TFBT: What Poets?

 

The Attican Study Group was recently translating Paus. 10.13.7-8

Ἡρακλῆς δὲ καὶ Ἀπόλλων ἔχονται τοῦ τρίποδος καὶ ἐς μάχην περὶ αὐτοῦ καθίστανται: Λητὼ μὲν δὴ καὶ Ἄρτεμις Ἀπόλλωνα, Ἀθηνᾶ δὲ Ἡρακλέα ἐπέχουσι τοῦ θυμοῦ. Φωκέων καὶ τοῦτό ἐστιν ἀνάθημα, ὅτε σφίσιν ἐπὶ τοὺς Θεσσαλοὺς Τελλίας ἡγήσατο Ἠλεῖος. … λέγεται δὲ ὑπὸ Δελφῶν Ἡρακλεῖ τῷ Ἀμφιτρύωνος ἐλθόντι ἐπὶ τὸ χρηστήριον τὴν πρόμαντιν Ξενόκλειαν οὐκ ἐθελῆσαί οἱ χρᾶν διὰ τοῦ Ἰφίτου τὸν φόνον: τὸν δὲ ἀράμενον τὸν τρίποδα ἐκ τοῦ ναοῦ φέρειν ἔξω, ..τότε δὲ ὁ Ἀμφιτρύωνος τόν τε τρίποδα ἀποδίδωσι τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι καὶ παρὰ τῆς Ξενοκλείας ὁπόσα ἐδεῖτο ἐδιδάχθη. παραδεξάμενοι δὲ οἱ ποιηταὶ τὸν λόγον μάχην Ἡρακλέους πρὸς Ἀπόλλωνα ὑπὲρ τρίποδος ᾁδουσιν.

Heracles and Apollo are holding on to the tripod, and are preparing to fight about it. Leto and Artemis are calming Apollo, and Athena is calming Heracles. This too is an offering of the Phocians, dedicated when Tellias of Elis led them against the Thessalians… The Delphians say that when Heracles the son of Amphitryon came to the oracle, the prophetess Xenocleia refused to give a response on the ground that he was guilty of the death of Iphitus. Whereupon Heracles took up the tripod and carried it out of the temple… On the occasion to which I refer the son of Amphitryon restored the tripod to Apollo, and was told by Xenocleia all he wished to know. The poets adopted the story, and sing about a fight between Heracles and Apollo for a tripod.

I have posted the pertinent parts for the following discussion.  (I hope I got the Greek right.)  First let me tell you that figuring out that ἐπέχουσι meant “calming” was quite the effort.  But when the dust selected, one of the students asked “What poets?”  We could recall nothing in Hesiod or Homer.  After class I looked at the Library because Apollodorus wrote about everything;

Apollodorus 2.6.2   “Not long after, some cattle were stolen from Euboea by Autolycus, and Eurytus supposed that it was done by Hercules; but Iphitus did not believe it and went to Hercules. And meeting him, as he came from Pherae after saving the dead Alcestis for Admetus, he invited him to seek the kine with him. Hercules promised to do so and entertained him; but going mad again he threw him from the walls of Tiryns.  Wishing to be purified of the murder he repaired to Neleus, who was prince of the Pylians. And when Neleus rejected his request on the score of his friendship with Eurytus, he went to Amyclae and was purified by Deiphobus, son of Hippolytus. But being afflicted with a dire disease on account of the murder of Iphitus he went to Delphi and inquired how he might be rid of the disease. As the Pythian priestess answered him not by oracles, he was fain to plunder the temple, and, carrying off the tripod, to institute an oracle of his own. But Apollo fought him,¹⁷⁴ and Zeus threw a thunderbolt between them. When they had thus been parted, Hercules received an oracle, which declared that the remedy for his disease was for him to be sold, and to serve for three years, and to pay compensation for the murder to Eurytus.”

My classmates question still remains,  “What poets? “ in the plural.  That is pretty easy, just look at Frazer’s commentary on Pausanias for other sources of the story.

Footnote 174; As to the attempt of Herakles to carry off the tripod, see Plut. De EI apud Delphos 6; Plut. De sera numinis vindicta 12 (who says that Herakles carried it off to Pheneus); Paus. 3.21.8, Paus. 8.37.1, Paus. 10.13.7ff.; Scholiast on Pind. O.9.29(43); Cicero, De natura deorum iii.16.42; Hyginus, Fab. 32; Serv. Verg. A. 8.300. The subject was often represented in ancient art; for example, it was sculptured in the gable of the Treasury of the Siphnians at Delphi; the principal pieces of the sculpture were discovered by the French in their excavation of the sanctuary. See E. Bourguet, Les ruines de Delphes(Paris, 1914), pp. 76ff., and Frazer, commentary on Pausanias, vol. v. pp. 274ff.

Still I had some vague memories of the poet Robert Graves discussing this battle;

“Heracles’s seizure of the Delphic tripod apparently records a Dorian capture of the shrine;” (The Greek Myths; The Murder of Iphitus, footnote 2)

Graves believes the mythical Return of the Heraclides (Heracles’ descendants claiming their birthright to territories in Peloponnesia reflects the historic Dorian invasion of the peninsula

So there you go, that’s all the poets I could find that sang of Apollo and Heracles wrestling over the Pythia’s tripod at Delphi