Stesichoros is a poet to whom the fates have been unkind. He wrote a great deal of poetry; he had a high reputation in antiquity, and apparently a very considerable influence on later literature; yet all that remained of his works until a few years ago, apart from a few isolated words and phrases, was about twenty fragments amounting in all to the equivalent of about forty hexameter lines.

Our picture of his writings, based merely on these tenuous fragments, a handful of allusions, and a few brief estimates by ancient critics, was naturally shadowy and ill defined. But recent publications of papyri, though they give us no great quantity of coherent text, have brought our picture into much sharper focus; and I propose tonight to give you some indication of what that picture now is. I shall base that indication in particular on the one poem that is now the best attested: the Geryoneis, the story of Geryon.

But first, some more general considerations. For his life, the evidence is sketchy, and either imprecise, or unreliable, or both: if one puts his activity in the second quarter of the sixth century, one must allow for a sizeable overlap—he is said to have lived a long life—into the adjacent quarters. He was a Western Greek: said to have been born in the Lokrian colony of Matauros, and his life connected by tradition both with Lokroi itself and with Himera in Sicily. He was doubtless influenced by the traditions of poetry which we know to have existed at Lokroi; but we know so vanishingly little of those traditions that their influence must remain an enigma.

We learn from the Souda that his works comprised twenty-six books. Now with other lyric poets references in ancient authors to a particular passage are made to a given book: ‘Pindar, Paians’; ‘Alkaios, Book 3’; and so on. But all our twenty-four such references to passages in Stesichoros are references not to a book but to a poem: ‘Stesichoros, Geryoneis’; ‘Stesichoros, (p. 2 ) Sack of Troy’—except that two of them are to a book of a poem, ‘Stesichoros, Oresteia, Book 2’. It is a quite safe conclusion that his poems comprised at any rate a book apiece; one at least, the Oresteia, was in more than one book, and for all we know the same may be true of others as well. We have the titles of a dozen of his poems; how many titles are lost we have of course no idea.

In the last twelve years there have been published fragments from papyrus rolls of no fewer than five of these poems: all of them published by Mr. Lobel in volumes of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. ¹ In 1956 came the first two, neither unfortunately of any size: of the Nostoi, four lines and tatters of two dozen more; of the Boar-Hunters, eighteen half-lines. But last summer came a better haul: a very little of the Eriphyle (seventeen half-lines); about fifty very broken fragments of the Sack of Troy, giving as published no single line complete; and about eighty fragments of the Geryoneis, mostly very broken and many of them minute, but preserving—as you will see from the handout—a certain amount of continuous text, and allowing also a certain amount of reasonably secure restoration.²

Now what manner of poems are they? I will begin with their outer form, and first with their metre. Until the papyri appeared we had to take on trust a statement in the Souda that ‘all Stesichoros’ poetry is triadic’; that statement is now confirmed. The triadic structure of the Geryoneis is readily established: I have set out the metrical scheme on the first page of the handout—a medium-sized strophe and epode, comparable in length with many of Pindar and Bacchylides. For the Sack of Troy, Dr. West has established a triadic structure with stanzas of comparable size.³ Of the other poems not enough survives for the whole structure to be determined; but there are indications of a nine-line strophe in the Nostoi (this was seen by Professor Merkelbach) and a seven-line strophe in the Boar-Hunters (seen by Professor Snell),⁴ and it would be perverse to doubt that these poems also were triadic.

The metres are in every case dactylic: pure dactyls in the Geryoneis and apparently in the Boar-Hunters, dactyls with some admixture of epitrites in the other three—I say ‘some admixture’, for the epitrite component is smaller than in the familiar dactylo- epitrites of Pindar and Bacchylides. I should not be surprised to learn that Stesichoros himself played a major part in the development of dactylo-epitrite from dactylic; but that is no question to be (p. 3 ) discussed tonight. The dactyls, I should add, are often—and in the Geryoneis predominantly—rising dactyls, with the periods beginning not with a long but with a double short.

The dialect is fundamentally doricized epic; epic, that is, with Doric vocalism and the occasional use of metrically equivalent Doric forms (for instance ποκα as the equivalent of Homeric ποτε). The vocabulary is largely but of course not exclusively that of our Homer; the use of the vocabulary, and its grouping into phrases, shows—as might be expected—some deviation from the Homeric norm; and occasionally we meet a form that seems to have no equivalent in epic, but to come from a different dialect or from a later stage in the development of the language. But only occasionally: fundamentally, as I say, it is doricized epic—the dialect that in the course of the next hundred years was to establish itself as the lingua franca of the international choral lyric of the Greeks.

Our earliest reference to Stesichoros is by the poet Simonides <PMG 564>: Stesichoros had written a poem on the funeral games of Pelias; and when Simonides mentions a victory of Meleagros in those games, he adds ‘for so did Homer and Stesichoros sing to the peoples’. To Simonides, that is, he is a forerunner to be named along with Homer; and this linking of him with Homer becomes a commonplace. To Dio of Prusa <Or. 37(55). 7, ii. 116. 12 von Arnim> it is common knowledge that Stesichoros ‘emulated Homer and wrote poetry that was very similar to his’; to Longinus <13.3> he is one of the few writers deserving to be called Ὁμηρικώτατοϲ. Of the descriptions of his style by ancient writers, I will quote one by Dionysios of Halikarnassos and one by Quintilian. Dionysios says of him (π. μιμ. fr. 6. 2. 7 <Opusc. ii. 205. 11 Us.–R.>), after discussing the merits of Pindar and Simonides, that he ‘is successful in the aspects in which they show themselves superior, and at the same time commands effects which they fail to attain: namely in the grandeur of the action which he makes his theme, and in the care which he bestows on the character and dignity of his personages'. And Quintilian <10. 1. 61 f.>, after putting Pindar first among lyric poets, proceeds next to Stesichoros: ‘one token of the strength of his genius is his subject-matter: he sings of great wars and famous heroes, and supports on his lyre the whole burden of epic poetry [epici carminis onera lyra sustinentem]. He gives his characters their proper dignity both in their actions and in their words, and if he had kept within bounds he would, I think, have been able to come a close second to Homer; but he is too full and too diffuse [redundat atque effunditur. a metaphor from a river that overflows its banks and spreads out instead of keeping to its channel]; a fault which one is bound to censure, but which nevertheless stems from the very fact that he has so much to say [quod ut est reprehendendum, ita copiae uitium est]’.

