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Phaethon in Ovid and Nonnus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Peter E. Knox
Peter E. Knox
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Columbia University
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Extract

Among the artifacts produced by nineteenth-century Quellenforschung, few have exerted more influence or endured more censure than the lost Hellenistic epyllion which, as reconstructed by G. Knaack, told of the journey of Phaethon to the palace of the sun-god and his disastrous ride in the solar car. Relying chiefly upon the two versions of the story told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses (1.747–2.398) and Nonnus in the Dionysiaca (38.105–434), and applying techniques comparable to the stemmatic method of textual criticism, Knaack traced every shared feature of these two accounts to the inevitable lost Hellenistic ‘original’. Details from Lucian (Dial. Deor. 25) and Philostratus (Imag. 1.11), who were also presumed to have read this lost poem, helped to fill in the blanks. Knaack's thesis illustrates the extremes of which source criticism was capable at a time when it was naively assumed that Roman poets were capable of little more than literal translation of their Greek models. In the early part of this century, a reaction set in against Knaack's method, when it was alleged that there was no common source for the two poets and that Nonnus derived his account of Phaethon directly from his reading of Ovid. The case was first made by J. Braune, who examined four episodes common to both works – Phaethon, Cadmus, Actaeon, and Daphne – and argued that correspondences between the two are due to imitation of Ovid by Nonnus. Braune's arguments did not win complete acceptance; it is noteworthy that even his supporters were not entirely convinced by three of his four test passages, for which abundant evidence survives of sources earlier than Ovid.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , December 1988 , pp. 536 - 551
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1988

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References

1 Quaestiones Phaethonteae, Philologische Untersuchungen 8 (Berlin, 1886), esp. pp. 22–78Google Scholar.

2 Nonnos und Ovid, Greifswalder Beiträge zur Literatur- und Stilforschung 11 (Greifswald, 1935)Google Scholar.

3 See his review of Braune, , in Gnomon 11 (1935), 597–605Google Scholar. Keydell, was not always so confident: cf. ‘Zur Komposition der Bücher 13–40 der Dionysiaka des Nonnos’, Hermes 62 (1927), 428Google Scholar, where he remarks on Nonnus' Phaethon, : ‘die ihm bekanntlich in einem hellenistischer Gedicht vorlag.’ And later, ‘Eine Nonnos-Analyse’, AC 1 (1932), 176Google Scholar or Cadmus, (Dion. 4.285ff.)Google Scholar: ‘nach der gewöhnlichen mythographischer Tradition weiter berichtet.’

4 Studi Nonniani: L'Epillio nelle Dionisiache (Palermo, 1964), pp. 253–70Google Scholar.

5 Diggle, J., Euripides: Phaethon (Cambridge, 1970), p. 181Google Scholar.

6 Cf., e.g., Cameron, Alan, ‘The Empress and the Poet: Paganism and Politics at the Court of Theodosius II’, YCS 27 (1982), 233Google Scholar: ‘Nonnus’ debt to Ovid has been put beyond reasonable doubt.'

7 In the case of Nonnus, see e.g. Hollis, A. S., ‘Some Allusions to Earlier Hellenistic Poetry in Nonnus’, CQ 26 (1976), 142–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 So Diggle (above, n. 5), 9: ‘Ovid's successors, both Roman and Greek, could not remain immune from his influence.’

9 E.g. Keydell, R., ‘Quintus von Smyrna und Vergil’, Hermes 82 (1954), 254–6Google Scholar. But contrast Vian, F., Quintus de Smyrne: La Suite d'Homère (Paris, 1963–1969), esp. Vol. I, xxxii–xxxvGoogle Scholar and Campbell, M., A Commentary on Quintus Smyrnaeus Posthomerica XII (Mnem. Suppl. 71 [Leiden, 1981]), pp. 115–17Google Scholar. See Vian's, Recherches sur les Posthomerica de Quintus de Smyrne (Paris, 1959), pp. 95–101Google Scholar, with bibliography of earlier works, It has also been alleged that Quintus used Ovid: cf. Haupt-Ehwald, on Met. 12.1Google Scholar and Keydell, R., Gnomon 33 (1961), 280–1Google Scholar.

10 Cf. Funaioli, G., ‘Virgilio e Trifiodoro’, RhM 88 (1939), 1–7Google Scholar, with approving comments by Cameron, A., Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford, 1970), p. 20 n. 5Google Scholar.

