#dionysius of halicarnassus

[promptuarium]

HERCULES, the son (as it is said) of Jupiter and Alcmene, wife of Amphitryon, was born in the 2715th year of the world, the 1247th before Christ was born. He lived 52 years. He died by fire, and was the first of the great pirates, according to Manetho. About this Hercules whom the Greeks claim as their own, they declare many things, or rather tell many stories, which will not be detailed in this passage.

For this passage, the deeds they attribute to be outstanding among all Hercules’s other deeds, by their custom. His twelve labors, which are said to have been preeminent, are described in depth by Diodorus of Sicily, book 5. He went from Hispania to Italy 55 years before Aeneas. He slew Cacus, and gave the Italians laws. He seized Troy, and slew Laomedon because he did not pay his reward. He made Priam, son of the slain one, King of Troy. Eventually, as a cure for a burning sickness, he threw himself headlong into burning flames. Thus the strongest of all men suffered his fate.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, book 1, says that this greatest leader cleansed the world of tyranny. Diodorus, Herodotus, Vergil and Ovid each tell many things about Hercules in many passages.

[aboutanancientenquiry]

“The Ethics of Authorship: Herodotus in the Rhetorical Works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus

Abstract

This chapter studies Herodotus’s reception in the literary essays of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Dionysius defends Herodotus’s narratorial behavior, including his choice of topic, his attitude toward his characters and readers, and his “ethics of representation.” The chapter demonstrates how Dionysius attributes “writerly lives” to his predecessors, in which authorship does not simply mirror one’s nature but rather depends on an active choice (prohairesis) for fair-minded representation. It suggests ways in which Dionysius’s positive acclamation of Herodotus involves his own kinetic imitation, and consequently the transportability of Herodotus’s voice into Dionysius’s literary criticism. The Herodotean ethos emerges as self-reflexive for Dionysius in his own critical role. The adoption of a Herodotean ethical persona through “submerged imitation” grounds Dionysius’s own self-portrait as a critic.”

Abstract of the Chapter I (’The Ethics of Authorship: Herodotus in the Rhetorical Works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus”) of the work of N. Bryant Kirkland  Herodotus and Imperial Greek Literature: Criticism, Imitation, Reception (OUP 2022)

Source:  https://academic.oup.com/book/43873/chapter-abstract/371038770?redirectedFrom=fulltext

[worldhistoryfacts]

One of the most famous Greek depictions of a "barbarian" is the “Dying Gaul,” carved during the Hellenistic period in the 200s BCE.

This wounded soldier can be identified as a Gaul because of his metal neck ring and facial hair.

By the way, this man isn’t just naked because the Greeks often sculpted people in the buff. Gauls were famous for fighting naked — a sign of “barbarian boastfulness,” according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus.

{Buy me a coffee} {WHF} {Medium} {Looking Through the Past}

[galusandmalus]

"Aeneas, the son of Aphrodite after he had settled his company in Italy, returned home, reigned over Troy, and dying, left his kingdom to Ascanius, his son, whose posterity possessed it for a long time." -Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities

who needs ao3 when roman literature exists

[ancientcharm]

When the Greeks sacked Troy, Aeneas retreated to Mount Ida, carrying his father Anchises on his shoulders and carrying his son Ascanius. His wife Creusa died in flight. He reigned for a time in Ida, then undertook a long voyage across the Mediterranean.

This Trojan hero went through several adventures in which different deities participated including his mother, Venus (Afrodita) . After his father's death in Sicily, a storm blew him astray and washed him onto the shores of Carthage.

Aeneas tells Dido the misfortunes of the Trojan city. Oil on canvas by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (1815) Louvre, Paris.

With the intervention of the goddess Venus, queen Dido of Carthage fell in love with Aeneas and wanted them to marry, uniting their lineages. But Jupiter opposed it and sent Mercury to warn him that he must continue his journey and fulfill his destiny.

Dido, outraged at being abandoned , cast a curse declaring that her people and the people descended from Aeneas would be enemies. After this, she stabbing herself with a sword on a pyre.

Death of Dido. Oil on canvas by Guercino (1631)

Back in Sicily, Aeneas celebrated great funeral games in memory of his father, who appeared to him to tell him that he must go to Cumae and descend into the underworld. In Cumae, Aeneas succeeded in having the Sibyl open the gates of Hades for him.

There he met the shadow of Dido, but he also saw his father, who in the Elysian Fields revealed to him the glorious destiny of the people he was to found in Italy.

