Typhoeus and Etna in Hesiod, Pindar, and (Pseudo-)Aeschylus

Abstract

This paper discusses the suspected reading †ἀïδνῆς in Hes. Theog. 860 and proposes the emendation οὔρεος ἐν βήσσῃς, <ε>ἰν Αἴτνῃ παιπαλοέσσῃ. The interpretative consequences of thus introducing into the text a reference to Mount Etna are then explored. The immediately following passage, ll. 861-867, is reinterpreted in the light of a preceding reference to the Sicilian volcano. Not only Hesiod, but also Homer is argued to have knowledge of volcanism. Hesiod’s simple, unelaborated reference to Typhoeus’ defeat at Mount Etna implies that the association of Typhoeus with Mount Etna was made by Greeks before Hesiod; it can plausibly be connected to Greek colonising or proto-colonising activity in the eighth century BCE. The Typhonomachy would be only one of several mythological episodes in early Greek hexameter poetry to be localised in the West. Finally, the arguable presence of the Typhoeus-Etna link in Hesiod’s Theogony significantly increases the likelihood that the closely related descriptions of Typhoeus in passages of Pindar (from Pyth. 1, Pyth. 8, Ol. 4, and frr. 92-3 Maehler) and the (Pseudo-)Aeschylean Prometheus Bound do not depend on each other, but on a lost early hexameter account of the Typhonomachy (perhaps, but not necessarily, the Cyclical Titanomachy) that had attained canonical status by the fifth century BCE. Thus also one popular argument for a late dating of the Prometheus Bound, and for its non-Aeschylean authorship, would need to be discarded.