Protesilaus

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Skione
. Head of Protesilaos, wearing Attic helmet / Stern of galley left within incuse square. Circa 480-470 BC
Coinage of Thebai, Thessaly. Veiled head of Demeter, wearing wreath of grain ears / ΘHBAIΩИ, Protesilaos, wearing armor and short chiton, holding sword in right hand and shield in left, stepping off the prow of a galley; waves visible to the lower right. Early 3rd century BC

In

hero in the Iliad who was venerated at cult sites in Thessaly and Thrace. Protesilaus was the son of Iphiclus, a "lord of many sheep"; as grandson of the eponymous Phylacos, he was the leader of the Phylaceans.[1] Hyginus surmised that he was originally known as Iolaus—not to be confused with Iolaus, the nephew of Heracles—but was referred to as "Protesilaus" after being the first (πρῶτος, protos) to leap ashore at Troy, and thus the first to die in the war.[2]

Description

In the account of Dares the Phrygian, Protesilaus was illustrated as ". . .fair-skinned, and dignified. He was swift, self-confident, and even rash."[3]

Mythology

Protesilaus was one of the

Laodamia, daughter of Acastus, and brought him up from Hades to see her. She was at first overjoyed, thinking he had returned from Troy, but after the gods returned him to the underworld, she found the loss unbearable.[10] She had a bronze statue of her late husband constructed, and devoted herself to it. After her worried father had witnessed her behavior, he had it destroyed; however, Laodamia jumped into the fire with it.[11] Another source claims his wife was Polydora, daughter of Meleager.[12]

According to legend, the Nymphs planted

Thracian Chersonese, of "great-hearted Protesilaus" («μεγάθυμου Πρωτεσιλάου»), elms that grew to be the tallest in the known world; but when their topmost branches saw far off the ruins of Troy, they immediately withered, so great still was the bitterness of the hero buried below.[13][14] The story is the subject of a poem by Antiphilus of Byzantium (1st century A.D.) in the Palatine Anthology
:

Cult of Protesilaus

Only two

cult statue of Protesilaus at this temple "standing on a base which was shaped like the prow of a boat." Coins of Elaeus from the time of Commodus with Protesilaus on the prow of a ship, in helmet, cuirass and short chiton on the reverse probably depict this statue.[22][23] Strabo also mentions the sanctuary.[24]

A founder-cult of Protesilaus at Scione, in

Pallene, Chalcidice, was given an etiology by the Greek grammarian and mythographer of the Augustan-era Conon[25] that is at variance with the epic tradition. In this, Conon asserts that Protesilaus survived the Trojan War and was returning with Priam's sister Aethilla as his captive. When the ships go ashore for water on the coast of Pallene, between Scione and Mende, Aethilla persuaded the other Trojan women to burn the ships, forcing Protesilaus to remain and found the city of Scione. A rare tetradrachm of Scione ca. 480 BCE acquired by the British Museum depicts Protesilaus, identified by the retrograde legend PROTESLAS.[26]

Protesilaus, speaking from beyond the grave, is the oracular source of the corrected eye-witness version of the actions of heroes at Troy, related by a "vine-dresser" to a Phoenician merchant in the

Greek hero-cult traditions that developed independently of the epic tradition.[27]

Cultural depictions

Among very few representations of Protesilaus,[28] a sculpture by Deinomenes is just a passing mention in Pliny's Natural History;[29] the outstanding surviving examples are two Roman copies of a lost mid-fifth century Greek bronze original representing Protesilaus at his defining moment, one of them in a torso at the British Museum,[30] the other at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[31] The Metropolitan's sculpture of a heroically nude helmeted warrior stands on a forward-slanting base, looking down and slightly to his left, with his right arm raised, prepared to strike, would not be identifiable, save by comparison made by Gisela Richter[32] with a torso of the same model and its associated slanting base, schematically carved as the prow of a ship encircled by waves: Protesilaus about to jump ashore.

