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TWO NOTES ON PHILOSTRATUS’ IMAGINES 2.28 (‘LOOMS’)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2017

Ruobing Xian
Ruobing Xian*
Affiliation:
Fudan University, Shanghai
*
Robinxian1985@hotmail.com
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Extract

In their edition of Philostratus’ Imagines Benndorf and Schenkel established an index locorum, ‘ex quibus tamquam fontibus Philostratus ea quae in Imaginibus leguntur hausisse videtur’. For the passage quoted above, they note three allusions to the Odyssey: (1) the famous snow-melting simile (19.204-9), which describes the weeping Penelope; (2) Penelope's loom, on which she unravelled at night what she had woven during the day (19.150; 2.105); and (3) the invisible bonds of Hephaestus as fine as spiders’ webs (8.280).

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Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , May 2017 , pp. 335 - 338
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Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2017 

1.

ἐπεὶ τὸν τῆς Πηνελόπης ἱστὸν ᾄδεις ἐντετυχηκὼς ἀγαθῇ γραφῇ καὶ δοκεῖ σοι πάντα ἱστοῦ ἔχειν, στήμοσί τε ἱκανῶς ἐντέταται καὶ ἄνθεα κεῖται ὑπὸ τῶν μίτων καὶ μόνον οὐχ ὑποφθέγγεται ἡ κερκὶς αὐτή τε ἡ Πηνελόπη κλαίει δακρύοις, οἷς τὴν χιόνα τήκει Ὅμηρος, καὶ ἀναλύει ἃ διύφηνεν, ὅρα καὶ τὴν ἀράχνην ὑφαίνουσαν ἐκ γειτόνων, εἰ μὴ παρυφαίνει καὶ τὴν Πηνελόπην καὶ τοὺς Σῆρας ἔτι, ὧν τὰ ὑπέρλεπτα καὶ μόλις ὁρατά. (2.28.1 = K. 382.9-17)

Since you sing the praises of Penelope's loom, having found an excellent painting of it, and you think the loom complete in all its parts—and it is stretched tight with the warp, and lint gathers under the threads, and the shuttle all but sings, while Penelope herself sheds tears so hot that Homer melts the snow with them, and she unravels what she has woven, look also at the spider weaving in a picture near by, and see if it does not excel in weaving both Penelope and the Seres too, though the web these people make is exceedingly fine and scarcely visible.Footnote 1

In their edition of Philostratus’ Imagines Benndorf and Schenkel established an index locorum, ‘ex quibus tamquam fontibus Philostratus ea quae in Imaginibus leguntur hausisse videtur’.Footnote 2 For the passage quoted above, they note three allusions to the Odyssey: (1) the famous snow-melting simile (19.204-9), which describes the weeping Penelope; (2) Penelope's loom, on which she unravelled at night what she had woven during the day (19.150; 2.105); and (3) the invisible bonds of Hephaestus as fine as spiders’ webs (8.280).Footnote 3 Later commentators have followed Benndorf and Schenkel,Footnote 4 and to my knowledge have failed to note another passage from the Odyssey (19.136-40) alluded to here by Philostratus:

ἀλλ’ Ὀδυσῆ ποθέουσα φίλον κατατήκομαι ἦτορ.
οἱ δὲ γάμον σπεύδουσιν· ἐγὼ δὲ δόλους τολυπεύω.
φᾶρος μέν μοι πρῶτον ἐνέπνευσε φρεσὶ δαίμων
στησαμένῃ μέγαν ἱστὸν ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν ὑφαίνειν,
λεπτὸν καὶ περίμετρον·

Instead, in longing for Odysseus I waste my heart away. So these men urge on my marriage, and I wind a skein of wiles. First, some god breathed the thought in my heart to set up a great web in my halls and fall to weaving a robe—fine of thread was the web and very wide.Footnote 5

