Thrinakia

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Thrinakia , also Thrinakie ( ancient Greek : Θρινακίη Thrinakíe = trident ) is the name of an island from Greek mythology . According to Homer's Odyssey, it was the property of the sun god Helios and one of the stations of Odysseus on his wanderings .

myth

Thrinakia in the Odyssey

Homer describes the events on Thrinakia in detail in Canto 12 of the Odyssey : Shortly after crossing the strait where Scylla and Charybdis lived, and on the same day that they left Kirkes island of Aiaia , Odysseus and his companions arrived Visibility of the Heliosinsel. There, two daughters of the sun god, Phaetusa and Lampetia , looked after seven herds of cattle and seven sheep from their father, each herd consisting of 50 animals. The seer Teiresias had already prophesied Odysseus in the underworld that he would pass Thrinakia and warned against robbing the cattle and sheep of Helios. If the animals were left untouched, Odysseus and his companions could make the journey home to Ithaca . If one slaughtered animals, all companions would find death and Odysseus would have to endure a lot of suffering before he would return to Ithaca alone on a strange ship. Also Kirke had Odysseus when she described him the way home, urged not to harm the animals.

Because of these prophecies, Odysseus did not want to dock on the island so that his companions would not be tempted to steal the sacred animals of Helios. However, his companions and their spokesman Eurylochos persuaded him to spend the night there before continuing on to the open sea. They swore an oath to feed themselves only on the supplies on the ship, which Kirke had given them, and not to touch Helios' cattle and sheep. In the course of the night, however, a storm came up, which made it impossible for Odysseus and his companions to set sail the next day. They pulled the ship into a grotto not far from the beach and hoped for favorable winds. But even in the next 30 days, stormy winds blew incessantly from the south and east, which made it impossible to continue. When the food supplies were exhausted, the companions first tried to catch fish and birds, but their hunger increased. After Odysseus had retired to a distant place on the island to implore the gods for favorable winds, he fell asleep. Meanwhile Eurylochus persuaded the other companions to slaughter some cattle, since starvation was the most miserable death and it would still be better - if the prophesied fate come true - to die on a full stomach on the high seas than to starve. They vowed to erect a large temple to Helios as reparation on a happy return home. When Odysseus awoke and returned to his companions, some cattle had already been slaughtered. He insulted his companions violently and was desperate because their actions could not be undone.

The next morning the storms finally subsided and they set out to sea. Helios had meanwhile noticed the slaughter of his cattle and demanded retaliation from Zeus, threatening not to let the sun rise again. When the ship was on the high seas, far from any coast, Zeus caused a storm and shattered the ship with lightning. All of Odysseus' companions were killed. Odysseus was able to save himself on the keel of his ship, narrowly escaped Scylla and Charybdis, to whose strait the current initially drove him back, and was finally washed up on a beach on the Calypso island of Ogygia after nine days . Elsewhere in the Odyssey, Odysseus claims, still hiding his true identity, to Penelope that Odysseus reached the coast of Scherias , the land of the Phaiacs , after the shipwreck .

Thrinakia in the Argonautica

In the Argonautica of Apollonios of Rhodes , the Argonauts pass Thrinakia after they got through the plankton unharmed . It describes in great detail how Phaetusa and Lampetia tend the flocks of Helios. However, the Argonauts do not go ashore, but watch the shepherdesses. This "pastoral scenery ... apparently improves the mood [of the Argonauts]" who are happy to have survived the life-threatening journey through the plankton.

Localization attempts

Although Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC At least most of the sites of Odysseus' odyssey were considered fictional, and modern ancient philological and ancient historical research is at least skeptical of attempts to locate the stations of Odysseus. Since antiquity, attempts have been made again and again to identify stations of Odysseus, etc. a. also Thrinakia, to connect with a real place.

