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ΛΕΥΚΑΣ ΠΕΤΡΗ*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
In the second Nekyia Hermes conducts to Hades the souls of the suitors slain by Odysseus:
Even in antiquity the identification of the Λευκ⋯ς πέτρη was a conundrum. It would seem that no ancient Greek scholar could plausibly locate this rock. According to the scholion in the codex Venetus Marcianus 613, one of the many reasons Aristarchos gave for athetising the whole of the second Nekyia was ⋯λλ' οὐδ⋯ ἔοικεν εἰς Ἅιδου λευκ⋯ν εἶναι πέτραν. Certainly Hades had πέτραι, but traditionally they were ‘black-hearted’ or ‘blood-red’, not λευκαί. As an example of the lengths to which scholiasts were driven to justify the epithet Λευκάς, the scholion in the British Library codex Harley 5674 has the unhelpful explanation οἱ γ⋯ρ νεκροί ⋯κλείψαντος το⋯ αἵματος λευκοειδεῖς ⋯ρ⋯νται. Eustathios' attempt is not much better; he writes ἰστέον δ⋯ ὅτι Λευκάδα μέν πέτραν ⋯ μ⋯θος πρ⋯ς τῷ Ἅιδῃ πλάττει ἢ κατ⋯ ⋯ντίɸρασιν, μ⋯λας γ⋯ρ ⋯κεῖ σκότος, ἢ κα⋯ δι⋯ τούς ⋯σχάτους τ⋯ς ⋯κεῖ γ⋯ς τόπους, οὓς εἰκ⋯ς τ⋯ν ᾓλιον ἔτι διαλευκαίνειν δυόμενον. At Od. 10.515, in commenting on the πέτρη where the Pyriphlegethôn and the Kôkytos flow into the Acherôn, he ventures the suggestion ἴσως δ⋯ εἴη ἂν αὕτη ⋯ ⋯ν τοῖς μετ⋯ τα⋯τα λεχθησομένη Λευκ⋯ς πέτρα, which is obviously a mere guess. It would be a waste of time to record the conjectural attempts of modern scholars to locate the Λευκ⋯ς πέτρη in Hades, for if the ‘Rock Leukas’ was across the Ocean, near the ‘Gates of the Sun’ and the ‘Land of Dreams’, we cannot reasonably hope to identify it.
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References
1 Dindorf, W., Scholia Graeca in Homeri Odysseam (Oxford, 1855)Google Scholar, ad Od. 24.1.
2 Aristophanes, , Ranae 470–1Google Scholar.
3 E.g., Allen, T. W., ‘The Homeric Catalogue’, JHS 30 (1910), 306–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shewan, A., ‘Leukas–Ithaka’, JHS 34 (1914), 239CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Beati Possidentes Ithakistae’, CPh 12 (1917), 136Google Scholar; Bürchner, L., ‘Leukas’, RE 12 (1925), 2236Google Scholar; Janssens, E., ‘Leucade et le Pays des Morts’, AC 30 (1961), 381 ff.Google Scholar; Simpson, R. Hope and Lazenby, J. F., The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (Oxford, 1970), 101Google Scholar.
The earliest extant reference to the island Leukas as the Λευκ⋯ς πέτρη occurs at Anacreon, fr. 94 (ed. B. Gentili, Rome, 1958):
Ἀρθε⋯ς δηὖτ' ⋯π⋯ Λευκάδος
Πέτρης ⋯ς πολι⋯ν κ⋯μα κολυμβέω μεθύων ἔρωτι.
However, the identity of name by itself is not good evidence that Homer and Anacreon intended the same rock by Λευκάς πέτρη, for this appellation was bestowed on many a bare white cliff; see Philipp, H., ‘Λευκόπετρα’ [which of course should be ‘Λευκοπέτρα’], RE 12 (1925), 2286Google Scholar, for three capes in southern Italy which were given this name. The reference to Leukas at Eur. Cycl. 166 ῥίψας τ' ⋯ς ἅλμην λευκ⋯δος πέτρας ἄπο is clearly inappropriate amidst a pastoral scene at the foot of Mount Aetna; the emendation λισσάδος, proposed tentatively by Hartung, J. A., Euripides' Kyklop (Leipzig, 1852), 103Google Scholar, ad loc., is virtually certain, for it is supported by Euripides' own words at Herc. Fur. 1148
κοὐκ εἶμι πέτρας λισσάδος πρ⋯ς ἅλματα,
and the same phrase recurs at Andr. 533 (cf. also Aeschylus, Suppl. 794 ff.).
4 I owe these passages to N. G. L. Hammond. Homer's placement of the Κιμμερίων ⋯νδρ⋯ν δ⋯μός τε πόλις τε beside the Ὠκεανός seems to be based on the widespread ancient misconception that the Sea of Azov was a gulf of the Ocean (cf. Pliny, , N.H. 2.168Google Scholarpaludis Maeoticae, siue ea illius Oceani sinus est, ut multos aduerto credidisse and Herrmann, A., ‘Maiotis’, RE 14 [1930], 591)Google Scholar. The existence of a Kimmerian πόλις, which some have doubted, now finds archaeological support in the fact that several Greek colonies on the Kimmerian Bosporos, Kepoi, Kimmerikon, Phanagoreia, and Tyri(k)take, were established on the sites of prehistoric settlements, probably Kimmerian; in particular, the inhabitation of the site of Phanagoreia extended back into the second millennium b.c. (The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sties, Princeton, 1976, s.v.Google Scholar).
