Julia Irons, University of Chicago
In this paper I read the dance of the Amazons in Callimachus’ Hymn to Artemis (237-250) in relation to the dance of the Cretan sailors in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (513-523), proposing first an intertextual connection and then exploring an interpretive implication. Structural parallels between the two hymns have often been noted, especially the Artemis’ adaptation of the Apollo’s mid-way closure and then resumption (Bing and Uhrmeister; Vestrheim; Hunter and Fuhrer; Fain; Stephens). In this paper I identify a further parallel which has not been noticed hitherto, between the scenes of choral performance near the end of each poem.
In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, the god establishes his sanctuary at Delphi by bringing a group of Cretan sailors to his sanctuary at Crisa and leading them in a paian (517) as they process to Delphi, where they will become his first priestly personnel at the site. Likewise, the penultimate scene of Callimachus’ Hymn to Artemis narrates the foundation of the goddess’ sanctuary at Ephesus, through the Amazons’ performance a prulis (240), a weapon dance. These two dances are further parallel in being the second choral dance of each hymn.
My reading contributes likewise to the issue of the structure of the Hymn to Artemis as a whole, perhaps the most well-known interpretive challenge of the poem, especially with respect to its second half, where the initial narrative structure of the poem seems to dissolve (Wilamowitz; Haslam; Bing and Uhrmeister; Vestrheim; Fain; Petrovic; Adorjáni). I argue that the dance at Ephesus is more than yet another in the tally of cult sites and aetiologies, but rather supports a reading of this hymn as structurally responsive to the Hymn to Apollo.
In the second part of my argument I explore one possible implication of this intertext. Callimachus uses these choruses and the cult foundations they enact to stage an explicit contrast between Delphi and Ephesus, in which the latter is said to surpass by far the former (250). Equally interesting are the similarities between the two choruses and their shared ritual function. The Amazons, like the Cretans, are outsiders to the community, foreigners who were nevertheless traditionally associated with the foundation of Artemis’ sanctuary (Pi. fr. 174 S-M = Paus. 7.2.7, cf. Paus. 4.31.8). Callimachus crafts a narrative in which the Amazons and their foundation of Artemis’ sanctuary are implicitly compared to the act of foundation in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, and the Amazons themselves are analogized to the Cretans. The very strangeness of the Amazons thereby becomes conventional. Callimachus thus provides the Amazons and their legendary cultic foundation with an emphatically Greek poetic precedent.