11 A Study of Daphnis and Chloe (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 76ffGoogle Scholar. For Chariton, cf. Cataudella, Q., ‘Riflessi Virgiliam nel romanzo di Caritone’, Athenaeum 5 (1927), 302–12Google Scholar.

12 See his review of Braune, , Byz. Zeitschr. 35 (1935), 385–7Google Scholar, together with the criticisms by Fletcher, G. B. A., CR 50 (1936), 239Google Scholar. Cf. Heinze, R., Virgils epische Technik, 3rd ed. (Leipzig, 1915), p. 81Google Scholar; Clausen, W. V., Virgil and the Tradition of Hellenistic Poetry (Berkeley, 1986), p. 138 n. 27Google Scholar.

13 Herter, H., ‘Ovidianum Quintum: Das Diluvium bei Ovid und Nonnos’, ICS 6 (1981), 318–55Google Scholar. Herter had already expressed his confidence in the hypothesis of a common source for Ovid, and Nonnus, in ‘Ovidius und sein Verhältnis zur bildenden Kunst’, in Ovidiana, ed. Herescu, N. I. (Paris, 1958), p. 58 n. 1Google Scholar, but in his subsequent publications did not return to the Phaethon episode.

14 Dion. 5.304–15, 476–7, 482–8 (Artemis, and Actaeon, )Google Scholar; 5.86–9, 601–10 (Persephone and Zeus); 7.171–279 (Semele and Zeus); 38.116–29. On such scenes in Nonnus, cf. D'Ippolito, G., ‘Draconzio, Nonno e gli “idromimi”’, A&R 7 (1963), 1–14Google Scholar, summarized in his monograph (above, n. 4), pp. 99–100. See too Chuvin's note on Dion. 5.304.

15 10.141–74 (Dionysus); 11.45–53 (Ampelos); 11.408–11, 416–21 (Carpus); 35.185–91 (Morrheus); 41.110–17 (Aphrodite).

16 For other such comparisons, cf. 10.586–7, 15.243, 16.48, 16.18, 34.40, 48.320; and see the discussion by Castiglioni, L., ‘Epica Nonniana’, RIL 65 (1932), 330Google Scholar.

17 Braune (above, n. 2), 36 asserts that Nonnus modelled this simile on Ovid in his Actaeon, (Met. 3.183ff.)Google Scholar, but, as Chuvin notes in his commentary on Dion. 5.488, Ovid's comparison of Artemis' blush to a cloud struck by sunlight has nothing in common with Nonnus' imagery.

18 For the phrasing, cf. 48.354 καὶ ῥοδέους σπινθῆρας ὀιστεύσυσι παρειαί.

19 The motif is repeated shortly thereafter of the maiden Chalcomede καὶ βλεφάρων ἀκτῖνες ἐμοἰ γεγάασιν ὀιτοί, 35.172.

20 Cf. Lexikon zu den Dionysiaka des Nonnos, ed. Peek, W. (Berlin, 1972–1975), s.vGoogle Scholar.

21 His independence is acknowledged by both Knaack (above, n. 1), p. 25 and Diggle (above, n. 5), pp. 183–4.

22 For the details see Bömer, F., P. Ovidius Naso: Metamorphosen, Buch IV–V (Heidelberg, 1976), p. 75Google Scholar. Later references, as Bömer notes, are sure to derive from Ovid, but he almost certainly used a source now lost to us.

23 Bömer, (above, n. 22), p. 79: ‘ein gelungenes und typisches Ovidianum.’Google Scholar

24 For the phrase πυρσὸς Ἐρώτων, cf. Dion.15.402 πυρσὸς Ἐρώτων, Paul. Sil. AP 5.290.3 πυρσὸν Ἐρώτων; Aristaen. 2.5. Dion. 38.117 is imitated at Musaeus 90 σὺν βλεφάρων δ' ἀέξετο . The motif is Hellenistic, derived from Meleager, , AP 12.110Google Scholar (= CV G–P) χαῖρε Πόθων φέρων θνατοῖσι, Μυΐσκε, | καὶ λάμποις ἐπὶ γᾷ ἐμοὶ φίλιος. Cf. esp. Parthenius, , SH 640.3Google Scholar Κύπρισος…πυρσόν ἀναψαμένη, a passage upon which Nonnus draws earlier in this scene, as the editor points out to me: with Dion. 38.111 νυμφίος ὑδατόεις, compare SH 640.5 ὑδατόεντα γάμον.

