Nikainetos and Oikous Huxley, George Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Fall 1970; 11, 3; ProQuest pg. 251 Nikainetos and Oikous George Huxley I N BOOK 15 at 673B Athenaios calls Nikainetos an €7T07TOL6c and an epichoric poet with a special interest in local history. There follow some delightful elegiacs in which the poet proposes a picnic at the Samian Heraion. Nikainetos' concern for antiquities was not confined to Samos, however; ten hexameters of his on the founding of Miletos are quoted by Parthenios (Amat.Narr. 11, 7TEpt Bv{3Atooc). Besides containing notable problems of interpretation, the lacunose lines are of value to students of Milesian myth-history. I first give the hexameters as Powell presents them in Collectanea Alexandrina. A few improvements in interpretation are suggested. Finally, the story of Byblis as related by Nikainetos is considered with respect to Milesian topography and archaeology. A novel should never be treated as though it were a Baedeker, but it is fair to suppose that Nikainetos in Samos had the Karian landscape clearly in mind. First, then, Powell's text (significant variants and conjectures will be noted later): A ' \ rJ / '0"" V'Tap 0 yE 7TpO'TEPWCE KLWV LKOVCLOV ac'TV , rp , <:" TT , '" ~<:' K'TLcca'TO, .L payaCL'f}v OE nEl\aLVEOC 7]yE'TO 7TaLOa ., 'TT~" ".J.." 0' 7] OL .H.avvov E'TLK'TEV aEL 'f'LI\EOV'Ta E/UC'Tac , 0;:," 0;:, \~ '" "a YELVa'TO OE paoal\7Jc Eval\LYKLOV apKEV OLCL 5 B {3 ' '<:' ~., , , " TT ~ V /\Loa, 'T7]C 7]'TOL aEKWV 7]pacca'TO navvoc •.• Bij tOErpEPEVOWC rpEVYWV rppLKciJoEa KV7TPLV , TT I ., ~ 'TT' .,' ' KaL npayov VI\LyEV7] Kat napLa Lpa I\OE'Tpa • • . "a' " " a '0;:,' ~, T I EV 7]'TOL 7T'TOI\LE pOV EOELp.a'TO 7TPW'TOC .LWVWV, , , "" "'" i' " aV'T7] OE yVW'T7], ol\ol\vyovoc OL'TOV EXovca, 10 B {3 '" , n ,~ TT I , 0;:, I I V I\LC a7T07Tpo VI\WV navvov WOvpa'TO VOC'TOV. 7TpO'TipWCE means forward from Samos to the Maiandros mouth. The subject of the first sentence is the hero-K'T{c'T7]c Miletos (not the Cretan Sarpedon, who is also said to have settled in southwestern Asia Minor). Miletos, after his dispute with Minos in Crete, had stayed in Samos for a while; hence there was a place in the island 251 252 NIKAINETOS AND OIKOUS called Miletos.1 Oikous is not necessarily a synonym for Karian Miletos here: Stephanos of Byzantion states s. v. OlKovc, Kap{ac 7T6A£c. TO EOV£KOV OlKovcLoc Ka~ OlKovda Ka~ "OlKovcLov aCTV." The last two words are not certainly quoted from Nikainetos by Stephanos, for the supple­ ment ELVEKEV OlKOVC]WV Elc a[c]Tv is made by Pfeiffer in Kallimachos' lyrics (fr.229.13) on the coming of Apollo Delphinios on a dolphin to the Karian shore on his way to Didyma from Delos. In Theokritos (7.115-17) the Loves are entreated to come from the sweet stream of Hyetis and Byblis, "that steep seat of golden-haired Dione" (who seems here to be identical with Aphrodite). The scholia in loco (p.107. 16-17 Wendel) state: "Hyetis and Byblis are springs of Miletos, where there is also a sanctuary of Aphrodite," and again (p.107.12 Wendel), of Oikous, "EV MLA~T4J T67TOC, <€vOa> i.EpOV 'AcppoS{T1}c." Here Oikous is treated as a part of Miletos, as it had become in time, not a distinct settlement nearby. From the testimonies it is evident that the spring Byblis, Oikous and the prednct of Aphrodite are all connected; but that they were not always part of the dty of Miletos proper is made clear by the scholiast on Dionysios Periegetes 825 (GGM 2.454): "Miletos was one of the notables in Crete, from whom the dty of Miletos there was named. When Minos campaigned against him, he sailed away from Crete and put in to Lydia in Asia." Meineke cor­ rected Elc AvSlav to Elc AVK{av, comparing Konon, Diegeseis 2 (FGrHist 26 F 1, 2); Elc Kap{av would be equally appropriate. The scholiast continues: "Miletos settled Oikous and gave its name to it, and estab­ lished a hieron of Aphrodite. He married Doie daughter of Maiandros, from whom a river in Karia is named, and he begat Keladon, Kaunos and Byblis. Of the children, Kaunos was not able to endure his passion for his sister" (or "his sister's passion for him") "and migrated to Lykia. Keladon, having become ruler of Oikous, took his dead father over to the neighbouring island and buried him. He too moved thither in obedience to an oracle"-Didyma presumably-"and called the place Miletos. A bridge marks the boundary between Oikous" (or "Oikounta," T!X VVV OlKovvTa, schol.) "as it is now and Miletos." Thus Miletos proper is the present Theatre-Hill, which, when an island, was linked to the mainland by a bridge or causeway over the low ground to the south. In the foundation myth the first Cretan settlement, accordingly, was at Oikous on the mainland, not on the island of Miletos proper nearby. 1 Herodoros. FGrHist 31 F 45; Aristokritos. FGrHist 493 F 3. GEORGE HUXLEY 253 Doie in this version of the KTLCLC is daughter to Maiandros, the eponym of the river. In Nikainetos, however, the wife of Miletos is (according to Hecker's certain correction) Tragasie daughter of Kelaineus, who takes his name from Kelainai upstream. Tragasie looks like a patronymic or a metronymic and may not be the wife's true name: perhaps her mother was Tragase, the eponym of Tragasai in the Troad.2 Kelaino, a Danaid, was also associated with the district of Kelainai (Strabo 579), but a mention of a father is more natural here than one of a mother; so we should correct to K€Acuv€oc, not toK€AcxLVOVC, the corrupt words TpCXYCXcLrJ OE KcxAcxLV€€C €tX€TO 7TaLOl.3 Byblis sister of Kaunos is likened to a juniper or cedar (apK€VOOLCL, line 4); Nikainetos evidently had an eye for trees: com­ pare Kat AVyoc, apxaLwv Kapwv CT€rpOC, a crown from the withies near Hera's temple in Samos, and the 7Tpop,aAoc there.4 The departure of Kaunos from Oikous in line 6 comes too abruptly after the mention of his unwilling passion in 5; Meineke noted the lacuna revealed by Parthenios' paraphrase of Nikainetos-wc OUK EATJY€ TO 7TaOoc. Nikainetos assumed that Byblis was innocent, but in most versions of the story, Parthenios notes, she declared her passion to Kaunos, who, horrified, departed--oi O€ 7TA€lovc .•• rpaclv. 5 There are serious problems in line 6. The f3fj OE llvpLVofjac of Robinson Ellis for f3fj O€rp€P€VOLOC is ingenious and attractive. The ethnic is attested by Stephanos S.v. llvpwooc, but the position of the place is, so far as I know, not determined. Kayser's arpap EVOLOC was accepted by R. Holland6 (Hnach Sud en") , but if Kaunos fled south­ wards from Miletos, he would, past Didyma, soon be in the sea; if possible, we ought to try to work out a rational route for him, even if Nikainetos was a romantic poet, and no matter how distressed our hero may have been. In determining his route to the neighbourhood of Kaunos, to found the city, we are further hampered by the cor- S For the place see Steph.Byz. S.v. Tpayacal (Hellanikos,FGrHist 4 F 34) with the correction of the entry by A. Meineke, ed. Stephan von Byzanz, Ethnika (Craz 1958) Epimetrum II, 721-22. Strabo 605. 3 R. Ellis, "Corrections of the Text of Parthenius," AJP 7 (1886) 225. 4 Athen. 673B. A. S. F. Cow/D. L. Page, The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams (Cam­ bridge 1965) nos. 2706-2707. 5 The variants of the tale are listed by E. Rohde, Der griechische Roman3 (Leipzig 1914, repro Hildesheim 1960) 101-02 n.l. See also Brooks Otis, Ovid as an Epic Poet (Cambridge 1966) 386-88. Benno Schmid O.S.B., Studien zur griechischen Ktisissagen (Freiburg/Schweiz 1947) 80, would include Apollonios Rhodios amongst the 1TAElovc. 6 R. Holland, "Zu Nikainetos von Samos," PhilWach 44 (1924) 302. 254 NIKAINETOS AND OIKOUS ruption in line 7. Here Powell accepts that Nikainetos mentioned Mount Kragos, Ka~ Kp&.yov vALy€Vfj, but there are difficulties. True, Horace (Ode 1.21.8) refers to "viridis Cragi," but Kragos is not alone in those parts in being wooded. VALY€V~C has to mean, according to Powell, 'wood bearing', which is possible but not the natural meaning 'born of wood', which Kragos cannot be. Again, Kragos is beyond the district of Kaunos; if Nikainetos was careful of the local geography he would have had to make his hero double back after reaching the mountain. Kragos is on the borders of Karia and Lykia;7 so it is hard to see how Kaunos came to holy baths of Karia after he reached Kragos unless he did turn back. But the real objection to putting Kp&.yov in line 7 is the fact that the text has KaL K&.1TpOC VAt Y€V€c. Kapros is a perfectly acceptable geographical name in the context. The river Kapros is a tributary of the upper l'vlaiandros,8 and joins it some way above the warm springs at Karoura. So KaL K&'1TPOV VAty€Vfj may well be correct here-even if the hero coming up the Maiandros valley would in fact arrive at Karoura first, not at the confluence of the Kapros with the Lykos. VAtY€Vfj would then neatly signify that the source of the river is in the wooded mountains. From the neighbour­ hood of Laodikeia Kaunos could then have made his way over the watershed, and then down the valley of the Karian Indos to the neigh­ bourhood in which he founded his city. Some versions of his wander­ ings took him as far afield as Lykia, but there is no evidence that in the fragment of Nikainetos he wandered so far. We can now turn back to line 6. If f3fj O€CP€P€VOWC of the text does not conceal1TEpTJv (1TEpTJV "Ivoov, the Karian river, would suit Kp&.yov in the next line), then we need an ethnic, such as the IIvpLVofjac of Robin­ son Ellis. Other conjectures have been offered. If K&'1TpOV and the identi­ fication of the holy baths with Karoura are accepted, we may say that the place or people concealed in cp€P€VOWC ought to lie between Oikous and Karoura, somewhere in the Maiandros valley. Try, then, f3fj o€ IIpLTJvfjac. They would of course not be the lonians of Hellenic Priene, but their Anatolian forerunners, some of whom, the Pedieis, survived in the Maiandros plain till Hellenistic times.9 The hero ? For the point that Telmessos (and so Kragos) was not part of the real and Original Lykia, see P. M. Fraser and G. E. Bean, The Rhodian Peraea and Islands (Oxford 1954) 56 n.4. 8 Strabo 578. Cf. Holland, loc.cit. (supra n.6). C. B. Welles, Royal Correspondence of the Hellenistic Period (New Haven 1934) 8B 2-3 and GEORGE HUXLEY 255 Kaunos would be fleeing along the shore of the estuary to the place where the Maiandros debouched in remote antiquity, in the land of the Prieneis, north of Oikous. Powell accepts in line 6 cppLKwDEa K67TpLV from Jacobs, but the text of Parthenios has dCPLWDHX KV7TpOV. However distraught Kaunos may have been, we should not suppose that he wandered all the way to Cyprus nor did he deliberately avoid or abandon (cpEVYWV) the island. Kaunos was the victim of passion inspired by Aphrodite, who had a precinct at Oikous. ocpLw8m should be retained with KV7TPW therefore: the sanctuary was close to low-lying ground where water-snakes flourish.10 In 28.3-4 Theokritos describes its situation at the "splendid town of Neileus,"o7T7Ta KV7TPLDOC lpov Kat.&J1-W Xt.wpov V7T' (Xw&t.w, "green amidst the soft rushes," or, possibly, "roofed with soft rushes." Parthenios supposed that in line 8 the subject of JDeLJ1-a'TO is Kaunos, and modern scholars have followed him. It is odd, however, as Jacoby noted,u to call the city of Kaunos or its founder Ionian. Konon (FGrHist 26 F 1, 2) places the foundation of Kaunos in its correct con­ text, well before the Ionian migration; and Herodotos (1.172) thought that the people of Kaunos were autochthonous, but, he says, the Kaunians believed themselves to be from Crete-that is to say, they were not Ionians. Parthenios himself states, a little later in 11, that the city was founded in land occupied by Leleges. I suspect that Parthenios did not have a complete text of Nikainetos' poem before him: there is almost certainly another lacuna between lines 7 and 8. The leading city of the Ionians was Miletos, whose second K'TLC'T7}C at the time of the Ionian migration was Neileus. The last three lines mean that Byblis laments at her spring, close to where the first of the Ionians, Neileus, built his citadel. She laments near Oikous, outside the gates of Ionian Miletos, where Neileus settled long after the time of Kaunos. (The capital pi of 7TVt.WV in Powell's text of line 10 seems to be a misprint.) As in Theokritos, so here in Nikainetos, Byblis is a spring of Miletos therefore, not of Kaunos. The onomatopoeic dt.ot.vywv can mean a kind of bird or a kind of frog.12 In the context of the spring a frog is more apt. Byblis in her grief for her absent brother (VOC'TOV here means 'going away', not 10 No need therefore to put dc/m:"'om Kvp{JTJv (in Rhodes) with F. Cassola, La Parola de Passaro 12 (1957) 208. 11 FGrHist 493 note 13. 12 See Gow on Theoc. Id. 7.139. 7* 256 NIKAINETOS AND OIKOUS