Intertextual Agōnes in Archaic Greek Epic: Penelope vs. the Catalogue of Women

Archaic Greek epic exhibits a pervasive eristic intertextuality, repeatedly positioning its heroes and itself against pre-existing traditions. In this article, I focus on a specific case study from the Odyssey : Homer’s agonistic relationship with the Catalogue of Women tradition. Hesiodic-style catalogue poetry has long been recognized as an important intertext for the Nekyia of Odyssey 11, but here I explore a more sustained dialogue across the whole poem. Through an ongoing agōn that sets Odysseus’s wife against catalogic women, Homer establishes the pre-eminence of his heroine and—by extension—the supremacy of his own poem.

nelson feature the bard Thamyris vying to compete against the Muses (Iliad 2.594-600) and Telemachus's claim that "audiences celebrate more the song that comes newest to their ears," a self-reflexive comment on Homer's own drive for novelty and success .3The Homeric Hymns, too, exhibit a similarly eristic flavor: the sixth Homeric Hymn (to Aphrodite) ends by asking the goddess to "grant me victory in this competition" (δὸς δ' ἐν ἀγῶνι | νίκην τῷδε φέρεσθαι, 19-20), while the narrator of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo pictures the Ionians gathering for a festival "assembly" (or "contest": ἀγῶνα) with boxing, dancing, and singing (146-150) and shortly thereafter asks the Delian maidens to remember him as the "most pleasurable of poets" whom they "enjoy the most" and "all of whose songs are the best hereafter" (ἥδιστος ἀοιδῶν … τέῳ τέρπεσθε μάλιστα … τοῦ πᾶσαι μετόπισθεν ἀριστεύουσιν ἀοιδαί, 169-173).4Such assertions reflect a clear competitive spirit, a drive to be superlative and preeminent.Moreover, the narrator of the first Homeric Hymn to Dionysus begins with a synkrisis of various traditions surrounding the god's birthplace, dismissing them all as false (ψευδόμενοι, A. 7), before settling on his own preferred option, Nysa (A. 1-10), an explicitly agonistic engagement with tradition.Even from this brief survey, we see that archaic epic was produced in an environment highly attuned to its competitive context.5 Building on such explicit markers, modern scholars have detected many cases of implicit agonism in archaic Greek epic.They have highlighted, for example, a polemical relationship between the Odyssey and the Iliad, centered especially on the underlying differences between the protagonists of each poem: Odysseus (the man of μῆτις) against Achilles (the figure of βίη)-an attractive, if at times reductive, dichotomy.6And they have explored how both poems compete against a host of other traditions (if not poems), including the Theban war tradition, the exploits of Heracles, and other episodes of the larger Trojan war cycle.7 Homeric poetry emerges as "meta-epic," in the words of 3 Thamyris: Maehler 1963: 16-17;Brillante 1992;Wilson 2006.For Telemachus's claim as a selfreflexive comment on the Odyssey, see Danek 1998: 60;de Jong 2001: 38;Scodel 2002: 53-54.Demodocus's and Odysseus's various tales in Scheria can also be interpreted as a quasi-poetic competition, paralleling the athletic contest of Odyssey 8: Ford 1992: 114-118. 4 The language of the festival contest (146)(147)(148)(149)(150) reverberates in the narrator's boast, strengthening the agonism of his claims: ἀοιδῇ | μνησάμενοι τέρπουσιν, 149-150 ~μνήσασθ ' , 167; τέρπεσθε, 170; ἀοιδαί, 173. 5 Cf.too our external evidence for the competitive performance of epic in the archaic and classical periods, especially at public festivals : Rotstein 2012;Martin 2015: 17-24;Tsagalis 2018. 6 Nagy 1979: 42-58;Thalmann 1984: 181-183;Edwards 1985;Cook 1995: esp. 28-32;King 1999;Wilson 2005; Currie 2016: 46 with n. 46; Grethlein 2017.Cf. too Lesser 2019 for a comparable rivalry between the Iliadic Helen and Odyssean Penelope (see below).7 Homer and Theban myth: Barker andChristensen 2020. Iliad andHeracles: Martin 1989: Margalit Finkelberg, able to supersede and deauthorize conflicting, alternative versions of myth.8Hesiod, too, has been interpreted within this competitive matrix: in the Theogony, the Muses assert that they can speak "many lies like the truth" (27-28), a claim that has been interpreted as a polemical dig against the falsities of heroic Homeric epic.9In addition, Hesiod's short, brief, and successful voyage from Aulis to Euboea in the Works and Days has been read as a case of agonistic one-upmanship over Homer and the Trojan war tradition, a foil to the long and arduous toils of the Greek expedition (650)(651)(652)(653).10 Within the wider context of Hesiod's victory at Amphidamas's funeral games (648)(649)(650)(651)(652)(653)(654)(655)(656)(657)(658)(659)(660)(661)(662), this final episode likely inspired the tradition of the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi: already in antiquity, audiences discerned a competitive relationship between these two subgenres of epic.11More generally, scholars have also highlighted how Homer exploits the self-interested and personalized narratives of his characters as a foil to emphasize the authority of his own Muse-inspired work.12In short, the agonistic context of archaic epic has inspired an attractive range of readings, allowing a deeper appreciation of the workings of archaic Greek poetics.Some scholars, however, have questioned the degree of interpoetic agonism in early Greek epic and have argued that interpretations such as these are out of line with the original performance contexts of archaic poetry and go against the ethos and rhetoric of the ancient poems themselves.Ruth Scodel, in particular, has sounded the most significant note of caution, arguing that the internal evidence of the Homeric texts provides little support for such readings.She argues that Homeric heroes are generally respectful of earlier generations, refraining from challenging or competing with them-part of a larger pattern in both epics of former generations proving greater than those of the present.Heroic glory, she insists, is not a zero-sum contest, allowing the Homeric poems to nelson position their heroes within a traditional canon that has room for them all.The overall ethos is one of deference to tradition, not dominance.13In addition, Scodel has argued that such agonistic readings misrepresent the competitive context of archaic performance: "the poet's real rival," she suggests, "is the poet against whom he is competing here and now, or the poet from down the road who may be hired in his place."14On her view, it is misguided to explore epic engagement with woolly, vacuous traditions, detached from specific real world contexts.
