Despite the central role that Menelaus played during the Trojan war, he has not always been regarded overly sympathetically. The most striking example that Stelow gives among modern scholars is a rejection of the supplement “most excellent” to describe him in Sappho fr.16 V, based solely on his reputation (vi). This, and many other examples, serve to highlight what Stelow is up against. Despite the countless works on other Homeric heroes, there has been a tendency to look on Menelaus a little unkindly, or in not much detail. The Menelaus that emerges from the Archaic period, Stelow argues, is distinctly more nuanced, and decidedly better, than the character that other generations have found. In demonstrating this, Stelow has produced an indispensable and encyclopaedic work on the figure of Menelaus up to 480 BCE that incorporates a wide range of textual, visual, and archaeological evidence.
To do this, the book is organised into two sections and an introduction. Part 1 (Chapters 1-2) looks at Menelaus in the Iliad and Odyssey and Part 2 “Votaries, Painters, and Poets” (Chapters 3-6) explores how Menelaus is presented in other Archaic sources. Chapter 3 looks at Menelaus in other Archaic poetry; chapter 4 looks at Menelaus in Archaic art; chapter 5 explores the evidence for the cult of Menelaus and Helen at Therapne; and chapter 6 acts as a short exploration of Menelaus at the end of the period under investigation, focusing on his appearance in Simonides’ ‘Plataea Elegy’. An appendix explores the rather confusing issue of Menelaus’ genealogy, and the indices (especially the Index Locorum) make the volume incredibly useful for anyone wanting to delve into a specific passage. Readers will, however, be rewarded by a cover to cover read.
Stelow’s introduction lays out her approach to the usual range of questions concerning Homer (two different ‘master composers’; Iliad first, Odyssey second, with knowledge of the Iliad). Even if readers disagree with Stelow’s views on the composition of the Homeric epics, her approach to analysing character is likely to find wide appeal. Influenced by Currie’s work on Homeric allusion, Stelow emphasises the need to focus on repetition in order to analyse the character of Menelaus in the Iliad and Odyssey.[1] Necessarily, the introduction contributes a variety of reinterpretations about the Homeric Menelaus that are key for the rest of the book. For example, while Willcock (whose influence on her own work Stelow notes) sees Homer’s Menelaus in apposition to his traditional, pre-Homeric epithets, Stelow goes further. She argues that “the seeming-contradiction between the hero and his epithets itself becomes Menelaus’ characteristic theme, a ‘mental mould’ problematized, and then resolved, by the poet” (17).[2] Indeed, this is a central part of Stelow’s interpretation of Menelaus in the Iliad and Odyssey.
Chapters 1 and 2 follow the same format, going through the passages in the Iliad and Odyssey in which Menelaus is present. I found the discussion of ‘the language of Menelaus’ particularly illuminating as a survey of how the poet of the Iliad creates Menelaus’ character through epithets and similes, but also through lexical and rhetorical features. In Chapter 2, we see how the character of Menelaus is somewhat redrawn in the Odyssey. Whereas the Menelaus of the Iliad is concerned with not appearing hyperphialos (“haughty”) and is somewhat defined by the presence of his brother, in the Odyssey he appears as a more uniquely independent character. By breaking away somewhat from how Menelaus is presented in the Iliad, the composer of the Odyssey, Stelow argues, sets a precedent for reengaging and revising the character of Menelaus in his own right, something that can be seen in the works of the non-Homeric Archaic Greek artists.
It is in Section 2 that Stelow examines these further revisions, and she is refreshingly realistic about what can and cannot be done with the evidence that survives (and also about how little of it does).[3] In Chapter 3, Stelow looks at Alcman (fr. 19 Calame = PMG 7), the Cypria, the Little Iliad and Ilioupersis, the Nostoi, Hesiod’s Catalogue of Women, Sappho frr. 16-17, and Stesichorus’ Helen, Palinodes, Ilioupersis, and Nostoi. The caution shown in Chapter 3, for example, in not assigning fragmentary lines to a speaker, and when dealing with Proclus’ summaries of the epic cycle, is mirrored in Chapter 4. Stelow decided not to look at uninscribed depictions of individual figures that others have identified as Menelaus.[4]
This highlights a key feature of the iconography of Menelaus in Archaic art. He has very few distinct attributes. We often need his name to be spelled out to be certain that the vase-painter intended any given figure to be him. While there are key iconographic tells for the hero, they are not always enough to provide a secure attribution, and those that are employed are often more subtle than those for other heroes or require the presence of Helen (for example the ‘mutual gaze’). This makes identifying Menelaus when he is represented without Helen particularly tricky; Stelow’s annotated catalogue includes only 10 examples secured by inscription.[5]
For the interpretation of ‘Recovery of Helen’ scenes on Archaic Greek figured pottery, Stelow adopts the categorisations of menace and escort type scenes, as developed by Kahill. In addition to Kahill, and in particular for data on quantity and distribution over time, Stansbury-O’Donnell is still important.[6] Stelow is generally quiet on these issues (e.g. “[Menelaus] became wildly popular with Helen on innumerable back-figure vases produced in Athens in the sixth century, many of which—though surely not all—were destined for export” [256]), though the footnotes guide readers to others’ discussions of them. What Stelow adds to Kahill’s and Stansbury-O’Donnell’s studies is a focused critique of Menelaus in these scenes specifically. Additionally, Stelow includes Archaic sculptures and metalworking, though, due to the nature of the material, the majority is figure decorated pottery.
