This paper presents the case for reading the Hephaisteion as a temple planned and begun by the Philaid family early in the fifth century. It was originally designed to give a house to Hephaestus in Athens after the successful campaign of Miltiades brought the island of Lemnos, traditionally the home of Hephaestus, under Athenian control. Work on the temple was interrupted by the death of Miltiades but resumed in the wake of Cimon’s successful northern ventures. The strong association of (...) Miltiades and Cimon with the strategic islands of the northern Aegean suggests that the correct interpretation of the Hephaisteion’s east frieze is the expulsion of the Pelasgians from Athens. Their punishment is interpreted here as a mythological analogue for the annexation of the Pelasgians’ island, Lemnos. Evidence from the island demonstrates that the Athenian cleruchs on Lemnos were eager to distinguish themselves from the Lemnians. The Pelasgian episode enabled them to demonstrate this, and to emphasize their Athenian identity. (shrink)

History of religion, in its beginnings, had to struggle to emancipate itself from classical mythology as well as from theology and philosophy; when ritual was finally found to be the basic fact in religious tradition, the result was a divorce between classicists, treating mythology as a literary device, on the one hand, and specialists in festivals and rituals and their obscure affiliations and origins on the other.

History of religion, in its beginnings, had to struggle to emancipate itself from classical mythology as well as from theology and philosophy; when ritual was finally found to be the basic fact in religious tradition, the result was a divorce between classicists, treating mythology as a literary device, on the one hand, and specialists in festivals and rituals and their obscure affiliations and origins on the other.

Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica 9, 338–352 deals with the most famous Λήμνιον κακόν of the ancient myths: the women of Lemnos, jealous of the relationships between their husbands and some Thracian slaves, killed all the male population of the island. Quintus’ story uses as an intertextual model Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica 1, 609–632, dealing with the same episode. The aim of this paper is not only to show the intertextual relationship between Quintus’ and Apollonius’ texts, but also to show how Quintus (...) changes the innovative point of view of Apollonius in order to come back to the traditional “masculinist” point of view. In doing so Quintus inserts in his text some fundamental details of Apollonius’ version, but he ingeniously modifies their functions or meanings in order to remind the readers both of Apollonius’ version and of the changes he made to it. (shrink)

In Roman literature, the Argo commonly ranks as the first ship. The Flavian poet Valerius Flaccus seems to place himself in this line of tradition too by constantly stressing the Argo’s pioneer status. Yet it has rightly been noted that nowhere in the Argonautica is the Argo explicitly said to be the first ever ship. Her exceptional role is based rather on her status as the first sea-going ship to sail across the open sea from Europe to Asia, opening the (...) seas to global marine trade. From this perspective, the hitherto inadequately explained mentions of ships in the Phlegyas simile (3,124–132) and the Lemnos episode (2,107–114; 285–305) can also be analysed as only apparent inconsistencies. The interpretive effort required here draws the attention of the reader or audience, which is called upon to compare the earlier ships to the Argo. In this, the poet suggests a pessimistic judgement: a consequence of the opening of the seas was shipping disasters and human tragedies. Also, it did not only lead to the expansion of civilising achievements, but also held the danger that rituals and customs of a periphery which is read as barbaric would penetrate into the cultural space of the Mediterranean world. (shrink)

Philoctetes was a good man and a good soldier. When he was on his way to Troy to fight alongside the Greeks, he had a terrible misfortune. By sheer accident he trespassed in a sacred precinct on the island of Lemnos. As punishment he was bitten on the foot by the serpent who guarded the shrine. His foot began to ooze with foul-smelling pus, and the pain made him cry out curses that spoiled the other soldiers' religious observances. They (...) therefore left him alone on the island, a lame man with no resources but his bow and arrows, no friends but the animals who were also his food. Ten years later, according to Sophocles' version of the story, they come to bring him back: for they have learned that they cannot win the war without him. The leaders of the expedition think of Philoctetes as a tool of their purposes; they plan to trick him into returning, with no empathy for his plight. The Chorus of soldiers, however, has a different response. Even before they see the man, they imagine vividly what it is like to be him– and they enter a protest against the callousness of the commanders: For my part, I pity him– thinking of how, with no living soul to care for him, seeing no friendly face, wretched, always alone, he suffers with a fierce affliction, and has no resources to meet his daily needs. How in the world does the poor man survive? (shrink)