5 See for example Od. 12.1–2 for the distinction between the Ὠκεανός (the outer ocean) and the θάλασσα, which is emphasised, among others, by Buchholz, E., Homerische Kosmographie (Leipzig, 1871), i (1). 54 ffGoogle Scholar. Failure to appreciate this distinction vitiates the contention of Huxley, G. L., ‘Odysseus and the Thesprotian Oracle of the Dead’, PdP 13 (1958), 245 ffGoogle Scholar. and of Janssens (op. cit. 385 ff.) that Homer placed Hades in Thesprotia. Moreover, Homer makes it clear (Od. 10.501 ff., 11.1 ff., 12.1 ff.) that he thought of Hades as being far away from the Greek world, whereas he represents the Thesprotoi as being in close contact with the Greeks (Od. 14.315 ff., 14.334 ff, 16.65 ff, 16.426 ff., 17.525–6, 19.270–1, 19.287 ff.). Thus Huxley's attempt to resuscitate the long-dead proposal of one Proteas Zeugmatites to substitute the Epirote tribal name Χειμερίων for Κιμμερίων at Od. 11.14 is quite ill founded. The same must be said of Janssens' proposal (381 ff.) that jumping off the rock Leukas was a preliminary ritual to consulting the nekyomanteion in Thesprotia; on p. 393 Janssens is forced to admit that classical authors provide no evidence in support of his hypothesis, and so he is driven to misinterpret a fragment of Menander to try to explain this universal silence. The coincidence between Homer's account of the rivers of Hades and those in Thesprotia, to which both Huxley and Janssens refer, was explained long ago by Pausanias (1.17.5), who stated his belief that Homer had appropriated the names of the Thesprotian rivers for those in his conception of Hades.
6 Testimony to Greek contact with Phoenician merchants is provided in Od. 13.271 ff., 14.287 ff, and 15.415 ff.
7 This idea is virtually an opinio communis; it is articulated inter alios by Gladstone, W. E., Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age (Oxford, 1858), iii. 324Google Scholar; Merry, W. W. and Riddell, J., Homer's Odyssey (Oxford, 1886), i. 399 and 406–7Google Scholar; Lang, A., The World of Homer (London, 1910), 18Google Scholar; Thomas, H. and Stubbings, F. H., in A Companion to Homer (London, 1962), 309Google Scholar. In particular, Odysseus' encounter with the Laistrygones (Od. 10.81 ff.), who lived in a land where the day was very long and the night very short and whose harbour bears a striking resemblance to a Norwegian fjord or a Scottish loch, certainly seems to have been inspired by an oft-retold tale of a ship's narrow escape from northern barbarians. On the eastern elements introduced by the Kimmerians and Od. 12.3–4 see Merry and Riddell, 503.
8 Pellicer, M., Menanteau, L., and Rouillard, P., ‘Para una Metodologia de Localización de Colonias fenitias en las Costas Ibéricas: El Cerro del Prado’, Habis 8 (1977), 217 ff.Google Scholar; Rouillard, P., ‘Brève note sur le Cerro del Prado, site phénicien de l'ouest, à l'embouchure du Rio Guadarranque (San Roque-Cadix)’, MM 19 (1978), 152 ff.Google Scholar; Schubart, H., ‘Phönizische Niederlassungen an der iberischen Südküste’, Madrider Beiträge 8, Phönizier im Westen (Mainz, 1982), 212 ffGoogle Scholar.
9 Culican, W., ‘Phoenician Remains from Gibraltar’, Australian Journal of Biblical Archaeology 2 (1972), 110 ff.Google Scholar; Hawkes, C., ‘Gibraltar, Gorham's Cave: Ibero-Punic Material with Exotica’, Actas do IV Congresso Nacional de Arqueologia Faro 1980 (non uidi)Google Scholar; H. Schubart, op. cit. 214. See Waechter, J. d'A., ‘Excavations at Gorham's Cave, Gibraltar’, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 17 (1951)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, plate 1, for a photograph of the entrance to Gorham's cave.
10 LSJ note that the adjective λευκός denoted a range of colours ranging from ‘the pure white of snow…to the grey of dust’. For colour photographs of Gibraltar, see the Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique Larousse (Paris, 1982), v. 4791Google Scholar; La grande Encyclopédie, Librairie Larousse (Paris, 1974), ix. 5418–19Google Scholar; Dennis, P., Gibraltar (London, 1977)Google Scholar, front cover. It is also possible that the principal quality denoted by Λευκάς was the bareness of the πέτρη; this is the meaning of the word λευκόπετρον used by Polybios at 3.53.5 and 10.30.5.
11 Cf. Juvenal 14.279–80:
…sed longe Calpe relicta
audiet Herculeo stridentem gurgite solem
for an expression of this sentiment in Roman times.
12 Without becoming mired in two vexed issues, the date of the last book of the Odyssey and the chronology of Phoenician penetration of the western Mediterranean, it is safe to say that the second Nekyia was composed no earlier than the eighth century b.c. (and possibly much later) and that the Phoenicians began to settle the south coast of Spain not later than c. 750 b.c., and possibly as early as c. 800 b.c. (H. Schubart, op. cit. 218 ff., with references to excavations at Las Chorreras and the Morro de Mezquitilla near the mouth of the Rio Algarrobo; also see B. B. Shefton, ‘Greeks and Greek Imports in the South of the Iberian Peninsula. The archaeological evidence’, ibid., 337 ff. for a review of Phoenician commerce in Greek pottery in Spain, especially pp. 342–3 for a fragment of an Attic Middle Geometric (c. 800–760 b.c.) krater found outside the Strait of Gibraltar at Huelva). Thus there is no chronological problem with assuming that a Phoenician report of Gibraltar communicated to Greek sailors or traders lies behind the Λευκ⋯ς πέτρη of the Odyssey.