TELEGONY

The 'Telegony' (Greek: '''Telegoneia'''; Latin: ''Telegonia'') is a lost ancient Greek epic poem. It was part of the Epic Cycle, that is, the "Trojan" cycle, which told the entire history of the Trojan War in epic verse. The story of the ''Telegony'' comes chronologically after that of the ''Odyssey'', and is the final episode in the Epic Cycle, last of the ''Nostoi'', or "Returns". The poem was sometimes attributed in antiquity to Cinaethon of Sparta, but in one source it is said to have been stolen from Musaeus by Eugamon or Eugammon of Cyrene^[1] (see Cyclic poets). The poem comprised two books of verse in dactylic hexameter.

Contents

Title

Date

Content

Latin inventions

Dante's invention

Notes

Editions

Title

In antiquity the ''Telegony'' may have also been known as the ''Thesprotis'' (Greek: Θεσπρωτίς), which is referred to once, by Pausanias in the second century CE;^[2] alternatively, the ''Thesprotis'' may have been a name for the first book of the ''Telegony'', which is set in Thesprotia. It was standard practice with the Homeric epics in antiquity to refer to isolated episodes by their own titles; for example, ''Iliad'' book 5 and part of book 6 was known as "the Aristeia of Diomedes" and Odysseus' descent to the Underworld (''Odyssey'' 11) as the ''Nekyia''.
A third possibility is that there was a wholly separate epic called the ''Thesprotis''; and yet a fourth possibility is that the ''Telegony'' and ''Thesprotis'' were two separate poems that were at some stage compiled into a single ''Telegony''. Most scholars at present tend to regard the third and fourth possibilities as unlikely, or at least worthless hypotheses, since neither possibility is demonstrable or falsifiable.

Date

The date of composition of the ''Telegony'' is uncertain. Cyrene, the native city of Eugammon, the purported author, was founded in 631 BCE; but the narrative details may have existed prior to Eugammon's version, perhaps even in the oral tradition. There is a distinct possibility that the author of the ''Odyssey'' knew at least some version of the ''Telegony'' story (the Thesprotian episode and Telegonos' unusual spear in the ''Telegony'' may have been based on Tiresias' prophecy in ''Odyssey'' book 11; but it is also possible that the ''Odyssey'' poet used the Telegonos story as a basis for Teiresias' prophecy). Certainly Eugammon's poem is most likely to have been composed in the 6th century BCE.

Content

The ''Telegony'' comprises two distinct episodes: Odysseus' voyage to Thesprotia, and the story of Telegonus. Probably each of the two books of the ''Telegony'' related one of these episodes. In current critical editions only two lines of the poem's original text survive. For its storyline we are almost entirely dependent on a summary of the Cyclic epics contained in the ''Chrestomatheia'' (see also chrestomathy) attributed to an unknown "Proklos" (possibly to be identified with the second-century CE grammarian Eutychios Proklos). A few other references also give indications of the poem's storyline.
The poem opens after Odysseus' return home to Ithaca and the "slaughter of the suitors" (Greek: μνηστηροφονία, ''mnesterophonia'') towards the end of ''Odyssey'', in Book 23, with the burial of Penelope's dead suitors.^[3] Odysseus makes sacrifices to the Nymphs^[4] He makes a voyage to Elis, where he visits an otherwise unknown figure 'Polyxenos', who gives him a bowl depicting the story of Trophonius. Odysseus returns to Ithaca and then travels to Thesprotia, presumably to make the sacrifices commanded by Tiresias in ''Odyssey'' 11. There he weds the Thesprotian queen Kallidike, who bears him a son, Polypoites.^[5] Odysseus fights for the Thesprotians in a war against the neighbouring Brygoi; the gods participate in the war, Ares routing Odysseus and the Thesprotians, countered by Athena, ever Odysseus' patron; Apollo intervenes between the battling gods. However, Kallidike is killed in the war, Polypoetes succeeds to the kingdom^[6] and Odysseus returns to Ithaca.
Meanwhile, it transpires that Circe, with whom Odysseus had an affair for a year in the ''Odyssey'' (books 10-12), has born his son, Telegonus (Τηλέγονος, "born far away"), who grows up on Circe's island, Aeaea. On the goddess Athena's advice Circe tells him the name of his father. In a detail inserted into the account in pseudo-Apollodorus, ''Epitome'' of the ''Bibliotheke''^[7] she gives him a supernatural spear to defend himself which is tipped with the sting of a poisonous stingray and was made by the god Hephaestus. Circe sends him in search of Odysseus. A storm forces Telegonus onto Ithaca without his realising where he is. As is customary for Homeric heroes in unfriendly land, he commits piracy, and unwittingly begins stealing Odysseus' cattle. Odysseus comes to defend his property, he and Telegonus fight, and Telegonus kills Odysseus— with his unusual spear, thereby fulfilling Tiresias' prophecy in ''Odyssey'' XI that death would come to Odysseus "out of the sea" (i.e. the poison of the ray).^[8] As Odysseus lies dying,^[9] he and Telegonus recognise one another, and Telegonus laments his mistake. Telegonus brings his father's corpse, Penelope, and Odysseus' other son Telemachus, back to Aeaea, where Odysseus is buried and Circe makes the others immortal. Telegonus marries Penelope, and Telemachus marries Circe.^[10]