Penelope tells Odysseus, who is disguised as a beggar, about how she used the loom to avoid remarrying. The snow-melting simile (19.204-9), which is unmistakably alluded to in Imag. 2.28.1, is anticipated by Penelope's speech here. Not only, as Rutherford has pointed out, does κατατήκομαι in 19.136 serve later as a keyword in the simile,Footnote 6 but Penelope's longing for Odysseus (Ὀδυσῆ ποθέουσα, 136) will also be taken up by her weeping over her husband (κλαιούσης ἑὸν ἄνδρα, 209). Even more interesting, if we accept that Philostratus is alluding to this passage, the characteristics of Penelope's ‘great loom’ (μέγαν ἱστόν, 139), ‘fine of thread and very wide’ (λεπτὸν καὶ περίμετρον, 140),Footnote 7 stand in contrast to the Seres’ webs, which are ‘extremely fine and scarcely visible’ (τὰ ὑπέρλεπτα καὶ μόλις ὁρατά). This contrast can be further confirmed by the mention of the spider's delicate web, which is attached to the slack threads (περιῆπται δὲ τῇ μηρίνθῳ λεπτὸς ἱστὸς πολλοὺς ἀποτετορνευμένος τοὺς κύκλους, ‘To this cord is attached a delicate web of many concentric circles’, 2.28.3 = K. 383.7-8). One notes that all three items are described as fine (λεπτός).

Recently McCombie has argued that the mention of the Seres’ extremely fine webs ‘establishes a transition from Homer's visual force to the verbal subtlety and exquisiteness (ὑπέρλεπτα) of the Callimachean aesthetic’, while the spider's delicate web (λεπτòς ἱστóς) ‘is another signifier of the subtlety and terseness of Callimachean λεπτóτης’.Footnote 8 McCombie's interpretation seems to be better supported if we see Philostratus’ reference to Penelope's loom as alluding to Homer's description of it as a μέγαν ἱστòν … λεπτòν καὶ περίμετρον (Od. 19.139-40); for the size of her loom could refer metaphorically to the great length of Homeric epics. In contrast, the slenderness of the spider's web reflects the Callimachean aesthetics of λεπτóτης.Footnote 9

2.

δεικνύει δὲ αὐτὰς ὁ ζωγράφος κατιούσας δι’ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀναρριχωμένας ἀερσιποτήτους κατὰ τὸν Ἡσίοδον καὶ μελετώσας πέτεσθαι. (2.28.2 = K. 382.24-7)

The painter shows them descending on it and scrambling up, high-flying like in Hesiod and practising flying.

Philostratus tells us that the spiders are painted by the painter as ‘high-flying like in Hesiod’ (ἀερσιποτήτους κατὰ τὸν Ἡσίοδον), and the word ἀερσιπότητος occurs in the Works and Days (= Op.) at line 777. I believe that this direct quotation serves not only as ‘poetic vocabulary combined with the rhythmical and intoned delivery that some speakers affected could assimilate declamatory rhetoric to sung poetry’,Footnote 10 but that it also draws our attention to its Hesiodic context (Op. 776–9):

ἡ δὲ δυωδεκάτη τῆς ἑνδεκάτης μέγ’ ἀμείνων·
τῇ γάρ τοι νεῖ νήματ’ ἀερσιπότητος ἀράχνης
ἤματος ἐκ πλείου, ὅτε τ’ ἴδρις σωρὸν ἀμᾶται·
τῇ δ’ ἱστὸν στήσαιτο γυνὴ προβάλοιτό τε ἔργον.

It is on that day that the high-flying spider spins its webs in the fullness of the day and the canny one gathers together its heap. On that day a woman should raise her loom and set up her work.Footnote 11

The spider's spinning of webs goes hand in hand with the woman's raising of her loom.Footnote 12 These two scenes depicted in Hesiod’s Op. 776-9 mirror the overall structure of Imag. 2.28, namely the juxtaposition of Penelope's loom and the spider's web, a juxtaposition which critics of the Imagines find difficult to explain. In my opinion, this provides no evidence that ‘the description of a painting representing Penelope's loom once preceded this Description 28 and has been lost’,Footnote 13 for the juxtaposition of the loom with the spider's web can be fully justified by Philostratus’ reference to this text of Hesiod. This juxtaposition brings out the trap motif, of which Penelope's loom and Clytemnestra's fabric provide contrasting examples in the Imagines, as Webb recently pointed out:

elles [sc. Penelope and Clytemnestra] sont liées par le motif, ou image, du personnage enveloppé et pris au piège. Dans Cassandre, c'est Agamemnon qui est enveloppé dans le tissu de Clytemnestre. Ici, dans Les Métiers, le tissage trompeur de Pénélope est comparé aux toiles d'araignée représentées à côté dans lesquelles des mouches sont prises au piège, comme l'Agamemnon de Cassandre.Footnote 14