25 The parallel has only been noticed by Castiglioni (above, n. 16), 326, who thinks it a conceit owed independently to the rhetorical tradition.

26 Cf. Gow on Theocr. 7.118, where he refers to Theocr. 23.33, *29.22; AP 12.12, 12.16, 12.109, 12.193; Plan. 251 (cf. 5–6 ἆ μἐγα θαῦμα | φλέξɛι τις πυρὶ πῦρ, ἥψατ' Ἔρωτος Ἔρως.

27 See the note by Gow-Page ad loc., and to the examples collected there add Plan. 197 (= Antip. Thess. LXXXIX G–P) and the anonymous hexameter epigram AP 9.449, which opens, τίς πυρὶ πῖρ ἐδάμασσε; τίς ἔσβεσε λαμπάδι πυρσόν; This epigram is probably from the second half of the fifth century, but shows no obvious signs of Nonnian influence: cf. Wifstrand, A., Von Kallimachos zu Nonnos (Lund, 1933), p. 170Google Scholar.

28 E.g. Lucian, , Dial. Deor. 25.3Google Scholar, τοῦ σοῦ πυρὸς ὁ κεραυνὸς πυρωδέστερος.

29 Cf., e.g. Am. 2.16.11–12, Met. 6.708, 14.444, Fast. 6.439, Trist. 4.3.65; and see Frécaut, J.-M., L'esprit et l'humour chez Ovide (Grenoble, 1972), p. 30 n. 12Google Scholar. In this passage note 2.280–1 liceat periturae uiribus ignis igne perire tuo.

30 Cf. of Helios, Dion. 23.26Google Scholar, οὐ πυρὶ πῦρ ἀνάειρε, καὶ εἰ πυρὸς ἡγεμονεύει

31 As noted by Maas (above, n. 12), 386 and Diggle (above, n. 5), p. 185.

32 He remarks (above, n. 5), p. 42 n. 3, ‘perhaps the messenger also included some description of the palace buildings’, comparing Ion 1146–65, Hyps. fr. 764, and this passage of the Metamorphoses. But cf. Herter (above n. 13), 58: ‘Es gibt auch keinen Anhalt dafür, dass in den beiden Vorlagen Ovids eine Ekphrasis des Palastes vorgekommen wäre: für das hellenistische Gedicht ist das seiner ganzen Anlage nach unwahrscheinlich und für Euripides jedenfalls nicht erweisbar.’

33 Friedländer, P., Johannes von Gaza und Paulus Silentiarius: Kunstbeschreibungen justinianischer Zeit (Berlin, 1912), pp. 19–21Google Scholar; cf. Norden, E., Aeneis Buch VI, 3rd ed. (Leipzig and Berlin, 1926), pp. 120–3Google Scholar; Haupt-Ehwald, on Mel. 13.680Google Scholar; Herter (above, n. 13), 53.

34 Friedländer (above, n. 33), p. 21.

35 See Herter (above, n. 13), 54 n. 21 for further parallels. Houses of the gods are conventionally golden: cf. Diggle, on Phaethon 238Google Scholar ἀστερωποῖσιν δόμοισι χρυσέοις, which he takes to refer to Helios' palace, comparing Mimn. fr. 1 la.2 W τόθι τ' ὠκέος Ἠελίοιο | ἀκτῖνες χρυσέωι κείαται ἐν θαλάμωι and PTebt. 3.6 (= SH 988) Ὑπεριν|ίδα χρύσεον οἶκον.

36 See E. J. Kenney's note on this passage in the translation of the Metamorphoses by Melville, A. D. (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar. For further parallels, see Bühler, W., Die Europa des Moschos (Weisbaden, 1960), pp. 156–7Google Scholar.

37 So, rightly, Chuvin, P., Nonnos: Les Dionysiaque, II: Chants III–V (Paris, 1976), p. 4Google Scholar, emphasizing Nonnus' debt here to Homer.

38 These lines refer to the decoration of the walls, rather than the sculpture; cf. Chuvin (above, n. 27), ad loc.

3 Cf. QS 3.738 Ἡφαίστον κλυτὶν ἔργον, itself an adaptation of [Hes.] Aspis, 123, Ἡφαίστον κλυτὰ δῶρα.

40 Nonnus may also have Euphorion in mind in this passage; see Chuvin ad loc, and cf. Dion. 4.204 τυκτὰ πολυγλυφέων ἠσπάσσατο κύκλα θυράων.

