Myth in the Making

In the Iliad, Achilles attributes his knowledge of both Ilion and Priam to hearsay. He refers to all the wealth which ‘they say’ (φασίν) Ilion once possessed ‘in previous times of peace’ (τὸ πρὶν ἐπ’ εἰρήνης, Il. 9.401–3), and similarly claims that ‘we hear’ Priam ‘was previously happy’ (τὸ πρὶν μὲν ἀκούομεν ὄλβιον εἶναι, Il. 24.543), since ‘they say’ that he surpassed all his neighbours in wealth and sons (πλούτῳ τε καὶ υἱάσι φασὶ κεκάσθαι, Il. 24.546). Knowledge of a distant people naturally relies on information from others, and such rumours of Trojan affluence doubtless circulated in the build-up to the expedition as a further incentive to join Agamemnon’s force.Footnote ⁷² After all, Hector himself claims that ‘previously all mortal men used to talk of Priam’s city as rich in gold and bronze’ (πρὶν μὲν γὰρ Πριάμοιο πόλιν μέροπες ἄνθρωποι | πάντες μυθέσκοντο πολύχρυσον πολύχαλκον, Il. 18.288–9). Besides this practical reality, however, these statements can also be taken more broadly to imply that Troy and its ruler have already become figures of legend. Even as the events of the war are unfolding, they have gained a traditional status in the talk of men.

Such a conception of a pre-existing and developing tradition surrounding Troy is felt even more clearly in the Odyssey.Footnote ⁷³ Even before his departure for the war, Penelope remembers how Odysseus had attributed the Trojans’ reputation of military might to hearsay (φασί, Od. 18.261), pointing to the pre-existing traditionality of their valour in martial epic. In context, we would have to imagine that Odysseus was thinking of Troy’s earlier war against Heracles, a core feature of tradition that is mentioned repeatedly in the Iliad (§iii.2.1), but an audience of the Odyssey itself may also anachronistically recall the very war at Troy in which Odysseus himself had since fought, the subject of the Iliad and other cyclic poems. The ten-year duration of that war attests to the fact that the Trojans are indeed formidable ‘fighting men’ (μαχητὰς … ἄνδρας, Od. 18.261). But it also renders ironic Odysseus’ following claim that they are the kind who ‘very quickly decide the great strife of equal war’ (οἵ τε τάχιστα | ἔκριναν μέγα νεῖκος ὁμοιΐου πτολέμοιο, Od. 18.263–4); in reality, there was nothing ταχύς (‘quick’), let alone τάχιστος (‘very quick’), about the war over Helen. Crucial for our current discussion, however, is the fact that the Trojans are once more represented as figures of legend. They are invoked in the same manner as heroes of the past: they have already joined the annals of tradition, alongside the likes of Typhoeus and Tydeus.

Elsewhere in the Odyssey, other recent events are similarly presented as established features of hearsay. When Telemachus first arrives in Pylos, he asks his host Nestor for news of his father, contrasting Odysseus’ unknown fate (ἀπευθέα) with what ‘we have heard’ about all the others (πευθόμεθ’, Od. 3.86–8):Footnote ⁷⁴

This rhetoric of Odyssean exceptionality echoes that of the narrator at the outset of the Odyssey (1.11–15), who similarly claims that ‘all the others who had escaped sheer destruction’ were already home (ἄλλοι μὲν πάντες, ὅσοι φύγον αἰπὺν ὄλεθρον, 1.11 ~ ἄλλους μὲν γὰρ πάντας, ὅσοι, 3.86), whereas Odysseus alone (τὸν δ’ οἶον, 1.13) was still stuck mid-journey.Footnote ⁷⁵ By referring to these other returns through the language of hearsay, however, Telemachus acknowledges that they are already developing into an independent tradition in their own right. After all, we know that Telemachus has indeed heard about such nostoi from the poet Phemius on Ithaca, who sang in Book 1 ‘of the return of the Achaeans, the woeful return which Pallas Athena laid upon them from Troy’ (ὁ δ’ Ἀχαιῶν νόστον ἄειδε | λυγρόν, ὃν ἐκ Τροίης ἐπετείλατο Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη, Od. 1.326–7, cf. λυγρῷ, 3.87).Footnote ⁷⁶ In appealing to what he has heard, Telemachus practically cites other poetic and mythical traditions about the aftermath of the war.

In response, Nestor embarks on a summary of the whole Trojan war and its aftermath (Od. 3.103–200, 254–316), offering a miniature overview of cyclic tradition from the events of the Cypria down to those of the Nostoi.Footnote ⁷⁷ He first recounts the events at Troy, introducing them with the language of memory, a reflection of his first-hand experience (ἔμνησας, Od. 3.103, cf. μνῆσαι, Od. 3.101: §iii.2). But when he reaches the final part of the ‘Returns’, he invokes the authority of hearsay (Od. 3.186–94):

Within the immediate context, Nestor’s repeated invocations of others’ talk suggests his incomplete knowledge and reliance on external sources, since he did not witness these events directly: after reaching safety himself, he does not know for certain who died or was saved (3.184–5). But the emphasis on verbal transmission also figures the traditionality of these events, pointing to the numerous traditions of other heroes’ homecomings which were later crystallised in the Nostoi and which here serve as foils and paradigms for Odysseus’ ongoing return.Footnote ⁷⁸ In particular, Nestor claims that ‘even you yourselves hear’ of Agamemnon’s death (καὶ αὐτοὶ ἀκούετε, Od. 3.193), nodding to the centrality of this specific narrative as a foil for Odysseus’ return, while also acknowledging the frequency with which it recurs in the Odyssey, from Zeus’s opening speech onwards (see §iii.2.1 n. 38). After all, Telemachus has indeed already heard of it from the disguised Athena (Od. 1.298–300).Footnote ⁷⁹ Besides signposting the allusive density of Nestor’s speech, however, this emphasis on hearsay also reflects the mechanics of tradition: Nestor claims that Telemachus will ‘learn’ all that he knows (δαήσεαι, Od. 3.187), figuring his speech as an act of transmission. His speech represents the dispersion of tradition, the gradual spread of ‘what people say’. In this scene between Telemachus and Nestor, the poet not only indexes his engagement with a host of other Nostoi traditions, but simultaneously depicts the development of his own tradition.

This self-reflexivity is even more visible in the way that events more contemporary with the Odyssey are represented as the object of hearsay. Shortly after his first Trojan war summary, Nestor notes that he has also heard talk of how Penelope’s many suitors devise evil in Telemachus’ halls (φασὶ μνηστῆρας σῆς μητέρος εἵνεκα πολλοὺς | ἐν μεγάροις ἀέκητι σέθεν κακὰ μηχανάασθαι, Od. 3.212–13).Footnote ⁸⁰ Again, at one level this φασί acknowledges Nestor’s reliance on reports from afar; but for Homer’s audience, this is a situation which we have seen all too clearly in the first two books of the poem. Indeed, we might suspect that Homer here advertises the budding fame of his own version of events even as they unfold: the suitors’ wrongdoing, like the Trojans’ wealth, are solidifying into elements of tradition as the epic progresses.Footnote ⁸¹ Besides this interpretation, however, the reference may also bear an additional significance, pointing beyond Homer’s narrative to other pre-existing traditions of Odysseus’ homecoming. Many scholars have suspected that our Odyssey repeatedly alludes to alternative and competing versions of Odysseus’ nostos, including one version which involved a more ‘realistic’ itinerary that took the hero to real-world locations such as Crete and Thesprotia.Footnote ⁸² The contents of any such alternative traditions are extremely conjectural and often based on little more than late sources and the internal evidence of the Odyssey itself,Footnote ⁸³ but they are at least partly presupposed by the Odyssean proem, in which Homer asks the Muse to ‘speak to us too from some point in the story’ (τῶν ἁμόθεν γε … εἰπὲ καὶ ἡμῖν, Od. 1.10), an expression that seems to acknowledge bardic predecessors to whom the Muse has previously told the same Odyssean tale.Footnote ⁸⁴ If we accept the possibility of other Odyssean traditions underlying our poem, then Nestor’s words gain further resonance: the suitors’ misbehaviour is indeed part of what ‘they talk about’ in the wider mythical tradition. The situation of Penelope and her suitors was already a well-known and established part of the fabula.Footnote ⁸⁵

Character (Por)traits

Besides such general evocations of broad events from the Trojan war tradition, Homer’s characters also appeal to hearsay when referring to more precise and detailed traits of specific characters. In such cases, we find fine-grained indexing of particular details from individual heroes’ biographies, not just allusion to the general contours of tradition in broad brushstrokes.

In Odyssey 4, for example, Peisistratus reminisces about his dead brother Antilochus, whom ‘they say excelled all others, pre-eminent in speed of foot and as a fighter’ (περὶ δ’ ἄλλων φασὶ γενέσθαι | Ἀντίλοχον, περὶ μὲν θείειν ταχὺν ἠδὲ μαχητήν, Od. 4.201–2). Within the internal story world, this remark reflects Peisistratus’ lack of direct acquaintance with his brother’s exploits, given that he was not himself present at Troy to see them (οὐ γὰρ ἐγώ γε | ἤντησ’ οὐδὲ ἴδον, Od. 4.200–1), but it also evokes the Trojan war traditions through which Antilochus’ fame has reached him and with which Homer’s audience would have been familiar. The Pylian youth played a significant part in the war as a close friend of Achilles, especially after Hector’s killing of Patroclus. In particular, his death at the hands of the Ethiopian Memnon was a prominent feature of the larger tradition, a key episode in the later Cyclic Aethiopis (Aeth. arg. 2c GEF) and one which the Homeric narrator has just recalled with the loaded language of memory (μνήσατο, ἐπιμνησθείς, Od. 4.187–9: §iii.2.1). Peisistratus’ appeal to hearsay acknowledges the central role that his brother played in the Trojan war fabula.

The emphasis on Antilochus’ speed, however, points not so much to the hero’s duel with Memnon as to his more general reputation as a runner in the wider tradition. In the Iliad’s footrace, he is introduced as the fastest of all the Achaean youths (ὃ γὰρ αὖτε νέους ποσὶ πάντας ἐνίκα, Il. 23.756), while Menelaus earlier claims that he is unmatched in his youth, speed and valour, paralleling Peisistratus’ description of his brother’s key traits (οὔ τις σεῖο νεώτερος ἄλλος Ἀχαιῶν, | οὔτε ποσὶν θάσσων, οὔτ’ ἄλκιμος ὡς σὺ μάχεσθαι, Il. 15.569–70). Elsewhere in the Iliad, moreover, Antilochus is called a ‘swift warrior’ (θοὸς … πολεμιστής, Il. 15.585) – a phrase used only once elsewhere in Homer of Aeneas, another hero renowned for his speedFootnote ⁸⁶ – and his agility is repeatedly stressed in his key contribution to the Iliadic narrative: his delivery of the news of Patroclus’ death to Achilles (θᾶσσον ἰόντα, Il. 17.654; βῆ δὲ θέειν, 17.698; πόδες φέρον, 17.700; πόδας ταχὺς ἄγγελος, 18.2).Footnote ⁸⁷ Although we do not have other evidence for his depiction elsewhere in archaic Greek epic, such a character trait was presumably an established feature of Antilochus in the Trojan war myth, not just limited to the Iliad. Indeed, earlier in the Odyssey, Nestor has already described his son in precisely the same terms as Peisistratus does here, suggesting that the attributes are formulaic and traditional (Ἀντίλοχος, περὶ μὲν θείειν ταχὺς ἠδὲ μαχητής, Od. 3.112 ~ Od. 4.202). After all, it is especially appropriate for Antilochus to share a major attribute of his companion, ‘swift-footed’ Achilles (e.g. Ἀχιλῆα πόδας ταχύν, Il. 13.348).Footnote ⁸⁸ Peisistratus’ appeal to hearsay in Odyssey 4 thus looks beyond the immediate narrative to point to Antilochus’ pre-eminence as a runner in the wider Trojan tradition. By indexing another element of cyclic epic, Homer signals not just his allusion to other features of the Trojan war narrative, but also his mastery over the mass of mythical material at his disposal.