In the Odyssey the story of Agamemnon's return is the most important foil for Odysseus’ nostos. In general, Agamemnon provides parallels with Odysseus, Clytemnestra with Penelope, Orestes with Telemachus, and Aegisthus with the suitors.Footnote 15 We may assume that the pepaideumenoi were supposed to be able to recognize this Homeric parallel, which the contrast between Penelope's loom (Imag. 2.28) and Clytemnestra's fabric (Imag. 2.10) alludes to.

These two notes offer an explanation of the puzzling structure of Imag. 2.28 by examining the text's use of explicit and hidden reference. As such, this article situates itself within the compass of contemporary criticism on Philostratus’ Imagines, a work that ‘belongs to a period of great sophistication in the use of language and the exploration of the effects on the listener and reader’.Footnote 16 The spider's delicate web (λεπτòς ἱστóς, 2.28.3) stands in juxtaposition to Penelope's fine loom. While the latter is both depicted by the painter and ‘written’ by Homer, ‘a good graphê’ (ἀγαθῇ γραφῇ, 2.28.1),Footnote 17 our sophist, whose textual fabric is ‘exceedingly fine and scarcely visible’ (τὰ ὑπέρλεπτα καὶ μόλις ὁρατά, 2.28.1), conjures up the former, which appears in the painter's work next to Penelope's loom, before the eyes of his readers (ὅρα καὶ τὴν ἀράχνην ὑφαίνουσαν ἐκ γειτóνων, 2.28.1).

Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Professor Jonas Grethlein (Heidelberg) as well as CQ’s anonymous reader for their constructive comments.

References

1 I use the Greek text of Benndorf, O. and Schenkel, C., Philostrati Maioris Imagines (Leipzig, 1893)Google Scholar. All translations of the Imagines are taken from the Loeb edition by Fairbanks, A., Philostratus the Elder, Imagines. Philostratus the Younger, Imagines. Callistratus, Descriptions (Cambridge, MA, 1931)Google Scholar, with modifications.

2 Benndorf and Schenkel (n. 1), 130.

3 Benndorf and Schenkel (n. 1), 138.

4 Fairbanks (n. 1), 249; Kalinka, E. and Schönberger, O., Philostratus, Die Bilder (Munich, 1968), 463 Google Scholar; Bougot, A. and Lissarrague, F., La Galerie de tableaux (Paris, 1991), 135 Google Scholar; Abbondanza, L., Immagini (Savigliano, 2008), 296 Google Scholar; Pucci, G. and Lombardo, G., La Pinacoteca (Palermo, 2010), 105 Google Scholar.

5 All translations of the Odyssey are taken from the Loeb edition by A.T. Murray and G.E. Dimock (Cambridge, MA, 1995).

6 Rutherford, R.B., Homer Odyssey XIX and XX (Cambridge, 1992), 150 Google Scholar.

7 On theses two adjectives, see Rutherford (n. 6), 152: ‘the former emphasises the fineness of the threads, the latter their length’.

8 McCombie, D., ‘Philostratus, ἱστοί, Imagines 2.28: ekphrasis and the web of illusion’, Ramus 31 (2002), 146–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 149–50.

9 Cf. Elsner, J., ‘Philostratus visualizes the tragic: some ecphrastic and pictorial representations of Greek tragedy in the Roman era’, in Kraus, C.S. et al. (edd.), Visualizing the Tragic: Drama, Myth, and Ritual in Greek Art and Literature: Essays in Honour of Froma Zeitlin (Oxford, 2007), 309–37Google Scholar, at 310 n. 4; and Webb, R., ‘Homère dans les Images de Philostrate’, in Dubel, S., Favreau-Linder, A. and Oudot, E. (edd.), À l'école d'Homère: la culture des orateurs et des sophistes (Paris, 2015), 203–14Google Scholar, at 211. Baumann, M., Bilder schreiben: virtuose Ekphrasis in Philostrats Eikones (Berlin, 2011), 142–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar calls McCombie's (n. 8) conclusion—that the metapoetic reading of Imag. 2.28 offers a programmatic statement of the Philostratean aesthetics—into question by arguing that the other examples relating to λεπτός in the Imagines do not fit well with it; he none the less agrees that ‘Im. 2,28 bietet eine Ӓsthetik der λεπτóτης’.

