#bacchylides

Theseus (bows): Good afternoon, Queen. Amphitrite (scrutinises him): Wait… you have something on your head. Theseus (touches his hair): Do I have any algae? Amphitrite: Posidonia isn't algae, it's a plant. Theseus (blushing bright red): I'm sorry, Queen… I just wanted to make a good impression. Amphitrite: Oh no… what a nice boy, Poseidon. May he stay for dinner.

Attic red figure terracotta kylix, attributed to Briseis Painter, ca. 480 BC. Metropolitan Museum, USA.

Well she is crowing him but we could also hc that Amphitrite is one of those people who gets annoyed when they see things out of place, such as a hair on a jumper or a leave in the hair.

The scene seems to belong to fragment 17 of Bacchylides where Minos, to prove whether Theseus is truly the son of Poseidon, throws a jewel (traditionally a ring) into the sea and Theseus jumps into the water and arrives with dolphins at Poseidon's palace, where he is received by Amphitrite, who dresses him in a purple cloak and presents him with her own wedding crown, made of roses by Aphrodite. AAAAAAAGHHHH🌹🌹🌹🌹

A little take to Posidonia oceanica:

As Amphitrite has emphasised, it is not a seaweed but a plant, specifically an angiosperm, also known as a marine phanerogam, and this particular species is the most important in the Mediterranean. It forms extensive meadows, capable of hosting a high biodiversity of species. The meadows provide shelter, food and a nursery for juveniles for many species, produce oxygen daily, while capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and creating tonnes of biomass per year.

(up and donw, left to right): Posidonia meadows; leaves and a flower; flower; fruits floating in the sea; germinated fruit

Bacchylides' Ode 17 Dithyramb 3 centres on a ship-board argument between Theseus, son of Poseidon, and Minos, son of Zeus. Throughout the short poem, it is clear that both of the main actors claim their authority, power and sense of self from their divine fathers. The poem is, effectively, a dad-off. As such, the narrative depends entirely on the interplay between the sons and their fathers.

Minos, "heart pricked by lust" [line 8], lays hands on Eriboia (one of the Athenian maidens sent as tribute to Knossos), which causes Theseus to upbraid him for his actions. Although Theseus begins his reprimand with a clear acknowledgement of Minos’ patrilineal descent (“Son of mightiest Zeus…” [line20]), he soon begins to cast doubt upon the validity of Minos’ claim, in the form of a veiled question about who it was that Minos’ mother actually conceived by: "even if it is true" [line 29], Theseus says, that it was Zeus that your mother slept with, "still I too am son of a god" [lines 33-4]. In other words, you might not be, but I am (and as well as a dad-off, the poem is a Yo Mama).

Minos is understandably piqued, and calls on Zeus to uphold the family honour, at the same time returning the challenge, demanding that, if Poseidon is indeed his father, Theseus jump “with boldness into your father’s home” [line63], to retrieve a ring from the ocean.

Zeus listens, and his lightning bolt is the first clear indication in the narrative that there is any truth to any of these claims of divine parentage (although the contemporary audience would presumably have been familiar with the myths, whether or not they believed them or had gone “to the trouble of wishing to separate the wheat from the chaff”  (Veyne, P. 1988 (trans. P. Wissing) Did the Greeks Believe In Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

Interesting here are the motives Bacchylides ascribes to Zeus for answering Minos’ prayer. Zeus, Bacchylides tells us, “engendering honor unsurpassed for Minos” [lines 68-9] sends the lightning “to make it visible to all” [line 70]: Zeus is proud of his boy, and wants everyone to know it.

Having demonstrated that he is indeed Zeus’ son, Minos repeats his challenge to Theseus: jump, and if you do it your father will grant you supreme glory throughout the well-wooded earth [lines 79-80]. There’s no question of 'if' here about Theseus’ parentage: Minos understands the trap Theseus now finds himself in, and how not denying that Poseidon is his father closes its jaws tighter. Regardless of the truth, Theseus has to jump: to remain on board would be a tacit admission of mortal parentage.

Theseus, of course, has no such doubts, and his “spirit did not give way” [lines 81-2]. Minos may have thought that Theseus was in a situation akin to the later medieval witch trials by water, and could only save his honour by drowning himself, but Theseus knows better.

That Minos (and, indeed, the other Athenians) was not expecting Theseus to jump is perhaps indicated by the amazement that fills his heart, and his attempts to hold the ship in its position [lines 86-9], but their fears are groundless because – of course – Theseus is indeed Poseidon’s son, and dolphins are already carrying him “to the home of his father” [lines 99-100].

There is an interesting contrast in the interactions between the fathers and sons; between Zeus and Minos and between Poseidon and Theseus. The former happens ‘on stage’, in front of the ship full of Athenian tributes and (presumably) crew. Minos asks Zeus to intercede on his behalf, and Zeus does. Minos asks Theseus to jump into the sea, and Theseus does. No-one asks Poseidon for anything, and the encounter between Theseus and his father happens in the depths of the ocean, ‘off stage’, unseen by any of the other characters in the poem.

In fact, in the literal sense it doesn’t happen at all, since although Theseus is taken to Poseidon’s halls, there is no indication that Poseidon is actually there, among the Nereids, in the company of Amphitrite.

[...]

Hestia is thus attested as standing "in the middle," a center associated with domestic space, the polis, and sacrifice. This positioning in the middle, at the center, ultimately blurs the boundaries between the categories through which we attempt to visualize Hestia. It thus becomes less important whether a space is identified as private or public, related to the oikos or the polis, allegedly female or male, in order for it to be connected to Hestia. That would explain why we find the goddess both in the presumably private and feminine oikos, as well as in the agora, a place often described as the center of male, public, and civic life.

Libation of Apollo kylix 480-470 BCE

"Nothing is past belief that is wrought by the care of the Gods. Then Delos-born Apollo carried the old man to the Hyperboreans, with his daughters of slender ankle, and there gave him rest..."

-Bacchylides, The Poems and Fragments: Page 261 (291 of 558 in pdf link below)

Anthologia Palatina 6.313 = Bacchylides Many-named daughter of Pallas, lady Nike, Look always with favor on the lovely chorus Of the Carthaeans, and ring with many crowns Bacchylides of Ceos in the frolics of the Muses.  κούρα Πάλλαντος πολυώνυμε, πότνια Νίκα, πρόφρων Καρθαίων ἱμερόεντα χορὸν αἰὲν ἐποπτεύοις, πολέας δ᾽ ἐν ἀθύρμασι Μουσᾶν Κηίῳ ἀμφιτίθει Βακχυλίδῃ στεφάνους.