These are significant criticisms of a major approach to Homeric studiesand they have not, as far as I am aware, been tackled directly.The issue inevitably engages with larger questions about the development of the Homeric texts and how they come to us in the form they do today.But even without getting drawn into such familiar and irresolvable questions, I feel that Scodel's argumentation can and should be reassessed.
For a start, Scodel does not justify why we should only prioritize the initial hypothesized performance context of bard against bard rather than later receptions of these works.If we imagine these poems as transient one-off performances focused on the present, her emphasis on the poet's real-world rivals makes sense.But this seems a reductive reading of the carefully crafted poems as we have them today, which are clearly invested in their own monumentality and the fame of their characters and stories.Most famously, Helen in Iliad 6 pictures herself and Paris as the subject of song in future generations (6.357-358), a self-consciousness that nods to the Iliad's own role in preserving these events, while Odysseus too claims to the Phaeacians that his κλέος reaches the heavens-thanks in large part to this very poem which preserves his deeds .Such claims as these are themselves a competitive move, an assertion that these stories and songs will continue to be propagated amid a mass of alternative rival traditions.Moreover, Jonathan Ready has recently highlighted how even oral texts are "capable of outlasting the moment," a process of "entextualization" that he already finds evidenced within the character speeches of the Iliad and the Odyssey (2019: 15-74).These epics are evidently invested in their reception beyond the "here and now."And such self-conscious reflection on poetic permanence proved a recurring aspect of the Greek literary tradition, as Henry Spelman has recently reminded us in the case of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (2018a) and Greek lyric more generally (2018b).Archaic Greek poems were not just ephemeral events but enduring artifacts that envisaged their future fame beyond the present.Poets were aware of this later reception and thus competed not only in a one-off contest with immediate rivals in the present but also against an entire canon of tradition to which they aspired to belong.Within such a broader perspective, an agonistic aspect to archaic epic's engagement with tradition is natural, even expected.
In addition, although Homeric heroes may sometimes refrain from competing directly with past heroes, this is not always the case, and there are in fact instances where they claim or are said to outdo their predecessors.In the Iliad, for example, Sthenelus responds to Agamemnon's rebuke of Diomedes by claiming that both he and Diomedes are "far superior" to their fathers (ἡμεῖς τοι πατέρων μέγ' ἀμείνονες εὐχόμεθ' εἶναι, 4.405) because they succeeded in sacking Thebes, even though they faced a greater wall with a smaller force (παυρότερον λαὸν ἀγαγόνθ' ὑπὸ τεῖχος ἄρειον, 4.407).Diomedes promptly silences his companion's boast, but these remarks invite us to compare and contrast the events at Troy with the great deeds of a former generation at Thebes, hinting at Homer's efforts to surpass this alternative tradition.15In the Odyssey, meanwhile, we could point to Athena's celebration of Odysseus as "by far the best of all mortals in counsel and in speech" (βροτῶν ὄχ' ἄριστος ἁπάντων | βουλῇ καὶ μύθοισιν, 13.297-298) and the dead Agamemnon's synkrisis of Penelope and Clytemnestra in the Underworld, when he explicitly contrasts the fame which Penelope has secured through her fidelity and the hateful song which will remain attached to Clytemnestra's name (24.191-202: see further below).Through these and other such episodes, the Homeric poems set their heroes against the characters of other traditions or poems, hinting at their superiority.There is a sense that the heroic drive to be aristos, to be pre-eminent, does indeed have an intergenerational aspect to it.
