EvinaSistakou TragicFailures Trends in Classics – Supplementary Volumes Edited by Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos Scientific Committee Alberto Bernabé · Margarethe Billerbeck Claude Calame · Philip R. Hardie · Stephen J. Harrison Stephen Hinds · Richard Hunter · Christina Kraus Giuseppe Mastromarco · Gregory Nagy Theodore D. Papanghelis · Giusto Picone Kurt Raaflaub · Bernhard Zimmermann Volume 38 Evina Sistakou Tragic Failures Alexandrian Responses to Tragedy and the Tragic ISBN978-3-11-047912-6 e-ISBN(PDF)978-3-11-048232-4 e-ISBN(EPUB)978-3-11-048063-4 ISSN1868-4785 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData ACIPcatalogrecordforthisbookhasbeenappliedforattheLibraryofCongress. BibliographicinformationpublishedbytheDeutscheNationalbibliothek TheDeutscheNationalbibliothekliststhispublicationintheDeutscheNationalbibliografie; detailedbibliographicdataareavailableontheInternetathttp://dnb.dnb.de. ©2016WalterdeGruyterGmbH,Berlin/Boston Logo:ChristopherSchneider,Laufen Printingandbinding:CPIbooksGmbH,Leck *1Printedonacid-freepaper PrintedinGermany www.degruyter.com To the late Daniel Jacob who would make an ideal reader of this book Contents Preface IX Introduction: From Tragedy to the Tragic 1 . Tragedy, from Athens to Alexandria 11 The contexts of Hellenistic tragedy 11 Ptolemaic cultural politics and tragedy 15 Performing, reciting or reading tragedy? 20 Tragedy enters the Library 25 . The Metaclassical Tragic 31 Tragedy as philosophy and its Hellenistic reworking 31 The impossibility of Aristotelian tragedy 38 Callimachus on (not) writing tragedy 44 Establishing tragedyand the tragic in Alexandria 52 . Alexandrian Tragedy 63 The star system of the Alexandrian tragedians 63 Rupture and revival of tragic myth 69 Historical tragedymakes a comeback 77 Generic divergences and tragic crossovers 82 . Callimachus Displaces the Tragic 89 Transcending the tragic in the Hymns 89 Tragic fragmentariness in the Aetia 98 Hecale, a mundane tragedy 105 . Redefining the Tragic in the Idylls of Theocritus 115 A messenger speech without a messenger 115 The bucolic world’s a stage 122 Simaetha’s tragic failures 131 . Tragedy into Epic in Apollonius’ Argonautica 141 Distilling Attic tragedy into the Argonautica 141 Epic teleologies and tragic modalities 153 An Alexandrian epic on tragic passions 161 VIII Contents . In the Metatragic Cosmos of the Alexandra 168 The Alexandra, a metatragic play 168 From the tragedy of Cassandra to ‘becoming Alexandra’ 176 Tragedy as textual unconscious 185 . The Romantic Tragic 193 Domesticizing tragedy 193 The tragedy of love 202 Parthenius, from tragedy to melodrama 211 Conclusion: Tragic Failures and Hellenistic Challenges 221 Bibliography 227 Abbreviations 227 Editions 227 Translations 227 Bibliography 228 Index 243 Preface Thisbookhasitsoriginsinaseriesofvexingquestionsthatkeptarisingduring myovertwentyyearsofengagementwithHellenisticscholarship:Whyistragedy mostlyneglectedintheintertextualandaestheticanalysisofHellenisticpoetry, whereas archaic epic and lyric take center stage in the relevant bibliography? Why is Homer unequivocally accepted as ‘the’ archetype for the Hellenistic poets,whereas Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are not? Why is the tragic idea, both as represented on stage and as a philosophical quality, rarely used as a key for the interpretation of Alexandrian poetics? Did the learned poets, whosephilologicalactivityintheMuseumwasdedicatedtothestudyofclassical tragedyalongsideepicandlyric,considertragedyadeadgenrebytheirownar- tisticstandards?DidtheAlexandrianpoetsandtheiraudiencesvaluethetragic effect,the arousal of pity-and-fear emotions, stemming from the representation ofaclassicaltragedyonstage?Canaheightenedsenseof ‘thetragic’berecon- ciled with the new outlook on life and art in the Hellenistic era? Questions maybe easilymultiplied,yet bibliographyscarcelyprovidesade- quateanswers.Whilemymonographwasstillinprogress,Icameacrossoneex- ception, namely the study of Agnieszka Kotlińska-Toma, Hellenistic Tragedy. Texts,TranslationsandaCriticalSurvey(publishedbyBloomsburyin2015).Kot- lińska-Toma offers a comprehensive survey of Hellenistic tragedy with a com- mentary on the surviving testimonies and fragments, a study that only partly overlapswith mychapteron Alexandrian tragedy. Luckily Iwas able toconsult this book before completing mine. Following the pattern of my previous mono- graphs(Reconstructing the Epic. Cross-Readings of the Trojan Myth in Hellenistic Poetry, Leuven 2008 and The Aesthetics of Darkness. A Study of Hellenistic Ro- manticism in Apollonius, Lycophron and Nicander, Leuven 2012), I have tested the main thesis of mybookagainst the broadrange of Hellenistic poetry rather than review a particular poem or poet in isolation from the entire Alexandrian ‘corpus’. Studies of the latter type in regard to the tragic are occasionally found in Hellenistic bibliography. An illustrating example is Apollonius’ Argo- nautica,which has been examined from the viewpoint of tragedy reception in aseries oflesserknowndissertations(F.Stoessl,ApolloniosRhodios.Interpreta- tionenzurErzählungskunstundQuellenverwertung,Bern-Leipzig1941;J.M.Nish- imura-Jensen, Tragic Epic or Epic Tragedy. Narrative and Genre in Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica, University of Wisconsin-Madison 1996; I. A. Schmakeit, Apollonios Rhodios und die attische Tragödie. Gattungsüberschreitende Intertex- tualität in der alexandrinischen Epik, Groningen 2003). An exceptional case is