In the Iliad, meanwhile, Antilochus himself appeals to hearsay when talking of Odysseus’ ‘raw old age’ during the funeral games for Patroclus (ὠμογέροντα δέ μίν φασ’ ἔμμεναι, Il. 23.791). On one level, this index simply reflects Odysseus’ traditional seniority within the Greek camp (especially when viewed from Antilochus’ youthful perspective).Footnote ⁸⁹ But as de Jong notes, φασί seems to place a particular emphasis on the preceding adjective ὠμογέροντα, making it ‘a kind of quotation, a nickname of Odysseus’.Footnote ⁹⁰ The word is a Homeric hapax legomenon, which was variously interpreted in antiquity as referring either to ‘early’ or to ‘premature’ old age.Footnote ⁹¹ But if it is a ‘quotation’ of sorts, from what kind of tradition does it derive? Given the generally proleptic flavour of the funeral games, which foreshadow many later events of the Trojan cycle (§iv.2), I would suggest that this reference also looks forward: in this case, to the wider fabula of Odysseus’ later life, as known from the Odyssey and Telegony. Unlike the ‘swift-fated’ Achilles, destined to die young at Troy, Odysseus was traditionally associated with a long and prosperous old age.Footnote ⁹² The hero spends much of the second half of the Odyssey disguised as an old man (παλαιοῦ … γέροντος, Od. 13.432) and is repeatedly addressed as a γέρων (e.g. Od. 14.37, 45, 122, etc.).Footnote ⁹³ But this deceptive role-playing only foreshadows his future old age beyond the bounds of the poem, as reflected in Teiresias’ prophecy (Od. 11.100–37) and as subsequently narrated in the Telegony (arg. 1–3 GEF).Footnote ⁹⁴ More generally, the centrality of old age to the Odyssean tradition is further reflected in the figure of the hero’s father, Laertes, who is in many ways a doublet of his son;Footnote ⁹⁵ indeed, he is explicitly described as being beset by a ‘raw old age’, just like the Iliadic Odysseus (ἐν ὠμῷ γήραϊ, Od. 15.357).Footnote ⁹⁶ Senectitude, therefore, is a prominent feature of Odysseus’ fabula; it was perhaps this very association which encouraged pseudo-Longinus to conceive of the Odyssey as the product of Homer’s old age (Subl. 9.11–14).Footnote ⁹⁷

Antilochus’ description of ὠμογέρων Odysseus thus taps into a wider tradition of Odyssean old age. The adjective ὠμογέρων parallels the situation of the Odyssean Laertes (ἐν ὠμῷ γήραϊ, Od. 15.357), but it also resonates with Teiresias’ prophetic mention of Odysseus’ sleek old age (γήρᾳ … λιπαρῷ, Od. 11.136), another rare phrase which seems to have been particularly associated with Odysseus (cf. Od. 19.368, 23.283). The only other epic instance of a similar idiom relates to Nestor (λιπαρῶς γηρασκέμεν, Od. 4.210) in a context celebrating his fortunate long life (perhaps as a model for Odysseus?), while its two other pre-Hellenistic appearances both evoke Odysseus as a model of long life and continued familial prosperity.Footnote ⁹⁸ The hero was the archetype of a full and gentle old age, ensuring a prosperous stability for his people (λαοὶ | ὄλβιοι, Od. 11.136–7). In describing the hero as ὠμογέρων, Homer thus appears to disrupt linear time by looking forward to these events that lie strictly beyond the Iliad. Within the wider proleptic context of the funeral games, Antilochus’ reference to Odysseus’ old age alludes to yet another later episode of the Trojan war tradition, signposted through φασί.

Such self-aware citation of tradition may even extend to direct textual allusion. The strongest case for this comes from the Odyssey, when Telemachus reports to Mentor-Athena that Nestor has been king for three generations of men (Od. 3.243–5):

On an internal level, this reference to Nestor’s age emphasises his wisdom and authority. He is a reliable source of information for Telemachus to consult. Such fabled seniority is the very kind of thing that Telemachus would have heard stories about as he was growing up on Ithaca, so φασίν makes natural sense within the story world: this is precisely the kind of tale that people tell, and the very kind of detail for which Telemachus would have to rely on the experience of others. As scholars have long recognised, however, this description of the Pylian king also closely resembles his opening description in the Iliad (Il. 1.247–52):

This connection was already noted by ancient and Byzantine scholars. The Odyssean scholia remark that Telemachus’ sentiment ‘has been adapted from the phrase in the Iliad’ (παρὰ τὸ ἐν Ἰλιάδι πεποίηται “μετὰ δὲ τριτάτοισιν ἄνασσεν”, Σ EHM^aT Od. 3.245a Ariston.), while Eustathius comments that ‘the poet succinctly paraphrases what was said about Nestor at more length in the Iliad’ (παραφράζων συντόμως ὁ ποιητὴς τὸ ἐν Ἰλιάδι περὶ Νέστορος πλατύτερον ἱστορηθέν, Eust. 1465.46–7 ad Od. 3.245–6 = i 124.5–6 Stallbaum). Of course, the two passages are not identical, and scholars have long been vexed by a slight discrepancy between them: on a literal reading, Nestor appears to have only ruled for one generation in the Iliad, but three in the Odyssey.Footnote ⁹⁹ Martin West’s assessment is not atypical: he describes the Odyssean line as ‘an egregiously unsuccessful attempt to reproduce the sense of A 250–2’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ However, Grethlein has highlighted the essential consistency between both passages: in each case, Nestor is pictured as having ruled over his own generation, as well as those of his children and grandchildren. As he acknowledges, the resulting timeframe skews both epics’ implicit chronology (seemingly interposing another generation between Nestor and his sons), but in both passages this can be explained as an exaggeration to reinforce Nestor’s authority.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Given the similar hyperbole and the shared emphasis on Nestor’s age, experience and wisdom, this thus remains a strikingly close parallel.

For scholars who are prepared to see a direct intertextual connection between the Iliad and Odyssey, this is certainly an attractive case for a direct, indexed allusion in archaic Greek epic: beneath Telemachus’ vague, pluralised φασίν, we may detect a specific reference to the Iliad. After all, the Iliadic passage derives from Nestor’s very first appearance in that poem, part of a memorable description of the Pylian king’s mellifluous speech (Il. 1.248–9).Footnote ¹⁰² It is – to use a phrase familiar from later periods – a ‘purple patch’ that could easily stick in an audience’s mind. By evoking it here, Homer and Telemachus would draw on literary precedent to authorise their exaggerated claim about Nestor’s age, gesturing to the fuller prior account of the Iliad, a truly ‘brief paraphrase’ as Eustathius claimed. Indeed, we could even see this allusion pre-empted in Telemachus’ wish to ἔπος ἄλλο μεταλλῆσαι (Od. 3.243), literally ‘enquire about another story’, but perhaps also ‘search after another epic’ (i.e. the Iliad).Footnote ¹⁰³

Such a direct connection is certainly possible, and one that I would not want to rule out. It is likely, however, that such a characterisation of Nestor’s seniority and triple-rule would not have been restricted to these two places in the archaic epic tradition. Nestor is a mainstay of the Trojan war story (cf. §i.2.1), who features across the Epic Cycle from the Cypria to the Nostoi, with a series of old and only partially understood epithets which indicate a character of considerable antiquity. His seniority and experience are essential parts of his mythical fabula; throughout the Iliad, his exceptional age is a recurring characteristic, already fixed in tradition (cf. Il. 2.555; §iv.2.1). In that case, we may suspect here engagement with the larger tradition surrounding Nestor, not restricted to a single source.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ This detail of his age and triple-rule is indeed what epic bards repeatedly ‘tell of’; the Iliad and Odyssey are simply two instantiations of what was most likely a common motif. It is significant, however, that this index comes in the voice of Telemachus, a figure who is no stranger to song (Od. 1.325–59). Once more, the distinction between song within and outside the story world begins to break down.

Regardless of one’s stance on the precise ‘target’ of this allusion, therefore, what is clear is that this φασίν – embedded in the voice of an internal character – already points to poetry beyond the Odyssey. Like the previous indices we have examined in this section, the device situates Homer’s poetry within a larger road map of myth, highlighting the poet’s detailed and encyclopaedic mastery of his mythical repertoire – not only on the level of plot and action, but also in the construction and articulation of individual characters.

Prominent Protagonists

Such indexed allusions to specific characters gravitate most towards the major protagonist of each Homeric epic: Achilles in the Iliad and Odysseus in the Odyssey. By concentrating on the talk swirling around each hero, Homer signposts his engagement and adaptation of prior traditions, while also acknowledging the key role which his own poetry plays in shaping the mythological record.

In the case of Achilles, these indices centre especially around the hero’s mixed parentage and ambiguous position between the mortal and divine worlds. We will consider Agenor’s indexed assertion of Achilles’ mortality below (Il. 21.568–70: §ii.2.4), but for now we can cite other cases in which internal characters comment on Achilles’ status. In Iliad 6, the Trojan augur Helenus introduces Achilles’ descent from a goddess with φασί (ὅν πέρ φασι θεᾶς ἐξ ἔμμεναι, Il. 6.100), marking the traditional and central role of Thetis in the hero’s biography. Similarly, when Aeneas later faces Achilles, he emphasises that they are both familiar with each other’s ancestry: they ‘know’ it from ‘hearing the ancient legends told by [or ‘about’] mortal men’ (ἴδμεν … | πρόκλυτ’ ἀκούοντες ἔπεα θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων, Il. 20.203–4). As Edwards notes, this comment can easily be taken as a reference ‘to epic poetry celebrating the exploits of the two heroes’,Footnote ¹⁰⁵ a reference which is reinforced by the use of the noun ἔπεα: not just ‘words’ in general, but also ‘poetic’ or even ‘epic utterances’.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Alongside the mention of ἄνθρωποι (‘people’), commonly singled out as the audience and propagators of epic poetry elsewhere,Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Aeneas’ emphasis on the fame and antiquity of these ἔπεα highlights the epic traditionality of both his and Achilles’ lineage.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ In his following words (206–7), Aeneas proves the accuracy of his knowledge, claiming that ‘they say’ that Achilles is the offspring of Peleus and Thetis (φασί, Il. 20.206). Once more, Achilles’ divine ancestry is pinpointed as a key feature of tradition.

In the Odyssey, meanwhile, Odysseus’ mythical career and accomplishments are similarly marked through the language of hearsay. When addressing Nestor in Book 3, Odysseus’ son Telemachus claims that his father ‘once, they say, fought by your side and sacked the city of the Trojans’ (ὅν ποτέ φασι | σὺν σοὶ μαρνάμενον Τρώων πόλιν ἐξαλαπάξαι, Od. 3.84–5), while when reunited with his father, he remarks that ‘I have always heard of your great fame, that you were a spearman in strength of hand and wise in counsel’ (ἦ τοι σεῖο μέγα κλέος αἰὲν ἄκουον, | χεῖράς τ’ αἰχμητὴν ἔμεναι καὶ ἐπίφρονα βουλήν, Od. 16.241–2). Although these cases may simply reflect Telemachus’ limited direct knowledge about his own father and thus inevitable resort to indirect hearsay (cf. Od. 1.215–16), they nevertheless suggest that both the events of the Trojan War and Odysseus’ exploits in them have already become established (and frequent, αἰέν) in the talk of men, as indeed they had: we can readily compare Demodocus’ first and third songs in Odyssey 8, or Menelaus’ and Helen’s competing accounts in Odyssey 4, which together emphasise the centrality of Odysseus as both warrior and schemer.Footnote ¹⁰⁹

It is particularly Odysseus’ resourcefulness, however, that is acknowledged as an established feature of tradition. Later in the poem, Telemachus again attributes his father’s reputation to hearsay, now with a focus on his cunning (Od. 23.124–6): ‘they say’ (φάσ’) Odysseus is pre-eminent in wiles (μῆτιν, 23.125). Similarly, when Odysseus himself reveals his identity in Scheria, he asserts that he is ‘an object of concern to all men’ for his tricks (δόλοι) and that his ‘fame reaches the heavens’, employing language that mirrors Circe’s allusive nod to Argonautic myth (ὃς πᾶσι δόλοισιν | ἀνθρώποισι μέλω, καί μευ κλέος οὐρανὸν ἵκει, Od. 9.19–20; cf. Ἀργὼ πᾶσι μέλουσα, Od. 12.70).Footnote ¹¹⁰ These comments point to the well-established tradition of Odysseus as the arch-deviser of the Trojan war myth, a reputation reflected in his formulaic epithet πολύμητις (‘of many wiles’), and more than deserved by his role in such episodes as the ambushes of Dolon, Rhesus and Helenus, as well as his various spying missions in Troy and the mobilisation of the Wooden Horse (Il. 10.338–579; Il. Parv. arg. 2a, 4b–d GEF; Od. 8.500–20). These indices highlight the traditionality of Odysseus’ cunning, while also acknowledging the Odyssey’s role in cementing it.Footnote ¹¹¹ Like Achilles, Odysseus emerges from his epic as a figure who is much talked of – and even more so, given his absence from Ithaca for the majority of the poem.

Homer thus indexes allusions to familiar aspects of the Trojan war tradition through the words of his characters. In some cases, he gestures to general events and broader elements of the mythical story: the Trojans’ might, the suitors’ insolence and the returns of the Greeks from Troy. But he also indexes specific characteristics of individual heroes: Antilochus’ speed, Odysseus’ old age and Nestor’s experience, as well as Achilles’ divine parentage and Odysseus’ cunning guile. In so doing, the poet emphasises the traditionality of his material, while also foregrounding his mastery over the larger mythical canon: in gesturing to what ‘others say’, he highlights his selective control of his inherited tradition.

In many respects, these examples support Scodel’s concept of Homer’s ‘rhetoric of traditionality’. As she has argued, the poet presents his material as traditional and familiar, eliding his own authorial presence and effacing any hint of originality.Footnote ¹¹² By presenting these events and details as what ‘they say’, Homer does indeed position them within a pre-existing canon of tradition and distances them from his own creativity. The Homeric epics are a retelling of what has been said before. However, Scodel’s theory does not work for all cases of indexical hearsay. On some occasions, indexed allusions involve a more competitive engagement with tradition. We have already noted Homer’s possible nod to competing traditions over Typhoeus’ final resting place (§ii.2.1), while Telemachus’ indexing of Odysseus’ μῆτις includes an assertion that no one could contend with his father’s guile (ἐρίσειε, Od. 23.126) – a statement that suggests the pre-eminence of not only Odysseus, but also the very poem which preserves his deeds.Footnote ¹¹³ In the following section, we will consider further appeals to hearsay which foreground a more competitive engagement with the mythic tradition.

