Chapter 17, The Return from Troy
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♠ Scholia at Lykophron, Alexandra 495 – Lykophronis Alexandra, vol. 2, pp. 179-81, ed E. Scheer. Berlin 1908.
♠ Hyginus, Fabulae 59
PHYLLIS: Demophoon, Theseus’ son, came, it is said, to Thrace to the hospitality of Phyllis, and was loved by her. When he wanted to return to his country, he promised to return to her. He did not come on the appointed day; she is said to have run down to the shore nine times that day, and from her (story) the place was named in Greek Ennea Hodoi. Phyllis, however, out of longing for Demophoon died. Her parents made her a tomb, and trees sprang up there which at a certain season grieve for her death, the leaves growing dry and blowing away. From her names, leaves in Greek are called phylla. Latin Text
♠ Hyginus, Fabulae 243
Phyllis killed herself by hanging on account of Demophoon, son of Theseus. Latin Text
♠ Servius, Scholia at Vergil, Eclogues 5.10 – Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii Bucolica et Georgica Commentarii, p. 55, ed. G. Thilo. Leipzig 1881.
♠ Ovid, Heroides 2
[1] I, your Phyllis, who welcomed you to Rhodope, Demophoon, complain that the promised day is past, and you not here. When once the horns of the moon should have come together in full orb, our shores were to expect your anchor – the moon has four times waned, and four times waxed again to her orb complete; yet the Sithonian wave brings not the ships of Acte. Should you count the days – which we count well who love – you will find my plaint come not before its time.
[9] Hope, too, has been slow to leave me; we are tardy in believing, when belief brings hurt. Even now my love is loath to let me think you wrong me. Oft have I thought the gusty breezes of the south were bringing back your white sails. Theseus I have cursed, because methought he would not let you go; yet mayhap ‘tis not he that has stayed your course. At times have I feared lest, while you were holding toward the waters of the Hebrus, your craft had been wrecked and engulfed in the foaming wave. Oft, bending the knee in prayer that you fare well – ah, base, base man! – have I venerated the gods with prayer or with burning of holy incense; oft, seeing in sky and on sea that the winds were favouring, have I said to myself: “If he do fare well, he is on the way.” In a word, all things soever that hinder those in haste to come, my faithful love has tried to image forth, and my wit has been fertile in the finding of causes. But you delay long your coming; neither do the gods by whom you swore bring you back to me, nor does love of mine move your return. Demophoon, to the winds you gave at once both promised word and sails; your sails, alas! have not returned, your promised word has not been kept. Continue Reading Latin Text
♠ Scholia at Lykophron, Alexandra 902 – Lykophronis Alexandra, vol. 2, pp. 291-92, ed E. Scheer. Berlin 1908.
♠ Apollodoros, Epitome 6.15a
But Meges and Prothous, with many others, were cast away at Caphereus in Euboea… and when Prothous was shipwrecked at Caphereus, the Magnesians with him drifted to Crete and settled there. Greek Text
♠ Aristotle, Peplos fr 640 [pp. 400-401 Rose] – Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta, ed. V. Rose. Stuttgart 1886.
♠ Apollodoros, Epitome 6.2-4
But Amphilochus, and Calchas, and Leonteus, and Podalirius, and Polypoetes left their ships in Ilium and journeyed by land to Colophon, and there buried Calchas the diviner; for it was foretold him that he would die if he met with a wiser diviner than himself.
[3] Well, they were lodged by the diviner Mopsus, who was a son of Apollo and Manto, and he wrangled with Calchas about the art of divination. A wild fig-tree grew on the spot, and when Calchas asked, “ How many figs does it bear?” Mopsus answered, “ Ten thousand, and a bushel, and one fig over,” and they were found to be so.
[4] And when Mopsus asked Calchas concerning a pregnant sow, “ How many pigs has she in her womb, and when will she farrow?” Calchas answered, “ Eight.” But Mopsus smiled and said,“ The divination of Calchas is the reverse of exact; but I, as a son of Apollo and Manto, am extremely rich in the sharp sight which comes of exact divination, and I divine that the number of pigs in the womb is not eight, as Calchas says, but nine, and that they are all male and will be farrowed without fail tomorrow at the sixth hour.” So when these things turned out so, Calchas died of a broken heart and was buried at Notium. Greek Text
♠ Strabo, Geography 14.1.27
Then one comes to the mountain Gallesius, and to Colophon, an Ionian city, and to the sacred precinct of Apollo Clarius, where there was once an ancient oracle. The story is told that Calchas the prophet, with Amphilochus the son of Amphiaräus, went there on foot on his return from Troy, and that having met near Clarus a prophet superior to himself, Mopsus, the son of Manto, the daughter of Teiresias, he died of grief. Now Hesiod revises the myth as follows, making Calchas propound to Mopsus this question:“I am amazed in my heart at all these figs on this wild fig tree, small though it is; can you tell me the number?
”And he makes Mopsus reply:“They are ten thousand in number, and their measure is a medimnus; but there is one over, which you cannot put in the measure.
” “Thus he spake,” Hesiod adds,“and the number the measure could hold proved true. And then the eyes of Calchas were closed by the sleep of death.
”But Pherecydes says that the question propounded by Calchas was in regard to a pregnant sow, how many pigs she carried, and that Mopsus said, “three, one of which is a female,” and that when Mopsus proved to have spoken the truth, Calchas died of grief. Some say that Calchas propounded the question in regard to the sow, but that Mopsus propounded the question in regard to the wild fig tree, and that the latter spoke the truth but that the former did not, and died of grief, and in accordance with a certain oracle. Sophocles tells the oracle in his Reclaiming of Helen, that Calchas was destined to die when he met a prophet superior to himself, but he transfers the scene of the rivalry and of the death of Calchas to Cilicia. Such are the ancient stories. Greek Text
♠ Hesiod, Melampodia fr 278 MW – Fragmenta Hesiodea, p. 137, ed. R. Merkelbach and M. L. West. Oxford 1967.
♠ Pherekydes 3F142 – Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 1, pp. 96-97, ed. F. Jacoby, 2d ed. Leiden 1957.
♠ Lykophron, Alexandra 426-30
one the swan of Molossus Cypeus Coetus, who failed to guess the number of the brood-sow’s young, when, dragging his rival into the cunning contest of the wild figs, himself, as the oracle foretold, shall err and sleep the destined sleep. Greek Text
♠ Scholia at Lykophron, Alexandra 427 – Lykophronis Alexandra, vol. 2, pp. 157-58, ed E. Scheer. Berlin 1908.
♠ Scholia at Lykophron, Alexandra 980 – Lykophronis Alexandra, vol. 2, p. 309, ed E. Scheer. Berlin 1908.
♠ Konon 26F1.6 – Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 1, pp. 192-93, ed. F. Jacoby, 2d ed. Leiden 1957.
Edited by Elena Bianchelli, Retired Senior Lecturer of Classical Languages and Culture, Univ. of Georgia, March 2023
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