(p. 4 ) The picture which this gives is of a lyric poet writing large- scale works on epic themes with a fullness of treatment running sometimes into the diffuse; and the papyrus fragments are now beginning to make clear how true this is. They have shown us another thing too, which the quotation fragments had not led us to expect, but which we can now see to lie behind Quintilian's words about ‘giving his characters their proper dignity both in their actions and in their words’: namely the amount of direct speech which Stesichoros puts on the lips of his various characters. We shall see plenty of this in the Geryoneis; and the papyrus fragments show that he did just the same in his other works as well. The scrap of the Nostoi has Helen speaking to Telemachos; the scrap of the Boar-Hunters is pure narrative, but that of the Eriphyle has a dialogue between Adrastos and Alkmaon; and in the tatters of the Sack of Troy the two coherent pieces that I have been able to put together (following Dr. West's work on the triad) are again in each case speeches. This is of course entirely in the Homeric vein: in the Iliad, the direct speech amounts to 45 per cent of the whole; I should suppose that the proportion in Stesichoros was very similar.

But it is time now for me to turn to the story of Geryon. I shall call him ‘Geryon’, as the most familiar form of his name; though in fact the normal ancient form is Geryones, or in Stesichoros’ Doric Garyonas; in Hesiod there is still a third form, Geryoneus.

One of the labours enjoined on Herakles by Eurystheus was to bring him the cattle of Geryon. This Geryon was a monster (I shall consider the detail of his monstrosity in a moment) whose father was a shadowy figure called Chrysaor, son of Poseidon by the Gorgon Medousa, and whose mother was the Okeanid Kallirrhoe. He lived in the island of Erytheia, out across the stream of the Okeanos, and equated at some stage—Stesichoros seems to accept, or at least to reflect, the identification—with one of the islands at the mouth of the Guadalquivir on which Cadiz now stands. He kept there a herd of cattle, guarded by a herdsman Eurytion and a two-headed dog Orthos, a brother of Kerberos (and, incidentally, first cousin to Geryon's own father). Herakles crossed the Okeanos, killed dog, herdsman, and Geryon himself, crossed the Okeanos again with the cattle, and drove them back to Tiryns.

Our earliest reference to the story is in Hesiod's Theogony (287–94). He tells of the birth of Chrysaor from Medousa, and then goes on:

And Chrysaor begot three-headed Geryoneus in union with Kallirrhoe, daughter of glorious Okeanos. Him did mighty Herakles kill, by his shambling cattle, in Erytheia amid the waters, on that day when he drove off his broad-browed cattle to holy Tiryns, crossing the stream of Okeanos, killing Orthos and the neatherd Eurytion in the misty steading beyond glorious Okeanos.

(p. 5 ) This is our earliest account; evidently the story was a familiar one at the time when these lines were composed, so that Stesichoros was breaking no fresh ground in his telling of it. (He was, as we know from other references, a vigorous innovator in some of the detail of some of his poems, and it is a priori likely enough that he innovated in the detail of the Geryoneis; but the main legend as he tells it is traditional.)

Our fullest account is in a very different work: the mythological handbook, probably of the first or second century ad, that goes under the name of Apollodoros. (It will go under that name, I should say, in this paper tonight: not because I believe Apollodoros wrote it, but because it is so much the simplest name to use.)

The tenth labour imposed on him was to fetch the cattle of Geryon from Erytheia. Erytheia was an island near the Okeanos, now called Gadeira. In it lived Geryon, the son of Chrysaor and Kallirrhoe daughter of Okeanos; his body was that of three men united at the belly but dividing into three from the waist and from the thighs. He owned a herd of red cattle, which were herded by Eurytion and guarded by the dog Orthos, a two-headed creature born from Echidna and Typhon. Herakles journeyed through Europe to fetch these cattle; he destroyed many wild animals, and set foot in Libya; and passing by Tartessos he left a monument of his journey by setting up two pillars over against one another at the boundaries of Europe and Libya. On his way he was heated by the Sun, and bent his bow at the god; and he, in admiration of his courage, gave him a golden cup, in which Herakles crossed the Okeanos. When he arrived at Erytheia he bivouacked on Mount Abas. The dog saw him, and rushed against him; but Herakles struck the dog with his club, and also killed the herdsman Eurytion when he came to help the dog. Menoites, who was pasturing the cattle of Hades there, reported this to Geryon; and he caught up with Herakles by the river Anthemous as he was driving the cattle away, joined battle with him, and was shot dead. Herakles then embarked the cattle in the cup, sailed across to Tartessos, and returned the cup to the Sun. (There then follows a lengthy narrative of all the things that happened to Herakles on his way home.)

I shall come back later to some of the detail of this account. For the moment I will confine myself to a brief consideration of the monstrosity of Geryon. In Hesiod he is ‘three- headed’. In Aeschylus and Euripides he is τριϲώματοϲ, three-bodied. The account in Apollodoros is the most circumstantial that we have: a kind of Siamese triplets united in the abdomen. There was evidently a similarly circumstantial account in Stesichoros; we have traces of it in the scholiast on the Theogony <287>, who says that Stesichoros ‘gave Geryon six arms and six legs and made him winged’. As the words stand they might I suppose be compatible with a single body provided, after the fashion—or rather beyond the fashion—of a Hindu deity, with a plethora of limbs; but since Geryon is invariably three-bodied in art, it seems to me quite (p. 6 ) safe to assume that the scholiast is merely mentioning features ignored by Hesiod (there is a καί in his account which is compatible with this), and that Geryon had three bodies in Stesichoros as well.

I have mentioned art; and having mentioned it I will show you one or two representations of the subject on sixth-century vases. And before I show them I would like to express my thanks to Professor Robertson for making it so easy for me to do so: I have been guided through the subject first by a paper he read in Oxford last term, and subsequently by the typescript of an article of his that is still only on its way into print;⁵ and finally he has crowned his kindness by actually lending me the slides. I could not have had better or more generous help; and I hope that in the use I make of it I shall say nothing of which he would disapprove. If I do, it will certainly be wrong.

