In Greek mythology Phthia (/ˈ
Phthia is referenced in Plato's Crito, where Socrates, in jail and awaiting his execution, relates a dream he has had (43d–44b):[2] "I thought that a beautiful and comely woman dressed in white approached me. She called me and said: 'Socrates, may you arrive at fertile Phthia on the third day.'" The reference is to Homer's Iliad (ix.363), when Achilles, upset at having his war-prize, Briseis, taken by Agamemnon, rejects Agamemnon's conciliatory presents and threatens to set sail in the morning; he says that with good weather he might arrive on the third day "in fertile Phthia"—his home.[2]
Phthia is the setting of Euripides' play Andromache, a play set after the Trojan War, when Achilles' son Neoptolemus (in some translations named Pyrrhus) has taken Andromache, the widow of the Trojan hero Hector as a slave.
Mackie (2002) notes the linguistic association of Phthia with the Greek word phthisis "consumption, decline; wasting away" (in English, phthisis has been used as a synonym for tuberculosis) and the connection of the place name with a withering death.[clarification needed] This suggests the possibility of a wordplay in Homer, associating Achilles' home with such a withering death.[3]
Location of Phthia
editThe Homeric Catalogue of Ships speaks of Achilles' kingdom as follows (Hom. Il. 2.680-5):
These names are generally believed to have referred to places in the Spercheios valley in what is now Phthiotis in central Greece.[4][5] The river Spercheios was associated with Achilles, and at Iliad 23.144 Achilles states that his father Peleus had vowed that Achilles would dedicate a lock of his hair to the river when he returned home safely.
However, a number of ancient sources, such as Euripides' Andromache, also located Phthia further north in the area of Pharsalus.[6] Strabo also notes that near the cities of Palaepharsalus and Pharsalus there was a shrine dedicated to Achilles' mother Thetis, the Thetideion.[7] Mycenean remains have been found in Pharsalus, and also in other sites nearby,[8] but according to Denys Page, whether the Homeric Phthia is to be identified with Pharsalus "remains as doubtful as ever".[9]
It has been suggested that "Pelasgic Argos" is a general name for the whole of northern Greece, and that line 2.681 of the Iliad is meant to serve as a general introduction to the remaining nine contingents of the Catalogue.[10]
See also
edit- Phthiotis (modern Greece)
References
edit- ^ "It looks as though [by Phthia] the Epic meant a district, which was contracted to a single occupied place (Pharsalos) by the opinion of the Greeks in historical times." Page, Denys (1959), History and the Homeric Iliad, p. 161.
- ^ a b Cooper, John M., ed. (1997). Plato: Complete Works. Associate editor, D. S. Hutchinson. Translation of Crito by G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett. p. 39. ISBN 0-87220-349-2. Translated by Benjamin Jowett on the MIT website.
- ^ Mackie, C. J., "Homeric Phthia", Colby Quarterly, Volume 38, no. 2, June 2002, pp. 163–173. [1]
- ^ Allen, T. W. (1906) "Μυρμιδόνων Πόλις" The Classical Review, Vol. 20, No. 4 (May, 1906), pp. 193-201; cf. p. 196
- ^ Phthia in Brill's new Pauly; cf. Strabo 9.5.8.
- ^ These include the Little Iliad fragment 19; Euripides Andromache 16ff; Strabo, Geography, 9.5.6.
- ^ This appears from a passage in Polybius to have been situated between Eretria (Thessaly) and Scotussa; cf. Perrin, B. (1885). "Pharsalia, Pharsalus, Palaepharsalus". The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1885), pp. 170-189; p. 179.
- ^ Morgan, John D. (1983). "Palae-pharsalus – the Battle and the Town", The American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 87, No. 1, Jan. 1983.
- ^ Page, Denys (1959), History and the Homeric Iliad, p. 161.
- ^ Loptson, Peter (1981). "Pelasgikon Argos in the Catalogue of Ships" Mnemosyne, Fourth Series, Vol. 34, Fasc. 1/2 (1981), pp. 136-138.