Jennifer Weintritt (Northwestern University)
Modes of reading become modes of writing (Barchiesi). In the last two decades, scholars of Greek scholia have brought into clearer focus how ancient critics read Greek poetry, Homer most of all (e.g., Nünlist, Schironi, Kelly et al.). Accordingly, our understanding of how Roman poets metabolized these reading practices in their own writing has increased (Hexter, Farrell), with still more work to be done. In this paper, I trace the links between Thetis’ appeal to Hephaestus in Iliad 18, its reception in Homeric scholia, and two scenes of goddesses entreating a god in Latin epic—Venus in Aeneid 8 and Thetis once again in Achilleid 1. I argue for an ancient mode, first, of reading the Iliad and the Odyssey as serial installments in a wider narrative and, second, of writing Latin epics to join this series.
Analyzing these three scenes, I show how critics’ response to Thetis in the Iliad is embedded in the dialogue of the Aeneid and so well established as to be taken for granted in the Achilleid. When Thetis complains to Hephaestus that she married Peleus unwillingly (Il. 18.434), some critics undermined the passage’s authenticity by asking why Thetis would rehearse facts about Achilles and Agamemnon’s feud or her marriage to Peleus that were well known to Hephaestus (e.g., Schol. bT ad Il. 18.444-56). Later, Venus and Thetis act as readers of the tradition, as characters in Latin epic often do (Hinds). Learning from Thetis’ success, Venus invokes the Iliadic scene and its doublet in the Aethiopis to persuade Vulcan to make arms for her own mortal son in the Aeneid. Vulcan, although he agrees, poses earlier critics’ question: quid causas petis ex alto? (Aen. 8.395). In the Achilleid, Thetis, who models herself on the maternal Venus of the Aeneid (Heslin), seems to take this rebuff into account. She does not bother to mention her marital problems to Neptune when she asks for a storm. Nevertheless, he replies as if she did (Pelea iam desiste queri thalamosque minores, Ach. 1.90). Reading forward in mythical time to the Iliad, the Achilleid thus seems to propose a motive for Thetis’ complaints about her husband: prior experience has shown they will be assumed anyway.
A late scholion reports that Aristotle said “Epic is a circle (or cycle)” (τὰ ἔπη κύκλος) and explains, “in that all poetry concerns itself with the same myths and the same stories as if it is going around in a circle” (Schol. Greg. Nazianz. ad in laud. Bas. Magn. 12). The study of seriality in modern media theorizes that serial narratives develop hand-in-hand with their reception to create a highly reflexive environment (Kelleter). Authors and audiences closely track devices of repetition and variation across the series, which strengthens the bonds between installments (Eco, O’Sullivan). In Roman epic, goddesses’ intertextual memories in entreaty scenes are one such device; they knit together Trojan War epics to form a series that expands by recycling itself and its reception.