The theme of Herakles' fight with Geryon is a very common one in sixth-century art. There are a few representations, on vases and elsewhere, that must be accounted pre-Stesichorean: the earliest is actually seventh-century, the others from about the first quarter of the sixth. But the vast majority of the representations—nearly seventy of them—are on vases that belong to the middle of the sixth century and its end; and it is likely enough that the impetus behind the popularity of the subject at this time is to be sought in Stesichoros' own poem.

It is not my purpose tonight, and certainly not within my competence, to give you a history of the legend in art; all I intend to do is to illustrate it from a very few of the more notable vases. Two of them are Chalkidian vases from the middle of the sixth century; two are Attic red-figure from its end. Between these come a vast number of Attic black-figure vases; but I pass over these as being, by and large, at once less informative and less attractive.

My first vase (fig. 1) is a Chalkidian neck-amphora from the middle of the sixth century.⁶ (The three pictures here are simply different aspects of the same vase.) The central figure is Herakles, drawing his bow and about to loose an arrow; facing him, Geryon—all three bodies erect, but with an arrow lodged apparently somewhere near the bottom of a throat. Behind Herakles his divine protectress Athena: she appears constantly on the vases, and we shall meet her in the poem as well. Behind her, the cattle. Dead, on the ground, the dog Orthos (no arrow in him, so perhaps clubbed, as in Apollodoros), and Eurytion, with an arrow in his back. Behind Geryon, a

(p. 7 ) chariot; but this can hardly belong to the legend, and is likely to be a separate picture drawn to fill the space.

The conformation of Geryon can be seen more clearly on a larger photograph of part of the same vase. He is three-headed, and presumably three-bodied (though his shields conceal this part of him); he is six-armed, and winged. All this accords with Stesichoros, but one feature does not: he supports this superstructure on a single pair of legs.

A second Chalkidian vase (fig. 2), an amphora of about the same date and ascribed to the same painter,⁷ shows fewer figures: Herakles, with Athena again behind him, and Geryon. Physically Geryon is the same as on the other vase: again winged, and again a single pair of legs. This time we are at a later stage in the fight, and the three bodies are clearly visible: two of them are already disposed of and are collapsing, one forward and one to the rear. There is no indication of arrows in either of the fallen bodies: Herakles, though he wears his quiver, is holding no bow and is gripping the third head by its helmet and driving a sword into its throat.

In two respects the portrayal of Geryon on these two vases is abnormal: all earlier representations, and all the later vases, give him six legs and no wings; and these two Chalkidian vases, with two legs and with wings, are exceptional. Now we know that the wings appeared in Stesichoros; but we know that the (p. 8 ) two legs did not. As far as the wings are concerned, I incline to suppose that they were an innovation of Stesichoros; and that they were taken over by this painter fairly soon after the poem became known but discarded later because they made Geryon too monstrous and complicated the picture unduly. For the legs, I agree entirely with a suggestion of Professor Robertson's: a six-legged Geryon, in side-view at least, is scarcely distinguishable from the three men side by side; our Chalkidian painter, concerned to stress the monstrosity, reduced the legs to two in order to make the three-in-one-ness visually apparent.

I now move to the end of the century and to my two Attic red- figure vases. The first of these (fig. 3), a cup painted by Euphronios,⁸ is not only a very good painting but the fullest of the lot: mythologically speaking perhaps too full. I am showing you first a detail, of the combatants: there is Geryon, with his six legs and no wings; one of his bodies has fallen back with an arrow in the eye, and Herakles after this success has given up his bow (though he still holds it, with a couple of arrows in his left hand) and is attacking the remaining bodies with his club. Orthos is dead between them, with an arrow in the chest.

And now the whole of the cup. Here again are the combatants; behind Herakles, Athena; behind her, Iolaos; and behind him, on the ground, Eurytion, still alive but bleeding from a wound in the chest. With the cattle, on the far side of the cup, three armed men. Behind Geryon, a woman, unnamed, in evident distress. She will be relevant to the surviving fragments of the poem. Iolaos and the armed men appear on no other vase than this; I should judge them to be quite out of place in what seems to have been essentially a solo expedition, and would suppose them to be an addition of Euphronios' own, made perhaps to fill out the very elongated field that this cup provided.

Now the second red-figure vase (fig. 4), a cup by the painter Oltos.⁹ The same six-legged and wingless Geryon, one body again fallen back with an arrow in the eye; but Herakles is this time attacking the remaining bodies with his bow. Behind Herakles, Athena and—uniquely—Iris; behind Geryon, once again the distressed woman. No dog; Eurytion on the ground, a wound in the chest.

I have said that I think it likely that it was Stesichoros' poem that gave the original impetus to the spate of paintings of the killing of Geryon. But this

(p. 9 ) does not mean, of course, that every painter when he depicted the incident had the poem itself in mind: the poem sparked off the tradition, but the tradition then developed on its own, the painters following their predecessors rather than the poet (though perhaps with an occasional booster from the poem), and modifying the detail from time to time as they found it artistically convenient. I would suppose that the Chalkidian paintings, in view both of their date and of their wings, are likely to follow most closely the detail of the poem; but it would be rash, of course, to construct the detail from the paintings alone.

Now at last I come to the actual fragments of the Geryoneis. I have transcribed on the handout the three quotation fragments and those fragments of

(p. 10 ) the papyrus which either offer a coherent text or give some kind of hint about the structure of the poem.

The papyrus was written early in the first century bc in a careful and regular hand. Now in three places we have in a single fragment parts of two adjacent columns, and in each case the metre in both columns can be identified; since we know the metrical structure, this enables us to deduce in each case the number of lines in a column, and each time that number is thirty. Since the hand is so regular, it is a reasonable working hypothesis that the number was consistent throughout the roll. In this case we can draw up a table indicating the metrical content of succeeding columns; and I have set out that table on the first page of the handout. There are 26 lines in a triad, 30 lines in a column; every column will begin at a point four lines later in the triad than its predecessor; after 13 columns, containing exactly 15 triads, we shall be back again where we began, and the 14th column will begin at the same point in the triad as the first.

In my table I have numbered the columns with roman numerals; and wherever we can identify the column to which a fragment belongs—which we can do immediately if the fragment comes from either the head or the foot of a column—I have put the column-number in the margin at the head of the text of the fragment. These numbers will be of considerable help in establishing the sequence of the fragments in the poem. But I must remind you that columns of the same number will keep recurring at intervals of 13 columns; so that two columns, say, with consecutive numbers need not themselves be consecutive, but may come at quite a distance apart.