Lies, Lies

On some occasions, the talk of others is explicitly branded as deceitful lies. In Iliad 5, for example, the Greek Tlepolemus accuses Lycian Sarpedon (Zeus’s son) of failing to live up to the standards of his own father Heracles, another son of Zeus (Il. 5.633–7):Footnote ¹¹⁴

Tlepolemus accuses Sarpedon of cowering from battle as Agamemnon criticised Diomedes in Book 4 (τίς τοι ἀνάγκη | πτώσσειν, 5.633–4 ~ τί πτώσσεις, 4.371: §ii.2.2),Footnote ¹¹⁵ but here he goes even further than the Greek general by actively challenging the tradition of Sarpedon’s divine parentage.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Of course, in this case his assertions prove misguided: Homer has already introduced the pair as a son and grandson of Zeus (5.631), while Tlepolemus’ swift death and Zeus’s later support of Sarpedon demonstrate through action that what ‘they say’ about the Lycian is indeed correct. But the hero’s countering of hearsay serves as a model for the poet’s own conduct elsewhere. Like Tlepolemus, Homer attempts to substitute tradition with a replacement narrative. But unlike his characters, the poet’s divine support and broader vantage point allows him to sift through the realms of hearsay with much more authority – and success.

Looking beyond the Iliad and Odyssey for a moment, the fragmentary Homeric Hymn to Dionysus opens with an extended instance of such contestation (HhDion. A.2–8):Footnote ¹¹⁷

The poet begins by canvassing a range of locations for Dionysus’ birthplace, all of which are attributed to the common talk of men (φάσ’, 3; λέγουσι, 6). But the poet – like Tlepolemus – dismisses such traditions as lies (ψευδόμενοι, 7), in favour of his own alternative explanation (Nysa, 9). In some respects, this opening priamel fits into the common hymnic motif of aporia, in which a poet expresses his hesitation about where or how to begin (e.g. πῶς τάρ σ’ ὑμνήσω, HhAp. 19).Footnote ¹¹⁸ But here, there is in fact no uncertainty about where or how the poet is starting: he is set on the god’s birthplace from the start, and the only question is which tradition is correct.Footnote ¹¹⁹ We are no longer in a position to determine whether the dismissed locations represent pre-existing alternative traditions which the poet counters, or simply foils that he has invented for rhetorical effect. But what is crucial for us here is the fact that the poet represents these dismissed alternatives as belonging to the domain of hearsay: it is what others say – and they are explicitly wrong.

This discourse of poetic lies has a wider currency in archaic Greek epic, especially as refracted through the voices of internal figures.Footnote ¹²⁰ At the outset of the Theogony, the Muses claim that they can speak ‘lies that seem like the truth’ (Theog. 27–8):

This statement has often been interpreted as a polemical dig against the falsities of Homeric epic, especially given the verbal parallel with Od. 19.203 (ἴσκε ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγων ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα).Footnote ¹²¹ Even if we do not accept such a precise intertextual connection, however, it is likely that Hesiod here distances himself from the ‘falsehoods’ of other (epic?) poetic traditions in favour of his own truth-speaking poetry. Elsewhere in his works, he presents ψεύδεα in a pejorative light: Falsehoods are the children of Eris (‘Strife’) alongside a host of horrific siblings like Famine and Ruin (Theog. 226–32), while in the Works and Days they are among Hermes’ gifts to the destructive Pandora (Op. 78).Footnote ¹²² Unlike the deceptive falsities of other poetry, Hesiod implies that his own Muses do want to speak ἀληθέα, ‘true things’. Like the narrator of the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus, he opens by dismissing prior traditions as ‘false’ to carve out his own space in the tradition.

This pejorative rejection of ‘false’ alternative traditions also lends some support to those scholars who have seen an allusive polemic underlying the ‘lying tales’ of the Odyssey. In the second half of the epic, the disguised hero utters five false tales about his own nostos, all of which are patently false within Homer’s narrative world (cf. Od. 13.254–5, 19.203).Footnote ¹²³ Many scholars suspect that these tales reflect pre-existing alternative traditions of Odysseus’ return which the poet has incorporated into his epic but de-authorised by recasting them as lies.Footnote ¹²⁴ This is an attractive, if speculative suggestion. But it may be strengthened by the fact that Odysseus also presents parts of his tales as the object of hearsay. In his fictional tales to Eumaeus and Penelope, the hero claims that he has ‘learned’ of Odysseus (Ὀδυσῆος ἐγὼ πυθόμην, Od. 14.321) and ‘recently heard’ of his return from Pheidon, the king of the Thesprotians (ἤδη Ὀδυσῆος ἐγὼ περὶ νόστου ἄκουσα | ἀγχοῦ, Od. 19.270–1, cf. ἀκοῦσαι, Od. 17.525) – just as Nestor has ‘learned’ of the Achaeans’ returns and Telemachus has heard of Agamemnon’s death (πεύθομαι, Od. 3.187; ἀκούετε, Od. 3.193). It is thus very possible that Homer – more implicitly than the poet of the Homeric Hymn – is downgrading other Odyssean traditions as mere lies, asserting the primacy and authority of his own version of events over the talk of others. While exploiting the language of hearsay to evoke the larger oral tradition within which he works, Homer would then be highlighting his own superiority by discounting the truth value of rival and alternative traditions. Like Tlepolemus, Hesiod, and the poet of the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus, here too, the circulating stories of others would be dismissed as lies.

Achillean (Im)mortality: Suppressing Alternatives

Presenting alternative versions of myth as ‘false words’ thus seems to have been an established mode for delegitimising rival traditions. But mere appeals to hearsay could also carry the same polemical charge, even without an explicit comment on a specific claim’s truth value. When Homer’s characters report what ‘they say’, we are invited to reconsider the details under discussion and ask whether others or indeed Homer himself would report things differently.

In the Iliad, such combative positioning is especially centred around the figure of Achilles. When Eurypylus claims that ‘they say’ (φασίν) Patroclus learnt his knowledge of healing herbs from Achilles, who in turn learnt it from Cheiron (Il. 11.830–2), the poet gestures to the tradition of Achilles’ tuition by Cheiron, a fantastical version of the hero’s upbringing which Homer tends to downplay elsewhere.Footnote ¹²⁵ More polemical, however, is Agenor’s assertion of Achilles’ mortality, that ‘people say he is mortal’ (Il. 21.568–70):

Unlike all the other examples of φασί I have discussed so far, this example is unusual since it does not lack a nominative agent, prompting de Jong to group it under her category (A) of φασί-utterances, those ‘with definite subject’.Footnote ¹²⁶ Yet the noun ἄνθρωποι (‘mankind’) hardly provides much more precise specification than the usual anonymous use of φασί; it is an ill fit when grouped alongside other specified subjects such as the Trojans and their allies (Il. 9.234), Ajax’s comrades (Il. 17.637), the suitors (Od. 2.238), the Phaeacians (Od. 7.322) or Odysseus’ father and son (Od. 11.176). The apparently superfluous ἄνθρωποι thus lays unusual stress on the phrase. On the one hand, this may play on the subject of the talk: ‘mortals’ claim that Achilles is ‘mortal’. But it is also significant that the noun ἄνθρωποι indicates the audience or propagators of poetry elsewhere in early Greek epic: Helen and Paris will be the subject of song for men of future generations (καὶ ὀπίσσω | ἀνθρώποισι … ἀοίδιμοι ἐσσομένοισι, Il. 6.357–8); Odysseus claims that he is the subject of song among men because of his trickery (πᾶσι δόλοισιν | ἀνθρώποισι μέλω, Od. 9.19–20); and Agamemnon’s shade claims that Clytemnestra will be the subject of a hateful song among men (στυγερὴ δέ τ’ ἀοιδὴ | ἔσσετ’ ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπους, Od. 24.200–1).Footnote ¹²⁷ It is thus tempting to treat this φασί as an invitation for Homer’s audience to consider other poetic traditions surrounding Achilles and questions of his (im)mortality: ‘people say’ that Achilles is mortal, but are they right?Footnote ¹²⁸ As with Achilles’ tuition from Cheiron, φασί here allusively acknowledges but simultaneously rejects an alternative tradition in which Achilles was more than mortal.

Of course, direct evidence for the tradition of Achilles’ immortality is attested only far later. The first extant instances of Thetis’ attempts to immortalise Achilles occur in the Hellenistic period, with passing references in Dosiadas’ Altar (σποδεύνας ἶνις Ἐμπούσας, AP 15.26.3) and Lycophron’s Alexandra (178–9, with Tzetz. ad Alex. 178). Apollonius of Rhodes offers a fuller account in his Argonautica (4.869–79), but this seems to draw heavily on Demeter’s similar treatment of Demophon in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (231–91), which complicates any attempt to trace the myth’s earlier history.Footnote ¹²⁹ Moreover, the Styx-dipping tradition, the most famous aspect of the myth in modern popular culture, is only securely attested even later: besides a possible passing allusion in the Batrachomyomachia (233), this detail of the myth appears first in literature only in Statius’ Achilleid (Achil. 1.133–4, 268–70, 480–1), and even later in art.Footnote ¹³⁰ It is thus possible that traditions of Achilles’ immortality are a post-Homeric invention. Indeed, some scholars suspect a Hellenistic origin for the myth.Footnote ¹³¹

Despite our late and limited evidence, however, it is likely that earlier traditions did exist surrounding Thetis’ concern over Achilles’ mortality and the hero’s subsequent invulnerability.Footnote ¹³² The obliqueness and brevity of Statius’ triple allusion to the Styx story suggest that the poet is drawing on an already familiar tradition, which he even indexes through temporal adverbs (saepe, iterum, Achil. 1.133–4). This alone would not rule out a Hellenistic origin for the myth, but there are strong grounds for tracing it back earlier. Invulnerability was a common attribute of other heroes in archaic myth,Footnote ¹³³ and we can find a number of hints that it was also applied to Achilles at an early date. The Hesiodic Aegimius already recounted Thetis’ attempts to test the immortality of her children by Peleus, here too by dipping them in water (Hes. fr. 300); we know that Achilles already enjoyed quasi-immortality in the Aethiopis with his afterlife on the White Isle – thanks again to Thetis’ intervention (Aeth. arg. 4b GEF); and the Iliad itself also conceals a veiled allusion to Achilles’ heel and associated invulnerability in Homer’s treatment of Diomedes’ foot-wound from Paris (Il. 11.369–83), part of Diomedes’ larger adoption of Achillean traits in the first half of the poem (§i.2.2).Footnote ¹³⁴ Various hints in archaic poetry thus suggest that the myth was of considerable antiquity.

Such a conclusion can be bolstered further by a neoanalytical case of motival priority. A number of scholars have argued that the Apollonian ‘immortalisation by fire’ is more appropriate to Achilles than Demophon, and thus cannot be wholly derived from the Homeric Hymn.Footnote ¹³⁵ The logic of the myth appears to be that fire burns off the infant’s mortal half, leaving only his immortal nature.Footnote ¹³⁶ And as Burgess notes, it is Achilles, not Demophon, who ‘is semidivine, and so could logically become immortalised if his mortality were burned away’.Footnote ¹³⁷

It is thus plausible that traditions about Thetis’ attempted immortalisation of her son existed already in the archaic period and that Homer’s original audiences may well have been aware of them.Footnote ¹³⁸ The Iliad’s general silence on this specific tradition would be in keeping with its suppression of immortality elsewhere, so as to emphasise the stark dichotomy between short-lived mortals and the immortal gods.Footnote ¹³⁹ Yet by having a character insist on the hero’s mortality with an indexical φασί, the poet acknowledges this alternative tradition, while pointedly highlighting his denial and divergence from it. In this case, Homer’s perspective coheres with what Agenor claims ‘people say’, but it is implicitly set against a major narrative variant.Footnote ¹⁴⁰

Competing Traditions: Penelope versus the Women of the Catalogue

The same agonistic strategy is also in play when Homer situates his own epic against other traditions of poetry and myth beyond those of the Trojan war. In such cases, the poet does not so much deny the truth value of other traditions, but rather uses them as a foil to assert the supremacy of his own narrative. A prime example is the relationship of the Odyssey to female catalogue poetry. Scholars have long recognised that the Iliad and Odyssey presuppose earlier traditions of female catalogue poetry familiar to us from the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. Margalit Finkelberg has argued that Ajax’s appearance in the list of Helen’s suitors (Hes. fr. 204.44–51) lies behind his entry in the Homeric Catalogue of Ships (Il. 2.557–8),Footnote ¹⁴¹ while Ian Rutherford has highlighted various correspondences between the Catalogue of Women and other poems in the early epic tradition.Footnote ¹⁴² In particular, Odysseus’ catalogue of heroines in the Nekyia (Od. 11.225–329) displays considerable overlap with the Hesiodic poem, especially visible in the case of its first heroine, Tyro, and her liaison with Poseidon (Od. 11.235–59): the preserved words of several Hesiodic lines precisely parallel Odysseus’ account of the episode,Footnote ¹⁴³ while the Odyssey’s comparison of surging water to a mountain when Poseidon conceals their lovemaking is also said to have occurred in the Catalogue (Od. 11.243–4, Hes. fr. 32).Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Despite the fragmentary state of the Hesiodic poem, there is a clear and strikingly close connection between these two passages.

