HEADS, GHOSTS AND OMENS: INTERTEXTUALITY, EKPHRASIS AND PICTURAL INFLUENCES IN PHILOSTRATUS THE YOUNGER’S EIKONES, 9 (PELOPS’ RACE)

Abstract

If the Eikones by Philostratus the Elder are a well-known example of a Second Sophistic depiction of fictional pictures, the homonymous work composed by his relative, Philostratus the Younger, remains obscure. This paper proposes to study the connection between the two series of Eikones and the originality of the Younger’s Eikones through the example of the ninth picture: Pelops’ chariot race against Oinomaos.

Using the devices of ekphrasis, the Younger Philostratus is in part inspired by the two pictures in the Elder’s Eikones that dealt with Pelops (I, 17 and I, 30) and which he uses as his main hypotext. But he chooses a different moment – the beginning of the race – and rather than developing the same type of scholarly commentary  as the Elder, he focuses on the relationship between visual description and plot exposition. In this, he appears more closely in debt to the Greek iconography of the race, both in his choice of moment and setting and in his use of symbolism. Abandoning the ethnographic elements and the love-only symbolism of his predecessor, his vision of the race is darker and ambivalent. He shows the rotten heads of the dead suitors and their ghosts whose lament predicts the death of Oinomaos. In this, he may be showing the influences of both Greek and Roman iconography and literary evocations of Pelops, though he innovates in the meaning he attaches to the presence of the dead suitors.