Reception in the Greco-Roman World: Literary Studies in Theory and Practice 1316518582, 9781316518588

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R E C EP T I O N IN T H E G RE C O - RO M A N WO R L D

The embrace of reception theory has been one of the hallmarks of classical studies over the last thirty years. This volume builds on the critical insights thereby gained to consider reception within Greek antiquity itself. Reception, like ‘intertextuality’, places the emphasis on the creative agency of the later ‘receiver’ rather than the unilateral influence of the ‘transmitter’. It additionally shines the spotlight on transitions into new cultural contexts, on materiality, on intermediality, and on the body. Essays range chronologically from the archaic to the Byzantine periods and address literature (prose and verse; Greek, Roman, and Greco-Jewish), philosophy, papyri, inscriptions, and dance. Whereas the conventional image of ancient Greek classicism is one of quiet reverence, this book, by contrast, demonstrates how rumbustious, heterogeneous, and combative it could be. This volume is dedicated to Professor Richard Hunter in gratitude for his pioneering contributions to the study of Greek literature. marco fantuzzi is Professor of Greek Literature at the University of Roehampton, London. His most recent book is an edition of the Rhesus attributed to Euripides for Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries (2020). helen morales is Argyropoulos Professor in Hellenic Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her most recent book is Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths (2020). She is co-editor of Ramus: Critical Studies in Greek and Roman Literature. tim whitmarsh is A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of nine books, including Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World (2015), and edits the Oxford Classical Dictionary. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.

c a m b r i d g e cl a s s i c a l st u d i e s General editors

j . p . t . c la c ks o n, w . m . be a rd , g. be t eg h , r . l . h u n te r , m. j. millett, s . p . o a kl e y, r. g . o sb o rn e , t . j. g . w h i t m ar sh

R E C EP T I O N IN T H E G RE C O - RO M A N WO R L D

Literary Studies in Theory and Practice Edited by M AR C O FA NT U Z Z I Roehampton University, London HE L E N M O R AL E S University of California, Santa Barbara T IM W HI T M A R S H University of Cambridge

University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781316518588 doi: 10.1017/9781108993845 © Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge 2021 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2021 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited, Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data names: Fantuzzi, Marco, editor. | Morales, Helen, editor. | Whitmarsh, Tim, editor. title: Reception in the Greco-Roman world : literary studies in theory and practice / edited by Marco Fantuzzi, Roehampton University, London ; Helen Morales, University of California, Santa Barbara ; Tim Whitmarsh, University of Cambridge. description: Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2021. | Series: Cambridge classical studies | Includes bibliographical references. identifiers: lccn 2021002368 (print) | lccn 2021002369 (ebook) | isbn 9781316518588 (hardback) | isbn 9781108995320 (paperback) | isbn 9781108993845 (ebook) subjects: lcsh: Classical literature – Greek influence. | Greek literature – History and criticism. | Reader-response criticism. classification: lcc pa3010 .r43 2021 (print) | lcc pa3010 (ebook) | ddc 808–dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021002368 lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021002369 isbn 978-1-316-51858-8 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Richard Hunter in thanks, friendship, and admiration

Professor Richard Hunter. Photo credit: Pascale Hunter

CONT ENTS

List of Figures Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Altered States: Cultural Pluralism and Psychosis in Ancient Literary Receptions tim whitmarsh

page x

xi xvi xvii

1

Part I Archaic and Classical Poetics 1 Neighbors and the Poetry of Hesiod and Pindar anna uhlig

23

2 Stesichorus and the Name Game richard p. martin

48

3 From Epinician Praise to the Poetry of Encomium on Stone: CEG 177, 819, 888–9 and the Hyssaldomus Inscription ettore cingano 4 Geometry of Allusions: The Reception of Earlier Poetry in Aristophanes’ Peace ioannis m. konstantakos Part II

72

92

Classical Philosophy and Rhetoric, and Their Reception

5 On Coming after Socrates laura viidebaum

121

vii

Contents

6 Chimeras of Classicism in Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ Reception of the Athenian Funeral Orations johanna hanink 7 ‘Our Mind Went to the Platonic Charmides’: The Reception of Plato’s Charmides in Wilde, Cavafy, and Plutarch timothy duff

145

167

8 Naked Apes, Featherless Chickens, and Talking Pigs: Adventures in the Platonic History of Body-Hair and Other Human Attributes 194 alastair j. l. blanshard Part III

Hellenistic and Roman Poetics

9 Before the Canon: The Reception of Greek Tragedy in Hellenistic Poetry annette harder

219

10 Pun-Fried Concoctions: Wor(l)d-Blending in the Roman Kitchen emily gowers

241

11 Powerful Presences: Horace’s Carmen Saeculare and Hellenistic Choral Traditions giovan battista d’alessio

266

Part IV Multimedia and Intercultural Receptions in the Second Sophistic and Beyond 12 Received into Dance? Parthenius’ Erōtika Pathēmata in the Pantomime Idiom 293 ismene lada-richards 13 Sappho in Pieces susan a. stephens

319

14 Hesiodic Rhapsody: The Sibylline Oracles helen van noorden

344

viii

Contents

15 Homer and the Precarity of Tradition: Can Jesus Be Achilles? simon goldhill References Index

371

399 446

ix

FIGURES

Figures 13.1 Fragments of texts from known genres 13.2 Most frequently occurring authors (excluding Homer) 13.3 Surviving fragments of lyric poets

page 332

333 333

Table 13.1 Table of Sappho papyri

x

341

N O T E S O N C O NT R I B U TO R S

alastair j. l. blanshard is the Paul Eliadis Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Queensland. He has authored a number of books on the reception of antiquity in the modern world. These include Hercules: A Heroic Life (Granta, 2005), Sex: Vice and Love from Antiquity to Modernity (Blackwells, 2010), and Classics on Screen: Ancient Greece and Rome in Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2011). He is one of the co-editors of the Cambridge University Press monograph series ‘Classics after Antiquity’ and is the subject-area editor for Classical Reception for the Oxford Classical Dictionary. ettore cingano is Professor of Greek Literature at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. His main interests lie in Greek epic poetry, especially in fragments, lyric poetry, early Greek mythography and local traditions, and archaic metrical inscriptions. He has edited and commented on Pindar’s Pythians 1 and 2 for the Fondazione Valla and has published extensively on the epic cycle, on the Hesiodic corpus, on the lyric poets from Stesichorus to Bacchylides, and on the major Greek myths (Theseus, Oedipus, Antigone, the Seven against Thebes). giovan battista d’alessio, formerly Professor of Greek Language and Literature at King’s College London, is now Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Naples ‘Federico II’. He has published extensively with a particular focus on Greek lyric, Hellenistic poetry, and literary papyri. timothy duff is Professor of Greek at the University of Reading. He was educated at Cambridge University, and has held visiting positions at Princeton University, Harvard University, the Freie Universität Berlin, the Australian National University, the University of Cincinnati, Shanghai University, and Wolfson xi

Notes on Contributors

College, Cambridge, where he is a Senior Member. He has also taught at the British School at Athens. His publications include Plutarch’s Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (Oxford, 1999), The Greek and Roman Historians (Duckworth/Bristol Classical Press, 2003), and Plutarch: The Age of Alexander (Penguin, 2012). marco fantuzzi teaches at Roehampton University, London, and has taught at Columbia University, NY, and at various Italian universities (Trento, Firenze, Macerata). He is a member of the editorial board of Bryn Mawr Classical Review, Materiali e Discussioni, and Seminari Romani di Cultura Greca. His publications include: Bionis Smyrnaei Adonidis Epitaphium (Liverpool, 1985); Ricerche su Apollonio Rodio (Edizioni Dell’Ateneo, 1988); (with R. L. Hunter) Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry (Cambridge, 2004); Achilles in Love (Oxford, 2012); The Rhesus Attributed to Euripides (Cambridge, 2020). He co-edited (with R. Pretagostini) Struttura e storia dell’esametro greco (Gruppo editoriale internazionale, 1995–6), (with T. Papanghelis) Brill’s Companion to Greek and Latin Pastoral (Leiden, 2006), and (with C. Tsagalis) A Companion to the Epic Cycle and Its Fortune in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 2015). simon goldhill is Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge and Foreign Secretary of the British Academy. He has published very widely on Greek literature and its reception, and his books have been translated into ten languages and won three international prizes including the Robert Lowry Patten Prize and the Runciman Prize. He has lectured all over the world, and is a regular talking head on radio and television. emily gowers is Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of St John’s College, and a Fellow of the British Academy. She has also taught at UCL, Princeton University, and Stanford University. She is author of The Loaded Table: Representations of Food in Roman Literature (Oxford, 1993) and Horace: Satires Book I (Cambridge, 2012), and editor, with William Fitzgerald, of Ennius Perennis: The Annals and Beyond (Cambridge Philological Society supplement, 2007). She has also published articles on food, poetics, and the built and xii

Notes on Contributors

natural worlds of antiquity, as well as reviews for the Times Literary Supplement and the Guardian. johanna hanink is Associate Professor of Classics at Brown University. Her work focuses on the cultural and intellectual life of classical Athens and its reception in antiquity and the modern era. She is author of Lycurgan Athens and the Making of Classical Tragedy (Cambridge, 2014) and The Classical Debt: Greek Antiquity in an Era of Austerity (Harvard, 2017). She earned her PhD in 2010 from Cambridge University with a thesis entitled “Classical Tragedy in the Age of Macedon: Studies in the Theatrical Discourses of Athens,” which was supervised by Richard Hunter. annette harder is emeritus Professor of Ancient Greek at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). She has published on Greek tragedy, Greek literary papyri, and particularly on Hellenistic poetry. Since 1992 she has organized the biennial Groningen Workshops on Hellenistic Poetry and edits the series Hellenistica Groningana. Her edition with commentary of Callimachus’ Aetia was published in 2012. ioannis m. konstantakos is Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He was supervised by Richard Hunter for his doctoral thesis at Cambridge (‘A Commentary on the Fragments of Eight Plays of Antiphanes’, 2000). He has published widely on ancient comedy, ancient narrative, folklore, and the relations between Greek and Near Eastern literatures and cultures. In 2009 his study Akicharos: The Tale of Ahiqar in Ancient Greece, vols. 1 and 2 (Stigmi Publications, 2008) was awarded the Academy of Athens’ prize for the best monograph in classical philology. ismene lada-richards is Professor of Classical Literature and Performance Culture at King’s College London. She is a literary and cultural historian with interests in performance, theatre history, and the relationship between literature and dance. Her publications include Silent Eloquence: Lucian and Pantomime Dancing (Bristol Classical Press, 2007) and numerous articles on aspects of Greek theatre and ritual, Greek and Roman theatrical performance, and pantomime dancing. Her current project on first-century xiii

Notes on Contributors

BC Roman poetry and dance is funded by a Major Research Fellowship awarded by the Leverhulme Trust. richard p. martin is Antony and Isabelle Raubitschek Professor in Classics at Stanford University. His most recent book on archaic Greek poetry, culture, and myth is Mythologizing Performance (Cornell University Press, 2020). Others include Healing, Sacrifice and Battle (Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, 1983), The Language of Heroes (Cornell University Press, 1989), Myths of the Ancient Greeks (New American Library, 2003), and Classical Mythology: The Basics (Routledge, 2016). In addition, he has edited Bulfinch’s Mythology (HarperCollins, 1991) and provided extensive notes and introductions for translations of the Iliad by Richmond Lattimore (University of Chicago Press, 2011) and the Odyssey by Edward McCrorie (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). His other interests include Greek religion, comedy, ethnopoetics, medieval Irish literature, and modern Greek poetry. helen morales is the Argyropoulos Professor of Hellenic Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is also tired. She does her bit as a classicist and loves her students. She is not sure she could name every country in the world let alone lecture in them. Which is a pity because she really needs a break. She hasn’t written that many books. Her most recent one is Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths (Bold Type Books, 2020). It hasn’t been translated into many languages, but it has a great cover. She’s also written a book about Dolly Parton. She suspects that she is a bit of a disappointment to her old advisor, Richard Hunter, but she is not going to ask. susan a. stephens is Sara Hart Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics at Stanford University. Her work includes (coauthored with Jack Winkler) Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments, (Princeton, 1995), Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2003), Callimachus: The Hymns (Oxford, 2015), and The Poets of Alexandria (Bloomsbury, 2018). Her current work is on ancient athletics. anna uhlig is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of California, Davis. She is co-editor (with Richard Hunter) xiv

Notes on Contributors

of Imagining Reperformance in Ancient Culture: Studies in the Traditions of Drama and Lyric (Cambridge, 2017) and (with Lyndsay Coo) of Aeschylus at Play: Studies in Aeschylean Satyr Drama, a themed issue of the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies (2019), and author of Theatrical Reenactment in Pindar and Aeschylus (Cambridge, 2019). helen van noorden is Wrigley Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Classics at Girton College, Cambridge, and for 2020–2 is Associate Professor/AIAS-COFUND Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies. She is the author of Playing Hesiod: The ‘Myth of the Races’ in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, 2015) and co-editor of Eschatology in Antiquity (Routledge, 2021). Her current monograph project focuses on the Sibylline Oracles, and she has wider interests in ancient receptions of archaic Greek epic, particularly in didactic, philosophical, apocalyptic, and satiric writing. laura viidebaum is Assistant Professor of Classics at New York University, where she moved after receiving her PhD from Cambridge in 2015. Her primary research interests are ancient rhetoric, philosophy and literary criticism. Her first book, Creating the Ancient Rhetorical Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2021), looks at the emergence of the rhetorical tradition in Greece and Rome from the fourth to the first century BCE. She was recently awarded a Humboldt fellowship to work at LMU (Munich) on her second monograph focusing on the third book of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. tim whitmarsh is the A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of St John’s College. A specialist in the literature, culture, and religion of ancient Greece, he is the author of nine books, including Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World (Knopf, 2015) and Dirty Love: The Genealogy of the Ancient Greek Novel (Oxford, 2018). He also edits the Oxford Classical Dictionary (5th edition). He has written over eighty academic articles and contributed frequently to newspapers such as the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, and the London Review of Books, as well as to BBC radio and TV. He is a Fellow of the British Academy. xv

A C KN O W L E D G E M E N T S

The editors would like to extend warm thanks to Nigel Thompson, Pascale Hunter, Michael Sharp, Bethany Johnson, John Jacobs, the Cambridge Classical Studies series editors, and the anonymous readers for the press.

xvi

A B B R E V I AT I O N S

Abbreviations of names and works of Greek and Latin authors are given according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary. Adler Astbury

Aujac

Austin–Bastianini

Bekker Billerbeck

BNJ CA Calame

CEG

Adler, A. 1928–38. Suidae Lexicon (Lexicographi Graeci 1). 5 vols. Stuttgart. Astbury, R. 2002. Marcus Terentius Varro: Saturarum Menippearum fragmenta. Leipzig. Aujac, G. ed. and trans. 1991. Denys d’Halicarnasse: opuscules rhétoriques. Tome IV: Thucydide; Seconde Lettre à Ammée. Paris. Austin, C. and Bastiannini, G. 2002. Posidippi Pellaei quae supersunt omnia. Milan. Bekker, I. 1965. Lexica Segueriana. Graz. Billerbeck, M. ed. and trans. 2006. Stephani Byzantii Ethnica. Vol. I: Α–Γ (Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae 43.1). Berlin and New York. Worthington, I. ed. 2006–. Brill’s New Jacoby. Powell, J. U. 1925. Collectanea Alexandrina. Oxford. Calame, C. 2001. Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece. Trans. Collins, D. and Orion, J. Rev. ed. Lanham. Hansen, P. A. 1983–9. Carmina epigraphica Graeca. 2 vols. Berlin and New York. xvii

List of Abbreviations

CGL Cobet Consbruch Cougny

Courtney Dittmar

DK

Drachmann

Ebert

FGE FGrH

Fowler Gerber Giannantoni

Gow–Page

xviii

Loewe, G. et al. 1888–1923. Corpus glossariorum Latinorum. 7 vols. Leipzig. Cobet, C. G. and Geelius, J. 1846. Euripidis Phoenissae. Lyon. Consbruch, M. 1906. Hephaestionis Enchiridion. Leipzig. Cougny, E. 1890. Epigrammatum anthologia Palatina cum Planudeis et appendice nova. Vol. III. Paris. Courtney, E. 1993. The Fragmentary Latin Poets. Oxford. Dittmar, H. 1912. Aischines von Sphettos. Studien zur Literaturgeschichte der Sokratiker. Berlin. Diels, H. and Kranz, W. 1951–2. Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. 6th ed. 3 vols. Berlin. Drachmann, A. B. 1903. Scholia vetera in Pindari carmina. Vol. I: Olympians. Leipzig. Ebert, J. 1972. Griechische Epigramme auf Sieger an gymnischen und hippischen Agonen. Berlin. Page, D. L. 1981. Further Greek Epigrams. Cambridge. Jacoby, F. 1923–58. Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Berlin and Leiden. Fowler, R. L. 2000–13. Early Greek Mythography. 2 vols. Oxford. Gerber, D. E. ed. 1997. A Companion to the Greek Lyric Poets. Leiden. Giannantoni, G. 1990. Socratis et Socraticorum reliquiae. 2nd ed. 4 vols. Naples. Gow, A. S. F. and Page, D. L. 1965. The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams. 2 vols. Cambridge.

List of Abbreviations

Herington Hirschberger

Hollis IE IEG2

IG IGR I. Magnesia I. Milet

I. Mylasa ISE Keil Kiessling–Heinze

Kock Laks–Most

Lentz

Herington, C. J. 1972. Older Scholia on the Prometheus Bound. Leiden. Hirschberger, M. 2004. Gynaikôn Katalogos und Megalae Êhoiai. Ein Kommentar zu den Fragmenten zweier hesiodeischer Epen. Munich and Leipzig. Hollis, A. S. 2009. Callimachus: Hecale. Oxford. Wagman, R. 1995. Inni di Epidauro. Pisa and Rome. West, M. L. 1989–92. Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Oxford. Inscriptiones Graecae (Berlin 1873–) Cagnat, R. 1964. Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes. Rome. Kern, O. ed. 1900. Die Inschriften von Magnesia am Maeander. Berlin. Rehm, A. in Kawerau, G. and Rehm, A. 1914. Das Delphinion in Milet (Milet I.3). Berlin. Blümel, W. 1987. Die Inschriften von Mylasa I. Bonn. Moretti, L. 1967. Iscrizioni storiche ellenistiche. Florence. Keil, B. 1898. Aelii Aristidis Smyrnaei quae supersunt omnia. Vol. II. Leipzig. Kiessling, A. and Heinze, R. 1958. Q. Horatius Flaccus. Oden und Epoden. Berlin. Kock, T. 1880–8. Comicorum Atticorum fragmenta. 3 vols. Leipzig. Laks, A and Most, G. W. eds. and trans. 2016. Early Greek Philosophy. Vol. III: Early Ionian Thinkers, Part 2. Cambridge, MA. Lentz, A. 1867–80. Herodiani Technici reliquiae. 2 vols. Leipzig. xix

List of Abbreviations

Lightfoot

Lobel–Page LSJ

Meiggs–Lewis

Merkelbach–West Most MP3

Nestle–Aland

OGIS Parke–Wormell PCG

Pfeiffer PG PMG

xx

Lightfoot, J. L. 1999. Parthenius of Nicaea: The Poetical Fragments and the Ἐρωτικὰ Παθήματα. Oxford. Lobel, E. and Page, D. 1955. Poetarum Lesbiorum fragmenta. Oxford. Liddell, H. G., Scott, R., Jones, H. S., McKenzie, R., Glare, P. G. W., and Thompson, A. A. 1996. A Greek–English Lexicon. 9th ed. Oxford. Meiggs, R. and Lewis, D. 1988. A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B.C. Rev. ed. Oxford. Merkelbach, R. and West, M. L. eds. 1967. Fragmenta Hesiodea. Oxford. Most, G. W. ed. and trans. 2007. Hesiod. Vol. I: Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia. Cambridge, MA. CEDOPAL, The Mertens–Pack3 File, http://web.philo.ulg.ac.be/cedopal/themertens-pack3-file/ Nestle, E. and Aland, K. 2012. Novum Testamentum Graecum. 28th ed. Stuttgart. Dittenberger, W. 1903–5. Orientis Graeci inscriptiones selectae. 2 vols. Leipzig. Parke, H. W. and Wormell, D. E. 1956. The Delphic Oracle. 2 vols. Oxford. Kassel, R. and Austin, C. F. L. 1983–. Poetae comici Graeci. 8+ vols. Berlin and New York. Pfeiffer, R. 1949–53. Callimachus. 2 vols. Oxford. Migne, J.-P. 1854–85. Patrologiae cursus completus: Series Graeca. Paris. Page, D. L. 1962. Poetae melici Graeci. Oxford.