What we make of these parallels depends in part on our theoretical preconceptions, but I am inclined to accept the conclusion of Rutherford that the Catalogue narrative likely pre-dated the Odyssey, even if the Catalogue as we have it is of a later date – a similar conclusion to that regularly drawn concerning the Epic Cycle.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ In that case, the surviving fragments of the Catalogue offer potential evidence for the kind of pre-Homeric traditions with which the Odyssey may have engaged. Of course, we must handle this evidence with considerable care and caution, since parts of the Catalogue as we have it may display some Homeric influence,Footnote ¹⁴⁶ but even so, our surviving fragments still provide the best window onto the possible contours of lost pre-Homeric traditions. In the immediate context of Odyssey 11, I thus consider it plausible that Homer is evoking earlier female catalogue traditions that would later coalesce into our Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ As in later literature, so already in the Odyssey, the Underworld is a natural site for direct engagement with the literary past.Footnote ¹⁴⁸

However, the Odyssey’s engagement with catalogue traditions is first signalled far earlier in the poem and in a far more overtly agonistic manner, during the Ithacan assembly of Book 2. Antinous, in his frustration at Penelope’s devious tricks for delaying the suitors’ advances, claims that she is unrivalled, even among women of a former age (Od. 2.115–22):

Antinous here compares Penelope with three women of the distant past: Tyro, Alcmene and Mycene, all of whom occupy prominent positions in Greek myth as the ancestors of many of its most famous heroes. In giving birth to Aeson, Pheres, Amythaon, Pelias and Neleus (Od. 11.254–9), Tyro in particular counts numerous heroes from the Trojan, Theban and Argonautic sagas in her lineage, including Melampus, Jason, Admetus, Adrastus and Nestor; Alcmene was the mother of Heracles, whose numerous affairs ensured a plentiful progeny; and Mycene, the eponymous heroine of Mycenae, was a significant ancestor in the Argive family tree as the mother of Argus, guardian of Io. By claiming that Penelope surpasses such eminent figures of the distant past, Antinous aims to criticise her unconventional ‘cunning’ (κέρδεα, 118), a trait that he has already blamed for the current impasse on Ithaca (2.88).Footnote ¹⁴⁹ But in so doing, he inadvertently praises Penelope’s exceptionality and highlights her obvious appeal: on this logic, whoever succeeds in wooing her will enjoy an illustrious and unsurpassed progeny – though as Danek notes, this comparison also exposes the suitors’ hybris: all three of these mythical women had divine lovers, so if Penelope is superior to them, she is completely out of the suitors’ league.Footnote ¹⁵⁰

Besides this ironic reflection on the suitors’ situation, Antinous’ direct contrast between Penelope and these other mythical women also activates a more allusive contrast between the Odyssey and female genealogical poetry. All three of Antinous’ comparanda also feature prominently in Hesiodic catalogue poetry: we have already encountered Tyro’s presence in both the Hesiodic Catalogue and the Odyssean Nekyia (Od. 11.235–59; Hes. frr. 30–2), while we can find Alcmene in both lists (Od. 11.266–8; Hes. fr. 193.19–20, fr. 195.8–63 = Scut. 1–56), as well as in the Great Ehoiai (frr. 248–9), where Mycene is also said to have featured (fr. 246).Footnote ¹⁵¹ Given the close combination of these women here, Antinous’ words point towards pre-existing female catalogue traditions, just as Odysseus’ do in the Nekyia. The likelihood of a reference to such traditions is further reinforced by the very nature of these lines: by listing the women in a miniature catalogue, Antinous repeats the compositional technique of Ehoiai poetry itself, while the word with which he introduces them, the relative pronoun οἷα (Od. 2.118), acts as a generic signpost, echoing the common introductory formula of such poetry (ἢ οἵη).Footnote ¹⁵² Antinous’ comparison thus imitates the key features of Hesiodic catalogue poetry at the same time as he evokes some of its principal protagonists.Footnote ¹⁵³

The allusive nature of these verses is sealed, however, by their indexical framing: Antinous introduces these women by appealing to hearsay (ἀκούομεν, 118) and antiquity (παλαιῶν, 118; πάρος, 119). The names of these women have reached him through transmitted tales, while their age marks the venerability of these traditions and heightens the contrast with the present. Stephanie West remarks that ‘the antiquarian note’ of these lines ‘is slightly strange’,Footnote ¹⁵⁴ yet viewed as indices of allusion, their function is clear: once more, appeal to hearsay signposts allusive interactions.Footnote ¹⁵⁵ After all, as regular ‘auditors’ of Phemius’ songs (ἀκούοντες, Od. 1.325–7), the suitors are themselves ‘aficionados of epic poetry’; it is no surprise if they derive their knowledge from older song traditions.Footnote ¹⁵⁶

Given this evocation of Hesiodic Catalogue poetry, Antinous’ comparison thus does much more than simply highlight Penelope’s desirability and objectionable craftiness. It also sets her Odyssean self against representatives of another rival poetic tradition. Despite Antinous’ attempts to criticise her κέρδεα, this comparison is in fact very favourable when viewed against the poem’s broader ideological framework. Penelope’s exceptional κέρδεα make her a prime match for Odysseus, whose own unrivalled κερδοσύνη (‘cunning’) is repeatedly highlighted in the epic (esp. Od. 19.285–6; cf. 4.251, 13.297, 14.31; cf. Il. 23.709). In addition, the only other specific figures whose κέρδεα are mentioned in the Odyssey are the couple’s son, Telemachus (18.216, 20.257), and Odysseus’ divine patron, Athena (13.297, 299). Within the broader context of the poem, κέρδεα are valorised as the emblematic and unifying trait of Odysseus’ household: κέρδεα are ‘arguably a defining theme of the Odyssey itself’.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ By having Antinous assert Penelope’s superiority to catalogic women in these terms, Homer thus agonistically hints at the superiority of the tale in which she features: just as Penelope surpasses these women of the past, so too does the Odyssey trump the Hesiodic tradition of female catalogues. Antinous’ ensuing claim seals this agonistic one-upmanship: Penelope is winning great κλέος for herself – not just a ‘notorious reputation’, but also ‘epic fame’ (μέγα μὲν κλέος ἀυτῇ | ποιεῖτ’, 2.125–6).Footnote ¹⁵⁸ As she surpasses the likes of Tyro and Alcmene, she too joins the ranks of those who are the subject of song in their own right.Footnote ¹⁵⁹

The polemic of this comparison is heightened when we consider how these Hesiodic women were themselves presented as unrivalled paragons of womanhood. The Hesiodic Catalogue explicitly sets out to list those women who were ‘the best at that time [and the most beautiful on the earth]’ (α̣ἳ τότ’ ἄρισται ἔσαν̣ [καὶ κάλλισται κατὰ γαῖαν], Hes. fr. 1.3),Footnote ¹⁶⁰ and both Tyro and Alcmene are further celebrated as flawless models of femininity in their entries in the Catalogue: Tyro surpasses all female women in beauty (εἶδος | [πασάων προὔχεσκε γυναι]κῶν θηλυτεράων, fr. 30.33–4) and is praised for her beautiful hair ([ἐϋπ]λόκαμος, fr. 30.25, notably the same epithet that Antinous uses of the Achaean women of the past: ἐϋπλοκαμῖδες Ἀχαιαί, Od. 2.119). Alcmene, meanwhile, receives a particularly lavish encomium (fr. 195.11–17 = Scut. 4–10):

In part, these verses draw on traditional elements of epic encomium: εἶδος (‘beauty’) and μέγεθος (‘stature’) are frequently combined in the praise, criticism or description of an individual’s physique, alongside other nouns such as δέμας (‘body’) and φυή (‘form’).Footnote ¹⁶¹ The image of wafting beauty is paralleled elsewhere in the Catalogue (fr. 43a.73–4) and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (276). Yet the larger focus here on Alcmene’s νόος (‘mind’) and marital fidelity are uncommon in such descriptions. Somebody’s φρένες (‘wits’) are sometimes picked out for comment,Footnote ¹⁶² yet the only other mention of νόος in such contexts is Odysseus’ negative dismissal of Euryalus’ ‘stunted mind’ during the Phaeacian games of Odyssey 8, in comparison to his outstanding looks (εἶδος μὲν ἀριπρεπές, … νόον δ’ ἀποφώλιός ἐσσι, Od. 8.176–7). The Hesiodic poet’s emphasis on this attribute here, then, in notably combative terms (οὔ τις ἔριζε, fr. 195.12), highlights Alcmene’s exceptionality. So too does the ‘honour’ which she pays to her husband (fr. 195.16–17), an expression which finds no direct parallel in the early Greek tradition,Footnote ¹⁶³ although there is perhaps an underlying touch of irony given her coming ‘affair’ with Zeus during Amphitryon’s absence.Footnote ¹⁶⁴ In any case, if these two traits (intelligence and fidelity) were particularly associated with Alcmene in early genealogical traditions, as the uniqueness of these lines may suggest, Antinous’ use of her in the Odyssey as a foil to Penelope is even more pointed. Not only does Penelope surpass the best women of the past, but she eclipses even her closest rival in wit and marital loyalty.Footnote ¹⁶⁵ She remains faithful to her husband,Footnote ¹⁶⁶ and displays an unparalleled facility with κέρδεα (2.118). Penelope’s intelligence is unsurpassed, which makes her the perfect match for Odysseus and – ironically – completely unsuitable for Antinous, whose very name betrays his hostility to sensible thought (ἀντί + νόος: ‘enemy of discernment’).Footnote ¹⁶⁷

Antinous’ words in Odyssey 2 thus position Penelope against key representatives of female catalogue poetry. Penelope proves superior even to the most intelligent and loyal women of this rival poetic tradition, a pre-eminence which reflects positively on the Homeric poet: his subject matter surpasses that of his predecessors. Near the start of the whole epic, Homer asserts the pre-eminence of his female protagonist and his own poetry, and he does so – rather ironically – through the ambivalent voice of a suitor. Although Antinous may attempt to criticise Penelope’s cunning, his synkrisis in fact foregrounds her exceptionality and unwittingly proves how suitable she is not only as a match for Odysseus but also as an emblem for the poem itself.

This emphasis on Penelope’s incomparability recurs several times later in the Odyssey with a similarly agonistic point.Footnote ¹⁶⁸ When Penelope speaks to the disguised Odysseus on his return to Ithaca, she wants him to learn whether she is ‘pre-eminent among other women’ for her ‘intelligence and prudent cunning’ (δαήσεαι εἴ τι γυναικῶν | ἀλλάων περίειμι νόον καὶ ἐπίφρονα μῆτιν, Od. 19.325–6), while in the second Nekyia (Od. 24.192–202), Agamemnon compares her favourably with Clytemnestra (who also features in the Catalogue: frr. 23a.13–30, 176.5–6). However, it is especially Telemachus’ compliments before the bow contest in Odyssey 21 which resonate with Antinous’ earlier words (Od. 21.106–10):

Like Antinous’ former praise, these verses evoke key features of the Hesiodic catalogue tradition: the οἵη (Od. 21.107) nods to the formula of catalogue poetry, like οἷα in Book 2,Footnote ¹⁶⁹ while the very context of these lines – the wooing of a woman and the idea of a woman as a prize (ἄεθλον) – resonates with many of the common themes of the catalogic genre.Footnote ¹⁷⁰ Here too, Penelope is set against the traditions of the Catalogue and comes out on top. Yet these lines also have a closer connection with Antinous’ earlier words than has been observed before. The initial trio of cities which Telemachus lists are all intimately linked with Antinous’ exempla: Tyro’s descendants ruled Pylos (Neleus/Nestor); Alcmene was from Argos, while her son Heracles was frequently imagined as the ruler of the locality (cf. Il. 15.29–30); and the city of Mycenae drew its name from Mycene herself.Footnote ¹⁷¹ Telemachus’ words thus not only evoke traditions of female catalogue poetry but also recall the implicitly agonistic intertextuality of the earlier episode. After all, he ends by claiming that the suitors themselves ‘know’ of Penelope’s incomparability (καὶ δ’ αὐτοὶ τόδε γ’ ἴστε, Od. 21.110), a remark that acknowledges their (and the external audience’s) familiarity with Antinous’ earlier words. Like the Iliadic allusions to Typhoeus and Tydeus, the indexed allusion in Odyssey 2 thus continues to resonate throughout the remainder of the poem, establishing an enduring contrast with another literary tradition and its paradigmatic representatives.Footnote ¹⁷²

Indexical appeals to hearsay in Homer, therefore, not only flag and signpost allusion but also mark a deeply agonistic engagement with other traditions. As in later Latin poetry, the device is used to mark out a larger map of poetic territories within and against which a poet defines himself. The device exhibits not only an encyclopaedic but also an agonistic drive. In the following section, we shall see how this same combination of nuances co-exists in our wider corpus of archaic Greek epic.