10 Bowie, E.L., ‘Greek sophists and Greek poetry in the Second Sophistic’, ANRW 2.33.1 (1986), 209–58Google Scholar, at 210 on the use of poetic quotation by the authors of the Second Sophistic.

11 The translation is taken from the Loeb edition by Most, G., Hesiod, Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia (Cambridge, MA, 2006)Google Scholar.

12 On the significance of the women's loom in Hesiod's Works and Days, see Canevaro, L.G., ‘The clash of the sexes in Hesiod's Works and Days’, G&R 60 (2013), 199–201 Google Scholar.

13 Quotation from Fairbanks (n. 1), 248 n. 3. See Benndorf and Schenkel (n. 1), 119 in their apparatus criticus, ad loc.: ‘ante caput XXVIII excidisse imaginem, qua Penelopa telam suam dissolvens exhibebatur, ratus est Kayser atque propterea legendum esse ἐπεὶ τὸν τ. Π. ἱστὸν ἐπαινεῖς. male. finxit scriptor puerum secum eiusmodi picturam vicinam (ἐκ γειτόνων) contemplatum esse eo consilio, ut hanc imaginem prooemio exornaret atque telae descriptionem altera tela opposita illustraret’; cf. also Kalinka and Schönberger (n. 4), 463.

14 ‘They are connected by the motif, or image, of a character who has been wrapped up and trapped. In Cassandra, Agamemnon is wrapped up in Clytemnestra's fabric. Here, in the Looms, Penelope's deceptive weaving is juxtaposed with the spider's webs, in which flies are trapped, like Agamemnon in Cassandra’ (Webb [n. 9], 211).

15 Cf. Od. 1.32-43; 1.298-302; 3.193-200; 3.254-316; 3.232-5; 4.91-2; 4.512-49; 11.409-56; 13.383-5; 24.95-7; 24.191-202. On this parallel, see de Jong, I.J.F., A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey (Cambridge, 2001), 12–13 CrossRefGoogle Scholar with further bibliography in n. 26; Saïd, S., Homer and the Odyssey (Oxford, 2011), 122–5Google Scholar; Marks, J., Zeus in the Odyssey (Washington, DC, 2008), 17–35 Google Scholar; Kurke, L., ‘Pindar's Pythian 11 and the Oresteia: contestatory ritual poetics in the fifth century b.c.e.’, ClAnt 32 (2013), 101–75Google Scholar, at 110–11.

16 Webb, R., ‘The Imagines as a fictional text: ekphrasis, apatê and illusion’, in Costantini, M., Graziani, F. and Rolet, S. (edd.), Le défi de l'art. Philostrate, Callistrate et l'image sophistique? (Rennes, 2006), 113–36Google Scholar, at 113 with further bibliography in n. 2. Cf. also Baumann (n. 9); Alexandre, S., ‘Sous les tableaux, l'image. Philostrate et l'invention à l'occasion de la peinture antique’, in Alexandre, S., Philippe, N. and Ribeyrol, C. (edd.), Inventer la peinture grecque antique (Paris, 2012), 45–70 Google Scholar; Squire, M., ‘Apparitions apparent: the parameters of vision in Philostratus the Elder's Imagines’, Helios 40 (2013), 97–140 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bachmann, C., Wenn man die Welt als Bilder betrachtet: Studien zu den Eikones Philostrats des Älteren (Heidelberg, 2015)Google Scholar.

17 On this pun in the Imagines, see Squire (n. 16), 106–7; cf. also Lissarrague, F., ‘Graphein: écrire et dessiner’, in Bron, C. and Kassapoglou, E. (edd.), L'image en jeu: de l'antiquité à Paul Klee (Paris, 1992), 189–203 Google Scholar.