If Euripides' tragedy, Protesilaos, had survived, his name would be more familiar today.[33]

The poem in the Palatine Anthology (VII.141) on Protesilaus by Antiphilus of Byzantium in turn inspired F. L. Lucas's poem "The Elms of Protesilaus" (1927).[34]

Works employing this myth

References

  1. ^ Homer. Iliad, 2.695.
  2. ^ a b Hyginus. Fabulae, 103.
  3. ^ Dares Phrygius, History of the Fall of Troy 13
  4. Hyginus
    . Fabulae, 97.
  5. ^ Iliad II; Pseudo-Apollodorus. Epitome of The Library E.3.14.
  6. ^ Pausanias, iv.2.5.
  7. ^ Hyginus. Fabulae, 114.
  8. ^ Smyrnaeus, Quintus (1913). Fall of Troy.
  9. ^ Homer. Iliad, 2.705.
  10. ^ Pseudo-Apollodorus. Epitome to The Library, E.3.30; Ovid. Heroides, 13.
  11. ^ Hyginus. Fabulae, 104.
  12. ^ The Cypria, Fragment 17; cited in Pausanias, Description of Greece, 4. 2. 7
  13. ^ Quintus Smyrnaeus, Τα μεθ' `Ομηρον, 7.407-411
  14. ^ Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, 16.238
  15. ^ Anth. Pal., VII.141
  16. ^ Ludo de Lannoy, ed. Jennifer K. Berenson Maclean and Ellen Bradshaw Aitken, trs.,Flavius Philostratus: On Heroes (1977, 2002) Introduction, liii.
  17. ^ Iliad II.
  18. ^ Pindar. First Isthmian Ode, 83f.
  19. ^ Herodotus. The Histories, 9.116-120; see also 7.23.
  20. ^ Arrian. The Campaigns of Alexander, 1.11.
  21. ^ Philostratus. Heroikos ("Dialogue Concerning Heroes"). "Protesilaos" is set in the sanctuary; elms were planted at the sanctuary by the nymphs; the chthonic hero has given advice to athletes in the form of oracular dreams; see Christopher P. Jones, "Philostratus' Heroikos and Its Setting in Reality", The Journal of Hellenic Studies 121 (2001:141-149).
  22. ^ C. Jones, New Heroes in Antiquity 2010, 72
  23. ^ Image of the coin from RPC Online:: "RPC IV, 10954". Roman Provincial Coinage Online. Ashmolean Museum. Retrieved 21 December 2022.
  24. ^ "ToposText". topostext.org.
  25. ^ Conon's abbreviated mythographies are known through a summary made by the ninth-century patriarch Photius for his Biblioteca (Alan Cameron, Greek Mythography in the Roman World [Oxford University Press) 2004:72).
  26. ^ G. F. H., "Protesilaos at Scione" The British Museum Quarterly 1.1 (May 1926):24).
  27. ^ See Casey Dué and Gregory Nagy, "Preliminaries to Philostratus's On Heroes", in Maclean and Aitken 2002.
  28. ^ Pausanias, in his travels in Greece at the end of the 2nd century AD saw no statues of Protesilaus, though he appeared among the heroes painted by Polygnotus at Delphi (x.30.3).
  29. ^ 'Historia Naturalis, 34.76.
  30. ^ Found at Cyzicus in Mysia (modern Turkey).
  31. ^ Accession number 1925.25.116: Richter 1929b: Gisela M. A. Richter, "A Statue of Protesilaos in the Metropolitan Museum" Metropolitan Museum Studies 1.2 (May 1929:187-200).
  32. ^ Richter 1929b.
  33. ^ So observed Gisela Richter, discussing the recently-acquired Metropolitan sculpture: Richter 1929a. "A Statue of Protesilaos" The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 24.1 (January 1929:26-29) p. 29.
  34. ^ New Statesman, 17 Dec. 1927, p.325, reprinted in The Best Poems of 1928, ed. Thomas Moult (Cape, London, 1928; Harcourt, Brace & Co, N.Y., 1928) and included with revisions in Lucas’s Time and Memory (1929) and From Many Times and Lands (1951)
  35. ^ Henderson, Jeffrey. "Dialogues Of The Dead: Dialogue 28". Loeb Classical Library.
  36. ^ Henderson, Jeffrey. "Protesilaus". Loeb Classical Library.
  37. .
  38. – via Cambridge Core.
  39. ^ "Sextus Propertius, Elegies, Book 1, Addressed to Cynthia". www.perseus.tufts.edu.
  40. – via www.loebclassics.com.
  41. ^ "P. Ovidius Naso, The Epistles of Ovid, Laodamia to Protesilaus". www.perseus.tufts.edu.
  42. ^ Chakraborty, Udayshankar (2014). Reconstruction of European epic tradition in Michael Madhusudan Dattas epic with special reference to Milton (PDF) (Thesis). university of Assam.
  43. ^ "Protesilas i Laodamia : tragedya". www.europeana.eu.

External links