Early Indices: Archilochus, Sappho, Alcaeus

Our earliest lyric cases of indexical hearsay look not to the lofty traditions of epic, but to the far humbler genre of fable. On several occasions in his surviving iambic fragments, Archilochus explicitly introduces his fables as αἶνοι – a word which not only signals his generic consciousness, but also his debt to pre-existing traditions.Footnote ¹⁹² He begins his account of ‘the fox and the monkey’ by claiming that he will tell his addressee Cerycides an αἶνος (ἐρέω τιν’ ὕμιν αἶνον, ὦ Κηρυκίδη, fr. 185.1) and similarly introduces his tale of the fox and eagle as ‘a fable told among men’ (fr. 174):

The specification here of an audience of ἄνθρωποι (a noun which we have already seen combined with allusive indices in epic)Footnote ¹⁹³ emphasises the traditionality of the tale and the authority of its moral message.Footnote ¹⁹⁴ Such explicit citations of αἶνοι appear to have been an established part of the handling of fable from Hesiod onwards,Footnote ¹⁹⁵ and the repeated use of the indefinite article τις retains the vagueness of reference that we have seen with other verbal indices. In this second Archilochean case, however, we have some evidence that the poet is indeed following an established fabula. The remaining words of Archilochus’ fragment closely resemble the beginning of the later Aesopic version of the same fable, centred on the friendship and union of the two animals (ὡς ἆρ’ ἀλώπηξ καἰετὸς ξυνεωνίην | ἔμειξαν, fr. 174.2–3 ~ ἀετὸς καὶ ἀλώπηξ φιλίαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους ποιησάμενοι, fab. 1 Perry).Footnote ¹⁹⁶ Admittedly, the text of this version is late, written probably between the first and third centuries ce, but it must derive from an older tradition, since Aristophanes’ Peisetaerus too refers to the same Aesopic fable with similar phrasing and indexing (Av. 651–3):Footnote ¹⁹⁷

Like Archilochus, Aristophanes introduces the fable by foregrounding the coming together of bird and beast (ἐκοινώνησεν, 653), while also employing the indefinite τι (652). But he attributes the tale not to Archilochus, but to the λόγοι of Aesop (651). Given the consistency of the fable in these later parallels, as well as Archilochus’ own gestures to independent, pre-existing αἶνοι, it is likely that such a fabular tradition already circulated in the mid-seventh century.Footnote ¹⁹⁸ Through such a self-conscious citation (αἶνός τις ἀνθρώπων), Archilochus signposts his allusive adoption of another tradition, just as Homer indexed his engagement with other myths.Footnote ¹⁹⁹

The melic poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus, by contrast, indexes epic myth on a number of occasions. In a small fragment of Sappho, we find an indexed allusion to traditions about Helen’s birth (fr. 166):

The wider context of this fragment is lost, but what we have corresponds to the version of the myth in which Helen was not the daughter of Zeus (or Tyndareus) and Leda, but rather the product of a liaison between Zeus and Nemesis – born from an egg that Leda received from a wandering shepherd or Hermes.Footnote ²⁰⁰ The story was a popular subject of fifth-century vase painting and also featured in Cratinus’ Nemesis,Footnote ²⁰¹ but it was already well established before the fifth century: elements of the myth suggest a primal and even pre-Homeric pedigree,Footnote ²⁰² and it certainly featured already in the Cyclic Cypria (frr. 10–11 GEF). Sappho may or may not have known the story from this specific poem, but her broad engagement with Trojan themes elsewhere attests to her familiarity with cyclic myth, which she must have known at least in part through epic poetry.Footnote ²⁰³ Her opening φαῖσι (alongside a temporal ποτά) signposts her introduction of a familiar mythical episode, cueing her audience’s knowledge of this cyclic tradition.Footnote ²⁰⁴

A comparable engagement with epic myth can also be found in Alcaeus, who appeals to hearsay when discussing Priam’s grief and the destruction of Troy ‘because of Helen’ (fr. 42.1–4, suppl. Page):

Alcaeus’ index points to the ruin and destruction at the heart of the Trojan war tradition. But within this, it also evokes a larger epic discourse surrounding Helen’s responsibility for the conflict: the phrase ἀμφ’ Ἐ[λένᾳ] in the fragment’s penultimate verse (v. 15) appears to have been a set formula associated with the war,Footnote ²⁰⁵ while ἐκ σέθεν (v. 3) similarly recalls other formulaic phrases attributing blame to Helen (e.g. Ἑλένης εἵνεκα).Footnote ²⁰⁶ Besides the general Trojan myth, the poem fits into a larger tradition of Helen kakegoria, to which Stesichorus’ Palinode (esp. οὐκ ἔστ’ ἔτυμος λόγος οὗτος, fr. 91a) and the incipit of an anonymous lyric poem also gesture ([Ἑ]λένην ποτὲ λόγος, P. Mich. 3250c recto col. i.5): all three index pre-existing stories (λόγοι) about the Spartan princess.Footnote ²⁰⁷

It was not only traditional myths that were the subject of the Lesbian poets’ indexical references, however. In a more self-reflexive move, a poet could also signpost engagement with the traditions of their own poetry. Take, for example, Sappho’s (unprovenanced) Brothers Poem, the first extant quatrain of which reads as follows (fr. 10.5–8):Footnote ²⁰⁸

Both the speaker and the addressee of these verses are unknown. A common interpretation is that Sappho addresses her mother or another family member, but alternatively Sappho herself might be the chatterer, critiqued by another speaker or addressing herself in a soliloquy.Footnote ²⁰⁹ In any case, the description of the addressee’s ‘chatter’ has a derogatory flavour: θρυλέω is a relatively rare verb, primarily found in prose and used of both repetitive and grating talk in a private or public setting.Footnote ²¹⁰ If it is used here of Sappho or another female family member, it likely implies a gendered dismissal of ‘women’s prattle’, in contrast to the socially sanctioned speech act of prayer (λί̣σσεσθαι, fr.10.10).Footnote ²¹¹

In addition to this gendered resonance, however, it is also possible to take this initial ‘chatter’ as a reference to Sappho’s own poetry. As Dirk Obbink has highlighted, Sappho’s poems repeatedly refer to Charaxus in terms of his movement and travels: he is always said to have ‘come’ or be ‘coming’ somewhere or other.Footnote ²¹² Obbink thus suggests that these verses act as a kind of ‘intertextual reference or self-citation’, acknowledging the frequency with which Sappho’s poetry chatters about Charaxus in this way.Footnote ²¹³ Peter O’Connell has taken this argument even further by speculating that a real or notional ‘welcome song’ for Charaxus might underlie these words, given the lexical parallels shared with other archaic songs of that subgenre.Footnote ²¹⁴ Sappho’s words would then be evoking and critiquing a specific song from her larger repertoire – an attractive, if ultimately unprovable, conjecture.

Given the various ways in which these verses seem to recall Sappho’s broader corpus, it may thus be possible to see a further indexical edge to θρύλησθα, especially if we take Sappho as the addressee (‘You, Sappho, are always chattering in your poetry …’).Footnote ²¹⁵ The flexibility of the Sapphic speaking ‘I’ and the fact that Sappho is frequently addressed elsewhere in her extant corpus make this a plausible hypothesis.Footnote ²¹⁶ As does the fact that later authors also employ the verb θρυλέω to refer to poetry and to index literary quotation: Plato and Polybius explicitly apply it to poetic chatter,Footnote ²¹⁷ and Euripides’ Bellerophon uses it to introduce a quotation of a gnome that is ‘chattered about everywhere’.Footnote ²¹⁸ Epicurus, meanwhile, uses the verb to mark a cross reference within his own work: φον[ὴ] μόνον ἀμ[ίβε]ται, καθάπερ πάλαι θρυ[λῶ] (‘only the sound is changed, as I have long been chattering’, fr. 34.30.5–7).Footnote ²¹⁹ In a similar manner, Sappho’s θρύλησθα may thus not only dismiss excessive female prattling, but also look back to her previous songs about Charaxus’ travels, which are here revised and corrected in the face of fresh news.

Of course, the fragmentary opening of the poem resists absolute conclusions, but on available evidence it is plausible to see θρυλέω as a more colourful alternative to the likes of λέγω and φημί, indexing prior poetic speech. If so, this example is more direct and explicit than the other indices we have explored. In comparison to the third-person forms of φημί and the abstract nouns λόγος and αἶνος, the second-person θρύλησθα points to speech within a specific context – which is apt for the more self-reflexive nature of the index, within Sappho’s own speech world. Yet this is not an isolated moment: in later chapters, we will see how Sappho similarly indexes engagement with her wider poetic traditions through appeals to memory (§iii.3.3) and temporality (§iv.3.1 and iv.3.2). Her repeatedly indexed self-references contribute to her creation of a consistent story world and of distinctive song cycles.

Fifth-Century Footnotes: Pindar, Bacchylides, Skolia

It is in the fifth century, however, that indexical hearsay is particularly prominent. Bacchylides indexes his account of Heracles’ katabasis in pursuit of Cerberus ( [π]οτ’, 5.56; λέγουσιν, 5.57),Footnote ²²⁰ as well as his treatment of Euenus’ harsh treatment of his daughter Marpessa (λ̣έ̣γ̣ουσι, fr. 20a.14).Footnote ²²¹ Yet it is Pindar who is the most intense and frequent footnoter of tradition. He indexically marks a wide range of myths, including Zeus’s flooding of the earth and the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha (λέγοντι μάν, Ol. 9.49);Footnote ²²² the deaths of Otus and Ephialtes, the theomachic sons of Iphimedeia and Aloeus (φαντί, Pyth. 4.88);Footnote ²²³ Ixion’s words as he is turned on the wheel (φαντί, Pyth. 2.21);Footnote ²²⁴ Antaeus’ audition of how Danaus once devised a way for his daughters to marry in Argos (ἄκουσεν, ποτ’, Pyth. 9.112);Footnote ²²⁵ Zeus’s rape of Danae as a shower of gold (φαμέν, Pyth. 12.17);Footnote ²²⁶ Perseus’ flight from the Gorgons (λέγοντι δὲ βροτοί, fr. 70a.15);Footnote ²²⁷ Zeus’s keeping watch over Leto’s birth pains (λέγο[ντι], Pae. 12.9);Footnote ²²⁸ Cadmus’ marriage of Harmonia (ποθ’ … [φ]ά̣μα, fr. 70b.27);Footnote ²²⁹ Zeus’s fathering of Aeacus and Heracles (λέγοντι, Nem. 7.84); and the fame of Aeacus (κλεινὸς Αἰακοῦ λόγος, Isth. 9.1).Footnote ²³⁰ In many of these cases, we do not possess full earlier accounts of the myth in question, but from the limited picture we have, these indices seem to mark references to established and familiar traditions.

This impression is reinforced when we consider Pindar’s indexical treatment of Trojan myth, where we have a clearer view of the traditions with which he could engage. In Isthmian 8, Zeus’s assent to the marriage of Peleus and Thetis is signposted with φαντί (Isth. 8.46a); the poet signals his engagement with the larger tradition of the pair’s wedding and the threatening power of Thetis’ offspring (§iii.3.1). In Pythian 3, Nestor and Sarpedon are singled out as ‘the talk of men’ (ἀνθρώπων φάτις, Pyth. 3.112), known to later generations from ‘such resounding verses as wise craftsmen constructed’ (Pyth. 3.113–14); we are invited to recall the pair’s prominent role in early Greek epic, perhaps especially in the Iliad.Footnote ²³¹ In Olympian 2, meanwhile, the poet indexes Ino’s immortal life among the Nereids (λέγοντι, Ol. 2.28–30), an account which might look to the Odyssey’s specific description of her immortalisation and new life in the sea (Od. 5.333–5: cf. Σ Ol. 2.51d).Footnote ²³² Given Ino’s mentions elsewhere in archaic literature, a more general nod to her mythical fabula is more likely,Footnote ²³³ although an Odyssean reference would fit with the poem’s larger appropriation of Homeric passages to construct a particular view of the afterlife.Footnote ²³⁴ Alongside his frequent indexing of non-Trojan myth, therefore, it is clear that Pindar frequently marked his mythical allusions through the language of hearsay, authorising his account with the backing of tradition.

Such appeals to hearsay are not restricted to the epinician genre in the fifth century, however. A similar indexical appeal to epic traditions is also visible in a pair of Attic skolia preserved by Athenaeus (15.695c = Carm. Conv. 898–9 PMG):

The first skolion focuses on the credentials of the Greek hero Ajax, gesturing to a well-established tradition of this hero as the second-best of the Achaeans. The sentiment recurs repeatedly in Homer and a variety of later authors, suggesting that it was a fixed part of Ajax’s fabula.Footnote ²³⁵ Indeed, it is a crucial element of the hero’s mythical biography, since it explains the great shame and anger he feels after he fails to beat Odysseus in the contest for Achilles’ arms. The arms were a ‘victory prize for the best’ (τῷ ἀρίστῳ νικητήριον, Apollod. Epit. 5.6). Based on the form of tradition, Ajax should have been their rightful heir. Aided by the indexical λέγουσι, these verses thus evoke an established element at the heart of Ajax’s mythical fabula.

The second skolion, however, builds on and caps the first by imitating its allusive strategy while simultaneously shifting its point of comparison from heroic excellence to temporal priority.Footnote ²³⁶ Ajax is now a peer of Achilles, but still in second place because his father Telamon beat him to Troy by a whole generation. The skolion picks up on and reworks the earlier poem’s patronymic (παῖ Τελαμῶνος), as well as its concern with Ajax’s status. Indeed, the hero is explicitly marked as δεύτερος here (in comparison to the first poem’s ἄριστος), an adjective which may itself reflect this skolion’s secondary and epigonal status in relation to its predecessor.Footnote ²³⁷ Crucially, however, this poem clinches its argument through another appeal to hearsay, marking its allusion to another well-established element of Trojan myth: the tradition of Heracles’ earlier expedition against Troy, in which Telamon played a key role.Footnote ²³⁸ Like its predecessor, this skolion thus alludes to an established feature of the Trojan war fabula and legitimises its claim with an indexing λέγουσιν. As a pair, they both invoke familiar features of tradition to justify their competing perspectives on Ajax. As generically ‘low’ sympotic song, they invoke the lustre of epic to authorise their own status as literature.

Besides gesturing to the authority of tradition at large, however, the first skolion may also look back to a specific, famous instantiation of the Ajax-as-second-best motif. In Odyssey 11, when Odysseus encounters his adversary’s shade, he not only recalls the arms contest (Od. 11.544–9) and twice expresses the second-best motif (Od. 11.469–70, 550–1) but also addresses the hero as παῖ Τελαμῶνος (Od. 11.553), the same apostrophe that we find in the skolion. This is a notably rare collocation that appears elsewhere only in Sophocles’ Ajax (Aj. 183) and an anonymous epigram in the Palatine Anthology (AP 9.116.3), both in the context of the arms contest and its aftermath.Footnote ²³⁹ Given the unique combination of the motif with this rare vocative address, the skolion may thus look back to Odysseus’ account of the Underworld encounter, an episode in which Ajax’s status played an important role. Behind the vague λέγουσι, we could see a specific reference to Homer and Odysseus as the key authorities for this claim. Even in this case, however, we should be wary of overplaying the evidence, especially given the frequency with which Ajax is defined by his patronymic elsewhere in early Greek poetry (Τελαμωνιάδης, e.g. Il. 9.623, Od. 11.543, Pind. Nem. 4.47; υἱὸς Τελαμῶνος, Il. 13.177, 17.284, 17.293, Pind. Nem. 8.23). The collocation παῖ Τελαμῶνος is ultimately not as distinctive as it first seems. Alongside the numerous other evocations of the second-best motif, and further echoes of epic phraseology in the skolion itself,Footnote ²⁴⁰ it is thus more plausible to see here an evocation of a more general motif of the epic tradition, rather than one specific instantiation. The skolion poet musters the support of tradition to prove his point, invoking a familiar and well-established feature of Ajax’s mythical fabula.

