Farrell, 'Best of the Argonauts: The Redefinition of the Epic Hero in Book One Of Apollonius' Argonautica', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9506
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9506-farrell-best
@@@@95.6.4, Clauss, Best of the Argonauts
James J. Clauss, The Best of the Argonauts: The Redefinition
of the Epic Hero in Book One Of Apollonius' Argonautica.
Hellenistic Culture and Society 10. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and
Oxford: University of California Press, 1993. Pp. xviii + 238.
ISBN 0-520-07925-6. $35.
Reviewed by Joseph Farrell -- University of Pennsylvani
jfarrell@mail.sas.upenn.edu
This monograph, "a thoroughly reconceived and rewritten
version" of the author's doctoral dissertation, addresses a
question first posed by Homer and then taken up by Apollonius:
"Who is the best among the heroes?" (xi). It argues that
Apollonius worked through the problem by reworking texts from
Homer on that in their various ways parse the heroic code and the
epic genre and suggest what meaning each may still have had in
Hellenistic culture.
The study's formal parameters--it is a sequential analysis of
the first book of the Argonautica--were chosen on the
grounds that "it is at the conclusion of Book 1 that Apollonius
identifies Jason as the hero of the epic in contradistinction to
the quintessential archaic hero, Heracles" (13). Clauss thus
follows a straightforward plan, working his way through the book
episode by episode and, where necessary, line by line and word by
word. His method involves a determined collection of verbal
parallels mainly with the texts of the Iliad and
Odyssey, which parallels then become the chief material
from which an interpretation is built.
The author is fully aware of the limits within which he must
work, both technical and critical. In the former category, Clauss
has to reckon with the fact that the text of Apollonius' Homer
was an unstable thing, available to us (as to Apollonius himself)
only through philological reconstruction; and, of course, we must
reconstruct the text of Apollonius as well before we can compare
it to the version(s) of Homer that we suppose were available to
him. In the latter category, Clauss focuses on a single theme in
a single book of the poem as it develops through the medium of
literary allusion. This does not add up to a holistic reading of
Apollonius' epic, but Clauss does not make this claim; and by
forgoing such a project, he registers a number of gains that are
just as valuable, while establishing certain interpretive
parameters that future critics would be wise to respect.
The eight main chapters all take the same basic shape: a
brief introduction followed by a structural analysis of the
episode with which the chapter is concerned, followed in turn by
separate discussions of the episode's component parts. Only in
Chapter 3 on the departure from Iolcus (lines 234-316) does
Clauss' argument depart significantly from the order of
Apollonius' narrative, the better to bring out (what Clauss
convincingly argues is) the episode's chiastic structure. Then
Clauss investigates the Homeric background onto which Apollonius'
allusive language projects itself. In some cases, this background
is brightly illuminated by a ringing quotation that points
unmistakably to a particular Homeric model. For instance, Aeson's
reaction to the departure of Jason, as all commentators note,
repeats that of Priam to the death of Hector (PAT\HR O)LOW=|
U(PO\ GH/RAI / E)NTUPA\S E)N LEXE/ESSI KALUYA/MENOS GOA/ASKEN
Arg. 1.263-64; O(\ D) E)N ME/SSOISI GERAIO\S / E)NTUPA\S
E)N XLAI/NH| KEKALUMME/NOS Il. 24.162-63; see pp. 40-42).
In other cases the poet directs the reader to his model by means
of the subtlest of gestures, chiefly by using unusual Homeric
diction (see e.g. pp. 41, 67, 70, 118, 145,188, to cite but a few
examples). Clauss' survey of this material appears to be
comprehensive, but he has not overloaded his argument with
excessive detail or his notes with superfluous citations. As a
result, the book would be valuable simply as a judicious guide to
previous work on Apollonius' Homeric imitations.
It is inevitable when dealing with imitation of Homer, whose
formulaic language necessarily produces a wealth of similarities
and possible cross-references within his own text, and who was
widely imitated by many poets before Apollonius joined the fray,
that the language of the Argonautica will on occasion
resemble that of more than one Homeric passage, and may even seem
to indicate other sources as well. Clauss is well aware of such
occurrences and is scrupulous about calling the reader's
attention to them, but as a critic he regards them warily. His
general procedure is not to complicate matters, which means in
practice normally arguing that "Apollonius seems to have his eye
chiefly on" only one passage at a time (43 n. 13; cf. 192 n. 26,
et passim). This is not to say that Clauss avoids the issues of
allusive contaminatio (simultaneous reference to different
source-passages, e.g. 7-8, 183-88) or allusive cross-referencing
(imitation of a single source-passage at different points within
an allusive work, e.g. 163 n. 32, 192 n. 26 193 n. 28 205 n. 55);
nor is he unaware of other Apollonian models (Hesiod, Pindar,
Herodotus, tragedy, and, among contemporaries and, with due
attention to the Prioritaetsfragen, Callimachus, Aratus, and
Theocritus). But Clauss's main concern is certainly with
Apollonius' individual references to Homer, which he defines
quite specifically. In the first place, he regards them as
textual phenomena with thematic import. In the second, they are
local phenomena, by which I mean that they involve specific
Homeric and Apollonian loci rather than intertextual systems that
pervade the poems as a whole. And yet, in making this case Clauss
shows that the totality of Homeric epic is in a sense involved.