We can tell from the column-numbers that the fragments of the papyrus extend over a pretty considerable stretch of the roll. Fr. 13 (E on the handout), (p. 11 ) from col. XI, is at least one whole sequence earlier than fr. 4 (K on the handout), also from col. XI; fr. 6 (M on the handout), from col. X, cannot in view of its content be adjacent to either of these, and so is at least one further sequence apart. This means that the fragments are spread over at least 26 columns, or 780 lines; and they may well be spread even more widely.

One fragment has in its margin a stichometric numeral, N—that is, line 1300 of the roll. This unfortunately tells us nothing: the fragment is so small a scrap that we have no clue to its content, and so cannot tell what stage in the poem has been reached by line 1300. That the roll contained at least 1300 lines was likely enough in any case: Pindar's Nemeans have 1261 lines, his Pythians 1983, Sappho's first Book 1320. And I add that we must allow for the possibility that the Geryoneis, like the Oresteia, occupied more than a single roll.

A word about the handout. In including supplements I have stuck my neck out slightly but not very far: I have supplied, that is, not only the certain but also the reasonably probable; I have plumped sometimes, rather than leave a gap, for one of two indifferent alternative possibilities; and in dealing with broken lines have articulated the letters or indicated the metre in what seems the most likely way, even though other ways might be possible. On the other hand I have included no supplements that do not fit the space; and I have made no supplements in places where I could not feel certain about the sense or about the general structure of the sentence.

I have also thought it better not to clutter up the handout by indicating the authorship of supplements. I have adopted some from Mr. Lobel and some from Professor Page, and have contributed others of my own; and some are the rather complicated kind where I have developed or modified a suggestion made by one of the others. My conscience is easy about this, since the supplements which are not my own are already in print—Mr. Lobel's in vol. xxxii of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Professor Page's in his new Oxford Text, Lyrica Graeca Selecta (where the principal fragments are included as Addenda); but I certainly owe it to these scholars to give a blanket warning that a good deal of the property here is not mine but theirs.

Now the text.

I leave my fragment A for the moment, and begin with B: a quotation fragment, describing the birth of the herdsman Eurytion. According to Strabo, who quotes it, Stesichoros says that Eurytion was born (γεννηθείη is his word, clearly not part of the quotation) ‘close over against famous Erytheia, by the limitless silver-rooted streams of the river Tartessos, within the hollow of a rock’. Now that we know the metre of the poem we can see that something is missing here: I have assumed it to be the verb τίκτεν, whose insertion allows us to fit the fragment into the beginning of an epode. (If (p. 12 ) there was such a verb in such a position, Strabo would have been compelled to omit it from his quotation to suit the form of his own sentence in which he quotes it.) Tartessos (the same word as Tarshish) is usually a town but here the river, the Guadalquivir. The παγαί are of course not its springs but its streams (the island lies off its mouth, not off its source); and I suppose them to be silver-rooted because Stesichoros conceives of the river as rising in the region of the silver mines from which the famous silver of Tartessos was obtained.

We have no notion at what precise point in the narrative this description came: at latest, of course, at the time when Eurytion is killed. And here I have one thing to say. In Apollodoros Herakles kills the dog Orthos and Eurytion when he first makes contact with the herd; the fight with Geryon comes only later, when Geryon arrives to recover the herd after Herakles has driven it away. I have no doubt whatever that the sequence of events in Stesichoros was the same. In many of the vase-paintings Eurytion (with or without a dog) is lying dead or dying at the feet of the combatants; which might create the impression that the painters were following a version in which the fight followed in the same spot as the killing of Eurytion and Orthos, and so more or less immediately after it. But this impression was never intended: the painters, concerned to fill their field with the persons and incidents of the legend, are perfectly willing to telescope those incidents both in time and in space. All one was meant to read into the paintings was ‘here is Herakles fighting Geryon after killing Eurytion and Orthos’; just where he killed them, or how soon before, is a question with which the painter was not concerned and which his public could be relied on not to ask.

I move on next to the fragment marked E on my handout. You may think, when you look at the handout, that I have been composing Greek lyric poetry rather than reconstructing it; but in fact we are lucky enough, in many places, to have just the right words or parts of words surviving for reconstruction to be fairly plain sailing.

The fragment contains a speech and its introduction. The speaker is Geryon: this is evident from line 27, περὶ βουϲὶν ἐμαῖϲ. In lines 1–4 Geryon is designated: ‘to him in answer spoke … so-and-so’. All that survives of the actual designation is in line 4 the letters θανατοιο or θανατοιϲ; as part of a designation this can hardly be anything other than the genitive ἀθανάτοιο, and genealogy and metre then conspire to make it at least very probable that the words were as I have put them down, ‘to him in answer spoke the doughty son of immortal Chrysaor and of Kallirrhoe’. We have no other evidence for the immortality of Chrysaor; but so little in any case is said about him anywhere that this need cause us no surprise. His father was Poseidon; his mother Medousa was admittedly the one mortal Gorgon of the three; but his (p. 13 ) full brother, the horse Pegasos, was immortal, champing away in Pindar's time at the mangers of Olympos. And in any case Chrysaor's immortality seems to have especial point in the speech that follows.

Geryon in this speech is replying to a speech by another person—a male, since Geryon addresses him in 16 with an ὦ ϕίλε whose termination is guaranteed by metre. And it is evident that that person has been trying to dissuade him from fighting with Herakles. The occasion therefore is at some point after Herakles has arrived in Erytheia and begun his cattle- rustling, but before Geryon himself has made contact with him. Whom then is Geryon addressing? Not his father Chrysaor: not at least if my supplements in 3 and 4 are right—you do not say ‘to Chrysaor spoke the son of immortal Chrysaor’: nor does ὦ ϕίλε seem a likely way to address one's father. Not Eurytion: if Herakles has attacked the herd already, Eurytion is dead. Whom else? At this point I come back again to Apollodoros: when Herakles had killed Eurytion and Orthos, Menoites, who was pasturing the cattle of Hades in the neighbourhood, came and told Geryon what had happened. I suppose this account to derive—via what intermediaries I shall not conjecture—from Stesichoros himself. If one thinks about Menoites, he is a very unexpected character in the narrative: what is he, and what are the cattle of Hades, doing on Geryon's island at all? Why should Geryon not be present when Herakles makes his attack? Why should he not visit the herd, find dog and herdsman dead and cattle gone, and track the cattle till he comes up with Herakles? In a prose narrative, no reason at all; but in epic or quasi-epic, every reason—only if the news is brought to Geryon at home, when he is remote from his herd, can we have before he sets out the long series of speeches and counter-speeches which the poet delights to compose, and which as we shall see Stesichoros did compose on this occasion. I think therefore that there is every reason to suppose that Menoites here derives from an epic or quasi-epic source; and since he fits so suitably into Stesichoros' account, I am very willing to suppose that source to be Stesichoros himself.