Indexing Texts: Pindar and Simonides on Hesiod

So far, we have seen that lyric poets frequently indexed their mythical references by appealing to hearsay, signposting and authorising their engagement with other traditions (or even perhaps specific texts: the Cypria, Iliad and Odyssey). In two further cases, however, we can be very confident that an index points to a precise text even in spite of the appeal to anonymous hearsay.

The first of these is found in Pindar’s sixth Pythian, a poem which celebrates a Pythian chariot victory by Xenocrates of Akragas and dwells on the filial piety of his son Thrasybulus. The youth, Pindar claims, follows the advice which the centaur Cheiron once gave to the young Achilles (Pyth. 6.19–27):

These instructions, to revere both the gods and one’s parents, form a stock part of Greek moral didacticism.Footnote ²⁴¹ But the scholia note a possible source for this maxim, the Precepts of Cheiron (αἱ Χείρωνος Ὑποθῆκαι), a work attributed in antiquity to Hesiod (Σ Pyth. 6.22, quoting Hes. fr. 283):

Scholars have often taken this scholiastic note as evidence that the maxim in Pyth. 6.23–7 derives directly from this Hesiodic poem,Footnote ²⁴² although the scholia do not quite say as much: all they actually claim is that Hesiod was attributed a poem on the same topic. Yet it is a plausible inference that Pindar had this specific poem in mind.Footnote ²⁴³ Both Pindar and Bacchylides appear to have alluded to the work elsewhere,Footnote ²⁴⁴ and the reverent and religious sensibility of the advice in Pythian 6 closely parallels the Hesiodic fragment’s injunction to sacrifice to the gods. There are thus strong grounds for seeing φασί here directing Pindar’s audience to a specific didactic predecessor. Given the fragmentary state of the Hesiodic poem, we cannot determine how Pindar manipulated his model, beyond his exploitation of Cheiron as an authorising figure of paraenetic authority.Footnote ²⁴⁵ But even from what remains, we can see that Pindar here indexed a precise citation through a vague appeal to hearsay.

Our second example offers an even stronger case for a direct citation of a specific poetic predecessor. It is a particularly well-known case of early Greek allusion, Simonides’ fragment on the mountain of Arete (fr. 579):Footnote ²⁴⁶

These lines are a clear adaptation of a passage from Hesiod’s Works and Days on the diverging paths of ἀρετή and κακότης (Op. 287–92):

Simonides’ evocation of this passage is secured by a number of verbal and thematic parallels: in Simonides’ fragment, Arete dwells (ναίειν, fr. 579.2 ~ ναίει, Op. 288 of Κακότης) among rocks which are ‘difficult to ascend’ (δυσαμβάτοισ’, fr. 579.2), just as the Hesiodic path to Arete is ‘long, steep and rough’ (μακρὸς δὲ καὶ ὄρθιος … | καὶ τρηχύς, Op. 290–1); and both passages focus on reaching the pinnacle (ἵκῃ τ’ἐς ἄκρον, fr. 579.7 ~ εἰς ἄκρον ἵκηται, Op. 291), an endeavour which requires much sweat (ἱδρώς, fr. 579.5 ~ ἱδρῶτα, Op. 289).Footnote ²⁴⁸ Although Simonides attributes this image to a mere, indefinite λόγος, there is thus a clear connection to the Works and Days passage, a connection which is further reinforced by the personification of Arete: as Richard Hunter notes, personification is a typically Hesiodic trope, through which Simonides ‘leaves little doubt stylistically as to which poet he is following’.Footnote ²⁴⁹ Behind its vague and riddling anonymity, the opening phrase ἐστί τις λόγος points not only to a familiar commonplace, but also to a specific literary predecessor.Footnote ²⁵⁰

This anonymity also conceals Simonides’ selective adaptation of his source. As scholars have highlighted, Simonides updates and rebrands Hesiod’s original image, eliding all mention of Κακότης and injecting Ἀρετή with a more moral aspect. Whereas in Hesiod the noun stood largely for agricultural success and material prosperity, Simonides restricts it to those who exhibit manly virtue (ἀνδρεία), internalising the toil and struggle required to achieve it (cf. ἔνδοθεν, v. 6).Footnote ²⁵¹ As Daniel Babut remarks, Simonides has ‘profoundly modified the structure and significance’ of Hesiod’s parable, rebranding it into a moral object lesson.Footnote ²⁵² Simonides’ opening appeal to hearsay thus not only points to a precise literary predecessor, but also appropriates Hesiod’s authority to legitimise his new moral outlook. Simonides presents a pointedly appropriative intertextuality, signposted through the indexical introduction: ἐστί τις λόγος.

In a host of lyric poets, therefore, indexical hearsay functioned as a way of marking allusion to other texts and traditions, appropriating their authority and signalling the poet’s command of their sources. The phenomenon is very similar to what we saw in epic, but here we are often on far stronger ground when arguing for the precise citation of earlier texts. As Scodel once claimed for Pindar, ‘What “they say” here may be what earlier canonical poetry said.’Footnote ²⁵³ But, as we have seen, this is not solely a Pindaric phenomenon. If we had more texts surviving from antiquity, it is plausible that we could identify further precise references in many of the other cases we have explored. As things stand, however, we are simply no longer in a position to track their precise contours.

Suppressed Alternatives: Theognis on Atalanta

In Theognis’ elegy on Atalanta, the footnoting φασίν invites an audience to situate a specific telling of a myth within its wider mythological context (Thgn. 1283–94):

In these verses, the spurned speaker uses the exemplum of Atalanta to show that his addressee cannot run from him forever: just as Atalanta fled from marriage (γάμον … | φεύγειν, 1289–90; φεύγουσ’ … γάμον, 1293), but eventually and unwillingly succumbed to its τέλος (1294), so too will the addressee, despite spurning love now (φεύγοντα, 1287), eventually feel the ‘wound’ of love (the speaker’s τέλος).Footnote ²⁵⁴ Scholars have recently suggested that the introductory phrase ὥς ποτέ φασιν is ‘a reference to poetic tradition’.Footnote ²⁵⁵ But more than that, I contend, it also encourages an audience to look beyond the bare details of Theognis’ account to what the poet has left untold.

Kirk Ormand has noted that the opening verses of the poem, directed to the addressee, are larded with imagery evocative of racing and competition: the boy will not pass the speaker by (παρελεύσεαι, 1285 – a verb commonly used in agonistic contexts), the boy has been victorious (νικήσας, 1286) and the speaker will ‘wound’ his fleeing beloved (1287, evoking a scene of hunting or battle).Footnote ²⁵⁶ Given such preparatory clues, Theognis leads his audience to expect that the ensuing Atalanta exemplum will narrate the maiden’s footrace against her suitors, known from the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and several other later sources.Footnote ²⁵⁷ But this expectation is frustrated. Instead of the race, we are simply told that Atalanta retreated into the lonely mountains (1292).

This omission is particularly striking since in some versions of the tale (most probably including the Catalogue), Atalanta was said to have raced after her suitors fully armed, imitating a hunt, and to have killed them if she overtook them.Footnote ²⁵⁸ Such a narrative of violence would more appropriately parallel the speaker’s desire to ‘wound’ his fleeing beloved here (σ’ ἐγὼ τρώσω φεύγοντά με, 1287). Theognis’ avoidance of this version is thus particularly surprising, all the more so since his ensuing narrative shares a number of phrases with the Catalogue’s treatment of the episode, especially fr. 73.4–5 and fr. 76.6:Footnote ²⁵⁹

Just as in Theognis, so too in the Catalogue, Atalanta flees from marriage and the gifts of Aphrodite (~ ἀναινομένην γάμον ἀνδρῶν | φεύγειν, Thgn. 1289–90; φεύγουσ’ ἱμερόεντα γάμον, χρυσῆς Ἀφροδίτης | δῶρα, Thgn. 1293–4).Footnote ²⁶⁰ Admittedly, these parallels rely partly on reconstructions of the Catalogue which may be inspired by Theognis’ verses. But these reconstructions are very plausible in their own right,Footnote ²⁶¹ and even without any supplementation the fragments still exhibit a clear emphasis on marriage and its refusal. Indeed, φεύγειν γάμον appears to have been a formula particularly associated with Atalanta’s fabula. Besides its use in a misogynistic gnome by Hesiod (Theog. 603), it appears nowhere else in extant archaic literature, while Aristophanes’ later use of the phrase for Atalanta’s lover Melanion offers a playfully comic distortion of the same myth, as he – rather than Atalanta – runs in flight (Lys. 781–96).Footnote ²⁶²

In Theognis’ elegy, it is thus attractive to see the poet drawing on key vocabulary attached to the fabula of Atalanta’s race, or even the Catalogue’s specific instantiation of it, reapplying this traditional phrasing to a different context: the mountains rather than the racetrack. Theognis elides the expected tale of the footrace, while still evoking it through the opening language of violent competition and several verbal echoes of its traditional fabula.Footnote ²⁶³ The effect is to maintain a more direct analogy between Atalanta and the recalcitrant παῖς as passive fleers of love. But the lingering echoes of the Catalogue tradition also align the speaker with the pursuing and violent Atalanta of the race story, destabilising any neat mapping. There may even be some irony in the sympotic speaker’s failure to control the full meaning of his exemplum.

The introductory ὥς ποτέ φασιν thus invites an audience to integrate this particular version of the tale within their wider knowledge of the myth, to appreciate the poet’s subtle appropriation and refashioning of a conflicted tradition. The phrase is not simply a mark of authority, but also a cue for the poet’s audience to incorporate their broader knowledge of the myth and to consider the significance of what ‘others say’ about Atalanta, including – at least from our perspective – the poet of the Hesiodic Catalogue.

Is That So? Bacchylides on Heracles’ Tears

An even more knowing gesture to contestable tradition comes in Bacchylides’ fifth epinician, a poem whose embedded myth of Heracles’ katabatic encounter with Meleager is introduced – as we have already noted – with a footnoting λέγουσιν (Bacchyl. 5.57: §ii.3.1). Over 100 lines later, however, the narrative closes with a further index, framing Bacchylides’ whole account in an allusive ring composition and placing additional weight on the poet’s final claim (Bacchyl. 5.155–8):

Such an indexical frame may mark the general traditionality of this episode: after all, Heracles’ katabatic encounter with Meleager was also narrated by Pindar (fr. 70b, 249a, fr. dub. 346c). But in addition, Bacchylides’ φασίν encourages an audience to recall other aspects of the myth beyond those directly relayed here. In claiming that Heracles shed tears in his life ‘then and only then’ (μοῦνον δὴ τότε, 5.156), the poet appears to be protesting a little too much, and his indexical appeal to hearsay invites his audience to recall another later occasion on which Heracles was also said to cry: his death by the poisoned robe he had received from his wife Deianeira.Footnote ²⁶⁴

In Sophocles’ later tragic account of that myth, the hero’s tears are a prominent motif: Heracles seeks pity for his pitiable self (οἴκτιρόν τέ με | πολλοῖσιν οἰκτρόν, Trach. 1070–1; contrast his pitying of Meleager in Bacchylides: οἰκτίροντα, 5.158) and claims that he has never cried before (καὶ τόδ’ οὐδ’ ἂν εἷς ποτε | τόνδ’ ἄνδρα φαίη πρόσθ’ ἰδεῖν δεδρακότα, | ἀλλ’ ἀστένακτος αἰὲν εἰχόμην κακοῖς, Trach. 1072–4). Sophocles’ treatment post-dates Bacchylides’ Ode,Footnote ²⁶⁵ so it cannot be a specific intertext for his epinician, but it is plausible that similar sentiments would have been expressed already in one of the many earlier treatments of the Heracles myth, especially given the hero’s broader tearless reputation in antiquity.Footnote ²⁶⁶ After all, in Bacchylides’ own dithyrambic treatment of the hero’s demise, Fate is said to ‘weave a shrewd, tear-filled plan’ for Deianeira, a phrase that suggestively alludes to the tears that result from her jealous attempts to regain Heracles’ love (ἄμαχος δαίμων | Δαϊανείρᾳ πολύδακρυν ὕφανε | μῆτιν ἐπίφρον’, Bacchyl. 16.23–5). And already in the Hesiodic Catalogue, the narrative of Heracles’ death (fr. 25.20–5) closes with the hero going down to the ‘much-lamenting house of Hades’ (Ἄΐδ[αο πολύστονον ἵκε]το δῶμα, fr. 25.25), a phrase which – if we accept Merkelbach’s plausible supplement – may not only evoke the generic doom and despair of the Underworld, but also the specific tears and lamentation of Heracles’ end, a contrast to his previously ἀστένακτος existence.Footnote ²⁶⁷

It is likely, therefore, that Heracles would have traditionally broken his tearless reputation only at the very end of his life, rather than in one chance encounter with a deceased hero in the middle of his labours. By importing the motif into Heracles’ katabasis (an adventure that itself imitates the end of life), Bacchylides is thus self-consciously innovating, introducing an ominous allusion to the hero’s future fate by means of ‘motif transference’.Footnote ²⁶⁸ For a knowing audience, Bacchylides’ claim that this was the only occasion on which Heracles cried would be transparently untraditional and open to question. The claim is supposed to be challenged, and φασίν marks it as such: ‘who else has said this?’ we are invited to ask. The answer? ‘Nobody.’ Just as in Agenor’s Iliadic evocation of Achilles’ mortality, the indexical φασίν highlights a point of tradition at the point where it is most contestable.Footnote ²⁶⁹