List of Abbreviations

PMGF

Preger

Schroeder

SECir

SEG SGO

SH

SIG3

SLG Snell–Maehler

SVF Swift

TAM

Davies, M. 1991. Poetarum melicorum Graecorum fragmenta. Vol. I: Alcman, Stesichorus, Ibycus. Oxford. Preger, T. 1891. Inscriptiones Graecae metricae ex scriptoribus praeter Anthologiam collectae. Leipzig. Schroeder, O. 1915. Novae Comoediae fragmenta in papyris reperta exceptis Menandreis. Kiel. Oliverio, G., Pugliese-Carratelli, G, and Morelli, D. 1961–3. Supplemento epigrafico cirenaico. Rome. Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (Leiden 1923–) Merkelbach, R. and Stauber, J. 1998–2004. Steinepigramme aus dem Griechischen Osten. 5 vols. Munich and Leipzig. Lloyd-Jones, H. and Parsons, P. 1983. Supplementum Hellenisticum. Berlin and New York. Dittenberger, W. 1915–24. Sylloge incriptionum Graecarum. 3rd ed. 3 vols. Leipzig. Page, D. L. 1974. Supplementum lyricis Graecis. Oxford. Snell, B. and Maehler, H. 1989–97. Pindari carmina cum fragmentis. 8th ed. 2 vols. Stuttgart. von Arnim, H. F. A. 1903–24. Stoicorum veterum fragmenta. 3 vols. Leipzig. Swift, L. 2019. Archilochus: The Poems. Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary. Oxford. Kalinka, R. 1901. Tituli Asiae Minoris I. Tituli Lyciae lingua Lycia conscripti. Vienna. xxi

List of Abbreviations

TGrF

TLG Usener Voigt Wehrli

xxii

Snell, B., Kannicht, R., and Radt, S. 1971–2007. Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta. 5 vols. Göttingen. Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (1972–) Usener, H. 1887. Epicurea. Leipzig. Voigt, E.-M. 1971. Sappho et Alcaeus: Fragmenta. Amsterdam. Wehrli, F. 1957. Die Schule des Aristoteles. Vol. IX: Phainias von Eresos, Chamaileon, Praxiphanes. Basel.

ALTER ED STATES: CULT UR A L PL U RALISM A N D P S Y C H O S I S I N AN C I E N T LI T E R A RY R ECE PT I ON S

tim whitmarsh

One of the hallmarks of Greco-Roman literary studies over the last thirty years has been the emergence of reception studies. It is not, of course, that the traces of Greek and Roman precedents in the works of many post-antique literary writers, artists, architects and thinkers were previously obscure. Already one hundred years ago one could readily find works of classical scholarship with titles like The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction.1 In such earlier studies, however, the emphasis was upon ‘influence’ and ‘legacy’: classical texts and artefacts were typically regarded as sources of enlightenment that were unilaterally formative. Modern readers, conversely, were viewed as ‘debtors’.2 After two world wars, the fall of European empires and decades of reckoning with disequilibria of race, religion and gender, however, the idea of the Greco-Roman tradition as a treasury of unalloyed civilized values has proven less convincing.3 ‘Reception studies’ is more than a new name for an old phenomenon; it marks an entirely renegotiated relationship with the classical past. Rather than celebrating the allegedly inherent value of the Greco-Roman tradition, the 1

2

3

Wolff 1912; cf. e.g. Chapman 1915. A study of the emergence and development of reception studies as a field would be of great interest. Cf. the early twentieth-century American series Our Debt to Greece and Rome. This metaphor is artfully deconstructed by Hanink 2017. The extent of Classics’ own complicity in this history is of course widely debated, but it is hardly deniable that many have claimed an allegedly ‘superior’ Greco-Roman civilization as a pretext for various forms of supremacism. A 1926 review of Jane Harrison’s Mythology (in the series mentioned in the previous note) begins by noting the common scholarly accusation levelled against her ‘of taking excessive interest in the undoubtedly intriguing doings of peoples with dusky faces and woolly heads’, but counters that ‘she may now be acquitted without a stain upon her character’; for what the book under review shows is that ‘whatever of savagery may have lingered round the Greek even at his highest development, the really interesting thing about him is not his savagery but his Hellenism’ (Brooke 1926: 19).

1

Tim Whitmarsh

‘transmitting’ culture, it locates the agency with the ‘receiver’, placing the emphasis upon the receiver’s creativity and ethical responsibilities.4 In particular, modern reception studies represent the meeting point between a theoretical emphasis (drawn from poststructuralism and postmodernism) on the equipollence of the ‘copy’ and the ‘original’ and a political imperative to expand not just access to classical literature but also the number of points of entry into the tradition(s). Twentieth- and twenty-first-century reception, in other words, has demonstrated that ‘the classical tradition’ is a global phenomenon that cuts (inconsistently, to be sure) across multiple demographics.5 At the same time as reception history has flourished, studies of classical literary texts ‘themselves’ have been revolutionized by related new methodologies. Scholarship on Hellenistic and Latin poetics in particular has been transformed by the embrace of intertextuality and allusion.6 These terms have been used in notoriously variable ways. ‘Allusion’ is typically imagined in rather straightforward terms: thus arma virumque, to take the most familiar example in the whole of classical literature, alludes to the Iliad and the Odyssey in a sophisticated capping gesture that marks Virgil’s supersession of his Homeric models. ‘Intertextuality’ is sometimes used in a similar way; but in its most radical form, proposed by Julia Kristeva, it indicates an anti-authoritarian theoretical belief that no language is fully ‘authored’ by its speaker, that all utterances are always already borrowed from elsewhere.7 ‘Intertextuality’ in classical literary studies, therefore, has often been taken to indicate something more acrophobically destabilizing than mere allusion: a sense that the text can be opened up to multiple different 4

5

6

7

2

For an analysis of classicism in terms of time, value, and responsibility see Postclassicisms Collective 2020: 8–44. For recent discussion see Hall and Stead 2020: 8–12. There are many excellent studies exploring classical reception and gender (e.g. Stevenson 2005; Hurst 2006; Wyles and Hall 2016), race and nationality (Goff and Simpson 2007; Greenwood 2010; Mee and Foley 2011; Hall 2013; Jansen 2018). More generally on classical reception see Martindale and Thomas 2006; Hardwick and Stray 2008; Gildenhard, Silk, and Barrows 2013; Richardson 2019; Postclassicisms Collective 2020. Hinds 1998 is the best known general study of the phenomenon of intertextuality in classical poetics; see also Edmunds 2001. There are of course many studies of specific texts. On the theoretical varieties of intertextuality see Allen 2011. Kristeva 1980.

Cultural Pluralism and Psychosis in Ancient Literary Receptions

interpretations depending on which line of allusive filiation the reader chooses to follow. These two intellectual developments – reception studies and intertextuality – are related, particularly via their poststructuralist ancestry; but they are not coterminous. In particular, the label ‘reception studies’ is almost always used in connection with analyses of post-antique readers of ancient texts, while ‘intertextuality’ is almost always employed, by classicists at any rate, of intra-antique relationships. This distinction risks giving the false impression that Greco-Roman antiquity was a unified, sealed cultural system sharply demarcated from later periods (and indeed, by implication, from neighbouring cultures).8 This volume considers, amongst other things, what is at stake in this distinction. What happens if we think of ancient texts in terms of reception rather than intertextuality? In making this move we follow the lead of our honorand, Richard Hunter, who has pioneered the field of ancient reception studies. The central implications of this reorientation, we contend, are threefold. First, the focus on reception prompts a greater focus on the wider contextual frames of the ‘receiving’ text. The emphasis is now less upon the ‘meaning’ of the text (and its deconstruction) than upon its materiality, its cultural baggage, the force of its political intervention. Reception suggests a more engaged, dynamically active process than intertextuality: texts and artefacts (both ‘transmitters’ and ‘recipients’) now signify emblematically as social documents, materially embedded in their cultures. Second, to speak of reception within classical antiquity breaks down any simplistic distinction between ‘antiquity’ and ‘modernity’, between classical and classicist. It reminds us that the ‘classical’ nature of Greco-Roman literature was already an ancient construction. ‘Classical Athens’, for example, was already a chimerical fiction in Hellenistic Alexandria (and arguably even already in fourth-century Athens). Finally, it insists that GrecoRoman literature was not simply a tradition ‘handed down’ within 8

This explains some of the discomfort that scholars of antiquity have felt with Currie 2016’s claim that Homeric poetry stands in an intertextual relationship with Near Eastern epic.

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a monoculture, but subject to endless reinvention in the light of new cultural influences and new intermedial cross-pollinations. This book collects essays about Greco-Roman practices and theories of reception. We begin by sketching a brief history of the ancient reception of Greek literature, and then proceed to identify where this volume’s essays speak to these concerns. Clearly any attempt to recover an ancient ‘reception theory’ per se would be a fruitless enterprise. There are many ancient tracts of literary criticism, and some (like Plutarch’s De audiendis poetis, most recently edited and commented on by Richard Hunter and Donald Russell)9 directly address the question of how to read works of literature. Ancient literary criticism – a field that has been ploughed intensively by this volume’s honorand – might just about be considered a form of reception theory.10 But that is, ultimately, wishful thinking. No surviving Ars recipiendi as such exists, and none is ever likely to come to light for the simple reason that reception theory is (as we have said) the product of a particular set of late-modernist intellectual and political concerns. Nevertheless, as Charles Martindale (one of the best known theorists of classical reception) has observed, all literary artists are also in a sense theoreticians of their relationships to the preexisting tradition, even if only implicitly: every act of interpretation embodied in a receiving text presupposes an underlying methodological architecture.11 Theory makes explicit what practice presupposes (just as practice exposes the risks, flaws and crises of theory). So while there is no overarching ancient ‘reception theory’ from antiquity, there are certainly a multitude of individual encounters that ‘theorize’ the act of reception. On the conventional model,12 these acts of reception can be integrated into a linear narrative of seamless classicism. Greek literature begins with Homer, and to a lesser extent Hesiod, who appear to have been treated as Panhellenic poets from the start. Archaic lyric poets (the likes of Alcman, Sappho, Archilochus and Alcaeus) 9 10

11 12

4

Hunter and Russell 2011. On ancient literary criticism see esp. Fuhrmann 1992; Ford 2002; Habib 2008; Hunter 2009a; Halliwell 2011. Martindale 1993: 53–4. E.g. Saïd and Trédé 1999; Taplin 2001; Whitmarsh 2004; Rutherford 2005.

