Monday, September 24, 2007
Quick question
Just a quick question from the Sappho poems: in a footnote for poem 244 on page 92, the editor mentions that Atreidai is probably Menelaos. However, in poem 149 on page 74, Sappho writes: "The Atreidai accomplished many feats/first at Illium, and then on the sea/on their voyage back." Here Atreidai is plural, so I am skeptical about the possibility that it is Menelaos. Has anyone been able to find any information about Atreidai? Thanks!
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3 comments:
Yes, it is plural, indicating the descendents of Atreus. (The '-ides' suffix is the patronymic.) Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon.
Perhaps the editor is suggesting that in this particular case the reference is most directly to Menelaos, since it is (at least symbolically) for his sake that the Achaians all go to war (Agamemnon being merely the commander-in-chief).
We will, by the way, be reading more about the House of Atreus shortly!
(BTW, for you sci-fi buffs, note that the main family in Frank Herbert's Dune novels is named Atreides, and are supposed to be descendents of Atreus. (I'm not sure whether Herbert makes it clear whether it is through Agamemnon or Menelaus, but if one goes through the mentions of the ancestral personalities in Paul's head, one might get an answer to this. It's been a long time since I read the books.)
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