An audience member who makes such a connection with Heracles’ future death, moreover, would find great irony in the fact that this Underworld encounter with Meleager is also the very moment that precipitates Heracles’ future tears. It is in this meeting that the Theban hero first hears of his future wife Deianeira, Meleager’s sister (Δαϊάνειραν, 5.173). The closing reference to Deianeira as ‘still without experience of golden Cypris, that enchantress of men’ (νῆϊν ἔτι χρυσέας | Κύπριδος θελξιμβρότου, 5.174–5) is especially pointed, since Deianeira will kill Heracles precisely when she resorts to magic and θέλξις in an attempt to regain his love, the domain of Cyprian Aphrodite.Footnote ²⁷⁰ Bacchylides’ φασίν is thus extremely loaded, inviting his audience to challenge his assertion and recall another occasion on which Heracles was traditionally thought to have cried. Indeed, Heracles’ Underworld tears proleptically foreshadow those which are still to come.Footnote ²⁷¹ Ultimately, Heracles’ fate is not very dissimilar to Meleager’s own, and Heracles is not far from the truth when he suspects that he will be killed by Meleager’s murderer (5.89–91). Their killers are not the same, but still very similar: close female relatives, δαΐφρων Althaea (5.137) and Deianeira (Δαϊάνειραν, ‘man-destroyer’, 5.173).Footnote ²⁷² Both heroes thus prove to be archetypal embodiments of the maxim which introduced Bacchylides’ extended narrative: ‘no man is fortunate in all things’ (οὐ | γά⸤ρ τις⸥ ἐπιχθονίων | π⸤άντ⸥α γ’ εὐδαίμων ἔφυ, 5.53–5). Far from simply highlighting the traditionality of Bacchylides’ account, this concluding index encourages an audience to situate this specific version within their wider knowledge of the myth, emphasising the contestability of tradition and looking forward to Heracles’ traditional tears that are still to come.

As in Theognis, Bacchylides’ use of indexical hearsay thus has an agonistic edge. The index encourages an audience to set rival and competing alternatives against each other. Theognis relocates Atalanta’s asceticism from the racecourse to the mountains, and Bacchylides invites his audience to challenge the assertion that Heracles cried only in his meeting with Meleager, rather than at the traditional moment of his death. As in epic, so too in lyric: indexical appeals to hearsay frequently emphasise the flexibility and fierce contestability of the mythical tradition.

Ibycus and Cassandra’s Fame

A less well-known invitation to ‘fill in the gaps’ occurs in a short fragment of Ibycus, whose context is now lost (fr. 303a):

Cassandra is here presented as a traditional figure of myth, within the grip of fama itself, as indeed she was. She appears in a number of archaic epic poems, where her beauty is similarly highlighted (cf. ἐρασιπλόκαμον, v. 2): in the Iliad, she is the most beautiful of Priam’s daughters (13.365–6) and directly likened to Aphrodite (24.699). Yet besides her epic appearances, she also features in Alcaeus, Bacchylides and Pindar, as well as frequently in archaic art.Footnote ²⁷⁵ In Ibycus’ own Polycrates Ode, she appears again as the subject of song ([ὑμ]νῆν Κασσάνδραν, S151.12) in a poem that similarly emphasises her physical attractiveness (‘slender-ankled’, τανί[σφ]υρ[ον], S151.11), as well as the traditionality of the Trojan war myth: ‘the much-sung strife’ ([δῆ]ριν πολύυμνον, S151.6) around the ‘most renowned’ city of Troy (περι̣κ̣λεές, S151.2). The short Ibycan fragment in question here, however, lacks a clear context. It is unlikely to be a complete poem, given the subjunctive ἔχησι, but we do not know what came before or after it. Even so, the extant verses exhibit a strong epic flavour, akin to Sappho fr. 44 with their epic-style compound adjectives and -οιο genitive ending. As in Sappho’s fragment, we are thus encouraged to think of this φᾶμις as taking a specifically epic form.

But more than this, given the traditional resonance of the fragment’s epithets, the indexical φᾶμις may also point to a specific moment in Cassandra’s mythical biography. The adjective γλαυκῶπις is a notably unusual choice for Cassandra: besides its appearance here, it is only ever used of Athena in archaic epic and lyric. Indeed, it is a stock epithet of the goddess, used over ninety times of her in the Iliad and Odyssey alone.Footnote ²⁷⁶ Given its traditional association, Ibycus’ innovative redeployment of the epithet for Cassandra suggests a close association between the goddess and the Trojan princess.Footnote ²⁷⁷ As Claire Wilkinson has suggested, the resulting link may parallel the beauty of both figures, but it also evokes the story of Cassandra’s rape by Locrian Ajax, an episode in which Athena played a central role. Not only did the rape take place in her temple at Troy, violating the goddess’ cult statue, but Athena was also the one to punish Ajax with death at sea and the rest of the Greeks with a stormy nostos.Footnote ²⁷⁸ Through the unusual adjective, Ibycus gestures to this specific aspect of Cassandra’s mythical fabula, supported by the indexical force of φᾶμις.

This allusion is reinforced further by the other adjective used to describe Cassandra in these verses, ἐρασιπλόκαμος (‘lovely-locked’). This is a very rare epithet, used elsewhere in extant Greek literature before late antiquity only twice of other mythical rape victims: of Tyro, who was raped by Poseidon (Τυροῦς ἐρασιπλοκάμου γενεά, Pyth. 4.136; cf. παῖ Ποσειδᾶνος, 4.138), and of the Muse Calliope, who gave birth to Orpheus after being raped by Oeagrus or Apollo (Μούσας ἐρασιπ[λοκάμου], Bacchyl. 29d.9).Footnote ²⁷⁹ It thus appears to have been an epithet especially used to describe victims of male sexual violence. Its use here would further encourage the recall of Cassandra as Ajax’s victim, just as γλαυκῶπις evokes Cassandra as a favourite of Athena.Footnote ²⁸⁰ Given these hints, it would be unsurprising if these Ibycan verses were originally followed by a narrative account of the rape, similar to that we find in Alcaeus fr. 298; the allusive hints in Ibycus’ language would then set the course for the ensuing narrative. But even if the original poem contained nothing more than a passing reference to Cassandra, its vocabulary, alongside the indexical φᾶμις, still points to a specific moment in the heroine’s fabula. Ibycus’ allusive index invites an audience to look beyond (and through) his immediate words to harness the larger, unexpressed tradition that lies beyond them.

Sappho and the Tithonus Myth

As a final example, we may turn to a particularly rich instance of such signposted supplementation: the recently reconstituted Sapphic poem on Tithonus and old age. In this poem, the poet’s persona laments her ageing physique before ending with a mythical exemplum that proves mortals’ inability to escape senile decrepitude (Sapph. fr. 58c.8–12):Footnote ²⁸¹

Tithonus, the mortal husband of Dawn, is introduced to prove that even those intimately connected with the gods cannot escape old age: γῆρας still seized him, just as it did frail Laertes in the Odyssey (κατὰ γῆρας ἔμαρψεν, Od. 24.390, cf. fr. 58c.11–12). At the outset, this tale is indexically marked as the subject of hearsay and a familiar part of tradition (ἔφαντο, fr. 58c.9). Indeed, Tithonus was a well-known mythical character from Homer onwards. In both the Iliad and the Odyssey, he is already the spouse of Dawn, lying in her bed as she rises to inaugurate the day (Il. 11.1–2, Od. 5.1–2), while in Hesiod, he and Dawn are named as the parents of Memnon and Emathion (Theog. 984–5). He may also, moreover, have made an appearance in the Aethiopis and its associated traditions, in which his son Memnon also receives immortality thanks to the intervention of Dawn (Aeth. arg. 2e GEF).Footnote ²⁸² However, it is only a little later that we first encounter clear evidence for the tradition of his flawed immortality, as evoked here by Sappho: he was granted exemption from death, but he could not stop the process of ageing and gradually withered away. In addition to Sappho fr. 58c, this tradition of Tithonus’ unavoidable ageing appears in the work of Sappho’s contemporary Mimnermus (fr. 4), as well as more extensively in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, when Aphrodite introduces Tithonus’ plight as an exemplum for Anchises of the dangers of divine–mortal relations (HhAphr. 218–38).Footnote ²⁸³ Sappho’s ἔφαντο thus points to a well-established tradition of Tithonus as Dawn’s spouse and a figure of perpetual ageing.Footnote ²⁸⁴ Indeed, it may even point to our Homeric Hymn as a privileged intertext.Footnote ²⁸⁵

Besides invoking a specific tradition or text, however, Sappho’s ἔφαντο also prompts her audience to recollect an aspect of the myth about which others have previously ‘talked’, but which she leaves unmentioned here: Tithonus’ subsequent transformation into a cicada. The Trojan prince wasted away to such an extent that he eventually became a tiny insect that feeds only on dew, left with nothing more than his own beautiful voice – an aetion to explain the fact that cicadas start chirping around dawn. The earliest explicit mention of this metamorphosis comes from Hellanicus of Lesbos in the fifth century – notably, a compatriot of Sappho, perhaps suggesting a particularly Lesbian or Aeolic interest in this myth (fr. 140 EGM).Footnote ²⁸⁶ Yet earlier texts already hint at this tradition, especially the Homeric Hymn. As Johannes Kakridis has argued, the description of Tithonus’ ceaselessly flowing voice matches the constant chirping of the cicada (φωνὴ ῥέει ἄσπετος, HhAphr. 237), and he is locked away in his chamber like a cicada in a basket (HhAphr. 236).Footnote ²⁸⁷ More significantly, Richard Janko notes that the description of ‘shedding old age’ (ξῦσαί τ’ ἄπο γῆρας, HhAphr. 224) evokes the tradition of cicadas shedding their skin, playing on the polyvalent potential of γῆρας to mean both ‘old age’ and ‘exuvia’,Footnote ²⁸⁸ while Richard Rawles has suggested that the rare noun κῖκυς (‘strength’, HhAphr. 237) puns on the ‘kik’ sound of the insect (a sound also reflected in the insect’s Latin name, cicada, and in Greek vocabulary: κίκους· ὁ νέος τέττιξ, ‘kikous: the young cicada’, Hsch. κ 2662).Footnote ²⁸⁹

Despite no explicit mention, therefore, the hymnic poet leaves a number of traces that hint at the cicada metamorphosis, suggesting that this feature of the myth may have also been in the background of Sappho’s fragment.Footnote ²⁹⁰ Indeed, the metamorphic myth could even be traced back to the Iliad, with its famous comparison of Trojan elders to cicadas (Il. 3.149–53). Just like their relative Tithonus, these aged men are worn down by old age (γήραϊ, 150), and though no longer fit for battle, they remain good speakers (ἀγορηταὶ | ἐσθλοί, 150–1).Footnote ²⁹¹ The simile encapsulates the core elements of Tithonus’ transformation: the physical decay of the body, but the enduring power of the voice. It is thus certainly possible that this metamorphosis already formed an established part of the literary tradition with which Sappho worked. And indeed, Helen King has argued that another Sapphic fragment may even allude to the myth directly.Footnote ²⁹² We could thus interpret ἔφαντο here as another act of signposted supplementation, prompting audiences to consider the larger tradition of the story with which they are familiar. As Rawles notes, such a reference would certainly resonate against the poem’s larger concerns, adding a note of consolation to the dreary inevitability of old age. The insect’s enduring voice parallels the poetess’ immortal song: although Sappho’s body cannot conquer death, her poetry certainly can.Footnote ²⁹³

Sappho’s ἔφαντο, like her κλέος in fr. 44, thus gestures to larger Trojan traditions: Tithonus’ marriage to the immortal Dawn, his inescapable ageing and his eventual transformation into a cicada. In our discussion so far, however, I have avoided commenting on one feature of Sappho’s ‘footnote’ that has caused a great deal of scholarly consternation: its unusual past tense. Instead of the usual φασί, we have the imperfect ἔφαντο, a form elsewhere found predominantly in epic.Footnote ²⁹⁴ There have been many attempts to explain the apparent anomaly,Footnote ²⁹⁵ but one particularly intriguing suggestion is that of Luca Bettarini, who has argued that the verb’s tense establishes a contrast between two different versions of the Tithonus myth, one old and outdated, the other new and current.Footnote ²⁹⁶ According to his argument, Sappho’s predecessors ‘used to say’ that Tithonus became immortal and ageless, remaining both young and beautiful ([κ]ά̣λ̣ο̣ν καὶ νέον, v. 11), with no negative complications. Such a tradition, he argues, is reflected in Homeric dawn periphrases (Il. 11.1–2, Od. 5.1–2), where Eos is pictured rising from the side of Tithonus, a detail that others too have taken to imply that – in Homer at least – ‘he was immortal and ageless like her’.Footnote ²⁹⁷ In Sappho’s day, by contrast, following Bettarini’s argument, Tithonus is said to be immortal but still ageing: in this newer and still current version, even he could not escape the onset of γῆρας. For Bettarini, Sappho’s ἔφαντο thus points to a former tradition that is no longer active, contrasting it with the more recent and complicated instantiation of the myth with which she is concerned. If true, Sappho’s index here would not only point to other texts and traditions but also exhibit an intense literary historical awareness, reflecting on the diachronic development of a specific myth.

