The Eagle's Gaze in the Opening of Heliodorus' Aithiopika

Abstract

Many recent studies have brought into focus the highly mimetic, ecphrastic and even cinematic quality of the initial scene of Heliodorus’ Aithiopika. As widely recognized, the Egyptian pirates’ camera-like gaze, through which the reader is drawn into the narrative, breaks this opening into a chain of enigmatic visual tableaux – a moored cargo ship, an array of slain bodies scattered all over the beach, the remnants of a banquet-turned-battle – and thus emblematizes this novel’s tendency to call into question the process of interpretation (cf. J. Winkler 1982, Bartsch 1989, Morgan 1991, M. Winkler 2000-2001, Whitmarsh 2005). Scholarship has noticed that through its beginning in medias res Heliodorus’ novel fashions itself as a quintessentially Odyssean narrative (cf. J. Winkler 1982, Whitmarsh 1998, Fusillo 2006, Elmer 2008, Morgan-Harrison 2008). It has also been pointed out (cf. Feuillatre 1966) that the banquet-turned-battle observed by the pirates bears striking resemblances to the description of the suitors’ slaughter in Book 22 of the Odyssey (ll. 8-21). This paper sets out to cast further light on the tantalizing opening of the Aithiopika and its coding of narrative into still moments by exploring Heliodorus’ intertextual dialogue with a simile from the same book of the Odyssey (ll. 379-89), which pairs the corpses of the suitors lying in blood and dust after their slaughter with fishes caught in a net and strewn in death on a beach. In this scene, Odysseus and Telemachus survey the dead suitors hemmed into the megaron and are cast in a spectatorial position that is defined by the repeated usage of the verb παπταίνω. This verb denotes a kind of panoramic vision characteristic of predator birds and, in particular, of eagles (cf. Lonsdale 1989). At the beginning of the Aithiopika, the Egyptian pirates look out to the sea from the ridge of a hill in the hope of catching new prey and, while doing so, they fix their eyes on a beach heaped with dead bodies. As I argue, the viewer-viewed relation framing the Odyssean simile re-surfaces in the opening of Heliodorus’ novel and intertextually associates the gaze of the pirates with the eagle symbolism conjured, in the Odyssean passage, by the semantics of παπταίνω. This analysis aims to enhance our understanding of the opening of Heliodorus’ Aithiopika by highlighting its treatment of Homeric similes as prototypes of ecphrastic discourse and teasing out its strategies of authorial self-positioning. In particular, I contend that in fashioning the starting-point of the novel as a diegetic reconfiguration of the fish simile the omniscient narrator of the Aithiopika displays his predilection for a panoramic standpoint (the so-called “bird’s eye view”) which, in the Homeric epics, is typical of similes (cf. De Jong-Nunlist 2004). In addition, by importing the Odyssean eagle imagery into the programmatic space of the prologue Heliodorus figuratively epitomizes the Aithiopika’s all-embracing glance over the previous literary tradition and defines this novel’s intertextual dimension in terms of predatory consumption. Bibliography Bartsch, S. 1989. Decoding the Ancient Novel. The Reader and the Role of Description in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius. Princeton. De Jong I., Nunlist R. 2004. “From Bird’s Eye View to Close-up: the Standpoint of the Narrator.” In A. Bierl, A. Schmitt, A. Willi, eds., Antike Literatur in neuer Deutung. Munchen-Leipzig: 63-83. Elmer, F. E. 2008. “Heliodoros’s ‘Sources’: Intertextuality, Paternity, and the Nile River in the Aithiopika.” TAPA 138: 411-450. Feuillatre, E. 1966. Etudes sur les Ethiopiques d’Heliodore: contribution a la connaissance du roman grec. Paris. Fusillo, M. 2006 “Metamorfosi romanzesche dell’epica.” In F. Montanari-A. Rengakos, eds., La poesie epique grecque: metamorphoses d’un genre litteraire. Vandoeuvres: 271-303. Lonsdale, S. H. 1989. “If Looks Could Kill: παπταίνω and the Interpenetration of Imagery and Narrative in Homer.” CJ 84: 325-333. Morgan, J. R. 1991. “Reader and Audiences in the Aithiopika of Heliodoros.” GCN 4: 85-103. Morgan, J. R., Harrison, S. 2008. “Intertextuality.” In T. Whitmarsh, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel. Cambridge: 218-236. Whitmarsh, T. 1998. “The Birth of a Prodigy: Heliodorus and the Genealogy of Hellenismus.” In R. Hunter, ed., Studies in Heliodorus. Cambridge: 92-124. . 2005. “Heliodorus Smiles.” In S. Harrison, M. Paschalis, S. Frangoulidis, eds., Metaphor and the Ancient Novel. Groningen: 87-104. Winkler, J. J. 1982. “The Mendacity of Kalasiris and the Narrative Strategy of Heliodoros’ Aithiopika.” YCS 27: 93-158 (= S. Swain, ed., Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel, Oxford 1999: 286-350). Winkler, M. M. 2001-2001. “The Cinematic Nature of the Opening Scene in Heliodorus’ Aithiopika.” AN 1: 161-184.