Hospitality Narratives in Virgil and Callimachus: The Ideology of Reception

Abstract

This article highlights the extent and significance of the intertextual relationship between reception-narratives in Virgil's Aeneid (Aeneas and Evander) and Callimachus' Aetia (Heracles and Molorcus) and Hecale (Theseus and Hecale). Encompassing Aeneas' succession to Hercules as Evander's guest, his failed pledge to his host, and his acquisition of a shield on which his historical successor, Augustus, is depicted, Callimachean intertextuality informs the narrative of the Aeneid in its widest sweep. As the archetypal scene of Homeric hospitality (Odysseus and Eumaeus) is received from Callimachus by the new Homer of Augustan Rome, the narrative of reception becomes one of intertextual and cultural appropriation, the dynamic s of which are far from those of amicable exchange. 'The new poem both needs the old texts and must destroy them. It is both parasitical on them, feeding ungraciously on their substance, and at the same time it is the sinister host which unmans them by inviting them into its home, as the Green Knight invites Gawain.' J. Hillis Miller 1

NICANDER'SHYMN TO ATTALUS: PERGAMENE PANEGYRIC

“…Aen . 8.582–3 see O'Rourke (2017) 136. Compare the similar debate surrounding the division of Pindar fr.…”