In the remainder of this article, I intend to substantiate this point further by exploring one particular case of epic agonism: the Odyssey's relationship with the Catalogue of Women tradition.I aim to highlight an ongoing intertextual rivalry within the Odyssey centered around the figure of Penelope.This rivalry nelson is signposted explicitly near the start of the poem, but it continues to reverberate throughout the whole epic, as the Odyssey poet asserts the superiority of his own poem and heroine.In what follows, I will describe this rivalry primarily in terms of "intertextuality," building on recent studies that have reclaimed this term to describe early Greek epic's interactions with other traditions within an oral framework.16By using this term, I do not mean to suggest that the Odyssey is interacting with a "fixed" poem, a "written text," or even a specific "oral text" (Ready 2019: 15-74).Rather, my focus is on how the Odyssey appropriates and repurposes the characters and themes of a rival oral tradition.This process could equally be framed in terms of "intertraditionality," a more recent coinage (Tsagalis 2014b), but I retain "intertextuality" here to acknowledge the general continuity with the intertextual practices of later generations; even if the target of reference is different ("traditions" rather than "texts"), many of the competitive maneuvers are similar.17 The Odyssey versus the Catalogue of Women As Barker and Christensen rightly note, "Homerists will frequently refer to the same phenomena with different language" (2020: 18).In this case, I suspect that my arguments and conclusions are compatible with most methodological and terminological frameworks.For a fuller discussion of my approach to early Greek intertextuality, see Nelson forthcoming a: § i.2.18 Finkelberg 1988.Though note the caution of Cingano (1990;2005: 143-151), who sees both texts drawing on epic traditions of heroes and bridal contests and considers the Hesiodic Catalogue an expansion of the abridged Iliadic text.19 Rutherford 2000: 93-96, 2012. Cf. too Zutt 1894: 13-23;Gazis 2018: 125-156.don (11.235-259): the preserved words of several Hesiodic lines precisely parallel Odysseus's own account of the episode,20 while the Odyssey's comparison of surging water to a mountain as Poseidon conceals their lovemaking is also said to have occurred in the Catalogue (11.243-244, cf.Hesiod fragment 32 M-W).21Despite the fragmentary state of the Hesiodic poem, there is a clear and strikingly close connection between these two passages.
What we make of these parallels depends in part on our theoretical preconceptions, but I am inclined to accept Rutherford's conclusion that the Catalogue narrative likely predated the Odyssey, even if the Catalogue as we have it is of a later date-a similar conclusion to that regularly drawn concerning the Epic Cycle.22In that case, the surviving fragments of the Catalogue offer potential evidence for the kind of pre-Homeric traditions with which the Odyssey may have engaged.Of course, we must handle this evidence with considerable care and caution, since parts of the Catalogue as we have it may display some Homeric influence,23 but even so, our surviving fragments still provide the best window onto the possible contours of lost pre-Homeric traditions.In the immediate context of Odyssey 11, I thus consider it plausible that Homer is evoking earlier female catalogue traditions that would later coalesce into our Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.24As in later literature, so already in the Odyssey, the Underworld is a natural site for direct engagement with the poetic past.25 However, this moment is not in fact the first time that the Odyssey engages with female catalogic tradition.The intertextual relationship is already signaled far earlier-and in a far more overtly agonistic manner-during the Ithacan assembly of book 2. Antinous, in his frustration at Penelope's devious tricks so doing, he inadvertently praises Penelope's exceptionality and highlights her obvious appeal: on the basis of this comparison, whoever succeeds in wooing her will enjoy an illustrious and unsurpassed progeny-though as Georg Danek notes, this comparison also exposes the suitors' hubris: all three of these mythical women had divine lovers, so if Penelope surpasses them, she is completely out of the suitors' league (1998: 74).28Besides this ironic reflection on the suitors' situation, Antinous's direct contrast between Penelope and these other mythical women also activates a more allusive contrast between the Odyssey and female genealogical poetry.All three of Antinous's comparanda feature prominently in Hesiodic catalogue poetry: we have already encountered Tyro's presence in both the Hesiodic Catalogue and the Odyssean Nekyia (Odyssey 11.235-259; Hesiod fragments 30-32 M-W), while we can find Alcmene in both lists fragment 195.8-63M-W = Scutum 1-56), as well as in the Great Ehoiai (fragments 248-249 M-W), where Mycene is also said to have featured (fragment 246 M-W).29 Given the close combination of these women here, Antinous's words point towards