The Ontology of Greek Mythical Entities, pt. 4

[The blog image is the stunning painting of Icarus’ fall by Rosemarie Beck, oil on linen, 1984, graciously allowed to be posted by the Rosemarie Beck Foundation.]

After a lengthy pause in thinking about and writing about how mythical entities function in the Greek storyworld, I return to the topic now that we are entering and cleaning the data from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Anyone who has studied the mythical aspects of the poem are well aware of his subtle choices of variants, the cleverness at forming the connective tissue between stories, and his readiness to invent when the literary need requires it. Here, I wanted to dwell on the myth of Daedalus and Perdix from book 8 (lines 235–259; cf. 183–185) and elsewhere, where the roles of the characters are the stable data points, while the names float depending on the narrative needs of the author.

Case Study #7: Daedalus, his Sister, and his Nephew

Ovid’s story of Daedalus’ treacherous actions against his nephew, a promising 12-year old with an agile mind for invention, is a flashback after Daedalus’ own son Icarus plummets to his death during their escape from Crete. As the scholar Riemer Faber (“Daedalus, Icarus and the Fall of Perdix: Continuity and Allusion in Metamorphoses 8.143–259,” Hermes 126 [1998] 80–89 at 80) persuasively argues, this episode is not merely a tangent to justify Daedalus and Icarus in a work about metamorphosis (as Hollis ad loc.) but a contemplation of the causes of Daedalus’ tragedy and therefore integral to the preceding episode. (Incidentally, Icarus lending his name to the island Icaria is plenty enough justification in Ovid.) This continuity to some extent demands that Ovid make certain choices in following or avoiding earlier traditions regarding the names of the actors in the Athenian episode of Daedalus’ life.

Before we turn to the variants, it is important to establish that the roles of the actors in this myth are stable even if the names are not. In Athens, Daedalus always has a sister, whose precocious son is placed in the care of Daedalus to learn the tricks of his trade. Out of jealousy Daedalus kills, or tries to kill, his nephew by throwing him from high place. He is inevitably discovered as a murderer and so flees to Crete in exile, where he famously helps Pasiphae mate with the bull and build the labyrinth to house their offspring, the Minotaur.

The names of the actors, however, vary, most notably the figure who bears the name Perdix (“partridge”). The very name indicates a metamorphosis myth (like “Daphne” or “Narcissus”). In most Greek texts it is the mother who bears this name, while the son is called Calos or Talos (Diod. Sic. 4.76, Apd. 3.15.8, Paus. 1.21.4). In each of these cases Daedalus is successful in murdering the child. In Diodorus, he is caught in the act of burying the corpse; in Apollodorus the corpse of the boy is discovered later. Pausanias makes no mention of a corpse but reports that Daedalus murdered his son (phoneusas), thus causing his exile from the city. Similarly, we find the name Perdix as the mother in an entry in the late Greek encyclopedia known as the Suda (under πέρδικος ἱερόν, “the shrine of Perdix”): 

Eupalamos had two children, Daidalos and Perdix. Her son was Kalos. Daidalos was jealous of him because of his skill and so threw him from the Acropolis. Because of this Perdix hanged herself, and the Athenians honored her. Sophocles in his Kamikoi says that Perdix was the name of the one killed by Daidalos.

We’ll return below to the variant in Sophocles, which Ovid employs, but in all of these other accounts it is implied that the mother is transformed somehow out of grief at the death of her son. I find it strange that in none of these accounts is the transformation explicitly recorded, but the name Perdix implies a transformation no less than Daphne or any of the aetiological names of birds in Antoninus Liberalis’ Metamorphoses. In the Suda entry she is simply honored (as the heading “shrine of Perdix” demands).

It is only by chance that we have corroboration of Sophocles’ account that it was the son who was named Perdix. In a wide-ranging and somewhat strange account of partridges, Athenaeus (Deip. 9.388f) quotes Sophocles’ play: “he [Daidalos] came ... the one who gave his name to the perdix bird in the famed hills of Athens.” It is impossible to tell if Sophocles’ version is the original (which was transferred later to the mother) or an adaptation ad hoc, but it shows that this version is early. In fact, it is the earliest account we have of this story. Unfortunately, we do not have any more information about this transformation. All we know is that Sophocles provided the aetiology of the partridge.

Ovid’s version is consistent with Sophocles’. Minerva, pitying the young boy, transforms him mid-fall (251–5), covering him in feathers and wings, only leaving the name he had before (255, nomen, quod et ante, remansit). But Ovid’s account extends the aetiology for a specific literary effect. In fact, we meet the partridge before he tells the story of Daedalus’ treachery; the poet enlists the partridge to “comment” on Daedalus’ loss of Icarus as a transition from that story to Daedalus’ crime, indicating that Icarus’ loss was, in effect, the result of Daedalus’ earlier crime. As Daedalus is burying Icarus, the partridge appears, the only one of its kind, from a muddy ditch to celebrate the death of Icarus by whirring and flapping his wings. The dislocation of the original setting—Perdix has presumably been following Daedalus throughout his exile in Crete all the way to Icaria, where Icarus fell—is an Ovidian invention, for he often uses sophisticated geographical tricks to create his connective tissue between stories. Ovid’s desire to highlight Daedalus’ sin against Perdix as the reason for Icarus’ death prompted the Roman poet to choose the Sophoclean tradition rather than the alternative in which Daedalus’ nephew dies.

Thus, the name of Perdix follows the figure who is transformed into the partridge—the mother, out of grief for her son, or the son, who is saved from certain death. In terms of how mythical entities work, there are here two principles in tension: the stable familial relationship between the characters (Daedalus, sister, nephew) on the one hand, and the purposes of the aetiology on the other. Because of this, the main driver in establishing the entities is the role in the narrative pattern, with the name floating depending on the needs of the author. In MANTO, then, the stable data point is the family relationship (Daedalus’ nephew for example), while there is a set of subsidiary alternative names associated with the central role (Calos, Talos, Perdix). The narrative ties created with the predicates will, in turn, establish the differing narrative patterns for the entities.