Cultural Pluralism and Psychosis in Ancient Literary Receptions

were originally epichoric, but gained a ‘classical’ status through wider Panhellenic performance. From the sixth century, we begin to see the competitive identification of earlier poets, as the idea of the text as a fixed entity gains hold. From the fifth century we begin to see a more pronounced sense of a gulf between present and ‘classical’ (i.e. mythological) literary past, whether it is Pindar pronouncing himself sceptical about the Tantalus story,13 the tragedians replaying heroic myth with dissonant democratic anachronisms, or the prose historians pronouncing themselves less gullible and more analytical than their verse forbears. Alexandria produced commentaries, scholia and textual scholarship, and thereby archived classicism. Rome, competing mimetically with the Hellenistic empires, produced drama and epics that moved between translation, emulation and aggressive supplantation of Greek models; and then developed its own classics, in the form of poets and historians umbilically linked to the time of Augustus, the ‘classic’ emperor. Then the Greek empire wrote back, finding new innovative resources in hyperclassicizing gestures that historically leapfrogged Rome and reinhabited the many worlds of the archaic and classical periods. But such a model, however seductively familiar it might be, reflects a conception of literary tradition that does not embrace the disruptive challenge of reception, which always steers us away from homogenization and towards fragmentation. In particular, the conventional model reifies ‘tradition’ as though it were a genealogical line running through the entirety of classical literature; and it imagines cultural history as an organic teleology rather than as a series of wilful improvisations. The radicalism of reception as a methodology lies, as we have said, in its spotlighting of the disruptive agency of the receiving text, which becomes a mediator (in Latour’s sense).14 Every act of reception rewrites the story of its own filiation. Reception asks us to consider cultural history as non-inevitable, contingent, infinitely rewritable. For 13

14

‘Son of Tantalus, of you I shall say, contrary to my predecessors . . .’ (υἱὲ Ταντάλου, σὲ δ᾿ ἀντία προτέρων φθέγξομαι, Ol. 1.37). ‘An intermediary, in my vocabulary, is what transports meaning or force without transformation . . . Mediators transform, translate, modify and distort the meaning or the elements that they are supposed to carry’ (Latour 2005: 39; emphasis original).

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example, if you happen to be reading Ezekiel’s Exagōgē (a Hellenistic tragedy, now surviving only in substantial fragments, that tells the biblical Exodus story) or even Lucian’s Podagra (a paratragic parody from the second century CE, written by a Syrian from the borders of the Roman empire), then your sense of the ‘story’ of Greek tragedy, what it can do and what it is essentially about, will inevitably not be that of those who confine themselves to the fifth century BCE.15 My choice here of examples that are both ‘late’ and ‘marginal’ to the conventional story of Hellenism is, of course, far from arbitrary. Reception emphasizes decentring, multiplicity: defiantly minoritarian, it reminds us of the many different stories that can potentially be told of past and present. (The ‘altered states’ of my title are political as well as psychological.) It is for this reason that the ‘practice’ of reception is ‘theoretical’: because every act of reception insists on its own radical singularity, and models its own radically singular relationship to the canon. There are chronological patterns in this volume, and the sketch given above will be recognizable intermittently. But Rezeptionsgeschichte is – fundamentally – a disruptive story of necessary discontinuities. At one level, of course, to claim this is to make a virtue of the necessity of an edited volume. But it is more than this. Traditional, linear narratives of cultural succession – for all their indispensability if we are going to make sense of history – claim a diagrammatic simplicity that can never represent more than a censored simplification. As Franco Moretti has insisted,16 we can never do the history of literature without recourse to metaphors (graphs, maps, trees), all of which present their own opportunities and risks. To approach cultural history through reception is to remind ourselves not just of the partiality of all such constructions but also of the metaphorical resources at our disposal. These preliminaries done, let us sketch the outlines of a history of Greek literature through the lens of reception: this will serve both as a prolegomenon to a more fully discontinuous history of Greek literature that remains to be written and as a methodological 15 16

6

On these texts as mediators of poetic tradition see Whitmarsh 2013. Moretti 2007.

Cultural Pluralism and Psychosis in Ancient Literary Receptions

framework within which to locate the chapters in this volume. Let us begin as ever with Homer, Greek literature’s originary mirage: a cultural prime mover who, paradoxically, also marks the reception and gathering of centuries’ worth of now-inaudible oral tradition. But let us begin not with Homer ‘himself’, but rather with what James Porter has called ‘the very idea’ of him.17 Homer – as a marker of cultural primordiality – has always been a fantasy. Already in antiquity, ‘Homer was himself felt as a strange loss, as grand and distant as Troy, and it was inevitable that he should assume mythic proportions’.18 To follow in the footsteps of Homer, or indeed any subsequent ‘literary classic’, was inevitably to commit to a kind of cultural Stockholm syndrome: the desire to remain bound to the legacy counteracted the urge to break free. On the one hand, therefore, any canonical literary source could be invoked positively as a source of moral wisdom: one clear example is the citation of poetry in Athenian law-court speeches.19 A Homeric quotation could always be relied on to add moral heft. But receiving a literary predecessor was often agonistic; the receiver was expected to improve, update or even reject. This could be aesthetic (as in Sappho’s famous priamel, which disavows heroic epic:20 ‘Some say a host of cavalry, others of infantry, and others of ships, is the most beautiful thing (κάλλιστον) on the black earth; but I say it is whatsoever one loves’, 16.1–4 Voigt). It could be argumentative, as in the rhetorical device of the anaskeuē or refutation (‘Euripides says that . . . but I say that . . .’). It could be social, as in tragedy’s reframing of Homeric modes of heroism within a democratic context.21 But the most familiar form was ontological: a receiving text could claim to improve on the veracity of its predecessors.22 When Hesiod’s muses say that ‘we know how to say many false things that are similar to genuine ones, but we know, when we wish, how to proclaim true things’, it is not exactly 17 18 19 20

21

22

Porter 2002. Porter 2002: 62. Perlman 1964. Whether Sappho directly knew the texts we identify as ‘Homer’s’, however, is uncertain. So, famously, Vernant 1990: ‘Greek tragedy is strongly marked by . . . tension between myth and the forms of thought peculiar to the city’ (43). On aspects of the development of the concept of fiction in the archaic period see Rösler 1980; Pratt 1993; Finkelberg 1998; Whitmarsh 2013: 11–34.

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clear what his target is (Homeric poetry? Epichoric epic?), but it seems likely that underlying the claim is some kind of agonistic differentiation of Hesiodic from other kinds of poetry in terms of its truth value.23 The picture becomes sharper with Xenophanes’ rejection, in the mid-sixth century BCE, of Homer’s and Hesiod’s depictions of the gods as anthropomorphic projections.24 Xenophanes presumed a gulf between a naïve past, in which Greeks knew only Greeks and therefore thought their gods looked like them, and a more worldly present that knows of Ethiopians and Thracians, and can therefore relativize. But this was not a rejection of poetry – he wrote in elegiac couplets himself – so much as a normative programme for a post-anthropomorphic poetic theology. For Xenophanes, mythological stories are ‘fictions’ (πλάσματα), to be rejected by a new age on theological and indeed moral grounds.25 Similarly, Hecataeus, Herodotus and Thucydides claim to supplant their predecessors by offering more truthful accounts.26 This kind of competitive self-definition is a familiar feature of early Greek society: we might compare the tactics used by soi-disant professionals such as doctors, who exploited the rejection of others as quacks and ‘root-cutters’ to buttress their own credentials as authorities.27 But within the literary tradition such competitive reception has a particular temporal dimension: it signals that the receiving context is culturally distinct from the transmitting one; that the passage of time has both allowed for new developments in thought and critical distance. Competitive classicism of this kind thus creates an implicit temporal rupture that splinters any model of linear cultural continuity. Ontological criticism of prior ‘classics’ does more than question their ‘truth’; it also, in a sense, questions their very ‘existence’, at least as classics. It insists that reality is not grounded in the deep past, but rather a condition of presence and presenthood. 23 24

25 26 27

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Hes. Theog. 27–8. ‘Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all things that among men are sources of blame and censure: thieving, committing adultery, and deceiving each other’ (Xenophanes fr. D8 Laks–Most; cf. D9–14). Fr. D59.21–2 Laks–Most. Moles 1991. Lloyd 1996.

Cultural Pluralism and Psychosis in Ancient Literary Receptions

This progressivist model shaped the response of Plato – arguably the first exponent of sustained literary theory – who proposed a new prose literature, which he called philosophy, which would be based not in (allegedly) spurious claims to divine revelation but in nonobfuscatory claims that could be defended in open debate. Plato paid particular attention to the forms and modes in which ‘classical’ (i.e. Homeric) literature was transmitted and might be reconceived: hence the Republic’s famous rewriting of the Iliad in direct (‘homodiegetic’) speech – which is to say, without ‘dramatic’ mimesis, the impersonation of voices that he found so objectionable (393d– 394a). The paradox that Plato’s own dialogues are formally mimetic, even dramatic, has long been noted;28 is this irony? Hypocrisy? Self-deconstruction? The crucial point for our purpose is that for Plato the reception of Homer and the poetic tradition comes in the form of a hybrid of appropriation and rejection: on the one hand, he seeks to take over the mantle of ‘educator of the Greeks’; on the other he retools, rejects and even expels the poets on grounds both ontological and ethical (like Xenophanes he objects to the depiction of divine criminality). The Poetics of Aristotle (Plato’s brilliantly rogue student) has a justifiably central role in modern histories of literary criticism, but it is worth remembering just what a strange text this is. His developmental history of tragedy is fundamentally a biologically derived story of acorn-to-oak teleology. In terms of tragedy, Aeschylus is the acorn, Sophocles the vigorous oak, and Euripides the withered trunk after dieback has struck. Aristotle’s literary-historical teleology is both radically unconventional (in that it skewers any fantasy that ‘earliest is best’) and, at least at first sight, dispiritingly determinist. But literary history is not really at the heart of the Poetics; nor was Aristotle a thoroughgoing determinist. The past provided ways of thinking about the present, but not inflexible rules. For all its teleology, the Poetics is a formalist text, and formalism carries with it an uncanny, ahistorical untimeliness (expressed in the form of a pretension to universalism).29 Racine, Corneille and the other French tragedians who took the Poetics as prescriptive were 28 29

See e.g. McCabe 2008. Hall 1996 discusses Aristotle’s striking uncoupling of tragic texts, even in performance, from the materialities, politics and ritual praxis of the theatre of Dionysus.

