APPENDIX

APPENDIX THE DATE OF THE CATALOGUE

Since I have discussed in this book how certain myths have been changed and developed by poets over the centuries, from Homer and the eighth century down to the fifth, and have looked in some detail at the particular version of these myths in the Catalogue of Women, it is clearly important to attempt to fix a date for the Catalogue if at all possible. West, in The Hesioclic Catalogue of Women (Oxford, 1985), has gone into this question in some detail, and his conclusions (pp.164-71) are, first, that the Catalogue is a unity, put together by one poet - and an Attic poet at that - using genealogical material that had been developing from the eighth century on; and, second, that this poet was working in the sixth century, somewhere between 580 and 520 BC. I accept West’s arguments for the unity of the poem,’ and find his suggestion of an Attic poet an appealing one. But I should like to modify his conclusions as to the date of the Catalogue, and therefore shall discuss his evidence in some detail.

We have 520 BC (approximately) as a terminus ante quem, since Hekataios, 1 F lb, cites ‘Hesiod’ (127 MW) for the fifty sons of Aigyptos. As West comments (p. 136): ‘It would be an excess of scholarly caution to doubt that he had the Catalogue in view, or rather the undivided Theogony-Catalogue. It was therefore current and accepted as Hesiod’s work by the end of the sixth century.’

A terminus post quem is given by the foundation of Kyrene in 63 1 BC, since 215 MW tells of Kyrene herself. Indeed this reference probably presupposes the city’s rise to greatness in the sixth century (p.132). Other references also indicate a sixth century date: the divinity of Herakles (‘a date after rather than before 600’: p.130), the extent of the geographical horizons shown (150 MW) in Phineus’ journey (p. 13 l) , genealogical details based on the Odyssey (p.131), and the affiliation of Sikyon to Erechtheus, perhaps reflecting the attempt by Kleisthenes (tyrant c. 600-570) to assert the supremacy of Ionian elements in Sikyon.

So the date limits now seem to be 600-520; or, perhaps more reasonably (giving time for Kyrene to grow in importance and for Erechtheus’ political machinations to have their effect),

West suggests three further points which might suggest a date later than 580 as the upper limit. First (p. 130), the Catalogue is structurally linked with the last part of the Theogon?, and West has dated Theog. 965-1020 as post 540.? However this section may well be a secondary insertion into its surroundings (p. 130), especially as ~ U V C C I K ~ cpGhov would make a much better antithesis to 963-4 than does I~SE&OV cpchov of 965;’ so it need have no implications for the date of the Catalogue.

Second, West suggests (p. 132) that the marriage of Eurydike, daughter of Lakedaimon. to Akrisios (129 MW, 1.12) points to the same kind of Spartan annexation of Mycenaean glories as evidenced by Stesichoros’ relocation of the palace of Agamemnon in Sparta (216 P M G ) . and by the acquisition of the bones of Orestes, and thus to a mid-sixth century date. However these are all reflections, I would suggest, of something rather earlier in date than this. since

580-520.

’ Though 1 would not discount the possibility of some passages being later interpolations. even i n the case of such ;I

’ West on TIwog. 4 17,430, 436.

structurally ‘tight’ and unified poem as West posits.

See West ad lot..

I58 THE CREATIVE POET

Herodotos tells us that Talthybios, Agamemnon’s herald, had a shrine at Sparta, and that the descendants of Talthybios were called Talthybiadai.4

Third, there is a possibility (p. 132) that a Pandion, who may be the Athenian Pandion, being made the father of a . . . ]u, who may be the Megarian Nioolu (43(a) MW, 1.70), may reflect Athens’ seizure of the Megarian port Nisaia in about 565 BC. But this is altogether far too tenuous.

In fact none of these three points prove under scrutiny to be enough to justify lowering the upper date of 580 - as indeed West himself must have concluded, since he too retains this same upper limit, while keeping 520 as the lower limit.

