Musai Hypophetores: Apollonius of Rhodes on Inspiration and Interpretation

Abstract

HIS paper offers a critical review of an old, well-known zetema. We examine Apollonius' use of 3nropiTjop at Argonautica 1.22, and explore what it reveals about his understanding of inspiration and interpretation in the poem, and the corresponding role he assigns to the Muses. We shall argue that the scholarly debate, a choice between the acceptations suggester and interpreter, has not as yet been properly framed: the meaning can be conceded, but the question remains-whose interpreter? To the received opinion interpreter of the we shall oppose the alternative interpreter of Apollo's oracles and will, which set off and direct the progress of the epic.' We shall ground this understanding of U3rol'piop in the Homeric precedent of Iliad 16.235, which we deem the correct interpretive framework. And we shall find our poet eminently concerned with the interplay of inspiration, whose source is the will of Apollo, and interpretation, that is, the explication of Apollo's will by the poet and his access to Apollo's intentions-an access crucially dependent on the mediation of the Muses, herein portrayed as subordinate to Apollo. Apollonius' poetics, then, reveal a profound concern with the hiddenness of the divine purpose and the intrinsic complexity of recovering past heroic traditions: seers and mediating deities, preeminently, the Muses, help the poet unravel their fabric.