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simply putting into practice Aristotle’s own abstract formalism. For Aristotle, therefore, literary ‘reception’ is an active, creative process: when he tells us which techniques work and which do not, he means us to put these into practice, and make our own literary texts better (irrespective of where we sit in the teleological life cycle of any genre’s maturation). Aristotle’s naturalism provides more than a metaphor for literary history. Exposing his own agonistic Oedipalism, Aristotle sets himself against Plato and argues that literary mimesis is a natural outgrowth of the human subject’s most fundamental cognitive processes: Clearly, then, poetry is the result of two causes, both natural (φυσικαί).30 For it is naturally instilled (σύμφυτον) in human beings from childhood to engage in mimesis. Indeed, what distinguishes the human animal from others is that it is the most mimetic of all, and it is through mimesis that one first learns about things. This is why all humans enjoy mimesis. (Poet. 1448b)

Aristotle is, however, not merely shadow-boxing with Plato (an act of reception that, incidentally, also serves to characterize his philosophical predecessor as a ‘classic’). He is also shifting literary production out of the realm of pure technique (τέχνη), and into that of nature (φύσις). From one perspective, this constitutes a postPlatonic recuperation of poetry. But from another, Aristotle’s challenge to poetry’s cultural primacy in Greek society is more radical than anything Plato ever achieved. Poetry is, for sure, not morally bad, vulgar or deficient, as Plato thought; but nor can it ever aspire to the status of second-order reflexivity that philosophy claims. It is simply an extension of human nature, much as eating and sex are. (And we note that while Aristotle sees humans as distinctive in the extent of their embrace of mimesis, the fact of mimesis does not per se differentiate us from the beasts.) Aristotle’s ‘scientific’ reception of the poetic tradition, then, also constitutes an implicitly competitive claim for philosophy’s greater rationalism. Plato and Aristotle are not, therefore, engaging in dispassionate ‘literary criticism’; they are, rather, intervening strategically, idiosyncratically and incoherently in a ‘classical tradition’ that is so overweening 30

What the ‘second cause’ is has been much discussed: see the bibliography gathered at Tsitsiridis 2005: 435 n. 2.

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that neurosis is the only rational response. Their foibles and contradictions are necessary by-products of a culture that overvalued its past. Our reception-based sketch of Greek literary history could be extended into the Hellenistic and Imperial periods, when classicism became if anything even more unmanageably normative. From Demetrius through Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Quintilian to Dio Chrysostom, we see a clear focus upon the idea that the young in particular should train themselves by emulating pre-existing models.31 In rhetoric, this often extended to forms of impersonation: to become a great orator, you had first to play at being Demosthenes. An epic poet completing the story of the Trojan War might choose to adopt ‘an interstitial status as “Homer and not Homer”’.32 This form of classicism was often mischaracterized by earlier generations of scholars as uncritical adulation of the past coupled with arid repetition in the present. In fact, as recent scholarship has shown, later Greek literary culture’s relationship with the past was much more complex and fragmented. For a start, canons were unstable and shifting: was Pindar a classic? Thucydides? Even Homer?33 More importantly, later Greek reception was dominated by a critical mode, which is to say an elevation of krisis or ‘judgement’ (at the individual or group level) as the filter through which classicism was effectuated.34 But what has not been sufficiently acknowledged is the psychologically traumatic nature of later Greek reception. Critics could imagine reception, for example, as a form of ‘haunting’, as in Philostratus’ Heroicus, where heroic ghosts of the past are said to be ‘still’ (ἔτι) seen on the Trojan plain (18.2).35 They could imagine it as artificial insemination: in a famous story, Dionysius of Halicarnassus tells of an ugly farmer who makes his wife look at beautiful paintings while they are having sex, so as to improve the looks of their offspring (On Imitation fr. 6.1 Aujac). The story is a parable of the improving effects of imitation of the literary classics: 31 32 33 34 35

See esp. Wiater 2011; Hunter and de Jonge 2019. Greensmith 2020: 55. E.g. Whitmarsh 2001, 2013. See esp. Too 1998. Whitmarsh 2013: 106–10.

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you, the literary author in the present, are doomed to bear ugly ‘children’ (texts) unless you gaze on the beautiful ‘paintings’ (the works of authors in the past).36 Perhaps inevitably, given the persistence of the Greek ‘agonistic spirit’, later Greeks could also see reception in terms of violent combat. The famous tract On the Sublime, for example, enjoins its reader to follow Plato in ‘fighting with all his spirit with Homer, by Zeus!’ (13.4) – albeit this complex text contains a raft of often conflicting metaphors and images to describe the relationship between past and present (including Delphic intoxication, ancestry and (more) impregnation).37 If we take these analogies and metaphors seriously we can begin to see just how deranged and deranging the effects of the classicizing superego could be.38 My aim here is not, of course, to capture all the varieties of ancient literary reception, but to demonstrate by way of example just how sophisticated, unpredictable, and chaotic ancient conceptualizations of the relationship between literary present and literary past could be. Greek literary history’s relationship to its own sense of classicism cannot be subsumed into a simple, linear framework, at least if one spotlights those disruptive acts of mediation that all insist on their own eccentricity. This plurality of positions could of course be expanded if we surveyed a wider cultural constellation of Greekspeakers, including (e.g.) Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Jews and Christians. But the fundamental point has been made. ‘Classical’ literature was not venerated simply in proportion to its antiquity; nor was it placed untouchably high up on a pedestal. Classicism, rather, was generated by the interplay between impossible remoteness and intolerable, space-invading proximity – as when Plutarch imagines himself receiving the long-dead subjects of his biography into his soul like guests into his home (Aem. Paul. 1.2),39 or when Philostratus describes the ghost of Hector drowning a youth who mocked him (Her. 19.5–7; an ancient Gradiva?). Ancient classicism (no less than its modern successors) is characterized by untimeliness 36 37 38

39

Hunter 2009a: 107–21; Whitmarsh 2013: 129–31. Whitmarsh 2001: 57–71. The idea of Homeric reception as a form of derangement famously goes back to Plato’s Ion (534b; cf. Phdr. 244a). On this passage see Duff 1999: 30–4.

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and the uncanny: that jarring sense that the literary past is either too close or too far away, but never quite in its right time or place.40 Reception is never – in antiquity or subsequently – simply a matter of drawing a straight, unidirectional line between two points fixed in history. The relationship between receiver and received is always, inevitably, explosively messy: the act of classical reception dislocates received and receiver alike by drawing attention to the transtemporal effrontery of translating between distant cultures, and in the act of negation of all intermediary steps (the ‘hidden labour’ of textual transmission across the ages that reception must deny). All acts of classical reception, we might venture, are heroic, theomachic, selfexposing, erratic, humbling, political and doomed. Approaching literary history in terms of reception, therefore, inevitably asks us to consider texts not simply as formal artefacts, or even as objects within a contested cultural history (though they are inevitably both of those), but also as psychotic states. This book is divided into four thematic parts. Part I deals with archaic and classical poetics. Although some have attempted to push allusivity right back to Homer and the dawn of Greek poetics,41 it remains true that most scholars have wanted to see self-conscious reference to earlier literature as emerging slowly in the classical period, and reaching fruition only in the Hellenistic era. The reason for this reticence has to do with uncertainties around the development of ‘fixed texts’: arguments as to when the poetry of Homer and Hesiod was stabilized remain, on our current evidence base, furiously inconclusive.42 It is clear that by the late sixth century, fixed textuality in something like the form that we know it (with a concomitant ‘author function’)43 had emerged, and indeed (relatedly) that texts were being written down and stored in specific ‘recensions’. But when this process 40

41 42 43

‘On the surface self-assured and Parnassian in its dictates, at a closer remove classicism reveals a number of interior fault lines . . . Presenting a front of timeless durability, classical values are in fact grasped only as fleeting and ephemeral moments that can be pointed to just when they vanish (“There!”), while all that remains of them once they are gone is the empty gesture of pointing itself, which may in the end be all that classicism can rightfully lay claim to’ (Porter 2006b: 306). Notably Currie 2016. González 2013 surveys the arguments (opting for a relatively long period of ‘fluidity’). Calame and Chartier 2004; Beecroft 2010.

