ODYSSEAN MEDIATIONS IN EUDOCIA'SMARTYRDOM OF ST CYPRIAN

Abstract

ὑμετέρης γενεῆς τε καὶ αἵματος εὔχομαι εἶναι(Eudocia'sLaudes Antiochiae; cf.Il. 6.211, 20.241).1The article argues that in Eudocia's fifth-centuryMartyrdom of St Cyprian– the only surviving Greek verse paraphrase of a hagiography – certain Odyssean lexical items and intertexts may be thematically grouped. A new category, the ‘diatext’, is introduced to describe this function of theOdysseyas an intermediate thematic model used to transpose the Cyprianic hagiographies (the ‘hypotext’) into Eudocia's verse paraphrase (the ‘hypertext’). A particularly important and complex example is the way in which Eudocia's metapoetic/narratorial and biographical alter ego, the ex-pagan Christian convert Cyprian, is modelled after Odysseus (especially in book 2).