Theocritus’ 'Herakliskos' (eid. 24). Introduction, text, translation, commentary

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Hans Bernsdorff
• Subject Area: Greek and Latin Philology
• Term: from 2020 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 449839861

In this project I aim to comment on a central text of Greek poetry (under contract with Oxford University Press). It comes from the first half of the third century BC and therefore belongs to the Hellenistic period, the poetry of which had a considerable impact on the literary production of later times. I here only mention the Roman poetry of the Augustan period (in Theocritus’ case Vergil in particular), but also modern European literature, in German. Scholarship on Hellenistic poetry has made an enormous progress within the last thirty years or so, in which new perspectives of research have been opened, e.g. on the question whether Hellenistic poetry, part of which was created in Ptolemaic Alexandria, could refer to an Egyptian backround. Theocritus’ 24th Idyll attempts to embrace Heracles’ whole heroic career in 172 hexameters. It focuses upon his first deed as a baby: the strangling of the two snakes sent by Hera to kill Heracles and his brother Iphicles. Due to this focus on the appealing themes of childhood and homely life, which entail a miniaturizing of the heroic, the text belongs to the most popular of Hellenistic poetry, all the more so since it is believed to combine many typical traits of Hellenistic aesthetics in a nutshell.Thus it is all the more surprising that there is no proper full-scale commentary on the text. The monumental Theocritus commentary by A. S. F. Gow is still indispensable for the discussion of textual and exegetical problems, but it is now almost 70 years old. Its interests, therefore, are partly different from those of today’s readers. The only attempt to treat the poem in a single, detailed commentary is unsatisfactory. Thus, after other idylls of Theocritus have recently found competent commentators, it is time to make the Herakliskos the object of a detailed explanation. Such a restriction to a relatively small number of verses seems wise in order to do justice to the high complexity of the poem.The general aims of the new commentary shall be:(i) to apply more recent methods and tools of interpretation (e.g. narratology, intertextuality, structuralistic analysis) to the Herakliskos;(ii) to make critical use of the results of recent scholarship on Hellenistic poetry and make them accessible for the reader of a single text; (iii) to include new textual evidence (papyrological, inscriptional, in medieval codices) for establishing a new text of the Herakliskos itself. New findings in the area of related texts (e.g. Posidippus’ epigrams on the Milan Roll) can help the interpretation of our poem;(iv) to include the results of recent scholarship in related areas of research such as ancient history, classical archaeology, Egyptology and history of religion.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants