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TWO NOTES ON PHILOSTRATUS’ IMAGINES 2.28 (‘LOOMS’)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2017

Ruobing Xian
Ruobing Xian*
Affiliation:
Fudan University, Shanghai
*
[email protected]
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Extract

In their edition of Philostratus’ Imagines Benndorf and Schenkel established an index locorum, ‘ex quibus tamquam fontibus Philostratus ea quae in Imaginibus leguntur hausisse videtur’. For the passage quoted above, they note three allusions to the Odyssey: (1) the famous snow-melting simile (19.204-9), which describes the weeping Penelope; (2) Penelope's loom, on which she unravelled at night what she had woven during the day (19.150; 2.105); and (3) the invisible bonds of Hephaestus as fine as spiders’ webs (8.280).

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , May 2017 , pp. 335 - 338
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Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2017 

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Professor Jonas Grethlein (Heidelberg) as well as CQ’s anonymous reader for their constructive comments.

References

1 I use the Greek text of Benndorf, O. and Schenkel, C., Philostrati Maioris Imagines (Leipzig, 1893)Google Scholar. All translations of the Imagines are taken from the Loeb edition by Fairbanks, A., Philostratus the Elder, Imagines. Philostratus the Younger, Imagines. Callistratus, Descriptions (Cambridge, MA, 1931)Google Scholar, with modifications.

2 Benndorf and Schenkel (n. 1), 130.

3 Benndorf and Schenkel (n. 1), 138.

4 Fairbanks (n. 1), 249; Kalinka, E. and Schönberger, O., Philostratus, Die Bilder (Munich, 1968), 463 Google Scholar; Bougot, A. and Lissarrague, F., La Galerie de tableaux (Paris, 1991), 135 Google Scholar; Abbondanza, L., Immagini (Savigliano, 2008), 296 Google Scholar; Pucci, G. and Lombardo, G., La Pinacoteca (Palermo, 2010), 105 Google Scholar.

5 All translations of the Odyssey are taken from the Loeb edition by A.T. Murray and G.E. Dimock (Cambridge, MA, 1995).

6 Rutherford, R.B., Homer Odyssey XIX and XX (Cambridge, 1992), 150 Google Scholar.

7 On theses two adjectives, see Rutherford (n. 6), 152: ‘the former emphasises the fineness of the threads, the latter their length’.

8 McCombie, D., ‘Philostratus, ἱστοί, Imagines 2.28: ekphrasis and the web of illusion’, Ramus 31 (2002), 146–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 149–50.

9 Cf. Elsner, J., ‘Philostratus visualizes the tragic: some ecphrastic and pictorial representations of Greek tragedy in the Roman era’, in Kraus, C.S. et al. (edd.), Visualizing the Tragic: Drama, Myth, and Ritual in Greek Art and Literature: Essays in Honour of Froma Zeitlin (Oxford, 2007), 309–37Google Scholar, at 310 n. 4; and Webb, R., ‘Homère dans les Images de Philostrate’, in Dubel, S., Favreau-Linder, A. and Oudot, E. (edd.), À l'école d'Homère: la culture des orateurs et des sophistes (Paris, 2015), 203–14Google Scholar, at 211. Baumann, M., Bilder schreiben: virtuose Ekphrasis in Philostrats Eikones (Berlin, 2011), 142–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar calls McCombie's (n. 8) conclusion—that the metapoetic reading of Imag. 2.28 offers a programmatic statement of the Philostratean aesthetics—into question by arguing that the other examples relating to λεπτός in the Imagines do not fit well with it; he none the less agrees that ‘Im. 2,28 bietet eine Ӓsthetik der λεπτóτης’.

10 Bowie, E.L., ‘Greek sophists and Greek poetry in the Second Sophistic’, ANRW 2.33.1 (1986), 209–58Google Scholar, at 210 on the use of poetic quotation by the authors of the Second Sophistic.

11 The translation is taken from the Loeb edition by Most, G., Hesiod, Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia (Cambridge, MA, 2006)Google Scholar.

12 On the significance of the women's loom in Hesiod's Works and Days, see Canevaro, L.G., ‘The clash of the sexes in Hesiod's Works and Days’, G&R 60 (2013), 199–201 Google Scholar.

13 Quotation from Fairbanks (n. 1), 248 n. 3. See Benndorf and Schenkel (n. 1), 119 in their apparatus criticus, ad loc.: ‘ante caput XXVIII excidisse imaginem, qua Penelopa telam suam dissolvens exhibebatur, ratus est Kayser atque propterea legendum esse ἐπεὶ τὸν τ. Π. ἱστὸν ἐπαινεῖς. male. finxit scriptor puerum secum eiusmodi picturam vicinam (ἐκ γειτόνων) contemplatum esse eo consilio, ut hanc imaginem prooemio exornaret atque telae descriptionem altera tela opposita illustraret’; cf. also Kalinka and Schönberger (n. 4), 463.

14 ‘They are connected by the motif, or image, of a character who has been wrapped up and trapped. In Cassandra, Agamemnon is wrapped up in Clytemnestra's fabric. Here, in the Looms, Penelope's deceptive weaving is juxtaposed with the spider's webs, in which flies are trapped, like Agamemnon in Cassandra’ (Webb [n. 9], 211).

15 Cf. Od. 1.32-43; 1.298-302; 3.193-200; 3.254-316; 3.232-5; 4.91-2; 4.512-49; 11.409-56; 13.383-5; 24.95-7; 24.191-202. On this parallel, see de Jong, I.J.F., A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey (Cambridge, 2001), 12–13 CrossRefGoogle Scholar with further bibliography in n. 26; Saïd, S., Homer and the Odyssey (Oxford, 2011), 122–5Google Scholar; Marks, J., Zeus in the Odyssey (Washington, DC, 2008), 17–35 Google Scholar; Kurke, L., ‘Pindar's Pythian 11 and the Oresteia: contestatory ritual poetics in the fifth century b.c.e.’, ClAnt 32 (2013), 101–75Google Scholar, at 110–11.

16 Webb, R., ‘The Imagines as a fictional text: ekphrasis, apatê and illusion’, in Costantini, M., Graziani, F. and Rolet, S. (edd.), Le défi de l'art. Philostrate, Callistrate et l'image sophistique? (Rennes, 2006), 113–36Google Scholar, at 113 with further bibliography in n. 2. Cf. also Baumann (n. 9); Alexandre, S., ‘Sous les tableaux, l'image. Philostrate et l'invention à l'occasion de la peinture antique’, in Alexandre, S., Philippe, N. and Ribeyrol, C. (edd.), Inventer la peinture grecque antique (Paris, 2012), 45–70 Google Scholar; Squire, M., ‘Apparitions apparent: the parameters of vision in Philostratus the Elder's Imagines’, Helios 40 (2013), 97–140 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bachmann, C., Wenn man die Welt als Bilder betrachtet: Studien zu den Eikones Philostrats des Älteren (Heidelberg, 2015)Google Scholar.

17 On this pun in the Imagines, see Squire (n. 16), 106–7; cf. also Lissarrague, F., ‘Graphein: écrire et dessiner’, in Bron, C. and Kassapoglou, E. (edd.), L'image en jeu: de l'antiquité à Paul Klee (Paris, 1992), 189–203 Google Scholar.