Aeneas and the Cumaean Sibyl. Oil on canvas by François Perrier (1646)

He reached the mouth of the Tiber and finally entered a city called Pallantium on the Palatine Hill. There, after going through several epic situations, he married Lavinia, only daughter of Latinus, king of the Latins, and founded the city of Lavinium, named after his wife.

Aeneas disappeared in the middle of a storm and was taken to Olympus and crowned by his mother Venus. His eldest son Lullius, from whom the Julii descend, founded Alba Longa the hometown of Romulus and Remus.

According to Livy, Lullius is the son of Aeneas and Lavinia, and seems to distinguish him from Ascanius son of Aeneas and Creusa. Silvius, son of Lullius, succeeded him on the throne of Alba Longa. Dionysius of Halicarnassus is the one who says that Silvius was the son of Aeneas and Lavinia, and therefore half-brother of Lulilus (Ascanius)

Years later, Numitor, maternal grandfather of Romulus and Remus and direct descendant of Silvius would be king of Alba Longa

Roman bas-relief, 2nd century: Aeneas lands in Latium leading his son Lullius (Ascanius); the sow identifies the place to found his city : Alba Longa

Over time, coming into contact with civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Romans realized that while everyone else had legends of heroes, epic wars, and several divinities interacting with humans at each event, they only had Mars in their founding story; twins thrown into a river, suckled by a wolf in a cave, adopted by a humble shepherd. And one of the twins ends up dying in a fight with the other.

Romulus and Remus, suckled by the wolf, found by Faustulus on banks of Tiber. Fresco by Giuseppe Cesari (1568-1640)

Augustus commissioned the great Roman poet Virgil to create a epic worthy of Rome, but without annulling its legendary founding history.

Through the Aeneid, Rome acquired a prestigious past; a mystical explanation of the three Punic Wars and the destruction of Carthage. Julia gens obtained a divine origin, giving even more legitimacy to the ruling dynasty. Furthermore, this epic exalts the Roman virtues that Augustus so wanted to restore and impose by law.

According to Roman historians, Augustus' sister Octavia faint from emotion upon hearing Virgil reading the Aeneid.

Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus and Octavia. Neoclassical painting by Jean-Joseph Taillasson, 1787

In the story of the Trojan War as told by Homer, Aeneas appears as a secondary character, after heroes such as the Greek Achilles or the Trojan Hector. Meanwhile Virgil made him a protagonist in an epic that linked the fall of Troy and the founding of Rome.

The Siege of Troy. Oil on canvas by French School ( 17th century)

[elucubrare]

the most validation i've ever felt in my life was when Dionysius of Halicarnassus said that Thucydides' prose was clunky and incomprehensible.

[whencyclopedia]

Laocoön: The Suffering of a Trojan Priest & Its Afterlife

The sculpture group of Laocoön and His Sons, on display in the Vatican since its rediscovery in 1506, depicts the suffering of the Trojan prince and priest Laocoön (brother of Anchises) and his young sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus and is one of the most famous and fascinating statues of antiquity. In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder states that the Laocoön, created by the eminent Rhodian sculptors Hagesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus, “is a work of art to be preferred to any other painting or statuary” (36.37). Among art historians, the sculptural group has received near-universal acclaim ever since its rediscovery under questionable circumstances in 1506.

Is the statue famously shown since its discovery in the newly designed Belvedere Garden at the Vatican Palace actually the ancient sculpture mentioned by Pliny, or rather a clever Renaissance forgery? If the latter, who may have contrived this masterful deception? If the former, is it an original, or a marble copy of a Hellenistic bronze made for a Roman patron?

Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts

In the most famous version of the story, as told by Virgil (70-19 BCE) in his Aeneid, Laocoön had warned his fellow citizens against the Greeks “even if they bear gifts,” and had tried to expose the true nature of the wooden horse by striking it with a spear (the wooden horse in question, of course, being the notorious “Trojan Horse”, left by the Greek forces on the coast so as to provide access into the city to the troops hidden inside the construction). When later two serpents emerged from the sea to kill the priest and his sons, the Trojans interpreted their horrific deaths as an act of divine retribution and promptly decided to move the wooden horse into the city, believing the contraption to be an offering to Minerva (Athena).

According to Arctinus of Miletus, the earliest tradition of the tragedy (surviving only through later citations), Apollo had sent the two serpents to kill Laocoön and only one of his sons; while the later author Quintus of Smyrna maintains that the serpents killed both sons but spared the father.

Servius, another late authority (c. 400 CE), tells us how Laocoön managed to incur the wrath of Apollo by sleeping with his wife before the cult statue in the god's temple. An even later source, the Byzantine scholar Tzetzes, adds that the scene of Laocoön's death took place in the very temple of the Thymbraean Apollo – appropriately setting the punishment at the scene of the crime.

The 5th-century BCE Greek playwright Sophocles produced a tragedy on the subject, of which only a few fragments survive in later citations. Apart from the sources mentioned above, Hellenistic poets Apollodorus and Euphorion, the historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Roman novelist Petronius, the Latin fables attributed to Hyginus, and a few other fragments, all provide various details of the tragic story.

Despite this appearance in ancient literature from the post-Homeric to Byzantine traditions, artistic representations of Laocoön's suffering are few and far between. Depictions appear in some Greek vase paintings (5th to 4th centuries BCE) and in two frescoes at Pompeii (c. 25-75 CE). The marble statue group of Laocoön and His Sons, therefore remains the most exceptional portrayal of only a handful of ancient works illustrating the suffering of Laocoön.

Continue reading...

[brimo5]

Finally, at Argos in 272 Pyrrhus is said to have met his death at the hands of a woman who hit him with a roof tile. The slayer was no ordinary mortal, but the goddess herself, disguised as an Argive woman (Pausanias 1.13.8; Plutarch Pyrrhus 34; Strabo 8.6.18). Demeter's retribution would have been appropriate for Pyrrhus because he was known to have violated a sanctuary of Persephone (Dionysius of Halicarnassus 20.9). (Practitioners of the Divine: Greek Priests and Religious Figures from Homer to Heliodorus,3)

Never forget that Demeter is her daughter's mother.

[dilutedh2so4]

The Trojans and the Gods

Partially inspired by this post :D

Priam's children Cassandra, Helenus, and Paris are at some point or another said to have been loved by Apollo. Cassandra got the gift of prophecy, and her brothers each got an ivory bow.

Paris was also loved by the nymph Oenone (and by Helen, daughter of Zeus, the most beautiful mortal woman)

Priam's wife Hecuba has, in some variants, two children with Apollo: Hector and Troilus. She's rescued by him during the Fall of Troy :')

Priam's sister Proclia has a son with Apollo, Tenes.

Priam's brother Tithonus was abducted by the goddess Eos, with whom he had Memnon.

Priam's mother was the nymph Strymo, daughter of the river Scamander, who married his father Laomedon.

Laomedon's uncle was Assacarus, who married Hieromneme, daughter of the river-god Simoeis.

Assacarus' grandson was Anchises with whom Aphrodite had Aeneas.

Laomedon's grandfather, Tros, married the nymph Callirrhoe — another daughter of Scamander.

Tros' son was Ganymede, who was loved and abducted by Zeus.

Tros' mother was Astyoche, daughter of Simoeis.

Tros' grandfather was Dardanus, son of Zeus and Electra, whose brother was Iasion — the lover of Demeter!

Sources:

Cassandra and Apollo: Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Hyginus' Fabulae, etc.

Helenus and Apollo: Photius' Library

Paris and Apollo: Eustathius' Ad Homerum (writer likely mixed him up with Helenus... but it's FUNNY)

Paris and Oenone: Parthenius' Love Romances, Apollodorus' Library

Paris and Helen: Proclus' Cypria summary, Sappho's Fragment 16, Alcaeus' Fragment 283, etc.

Hecuba and Apollo: Apollodorus' Library, A-Scholia on the Iliad

Proclia and Apollo: Tzetzes' Ad Lycophronem, Apollodorus' Library Epitome

Tithonus and Eos: Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Apollodorus' Library, etc.

Strymo, Hieromneme, Callirrhoe, Astyoche: Apollodorus' Library

Anchises and Aphrodite: Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, etc.

Zeus and Ganymede: Homer's Iliad, Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, etc.

Zeus and Electra: Diodorus Siculus' Library, Dionysius of Halicarnassus' Roman Antiquities, Apollodorus' Library, etc.

Demeter and Iasion: Hesiod's Theogony, Homer's Odyssey, etc.

[lyculuscaelus]

The name Ναυσικάα (Nausicaä) meaning “burner of ships” (from ναῦς, “ship”, and καίω, “burn”) oddly reminds me of the burning of ships by the Trojan women in some of the nostoi stories, the most famous one being the burning of ships in Aeneas’s story caused by the Trojan woman (incited by Rhome according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, by Hera [Juno] according to Virgil)

[blue-lotus333]

I really wish people would talk about that myth where both Aeneas and Odysseus found Rome together.

Little source where u can read abt it:

- https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Dionysius_of_Halicarnassus/1D*.html#note216

[promptuarium]

MINOS, son of Jupiter Asterius and Europa, brought together a fleet and occupied the sea, in the 2710th year from the creation of the world and the 1252nd before Christ was born. He was the first lord of the Cyclades islands, and set up colonies in most of them when the Carians had been thrown out, and set his sons up as leaders, and he removed pirates from the sea. Thucydides, in the preface to his history.

He was held by universal consensus to be a just man, of an esteemed lifestyle, and is said to have first convinced them to use written laws, and to depict them as given by the command of Mercury, from the author Jupiter. Diodorus of Sicily, book 2 and 6. On his wisdom, see Dionysius of Halicarnassus, book 2, on the deeds of Numa.

Volaterranus, book 33, says this: Surely on account of his great justice, Minos was said after his death to be a judge among the souls of the dead, together with his brother Rhadamanthus.

[lionofchaeronea]

Reading A Critical History of Early Rome by Gary Forsythe. As the title suggests, Forsythe is deeply skeptical about the value of ancient narrative sources for early Roman history (chiefly Livy, of course, but also Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Plutarch). It's a very different tack from the standard English-language work on the period, Tim Cornell's The Beginnings of Rome, which places more credence in the literary tradition. In general, I incline to Forsythe's view--the Romans had a remarkable knack for mythologizing their own history, and writers like Livy, working in a heavily Grecizing historiographic tradition, tend to find (or create) forced parallels between early Rome and Greece (e.g. casting the defeat of the three hundred Fabii at Cremona as the Roman equivalent of Leonidas' last stand at Thermopylae). But even if you happen to be less skeptical than Forsythe, he's well worth a read, not least for the care he takes at placing Rome's development within a broader Mediterranean context.

[ihavedonenothingright]

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh boy. I just had to read an article on the vestal virgins full of all of the most egregious examples of 2010s millenial humor, and the worst part is? It's ahistorical. It's actively wrong about several things because it repeats the mytho-histories of Livy and Cassius Dio and Dionysius of Halicarnassus as fact. So I had to sit through a series of jokes that included parentheses after them telling me to "stop laughing" AND read a blatantly incorrect account of a topic I have a great deal of knowledge about.

Anyway, to comfort myself I looked up five papers I've previously referenced in my writing on the vestals, and the works of Livy, Cassius Dio, Dionysius, Cicero, and Plutarch. I am going to come into class tomorrow and destroy this thing.

[galusandmalus]

It's Ascanius day

"For when Ascanius took over the rule, Lavinia, becoming alarmed lest her relationship as step-mother might draw upon her some severity from him, and being then with child, entrusted herself to a certain Tyrrhenus, who had charge of the royal herds of swine and whom she knew to have been on very intimate terms with Latinus. He, carrying her into the lonely woods as if she were an ordinary woman, and taking care that she was not seen by anyone who knew her, supported her in a house he built in the forest, which was known to but few. And when the child was born, he took it up and reared it, naming it, from the wood, Silvius, or, as one might say in Greek, Hylaios.

But in the course of time, finding that the Latins made great search for the woman and that the people accused Ascanius of having put her to death, he acquainted them with the whole matter and brought the woman and her son out of the forest. From this experience, Silvius got his name, as I have related, and so did all his posterity. And he became king after the death of his brother, though not without a contest with one of the sons of Ascanius, — Iulus, the eldest, — who claimed the succession to his father's rule"

-Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities

i swear ascanius and lavinia lore is shit straight out of its always sunny

Other sources go into how they have a weird system of co-ruling. AND IT WORKS??? i guess there wasn't actually a lot of beef between them lmao. reminder, Ascanius is like 16 or younger in this lmao if the timeline is correct.

[fleurbleedinghearts]

the worst part of the bizzare neoptolemus doesn't kill astayax stories is that tbh Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, a book that does that IS LIKE actually really interesting and something I recommend

The Trojans were the Romans's blorbos due to the belief they were descended from Aeneas. Astyanax might as well be their Princess Diana.

I guess the versions where Neoparasite is slightly less evil and doesn't beat Priam to death on an alter using the body of his grandson is nice, still hate that kid though and Orestes did the world a favor by killing him.