Philoctetes was a good man and a good soldier. When he was on his way to Troy to fight alongside the Greeks, he had a terrible misfortune. By sheer accident he trespassed in a sacred precinct on the island of Lemnos. As punishment he was bitten on the foot by the serpent who guarded the shrine. His foot began to ooze with foul-smelling pus, and the pain made him cry out curses that spoiled the other soldiers' religious observances. They (...) therefore left him alone on the island, a lame man with no resources but his bow and arrows, no friends but the animals who were also his food. Ten years later, according to Sophocles' version of the story, they come to bring him back: for they have learned that they cannot win the war without him. The leaders of the expedition think of Philoctetes as a tool of their purposes; they plan to trick him into returning, with no empathy for his plight. The Chorus of soldiers, however, has a different response. Even before they see the man, they imagine vividly what it is like to be him– and they enter a protest against the callousness of the commanders: For my part, I pity him– thinking of how, with no living soul to care for him, seeing no friendly face, wretched, always alone, he suffers with a fierce affliction, and has no resources to meet his daily needs. How in the world does the poor man survive? (shrink)

On some accounts, Sophocles’ Philoctetes is most notable for what it lacks: alone among the extant Attic tragedies, there are no women in the dramatis personae; alone among the extant plays of Sophocles, no characters die; and the chorus plays a relatively diminished role, adhering most closely to Aristotle’s injunction in the Poetics that a chorus should take on the role of an actor. But when viewed through the lens of ecocritical feminism and vibrant materialism, notably the work of Donna (...) Haraway, Mel Chen, Jane Bennett, and Anna Tsing, the play’s landscape, the island of Lemnos, comes to life; and it teems with feminine energies as well as compromised and complicated animacies, while the chorus serves as an empathic focalizer and world-builder. This paper argues that in addition to animating the island’s material ecosystem, Sophocles conjures Lemnos’ mythic ecosystem, most notably the tale of the notorious, murderous, and malodorous Lemnian Women. All of these elements cohere to characterize Philoctetes as an abject, sterile menstruator. Furthermore, the chorus’s brief, strange Hymn to Gaia encapsulates the play’s tension between a masculine, heroic, teleological narrative and the feminine, primordial, bestial world of Lemnos. These dynamics are further considered through the lens of fifth-century Athenian colonization, the story of the indigenous Lemnian Pelasgians, and a colonial reading of the Odyssey’s Cyclopeia. Finally, the paper explores the close, mutually constitutive relationship between text, landscape, and body via the popularity, in later antiquity, of pharmacological applications of Lemnian Earth, used to treat, among other ailments, snakebites and menstruation. (shrink)

Scene V.viii of Terence's Phormio brings to a climax the confrontation between the trickster Phormio and the two old men Demipho and Chremes. Phormio, exploiting his knowledge of Chremes' extra-marital affair in Lemnos, persuades Chremes to surrender any claim to thirty minae, extracted by false pretences, which have in fact been used to purchase a girl for Chremes' son Phaedria. Demipho urges resistance to this blackmail, suggesting that they have more chance of placating Chremes' wife Nausistrata if they themselves (...) tell her about the Lemnian affair. Phormio reacts by moving towards Chremes' house and calling out Nausistrata by name. The old men try in vain to restrain him. (shrink)

While Statius' decision to treat events in landlocked Thebes offered limited opportunity to integrate into his poem a maritime episode, which had become a staple epic ingredient by the first centurya.d.,theThebaidis dotted with references to the Argonauts' quest for the Golden Fleece, including a narrative flashback of the crew's time at Lemnos. Following in a long tradition of cross-contamination between Argonautic and Theban literary texts, Statius' poem also evokes works of literature which narrate the legend, notably theArgonauticasof Apollonius Rhodius (...) and Valerius Flaccus. A lack of scholarly focus on this latter area has generally led to a piecemeal scrutiny of individual allusive passages rather than a systematic treatment. However, Stover's recent paper paves the way for a more productive approach through its contention that theThebaidmakes widespread use of the mythic subject matter: ‘It … appears that Statius frequently appropriates the Argonautic tradition and that he does so largely to present the Argives as quasi Argonauts. This suggests that their adventure to conquer Thebes is analogous to the Argonauts’ voyage to Colchis.'. (shrink)

