7 - The archery

Summary

Introduction

The final event of Statius' games is the archery. The archery targets Adrastus, the sole participant in this non-game, and issues of kingship, control and interpretation. For the games are a controlled environment, and it is this element of control which differentiates them from reality. Historical games were also an arena for negotiations between the political controllers and their often rebellious subjects, as we have seen above. This chapter examines the archery match in relation to its Homeric and Virgilian predecessors and the Silian version; it shows that politics and control are essential to the interpretation of all these, and that the master of ceremonies (editor) strives, with more or less success, to control interpretation of events in the narrative, especially omens. The second section investigates the different roles of the editores, how they set the games up and establish their own control, and how they deal with controversy and dispute. The third section widens the discussion to include whole poems and look at how Achilles, Aeneas and Adrastus attempt, and often fail, to control the wider narrative, suggesting an analogous problem of poetic control.

The archery match

At Iliad 23.850–83, the archers shoot at a dove tied to a mast. Achilles specifically anticipates the improbable outcome, that one of the archers should hit the rope rather than the bird, and Teucer carries this out. Meriones then prays to Apollo and as the bird flies free, he brings it down, winning the match. When Virgil reworks this match, he takes on the entire apparatus of dove, mast and rope, as if specifically to transcend it.