Reconstructing the Epic: Cross-Readings of the Trojan Myth in Hellenistic Poetry (review)

This wide-ranging and insightful book is a study of the Trojan myth in Hellenistic poetry. The author defines the Trojan myth as "the host of episodes which are linked directly or indirectly with the Trojan war and its protagonists" (17), resulting in a volume that grapples with an ambitiously large, and at times unwieldy, set of allusions, ideas, and (inter)texts. Despite an occasional lack of cohesion, this book contributes to our understanding of Hellenistic poets' engagement with their mythic and poetic past, and readers can learn much from the author's investigation of infrequently discussed texts.

Sistakou's first section (of three, each divided into shorter chapters) outlines some of the ways Hellenistic poets engaged with and drew from the Iliad and Odyssey while keeping the main Homeric narratives distanced from their own literary creations. One method she outlines is the employment of what she calls Homeric adunata, defined as novel (re)presentations of Homeric contexts and figures. Sistakou dwells at length on the most obvious example of an adunaton in the recrafting of the Odyssey's Polyphemus by Theocritus in Idyll 11, which allowed the poet to "invert" and "debunk" Homeric characterization (34). She also argues that catalogues, styled after those of the Iliad and Odyssey, were used by Theocritus to eulogize his patron, elevate bucolic poetics, and "spotlight his own unique aesthetic" (50). Sistakou ends with an investigation (not entirely convincing) of what she terms the "fossilization" of the Trojan myth by showing how proverbs and riddles deriving from it appear in genres such as urban mime as a way of replicating "low," everyday speech.

Hellenistic modes of retelling the Trojan myth are the theme of the next section. What emerges here is a persuasive argument that the erotic, episodic, and supernatural nature of the Cypria constituted an especially congenial model for Hellenistic poets. "Hesiodic poetics," often aetiological and genealogical, is also introduced as an important register which was used by Hellenistic poets interested in recasting the Trojan myth. The rest of the section takes up targeted studies on the ways in which the Nostoi of the minor Greek heroes were retold by Hellenistic poets, how Apollonius of Rhodes intersected the Argonautic and Trojan myths, and on the unique literary engagement Lycophron's Alexandra has with the history and prehistory of the war at Troy.

In the third and final section, Sistakou focuses on the Trojan myth through the lens of Hellenistic literary aesthetics, concentrating on intertexts as well as on how Hellenistic poets were largely drawn to its aetiological, fantastic, erotic, and nonheroic aspects. These elements make up much of what we think of as the "Alexandrian aesthetic." Through focusing on epyllia concerned with aspects of the Trojan myth, "(para)Trojan novellas" on erotic themes from Parthenius, and the "debunking" and modernization of Trojan war heroes, Sistakou again describes how the Trojan myth both provided important source material for Hellenistic poets and contributed to the shaping of literary aesthetics.

Sistakou's book leaves a few large questions unanswered. One is how the Panhellenic Trojan myth, showing the Greek people united for the first time against a barbarian enemy, fits into the fractured politics of the Hellenistic age, where rulers vied constantly with each other for territory and advancement. For instance, can we imagine that an aetiological poem such as the Lesbou Ktisis has some larger significance for its contemporary audience besides its position in the Trojan myth? Another question is one of boundaries: where does the Trojan myth begin and end? A representative example of how expansive and decentered the Trojan myth becomes in her book occurs when Sistakou points out (80–81) that Euphorion and Lycophron both allude to a story, known to Stesichorus, that as a child Telemachus had fallen into the sea from which he was rescued by dolphins, a benefaction which led Odysseus to adopt that animal as his...