This paper considers the Hellenistic poets' attitude towards pre-Trojan war myths; in particular, it examines the Hellenistic reception of six narratives from the Cypria: the marriage of Peleus and Thetis; the duel between the Dioscuri and Idas and Lynceus; the story of Telephus; the love affair between Achilles and Deidameia; the abandonment of Philoctetes on Lemnos; and the involvement of the Achaeans with the priest Anius and his daughters, the Oenotropae. Furthermore, it is argued that the reception of these (...) stories from the Cypria may be seen as a metaliterary comment upon epic poetry, firstly because narratives from the Epic Cycle are adapted to fit epic subgenres, such as the elegy, the epyllion, the hymn and the idyll, and secondly because the neoteric versions of these narratives put particular emphasis on certain motifs, types of hero and narrative techniques which are typical of Hellenistic poetics. (shrink)

This paper will examine three textual problems in Statius’ Thebaid, book 5 (Hypsipyle’s narration of the massacre on Lemnos) that have not previously been discussed in appropriate detail. It will also try to contribute to the demonstration of the fact that, on several occasions, P (Parisinus lat. 8051, s. ix2/3) is not the best codex in the tradition and that we can easily accept the text of the majority of manuscripts.

De entre los héroes sofócleos, la figura de Neoptólemo sobresale por su particular dificultad para comprometerse de manera definitiva con un curso de acción. El joven acepta llevar a cabo un engaño pergeñado por Odiseo para obtener el arco infalible de Filoctetes, quien vive hace diez años abandonado en la isla desierta de Lemnos. Pero una vez avanzada la treta, cuando se aproxima realmente al objetivo, de pronto se ve asaltado por una duda que le impide seguir adelante, de (...) manera tal que se desdibuja su posición de agente capaz de concretar el plan. Neoptólemo termina por confesar al solitario isleño el motivo fraudulento de su presencia, y, excusándose, aduce estar gobernado por una “necesidad” (v.923: anánke). En este trabajo presentaré, en primer lugar, las condiciones de emergencia y las características del plan ideado por el ingenioso rey de Ítaca; en segundo lugar, una explicación de la indecisión de Neoptólemo a partir de la particular relación entre su discurso y la realidad que pretende referir; en tercer lugar, me centraré en las derivas ontológicas del conflicto central de la obra y, finalmente, avanzaré sobre los corolarios prácticos que se siguen de lo laborado en los puntos anteriores. (shrink)

At Her. 6.113–18 Hypsipyle lays out for Jason the advantages to be gained by marrying her: the prestige of her noble and even divine family, and the fertile island of Lemnos, which will come as her dowry. She then adds the fact that she is pregnant with twins ; this thought introduces a new section, which extends until line 130.

When the Argonauts reach the island of Lemnos, Apollonius of Rhodes tells us, they send their herald Aethalides to the ruler of the island. Such a means of establishing contact and requesting safe passage was the norm in the Homeric world; there heralds acted as intermediaries between commanders and subordinates or between groups of people. In preliterate societies, heralds facilitated communication: messages were transmitted through memorization and repetition rather than by means of writing. While verbatim repetition was no doubt (...) a necessary feature of this form of communication, its wholesale transference into Homeric poetry was not necessarily the logical corollary. Nonetheless, we know of such repetitions precisely because of their appearance in the Homeric poems. It is now widely accepted that such passages are a result of the oral style of composition in which the oral poet repeats passages just as he uses shorter formulaic phrases. The debate embedded in the A-scholia of the Iliad suggests that repeated passages were a source of contention already in antiquity. While it is more common to see the scholiasts trying to decide which passage is ‘correct’ and which should be athetized, this provides evidence that athetization was not a unanimous impulse. The scholiast defends 2.60–71, part of which is repeated for the third time, against Zenodotus. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Journal of Ancient History Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 2 Seiten: 323-356.