Some support for this reading may be found in Pindar, who elsewhere similarly distinguishes different versions of a single myth. Christopher Brown compares Pindar’s first Olympian, where the envious gossip of Pelops’ neighbour (also expressed with the imperfect: ἔννεπε, Ol. 1.47) is set against Pindar’s more ‘recent’ version of the myth (Ol. 1.35–52: §iv.3.3).Footnote ²⁹⁸ An even closer parallel, however, can be found in Pindar’s first Nemean, where the poet claims that he is rousing up an ‘old tale’ (ἀρχαῖον ὀτρύνων λόγον, Nem. 1.34). This appears to contrast his traditional account of Heracles’ infancy (possibly derived from Peisander’s epic Heraclea)Footnote ²⁹⁹ with a more recent version, perhaps Pherecydes’ near-contemporary rationalisation of the myth (in which Amphitryon, not Hera, sent the snakes: frr. 69a–b EGM).Footnote ³⁰⁰ If Pindar could draw such a distinction between different versions of the same myth, we may indeed wonder whether Sappho could do the same a century earlier.Footnote ³⁰¹

However, I am sceptical whether ἔφαντο alone can mark the differentiation that Bettarini requires of it. At first, his argument appears to be supported by the syntax of these verses: only the claim that Eos ‘went’ to the ends of the earth with Tithonus is strictly part of the indirect speech introduced by ἔφαντο, whereas the onset of old age is described by the poet herself with the indicative ἔμαρψε. The hearsay is thus strictly restricted to Tithonus’ alleged immortality. However, such a transition from oratio obliqua to direct speech can be paralleled elsewhere without implying any significant shift in the truth value of the content: for example, Simonides’ Arete fragment (fr. 579: §ii.3.1) moves from an accusative and infinitive construction (τὰν Ἀρετὰν ναίειν, v.2; ἀμφέπειν, v. 3) to the nominative ἔσοπτος (v. 5, with ἔστί understood) without any clear change in meaning.Footnote ³⁰² Stronger support for Bettarini’s case may still perhaps be found in the verb ἔφαντο, which often appears elsewhere in epic contexts ‘of false hopes or promises’,Footnote ³⁰³ a traditional reference that would resonate effectively here: they said (or ‘thought’) that Tithonus was immortal, free from the usual handicaps of mortality, but this was ultimately not true. However, in spite of these supporting arguments, we should question Bettarini’s neat notion of a continuous development from one version of the Tithonus myth to another, an evolutionary model which fails to account for the potential of an ongoing interchange and dialogue between different versions in different contexts. We have, after all, already seen potential hints of Tithonus’ cicada transformation in the Iliad, while even the Homeric dawn periphrases do not explicitly contradict the version of Tithonus’ continuous ageing. Elsewhere in the Iliad, Tithonus is named as a son of Laomedon, a brother of Priam and cousin of Anchises (Il. 20.237). Even if he had not achieved eternal youth, therefore, he would still have been within the usual life cycle of a human being during the events of the Iliad and Odyssey.Footnote ³⁰⁴ There is, in short, no reason for seeing the Homeric formula as evidence for an earlier, more primitive version of the myth in which Tithonus enjoyed an unblemished immortality.

The anomaly of the past tense has also been considerably overplayed; it is not in fact without parallel. Besides the archaic and classical examples cited by other scholars,Footnote ³⁰⁵ it is particularly worth comparing Aratus’ Hellenistic account of Orion’s rape of Artemis and the huntsman’s subsequent death from a scorpion sting (Phaen. 634–46). Just as in Sappho, this tale is attributed to the talk of the poet’s predecessors with the imperfect ἔφαντο (προτέρων λόγος, οἵ μιν ἔφαντο, Phaen. 637), and it also transitions from an infinitive to a simple indicative during the course of its narration (ἑλκῆσαι, Phaen. 638; ἡ δὲ … ἐπετείλατο, Phaen. 641). Yet it ends with a present φασί in a kind of ring composition (Phaen. 645), marking the complementarity of past and present speech. Both φασί and ἔφαντο can thus be used to gesture to other traditions, even within a single passage. Despite its attractions, therefore, we cannot maintain the distinction which Bettarini draws between the two versions of the Tithonus myth, or the significance he places on Sappho’s imperfect. Rather, I contend, ἔφαντο functions like any other index of hearsay, whether in the present or a past tense, alerting an audience member to other tellings of this myth and inviting them to supplement it with their wider knowledge. Indeed, if anything, the rare epic imperfect adds to the Homeric flavour of these lines, reinforcing the potential connection with the hexametric Homeric Hymn. As in Ibycus, Bacchylides and Theognis, Sappho’s appeal to hearsay indexes her engagement with wider traditions and texts surrounding Tithonus, inviting her audience to supplement unmentioned details of the myth.

Pindar’s Flexible Mythology

On a number of occasions, Pindar alters the literary tradition to heighten the parallelism between a myth and his contemporary present, or to incorporate a primarily local myth into the Panhellenic traditional canon. In such cases, he often appeals to hearsay to embellish his account with the veneer of traditional authority. In Pythian 1, for example, the Theban poet introduces Philoctetes as a parallel for the Sicilian tyrant Hieron, recalling the Greek hero’s physical infirmity, rescue from Lemnos and key role in the sack of Troy (Pyth. 1.50–5). The introductory φαντί (Pyth. 1.52) marks the general traditionality of this myth, nodding to the hero’s gruesome snake wound and Helenus’ prophecy that Troy could not be taken without Philoctetes and Heracles’ bow, familiar from the Epic Cycle and elsewhere.Footnote ³⁰⁶ But it also authorises a patently untraditional element: in other versions of the myth, Philoctetes was cured of his wounds before he entered battle.Footnote ³⁰⁷ In Pindar, by contrast, he continues to ‘walk with a weak body’ (ἀσθενεῖ … χρωτὶ βαίνων, Pyth. 1.55), a detail that renders him a closer parallel for the poet’s sickly patron.Footnote ³⁰⁸ Through the indexical φαντί, Pindar invokes tradition to legitimise this revamped version of the myth.Footnote ³⁰⁹

However, Pindar does not only rewrite tradition to enhance his victors’ glory. At other points, he adapts the mythical past to reflect the contemporary political realities of a victor’s hometown. In Olympian 6, for example, Evadna, the mother of Iamus and the Iamid line, is introduced not as the true biological daughter of Aepytus, the king of Arcadia (as was traditional), but rather as his foster daughter. Instead, her true parents are said (λέγεται, Ol. 6.29) to have been Poseidon and Pitana, the homonymous heroine of a Spartan city. This genealogy appears to reflect the contemporary politics of Pindar’s own day, in which the most famous Iamid prophet, Teisamenus of Elis, had been granted Spartan citizenship.Footnote ³¹⁰ By incorporating the Spartan Pitana into Iamus’ genealogy, Pindar integrates his contemporary reality into the mythical past. And by appealing to hearsay at this moment, he legitimises this addition with a veneer of traditional authority. In the words of Pavlou, he ‘manages to present the recent insertion into the Iamid genealogy as already traditional and socially authoritative’.Footnote ³¹¹

Pindar also appeals to the authority of hearsay when imbuing local, epichoric traditions with a Panhellenic pedigree, as in the mythical aetion of Rhodes in Olympian 7. The poet introduces the emergence of the island from the sea as the ‘ancient talk of men’ (Ol. 7.54–7):

The narrative continues with Helios, the sun god, failing to gain a share of land because of his absence during the lot-taking; but he sees Rhodes below the sea and requests it as his future domain when it rises (Ol. 7.58–71). Here, once more, the language of hearsay and antiquity combine to index a mythical reference, alongside the specification of a community of ἄνθρωποι.Footnote ³¹² However, as the Pindaric scholia note, this tradition of Rhodes’ submergence is not attested in literary sources before Pindar (Σ Ol. 7.101). Rather, the scholia suggest that the poet is drawing on ancient local traditions, a plausible suggestion (Σ Ol. 7.100a, 101). As Barbara Kowalzig has demonstrated, ‘the presence’ of Helios ‘and the importance of his legends on Rhodes at an early time … are undeniable’.Footnote ³¹³ Yet the divine division of lots also has a significant literary heritage of its own, going back at least to Poseidon’s account of the three-way division of the world in the Iliad (15.187–93). Kowalzig has highlighted Pindar’s numerous verbal connections with the Homeric passageFootnote ³¹⁴ but also notes that the Pindaric scene exhibits a significant discrepancy with its epic forebear: in Homer, the earth remained common to all (γαῖα δ’ ἔτι ξυνὴ πάντων, Il. 15.193), while in Pindar it is precisely the earth that is divided up (ὅτε χθόνα δατέοντο, 55; χώρας ἀκλάρωτον, 59).Footnote ³¹⁵ Pindar thus appropriates and adapts the authority of the literary tradition to bolster local myth. The introduction of the story with a gesture to ancient hearsay does not so much paper over Pindar’s innovations as much as it endows a local and little-known story with the prestige of canonicity.

The Tyrant Slayers: Inventing Tradition

In lyric poetry, we thus do not find out-and-out mythological inventions disguised as traditional tales, but rather slight adaptations of pre-existing myths to reflect and enhance contemporary circumstances. In such cases, appeals to tradition bestow an element of canonicity on contemporary and epichoric traditions, inscribing them into the wider storehouse of communal song.Footnote ³¹⁶ This perfectly fits the more general practice of epinician, which often juxtaposes local figures and traditions with the major Panhellenic myths of the Greek world. But it is worth stressing that this is not solely a Pindaric or even epinician phenomenon. We can identify a comparable instance of authorised ‘innovation’ in an Attic skolion on the immortality of the Athenian tyrant slayer Harmodius (Carm. Conv. 894 PMG):

This text, as transmitted, contains two indexical appeals to tradition within the space of four lines. The second, if retained,Footnote ³¹⁷ is the more straightforward and evokes wider traditions surrounding Achilles’ and Diomedes’ immortalisation, here expressed through traditionally epic language.Footnote ³¹⁸ Achilles, in particular, was associated with a range of afterlife locations after his death: besides the Odyssean Underworld (Od. 11.471–540), he was also situated on the White Isle (Aeth. arg. 4b GEF; Pind. Nem. 4.49–50), the Elysian fields (Ibyc. fr. 291; Simon. fr. 558) and – as here – the isles of the Blessed (Pind. Ol. 2.70–80; Pl. Symp. 179e–180b). Diomedes, meanwhile, was immortalised by Athena, at least according to Pindar (Nem. 10.7) and apparently also Ibycus (fr. 294 = Σ Pind. Nem. 10.12). The second φασί thus marks the traditionality of these heroes’ afterlives, while also perhaps acknowledging the competing alternatives for Achilles’ final resting place.Footnote ³¹⁹

The first φασίν, however, is more arresting, since it attributes the same immortal status to a historical individual, the Athenian tyrant slayer Harmodius. This youth famously lost his life alongside his adult lover Aristogeiton in their attempt to kill the Athenian tyrant Hippias and his brother Hipparchus in 514 bce. In the grim light of history, their behaviour does not seem equal to that of Homer’s greatest heroes: it was an act of revenge, motivated by a personal slight, and only partially successful. The pair managed to kill Hipparchus but not Hippias, who responded to their plot with a harsher and more repressive rule. Despite these realities, however, Harmodius and Aristogeiton became lauded as ‘tyrant slayers’ in the popular imagination and were refashioned as the poster boys of Athenian democracy, celebrated with statues, song and hero cult.Footnote ³²⁰ This skolion, alongside others on the same theme (893, 895–6 PMG), forms part of the larger ideological development of the Harmodius myth, setting the hero on a par with the greatest warriors from the Trojan war. After all, we have already seen in other skolia how one of the heroes mentioned here, Achilles, was singled out as the greatest warrior who went to Troy (898–9 PMG: §ii.3.1). In this context, the poet’s initial φασίν is extremely loaded, drawing on the authority of tradition to authorise this local Athenian legend.

As in Pindar, this innovation is achieved through a creative reworking of tradition. Already in Hesiod’s Works and Days, the Isles of the Blessed were the home of the prosperous heroes (καὶ τοὶ μὲν ναίουσιν … | ἐν μακάρων νήσοισι … | ὄλβιοι ἥρωες, Hes. Op. 170–2). But the skolion appropriates this long-standing epic tradition of heroic immortality for a specifically Athenian purpose, aligning a local hero with the Panhellenic greats.Footnote ³²¹ In so doing, it may also evoke Achilles as a prime model for Harmodius’ pederastic relationship with Aristogeiton. Elsewhere in Attic literature, Achilles and Patroclus are mentioned as ancient analogues for the tyrant slayers (Aeschin. In Tim. 132–3, 140–2; Pl. Symp. 179e–180b, 182c),Footnote ³²² and in Plato’s Symposium Phaedrus claims that it is precisely Achilles’ love for his friend which guaranteed his immortalisation on the Isles of the Blessed (179e–180b). Achilles here is thus an exemplar not only of heroic immortality, but also of someone who has achieved it through pederastic devotion. As in Pindar, a local tradition is incorporated into the annals of song and bolstered by the authority of the mythical past. The indexical φασίν both authorises and cements the traditionality of the Harmodius myth.Footnote ³²³

Appeals to hearsay in lyric, therefore, not only signpost allusions to pre-existing traditions and texts, but also mark and authorise the creative reworking of tradition, building on the epic example we have already seen in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. These are not so much cases of pure invention and fabrication, as occasions on which poets rework and revise traditional material. Our limited access to the whole range of lyric poetry inhibits a fuller perspective on such practice, but even from these glimpses, we see that lyric poets exploited the indexical potential of hearsay not only to mark and supplement their allusions to pre-existing texts and traditions, but also to authorise their innovative departures from the trodden path.