However, I would suggest that other evidence should persuade us instead to raise the lower limit of 520, and thus narrow the time-range further from the bottom end up. Let us begin with possible connections between the Catalogue and Stesichoros. We know from Chamaileon that, apart from the famous Palinode in which Stesichoros criticised Homer and said that only a phantom of Helen went to Troy, there was another Palinode in which he criticised Hesiod,s though we do not know for what reason. This is hardly likely to have been the real Hesiod, and (as West notes, p.134) the Catalogue is the poem most likely to have been in question. Moreover it does seem that Stesichoros may well have been familiar with the Catalogue itself, because of the correspondences in the details of the Oresteia legend as told by the two poets. Stesichoros, like Hesiod, has Agamemnon as a descendant of Pleisthenes,6 and has Iphigeneia made immortal after her ~acrifice;~ and there seems to be a direct reminiscence of Hesiod in Stesichoros’ reference to the daughters of Tyndareos.* As West himself says: ‘He evidently knew a poem (probably a genealogical poem) in which the three sisters’ stories were linked together in the same way as they were in the Catalogue’; but, granted that Stesichoros knew and criticised ‘Hesiod’, why not the Catalogue itselfly Stesichoros was working in the first half of the sixth century, perhaps even as late as 540.1° So this would seem to raise the terminus ante quem of the Catalogue to perhaps 550, and our range is now 580-550. But there are still further considerations to be taken into account, which encourage (though do not demand) a further raising of the lower limit.

Hdt. 7. 134. Cf. 7. 159, where it is suggested that Agamemnon would have been distressed to learn that the Spartans had been deprived of their command by Gelon and his Syracusans.

P. O.\;v. 2506 fr. 26 i = 193 PMG.

2 19 PMG and 194 MW; see p. 9 1 n.47 above.

215 PMG and 23(a) and (b) MW; see p.90 above

223 PMG and I76 MW; see p.90 above.

The unlikelihood of its being Hesiod here who was following Stesichoros, quite apart from this last consideration, is increased by the fact that Hesiod follows the epic version of the death of Meleagros, and gives no hint of any knowledge of Stesichoros’ inclusion of Meleagros’ death by the brand, the version that was soon to be ‘known throughout Greece’ (see Chapter 2, ‘Meleagros’, passim).

IOSee P. Maas S.V. Stesichoros, RE 3A (1929), cols. 2458-9; C. M. Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry (Oxford, 1961), pp.74-6; A. Lesky, A History o fGreek Literuture (New York, 1966), p.151; H. Frankel, Early Greek Poetry und Philosophj (Oxford, 1975), p.281; M. L. West, ‘Stesichoros’, CQ ns 21 (1971), pp.302-6.

APPENDIX 159

The Alkmene-Ehoie is used as an introduction to the Shield of Herakles, and if it was the poet of the Shield who used it as such and not a later redactor who juxtaposed the two poems” then this would set the terminus ante quem of the Catalogue at about 570.12 Furthermore the FranGois Vase, produced at a little after 570,13 would confirm this lower limit, if I am right to see the Catalogue as the literary influence behind its painter Kleitiasi4 - a suggestion which is all the more likely, of course, if the poet of the Catalogue was, as West believes, an Attic poet.

Thus we may perhaps finally, though tentatively, conclude on a date for the composition of the Catalogue of between about 580 and 570 BC.

’ I Wilamowitz thought it beyond doubt that the first possibility was the case, West believes the second: see references in West, p. 136.

l 2 The Shield was composed by about this date: see R. M. Cook, ‘The Date of the Hesiodic Shield’, CQ 31 (1937), pp.204-14. J. L. Myres would put it rather earlier: see ‘Hesiod’s “Shield of Herakles”: its Structure ,and Workmanship’, JHS 60 (1940), pp.17-38. See also J. Schwartz, Pseudo-Hesiodea (Leiden, 1960), p.487: ‘L’EhCe d’Alcmkne dont I’Aspis donne le terminus ante quem.’

l 3 See p.18 n.74 above.

I4 See in general Chapter I , ‘Peleus and Achilles’, and in particular pp.4 and 17f.