At this point I go back a little, to fragments C and D.C comes from cols. VI and VII; if these columns are in the same sequence as Geryon's speech in col. XI, there are 105 lines between the last line of C and the first of E. On the first part of C I shall waste no words. The second part, in col. VII, may I think come from Menoites' description of Herakles. First, its position is suitable: Menoites describes Herakles and what he has done; Geryon says ‘I'm going to fight him’; Menoites replies ‘I wouldn't if I were you’; 105 lines is a quite likely stretch to be covered by this amount of speech-making. Secondly, ποκα in line 3 points to a speech: ποτε in Homer comes predominantly in speeches. Thirdly, in line 2 a nominative ending in -δόκα is very likely ‘quiver’ (whether ἰοδόκα or οἰϲτοδόκα: space would suggest the latter); and if in a speech (p. 14 ) ‘quiver’ occurs in the nominative, then a description of Herakles' appearance is a promising place. Obviously this identification can only be very tentative; nevertheless the possibility is worth pointing out.

For the second fragment, D, we have no external means of establishing a position. But ὦ ϕίλε suggests the Geryon-Menoites dialogue; and one possibility is that Menoites is appealing to Geryon to consider his mother and father before he fights.

Now back again to E. Geryon begins: ‘Do not seek to affright my lordly spirit with words of chilly death’. The restoration is basically that of Professor Page, but modified by me. After ‘don't try to frighten my …’ we must have ‘spirit’, which gives ἀγάνορα θυμόν; then θα[ in 5 is ‘death’, ]τα at the beginning of 6 is the end of an adjective agreeing with it, and between them there will be a verb to govern them. The next line, ‘and don't (something) me’, I have not tried to restore: after μηδέ there will be either an elided με plus a word beginning ελ[, or an unelided με plus a word beginning λ[. With ἐλέγχεα coming just below I should prefer to avoid it, or its cognates, here; probably therefore something beginning λ[ is the more likely articulation.

Then Geryon proceeds to consider alternative possibilities and their consequences: the first with 7 αἰ μὲν γάρ, the second with 16 αἰ δέ. The restoration of the two if-clauses is pretty secure. In the second, a noun in -ραϲ (16) can only be πεῖραϲ or γῆραϲ; the Homeric ἐπὶ γῆραϲ ἱκέϲθαι at once suggests itself. Then in the first, αγη[ in 9 will obviously be its converse, ἀγήραοϲ or ἀγήρωϲ. Now it is καὶ ἀγήρωϲ; in Homer ἀγήραοϲ is constantly coupled with ἀθάνατοϲ, ‘immortal and unaging’, and so it must be here. This, with a verb in -μαι between them, gives ἀθάνατόϲ τ᾽ ἔϲομαι καὶ ἀγήρωϲ, ‘if I am going to be immortal and unaging in Olympos’; then before ἀθάνατοϲ presumably a vocative, and for the end of 9 πὰρ μακάρεϲϲι θεοῖϲ is of itself suitable and gives, as we shall see, the converse of what is said in the second if-clause. So we have ‘if, my friend, I am to be immortal and unaging with the blessed gods in Olympos’.

For the second if-clause, we have already established ἐπὶ γῆραϲ ἱκέϲθαι; before it my supplement seems inevitable—‘But if, my friend, I am bound to reach hateful old age’. Then, with an adverb in -θε, the obvious sense will be ‘and to live apart from the immortals’ (ἄνευθε, ἀπάνευθε); and this leaves us with ἐν, in or among, something beginning with epsilon. For this I would suppose ἐϕαμερίοιϲ to be at least very likely: ‘but if, my friend, I am bound to reach hateful old age and to live among creatures of a day, sundered from the blessed gods…’.

These are the alternatives; what are their respective consequences? In each case Geryon says that the better, or the nobler, course is so-and-so; what are the so-and-sos?

(p. 15 ) At this point we should look at the Iliad. In book 12 Sarpedon is encouraging Glaukos to join in the attack on the wall. ‘Why’, he says (I am paraphrasing here)—‘why do we two have such honour and such wealth in Lycia? Because we have it we must fight in the front of the battle, so that the Lycians may say of us that our wealth is matched by our glory in war.’ Noblesse, that is, oblige. And then he goes on (322–8):

‘Oh my friend’ [ὦ πέπον, he says; this may lend some support to my restoration of πέπον in Stesichoros, line 8]—‘oh my friend, if once escaped from this war we were going to be forever ageless and immortal, neither would I myself fight in the front of the battle nor would I send you on into the fighting that gives men glory; but as things are, since the black κῆρεϲ of death in fact beset us beyond number, and no mortal man can escape them or avoid them—let us go on, whether we shall give glory to another or another to us.’

This passage is not only great poetry: it is, as great poetry usually is, logically sound. The first alternative is a mere pipe-dream, expressed in the optative: if we had immortality assured us if we survive the war, then our obvious course would be to survive the war and to refuse to fight; but we have not—we have got to die like every man; and since we have got to die in any case, then let us fight, and die if we must with honour.