pre-existing female catalogue traditions, just as Odysseus's do in the Nekyia.The likelihood of a reference to such traditions is further reinforced by the very nature of these lines: by listing the women in a miniature catalogue, Antinous repeats the compositional technique of Ehoiai poetry itself, while the word with which he introduces them, the relative pronoun οἷα (2.118), acts as a generic signpost, echoing the common introductory formula of such poetry (ἢ οἵη).30Antinous's comparison imitates the key features of Hesiodic catalogue poetry at the same time as he evokes some of its principal protagonists.31 The allusive nature of these verses is sealed, however, by their carefully marked framing: Antinous introduces these women by stressing their antiquity (παλαιῶν, 118; πάρος, 119) and gesturing to hearsay (ἀκούομεν, 118).The names of these women have reached him through transmitted tales, while their age 28 The irony is even stronger when we recall that Tyro was famous for warning her father not to contend with the gods (οὐ]δ' εἴασκε θεοῖς [βροτὸν ἰσ]οφαρίζειν, Hesiod fragment 30.27M-W); Antinous too should heed this advice.29 On the Great Ehoiai and its relationship to the Ehoiai: nelson marks the venerability of these traditions and heightens the contrast with the present.Stephanie West remarks that "the antiquarian note" of these lines "is slightly strange" (1988: 139), but I suggest that these elements function here as intertextual markers, precursors of the "Alexandrian footnote."32Roman poets frequently present details familiar from other texts as the product of fama ("rumor") and refer to traditional characters as antiquus ("ancient")self-conscious gestures that are usually considered the preserve of Hellenistic and later poets.33Yet already here, Antinous's appeal to hearsay and his assertion of these women's antiquity seem to act in a similar manner, signposting allusive engagement with catalogic tradition.34After all, as regular "auditors" of Phemius's songs (ἀκούοντες, Odyssey 1.325-327), the suitors are themselves "aficionados of epic poetry" (Sammons 2010: 61n8); it is no surprise if Antinous derives his knowledge from older song traditions.Given this evocation of Hesiodic catalogue poetry, Antinous's comparison thus does much more than simply highlight Penelope's desirability and objectionable craftiness.It also sets her Odyssean self against representatives of another rival poetic tradition, a significant agonistic move.Despite Antinous's attempts to criticize her κέρδεα, this comparison is in fact very favorable when viewed against the poem's broader ideological framework.Penelope's exceptional κέρδεα make her a prime match for Odysseus, whose own unmatched κερδοσύνη ("cunning") is repeatedly highlighted in the epic cf. 4.251,13.297,14.31;Iliad 23.709).In addition, the only other specific figures whose κέρδεα are mentioned in the Odyssey are the couple's son, Telemachus (18.216,20.257),and Odysseus's divine patron, Athena (13.297,299).Within the broader context of the poem, κέρδεα are valorized as the emblematic and unifying trait of Odysseus's household: κέρδεα are "arguably a defining theme of the Odyssey itself" (Sammons 2010: 61).35By having Antinous assert 32 On the Alexandrian footnote, see Hinds 1998: 1-3; cf.Wills 1996: 30-31 ("external markers of allusion").33 Fama: for example, Ovid Metamorphoses 12.197 (ita fama ferebat, "so rumor had it"), 12.200 (eadem hoc quoque fama ferebat, "the same rumor reported this too"), looking to the Hesiodic Catalogue's account of Neptune's rape of Caenis (Ziogas 2013: 198-199 Penelope's superiority to catalogic women in these terms, Homer thus agonistically hints at the superiority of the tale in which she features: just as Penelope surpasses these women of the past, so too does the Odyssey trump the Hesiodic tradition of female catalogues.36Antinous's ensuing claim seals this agonistic one-upmanship: Penelope is winning great κλέος for herself-not just a "notorious reputation" but also "epic fame" (μέγα μὲν κλέος ἀυτῇ | ποιεῖτ' , 2.125-126).37As she surpasses the likes of Tyro and Alcmene, she too joins the ranks of those who are the subject of song in their own right.The polemic of this comparison is heightened further when we consider how these Hesiodic women were themselves presented as unrivalled paragons of womanhood.The Hesiodic Catalogue explicitly sets out to list those women who were "the best at that time [and the most beautiful on earth]" (α ̣ ἳ τότ' ἄρισται ἔσαν ̣ [καὶ κάλλισται κατὰ γαῖαν], fragment 1.3 M-W),38 and both Tyro and Alcmene are further celebrated as flawless models of femininity in their own entries in the Catalogue: Tyro surpasses all female women in beauty (εἶδος | [πασάων προὔχεσκε γυναι]κῶν θηλυτεράων, fragment 30.33-34M-W) and is praised for her beautiful hair ([ἐϋπ]λόκαμος, fragment 30.25 M-W, notably the same epithet that Antinous uses of the Achaean women of the past: ἐϋπλοκαμῖδες Ἀχαιαί, Odyssey 2.119).Alcmene, meanwhile, receives a particularly lavish encomium (Hesiod fragment 195.11-17M-W = Scutum 4-10): ἥ ῥα γυναικῶν φῦλον ἐκαίνυτο θηλυτεράων εἴδεΐ τε μεγέθει τε· νόον γε μὲν οὔ τις ἔριζε τάων ἃς θνηταὶ θνητοῖς τέκον εὐνηθεῖσαι.