Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Markers of Allusion in Archaic Greek Poetry by Thomas J. NelsonJason S. NethercutMarkers of Allusion in Archaic Greek Poetry. By Thomas J. Nelson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp. xvi + 441. ISBN: 9781009086882The thesis of this book is big and important. Nelson shows conclusively that metaliterary citation of engagement with other texts is not, as conventional wisdom maintains, the creation of bookish poets in Alexandria and their Roman counterparts. In fact, every single category of what Nelson calls “indexicality” is fully on display in Archaic Greek poetry, often already in the Iliad and the Odyssey; such indexicality is regularly shown to be deployed via the exact same mechanisms and for the exact same poetic ends as what we witness five centuries later. Well produced, meticulously researched, and generally free of infelicities and errors, Nelson’s book is mandatory reading for Hellenists and Latinists alike and undoubtedly will remain a fixture in bibliographies for many years to come.Nelson breaks his argument into five chapters, beginning in Chapter 1 with methodological considerations regarding terminology, theory, audience, and, especially, the frameworks available for the phenomenon of allusion in Archaic Greek poetry, much of which we must situate in oral traditions. The footnotes to this chapter are especially comprehensive with respect to earlier scholarship on allusive indexing in Greco-Roman poetry; accordingly, this overview now represents the standard that will need to be consulted by anyone currently working on allusion and intertextuality. Chapters 2 to 4 each take up in turn a major category of indexicality, including footnoting (2), appeals to memory (3), and temporal appeals to generalized “earlier” authorities and “future” readers (4). The procedure is always to argue by demonstration; it is here that Nelson shines especially brightly, as he is an excellent close reader, and his examples are usually perfectly chosen to illustrate his point. Nelson opts sensibly to interpret the panoply of allusions he adduces in his book primarily as allusions to mythological fabulae, rather than to texts, although he does make space for allusion to earlier texts in this material, especially when there is no other reasonable explanation for the evidence he brings forward. Generally, this is all well done in a manner duly sensitive to the evidentiary uncertainties involved. While some readers might quibble with any given reading advanced by Nelson, the cumulative effect puts any case one could bring against his basic thesis out of court.Certain individual examples have the potential drastically to reorient our understanding of the relationship between our earliest Greek epics. To choose only one, but perhaps the most consequential: as part of his demonstration in Chapter 2 that the so-called “Alexandrian Footnote” must be reconceived as an [End Page 461] inherent component of Greek poetry from its inception, Nelson demonstrates that Homer’s generalized appeal to the tradition of Zeus’ battle with Typhoeus at the culmination of the catalogue of Greeks (φασί, Il. 2.783) actually invites comparison specifically with Hesiod’s inset narrative of this battle in the Theogony (esp. 843–7 and 857–9). Nelson adduces widespread similarities of language in the two descriptions (e.g., ἱμάσσῃ, Il. 2.782 ~ ἱμάσσας, Theog. 857; γαῖα δ’ ὑπεστενάχιζε, Il. 2.781, στεναχίζετο γαῖα, Il. 2.784 ~ Typhoeus: στενάχιζε δὲ γαῖα, Theog. 858; Zeus: ἐπεστενάχιζε δὲ γαῖα, Theog. 843; πυρὶ χθὼν πᾶσα νέμοιτο, Il. 2.780 ~ καῦμα... πυρός, Theog. 844–5, χθὼν πᾶσα, Theog. 847; and χθὼν | σμερδαλέον κονάβιζε, Il. 2.465–6 ~ σμερδαλέον κονάβησε, Theog. 840). More importantly, Nelson shows that the precise detail that Homer footnotes, namely that Typhoeus’ resting place (εὐνάς) is located among the Arimnoi (Il. 2.783), refutes Hesiod’s claim that the defeated Typhoeus is dispatched to Tartarus (Theog. 868) by cross-referencing Hesiod’s own singular footnote (φασί, Theog. 306) for the story that Typhoeus shared a “bed” with Echidna who resides, precisely, among the Arimnoi (Theog. 304–8). As Nelson puts it (81), “Homer’s φασί appears to index tradition precisely at the point where it is most contestable,” and he continues (83), “[i]f Homer and Hesiod were contemporaneous Hellenistic poets, scholars might argue that this pair of indices marks a reciprocal relationship between these two passages—a self-reflexive cycle of cross referencing, in which each author knowingly nods to the ‘talk’ of their poetic peer. In the context of archaic epic, however, it is likely...