But Geryon's speech is different. In his first alternative immortality is not a mere pipe-dream but a serious prospect; the verb he uses is indicative, and whether my actual supplement of ἔϲομαι is right or wrong the termination ]μαι is certain, and any other verb that one restores in its place will be equally indicative. Immortality as I say is a serious prospect: his father is immortal (as the poet has reminded us a few lines before); his mother, an Okeanid, is presumably immortal too; it is entirely on the cards that he himself will inherit their immortality. What is the logic going to be now? It is not a question, as it was in the Iliad, of becoming immortal if he survives this present crisis, it is a question of being destined for immortality in any case. The logical thing then would be simple: if I am going to be immortal, fight Herakles, since he will not in any case be able to kill me; if I am not, fight him just the same, and risk honourable death rather than accept an old age of disgrace. Perhaps indeed this is what Geryon says; but I doubt it. The second alternative is pretty clearly along those lines (though I cannot feel any certainty about the precise construction): perhaps ‘it is far more καλόν for me to endure whatever is fated, so that shame and disgrace may not attend on me and on all my family from the lips of those who tell hereafter of the son of Chrysaor; may not that be the will of the blessed gods’. That must at least be the general sense of the second alternative; but for the first alternative I am by no means sanguine of restoring ‘fight in any case, since he won't be (p. 16 ) able to kill me’. It looks more likely to be ‘it is better to endure disgrace and to allow Herakles to make away with my cattle’ (in line 14, perhaps some part of κεραΐζειν); and this, after the indicative of the protasis, will not be as competent as I should have hoped.

But there we are. The passage is clearly modelled on Iliad 12, in language which, so far as one can restore it, is no mean adaptation of an exemplar which neither Stesichoros nor any poet could hope to surpass or even to equal; and if the logic does break down in the first alternative, the vigour and pathos of the whole will still remain. One begins to see why the ancient critics speak as they do of Stesichoros' concern with the debita dignitas of his characters.

The next piece on my handout, F, was hardly worth including at all. The vocative Κρονίδα βαϲιλεῦ seems a necessary restoration, and shows that the fragment belongs to a speech; the preceding line looks to have contained ἀδίκοιϲιν; for a guess therefore, a speech by Geryon in indignation at the robbery.

Next, G. There is no doubt about this: Geryon's mother Kallirrhoe is appealing to him, and appealing to him not to fight. And here the papyrus throws light on the vases: the distressed woman whom we saw on two of the vases, and whose identity had been much discussed, will certainly be Kallirrhoe.

In lines 4 and 5: ‘I beseech you, Geryon, if ever I gave you my breast to suck.’ The restoration depends on the parallel, first drawn by Mr. Lobel, with Hekabe's appeal to Hektor in Iliad 22, when she tries to dissuade him from fighting Achilles: εἴ ποτέ τοι λαθικηδέα μαζὸν ἐπέϲχον. Once again we have Stesichoros adapting an Homeric exemplar. And the first lines smack of another Homeric exemplar, when Thetis says to Achilles τί νυ ϲ᾽ ἔτρεϕον αἰνὰ τεκοῦϲα; The parallel depends, I grant, on my supplement at the beginning of line 3 <ἀλαϲ[τοτόκοϲ>, but I am fairly hopeful that the supplement is right. In the αλαϲ[ at the end of line 2 both the vowels have grave accents in the papyrus: that means that according to our way of writing accents the accent comes on a syllable subsequent to these. The word therefore is a part not of ἄλαϲτοϲ but of some derivative or compound: no word known to the lexica is of any use, but this compound is right for space (it tallies, that is, with the supplement in 5), is rhetorically effective, and is of course entirely possible linguistically. She calls herself ‘wretched, calamitous in my motherhood, calamitous in my fate’.

I cannot supply the beginning of 4: I should have expected ἀλλά ϲε, but it is too short; νῦν δέ ϲε is too long; and I have failed to think of anything in between. In 8 and 9 she may be begging him to stay παρὰ ματρὶ ϕίλαι (which would be right for space) and to take delight in εὐϕροϲύναι, good cheer; but I (p. 17 ) am puzzled by the tense, the aorist, of what seems bound to be γανυθείϲ or γανυθέντα, ‘delighting’. In 10 she may have finished speaking and be doing something to her fragrant peplos, her θυώδεα πέπλον; perhaps, as Hekabe does, exposing her breast. But the remains are too slight for more than speculation.

For the moment I shall pass over H and proceed to I. The essential solution—lines 25–9—is due to Professor Page, and only the adverb is mine: ‘then did grey-eyed Athena speak in her wisdom to her stout-hearted father's brother who fares by horse’—that is, to Poseidon; both Homeric epithets, though neither is applied in Homer to Poseidon. Now Poseidon is Geryon's paternal grandfather, and so has an obvious personal interest in the conflict. And Athena says to him ‘come, remember the promise you made’ (good Homeric language again)—remember your promise and…do what? At first blush, seeing Γαρυόναν θανάτου together, one thinks ‘save Geryon from death’; but this will never do. Athena is Herakles' great champion, constantly helping him in his labours, constantly shown on the vases as standing behind him and lending him her support: she cannot conceivably be urging Poseidon to save his victim. Professor Page, in the apparatus to his Oxford text, propounds a solution: Athena is saying ‘you try to save Geryon; I shall help Herakles’. This is certainly better, but I still find it unconvincing: Athena's part is surely to dissuade Poseidon from interfering at all (and the vases, I may add, show no trace of his helping Geryon). I have put down on the handout another solution which I think is much more what one would expect: remember your promise and do not try to save Geryon from death. This means that we must suppose that Athena has somehow squared Poseidon earlier in the poem; I have no notion how she managed to square him, but I find no difficulty in assuming that somehow she did.

Finally, where does the fragment belong? Again perhaps we may draw an analogy from the killing of Hektor in the Iliad: after Achilles has come against Hektor, and Hektor has turned and fled, the gods are all watching them; and Zeus, whose own sympathies are all with Hektor, inquires of the others whether they should save him or let him die. Athena protests; and Zeus gives way. Then (after a little intervention by Athena) the battle begins.

Now our fragment comes from the foot of col. VIII; and fragment K begins in the middle of col. XI, with Herakles about to join battle with Geryon. If the two columns are in the same sequence, there will be 73 lines between the fragments. This would give a divine discussion in much the same position as in Iliad 22. I would suppose that after rejecting his mother's plea Geryon goes off in quest of Herakles and the cattle; and that in the interval between his going off and his finding them we have this divine interlude. After Athena's speech there will be a reply by Poseidon and then I suppose an account of (p. 18 ) how Geryon comes upon Herakles; the 73 lines would accommodate this very suitably.

The fragment begins with the broken lines ‘stayed with Zeus the king of all’ (the epithet is pretty secure: we knew it from Alkaios and an Orphic hymn). Who stayed, in the singular? I find it hard to see why one particular deity should be singled out: is it perhaps none of the gods—οὔ τιϲ ἔμιμνε παραὶ Δία παμβαϲιλῆα θεῶν? Is their interest in the battle so intense that they desert Olympos and come down to watch from close at hand? And is it then that Athena, mistrusting Poseidon's presence, delivers this reminder to keep him in order?

