Irony in the Catalogue of Heracles’ Education in Theocritus’ Idyll 24

The catalogue of Heracles’ education in Theocritus’ Idyll 24 (vv. 103-134), which marks a sudden change in the form and content of the poem, has long troubled modern critics, even causing one to assert that it is an interpolation (Griffiths 1996: 115). Scholarship on this Idyll has traditionally focused on the beginning, which is a quintessentially Alexandrian reworking of Pindar’s Nemean 1. The catalogue itself has been productively studied from the perspective of childhood and education (Cusset 1999, Pretagostini 2003, de Miguel Jover 2011, Ambühl 2021, Pache 2021). My analysis will build upon this work to argue that Theocritus has embedded irony into the catalogue by referencing events from Heracles’ traditional later life that highlight the incongruity between the hero’s training and his actions.

The first part of this presentation will outline my framework of irony, which puts this paper in conversation with other studies on Theocritean irony (e.g. Horstmann 1976, Giangrande 1971 & 1978, Heubeck 1973, Whitehorne 1974, Kelly 1979, Segal 1984, Chatzikosta 1986, Domány 2013). This analysis will utilize situational irony where “the author makes no comment, even though the context seems to cry out for an explicit remark on two juxtaposed items” (Griffiths 2001: 172). Situational irony applies to the catalogue of Heracles’ education in Idyll 24 because the hero was better known for his base appetites and raw athleticism than for curiosity and wisdom. Encountering Heracles in an academic context, which also counts as a new literary supplement (Peirano 2012), would have startled some readers or at least caused them to raise an eyebrow.

The second part of this presentation will demonstrate how the catalogue of Heracles’ education creates irony. The catalogue lists six academic subjects, but in the interest of time, I will only analyze Heracles’ lessons in music: we are told that Eumolpus “made [Heracles] a bard” (ἀοιδὸν ἔθηκε, 109). Euripides’ Alcestis enables sophisticated readers to detect irony in Eumolpus’ instruction. In the play, after Alcestis has volunteered to die, her husband Admetus promises to put an end to social gatherings, which feature music (344). But when Heracles arrives in the palace between his labors, Admetus does not enforce his promise but instead orders his servants to welcome the hero without alerting him to Alcestis’ death (545-550). Heracles makes himself too comfortable, causing a servant to complain that he is the worst guest that the palace has ever received (747-764). The servant lists several reasons for his negative assessment of Heracles, which culminate in Heracles singing “unmusically” (ἄμουσα, 760). Heracles’ singing lessons in Idyll 24 are therefore ironic when they are read against Euripides, because the hero does not, or cannot, sing well in adulthood. This same methodology, which reads the catalogue against the tradition of Heracles’ later life, will characterize all of the hero’s lessons in the catalogue as ineffective, thereby producing a humorous effect for readers of Idyll 24 who can detect the incongruity between the hero’s training and his actions.