Talk:Achelous

Comments

I've added some more information and have included my references. Mainly, I've added the bit about how Achelous looked like (at least according to myth), and have added a bit more about the myths and legends surrounding him. Ekpardo 02:34, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

"He was also considered a storm-god." This has been in the text since the Stone Age. I doubt that a rivergod is a stormgod (it doesn't work in the Greek vision of the hydrological cycle, but seems modern: "rains fill the rivers, right?" Can anyone come up with a scrap of quote to link Achelous to a storm? --Wetman 02:29, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• I couldn't find any references for this either, and I think it might be a good idea to delete this reference. Ekpardo 02:34, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Eleven months' notice should be enough. Out it goes. --Wetman 14:55, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

paternity

The former unsourced statement that Achelous was the son of Poseidon may have simply confused Poseidon with Okeanos. A request for a citation produced no response. I deleted it. --Wetman 23:39, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Achelous/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Developing, but needs more for a higher rating. Captain panda In vino veritas 20:35, 17 March 2007 (UTC) I changed the Greece & Rome Project rating to a B. Unlike many articles on mythological figures, it isn't full of rambling craziness nor obsessed with revealing the "truth". It follows standard copyediting practices, and is easy to read. Its citation of primary sources is careful and seems thorough. It could use some additional secondary scholarship, but not of the sort wherein the myths are subordinate to a grand theoretical scheme. Cynwolfe (talk) 21:43, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Last edited at 21:43, 18 March 2011 (UTC). Substituted at 06:36, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Natalis Comes

@Paul August:, You reverted my removal of the sentence beginning "According to the Renaissance mythographer Natalis Comes". I'd rather hoped you'd seen the discussion at Talk:Zeus with Michael Aurel and NeoSIMIAN-Terraform and would join in if you didn't like the way it was going, or had seen the discussion at Talk:Ares#Sourcing just after you and I and Haploidavey had been talking about sourcing needs. Do we need a yet more central location to discuss whether we treat Natalis Comes as a reliable source or his theories as worthy of mention? NebY (talk) 00:26, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

@NebY: Thanks for bringing this discussion here. Unfortunately I haven't followed either of the discussions you mention, but if anyone is saying that Natalis Comes is an inherently unreliable source, and should never be used on Wikipedia, than I would have to respectfully but strongly disagree. It's my opinion that the statement removed is verifiably correct, relevant, and presented in the appropriate context with the appropriate weight. If you would like to present any arguments as to why any of that is untrue I would be very interested and hope to be persuaded ;-) Or if you would simply like me to elaborate on why I think all these things are true, I would be happy to expound at length ;-) However, just at the moment, I am very busy, and will be for the next few days, and unfortunately will have limited time for discussing any of this. Regards, Paul August ☎ 10:48, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

@Paul August:, that's fine, I can take the time too. For starters, Comes is a primary source in Wikipedia's terms but of course not a contemporary one. We do use primary sources extensively in our mythology articles in an implicit WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, true, and often indiscriminately, but at least they usually have the benefit of coming from the period of Greek and Roman paganism. Even if we ignore that, he's largely decried as unreliable, to put it mildly; do we have sources saying he is reliable? Even as unreliable, it might be relevant to mention him in describing, for example, Renaissance or later artworks that were influenced by his depiction of classical mythology, especially if they would otherwise be mysterious and inexplicable, but that's not what we have in this article. Anyway, I'll look forward to your exposition! NebY (talk) 20:27, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

@NebY: It occurs to me that perhaps there is some confusion here. The sentence being discussed is this:

According to the Renaissance mythographer Natalis Comes, Alcaeus had Achelous as the son of Ocean and Earth.

References

This is asserting that Natalis Comes wrote that the 7th-6th-century BC poet Alcaeus, wrote (somewhere) that Achelous, the river god, was the son of "Ocean and Earth" The citation being given here, for this assertion, is: "Alcaeus fr. 450 Campbell", which is taken from this work, listed in the "Reference" section as:

• Campbell, David A., Greek Lyric, Volume I: Sappho and Alcaeus, Loeb Classical Library No. 142, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-674-99157-5. Online version at Harvard University Press.

This text is a compilation of the fragments of the lost works of the ancient poets Sappho and Alcaeus of Mytilene. Here is it's entry for what it lists as Alcaeus fragment 450:

450 (Voigt) Comes Natalis Myth. 7. 2 (p. 714 ed. Francof. 1581)

Alcaeus Oceani et Terrae filium esse (Acheloum) sensit.

which Campbell translates as:

Alcaeus saw that Achelous¹ was the son of Ocean and Earth.

1 River, boundary between Acarnania and Aetolia; cf. Sa. 212.

So, Natalis Comes, is *not* the source being used here (by us), rather the source being used is Campbell. Paul August ☎ 12:39, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for quoting all that; I don't have full access to the Loeb page. I'm hardly familiar with Renaissance Latin but I don't see how we can translate "sensit" as "had" or "wrote (somewhere)". Campbell gives "saw", and it seems to me that Comes claims Alcaeus understood Achelous to be etc., which is a much weaker and less explicit claim, perhaps deliberately so - rather more like "Alcaeus doesn't come right out and say it, but t think he understands that..." Am I going to have to read Comes to find out how he argued it?

