Hesiod's Theogony: From Near Eastern Creation Myths to Paradise Lost by Stephen Scully (review) Deborah Lyons American Journal of Philology, Volume 138, Number 1 (Whole Number 549), Spring 2017, pp. 181-184 (Review) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ajp.2017.0005 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/658664 Accessed 7 May 2018 17:39 GMT
BOOK REVIEWS u Stephen Scully. Hesiod s Theogony: From Near Eastern Creation Myths to Paradise Lost. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. xiv + 268 pp. Cloth, $85.00. The heart of Stephen Scully s book is a masterful inquiry into the place of the Theogony in literary history, in the course of which he makes important observations about the evolution of ancient Greek ideas of the cosmos, divinity, sexuality and gender, justice, and the polis. He prefaces his historical investigations with a careful reading of the poem on its own terms, before looking backward toward its sources and then forward toward the influence it exerted on later texts. Literary analysis and literary history are carefully interwoven, as Scully s initial reading of the poem provides a road map for the historical sections of the book. The introduction briefly addresses contemporary cosmogonic thinking, before going on to explore theogonic themes in the work of Sigmund Freud. Here, Scully highlights his interest in the conflict between anarchic sexuality and social order, which will later reappear in his detailed treatment of Hesiod s poem and in the historical sections. Chapter 1 compares first Homer to Hesiod and then the Theogony to Genesis. Chapter 2 offers a reading of the Theogony that highlights both its formal and thematic aspects. These features will turn out to have central importance for his situation of the Theogony in the earlier and later traditions. His focus on the political reverberates throughout his discussion of ancient Mesopotamian and Indo-European traditions and the later influence of the poem, while observations about Hesiod s poetics come back into play especially in his reading of Milton. In Chapter 3, the author discusses the candidates for ancient sources Mesopotamian, Phoenician, and Egyptian for the myths of the Theogony. This part of the book draws heavily on the work of previous scholars (West, López- Ruiz, etc.) but is nonetheless useful for the clarity of its exposition of a complex topic in a relatively short space. Chapters 4 through 6 detail the influence of the Theogony on later writers, first Greeks and Romans, followed by early Christians, and then (with increasingly sparse material) through later periods, before arriving at his end-point, Milton s Paradise Lost. The last section on Milton finally offers enough material to allow for an extended and rewarding parallel reading of the two poems. Scully s insights about the poem, while based on previous scholarship, are well developed and relevant to his larger theme. Drawing on the work of Thalmann (1984), he shows how Hesiod s choice of words frequently activates the meanings inherent in the names and personified abstractions that people this heavily American Journal of Philology 138 (2017) 181 199 2017 by Johns Hopkins University Press
182 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY populated text. For example, lines 64 71 introduce the Muses, describing them in words that prefigure their names: thalie\s erate\n... melpontai... kleiousin... opi kalei, etc. When their actual names appear in the following lines (75 79), we have already heard them in the descriptions of their activities. Zeroing in on the ways that the poet sometimes anticipates and at other times follows the introduction of a mythic personage with related nouns and verbs that activate the meaning of the figure in question, he shows that the text is far more fully inhabited by these divine beings than a casual reading or a reading in translation can possibly reveal. Indeed, Scully has interesting things to say about the dilemmas posed for text editors (and even more for translators) in deciding which abstractions should be capitalized as personifications, and which are simply common nouns. Scully s other, and ultimately more consequential, major interpretive move is to make the strong case for a political (in the root sense of the word) reading of the poem. According to this line of thought, the telos of the poem s violent generational battles of succession is the creation of a proto-polis on Olympus, a reserve of calm amidst the violence of the surrounding universe, which will serve as a model for mortals. The Zeus of Hesiod is not an orderer of the universe, but a provider of harmony and order within the limited sphere of Olympus. In his consideration of ancient Near Eastern influences, Scully notes that it is far from clear under what circumstances transmission would have occurred and he considers all the options without declaring for any single one. He discusses the parallels with Hurrio-Hittite myths, especially in the myth of Kumarbi, a violent succession involving castration, and the Typhoeus-like Illuyanka, but ultimately finds the evidence for Babylonian influence from the Enuma Elish more intriguing. This is in part because of the Babylonian epic s concern with city-building. Particularly interesting is Scully s observation that the Syro-Phoenician myths almost entirely exclude family relationships and female figures, while in the Enuma Elish the conquered body of the primordial goddess Tiamat is divided to make the heavens, waters, and earth. He observes that although the Theogony also treats female goddesses harshly, the Greek tradition nonetheless gives them a greater role in the creation of a harmonious polity than the Babylonian myth allows. If it is impossible to decide how and when ancient Near Eastern myths might have become known in Greece, it seems unnecessary to adjudicate competing claims for this influence (nor does Scully do so, except by implication). Certainly different traditions could have entered the Greek world (and the Greek imagination) at different times and by different means. The chapters on the influence of Hesiod on later Greek and Roman literature are impressively learned, and are enlightening on the theme of changing notions of justice. Particularly rewarding is the section on the Homeric Hymns, which shows their many close connections with the Theogony. Also of great interest are the pages on Plato, which deal with the paradox of the philosopher as both critic of myth and prolific mythmaker. For Scully, Plato is more Hesiodic than he is usually assumed to be, reworking the Theogony to suit his purposes in different dialogues even as he rejects the poet s conception of the divine.
