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The ‘Mountain-Mother’ Ode in the Helena of Euripides
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
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Paley, in his note on Eur. Hel. 1301, says, ‘The choral ode which here follows, though beautiful in itself, is liable to the charge of being unconnected with the subject of the play.’ He adds that the ode ‘is both difficult and corrupt.’ And as far as I am aware, no one has yet succeeded in explaining away the difficulties, or restoring the more corrupt sentences.
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page 161 note 1 I do not dispute Prof. Murray's conclusion (Euripidis Fabulae, I. p. vi. and II. praef.) that P (or G) is something more than a mere copy of L. But as G contributes no significant variants in the passages here discussed, L may for the present purpose be treated as the sole authority.
page 163 note 1 Dr. Verrall (Four Plays of Enrip. p. 278) ‘I think it almost certain that is addressed says, with playful familiarity, to Aphrodite.’ But if no better way to make sense of the ode can be found than to assume that Euripides makes a chorus of Greek women talk to the goddess Aphrodite with ‘playful familiarity,’ and address her as ‘my child,’ it would be preferable to confess that the problem is insoluble. Mr. Pearson suggests that Si rat is addressed to Persephone. But this also seems impossible.
page 163 note 2 Cf. Soph. Phil. 391 ff., where the supreme deity of the Troad is invoked: . The mention of Pactolus identifies the Idaean Mother with the Lydian.
page 163 note 3 Dr. Verrall calls the ode 'Thesmophorian.' But the rites described and recommended in Antistr. 2 have no more to do with the ritual of the Athenian Thesmophoria (so far as that is known to us) than with the ritual of Guy Fawkes. It is true that one of the choral odes of the Thesmophoriazusae (1. 988 ff.) contains a description of Bacchic rites. But that particular ode has no connexion with the Thesmophorian ritual; and Dionysus occurs in it only as the last of a series of deities successively invoked, who are certainly not the deities to whom the festival belongs. (The names are these : the Olympian Gods in general; Apollo and Artemis; Hera Teleia; Hermes Nomios; Pan and the Nymphs; and lastly, Dionysus.) In an earlier passage of the same play (1. 297 ff.), the Thesmophorian deities are formally enumerated: . It is not with such a group of deities as this that the Bacchic rites are associated.
page 164 note 1 The earliest extant application of the name Rhea to the Asiatic Mother seems to be Eur. Bacch. 59. 128.
page 165 note 1 The name Demeter does not occur in the MS. text; but Δηω, a shortened form of it, has been introduced by a probable conjecture in 1. 1343, i.e. near the end of the story. However, the presence or absence of the name matters little; the goddess who has lost a daughter is, in that respect, identical with Demeter, whether expressly so named or not.
page 165 note 2 If and so far as the Idaean Mother was identified with Rhea, it would follow, on Hesiod's authority, that Demeter was her daughter.
page 165 note 3 Philodemus περ⋯ εὐσεβ. p. 23 : .
Preller-Robert, Gr. Myth. p. 651 n. 3, says, ‘Dieselbe Gleichsetzung (i.e. the equation of Rhea and Demeter) findet sich bereits bei Pindar’; but I have found no evidence for this. The phrase χαλκοκρ⋯του π⋯ρεδον Δαμ⋯ρερος, applied by Pindar (Isthm. 7. 3) to the Theban Dionysus, the son of Semele, is not enough to prove it. The epithet χαλκοκρ⋯του is sufficiently accounted for by the statement of Apollodorus (Schol. ad Theocr. 2. 10): —i.e. sounds a gong. It certainly does not appear that Pindar anywhere said that the Idean Mother had lost a daughter.
page 165 note 4 Proclus in Crat. p. 96:
Proclus in Crat. p. 85: Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 537.
page 166 note 1 Preller-Robert, p. 854.
Strabo 7. 50:
Diodorus 5. 49. 2 :
page 166 note 2 Schol. Laurent, ad Apollon. Rhod. I. 917 (Merkel-Keil):
Schol. Paris. ibid. (Brunck-Schaefer): τοὺς δ⋯
page 166 note 3 Stengel, Griech. Kultusalterthumer, p. 164: ‘Auch fur den Samothrakischen Kultus ist ein Vorgang bezeugt, der das Umherirren der ihres Kindes beraubten Demeter veranschaulichen sollte.’ Conze, Archaeol. Unters. auf Samothr. ii. 26.
page 166 note 4 See Lobeck, Aglaoph. 1221–9.
page 166 note 5 Hdt. 2. 51.
page 167 note 1 Pausanias, I. 3. 5, speaking of the Athenian Metroon, says that the statue of the ‘Mother of the Gods’ which stood in it was made by Agorakritos, i.e. before 424 B.C. According to Preller-Robert, Gr. Myth. p. 651, this statue 'showed the goddess entirely in accordance with the type of the Great Mother of Asia Minor.'
page 167 note 2 The ostensible lesson of the ode is 'Perform the Bacchic rites, and honour the deities to whose cult they belong; it will be the worse for you if you do not.' And that is also the ostensible lesson of the Batchae. We know that Euripides in his own person cannot have meant that; but what his real meaning or purpose was, in both cases alike, it is difficult, if not (for us) impossible, to discover.
page 169 note 1 A. 64: Stesichorus (Bergk P.L.G4. iii. p. 215):
page 169 note 2 L. 24.
page 169 note 3 L1. 29, 209.
page 169 note 4 Cf. Eur. Hippol. 141 ff. Murray:(the Chorus is trying to account for Phaedra's sickness:) ἦ σ⋯ γ’ πεγ⋯νωγν τρ⋯χῃ;—Soph. Aj. 172: (the Chorus is trying to account for the madness of Aias:) ἦ ῥ⋯ γ’
page 170 note 1 Cf. Paus. 3. 12. 7: