Hesiod's Theogony: From Near Eastern Creation Myths to

Paradise Lost by Stephen Scully (review)

Deborah Lyons

American Journal of Philology, Volume 138, Number 1 (Whole Number 549),

Spring 2017, pp. 181-184 (Review)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ajp.2017.0005

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/658664

Accessed 24 Apr 2018 20:47 GMT

 BOOK REVIEWS

u
S tephen S cully . Hesiod’s Theogony: From Near Eastern Creation Myths
to Paradise Lost. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
xiv + 268 pp. Cloth, $85.00.

The heart of Stephen Scully’s book is a masterful inquiry into the place
of the Theogony in literary history, in the course of which he makes important
observations about the evolution of ancient Greek ideas of the cosmos, divinity,
sexuality and gender, justice, and the polis. He prefaces his historical investigations
with a careful reading of the poem on its own terms, before looking backward
toward its sources and then forward toward the influence it exerted on later texts.
Literary analysis and literary history are carefully interwoven, as Scully’s initial
reading of the poem provides a road map for the historical sections of the book.
The introduction briefly addresses contemporary cosmogonic thinking,
before going on to explore theogonic themes in the work of Sigmund Freud.
Here, Scully highlights his interest in the conflict between anarchic sexuality
and social order, which will later reappear in his detailed treatment of Hesiod’s
poem and in the historical sections. Chapter 1 compares first Homer to Hesiod
and then the Theogony to Genesis. Chapter 2 offers a reading of the Theogony
that highlights both its formal and thematic aspects. These features will turn out
to have central importance for his situation of the Theogony in the earlier and
later traditions. His focus on the political reverberates throughout his discussion
of ancient Mesopotamian and Indo-European traditions and the later influence
of the poem, while observations about Hesiod’s poetics come back into play
especially in his reading of Milton.
In Chapter 3, the author discusses the candidates for ancient sources—­
Mesopotamian, Phoenician, and Egyptian—for the myths of the Theogony. This
part of the book draws heavily on the work of previous scholars (West, López-
Ruiz, etc.) but is nonetheless useful for the clarity of its exposition of a complex
topic in a relatively short space.
Chapters 4 through 6 detail the influence of the Theogony on later writers,
first Greeks and Romans, followed by early Christians, and then (with increasingly
sparse material) through later periods, before arriving at his end-point, Milton’s
Paradise Lost. The last section on Milton finally offers enough material to allow
for an extended—and rewarding—parallel reading of the two poems.
Scully’s insights about the poem, while based on previous scholarship, are
well developed and relevant to his larger theme. Drawing on the work of Thalmann
(1984), he shows how Hesiod’s choice of words frequently activates the mean-
ings inherent in the names and personified abstractions that people this heavily

American Journal of Philology 138 (2017) 181–199 © 2017 by Johns Hopkins University Press
182 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY

populated text. For example, lines 64–71 introduce the Muses, describing them in
words that prefigure their names: thalie\s erate\n . . . melpontai . . . kleiousin . . . opi
kalei, etc. When their actual names appear in the following lines (75–79), we have
already heard them in the descriptions of their activities. Zeroing in on the ways
that the poet sometimes anticipates and at other times follows the introduction
of a mythic personage with related nouns and verbs that activate the meaning of
the figure in question, he shows that the text is far more fully inhabited by these
divine beings than a casual reading—or a reading in translation—can possibly
reveal. Indeed, Scully has interesting things to say about the dilemmas posed
for text editors (and even more for translators) in deciding which abstractions
should be capitalized as personifications, and which are simply common nouns.
Scully’s other, and ultimately more consequential, major interpretive move
is to make the strong case for a political (in the root sense of the word) reading
of the poem. According to this line of thought, the telos of the poem’s violent
generational battles of succession is the creation of a proto-polis on Olympus, a
reserve of calm amidst the violence of the surrounding universe, which will serve
as a model for mortals. The Zeus of Hesiod is not an orderer of the universe, but
a provider of harmony and order within the limited sphere of Olympus.
In his consideration of ancient Near Eastern influences, Scully notes that it
is far from clear under what circumstances transmission would have occurred and
he considers all the options without declaring for any single one. He discusses the
parallels with Hurrio-Hittite myths, especially in the myth of Kumarbi, a violent
succession involving castration, and the Typhoeus-like Illuyanka, but ultimately
finds the evidence for Babylonian influence from the Enuma Elish more “intrigu-
ing.” This is in part because of the Babylonian epic’s concern with city-building.
Particularly interesting is Scully’s observation that the Syro-Phoenician myths
almost entirely exclude family relationships and female figures, while in the Enuma
Elish the conquered body of the primordial goddess Tiamat is divided to make the
heavens, waters, and earth. He observes that although the Theogony also treats
female goddesses harshly, the Greek tradition nonetheless gives them a greater
role in the creation of a “harmonious polity” than the Babylonian myth allows. If
it is impossible to decide how and when ancient Near Eastern myths might have
become known in Greece, it seems unnecessary to adjudicate competing claims for
this influence (nor does Scully do so, except by implication). Certainly different
traditions could have entered the Greek world (and the Greek imagination) at
different times and by different means.
The chapters on the influence of Hesiod on later Greek and Roman lit-
erature are impressively learned, and are enlightening on the theme of changing
notions of justice. Particularly rewarding is the section on the Homeric Hymns,
which shows their many close connections with the Theogony. Also of great
interest are the pages on Plato, which deal with the paradox of the philosopher
as both critic of myth and prolific mythmaker. For Scully, Plato is more Hesiodic
than he is usually assumed to be, reworking the Theogony to suit his purposes in
different dialogues even as he rejects the poet’s conception of the divine.
 BOOK REVIEWS 183

As the book turns to later times it takes on a dispiriting tone, as the author’s
favored text seems always on the point of falling into irrelevance and obscurity.
Interestingly, the trajectory (with a few moments of more intense interest on the
part of authors such as Solon, Aeschylus, and much later Plutarch) is linear, as the
shift of focus, beginning with the Presocratics and continuing (albeit with a few
interruptions) through to the introduction of Christianity, is from the harmony
of the polis to the harmony of the soul. Concomitant with this change of inter-
est is the growing distaste for the violent myths that occupy central stage in the
Theogony. There arises a consistent critique, beginning with Xenophanes, of the
more lurid incidents in the poem, such as the castration of Uranus and the birth of
Aphrodite. Those who do not reject the myths outright turn to allegorical readings.
Particularly problematic for later writers is Zeus’ binding of his father
Cronus. This impious act throws a monkey wrench into efforts to recast the father
of gods and men as a universal (and moral) god. Consequently, for those who do
not choose to read allegorically, these events are either rejected outright or soft-
ened in the retelling. The culmination of this tendency can be seen in the Library
of Pseudo-Apollodorus, which as Scully observes, makes the myths “bland and
bloodless.” (Later texts will outright deny Zeus’ divinity or even, as in Paradise
Lost, turn him into a satanic figure.)
The arrival of Christianity furthers neglect of the Theogony in favor of
the less troublesome and more safely moralizing Works and Days. A few bright
moments, provided by the scholars of the Hellenistic period and later of Renais-
sance Italy, disrupt the otherwise bleak picture (and ensure the continued survival
of the text). Nonetheless, it is the deep engagement of the Christian epic Paradise
Lost with the Theogony that provides Scully’s account with its culmination.
One effect of Scully’s treatment of Paradise Lost is to show how good a
reader of Hesiod Milton was. This is not surprising: so good a Hellenist was he
that at least one of his emendations has been generally adopted by editors of
Euripides. The earlier discussion of Hesiod’s etymological play (in Chapter 1)
turns out to be significant for the author’s treatment of Hesiodic echoes in this
poem. He shows how aware Milton must have been of this feature of Hesiodic
poetics, and how cleverly he adopts it for his own. A nice example is his observa-
tion of how the repeated prefix dis- is reinforced by the borrowing of the Latin
name for Hades, Dis.
A central theme is Milton’s incorporation of elements of Classical mythol-
ogy into his Christian narrative. Milton shows himself a bolder and less conflicted
recycler of antiquity than those who came before, easily reusing the ancient themes
not to obscure but to highlight the differences between Greek and Christian
mythology. In a one example, Scully shows how both Proserpina and Pandora
serve as negative comparisons for Eve.
Scully has succeeded admirably in carrying out his ambitious project, but
I question a few of his organizational choices. Placing Freud and Genesis outside
of the historical narrative makes sense, in that they are neither influencers nor
influenced. Nonetheless, it gets the book off to a choppy start. Although we can
184 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY

exclude any influence of the Hebrew Bible on the Theogony, it might be more
revealing to incorporate it into its Near Eastern context by including it in Chap-
ter 3. As for Freud, Scully hedges about his knowledge of the Theogony, but it is
not clear that Hesiodic influence can be entirely excluded. Moving this discussion
to an epilogue would have provided the book with a less abrupt ending.
The exhaustive account of Hesiod’s later influence means that at times
the author struggles to say something about authors who cared little about the
Theogony. More decisive shaping of the narrative at these points would have
provided the reader with welcome direction. Certain choices are puzzling: why
continue to print the word polis in Greek, especially in the hybrid “proto-polis,”
and why is Gaia consistently called Earth, while other gods, like Uranus, are
given their Greek names? Finally, at times the author seems to be enjoying a
private joke, as when he entitles a section on the hostile reception of Hesiod
in the Second Sophistic and by Christian apologists “Fun Times with Hesiod.”
I must, alas, close with one more complaint, for which the author is blame-
less. For a publication by one of the premier academic presses, the book has a
number of typos and editing mistakes. One can only hope that Oxford University
Press sees the error of its ways and ceases to stint on editing. Scholarship of this
caliber deserves no less.

Deborah Lyons
Miami University
e-mail: lyonsd@miamioh.edu

Laurent Pernot. Epideictic Rhetoric: Questioning the Stakes of Ancient Praise.

(Ashley and Peter Larkin Series in Greek and Roman Culture.) Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2015. xiv + 166 pp. Cloth. $50.

This book comes from one of the current world authorities on epideictic
rhetoric and oratory and represents the summation of nearly a quarter-century of
thinking on the topic. Beginning with the appearance of his massive Rhétorique
de l’éloge dans le monde gréco-romain (1993), which reached almost 900 pages
in two volumes, Laurent Pernot has established himself as a presence in Clas-
sics generally, in Rhetoric specifically, and in the study of epideictic above all.
The present work had its origin in a seminar hosted by the Rhetoric Society of
America in 2012, under the larger auspices of the International Society for the
History of Rhetoric. αἱ δεύτεραί πως φροντίδες σοφώτεραι, and this volume, though
not as expansive as Pernot’s 1993 opus, takes advantage both of long reflection
and of the proliferation of scholarship in the intervening years.
Pernot sharpens his focus somewhat in this latest book, identifying two
major areas of research that need at this point to be addressed. First, “. . . while
epideictic is important, its role remains unclear. Unlike judicial and deliberative
speeches, epideictic orations are not meant to elicit any vote or any decision on