Space and Scenery in Quintus of Smyrna, Claudian and Nonnus

Abstract

An important if limited contribution to the study of space and scenery in classical epic was made in 1976 with the publication of Early Epic Scenery: Homer, Virgil and the Medieval Legacy, by T. M. Andersson. Andersson's deliberate ignoring of the contributions of Hellenistic, Silver Age and late Greek and Latin epic are omissions which sometimes lead to distorted judgments. This article seeks to fill in part one of these gaps by examining spatial representation by three late writers of what might still loosely be termed epic.Andersson argues that Homer has a relatively poor and primitive concept of organised, rational, visual space, wherein the composer concentrates on his characters' actions and words, rather than giving much of the background against which action occurs; topographical features and spatial relations and distances between objects and persons are often vague, arbitary or downright impossible unless surmounted (as they sometimes are) by divine intervention. Homeric emphasis is on how people feel and respond when they see something rather than on the observed scene, object or behaviour itself. Splendour, for instance, is normally conveyed not so much by elaborate description of the splendid article as by dwelling on the impression made upon the viewer. Wide or carefully sourced perspectives are rare, there being no general design within a clear framework, but a mélange of detail, very narrow, fragmentary viewpoints and insulated scenes. It is a world of kinaesthetic and emotional flux, a world orchestrated into being by sound or suggested by similes rather than painted on a broad canvas for careful scrutiny by the eye, and within which communication occurs, sometimes at impossible ranges, by noises rather than by sight. The sketchiness of Homer's description of Odysseus' house on Ithaca, for example, has caused scholars much difficulty in reconstructing its layout.