S. Douglas OLSON Matro of Pitane (SH 534–40) and the Late Classical Reception of Epic Poetry

Seven fragments of the parodic poetry of Matro of Pitane (late 4th c. BCE), including one of 122 nearly continuous lines, are preserved in Athenaios’ Deipnosophists (= SH 534–40). Matro’s poems are constructed primarily out of Homeric lines which have been altered to serve new, distinctly comic purposes, and the fragments thus provide important evidence for the late classical reception of epic poetry. This paper will have three main goals: (1) to offer evidence for dating SH 534 (the longest and only firmly dateable fragment) to 307–301 BCE, the period of the restored Athenian democracy, rather than to the time of Demetrios of Phaleron, where Wilamowitz put it; (2) to examine several short passages from SH 534 (esp. vv. 56–64 and 73–6) in order to show that Matro was not a “rather wretched journeyman” (thus Wilamowitz) but was capable of combining his epic exemplars in extremely subtle and effective ways, and to argue that the poet expected his audience to recognize his allusions; (3) to use that evidence, along with an analysis of the specific sections of the Iliad and the Odyssey from which Matro borrows verses in SH 534, to make sense of his vision of Homeric poetry and his literary aesthetic generally.

The two sections of Homer that Matro parodies far and away most frequently are the Catalogue of Ships in Il. 2 and the Nekuia in Od. 11, most likely because these are prominent examples of catalogue poetry which have obvious generic appeal to an adaptor eager to construct long lists of foodstuffs and the like. Beyond this, his allusions are overwhelmingly Iliadic and are confined almost exclusively to the Doloneia; the section of the poem now known as Book 16; and the final portion, in which Achilleus confronts and kills Hektor, and Patroklos is buried and Hektor mourned. Matro’s selection of Iliadic material is thus heavily skewed toward pathos, and the same is true of the individual verses he chooses to adapt. Thus in Book 16 he alludes to Aias’ weary retreat from the battlefield (102–3); the contrast between Achilleus’ mortality and the immortality of his horses (154); Patroklos’ loss of his helmet (794) and the doom hanging over Hektor as he picks it up (800); and the final confrontation of the two men (820). Indeed, the narrator repeatedly presents his own experiences in very similar ways: almost everything he does brings with it tears, failure, or a recognition of his inevitable fate. Matro’s reading of Homer must reflect in the first instance his own personal taste. Given that his poetry was intended for a popular audience, however, it seems reasonable to look to his work for reflections of broader aesthetic trends as well, and in particular for a foreshadowing of the predilection readily apparent in Hellenistic artists and poets of a slightly later period for depicting great human emotion, especially at moments of psychological or physical duress.