Claudia Baldassi

It is widely known that the Dioscuri – the divine (or semi-divine) twin sons of Zeus – are deeply embedded in Spartan myths and religion; however, the geographical and chronological diffusion of their stories outside Laconia is much more controversial.
In this paper, I will examine a single episode of their myth in a specific geographical context: the reception of the abduction of the Leucippides at the hands of the Dioscuri in Southern Italy. In fact, the earliest examples of this myth outside Laconia are dated to the middle of the sixth century and prove an already widespread knowledge of the story of the Leucippides. Those first cases are barely more recent than the earliest information from Sparta we have, and also seem to be closer to the Spartan situation itself, as compared for example to Athens. Nevertheless, the first signs of drift in the meaning of the episode are already evident.
In particular, my interest will focus on the poleis of Rhegion and Locri. I will try to ascertain how, when and why the myth of the Dioscuri developed in these contexts, by recurring to a selection of archaeological, artistic, literary and historical evidence, to recreate a clearer picture of the intricate web of relations connecting Archaic Sparta and the Peloponnese to the colonies of Magna Graecia.

The Helen is one of Euripides’s most problematic and controversial works. It was performed in 412 BC, when Athens was still in the middle of the Peloponnesian War, facing the immediate aftermath of the failure in the Sicilian expedition. As in the case of other tragedies (cfr. e.g. The Trojan Women in 414 BC), Euripides is here using the Trojan War as a veiled paradigm for the war raging on in his contemporary world. The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on how Helen’s myth interacts with the political context of the play by focusing specifically on the third stasimon. Here the chorus give an idyllic description of Sparta and its cults, which Helen will find again when going back home. I will argue that, behind a play that has been considered too often as a mere evasive exercise, one can find an implicit and twofold message directed to its Athenian audience. On the one hand, Sparta is strong in its traditions and traditional cults; the image of Sparta that emerges from the chorus’ description is out of time, both contemporary to the audience and familiar to Helen, who is coming back to it in her mythological past. The rites are taking place as it has always been and the Leucippides – the mythological girls or the Spartan priestesses? – are leading the dances, as it will always be. On the other hand, could there be any room for progress in the perception of Sparta, through the recognition of Helen’s original innocence? Euripides introduces to the Athenians the Spartan image of Helen, who is a faithful wife and an innocent woman, and presents some interesting connections to the female rites of passage. She is much closer to the Spartan goddess than to the traditional adulteress.

This paper will deal with a fragmentary papyrus, published in 2004 by Obbink (P. Oxy. LXIX 4708); it tells the story of a secondary episode of the Trojan saga, the first disastrous expedition of the Achaeans against Troy. They believed they had come to Troy, but attacked the wrong city, ignoring that Telephus, son of Herakles, protected it. He easily repelled the invaders and they were forced to retreat to Greece. The author is likely Archilochus.
I will focus on an interpretative problem concerning lines 13-15, where the author mentions, among the Achaeans, “sons and brothers” of immortals. Who could be called brother of an immortal? I will consider the – few – existing interpretations, from West and Nicolosi, and propose a tentative one of my own. Could this expression have something to do with the Dioscuri? Castor is the only one who could be legitimately called brother of an immortal – his twin Polydeuces. Their partecipation to the Trojan War is excluded by the Iliad (3, 234-244), but as long as they never arrive to Troy, nothing prevents them from at least trying to reach it. We only have some really faint traces in late sources of the Dioscuri chasing after their abducted sister; nonetheless, a connection is not as out of place as it could seem at first sight.
Probably, nothing can be proved for certain yet, but this interpretation offers also a suggestive trail of questions and reflections on the topic of myth, its use in literature and the existence of lost versions of it.

The Leucippides, Phoibe and Hilaeira, the two daughters of the mythological Messenian king Leucippus, are (barely) known to modern scholarship as the girls abducted by the Dioscuri in one of their last and less glorious exploits. It is common knowledge that the Dioscuri – the divine (or semi-divine) twin sons of Zeus – are deeply embedded in every aspect of Spartan life; however, much less is known about the position of the Leucippides in Sparta.
The abduction of two unmarried girls by two young heroes is perceived by modern scholarship as an episodic reflection of the wider sociological theme of “female initiation and marriage”, as it spread throughout the Greek world. However, this specific episode resonates in a considerably deeper and more complex way inside the Spartan context, as is to be expected of a myth dealing with the “national” heroes and gods of a city. What is less expected is the vital role played in this story by the Leucippides as Messenian characters. The abduction is placed on the historically turbulent border between archaic Laconia and Messenia, and as a myth about rivalries between royal families and border-crossing raids, it is bound to tell a story of some political meaning, on both sides of the border in question.
This paper uncovers the political meaning and the identity-making value of the episode in both areas, through literary, artistic and archaeological evidence, primarily in the Peloponnese, but also following in its wake as far as Magna Graecia, chasing after the trails of Peloponnesian settlers in the area.

Abductions are extremely common events in Greek myth; accordingly, famous episodes often make their appearance in vascular depictions too. Using the abduction of the Leucippides by the Dioscuri as a case study, this paper aims to investigate the depiction of emotional trauma – or lack thereof – in abducted girls. Nowadays, no one would ever doubt the traumatic nature of such experience; however, pottery painters show surprisingly different levels of sensitiveness and solidarity towards these girls' feelings. We find panic-filled runs, surprised gestures and outstretched hands begging for help; but we also find girls modestly covering their heads with veils, standing straight and solemn on their abductor's chariot, or even taking the reins of it. How can these girls be so collected in such a situation? Most abductions happened by chariot – Persephone's is probably the most famous, but as I have mentioned before, it is also a common occurrence for the Leucippides' – and the abductor and abducted girl, standing on a chariot among powerless well-wishers, must have distinctly reminded its Greek users of a wedding procession. Abductions in real life did not seem to be as popular as in depictions. Weddings, on the other hand, were obviously part of the everyday life of any Greek person; and mock abductions had – apparently – something to do with wedding rituals too, at least in some contexts (e.g. Sparta). In conclusion, the depictions of the abducted girls' feelings walk a thin line between the emotional trauma of a violent accident and the solemn acceptance of the ineluctable fate of marriage. On which side the painting is more inclined depends on what the painter wants to highlight – rape or marriage, violence or persuasion, acceptance or reluctance.

Theocritus' Idyll 22 is a hymn to the Dioscuri; it follows quite closely the structure of traditional hymns, but with an unexpected twist to a traditional story. For the first time ever, Castor is the only protagonist of the abduction of the Leucippides and of the fight with the Apharetidae, their husbands-to-be. However, what should attract our attention is the connection itself between the two episodes – never before had it happened, at least in literary sources. While both episodes are widely attested, mainly in iconography, they do not converge until the Hellenistic period. Nonetheless, Theocritus is not the one who invented the abduction as the cause of the fight – the iconography already hints at it before. Probably, he is the first to introduce the abduction of the brides-to-be as the cause of the fight, but this extra detail – satisfying from both a logical and an emotional point of view – is only the conclusion of an evolutionary process that brought to the fusion of two episodes into one. In the beginning, the Dioscuri took part with the Apharetidae in an ill-fated cattle raid. They still abducted their chosen brides, but in a completely different (and we can assume more successful) context – a cultic context, judging by the pottery paintings. By the time we have our first detailed narration of the episode in the Hellenistic age (i.e. Theocritus'), these events have all merged into a single, more complex structure. How did it happen? This paper aims to shed some light on the main moments of this story, with a particular focus on the interactions between literary and iconographic sources.