Blending Multiple Identities of the Gods in Hellenistic Literary and Inscribed Epigrams (20 min)

Presenters

Federica Scicolone, University of Pavia

Abstract

Text world theory codifies the way in which we make sense of any kind of discourse, by constructing mental images of the situation described. Every discourse operates on many conceptual levels and some of them can be blended in worlds that combine features from several conceptual spaces in a new mental representation for building up meaning (G. Fauconnier and M. Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities [New York, 2002]). In Greek epigrammatic practice, conceptual blending allows ancient consumers of verse-inscriptions about the gods to create a blended word, where different divine notions can be merged starting from a common ground of religious beliefs and traditional accounts. For instance, SGO 03/06/07,1-2 (Teos, second to first centuries B.C.E. Στέλλεο Περσεφόνας ζάλον, χρυσέα Στρατονίκα· / σὰν γὰρ ἄναξ ἐνέρων ἅρπασεν ἀγλαΐαν, “Soothe Persephone’s envy, golden Stratonike, for the lord of the dead abducted your beauty”) can be interpreted as a poetic blended space where, starting from the common ground that Stratonike and Persephone share anthropomorphic features, the audience’s belief in Persephone as religious referent is projected onto her literary portrayal as envious, as in the myth of the nymph Mintha/Iynx disturbing Persephone’s union with Hades (cf. Zenod. FGrH 19 F4). Drawing from the work of F. Budelmann and P. LeVen on conceptual blending in Greek poetry, I investigate the possibility of merging multiple divine identities in Greek epigram. I focus on Hellenistic epigrams and compare them with coeval religious texts (e.g., Callimachus’s hymns to Apollo, Zeus, and Artemis) considering the literary experimentalism that in this period affected verse-inscriptions and religious performance. I argue that blended portrayals of the gods could be created, where their cultic identities, materiality (as cult statues), anthropomorphic behaviors, and status as poetic characters coexist in the mind of ancient audiences.