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began, whether it proceeded by slow evolution or sudden steps, and whether texts continued to circulate in the classical period in different oral forms (alongside their more canonical cousins) . . . all of these remain difficult questions. This elusiveness means that alternative models for reception to the conventional ones must be sought. Anna Uhlig argues that the trope of ‘neighbourliness’ helped Hesiod and Pindar explore not just the juxtaposition of different poetic traditions, but also their own poetic material. Neighbourliness is not a technological way of relating textual elements, but a spatial and ethical way of organizing them in line with the cooperative values of communities. Richard Martin poses a very different kind of question: when did poets start naming their predecessors, and why? This discussion has important implications for the questions around textual fixity noted above, for (as we have said) authorship and textuality are closely linked in Greece. In the first of this book’s multimedia chapters, Ettore Cingano considers the strategies shared between the high epinician poetics of Pindar and his peers and a series of inscribed encomia: if the latter cannot be styled ‘receivers’ of Pindar himself, they demonstrate that both draw from the same literary well. Finally in this section, Ioannis Konstantakos proposes a new way of understanding Aristophanic poetics in terms of a carnivalesque absorption of ‘serious’ poetry, troping comedy as ‘peace’ to its predecessors’ war. In one sense, then, this section comes full circle, back to Uhlig’s neighbourliness, and reminds us that reception need not always be understood in terms of Oedipal agonistics: in the world of the city state it could be imagined as irenic, constructive, and community-building. Part II moves to prose, to classical philosophy and rhetoric and their reception. Philosophy and rhetoric were certainly received in the form of more or less fixed texts; but here too focusing on reception takes us into a more mobile world in which exemplary biographies and ideas can be received as well as written words. Laura Viidebaum asks us to consider the legacy of Socrates, the towering figure of fifth-century philosophy. In this case, we certainly do have a case of considerable anxiety of influence: his example resonated through the history of Greco-Roman 14

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philosophy, and indeed into early Christianity too.44 Avoiding the conventional Socratic doxographic genealogy, however, Viidebaum shows that the great philosophical ‘father figure’ may be a hidden, spectral presence in the works of Isocrates – who treated him with rather less reverence. Johanna Hanink explores another tangled tale of problematic reception. We are used to thinking of Roman-Greek ‘classicism’ in terms of the feting of the past, but as Hanink demonstrates Dionysius of Halicarnassus was far from uncritical in his treatment of classical Athens, particularly in view of its militarism. Like Aristophanes (in Konstantakos’ reading), Dionysius (in Hanink’s) uses the trope of peace – here implicitly the pax Romana – to structure his discourse of reception, and to position Augustan Rome as superior to its prestigious Greek predecessor. Timothy Duff considers the reception of Plato’s Charmides in Plutarch, by way of Wilde and Cavafy. Once again it is a question not so much of the reception of strings of words as of the cultural paradigm they communicate: in this case, the idea of desire between men. Charmides, with its striptease titillation pressed into the service of moralization, demands a complex, equivocal reception, and gets it: for Wilde and Cavafy, gay love is legitimized within an ennobling but ultimately repressive axiology; for Plutarch, by contrast, same-sex desire, even when sanctioned by Plato, must always be relegated to the realm of metaphor. Alastair Blanshard’s chapter surveys an even broader field: drawing on posthumanist critiques of the boundaries that demarcate humanity, he shows that Platonic anxieties around nudity, clothing and the intermediary status of human beings have a long and rich history throughout Greek cultural history – and indeed remain unresolved, for the very good reason that the question of how to identify a criterion separating us from other animals remains open to this day. Part III moves to Hellenistic and Roman poetics. At first sight this might look like terra firma for classicists: few truths are more universally acknowledged in the discipline than that Hellenistic and Roman poets make creative use of Greek textual predecessors. Yet each of the three contributors in this section uses the lens of reception in a very different way to say something more profound 44

Taylor 2008.

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and discomfiting than this. Annette Harder’s chapter on the reception of (now) fragmentary Attic tragedy in Hellenistic poetry poses the great ‘what-if’ question: if we had the entire tragic canon, how would that affect our understanding of Hellenistic poetry? And, conversely, is our sense of what the Hellenistic tragic canon looked like skewed by confirmation bias, given that much of our evidence for it consists in intertextual identifications that are necessarily rooted in the tragedy we already know? Harder’s thought experiment pushes us into unsettling territory. Emily Gowers, meanwhile, offers a very different kind of challenge, taking us back to the words, and even the letters, on the page. What does it mean to receive and process verbal and phonetic cues? Why is it that human beings are drawn to responding to literature with anagrams and puns? Creatively revisiting her own influential scholarship on poetry, cookery and the body, she invites us to consider the material assemblages that constitute the acts of reception. Gowers invites us to understand reception viscerally: what goes in must come out, transformed in accordance with inexorable yet invisible gastric laws. Giovan Battista D’Alessio closes this section with an analysis of Horace’s Carmen Saeculare in terms of choral poetics. Chorality can claim to be the central issue in all discussions of the religious significance of Greek literary reception.45 When do choruses become, and when do they cease to be, authentic voices for the community? When do they become, and when do they cease to be, fictions constructed in the service of elite aesthetics? The dominant narrative in classical scholarship has always been a Romantic-inspired one of progressive dilution. D’Alessio’s analysis reverses the direction of travel: he argues that while Callimachus’ ‘choral theology’ is implicit, Horace, having ingested it, brings it out in a double sense: as open performance in an identifiable time-space in Augustan Rome, and as the fullest expression of a latent cosmic vision of universal power. Part IV enters the Romanized Greek world, a different one in terms of the surviving evidence base. We suddenly have a huge archaeological record: papyri, mosaics, architecture, glassware, 45

Gagné and Hopman 2013.

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ceramics, even textiles. This is not just an accident of survival: the wealth and trade opportunities generated by the Empire meant that forms of art that had once been restricted to the elite (e.g. terra sigillata pottery) were now more widely available, and new modes of expression (e.g. pantomime)46 spread across the Hellenophone territories. This multimediality prompts a tendency in literature to experiment with intermediality: literature becomes fused with art, music, dance and architecture. It also leads to an ‘internationalization’ of Greek literature itself. Once we hit the principate, any monocultural fictions become completely unsustainable. Texts are often composed not for the polis at all but for the Greek-speaking world of the Mediterranean and beyond. The Athens-centred classicism of the so-called ‘Second Sophistic’ – which may at first sight look like cultural conservatism and a hankering for the polis – is best understood as a Newtonian reaction to the ‘globalization’ imposed by the Roman Empire. When we speak of ‘Greek literature’ in this period, any ideal of a face-to-face community is illusory. Of course there are still many Greek communities that both rehearse traditional ways of being in the polis and improvise new ones. But now that Greek is also the prestige language of the entire eastern Roman Empire, new textual forms (among them the Christian Gospels and the Greek novel) spring up to evangelize to new audiences. Ismene Lada-Richards opens this section by asking us to consider the pantomime dancer as the absent presence lurking in Parthenius’ Erōtika Pathēmata (more usually considered as source material for poetics). Lada-Richards invites us to imagine reception as choreography, textual material transcribed onto and inside the human body itself. In this respect her chapter shares some preoccupations with Gowers’; but Lada-Richards also describes a specific moment of cultural revolution when dance became a major art form, when the written text ceased to be an enclosed space and began instead to be newly (re)imagined as a performance libretto. Susan A. Stephens considers another form of materialization of the text. The second century CE is the era from which we have the greatest number of literary papyrus 46

Hall and Wyles 2008.

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remains. The papyrological rediscovery of Sappho has hugely enriched our understanding of archaic poetry, and of its leading light (also antiquity’s most significant female author). But what if we treat these papyri instead ‘archaeologically’, as objects, as documents evidencing the reception of Sappho in the second century? Stephens argues that what they show is that despite the celebrity of Sappho’s name, reading her remained a challenge to all but the most highly educated. Like Martin, she asks us to consider the role of naming in the act of reception; but whereas Martin sees it as formative in the early creation of a textual culture, and instrumental in creating an idea of ‘the text’, Stephens sees it as separable at this late stage. Sappho the celebrity and Sappho the poet are entirely different phenomena. Helen Van Noorden and Simon Goldhill close the volume with meditations on cultural translations. Van Noorden considers the Sibylline Oracles, Greek hexameter ‘epics’ that ventriloquize a Jewish sibyl who protests the venality of Rome and claims that Homer learned the art of the hexameter from her. A more perfect expression of untimeliness enacted by cross-cultural reception could hardly be found: poems written in the Imperial era purport to be antique, events in the past are ‘predicted’, and the canonically Greek form of literary expression is ‘unmasked’ as Jewish. What Van Noorden demonstrates is the unrecognized role of Hesiod within Sibylline poetics: time and again Hesiod (on most conventional accounts the junior partner in early Greek epic’s double act) is turned against Homer, in a move that might be called Callimachean were it not for the high cultural stakes in this GrecoJewish battle for foundational literary prestige. Simon Goldhill’s chapter considers the Byzantine Christian poet Cometas, taking his cue from a poem that intertextually assimilates Jesus to Achilles through the language of κλέος (fame). Cometas parses the distinction between cultural continuity and cultural rift in terms of form (Greek poetics) and content (Christian message). In practice, however, as Goldhill shows, that distinction cannot be maintained for long: the ‘metaphysics’ of Greek poetic conceptions of immortality and commemoration clash irreconcilably with a Christian theology. Cometas also, intriguingly, claims to be a restorer of Homer’s texts as physical artefacts: once again the 18

Cultural Pluralism and Psychosis in Ancient Literary Receptions

Greek literary text is now received as an object rather than as winged words. Reception as museological curation is one way of marking cultural distance, and neutralizing the threat that comes with non-Christian theology. But curation demands care, and Cometas’ loving restorations sharply pose the question of why a Christian should care at all about Homer, and about Greek poetics. There is no risk-free way for a Byzantine Christian to practise Greek literary reception. Fortunately, not all receivers of Greek literature are beset by the same anxieties. This volume is dedicated by friends and colleagues to a scholar whose care for the entirety of ancient Greek literary tradition and its many plies (ancient reception, commentary and scholarship) is legendary. It would be impossible to match the depth of our honorand’s learning and intellectual generosity, but this book may at least serve as a marker of the strength of our affection and gratitude.

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part i AR C H A I C A N D C L A S S I C A L PO E T I C S

ch a p t e r 1 N E I G H B O R S A N D T H E P OE T RY O F H E S I O D A N D P I N DA R

anna uhlig

Recent years have witnessed an increased interest in the influence of Hesiod and the Hesiodic hexameter corpus on the choral poetry of the archaic and early classical periods.1 Pindar, in particular, has featured prominently in scholarly discussion as a figure shaped in important ways by Hesiod and the Hesiodic tradition.2 Building on this rich body of scholarship, this chapter explores how the relationship between these two poets might be imagined through a theoretical framework of poetic “neighborliness.” I argue that the category of “neighbor” can be applied to the poetic approach of Pindar and Hesiod and can help to articulate commonalities and connections between their works. Before turning to them and their critically suggestive approaches to the category of neighbor, I would like to situate my specific argument within the broader scope of ancient literary-critical taxonomies. A Commons Dilemma In the first chapter of his Poetics, Aristotle famously laments the limitations of a literary critical discourse too reliant on metrical features and, consequently, insensitive to the qualities that truly distinguish between types of “poetic” expression. It is for this reason, Aristotle explains, that there is no common name (οὐδὲν γὰρ ἂν ἔχοιμεν ὀνομάσαι κοινόν) that embraces mimetic dialogues in prose and poetry (1447b10), while at the same time critics assume a false commonality, where in fact none exists (οὐδὲν δὲ 1

2

Especially important are Hunter 2005, Boys-Stones and Haubold 2010, Hunter 2014, van Noorden 2015, Stamatopoulou 2017, Tsagalis 2017. On the relationship between Pindar and Hesiod, in addition to the above, see also D’Alessio 2005b, Worman 2015: 66–103, Philips 2018.