41 Cf. Knaack (above, n. 1), p. 30, and Braune (above, n. 2), pp. 21–3, who is followed by Diggle (above, n. 5), p. 187; D'Ippolito (above, n. 4), p. 263; and Keydell, (above, n. 3), 599. Braune's argument that the first speech of Helios in Nonnus is a later insertion drawn from Ovid is reported with approval by Diggle; the comments of Fletcher, G. B. A., CR 50 (1936)Google Scholar, 239 are worth repeating: ‘When it is argued that the first speech of Helios in Nonnus XXXVIII. 196ff. is an insertion based on Ovid, and it is asserted that “die beiden Halbverse 194 und 212 schliessen inhaltlich eng aneinander an” it must be observed that, if the whole speech is removed, what results, as we have the text now, is ὁ δὲ (sc. Phaethon) πλέον ἡδέι μύθῳ | αἰτίζων λιτάνενε παῖς δὲ…(sc. Phaethon).’ The speech forms an integral part of Nonnus' conception, each part of which can be shown to conform to embedded tradition.

42 The scholion differs in several important respects from the plot of his Phaethon in so far as it is susceptible of reconstruction; cf. Diggle (above, n. 5), pp. 31–2.

43 Diggle (above, n. 5), p. 187.

44 ὦ τέκος is found at line opening at Il. 24.425, Od. 7.22; QS 7.39, 7.294, 12.74, 13.226, 14.444; cf. Dion. 26.355 'Ώκεανοῖο γένος. Nonnus' awkwardness here may be due to the influence of a model in which the parentage of Phaethon had been disputed as is the case in Ovid, a suggestion that I owe t o the editors.

45 As Braune (above, n. 2), p. 22 puts it, ‘urn Ovid zu übertrumpfen’.

46 The epithet was picked up by Callimachus, H. 4.64, and subsequently applied to the planet by Dorotheus of Sidon, fr. 8.1 Stegemann. Cf. Chuvin (above, n. 37), on Dion. 4.52.

47 Cf. 3.408 χέων ποιητὸς ἀήτης, 12.284 φέρων ποιητὸν ἀήτην.

48 Cf. 8.337 σοὶ πόρεν…πάλιν σπινθῆρα κεραυνοῦ, 2.601, 23.235, 35.291, 44.183.

49 See Bömer's commentary ad loc.

50 For details, see Keydell's apparatus at 231 and 241.

51 An exception is D'Ippolito, 264: ‘Il secondo discorso di Elio (222–90), presenta con Ovidio solo qualche concordanza, ma nella maggior parte sembra elaborazione propria di Nonno, il quale à modo, seguendo i suoi speciali interessi, di riversarvi la sua cultura astrologica.’

52 See Gundel, W., ‘Planeten’, RE 20 (1950), 2091–2Google Scholar.

53 Stegemann, V., Astrologie und Universalgeschichte: Studien und Interpretations zu den Dionysiaka des Nonnos (Leipzig, 1930)Google Scholar.

54 Geminus, , Isagog. 1.24–8Google Scholar, Cleom. 1.3. Cf. Stegemann (above, n. 53), pp. 32–3 for further references.

55 Doroth. CAG V.3.125.13 ἔμπυρος Ἀρης. Lists of the planets are not uncommon in late Egyptian poetry: cf. Cameron (above, n. 10), 206–7 on Theon of Alexandria (Heitsch ii.S 4 = Stobaeus 1.5.14) and the likely source of the list of planets in Claudian, , Stil. 2.433–40Google Scholar. The evidence adduced by Cameron here tells strongly against Braune's thesis that Nonnus read Claudian's Latin poetry, developed in ‘Claudian and Nonnus’, Maia 1 (1948), 176–83Google Scholar.

56 The text of Coma is defective at this point, so we cannot tell whether Diophilus owes this phrase (in the same metrical position as in Nonnus) to Callimachus. In a similar context, cf. Call, fr. 748 Pf. ἐσχατίην ὑπὸ πὲζαν ἐλειήταο Λέοντος.

57 The spondaic line ending was originally a neoteric affectation: cf. Ross, D. O., Style and Tradition in Catullus (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), pp. 130–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lyne, R. O. A. M., Ciris: A Poem Attributed to Vergil (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 15–16Google Scholar. In his elegiacs Ovid conforms to type, with all but one of the spondaic lines ending in a Greek word. The exception occurs in a suspect epistle, Her. 12.121; cf. Platnauer, M., Latin Elegiac Verse (Cambridge, 1951), pp. 38–9Google Scholar. Of 34 spondaic lines in the Metamorphoses, 15 end with Latin words, pace Bömer, on Met. 1.14Google Scholar. Spondaic line endings with some form of Appenninus may already have been common before Ovid: cf. Hor, . Epod. 16.29Google Scholar, Cornelius Severus, fr. 10 Morel and the jibe by Persius at 1.95. For the practice of other hexameter poets, cf. Norden, E., P. Vergilius Maro: Aeneis Buch VI (Stuttgart, 1957), p. 438Google Scholar.

58 See Swanson, D. G., The Names in Roman Verse (Madison, 1967), s.vvGoogle Scholar.

59 See Bömer, on Met. 1.472Google Scholar for a list of such forms coined by Ovid.

60 Prop. 2.26.47 has nothing to say about the metamorphosis; pace Moore-Blunt, J. J., A. Commentary on Ovid, Metamorphoses II (Uithoorn, 1977), p. 55Google Scholar. See Bömer ad loc. on the sources: he suspects a Hellenistic origin.

61 Cf. too A. R. 1.127 Ἐρυμάνθιον…τῖφος.

62 Castiglione, L., Studi intorno alle fonti e alia composizione delle Metamorfosi di Ovidio (Pisa, 1906), p. 284Google Scholar recorded his suspicion of an Alexandrian model for Ovid's two catalogues; and even Knaack (above, n. 1), p. 40 concedes that it need not have been his epyllion.

63 Knaack (above, n. 1), p. 40 attributes this discrepancy to each poet's following his own taste in adapting the lost poem; cf. Rohde, A., De Ovidi arte epica (Diss. Berlin, 1929), p. 22Google Scholar.

64 Cf. esp. Cameron, A., ‘Wandering Poets: A Literary Movement in Byzantine Egypt’, Historia 14 (1965), 494–6Google Scholar, who is followed by Diggle (above, n. 5), p. 199. See too D'Ippolito (above, n. 4), pp. 73–5 and Cameron's later discussion with special reference to the career of Claudian (above, n. 10), pp. 19–20. Elsewhere (316–21) Cameron concedes that the evidence for literacy in Latin in Constantinople is very slim, and rightly judges that Claudian wrote for a western audience.

65 On the shifting fortunes of the classics in the schoolroom, see Marrou, H. I., A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. Lamb, G. (London, 1956), pp. 277–8Google Scholar.

66 For a full account of the Vergil papyri, with plates, see Seider, R., ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte und Paläographie der antiken Vergilhandschriften’, in Studien zum antiken Epos, edd. Görgemanns, H. and Schmidt, E. (Meisenheim am Glan, 1976), pp. 129–72Google Scholar.

67 Cf. Marrou (above, n. 65), pp. 255–8.

68 There is little basis for the confidence expressed on this score by D'Ippolito (above, n. 4), p. 74: ‘Anche se papiri ovidiane non sono stati finora rinvenuti è assurdo che il poeta delle Metamorfosi venisse trascurato.’

69 As Herter (above, n. 13), 319 puts it: ‘das Problem liegt nicht so sehr darin, ob er Latein genug verstand, einen römischen Poeten in extenso zu lesen, sondern das ist die Frage, ob er es auch wirklich getan hat, ob er diese Mühe nötig befand, wo er doch genug Autoren seiner eigenen Sprache zur Verfügung hatte, zumal wenn er, wie man früher wenigstens glaubte, von der Singularität der hellenischen Kultur durchdrungen war.’

70 Where Claudian acquired his knowledge of Latin poetry we can only guess. It is virtually certain that his familiarity with the language at least began in Egypt; cf. Cameron (above, n. 10), p. 19. But his reading of Ovid need not have been much earlier than his first productions in Latin. For what it is worth, there is no trace of Latin influence in his surviving Greek verse.

71 For this style of reference to earlier traditions by the Roman poets, see Norden's, note on Aen. 6.14Google Scholar.

72 For example, Nonnus presents different versions of a number of myths where one would expect to detect some trace of Ovidian influence if in fact he had read the Metamorphoses. For example, his account of Pyramus and This be at Dion. 6.347–55 and the scattered references to Daphne, , as at Dion. 42.387Google Scholar, assume different versions of the myths, which may have been known and rejected by Ovid. On the latter, see Herter, H., ‘Daphne und Io in Ovids Metamorphosen’, Hommages à Robert Schilling, edd. Zehnacker, H. and Hentz, G. (Paris, 1983), pp. 318–19Google Scholar.