τῆς καὶ ἀπὸ κρῆθεν βλεφάρων τ' ἄπο κυανεάων τοῖον ἄηθ' οἷόν τε πολυχρύσου Ἀφροδίτης.ἣ δὲ καὶ ὣς κατὰ θυμὸν ἑὸν τίεσκεν ἀκοίτην, ὡς οὔ πώ τις ἔτισε γυναικῶν θηλυτεράων· Antilochus's reckless behavior in the chariot race of Iliad 23 (κέρδεσιν, 515), an act of "deception," "guile," and "cheating" (ψεύδεσσι, 576; δόλῳ, 585; ἠπεροπεύειν, 605).Cf.Roisman 1994;Dougherty 2001: 38-60;Tsagalis 2009: 152-154. 36 Cf.This direct rivalry may even be asserted on a verbal level: note the similar phrasing of τάων husband44 and displays an unparalleled facility with κέρδεα.Penelope's intelligence is unsurpassed, which makes her the perfect match for Odysseus andironically-completely unsuitable for Antinous, whose very name betrays his hostility to sensible thought (ἀντί + νόος: "enemy of discernment").45Antinous's words in Odyssey 2 thus position Penelope against key representatives of female catalogue poetry.Penelope proves superior even to the most intelligent and loyal women of this rival poetic tradition, a pre-eminence which reflects positively on the Homeric poet himself: his subject matter surpasses that of his predecessors.Near the start of the whole epic, Homer asserts the preeminence of his female protagonist and his own poetry, and he does so-rather ironically-through the ambivalent voice of a suitor.Although Antinous may attempt to criticize Penelope's cunning, his synkrisis in fact foregrounds her exceptionality and unwittingly proves how suitable she is not only as a match for Odysseus but also as an emblem for the poem itself.

Reverberations: The Agōn Continues
This assertion of Penelope's superiority is not a one-off passing reference.Antinous's words resonate and echo throughout the Odyssey with a similarly agonistic point.At key moments in the narrative, Penelope is praised for the same traits and in the same manner-through comparison with the women of the Catalogue.Antinous's inadvertent praise inaugurates an ongoing agōn that pervades the poem.
We have already mentioned the catalogue of heroines in the Odyssean Nekyia (11.225-329).46Scholarship traditionally emphasizes how this catalogue is tailored to one particular member of Odysseus's immediate internal audience, queen Arete.47But for Homer's external audience, the catalogue also On this catalogue in general, see Pade 1983;Houlihan 1994;Steinrück 1994;Hirschberger 2001;Sammons 2010: 74-93;Larson 2014. 47 Büchner 1937: 107;Heubeck 1954: 33;Stanford 1959: 381;Wyatt 1989: 240;Doherty 1991Doherty , 1992: : nelson establishes these women as comparanda for Penelope.Not only does it follow immediately after Odysseus's conversation with his mother, Anticleia, in which he hears of Penelope's enduring heart (11.181-183).It also begins by overlapping significantly with Antinous's previous catalogue: Tyro appears first in both lists (2.120, 11.235-259), while Alcmene also features prominently in each (in second and third place respectively: 2.120, 11.266-268).By frontloading this Underworld catalogue with two of the women whom Antinous had already compared to Penelope, Homer invites us to position all the others that follow against Odysseus's wife.Many are seduced and raped by a disguised god, especially Zeus (Alcmene, Antiope, Leda, Maera) and Poseidon (Iphimedeia, Tyro); others are killed or abandoned by their male partner (Megara, Procris, Ariadne); while others still remarry (Clymene), betray their husband (Eriphyle), or are possessed by an unnatural desire for their (step-)son (Epicaste, Phaedra).48Their unhappy loves and their various affairs stand in stark contrast to Penelope's enduring fidelity.49The majority, moreover, also feature in our extant Hesiodic fragments, and most of the rest likely featured in sections of the Catalogue that no longer survive.50Here too, Homer introduces representatives of catalogic tradition as a foil for Penelope.As elsewhere in Odysseus's Apologos, we are encouraged to look back (and ahead) to the situation on Ithaca.This synkrisis with catalogic women is made even clearer in the second Nekyia at the end of the Odyssey, when Agamemnon talks to the dead suitor Amphimedon and explicitly compares Penelope and Clytemnestra, an episode that we have already noted in passing (24.191-202):51 168-169, 1995: 87-126;Tsagarakis 2000: 83;West 2012: 130;Barker and Christensen 2020: 153n77.Athena had encouraged Odysseus to win Arete's favor (Odyssey 7.75-77) and she is the first to respond when he finishes the catalogue  For the stories of Maera and Procris, see Pherecydes fragment 170 and fragment 34 egm respectively.The former was raped by Zeus and gave birth to Locrus, a companion of Amphion and Zethus; the latter failed her husband Cephalus's test of her fidelity and was later killed by him in a hunting accident, although West suggests that this is a fifth-century Attic tradition and that in the Catalogue she might have also been "the object of a god's desire" (1985: 106-107).49 See esp.Alden 2017: 47-54, 103-112. Cf. too Walcot 1959;Northrup 1980;Danek 1998: 231;Barker and Christensen 2020: 