Hesiod's Descriptions of Tartarus ("Theogony" 721-819)

Abstract

SUSPECTED INTERPOLATIONS ARE, whatever their other uses, a good indication of scholarly unease, and by this measure Hesiod's account of the underworld (Theogony 721-819) has left scholars more puzzled than most passages in what is, all told, a rather puzzling poem. This unease has continued to affect the great modern editors of the text: West (1966: 50) believed that the passage provided the best evidence for archaic interpolations in the Theogony; Solmsen (1982: 14-18) came to doubt that Hesiod should be credited with any of it. But while we have no firm basis for trusting the accuracy of our text, we have even less reason to believe that we can accurately detect interpolations in the one extensive description of the underworld given in early epic.' Nor is the compromise position that Hesiod himself composed different sections of the description of Tartarus at different times a satisfying answer: we would still need to consider why Hesiod left contradictory passages in the final version. And so our first step ought to be an attempt to understand the passage as it stands, daunting though this may be. Despite its obscurities, Hesiod's Tartarus deserves another attempt at interpretation because of its intrinsic role in the Theogony and its influence on subsequent Greek thinking about the structure of the universe. Tartarus serves at once as a safe place to detain the Titans and as the home of some of the brood of Night who still do their evil business above ground; it thus plays an important role both in the narrative of the rise of Zeus and in Hesiod's description of the negative powers we mortals still have to face. And it is only by understanding Hesiod's description of the founts and limits and the great chasm in Tartarus that we will be in any position to evaluate his cosmology. The structure of the description of Tartarus has generally been recognized as an important argument for the authenticity of all or most of it.2 While some have pushed the structural argument too far, the passage is unified by ring-composition and the sort of juxtaposition which typifies Hesiod's method of composition. There is not to be found in it, despite Schwabl (1966: 97-106), a series of line to line correspondences; the easiest way to foil any attempt at line-counting is to note that there is no clear place where the Titanomachy ends and the description of Tartarus begins. Yet this lack of a clear transition shows the integration of the description of Tartarus with the rest of the poem. Tartarus is described, first and last, as the place where the Titans are consigned by the Hundredhanders. It is this repeated connection to the Titanomachy and the duplicate lines on the founts