Telegony

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The Telegonia (Greek Τηλεγόνεια or Τηλεγονία) is a lost ancient Greek epic, the Trojan legend cycle is expected and the epic cycle completed. It continued Homer's Odyssey and dealt with the last adventures of the legendary hero Odysseus, including his killing by his son Telegonus .

Date of origin and author

Telegonia was probably established in the 6th century BC. Written down in Cyrene on the basis of older models and comprised two books, but is only mentioned in more recent records. Most sources name as the alleged author a Eugamon or Eugammon of Cyrene, but sometimes also the Kinaithon of Lakedaimon , which is much earlier than Eugamon .

State of preservation and name

Only five or six fragments of telegonia have survived, including one or two (ascribed) hexameters of the original text. There are also two summaries of the course of action, namely in Proklos in his excerpted Chrestomathie and in Hyginus , the latter showing some additions that were only invented later. The mythographic tradition also provides an approximate idea of ​​the poem. It is named after Odysseus' son Telegonos, who grew out of the connection with the sorceress Kirke .

compilation

The author probably took the material for telegonia from several earlier independent sagas that dealt with Odysseus' last fate in life. The basis was an older, actual telegony , which only dealt with the killing of Odysseus by his son Telegonus, a motif that also occurs elsewhere in world literature - for example the German Hildebrand song. The Telegonie author preceded this story with the myths of Odysseus' journeys to Elis and Thesprotien and processed them into a story, apparently using a very old legend, probably already adopted by Homer, about a prediction by the blind seer Teiresias as the basic motif. According to this oracle described in the Odyssey, after Odysseus had overcome his wife's suitors, he would undertake a journey to an area whose population did not know the sea and would suffer an “ex-maritime” death after returning to his home island.

content

According to Proclus, telegonia began after the Odyssey with the burial of the slain suitors Penelopes and Odysseus' offering a sacrifice for the nymphs . Then Odysseus traveled to Elis. There he was to the cattle of the Augean visit that Polyxenos king of Elis, had inherited. Odysseus enjoyed the hospitality of Polyxenus, who presented him with an ornate crater . Telegonia gave a detailed representation of the reliefs of this crater in the literary form of an ekphrasis , on which the construction of a treasure house for Augias in Elis by the well-known builders Trophonios and Agamedes could be seen. After his stay in Elis, Odysseus went back to Ithaca, made sacrifices to the sea god Poseidon according to Teiresias's instructions and then traveled to Thesprotia. In this country he became the consort of Queen Kallidike . A son, Polypoites , emerged from the relationship with her . Odysseus supported the Thresprot victoriously in the war against the Thracian tribe of the Bryger . During the battle, the god of war Ares intervened on the side of the Bryger, but encountered resistance from Odysseus' patron goddess Athena ; after all, Apollo separated the warring gods. When Kallidike died, Odysseus turned the government over to Polypoites and traveled back to his homeland.

Now the grown-up Telegonos, who had been sent to search for his father Odysseus by his mother Kirke, was sent to Ithaca. For Telegonos, however, Ithaca was a foreign island. He stole cattle out of hunger and came into conflict with his unknown father, who wanted to defend his cattle. During the fight Telegonos unsuspectingly killed his father with a poisonous ray sting forming the tip of a lance, with which the prophecy of Teiresias regarding the "exmaritime" death of Odysseus was (partly) fulfilled, since the deadly ray sting came from the sea. However, it does not fit the fact that Odysseus was also predicted a gentle, peaceful death in the same prophecy. After Telegonos had become aware of the true facts of who he had killed, he probably held a lament for Odysseus after the portrayal of Telegonia. Then he brought the remains of his father and Penelope and her son of Odysseus, Telemachos , to Kirke on the island of Aiaia . Kirke gave both Penelope and Telemachus immortality through her magical powers. There was a double wedding between Telegonos and Penelope on the one hand and Telemachos and Kirke on the other. The latter was also reported in the Nostoi .

reception

The tragedy poets Aeschylus , Sophocles and Marcus Pacuvius , among others, worked on the subject of telegonia , but their works are all lost. According to Sophocles, Euryalus, Odysseus' son of the thesproteress Euippe, went in search of his stranger father, but was killed on Ithaca by his half-brother Telemachus. In the 1st century BC BC Parthenios of Nicaea probably redesigned Sophocles' drama in such a way that, according to his version, Euryalus died at the hand of his father Odysseus.

literature

Remarks

  1. ^ Proklos, Chrestomathie ; Eusebios of Caesarea in Hieronymus , Chronicle 102, 1st ed. Helm (dated 568-565 BC); among others
  2. ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 127.
  3. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 11, 119-137.
  4. ↑ Parthenios, Erotica pathemata 3.