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κοινόν), when they apply the same moniker to hexameter poets such as Homer and Empedocles (1447b17–18). Despite the ample attention paid to Aristotle’s reflections over the years,3 it is still worth pausing to note to how his critical invocation of commonality (τὸ κοινόν) as the heart of literary categorization is paired with a recognition of the inadequacy of literary-critical terminology. Few scholars have done more in recent years to explore the intricacies of ancient critical practice, and the complexities of ancient literary-critical discourse in particular, than Richard Hunter. An abiding interest in ancient critical practices can be traced throughout the broad-ranging subjects that have marked his prolific career. As his work has helped to make clear, the confounding, often subtle, or even opaque assessments of ancient critics formed part of an ever-changing taxonomy of literary expression. In the Poetics, Aristotle’s diagnosis of the inability of critical language to accurately reflect poetic commonalities reminds us just how hard it can be to identify terminology that adequately expresses the less overt connections that link authors or texts. In his scholarship, Hunter has taught us just how varied and compelling were the attempts to supply such a taxonomic structure. By contrast with the relatively simplistic structures set out by the genre-based analysis favored by many modern scholars,4 the messy business of ancient critical discourse is perhaps best understood as a discourse of “style.” Stylistic analysis provided a mode of grouping authors that was – like Aristotle’s Poetics – dependent on, yet undeniably distinct from, questions of genre. Early examples of stylistic assessment, such as the agōn between Aeschylus and Euripides in Aristophanes’ Frogs or that between Homer and Hesiod in the hexameter poem known as the Contest, examine poets working in the same genre (tragedy in Frogs, epic 3 4

See, e.g., Halliwell 2015 with bibliography. As Ford 2002: 21 has asserted, the most lasting legacy of Aristotle’s Poetics for the modern critic is the notion that one can “analyze the entire range of song types into genres.” It was, however, Aristotle’s general indifference to genre that prompted Russell 1981: 152 to observe that “the genre rules which poets observed are not recorded by the philosophical critics, because they regarded them as superficial and not going to the heart of the matter.” See also the helpful observations of Rosenmeyer 2006: 429.

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in the Contest) in order to call attention to their contrasting approaches to a shared form. This form of intra-generic agōn persists as a critical form, as when Plutarch contrasts the comedic styles of Aristophanes and Menander (Comparison between Aristophanes and Menander) or Dio Chrysostom replays Aristophanes’ battle of the tragedians through the lens of their Philoctetes plays (Or. 52). But the precise character of the stylistic categories themselves could also overshadow interest in the work of any given author, permitting theoretical treatments to assess a range of authors with hardly any reference to genre. Thus Demetrius, in discussing the “elegant style” (χαρακτὴρ γλαφυρός), shifts seamlessly between analysis of Xenophon, Sappho, and Sophron; Dionysius’ fragmentary On Imitation praises the stylistic elegance of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Herodotus, and Demosthenes without apparent reference to genre; and the author of On the Sublime treats any manner of work in his assessment of what constitutes to hupsos. Indeed, it is possible to describe ancient stylistic theory as (inter alia) a means of grouping authors across generic boundaries and giving names to potentially obscure structures of poetic commonality. When conceptualized in this way, often idiosyncratic discourses of style can be understood to lay claim to an Aristotelian inheritance. It also becomes clear that “ancient stylistic discourse” is but one way to denote the many non-genre-based taxonomies deployed in furtherance of ancient literary criticism. The most overt of these linking strategies, and also the most well-known to modern scholarship, works through the positing of genealogical relationships, such as those said to link Hesiod and Stesichorus, or Simonides and Bacchylides.5 Less explicit, although no less pervasive, is a structure of geographic associations that, in addition to serving as a shorthand for style,6 can give a name (or, rather, a fixed coordinate) to other types of fugitive commonalities between authors.7 5

6 7

The general character of these genealogical strategies is well discussed by Fairweather 1984: 250–1, 256–9. See also Telò 2010 on text-internal play of “familial” poetic affiliation. Worman 2015. It is in this way that the biographical tradition develops a link between Pindar and Aeschylus through a parallel emphasis on the respective poets’ experiences in Athens and Sicily, on which see Uhlig 2019: 1.

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But if the often-confounding criteria by which ancient critics grouped authors encourage us to search for links where modern scholars might not otherwise have thought to look – between, say, Sappho’s lyrics and the mimes of Sophron – the admirably broad scope of ancient literary classification nevertheless hardly exhausts the commonalities that we might want to explore between ancient authors, or, for that matter, the connections that these authors themselves sought to establish through increasingly sophisticated matrices of allusion and appropriation.8 It is here that the scholarly category of “ancient reception” – which seeks to draw links of commonality between authors or works under a distinctly modern name – can be understood as an exercise in (a very particular form of) stylistic criticism. The taxonomies that this discourse constructs inhabit a grey area, participating in both ancient and modern critical terminologies, but not wholly belonging to either. This temporal schizophrenia of critical approach is perhaps most apparent in our use of genealogical metaphors, such as the notion of poetic inheritance, which simultaneously reproduce the biological fictions of ancient criticism while adopting (overtly or not) the distinctively twentieth-century notion of a (post-)Freudian family drama.9 The terminology/taxonomy of poetic neighboring that I explore here is likewise situated in an uncertain critical terrain that is neither fully ancient nor modern. I have, as much as possible, sought to carve out a discourse structured by the contours of the ancient texts under consideration: Hesiod’s Works and Days and Pindar’s epinician odes. The neighbors that I discuss are, therefore, largely out of step with post-Christian notions of neighborliness guided by the teachings of the Gospels.10 But even if my use of the category of neighbor to describe poetic affiliation is drawn from figurations already present in the works of these two ancient poets, the ends to which I deploy this structure are not constrained by ancient critical practice. My primary aim, in other words, is not

8

9 10

Feeney 2006 offers a salutary analysis of the inevitable gap between critical frameworks, both ancient and modern, and the objects they seek to describe. The Freudian strain is, of course, to a large degree the legacy of Bloom 1973. On the importance of this literary tradition, see Reinhardt 1995, Edmonson 2011.

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to recover a lost critical language hidden in the text of Hesiod, Pindar, or elsewhere. In fact, my aims are at times at odds with (what I imagine to have been) ancient practice. In adopting the category of neighbor, I find that my thinking harmonizes with the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and in particular her desire to move away from the hermeneutics of suspicion and the practices of what she calls “paranoid reading.” Sedgwick speaks in spatial terms of adopting a position beside in order to move away from the beyond and beneath that suspicious reading attempts to inhabit.11 “Beside,” she observes, “is an interesting preposition also because there is nothing very dualistic about it.”12 The model of neighboring that I argue for here is, quite emphatically, a kindred of Sedgwick’s beside. Not only does it share the spatial framework of nonhierarchical contiguity, but a great part of its attraction lies in the potential for circumventing long-established binaries. Most pointedly, insofar as the provisional contiguity of neighboring entails no “special imitative instinct,” as George Edmondson has observed,13 it suggests a reading practice that is unencumbered by what Sedgwick identifies as the reflexive imitation at the heart of paranoid interpretation.14 In the place of a structure of negative mirroring (the Freudian agōn at the heart of so much work on reception), the beside of neighboring contributes to an evolving critical vocabulary that seeks to position itself alongside, rather than to excavate what is hidden behind, our ancient texts. Good Verses Make Good Neighbors The category of the neighbor does not seem to hold much appeal for Homer, who never dwells on the character of geitones on those rare occasions when he mentions them by name.15 Hesiod, by 11 12 13 14 15

Sedgwick 2003: 8–9. Sedgwick 2003: 8. Edmonson 2011: 9. Sedgwick 2003: 131–3. The three uses of the term are all in Odyssey: a passing description of the guests at Menelaus’ feasts (4.16); the simile describing the conservation of Odysseus’ “fire” upon arrival on the island of Scheria (5.489); and to identify the reinforcements who come to the aid of the Cicones in their fight against Odysseus’ men (9.48).

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contrast, brings neighborly relations to the fore at the very outset of his Works and Days when he praises the role of good Strife in moving men to excellence. εἰς ἕτερον γάρ τίς τε ἴδεν ἔργοιο χατίζων πλούσιον, ὃς σπεύδει μὲν ἀρόμεναι ἠδὲ φυτεύειν οἶκόν τ’ εὖ θέσθαι· ζηλοῖ δέ τε γείτονα γείτων εἰς ἄφενος σπεύδοντ’· ἀγαθὴ δ’ Ἔρις ἥδε βροτοῖσιν. καὶ κεραμεὺς κεραμεῖ κοτέει καὶ τέκτονι τέκτων, καὶ πτωχὸς πτωχῷ φθονέει καὶ ἀοιδὸς ἀοιδῷ. For someone who is neglecting his work sees another man who is richer than himself, who hastens to plow and to plant and to improve his household; neighbor envies neighbor hastening towards wealth. This Strife is good for men. Potter is roused against potter and craftsman against craftsman, beggar envies beggar and singer envies singer. (Op. 21–6)

Much has been said about the programmatic status of this complex passage, which culminates in the explicit inclusion of singers (ἀοιδὸς ἀοιδῷ) amongst the list of those who benefit from the positive form of contention.16 My interest here is to call attention to how the category of neighbor (γείτων) functions as both a pivot towards and umbrella term for the subsequent catalogue of specific figures – potter, craftsman, beggar, singer – who benefit from competition. The tightly juxtaposed polyptoton (γείτονα γείτων, itself a kind of “neighboring” within the hexameter) sets a model into which the subsequent pairings are then slotted, albeit with a slight shift in case and order. The term γείτων forms a bridge from the contiguous householders of lines 21–3 – agricultural workers whose physical proximity permits them to see (ἴδεν) the divergence of their fields and fortunes over the years – to the more figurative neighboring of those whose livelihoods rest on the same craft. The first two of these latter competitors, the “potter” and “craftsman,” can perhaps be considered as neighbors in a literal sense; it is clear, for instance, that potters’ workshops could cluster geographically as they did in the Kerameikos in Athens. But when one considers the proverbially itinerant identities of beggars and poets,17 a strictly literal understanding of neighbors as those linked 16 17

On this programmatic passage, see Gagarin 1990, Thalmann 2004. Martin 1992 demonstrates how Hesiod cultivates his own migrant identity through an embrace of “metanastic” poetics. See also Hunter and Rutherford 2009.

