Attic Tradition and Tragic Allusion in the Ithyphallic Hymn for Demetrius Poliorcetes

In this paper, I explore how the ithyphallic hymn for Demetrius Poliorcetes engages with conflicting interpretations of the Athenian literary past. I show how the hymn draws on Attic tragedy to associate Demetrius with two key figures of the dramatic stage: the divine Dionysus and the heroic Oedipus. I begin with a detailed analysis of the hymn’s intertextual engagement with Euripides’ Bacchae and Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus at Colonus. On the surface, both Dionysus and Oedipus serve as flattering mythical exempla: the hymn exploits local literary idioms to legitimize and authorize Demetrius’ divine power, just as its theological reflections appropriate Athenian philosophical thought. Yet despite this overt praise, both figures are polyvalent and ambiguous models, through which the hymn also provides a more subversive undercurrent of coded Athenian resistance. The ithyphallic hymn not only seeks to secure Demetrius’ ongoing favor, but also hints at the king’s ultimate fragility and participates in a broader cultural contest between Athens and Macedon for control of the Attic tragic tradition.