BOOK REVIEWS 183 As the book turns to later times it takes on a dispiriting tone, as the author s favored text seems always on the point of falling into irrelevance and obscurity. Interestingly, the trajectory (with a few moments of more intense interest on the part of authors such as Solon, Aeschylus, and much later Plutarch) is linear, as the shift of focus, beginning with the Presocratics and continuing (albeit with a few interruptions) through to the introduction of Christianity, is from the harmony of the polis to the harmony of the soul. Concomitant with this change of interest is the growing distaste for the violent myths that occupy central stage in the Theogony. There arises a consistent critique, beginning with Xenophanes, of the more lurid incidents in the poem, such as the castration of Uranus and the birth of Aphrodite. Those who do not reject the myths outright turn to allegorical readings. Particularly problematic for later writers is Zeus binding of his father Cronus. This impious act throws a monkey wrench into efforts to recast the father of gods and men as a universal (and moral) god. Consequently, for those who do not choose to read allegorically, these events are either rejected outright or softened in the retelling. The culmination of this tendency can be seen in the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus, which as Scully observes, makes the myths bland and bloodless. (Later texts will outright deny Zeus divinity or even, as in Paradise Lost, turn him into a satanic figure.) The arrival of Christianity furthers neglect of the Theogony in favor of the less troublesome and more safely moralizing Works and Days. A few bright moments, provided by the scholars of the Hellenistic period and later of Renaissance Italy, disrupt the otherwise bleak picture (and ensure the continued survival of the text). Nonetheless, it is the deep engagement of the Christian epic Paradise Lost with the Theogony that provides Scully s account with its culmination. One effect of Scully s treatment of Paradise Lost is to show how good a reader of Hesiod Milton was. This is not surprising: so good a Hellenist was he that at least one of his emendations has been generally adopted by editors of Euripides. The earlier discussion of Hesiod s etymological play (in Chapter 1) turns out to be significant for the author s treatment of Hesiodic echoes in this poem. He shows how aware Milton must have been of this feature of Hesiodic poetics, and how cleverly he adopts it for his own. A nice example is his observation of how the repeated prefix dis- is reinforced by the borrowing of the Latin name for Hades, Dis. A central theme is Milton s incorporation of elements of Classical mythology into his Christian narrative. Milton shows himself a bolder and less conflicted recycler of antiquity than those who came before, easily reusing the ancient themes not to obscure but to highlight the differences between Greek and Christian mythology. In a one example, Scully shows how both Proserpina and Pandora serve as negative comparisons for Eve. Scully has succeeded admirably in carrying out his ambitious project, but I question a few of his organizational choices. Placing Freud and Genesis outside of the historical narrative makes sense, in that they are neither influencers nor influenced. Nonetheless, it gets the book off to a choppy start. Although we can
184 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY exclude any influence of the Hebrew Bible on the Theogony, it might be more revealing to incorporate it into its Near Eastern context by including it in Chapter 3. As for Freud, Scully hedges about his knowledge of the Theogony, but it is not clear that Hesiodic influence can be entirely excluded. Moving this discussion to an epilogue would have provided the book with a less abrupt ending. The exhaustive account of Hesiod s later influence means that at times the author struggles to say something about authors who cared little about the Theogony. More decisive shaping of the narrative at these points would have provided the reader with welcome direction. Certain choices are puzzling: why continue to print the word polis in Greek, especially in the hybrid proto-polis, and why is Gaia consistently called Earth, while other gods, like Uranus, are given their Greek names? Finally, at times the author seems to be enjoying a private joke, as when he entitles a section on the hostile reception of Hesiod in the Second Sophistic and by Christian apologists Fun Times with Hesiod. I must, alas, close with one more complaint, for which the author is blameless. For a publication by one of the premier academic presses, the book has a number of typos and editing mistakes. One can only hope that Oxford University Press sees the error of its ways and ceases to stint on editing. Scholarship of this caliber deserves no less. Miami University e-mail: lyonsd@miamioh.edu Deborah Lyons Laurent Pernot. Epideictic Rhetoric: Questioning the Stakes of Ancient Praise. (Ashley and Peter Larkin Series in Greek and Roman Culture.) Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. xiv + 166 pp. Cloth. $50. This book comes from one of the current world authorities on epideictic rhetoric and oratory and represents the summation of nearly a quarter-century of thinking on the topic. Beginning with the appearance of his massive Rhétorique de l éloge dans le monde gréco-romain (1993), which reached almost 900 pages in two volumes, Laurent Pernot has established himself as a presence in Classics generally, in Rhetoric specifically, and in the study of epideictic above all. The present work had its origin in a seminar hosted by the Rhetoric Society of America in 2012, under the larger auspices of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric. αἱ δεύτεραί πως φροντίδες σοφώτεραι, and this volume, though not as expansive as Pernot s 1993 opus, takes advantage both of long reflection and of the proliferation of scholarship in the intervening years. Pernot sharpens his focus somewhat in this latest book, identifying two major areas of research that need at this point to be addressed. First,... while epideictic is important, its role remains unclear. Unlike judicial and deliberative speeches, epideictic orations are not meant to elicit any vote or any decision on