131-171 Then the soul of Atreus's son answered him: "Blessed son of Laertes, Odysseus of many wiles, you truly obtained a wife of great virtue.How good of understanding was excellent Penelope, daughter of Icarius!How well did she retain the memory of Odysseus, her wedded husband!And so the fame of her virtue will never die, and the immortals will fashion a delightful song for those on earth in honor of prudent Penelope.Not so the daughter of Tyndareus, who plotted evil deeds and killed her wedded husband.Her song will be hateful among mankind, and she will bestow a dire reputation on the whole female sex, even on her who acts rightly." Agamemnon's ghost praises Penelope's "great virtue" (μεγάλῃ ἀρετῇ, 24.193, cf. ἀρετῆς, 197), the very trait which attracted all the suitors to compete for her in the first place (2.205-207), and he celebrates her in the same terms as Antinous had previously, applauding her "good understanding" (ἀγαθαὶ φρένες 194; cf.φρένας ἐσθλάς, 2.117) and undying fame (24.196-197; cf. μέγα μὲν κλέος ἀυτῇ | ποιεῖτ' , 2.125-126).As in book 2, this Penelopean praise can be read metapoetically, reflecting the Odyssey's bid for poetic supremacy (Tsagalis 2008: 30-43), and here too it is secured through comparison with another woman of the mythical past: in this case, Agamemnon's own wife, Clytemnestra.It is well known that the Odyssey repeatedly engages with a well-established "Oresteia" tradition, establishing Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, and Orestes as parallels and foils for Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus.52It is less commonly acknowledged, however, that this story also featured in the Hesiodic Catalogue (fragment 52 See D ' Arms and Hulley 1946;Hölscher 1967;Olson 1990Olson , 1995: 24-42;: 24-42;Katz 1991: 29-53;Felson 1994: 93-107;Marks 2008: 17-35;Tsitsibakou-Vasalos 2009;Alden 2017: 77-100.nelson 23a.27-30M-W).Just like Tyro, Alcmene, and Mycene, Clytemnestra stands as a representative of this rival tradition, who again proves inferior to Penelope.In this regard, it is worth noting a significant verbal overlap between the Odyssey and the Hesiodic Catalogue: in both poems, Orestes is said to have "killed" or "taken revenge" on πατροφονεύς Aegisthus (ἔκτανε πατροφονῆα, Odyssey 1. 299, 3.307; ἐτείσατο πατροφονῆα, 3.197; ἀπε ̣ [τείσατο π]ατροφο[ν]ῆα, fragment 23a.29 M-W).These are the only four instances of πατροφονεύς ("father-murderer") in extant Greek poetry, all in the same metrical sedes.The Odyssey's abbreviated accounts of the "Oresteia" story may thus look in part to a specifically catalogic telling of the tale.In one of the poem's final mentions of Penelope, Odysseus's wife is here once more positioned against another woman of the catalogue tradition.
Such catalogic agonism also reverberates elsewhere in the Odyssey when characters assert Penelope's superiority even without an explicit comparison to other named women.When Penelope speaks to the disguised Odysseus on his return to Ithaca, for example, she wants him to learn whether she is "preeminent among other women" for her "intelligence and prudent cunning," thematically recalling the sentiment of Antinous's past eulogy (δαήσεαι εἴ τι γυναικῶν | ἀλλάων περίειμι νόον καὶ ἐπίφρονα μῆτιν, Odyssey 19.325-326).But it is especially Telemachus's compliments before the bow contest in Odyssey 21 that resonate with Antinous's earlier words (21.106-110): ἀλλ' ἄγετε, μνηστῆρες, ἐπεὶ τόδε φαίνετ' ἄεθλον, οἵη νῦν οὐκ ἔστι γυνὴ κατ' Ἀχαιΐδα γαῖαν, οὔτε Πύλου ἱερῆς οὔτ' Ἄργεος οὔτε Μυκήνης· [οὔτ' αὐτῆς Ἰθάκης οὔτ' ἠπείροιο μελαίνης·] καὶ δ' αὐτοὶ τόδε γ' ἴστε· τί με χρὴ μητέρος αἴνου; But come now, you suitors, since this here is your prize before you: there is no other woman like her today throughout the Achaean land, neither in holy Pylos, nor in Argos, nor in Mycenae.[Nor in Ithaca itself, nor on the dark mainland.]But you know this yourselves; what need have I to praise my mother?Like Antinous's former praise, these verses evoke key features of the Hesiodic catalogue tradition: the οἵη (21.107) nods to the formula of female catalogue poetry, like οἷα in book 2,53 while the very context of these lines-the woo-ing of a woman and the idea of a woman as a prize (ἄεθλον)-resonates with many of the common themes of the catalogic genre.54Here too, Penelope is set against the traditions of the Catalogue and comes out on top.Yet these lines also have a closer connection with Antinous's earlier words than has been observed before.The initial trio of cities which Telemachus lists are all intimately linked with Antinous's own exempla: Tyro's descendants ruled Pylos (Neleus/Nestor); Alcmene was from Argos, while her son Heracles was frequently imagined as the ruler of the locality (cf.Iliad 15.29-30); and the city of Mycenae drew its name from Mycene herself.55Telemachus's words thus not only evoke traditions of female catalogue poetry but also map directly onto Antinous's list of three women, recalling the agonistic intertextuality of that earlier episode.After all, Telemachus ends by claiming that the suitors themselves "know" of Penelope's incomparability (καὶ δ' αὐτοὶ τόδε γ' ἴστε, 21.110), a remark that acknowledges their (and the external audience's) familiarity with Antinous's earlier words.56On the threshold of the Mnesterophonia, Homer's audience are pointed back to the start of the poem and to Antinous's initial encomium of Penelope.At this climactic point of the narrative, we are reminded that Penelope is completely out of the suitors' league; their impending deaths will be no surprise.
