Michael Knierim (University of Illinois)
I argue for a metapoetic reading of the Talos episode in which Medea annihilates a stand in for Theocritus’ Polyphemus, the bucolic hero who had found a pharmakon to cure love-sickness. This makes Medea a kind of anti-Galatea, who, rather than fleeing to the sea from a giant or coyly pelting him with apples, sends not love, but death from afar.
The distinctive phrases, “λεπτὸς ὑμήν” and “σύριγξ αἱματόεσσα” in 4.1647-48, have not only a literal sense (“a thin membrane” and “a blood-filled vein”) but are also meta-poetic signals: “a refined/Callimachean marriage song” and “bloody pan-pipes” the latter of which is meant to evoke Theocritus, who is almost certainly earlier than Apollonius according to Jackie Murray’s firm astronomical date of 238BCE for the latter (Murray 2014).
My reading of the episode strengthens the foreshadowing of Medea’s future fate. Sarah Cassidy has already noted similarities between Apollonius’ Talos and the Polyphemus of the Odyssey and has pointed out the marriage symbolism in the passage which hints at the failure of her relationship with Jason and gives a dark forecast of her future in the underworld with Achilles, since she kills Talos by his Achilles’ heel (Cassidy 2018).
Building on this, I argue that Medea also rejects the bucolic tradition of healing the pains of unhappy love. Idyll 11 opens with Theocritus telling Nicias, his doctor/poet friend, how Polyphemus has found a medical treatment for love, namely, the muses. After showing the Cyclops singing of Galatea and himself too, the poem ends with the statement that “thus Polyphemus shepherded his love”, “οὕτω τοὶ Πολύφαμος ἐποίμανεν τὸν ἔρωτα” (line 80). Scholars have debated whether Polyphemus has cured his love and if so, in what manner: by self-deception (Gutzwiller 2006 399-400), by katharsis of negative emotions (Cozzoli 1994), by rational reflection and maturity (Barigazzi 1975 188)? Or is he keeping his love in check but also keeping it alive as a shepherd would his flock (Spofford 1969 34-35)?
Medea the pharmakis has sealed her own fate, and rejected his curative pharmakon, however it worked. There will be no turning back. When her turn for grief in love comes, she will not shepherd her love with poems like Polyphemus, nor will her magic be ineffective like that of the heartbroken Symaetha in Idyll 2.
Further, depicting the Talos scene as anti-bucolic reverses the peaceful kathartic qualities of that genre and emphasizes the tragic horror of the scene. The dutiful but out of place Talos evokes the awkward, naive Polyphemus and is struck down. Apollonios’ epic Medea has destroyed the work of the older bucolic poet in a refined and bloody tribute.