Now I revert for a moment to H. Line 19 begins πείθου τέκνον: my child, do as I say. (The initial π is represented only by a speck, but no other letter gives sense; the form as it stands is Attic, and impossible for Stesichoros, but can easily be supposed to be a corruption of an original πείθευ.) This immediately suggests that again we have Kallirrhoe speaking to Geryon; and the problem is then to relate this fragment to fragment G.

A moment ago I was supposing that I, the divine interlude, followed after Geryon's rejection of Kallirrhoe's appeal; and I is from col. VIII. Now H is from the foot of col. VI; if therefore it is Kallirrhoe speaking to Geryon, it will (on my supposition) come two columns before I. Now G, which is certainly Kallirrhoe to Geryon, is from an unknown column but not from VI or VII (and if from VIII, not the same VIII as I); if therefore G comes close to H, it comes before it, in one of cols. I–V.

So far so good. But now consider the beginning of H, line 15: this looks to be ἰδοῖϲά τε νιϲόμενον, ‘and seeing him coming’, and this suggests the introduction to a speech, ἰδοῖϲά τε νιϲόμενον ποτέϕα: and seeing him coming she addressed him. But this is no way to introduce Kallirrhoe's second speech to Geryon in the same complex as G; so that if G and H belong together, G comes after H. But in that case H cannot come two columns before I, since that leaves no room for G between the two; and either the divine interlude comes elsewhere or a whole sequence of 13 columns has to be inserted between H and I.

I do not know the answer to this. It may well be that my notion about ‘seeing him coming she addressed him’ is all wrong; and if it is, my arrangement can stand. But if it is right, I shall have to think again. The problem serves as a warning about the dangers of reconstructing a text as fragmentary as this.

Now K: the lower halves of two consecutive columns. In the first, Herakles has evidently caught sight of Geryon approaching, and is debating with himself about the tactics to use. In 18, νόωι διέλεν is presumably ‘decided’ (a rather odd use); then (20–2) ‘it seemed to him to be by far the better course (p. 19 ) [Homeric, but with an odd Euboian infinitive εἶν for εἶναι] to keep his distance [at a guess: ἀπάνευθε κιόντα or the like] and make war covertly against this powerful man’. In 23 perhaps εὐράξ (Homeric, meaning ‘on the side’): ‘taking his stand to his flank he devised for him bitter doom.’ I will stop there for the moment, and come back to the rest of the column later.

In the second column the text reappears as the poet is talking about an arrow, in the nominative: it is ‘bearing [or some such verb] the end of a hateful death, with doom about its head [an extraordinary use of κεϕαλά for the head of an arrow],¹⁰ besmeasured with blood and (some kind of) gall’ (an adjective has gone; the gall is the hydra's, which Herakles traditionally used as his poison); then, with ὀδύναιϲιν strangely in apposition to χολᾶι, ‘the agony of the man-destroying sheeny-necked hydra’. That describes the arrow; and now Herakles uses it. ‘And in silence, stealthily, he drove it into his forehead: and it cut through flesh and bone by the dispensation of the daimon; and it carried right through, did the arrow, to the very crown of his head and stained with crimson blood his breastplate and gory limbs.’

Here there are patent reminiscences of Homeric wounds. At the same time there are two things which are very strange. One (suggested to me by Dr. West) is the remarkable trajectory of an arrow which hits someone in the forehead and comes out at the top of his head; the other is the verb ἐνέρειϲε, which suggests not a missile but a thrusting blow (it is what they do to the stake when they thrust it into the Cyclops' eye); so that one may be tempted to wonder whether Herakles is perhaps stabbing Geryon with an arrow. But of course he cannot be: everything else points to a normal missile arrow—‘silently and by stealth’, and perhaps above all line 21, ‘it carried right through to the very crown of his head’, which can be said surely only of a weapon travelling under its own impetus (the verb is thus used four times in Homer, always of a missile, whether arrow or spear). I remark also on δαίμονοϲ αἴϲαι: success with the more chancy missile is what might more readily be ascribed to the working of the daimon.

So despite the oddities I am confident that the wound is a wound by a missile arrow. The question now comes: which body? And I would suppose the first. In our two red-figure vases we saw the first body disposed of by an arrow in the eye: very much the wound we have here. And in the vase-paintings Herakles commonly begins with his bow but proceeds to other weapons for subsequent bodies—in one Chalkidian vase he is attacking the third body with a sword, in Euphronios the second body with his club. And this variety would be the natural choice for an epic or quasi-epic poet, so that the killing of the various bodies should not be repetitious, and should hold (p. 20 ) the interest of his audience. My fragment L is of possible interest here: in one line ‘second’, in the next line ‘club’. But of course it might come from elsewhere in the poem; and I would point out that if it follows K there must be at least 57 lines between the two.

Back now to the end of the first column. In 25 someone seems to be holding a shield, apparently in front of something, πρόϲθε; this can only be Geryon—Herakles does not carry a shield. Then we have ‘from his head’, ‘horse-plumed helmet’, and ‘on the ground’. Professor Page suggests that Herakles hits Geryon on a head with a stone and knocks off its helmet, which clatters on the ground. But this surely is a strange tactic when one has a bow to use; and it must be noted that the vases at all stages of the fight regularly show the helmets all in place on their heads. Nevertheless the possibility must remain in play if no more convincing solution can be found. As an alternative, I remark that the remains might be compatible with a quite different interpretation: Herakles shoots an arrow, but hits Geryon on a helmet; the helmet wards it off from the head, and the arrow falls useless to the ground. As still another alternative: it may be that the body of the second column is after all the second, and that the first one is being disposed of here; though if so it would seem to me that the disposal is proceeding rather rapidly for Stesichoros' unhurried style.

My fragment O ought perhaps to be considered in this context: it comes from the head of a col. XII, and might therefore be the top of the second column of K. But I can make nothing of it: it mentions a head and, apparently, an ear, ὦαϲ, so that it might prima facie belong; but I have been able to extract no sense that fits either this context or any other.

