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Filoni, Andrea, 1973-

Aristarco e il peana : l'esegesi anticaa Hom., Il. I 472-474

2023 - Leo S. Olschki

P. 133-163

  • The identity of the god Paieon, physician of the gods, who appears twice in the V book of the Iliad (vv. 401-402; 899-901) was highly debated in antiquity. The current opinion was that the god had to be considered the same as Apollo, usually invoked as Paean; instead, according to Aristarchus, Homer described an earlier situation, where Apollo and Paieon still were different divinities. The question played a role in a difficult case, the athetesis of Il. I 474. Lemma, critical sign and indirect tradition attest the athetesis for v. 474, whereas the internal arguments – one of which is the distinction between the two gods – work better if applied to v. 473, where the paean-song is mentioned: if Apollo and Paieon were not yet identified, the presence of the song, which is homonymous to the physician of the gods, would sound odd in an Apolline context – the scene is Chrysa in the Troad, after the well-known events of the first book of the Iliad.
  • This is confirmed by the presence, in the v. 473, of the action of singing, whereas the surrounding verses allude only to dance – i.e. the meaning which Aristarchus gave to Homeric μολπή and μέλπω. If the reconstruction is correct, the actual version of scholia and critical signs ad loc. may have been produced by a later grammarian, who did not understand Aristarchus' motivations and moved the arguments which supported the athetesis from 473 to 474. Possibly, the repetition observed by Aristarchus on 474 respect to 472 – unable in itself to athetise the verse – attracted the attention of the later reworker. [Publisher's text]

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Parola del passato : rivista di studi antichi : LXXVIII, 1, 2023