Ancient authors

Thucydides wrote around 400 BC That Sicily was once called "Trinakria" ("Dreikap" or "the triangular one"), which was seen as a derivation from Homer's Thrinakia. Since then, the equation ( Thrinakia = Trinakria = old name of Sicily ) has been adopted by many later authors, especially Roman ones , although the term Trinakria was hardly used for Sicily and can hardly be derived from Thrinakia etymologically . Some authors, including Appian , localized the island on the Mylae peninsula (now the Milazzo peninsula ) at a small town of Artemision, the exact location of which is unknown.

Modern attempts at localization

A number of modern researchers also identify the island with Sicily or with places on its east coast, including Victor Bérard and Ernle Bradford (each near Taormina and in the Bay of Taormina), Armin Wolf (Zancle peninsula, today part of Messina and part of ancient Zankle). However, as early as 1830, Karl Heinrich Wilhelm Völcker , u. a. because Homer describes Thrinakia as a lonely island (νήσος ερήμη), on which no people live, which is just as untrue in Sicily as the barren soil, because of which Odysseus' companions hunted birds and fish.

The localizations of the island on the east coast of Sicily are usually based on the equation of the Strait of Messina with the strait on which Scylla and Charybdis are said to have lived, thus locating these stations (and the Kirk island Aiaia ) west of Greece. A number of statements by Homer suggest that the poet Thrinakia - like the entire complex of Aiaia, Isle of Sirens , Scylla and Charybdis, Plankten and Thrinakia - settled far to the east. This is indicated by the names of the Helio daughters and, with regard to Aiaia, the statement that the island is located near the house and dancefloor of the Eos , where the daily ascent of Helios begins. Therefore Thrinakia was also suspected in the Black Sea region , u. a. Already by Karl Ernst von Baer , who however assumed that the Greeks assumed a sea connection between the northern Adriatic and the Black Sea in Homeric times, which was criticized.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 12,260-453 (including the shipwreck shortly after the journey and the death of the companions)
  2. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 11: 106-115
  3. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 12: 127-142
  4. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 19, 274-279.
  5. ↑ Apollonios of Rhodes, Argonautika 4, 964-979.
  6. ↑ Hans Bernsdorff : Shepherds in the non-bucolic poetry of Hellenism. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2001, pp. 80f.
  7. ↑ Quoted in Strabo, Geographie 1,2,15.
  8. ↑ Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 6,2,2
  9. ^ Karl Preisendanz: Thrinakie , in: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Ed.): Detailed Lexicon of Greek and Roman Mythology , Volume 5, Teubner-Verlag, Leipzig 1924, Sp. 873 (there also other ancient sources).
  10. ^ Appian, Civil Wars 5, 116 ( English translation ).
  11. ^ Karl Preisendanz: Thrinakie , in: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Ed.): Detailed Lexicon of Greek and Roman Mythology , Volume 5, Teubner-Verlag, Leipzig 1924, Sp. 873 (with mention of further ancient sources)
  12. ↑ Victor Bérard: Les Phéniciens et l'Odyssée. Volume 2, Librairie Armand Colin, Paris 1903, p. 374ff.
  13. ↑ Homer's Odyssey - Just a Sailor's Tale? Cape. 11 ; Ernle Bradford Ulysses Found. Hodder and Stoughton, London 1963, pp.
  14. ↑ Armin Wolf: Homer's journey: in the footsteps of Odysseus. Completely revised new edition. Böhlau, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2009, pp. 97ff., 142 u. a.
  15. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 12, 351.
  16. ^ Karl Heinrich Wilhelm Völcker: About Homeric geography and world studies. Hanover 1830, p. 119f. on-line
  17. ↑ Uvo Hölscher: The Odyssey: Epic between fairy tales and novels. 2nd unchanged edition, CH Beck Munich 2000, p. 155ff.
  18. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 12, 3f.
  19. ↑ Ernst Bär: About the Homeric localities in the Odyssey. F. Vieweg, Braunschweig 1878
  20. ↑ u. a. Richard Hennig : New Findings on Homer's Geography. In: Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, (N. F) Volume 75, 1926, pp. 273f.