Oenone

This article is about the mythological figure. For the poem by Tennyson, see Oenone (poem). For the asteroid, see 215 Oenone.

In Greek mythology, Oenone (/ɪˈnoʊniː/; Ancient Greek: Οἰνώνη, romanized: Oinṓnē, lit. 'wine woman') was the first wife of Paris of Troy, whom he abandoned for Helen. Oenone was also the ancient name of an island, which was later named after Aegina, daughter of the river god Asopus.[1]

Biography

Oenone was a mountain nymph on Mount Ida in Phrygia, a mountain associated with the Mother Goddess Cybele and the Titaness Rhea. Her gift of prophecy was learned from Rhea.[2] Her father was either the river-gods, Cebren[3][4] or Oeneus.[5][6] Her name links her to the gift of wine.

Mythology

Paris, son of king Priam and Hecuba, fell in love with Oenone when he was a shepherd on the slopes of Mount Ida. He had been exposed in infancy owing to a prophecy that he would bring destruction to Troy, but rescued by the herdsman Agelaus. The couple married, and Oenone gave birth to a son, Corythus.[7] Paris swore he would never desert her, but Oenone prophesied that - whilst his love for her was true now - he would later abandon her and bring ruin to his family. Paris, perhaps disturbed or afraid, always dismissed her warnings.[8]

Her prediction came true when Paris returned to his birth parents in Troy and sailed across the Aegean for Helen, the queen of Sparta. Out of revenge, she sent Corythus to guide the Greeks to Troy.[9] Another version has it that she used him to drive a rift between Paris and Helen. Paris, not recognizing his own son, killed him.[10]

She even sent her son to inform the Greeks of the prophecies required to take Troy: one of the Aeacidae, Pelops' bones, and Heracles' arrows.[11]

One of the only extensive surviving narrations of Oenone and Paris is Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica, Book 10, 259–489, which tells the return of the dying Paris to Oenone.[12] Mortally wounded by Philoctetes's arrow, he begged Oenone to heal him with her herbal arts, but she refused and cast him out with scorn, to return to Helen's bed, and Paris died on the lower slopes of Ida. Then, overcome with remorse, Oenone, the one whole-hearted mourner of Paris, threw herself onto his burning funeral pyre, which the shepherds had raised.[13]

In Apollodorus' Library, she hanged herself upon finding Paris dead, whilst Lycophron imagines her throwing herself from the walls of Troy.[14][15] According to Conon's Narrations, Oenone kills the messenger who informed her of Paris' demise.[10]

Her tragic story makes one of the Love Romances of Parthenius of Nicaea, where she jests that Paris ask Helen to heal him. Even so, she sets out to save her husband, but arrives too late, and kills herself.[8]

Ovid includes an imagined reproachful letter from Oenone to Paris in his Heroides,[16] a text that has been extended by a number of spurious post-Ovidian interpolations, which include an elsewhere unattested rape of Oenone by Apollo.[17]

In literature

Thomas Heywood wrote the epyllion Oenone and Paris (1594) in rhyme royal.

William Morris included "The Death of Paris" in The Earthly Paradise.

Lawrence Binyon published Paris and Oenone, a one-act closet tragedy in blank verse, in 1906.

Tennyson adapted the source material of Smyrnaeus for "The Death of Oenone" (1892), distilling its tragic essence.[18] This was Tennyson's second poem on the subject; his previous attempt, "Oenone", was critically panned when first published in 1833.[19] The poem was practically rewritten between then and 1842 and the revised version has been described as exquisitely beautiful.[20]

In Racine's Phèdre, the name Oenone is given to Phaedra's nurse, a character who also commits suicide.

Notes

  1. ^ A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, Aeacus
  2. ^ Apollodorus, 3.12.6
  3. ^ Apollodorus, 3.12.6; Parthenius, 4 from Book of Poets of Nicander and the Trojan History of Cephalon of Gergitha; Tzetzes ad Lycophron, 57
  4. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Oenone" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  5. ^ Tzetzes ad Lycophron, 57
  6. ^ Graves, Robert (2017). The Greek Myths - The Complete and Definitive Edition. Penguin Books Limited. p. 632. ISBN 9780241983386.
  7. ^ Parthenius. Love Romances 34
  8. ^ a b Parthenius. Love Romances 4
  9. ^ Tzetzes. Ad Lycophronem 57
  10. ^ a b Conon. Narrations 23
  11. ^ Lycophron. Alexandra 52–60.
  12. ^ On-line text of Posthomerica; Alternative text
  13. ^ Posthomerica. 10.260–410
  14. ^ Apollodorus. Bibliotheca 3.12.6
  15. ^ Tzetzes. Ad Lycophronem 65
  16. ^ Heroides 5
  17. ^ Sergio Casali, reviewing The Cambridge Heroides in The Classical Journal 92.3 (February 1997, pp. 305–314) pp306-07.
  18. ^ Tennyson dedicated his poem to the classical scholar Benjamin Jowett as "a Grecian tale retold" and in his Memoirs (ii.386) credited it with being "even more strictly classical in form and language than the old", as Wilfred P. Mustard noted in The American Journal of Philology 23.3 (1902), p 318. See "The death of Oenone" Archived 2007-06-09 at the Wayback Machine
  19. ^ Thorn, Michael. (1992) Tennyson, p. 106. New York: St. Martin's Press.
  20. ^ Notes to Poetical Works of Lord Tennyson, Collins, published ca. 1940

References

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