The initially signposted contrast with another literary tradition and its paradigmatic representatives thus continues to resonate through the whole poem.Both explicitly and implicitly, Penelope is presented as a foil for the women of the Catalogue.She surpasses them in her loyal fidelity and in her intelligence and cunning-a key trait that aligns her not only with Odysseus but also with the poet of the Odyssey.57Indeed, this conclusion complements Rachel Lesser's recent argument that the Odyssey positions itself against the Iliad through a direct comparison of Penelope and Helen, each character embodying the ethics and ideology of their respective epic (2019).In a similar way, we have seen here that Penelope lies at the center of another intertextual rivalry: This interpretation may lend additional support to the deletion of Odyssey 21.109, which introduces Ithaca and the mainland, places which are unnecessary for the allusive backreference.The line appears to be a "concordance interpolation": it is absent in many manuscripts, seems to have been adapted from Odyssey 14.97-98, and is "out of place" after the mention of "the Achaean land" in 107 (Fernández-Galiano 1992: 158 on 21.107).56 For the language of knowledge as a marker of intertextuality, see nelson by repeatedly setting her against the myriad women of the Catalogue, Homer establishes her-and his own-pre-eminence.However, there might be more at stake in this intertextual maneuver than a simple assertion of poetic superiority: Homer's insistence on Penelope's excellence may also be a polemical move in itself.We know from various later sources that Penelope was not in fact always as faithful as she appears in our Odyssey.Already in Herodotus, we hear that Penelope bore Pan to Hermes (2.145.4), a detail that is repeated by numerous later writers and seems to go back at least as far as Pindar (fragment 100 Snell-Maehler).58Duris of Samos offers an even more ignoble version of this story, in which Penelope bore the "goat-legged" god (τραγοσκελῆ) after "sleeping with all the suitors" (συνελθοῦσαν πᾶσι τοῖς μνηστῆρσι), hinting at an etymological connection between Pan's name (Πάν) and her indiscriminate promiscuity (cf.πᾶν, "everything": bnj 76 F 21).59 Various other later testimonia also claim that she succumbed to the suitors' persistent advances: Pausanias records a Mantinean tradition in which Odysseus accused Penelope of infidelity and sent her away (8.12.5-6);Lycophron's Cassandra predicts that Penelope will "empty out" Odysseus's house by "prostituting herself" (κασωρεύουσα κοιλανεῖ δόμους, Alexandra 772);60 and the Epitome of Apollodorus's Bibliotheca refers to multiple traditions in which she was seduced by a specific suitor, including Amphinomus or .Moreover, already in the Telegony, Penelope marries Telegonus after he has killed his father, Odysseus, an uncomfortably Oedipal move (argumentum 4b; fragment 6 gef).61 Of course, all of these accounts may be post-Homeric innovations, mischievous and counter-cultural reworkings of the Odyssey's image of a loyal and loving spouse.But it has also been argued that they reflect earlier pre-Homeric 58 See Haldane 1968: 23-25, who sifts the conflicting testimony regarding Pan's paternity (cf.Roscher 1894) and follows Timpanaro's argument that Pindar specified Hermes, not Apollo (1957Apollo ( : 184-187 = 1978: 480-486;: 480-486;cf. Snell 1964: 94) traditions which the Odyssey itself is at pains to "de-authorize," especially through the opening portrayal of Hermes as a critic of Aegisthus's adultery and a firm ally of Odysseus, negating his role as a potential rival for Penelope.62Such a suggestion can be no more than an attractive possibility on available evidence, but if we entertain it as such, we may be able to discern further point in Homer's comparison of Penelope to the women of the Catalogue.Rather than simply signifying Penelope's pre-eminence, this insistent celebration of her excellence may also attempt to suppress alternative traditions in which she was no such paragon of virtue.If so, Homer does not tackle such problematic traditions head-on but rather skirts round them by positioning Penelope against the infidelity and sexual transgressions of other mythical women.The intertextual agōn that we have been tracing here may thus in fact be formed of two separate competitive moves: on the one hand, Homer explicitly marks Penelope's superiority to the women of the Catalogue; on the other hand, he may also implicitly silence and suppress uncomfortable Penelopean alternatives.Through these two complementary processes, the Odyssean Penelope's excellence would resound all the more definitively.