The lexical survey of Homeric "citations" is made the basis
of a convincing thematic analysis that focuses on the ways in
which Apollonius measures his characters against Homeric
prototypes and finds them, shall we say, heroically challenged.
Their shortcomings include, but are not confined to, those that
concern conventional or obviously heroic traits. Jason is no
Achilles, nor is he an Odysseus or a Hector. Indeed, Apollonius
measures his characters against a heroic ideal that no single
Homeric character could meet, either. If Jason is no Achilles,
then neither is Hector, and vice versa; but in Jason's case a
lack of martial prowess is not made good by extra emphasis on
family values. In his above mentioned analysis of the hero's
leavetaking, for instance, Clauss compares Jason to Hector, "the
quintessential KHDEMONEU/S," and finds "Jason and his family...to
be a weak, shallow, and self-absorbed group, totally unheroic in
stature" (p. 56). Apollonius is relentless in exposing his hero's
shortcomings, as Clauss' analysis makes crystal clear: it is
almost painful to witness the spectacle in which Jason is
compared to previous heroes in a succession of allusive contests
that he can only lose. Nevertheless, the cumulative effect of
this intertextual agon is to establish Jason as the best of the
Argonauts, particularly in contrast to the poem's most obvious
symbol of conventional heroism, Heracles--in Clauss' words, "a
disquieting but inevitable conclusion" (13).
If the book has a fault, it is perhaps a bit too reserved
both in its methods and in its willingness to push the
interpretive envelope. Emphasis on verbal imitation enables
Clauss to take full advantage of the abundant efforts primarily
of continental scholarship to investigate Apollonius' use of
Homeric hapax and dis legomena and other linguistic
rarities, work which Clauss has been able to supplement with his
own lexical research using the computerized TLG database and
Ibycus search program. Such extensive evidence of an almost
material character provides a very secure foundation for his
thematic interpretation. At times, however, I believe Clauss is
more cautious than he needs to be. At 1284-95, for instance, when
Telamon quarrels with Jason over the loss of Heracles, Clauss
(following the commentaries of Mooney and Ardizzoni and
Campbell's collection of parallel passages) adduces a quotation
from Iliad 18: Telamon's reaction to the loss of Heracles
is thus derived from Achilles' reaction to the news of Patroclus'
death. But Telamon's words are spoken in a quarrel with Jason. In
a note (201 n. 50) Clauss cites Richard Hunter's excellent
suggestion that the argument is modeled in part on the quarrel
between Achilles and Agamemnon in Iliad 1, but declines to
follow Hunter on the grounds that there are "no discernible
textual points of contact" between the two passages. Clauss
admits, however, "that the resolution of the Argonautic argument
looks to that of the Iliadic" and exploits this awareness in his
ensuing analysis. Thus to exclude the quarrel motif itself from
consideration strikes me as an excessively strict application of
a basically sound method. And in view of the fact that the
quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, like that between Telamon
and Jason, concerns the same basic question--"Who is the best of
the Achaeans/Argonauts?" i.e., the very theme of Clauss' book--
the decision to exclude the Iliadic passage from consideration
goes beyond caution and begins to look like downright
self-abnegation. I would have preferred to see what Clauss might
have done with this juicy morsel instead of leaving it to others.
The upshot of Clauss' interpretation--that Apollonius'
ringing of the changes on Homer's conception of the epic hero
ushers in a new paradigm for a new age, one that is however full
of "trenchant irony" in presenting the hero not as "a totally
self-sufficient man of godlike strength" but rather "a totally
dependent man of limited skills" (211)--is hardly unprecedented
(nor does Clauss claim that it is or fail to acknowledge his
forerunners). The Best of the Argonauts does, however,
offer an exemplary demonstration of the intimate and necessary
connection between philological research and literary
interpretation. Clauss' enviable command of Apollonius text, his
deep understanding of the habits of mind that enabled the
Alexandrian scholar/poets to create such "curious and demanding"
(1) poetry, have enabled him to produce a study that all students
of the Argonautica will do well to consult.