Glimpses of Aeolian traditions in two different myths about two different visits by Philoctetes to the sacred island of the goddess Chryse
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The cover illustration for this essay is a drawing, made in the early nineteenth century of our era, which copies with some clarity and flair a picture painted on a vase manufactured in Athens in the fifth century BCE and now housed in Vienna. A follow-up illustration, immediately below the drawing, is a photograph of this ancient painting, and further below is an overall photograph of the vase itself. What we see pictured here is a scene derived from myths about the hero Philoctetes. We see him participating in a sacrifice that took place on an island named Chryse, sacred to a goddess named Chryse, whose cult statue, viewed frontally, is overseeing the sacrifice. This scene will be unfamiliar to readers who are familiar only with the version of the myth of Philoctetes that we see foregrounded by Sophocles in his tragedy named after this hero, Philoctetes, the première of which took place in 411 BCE at the festival of the City Dionysia in Athens. Before I focus on what will be unfamiliar, however, I review here what will seem quite familiar. In the version of Sophocles, as in the version of the myth we see in the picture I show here, Philoctetes was participating in a sacrifice that took place on the island Chryse, sacred to the goddess Chryse. In the version of Sophocles, however, unlike the version we see pictured here, the sacrifice went wrong. A snake guarding the cult statue of the goddess bit Philoctetes in the foot. This toxic wounding of the hero, as I noted in my previous essay about Philoctetes (Nagy 2021.08.02, linked here), was a primal event to be hauntingly remembered in the tragedy created by Sophocles. But here is where things get unfamiliar, as we take a second look at what we see painted on the vase now housed in Vienna: there is no snake to be seen here. So, the sacrifice that is pictured in this painting is not marred by a traumatic snakebite. In fact, there cannot be any snakebite here, since the sacrifice that is pictured in this painting is not the same as the sacrifice pictured in the tragedy by Sophocles. The occasion for the sacrifice pictured in the painting, as we will see in what follows, was a prelude to a “First” Trojan War, whereas the occasion for the sacrifice pictured retrospectively in the tragedy of Sophocles was a prelude to the “Second” Trojan War as narrated in the Homeric Iliad. If we take into account all the surviving versions of myths about Philoctetes, we find that this hero visited the sacred island of Chryse two different times, participating in two different sacrifices. Despite, however, such a pattern of divergence to be noted in the surviving myths, we must also note a most salient point of convergence in the attested versions of these same myths about the two visits of Philoctetes to Chryse. The point of convergence has to do with the visualization of the cult statue that is sacred to the goddess Chryse. How this statue is pictured reveals glimpses, as I call them, of Aeolian traditions in the formation of myths that told about the two visits of Philoctetes to the sacred island of the goddess.
The Classics
Version of Record
The Classics
Version of Record
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Tác giả
Nagy, Gregory
Nhà xuất bản
Harvard University, Center for Hellenic Studies