Now finally the last lines of K. Here, in our one bit of continuous narrative, comes still another Homeric feature, a simile: ‘And Geryon inclined his neck at an angle, like a poppy, that spoiling its tender form forthwith sheds its petals and…’—and there the fragment ends. Again we have a clear reminiscence of Homer: in Iliad 8, of a man shot in the chest by an arrow, ‘just as a poppy droops its head to one side, a poppy in a garden, weighed down with fruit and with the showers of spring, so he let his head sink to one side all heavy with its helmet’. Though I find Stesichoros' language here a little odd: αἶψα passes my understanding.

Now I leave the fight with Geryon, and come to Herakles' journeying. He will have gone out by foot to the hither shore of the Okeanos; but at that point he had the problem of crossing the Okeanos to Erytheia. Stesichoros solved the problem for him by having the Sun give him the loan of a golden cup: the cup in which once he had reached the west in the evening he was carried back along the Okeanos to the east, ready for his next day's westward journey. The cup itself was well established in legend: we have it, described (p. 21 ) for its own sake, in the famous lines of Mimnermos <fr. 12 West>. But was its use by Herakles traditional? Or was it Stesichoros' own inspiration? I should certainly like—though I cannot of course prove it—to think the latter.

Herakles has to make two journeys in the cup: out to Erytheia, then back again with the cattle. Does he keep the cup for the whole period, or does he borrow it separately and briefly for each of the two journeys? I suspect the latter. This would certainly be the most convenient course for the Sun; but in this world of fantasy such practical details might be overlooked. There is however another consideration that tells the same way. In Apollodoros the Sun lends Herakles the cup in admiration, after Herakles has threatened him with his bow for making him too hot: this surely happens towards sunset, as the Sun comes uncomfortably close to Herakles in the far west as he loses altitude before setting. And then in Apollodoros Herakles on reaching Erytheia bivouacs on Mount Abas; that again suggests an evening journey after which Herakles settles down for the night. But if he crosses to Erytheia in the late evening, Herakles must then surrender the cup to the Sun for his eastward journey; then he will borrow it again next evening (or a later one) for the return.

Now in fragment N we have the Sun embarking in the cup and Herakles setting off on foot: evidently Herakles has just surrendered the cup to the Sun. Now if there is only a single borrowing, for the whole round trip, this must be on the return; but if there are separate borrowings, it can be after either journey.

Consider now the text of the fragment. (Now that we know the metre, the transmitted text can be seen to have been slightly corrupt; I have made what seem to me the most likely changes.) ‘Then did the son of Hyperion embark in his golden cup, that crossing through the Okeanos he might come to the depths of holy dark night, to his mother and his wedded wife and his dear children; but the other, the son of Zeus, went on foot into the wood shadowy with laurel-trees.’ Is this the landing on Erytheia? Or the return to the mainland with the cattle? I think surely the former; if the latter, I do not see how the cattle could be ignored.

Now fragment M. This is again the journeying in the cup: ‘Over the waves of the deep brine they came to the beautiful island of the gods, where the Hesperides have their all-golden abode.’ And then in 6 I think καλύκων, of the buds on their apple-tree.

Two things here seem certain. One is that the fetching of the cattle of Geryon and of the apples of the Hesperides are different labours, enjoined by Eurystheus at quite separate times; we cannot therefore have Herakles collecting the apples in a poem devoted to the other and quite unconnected labour. The second is that the island of the gods, where the Hesperides tend (p. 22 ) their apple-tree, is a quite separate island from Erytheia. There is therefore only one possibility: that in making his crossing to or from Erytheia Herakles touches at the island of the Hesperides; that is, that Stesichoros takes the opportunity, with Herakles in the neighbourhood, to throw in simply for its own sake a brief descriptive passage about this wonderland. We know that he mentioned in the Geryoneis another Atlantic island, the island of Sarpedon: it seems not unlikely that the mention came in the same context as this fragment.

But there is still one problem remaining: the subject of ἀϕίκοντο is plural. Who are ‘they’? One might think of Iolaos and the armed men on the Euphronios vase; but these are surely only a private venture of Euphronios—no trace of them anywhere else, the whole expedition reeks of single-handedness, and I would say that there is strong evidence for the single-handedness in the last line of fragment N, where it is Herakles (and no other mentioned) who sets off into the shadowy wood.

I can think of two possibilities. One is that the cup—which was a magic cup, self-propelled and self-steering—should have a personality and be included with Herakles in the ‘they’. The other is that this is the return journey, and that ‘they’ is Herakles and the cattle. I find neither of these suggestions attractive; but I have no better one to offer.

Finally, I go back to my fragment A. Herakles, besides his major labours, had all manner of secondary exploits and adventures; and it was inevitable that these should attach themselves to the periphery of the major ones. One of them was a fight with the Centaurs that took place when Herakles persuaded one of their number, Pholos, to let him drink from a jar of wine that he was guarding as the Centaurs' common property. Here we have the antecedents of the fight: ‘and he took a pot-like cup, of some three flagons measure, that Pholos had mixed and set before him, and put it to his lips and drank.’ Evidently therefore Stesichoros took the opportunity to allow Herakles, whether on the outward or the homeward journey, to perform some of these minor exploits. But the language here suggests that they were dealt with summarily: when the giving of the wine that was the casus belli is mentioned here so casually, I cannot feel that the incident was recounted at length.

That then is what we know, or can conjecture, about the Geryoneis.

And now I would like first to say very briefly something that I have felt for a long time and become convinced of after working on these fragments: that I do not believe for a moment that this was choral lyric, as it has so often been said to be. Choral presentation of a work of this kind and this length would surely be intolerable. It will have been delivered, surely, like the epic on which (p. 23 ) it is based, by a single performer, accompanying himself doubtless on the lyre.¹¹

And then to sum up my impression of the poetry. When so much of Stesichoros' effect must have been achieved on the grand scale, by the broad sweep of his narrative, it would be unfair to judge him more than provisionally on these tattered and uncertain scraps; but even from these something has begun to emerge. One can see now something of the merits that the ancient critics found: the resemblance to Homer, the dignity of his characters, the grandeur of his theme. At the same time one can see something of his faults: a certain lack of control, evinced not merely in the over-fullness or diffuseness that Quintilian castigates but also, I suspect, in a certain carelessness or muddle-headedness in his thought and language. But the faults, so far as one can tell, weigh little against the merits: my appetite is whetted, and I hope most earnestly that the papyri will one day give us something that we can really read and really judge.

APPENDIX: THE HANDOUT