Conclusions: The Agōn Expanded
We have seen how the poet of the Odyssey agonistically positions his poem against a larger tradition of other songs, asserting the primacy of Penelope and-by extension-his own poem that celebrates her.This agonistic posturing is not an isolated moment but rather recurs at key points throughout the epic, reinforcing Penelope's superiority (and perhaps also pointedly suppressing alternative traditions of Penelopean infidelity).Over the course of the poem, the Ithacan queen almost becomes an embodiment of the Odyssey itself, as her intimate association with weaving and cunning aligns her closely with the poet's own production of song (cf.Clayton 2004;Hernández 2008).
To close, I would like to expand this analysis in two further directions: first, to suggest that this intertextual agōn is not solely limited to the character of Penelope in the Odyssey; and second, to chart one aspect of its Nachleben in later Greek culture.
First, this intertextual agōn extends beyond Penelope and the women of the Catalogue to embrace its male participants.The Odyssean suitors are strongly nelson associated with catalogic poetry themselves: they woo Penelope like Helen's suitors in the Catalogue (fragments 196-204 M-W) and are themselves frequently presented in list-form (Odyssey 16.245-253, 18.291-301, 22.241-243, 265-268, 283-284: cf. Sammons 2010: 197-204).Like the heroines of myth, they too stand as representatives of catalogic tradition.Yet just as Tyro, Alcmene, and Mycene cannot compete with Penelope, so too do the suitors ultimately prove no match for Odysseus and his household by the end of the poem.Indeed, the suitors' inferiority may also be telegraphed earlier in the epic through their leader's less successful engagement with catalogue tradition.We have already noted Antinous's limited grasp of the implications of his catalogic reference in Odyssey 2, which is far less skillful than Telemachus's veiled and allusive back-reference in Odyssey 21.But even at a more basic level, his access to such traditions is inferior to Odysseus's own: Antinous relies on distant and indirect hearsay for his knowledge of these catalogic women (ἀκούομεν, 2.118), whereas Odysseus sees them and talks with them directly in the Nekyia.Indeed, the verb ἴδον ("I saw") repeatedly punctuates Odysseus's account, almost a direct replacement for catalogue poetry's repeated generic tag of ἢ οἵη (Odyssey 11.235,260,266,271,321,326,329).Within epic poetry's broader prioritization of direct autopsy over indirect transmission (cf.Ford 1992: 57-67), Odysseus's eye-witness encounters set him above Antinous in his mastery of tradition.63Odysseus outdoes the catalogic Antinous just as Penelope outshines the catalogic women.Both the men and the women of Odysseus's family ultimately surpass the emblematic representatives of the Catalogue of Women.Crucially, as we have seen, they are all united by their possession of κέρδεα.
Secondly, we should note that this agonistic strategy had a long afterlife in antiquity, as fictional and real-life women continued to be compared with exemplars of the mythical past.In the post-Homeric tradition, however, Penelope transitioned from the tenor to the vehicle of such comparisons, acting as a recurring model of female excellence in a wide variety of genres.64Richard Hunter has highlighted how Penelope "could function as a kind of shorthand for commemorating the merits of a dead wife" in sepulchral epigram, where she is repeatedly invoked as a paradigm and foil (2018: 7;cf. Peek 1965) No longer sing of Penelope or Euadne, who once mounted the pyre65 alongside Capaneus, nor even of Laodameia, who accompanied the son of Iphiclus from their home, shedding tears.And let Alcestis's name lie silent, she for whom the Fates first unraveled(?)66 the threads of destiny, after they had spun them twice for Admetus.These much-celebrated heroines, whom ancient time67 has inscribed in eternity, Atilia surpasses among the late-born, she who prayed for a most unbelievable fate in place of her husband Philippus.
The author of this epigram asserts the superiority of Atilia Pomptilla over exemplary women of the mythical past, reworking Antinous's own Odyssean rhetoric.Not only does the poet list these women in catalogue form but he also describes them as "much-talked-of heroines