Maria Kovalchuk, University of Pennsylvania
Theocritus’ Idyll 18, which is an epithalamium for Helen and Menelaus, contains a description of Helen’s future cult in Sparta (lines 39-48). As part of the cult, a group of maidens who are Helen’s former playmates will worship a shady plane tree, which represents Helen in her absence. These lines have puzzled modern scholars; for example, Pantelia 1995 has pointed out that “there is no clear connection between Helen’s presentation as a human innocent bride in the first part of the Idyll...and the description of the mysterious cult in honor of the divine Helen in the second part of the poem” (1995:76). Without solid historical evidence for the cult, scholars (including Kaibel 1892 and Stern 1978) have looked for a literary justification of the passage, though with limited success. This paper will argue that Theocritus has set up the cult passage to be read against Euripides’ Helen, which contains several aetiologies related to Helen’s worship. Such a comparative reading turns the cult passage in Idyll 18 into the site of literary play and irony, creates generic complexity, and characterizes the maidens as naïve along with Helen.
My paper will develop this argument in three parts. In the first part, I will briefly perform a close reading of the maiden’s cult passage, focusing especially on the adjectives πρᾶταί...πρᾶταί modifying the maidens (43, 45) as well as their use of future perfect verbs, which emphasize that the cult does not yet exist. In describing the past of this future cult, the maidens have reverse engineered several possible cults of Helen. In the second part of my paper, I will briefly perform a close reading of the cult passage in the Helen, where Castor pronounces two aetiologies. First, he describes Helen’s deification: θεὸς κεκλήσῃ (1667); second, Castor explains why an island will be called after her: Ἑλένη...κεκλήσεται (1674). In the third part of my paper, I will extensively argue that reading the maidens’ cult passage in Idyll 18 against Castor’s aetiologies in the Helen opens the former passage to several ironic interpretations. To give only one example in this abstract, there is an incongruity between Helen’s proxies. In Idyll 18, her tree is perishable, while in the Helen, her island is a permanent feature of the landscape. This contrast characterizes the tree as a naïve choice for the object of the maidens’ worship, since it does not guarantee that the cult will last forever and suggests that the maidens cannot think beyond a tree’s lifespan. Ultimately, this paper will show that, in contrast to the future cult of Helen in Euripides which is legitimized by Zeus (1669), the maidens’ cult for her in Idyll 18 is an innocent creation, stemming from human emotion and lacking the weight of tradition and authority. Although the maidens’ cult is a spontaneous and amateurish idea, it could nevertheless become a kernel for a legitimate religious experience like the one described in the Helen.