The Last Shall Be First: πανύστατος in Apollonios and Homer

Abstract

This article considers the intertextual significance of Apollonios’s use on two occasions in the Argonautika of πανύστατος, a Homeric τρὶς λεγόμενον, found twice in the Iliad and once in the Odyssey. Homer applies it to Eumelos’s finishing position in the chariot race and the emergence of Polyphemos’s ram from the cave, Apollonios to Herakles’s endurance in the rowing contest and Aietes’s equally belated emergence from his palace. πανύστατος in itself simultaneously evokes belatedness and the sense of being the last remaining, in keeping with Apollonios’s epigonal poetics and his archaizing depiction of Herakles and Aietes. Intertextually, Herakles’s impromptu contest and Aietes’s role in the crypto-athletic ἄεθλος he sets Jason resonate with the Homeric funeral games and their exploration of the definition of excellence and how it is measured, through the figure of Eumelos who is both πανύστατος and ἄριστος. Polyphemos’s ram, whose superficially humble lastness conceals Odysseus’s victory, renders the relationship more complex still.