Owen GOSLIN Pindaric Allusion in Callimachus’ Cyrene Narration (Hymn 2.65-96)


Interest in Callimachus’ poetic stance has typically focused on the sphragis of Hymn 2, where Apollo famously indicates that he prefers the small waters of a pure spring to the expansive but impure flow of the “Assyrian river.” In this paper, however, I will argue for the programmatic importance of an earlier section in the hymn, the narration of the legendary founding of Cyrene. The significance of this narrative rests partly in the close connection it builds between C. and Apollo; by exploiting the relationship with Cyrene that both poet and god share C. is able to represent himself as the personal beneficiary of Apollo’s involvement in the city’s foundation . But Cyrene offered C. an even wider network of associations, for Pindar, too, narrated the foundation of the city in his Pythians 4, 5 and 9. A reading of the Cyrene narration against this Pindaric intertext promises a new perspective on C.’s poetic program. I will argue that C. uses this episode to link himself not only with Apollo but also, intertextually, with Pindar; C. thus incorporates both a divine and a human authority into his hymn. The allusions that I shall discuss play an important part in how C. constructs and situates himself within a literary tradition that blends the genre of the Homeric hymn with Pindaric epinician.

My paper will include a close reading of C.’s description of the Karneia, the Dorian festival of Apollo that had its origin in Sparta and which colonists later brought to Thera and Cyrene. C. introduces the aetion of the cult with a priamel (69-71) that highlights the close connection between the poet and Apollo. While this priamel emphasizes the exclusivity of the poet’s divine patronage, it also contains an allusion to P. 5.69-81, thereby creating a shared literary paternity between C. and Pindar that is expressed through their common ethnicity.

The allusivity of the Cyrene narration is perhaps at its richest in the description of the yearly re-enactment of the Karneian festival (78-84). Here C. conveys the fecundity and vitality of the yearly ritual through an abundance of carefully selected literary allusions. C. alludes to Homer’s description of Alkinoos’ flourishing garden and the Elysian Field in the Odyssey through the use of a Homeric hapax (H. 2.78; Od. 7.118) and the description of the “blowing Zephyr” (H. 2.82; Od. 7.119 and 4.567). These allusions are combined with key poetic terms culled from Pindar, the most important of which is ‘dew’ (82), connoting the immortality conferred through the poet’s song. Thus the inclusion of ‘dew’ in the description of the Karneia hints at the immortality of the ritual and the role of song - and in particular the poetic tradition that C. has constructed - in creating that immortality.

The end of the Cyrene narration maintains the connection between all three figures; yet a blurring between the functions of god and poet begins to occur here. Apollo is favorable to Cyrene, the poet asserts, since he “remembers his earlier rape” of the eponymous nymph (94-5). Through this act of memory Apollo is comparable to a hymnic poet, memorializing his own past deeds. But since C.’s narrative does not relate Apollo’s rape of Cyrene the “remembrance” points the reader back to Pindar’s account in P. 9. Apollo, then, is assimilated to the role of a particularly allusive poet. C. closes the Cyrene narration with a circle of remembrance among all three “poets”: Apollo remembers Pindar, while C. honors Apollo (96). The relationship created here between these three figures anticipates the sphragis that closes the hymn (105-112), in which Apollo takes on even more characteristics of the poet by violently expelling C.’s detractors and defending the poet’s program himself.