Where Stelow excels is in her annotated catalogue of scenes of Menelaus without Helen, and in focusing on how Menelaus is represented in key scenes alongside Helen. As Stelow demonstrates, “Reading the images in ‘parallel’ with Homer yields us moderns an understanding of Menelaus as a surprisingly heroic and popular figure” (257).
Arguably though, it is in Chapter 3 that the popularity of Menelaus can be seen more clearly, in the poems that explore his relationship with Helen, Nestor, Antenor, his stay in Crete, and his role as a good husband. It would have been interesting to have more discussion between Stelow’s conclusions in Chapters 3 and 4. For example, why might it have been that the Menelaus that emerges from Archaic lyric and non-Homeric epic doesn’t seem to emerge in Archaic art? Is there something about the painted vases (primarily cups and amphoras) that can explain their depiction of a heroic, individual Menelaus, or Menelaus with Helen, rather than scenes of Menelaus that present him in a similar manner to the emotionally and narratively varied appearances that are found in Archaic lyric and epic? By and large, Stelow tends to avoid these questions.[7] My suspicion would be that the explanation might lie in the local and personal nature of certain lyric poetry (e.g. Sappho fr.16) and in potters’ need to create marketable and saleable images, and thus falling back on the most popular paradigms of Menelaus.
As the first book on Menelaus in Archaic Greece (as the blurb puts it “the first book-length study of the Homeric character”), it is incredibly exciting how much material Stelow covers, and how many further questions this allows us to ask about Menelaus from a securely built base of knowledge.
One of the areas where there will doubtless be further exciting work is thinking about how the cult of Menelaus at Therapne relates to the Homeric Menelaus, and vice versa, not least because the publication of the Archaic material from the site is still forthcoming. From a practical point of view, Chapter 5, on the Menelaion (a small site just outside Sparta where both Menelaus and Helen received worship) includes more footnotes to forthcoming work and personal communications than normal. This means that Stelow’s chapter includes a range of not widely circulated information about the Menelaion which many will find of great interest, even if they can’t yet check the references.
Chapter 6 picks up on the idea of the local Spartan cult of Menelaus and focuses on how his pan-Hellenic significance seems to be propagated by Simonides’ ‘Plataea Elegy’, with the song acting as the climax for Menelaus as a symbol of Greek heroism. As Stelow notes (164), this means that Bacchylides’ fr.15 falls outside the date range of the book, which is of course fine, but this raises some wider questions about the academic periodisation of Archaic Greece. Admittedly, we do not know when Bacchylides fr.15 was composed (likely sometime in the 470-460s), but the convention of stopping at 480 means that we miss out on a discussion of the one lyric source that survives as a link between the Archaic representations and the Classical representations of Menelaus (many of which are Athenian).[8]
Stelow has produced an extremely thorough work that covers an incredibly broad range of evidence that shows clearly the varied and complex character of Menelaus in Archaic Greece. This book will be necessary reading for anyone engaging with Agamemnon’s brother, and I have no doubt that it will stimulate wider interest in Helen’s husband too.
Notes
[1] Currie, B. G. F. 2016. Homer’s Allusive Art. Oxford.
[2] Compare, e.g. Willcock, M. M. 2004. ‘Traditional Epithets.’ In Bierl, A., A. Schmitt, and A. Willi, eds. Antike Literature in neuer Deutung. Leipzig: 51-62.
[3] See, e.g., 181.
[4] See, e.g., 206 n.16.
[5] This means that a Laconian vase possibly showing Menelaus and Proteus (Pipili no. 88) gets only a brief mention (Stelow, p. 206, n.17). Stelow does not note that one of the factors Pipili thought added to the argument for identifying Menelaus here was that “the lack of attributes for the two men flanking the central figure…makes it more probable that we have the struggle between Menelaos and Proteus than that between Herakles and Nereus…” (Pipili, 31,33).
[6] Kahil, L. 1955. Les enlèvements et le retour d’Hélène dans les textes et les documents figurés. Paris. Stansbury-O’Donnell, M. 2014. ‘Menelaos and Helen in Attic Vase-Painting’ In J. H. Oakley, ed., Athenian Potters and Painters III. Oxford: 255-65.
[7] “[M]y investigation of the depiction of Menelaus in the archaic period has taken no advance position as to the influence of poetry on art (or vice versa) …” (293), referencing Small, J. P. 2003. The Parallel Worlds of Classical Art and Text. Cambridge: 176, who argues for viewing art and poetry along “parallel worlds” of non-interaction.
[8] For reading Bacchylides fr.15 as an Athenian song: Fearn, D. 2007. Bacchylides: politics, performance, poetic tradition. Oxford: 257 ff.