Secondly, Campbell (or his predecessors) is diligently compiling and presenting every fragment concerning Alcaeus. Is our task to compile every mention of Achelous likewise, however weak or minor? I like our term "editors"; we choose what to present; we're discriminating about our subjects and our sources, about due weight and ultimately about encyclopedic value. We leave out all sorts of details not just outright trivia. Why should we choose to include and give credit to Comes' supposition? NebY (talk) 16:11, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

@NebY: Yes, after establishing whether the statement in question is verifiably accurate (which I think we have done), the next question is, is that statement worth having in the article? Hesiod has Achelous, along with all of the other river-gods, as the son of Titans Oceanus and Tethys. However, according to Sevius, Achelous was said to be the son of Gaia (Achelous Terrae fuisse filius dicitur). So Natalis Comes' report that Alcaeus of Mytilene, also had Achelous as the son of Gaia (and Oceanus), gives some important contex for Servius' statement, and suggests that there was, perhaps a much earlier tradition, of a differerent parentage for Alcaeus, than that of Hesiod, reaching at least as far back as Alcaeus (late 7th century BC)! This becomes particularly important when considering that, in some contexts apparently, Achelous was identified with Oceanus (see Fowler 2013, p. 12), as well as when considering the possibility that Achelous may even have predated Oceanus as the original Greek water-god (see section "Possible Origins"). Notice that Smith s.v. Achelous, thought enough of the importance of Comes' statement to cite it in his second sentence! Surely, then, it can find a place in our order of magnitude larger article.

How to best express Campbell's "Alcaeus saw" is, of course, another matter. I wouldn't object to your "Alcaeus understood ...", but in my opinion "Alcaeus had" is better, since it is almost certainly the case that Natalis Comes had before him the text of a poem by Alcaeus in which there was a passing poetic reference to Alcaeus such as: "O Achelous, son of Gaia and Oceanus, you king of rivers ..." (see Homer, Iliad 21.194–199).

Paul August ☎ 12:56, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Apologies for going AWOL mid-conversation; I'm not going to be able to do much on Wikipedia for some time.

Yes, about 175 years ago, Schmitz (L.S.) mentioned Comes in his second sentence. We can be more particular about our sourcing and recognise that though the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology is conveniently available online, that is due to its antiquity. Wikipedia prefers more modern scholarship.

We don't have evidence that Comes had Alcaeus's text in front of him; rather the contrary. In de Achelous, a chapter of about 100 lines in a 1567 Venetian edition, Comes quotes six lines of Sophocles in Greek, followed by a six-line Latin translation, and four lines of Euripides alongside a Latin translation, as well as two lines of Ovid and one of Virgil, specifying the play or poem in each case, but only "Achaeus (sic) Oceani & Terrae filium esse sensit, at Hecataeus Solis et Terrae."

I notice the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edition) has "Achelous was personified early as a water and river-god ((the son of Oceanus and Gaia (Ge)) .... For his mythology and widespread depiction in art, see H.P.Isler , LIMC 1/1 (1981) 12-36." We have other LIMC and Isler references in the article but not that, which might be worth reading; perhaps it contains a more secure and WP:RS foundation, whether for accepting Comes' claim or by another route. It might at least explain why William M Murray chose to mention that parentage alone in his OCD article. NebY (talk) 13:44, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

@Paul August:, Oops, can't assume you're still watching this and should have pinged you. NebY (talk) 13:50, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

I realise I'm a few years late to the party here; I've only just stumbled upon this (seemingly unfinished?) discussion. I think I'm largely inclined to agree with NebY that we probably shouldn't, as a general rule, use Natalis Comes on Wikipedia for statements about classical mythology (other than, for example, discussing its reception in Renaissance times); exceptions would be cases where he is conveying an opinion of a Greek or Roman writer, and we have good reason to believe what he conveys is actually accurate. So the question here, in my view, is whether or not this is the case for this Alcaeus fragment.

Best would of course be secondary sourcing, but I don't think we have any here (besides Smith). The parentage of Earth in the LIMC (mentioned in NebY's comment above), is coming just from Servius, and the entry doesn't seem to mention this fragment. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, from what I can tell, doesn't mention this parentage (at least not in the edition I'm looking at), as it states that Achelous was personified early as a water- and *river-god (the son of *Oceanus and *Tethys) (ie., Tethys is his mother, not Gaia); looking at other reference works, the RE and Brill's New Pauly don't mention this fragment. While Campbell's translation is itself a secondary source, the fragment's inclusion in his volume doesn't really tell us a whole lot about its authenticity; Voigt, in her edition, similarly to Campbell, doesn't comment upon the fragment. As to Smith, while he is a secondary source, he is pretty old at this point, and he makes mistakes not too infrequently; overall, I don't know that he's the best indicator here of whether this fragment is worth including.

As to Natalis Comes' reliability, especially with respect to his claims about what classical writers stated, Fowler (Early Greek Mythography, Vol. I, p. xxxiii) says the following:

The excerpts from Natalis Comes' Mythologiae printed by Jacoby in his addenda will not be found here. I shall have more to say on this intriguing figure in the commentary, but there is not the slightest reason to trust him. It is simply incredible that so many unique details should be preserved by him alone at such a date (1567).

All of Alcaeus's works are now fragmentary; they were edited in around the 2nd century BC, and I can't find mention of works being known as extant later than this. The first two editions of the fragments of Alcaeus were produced in the 1550s, around a decade before Natalis Comes' work was published, and so, to me, it would seem fairly unlikely that Comes could have been looking at a surviving work by Alcaeus; while it's possible that he had some other source from which he obtained this information, I'm inclined to say, given the above, that it would be better to not include mention of this fragment. I do, however, understand the implications of the parentage given by Servius having had a possible much earlier antecedent, and so I think it would be best to remove the current sentence on the Alcaeus fragment, and instead convey what the LIMC says about the parentage from Servius: Nach Hesiod Sohn des Okeanos und der Tethys, nach anderer, wohl urspriinglicherer Überlieferung Sohn der Erde (Ge).

– Michael Aurel (talk) 07:43, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Harumph! Now I will have to rethink this all again! Note this edit Paul August ☎ 14:46, 2 December 2024 (UTC)