The rhapsodist’s apprentice, or when Homer crossed the Styx (Lucianus, Cont. 7)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/emerita.2012.02.1024Keywords:
Lucian, Charon, Homer, rhapsodist, Homeric poetry, parodyAbstract
In Charon or the Inspectors we find the ferryman of the underworld on earth, talking to the god Hermes about wealth, happiness, and the vain human striving for material goods. The piece has been considered to be an example of Menippean satire inside the corpus of Lucian’s works. Homeric poetry is always in the background. Lucian uses Homeric verses, or rather, verses structured in the Homeric manner, to formulate his critical view of the mortal world; in addition, he puts these verses into the mouth of a character who must temporarily give up his job as a ferryman in order to practise the art of rhapsody. This paper analyses a textual problem: the two variants in Cont. 7 referring to Homer in the manuscript tradition. In a context in which Lucian wants to make fun not just of foolish humans but also of the Greek poet par excelencia, the reading of the ueteres seems more appropriate because it illustrates better Lucian’s parodic intention in recalling Homer and in trying to adapt form and content to the Greek tradition.
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