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Nestor's War Effort (Stat. Ach. 1.422)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Rachel Williams
Rachel Williams
Affiliation:
St Anne's College, Oxford
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Extract

Here in the Achilleid Statius catalogues the contributions of Greek towns to Agamemnon's expedition against Troy. Every item of equipment is appropriate to its origin. There is one puzzle, however: why is it that murorum tormenta are the peculiar contribution of Pylos and Messene? O. A. W. Dilke (1954) suggests that the proximity of classical Messene to Mt Ithome would have reminded Statius of the siege of that place by the Spartans in 464–59 b.c., when they were aided by the Athenians, experts in siege warfare. This solution is undoubtedly ingenious but, based as it is upon association, it places this last entry in a quite different category from the previous entries: all the preceding items have been very definite products of their places of origin. K. von Barth (1664), while noting the not unparalleled anachronism, attempts to account in another way for the siege-engines: ‘quia ibi silvae crassissimas arbores habent’. But there is no evidence to support this: Messenia features neither in the pages of Theophrastus (Περ⋯ Φυτ⋯ν Ἱστορία) or Pliny (N.H. 16) as a source of quality timber, nor in the poets as an area which is characterised by the stoutness of its trees.

These theories pay insufficient attention to the verb tendunt, the vox propria for exerting a strain on rope, making it taut (cf. Stat. Sil. 3.2.26f.: ‘stuppea tendite mali | vincula’).

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , May 1986 , pp. 280 - 283
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1986

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References

1 Jannaccone (1950) has ‘con allusione alle funi con cui gli arieti o simili erano manovrati’. Ropes feature too in the notes of Bernartius (1595) and Stephens (1651).

2 See Ventris, and Chadwick, , Documents in Mycenaean Greek, 295ff.Google Scholar

3 ibid. 155–6.

4 See Wood, Michael, In Search of the Trojan War, 161Google Scholar; also, Taylour, Lord William, The Mycenaeans, 153Google Scholar.

5 We know that there was a flourishing flax industry in Elis (see Paus. 5.5.2 and Frazer ad loc. for the identification of βύσσος with flax). There was also in Elis a town called Pylos. Could it be that Statius has confused Elean Pylos and Messenian Pylos? Given that poets could confus Pharsalus and Philippi, such a conflation is not unlikely.

6 A possible candidate is the Alexandrian poet and critic Rhianus. He wrote four epics, among them a Messeniaca, and, judging by the fragments preserved by Stephanus of Byzantium, they were packed with geographical and ethnographical detail. His works were read by the pedantic Tiberius (Suet. Tib. 70) and Statius' father, a poet and, like Rhianus, an Homeric scholar, had similar tastes: a penchant for doctrina and a love of the antique (see Hardie, , Statius and the Silvae, 10Google Scholar). I owe this observation to the editors.

7 A verbal parallel strengthens the analogy: tendunt recalls intendunt in Vergil's ‘…stuppea vincula collo | intendunt’ (ibid. 236–7).

8 See also Enk, P. J. on Grattius, Cynegeticon 36Google Scholar, where he says of the poet ‘stuppeam messem proventum lini vocat’.

9 See E. W. Marsden, Greek and Roman Artillery: Historical Development, 2 and passim.

10 An allusion to torsion is certainly the more appealing alternative as it evokes a pleasin picture of wooden mechanisms set in creaking motion. Poets like to refer to technical processe though the veracity of their descriptions leaves much to be desired (cf., for instance, the confusion at Verg. Aen. 7.14, where pecten instead of radius is used for the shuttle of Circe's loom; see also White, K. D., Roman Farming, 39–40Google Scholar, for inaccuracies in Vergil's descriptions of technical operations in the Georgics).

* I should like to thank Professor R. G. M. Nisbet, who encouraged me to write this and provided helpful criticism; also Dr N. M. Horsfall for valuable comments on reading a later draft.