Latin inventions

Latin poets^[11] make Telegonus the founder of Praeneste, an important Etruscan fortified high place and sacred site.

Dante's invention

In Dante's ''Divine Comedy'', in the eighth ''bolgia'' of the Inferno,^[12] Dante and his guide meet Ulisse among the false counsellors, and receive a variant accounting of his death "from the sea" in a five-month journey beyond the Pillars of Hercules that has ended in a whirlpool drowning as the mariners approach the mountain of Purgatory. No Greek source was available to Dante, only the Latin recensions of Dictys and Dares.
Among the plethora of operas based on the myths of Odysseus and those around him, there is but one^[13] based on Telegonus, Carlo Luigi Grua's ''Telegone'' (premiered in Düsseldorf, 1697) of which an aria "Dia le mosse a miei contenti" may be noted. Divine intervention, a tragic death and multiple weddings at the end all assorted easily with the conventions of ''opera seria''.

Notes

1. "Some have seen in the 'burst of happy marriages' in which the ''Telegoneia'' ends an explanation for its being ascribed to Eugammon, a name which apparently means 'Happy-Marrier'", Edmund D. Cressman remarks (Cressman, "Beyond the Sunset" ''The Classical Journal'' '27'.9 (June 1932:669-674], p 671).
2. Pausanias 8.12.5.
3. The beginning of ''Telegoneia'' suggested to G.
L. Huxley (''Greek Epic Poetry: From Eumelos to Pamyassis'', Harvard Univerrsity Press, 1969:171) that the ''Odyssey'' as it was known to Eumelos in the sixth century ended at this point, without the so-called "Continuation" in the version we read today. Joseph Russo, reviewing Huxley in ''The American Journal of Philology'' October 1972:623, expressed his own feeling "that Eugammon was free to begin his poem about Telegonus wherever he wanted, the main criterion being that it suit his artistic design, which we are in no position to judge adequately".
4. Presumably the nymphs are intended in whose cave he had hidden the treasure he brought with him to Ithaca: see ''Odyssey'' 13.
5. "In the non-Homeric poems of the Cycle, the character of Odysseus appears much less admirable than it does in Homer," Edmund D. Cressman remarks (Cressman 1932:670).
6. The often-repeated theme in Greek mythology of the son of a queen's consort succeeding to her throne has raised much commentary.
7. ''Epitome'' vii.36.
8. As all prophecy in myth "comes true", most readers attribute the interpolation of this marine detail to an attempt to make Odysseus' death "come from the sea".
9. Sophocles' lost ''Odysseus Acanthoplex'' also brought him inadvertent death at the hand of Telegonus.
10. The plot summary by Eutyches Proclus, which is followed here, is translated byHugh G. Evelyn-White, ''Hesiod, Homeric Hymns and Homerica'' (Loeb Classical Library), 1914,
11. Cressman 1932:672 notes Horace, Ovid, Propertius and Statius.
12. ''Inferno'', Canto XXVI.
13. According to ''Latin Notes Supplement'', December 1926 (noted by Chessman 1932:673).

Editions

★ Online editions (English translation):

★
★ Fragments of the ''Telegony'' translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, 1914 (public domain)

★
★ Fragments of complete Epic Cycle translated by H.G. Evelyn-White, 1914; Project Gutenberg edition

★ Print editions (Greek):

★
★ A. Bernabé 1987, ''Poetarum epicorum Graecorum testimonia et fragmenta'' pt. 1 (Leipzig: Teubner)

★
★ M. Davies 1988, ''Epicorum Graecorum fragmenta'' (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht)

★ Print editions (Greek with English translation):

★
★ M.L. West 2003, ''Greek Epic Fragments'' (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press) ISBN 0-674-99605-4