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Poseidon Hippios in Bacchylides 17
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
It used to be a commonplace that Bacchylides made profligate use of epithets to adorn his poetry, and not always in an appropriate fashion. More recently, there has been a healthy reaction against this attitude, with attempts to seek more subtle relationships between epithets and the contexts in which they occur. Recent study of poem 17 has concentrated on the conflict of character between Theseus and Minos, and the structure of the Ode, but the epithets have received some attention.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1980
References
1 On this paean see Stern, J., ‘The Structure of Bacchylides XVII’, RBPb 45 (1967) 40–7,Google ScholarPieper, G. W., ‘Conflict of Character in Bacchylides Ode 17’, TAPA 103 (1972) 395–404,Google Scholar G. J. Giesekam, ‘The Portrayal of Minos in Bacchylides 17’, Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar, ed. F. Cairns (= Area) 2 (1976), 237–52, idem, CQ N.S. 27 (1977), 249–55,CrossRefGoogle ScholarFührer, R., ‘Beitra´ge zur Metrik und Textkritik der griechischen Lyriker II’, Nacbricbten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Phil.Hist. Klasse, 1976, 165–243.Google Scholar
2 art. cit., p. 42.
3 The parallelism is no coincidence: the whole poem is a nexus of symmetries, from its very first word (where the focus on the ship's prow surging forward is balanced near the end by Theseus’ triumphant appearance at its stern: this is conveyed by the balancing ‘ornamental’ epithets 
(119)).
4 art. cit., p. 400. This comes to grief 
5 This is of course parallel to the gift Aethra received; note the detail that Amphi-trite obtained it from Aphrodite 
(115). The other gift from Aphrodite in the poem is the lust that overcomes Minos, and we are meant to perceive the contrast, and remember the gulf between legitimate and illicit desires: consequently we are meant to be in no doubt that Minos is in the wrong (pace Giesekam, Arca, art. cit., passim: his view of the poem, which runs contrary to Greek morality at all periods, deserves an answer at far greater length).
6 The Poems of Bacchylides (1897), p. 170.Google Scholar
7 Bacchylides (1905) ad Ioc.
8 No reference to the analogy between horses and dolphins appears at all in the exhaustive articles in Pauly-Wissowa iv. 2504–9 s.v. Delphin, xxii 482–4 s.v. Poseidon und das Ross.
9 Iambi et Elegi Graeci ad loc. Bacchylides' use of sap is a pun of sorts, but should not be faulted for this reason, especially as it enhances the clarity of the picture presented so admirably. For wordplay indulged for its own sake, contrast (14), where Bacchylides puns on the name, as if derived from not (tow. Compare Pindar's (fr. 75. 10B) and especially Bacchylides 13.102 ff. in his only other mention of this redoubtable lady. I now find the same point in Führer, art. cit., p. 196, with the added reinforcement that he reads His assumption of several cases of Responsions freiheit in order to defend the papyrus text merits further discussion, but I have not followed his text. I would like to thank Professor West for knowledge of Führer's work, and Dr. C. Carey for helpful advice and encouragement.