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by the proximity of their dwellings proves more challenging. Instead, we are encouraged to think about contiguity as determined by more than geographic coordinates. In particular, we are invited to think of neighboring as a relationship that singers are able to have with each other, despite the distances (physical and otherwise) that can make them appear far apart. The striving neighbors of this passage provide three insights that will frame my approach to neighboring in Hesiod. Firstly, the pivotal work being done by the category in this programmatic introduction signals the importance of neighboring within the broader conceptual economy of Works and Days. Secondly, the flexibility of the term – negotiating the shift from literal to figurative proximity – suggests that much of the value of thinking in terms of neighboring is derived from the various types of relationship that the designation can denote. And, thirdly, by using the idea of neighbor to shift from the strife between farmers to that between singers, Hesiod suggests that this particular relationship of proximity may serve to link the agricultural content of his poem and any broader meaning that audiences may draw from his song. The taxonomic flexibility which endowed γείτων with its critical power in Hesiod’s celebration of Strife is again on display when the poet returns to the subject of neighbors later in Works and Days, detailing the distinctive character of the relationship and once again providing a picture that defies simple categorization. τὸν φιλέοντ’ ἐπὶ δαῖτα καλεῖν, τὸν δ’ ἐχθρὸν ἐᾶσαι· τὸν δὲ μάλιστα καλεῖν ὅστις σέθεν ἐγγύθι ναίει· εἰ γάρ τοι καὶ χρῆμ’ ἐγκώμιον ἄλλο γένηται, γείτονες ἄζωστοι ἔκιον, ζώσαντο δὲ πηοί. πῆμα κακὸς γείτων, ὅσσον τ’ ἀγαθὸς μέγ’ ὄνειαρ. Invite your friend to a feast, but not your enemy. But above all invite whoever lives close by. For if you have some local need, neighbors come beltless whereas kinsmen gird themselves. A bad neighbor is a bane to the same degree that a good one is a great advantage. (Op. 342–6)

There is a decidedly folkish tone to these precepts, which continue on for a few more lines to emphasize the need for reciprocity amongst neighbors (347–51). Unlike in the earlier programmatic discussion of Strife, neighboring is explicitly defined as a relationship of geographic 29

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proximity: a neighbor is “whoever lives close by” (ὅστις σέθεν ἐγγύθι ναίει). Yet the passage begins to tease out a clearer picture of how neighboring, because of its inherent mutability, is distinct from other relationships that structure the world of Works and Days. Most notably, neighboring is situated outside of the traditional binary of friend and foe (philos/ekhthros).18 In practice, Hesiod explains, neighbors may be either of these things. The category itself is not determinate of status. Proximity can yield extraordinary benefits, such as when the neighbor arrives before kinsfolk in a time of need. But this same closeness can also become a bane if the relationship is not properly cultivated. Thus, Hesiod attributes the death of one’s livestock to the ill will (or perhaps indifference) of bad neighbors (οὐδ’ ἂν βοῦς ἀπόλοιτ’, εἰ μὴ γείτων κακὸς εἴη, 348). To call someone “neighbor” is only to claim a spatial connection, whether literal or figurative. It denotes some type of similarity insofar as there exists a common concern, such as an affiliation based on an adjacent property or occupation. Beyond that, the contours of the relationship remain unknown until further specified. The instability that Hesiod attributes to the ethical structure of neighboring underlines the anti-essentialist nature of the category (i.e. we cannot make assumptions about neighbors beyond the mere fact of their geographic or metaphorical association). It also adumbrates a temporal aspect that comes more fully into view as Works and Days progresses. Returning to the uncertainties of neighborly relations, Hesiod warns Perses against begging at the houses of others (πτώσσῃς ἀλλοτρίους οἴκους, 395) and “seeking his livelihood from neighbors, who do not care for him” (ζητεύῃς βίοτον κατὰ γείτονας, οἳ δ’ ἀμελῶσιν, 400). That Hesiod does not intend to draw a distinction between neighbors and true philoi such as family members is made clear by his own avowed refusal to help Perses (396–7). As with the earlier descriptions the category of neighbor again resists straightforward opposition to other 18

Pace Athenaeus, who interprets the passage as an example of “Boeotian stupidity” that directly equates friendship with proximity (Ath. 5.186f). It is nonetheless noteworthy that the valuing of neighbors is identified by Athenaeus as Hesiod’s “mode” or “style,” in contrast with that of Homer: οὐχ ὃν τρόπον Ἡσίοδος· οὗτος γὰρ ἀξιοῖ καὶ τοὺς γείτονας. On the structuring opposition of friends/enemies in early Greek thought, see Blundell 1989: 26–59.

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relational statuses. It is unclear if the potential indifference (οἳ δ’ ἀμελῶσιν) described here is synonymous with the cow-destroying ill will invoked at 348, or if Hesiod means to place these latter neighbors entirely beyond the binary of philos/ekhthros. Can the apathy of Perses’ neighbors be understood as a qualification of the commonality established through mere proximity? Neighbors may be good or bad, or neither? Whatever the precise import of the relative clause, we may want to read the passage in light of the ways in which neighborly relations are shaped over time. It may be that Perses’ neighbors’ apathy is inherent; the passage makes no explicit mention of temporal concerns. But given Hesiod’s earlier emphasis on the mutability of neighbors, I think it plausible that he envisions Perses’ relationships with his neighbors deteriorating over time – much as that with his brother already has. If Perses abuses his neighbors’ generosity by continued begging (i.e. if he acts as a bad neighbor), they will foreswear any concern for him that they may once have felt. The temporal complexities of defining neighborly relations are further illuminated in Hesiod’s subsequent instructions regarding marriage. One should, he recommends, marry a girl who lives close by: τὴν δὲ μάλιστα γαμεῖν, ἥτις σέθεν ἐγγύθι ναίει (700). But it is necessary to take care, lest doing so makes you the butt of neighbors’ jokes: πάντα μάλ’ ἀμφὶς ἰδών, μὴ γείτοσι χάρματα γήμῃς (701). These lines, which enjoyed some degree of popularity amongst later authors,19 highlight the ways in which individuals linked through geographic proximity can find their relationships shifting over time. Through the act of marriage, the local virgin is transformed from one form of intimacy (a geographically connected neighbor) to another (a household member). At the same time, the groom’s own status vis à vis his other neighbors risks a markedly different shift in the potential loss of respect. Marriage to a neighbor has the potential to transform one’s standing in the eyes of those who remain outside the oikos. The geographic coordinates remain fixed, but the neighborliness is now of a quite different sort. The conjunction of shifting identities both within and without the oikos underscores the unstable intersection of two overlapping, yet distinct forms 19

See West 1978: 328 for discussion.

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of productive affiliation; the essentialist and intentional genealogical connections that are the product of sexual reproduction, on the one hand, and the shifting and haphazard affinities between those linked by the accident of proximity, on the other. As we have already seen, the γείτων does not fit into a readily identifiable slot in Hesiod’s world. It is a category defined by space, but that exists in time, and as such can only be understood in temporal context. Today’s good neighbor may turn bad tomorrow. The girl who used to live down the road may someday become a wife. The neighbors of these scattered passages inhabit an uncertain space within the interpersonal drama that Hesiod develops in Works and Days. The poet is addressing his brother because of their blood ties and the difficulties that their familial bond presents with regard to their shared paternal inheritance. The neighbors of Works and Days present an alternative model of meaningful connection – not one that stands in opposition to genealogical structures, but a temporally mutable notion of attachment based on the accident of proximity. Neighbors may be closer than kin, yet they are also potential adversaries, especially as regards the evolving shape of one’s own oikos (wives, children, livestock). It is thus noteworthy that the temporally shifting, forcefully anti-essentialist neighbors of Works and Days stand outside of the black-and-white certainty with which Hesiod outlines his most famous discussion of spatial proximity: the warning against choosing the easy path which lies closest to hand (λείη μὲν ὁδός, μάλα δ’ ἐγγύθι ναίει, 288). This particular equation of physical closeness with indolence and pretensions to unearned happiness, whether or not it began with Hesiod, enjoyed a remarkably rich afterlife in the ancient critical tradition which I will not explore here.20 But it should be noted that, although Hesiod’s description of the easy path shares the same formulaic language as his later discussions of neighbors (ἐγγύθι ναίει, 288 = 343, 700), the models of proximity that these passages espouse are quite different. The geographic proximity of the easy path leads always and inevitably to vice (τὴν κακότητα, 287). But neighborly proximity does not fall into the 20

See especially Hunter 2014: 93–100. On Pindaric reception in particular see Philips 2018: 265–70.

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simple binary of easy and hard, good and evil. As George Edmondson has observed, neighborly affinities exist outside of the phantasmagorical “economy of like and not-like.”21 The relationships that arise with those who “live nearby” are only intelligible as part of a temporally contingent back-and-forth between agents whose roles and status are under constant renegotiation. So far our discussion has been following Hesiod’s lead by treating the proximity of neighbors as a rather literal question of geographic contiguity. But, as we have already noted with respect to Hesiod’s programmatic reflections at the opening of Works and Days, there is room for a more flexible (and creative) idea of “closeness” when approaching this category. In the case of rival artisans, it is a metaphoric neighborliness (the proximity of technical skill) that transforms strife into a positive virtue. The nongeographic proximity that links fellow potters or singers over time does not arise from the happenstance of close habitation, yet Hesiod’s recourse to the language of neighboring suggests that, nevertheless, there is some degree of randomness to the way that productive relationships emerge between practitioners of certain artisan traditions. In the next section I will turn my attention to how the metaphor of neighborliness through shared technical skill offers a model for thinking about poetic affiliations that steps away from, without opposing, the genealogical structures that underpin so much work on ancient reception. Now, however, I would like to briefly suggest that neighboring might also be a useful lens through which to consider the poetic structure of Works and Days itself. There is some ancient precedent, albeit some centuries later than Hesiod, for employing the language of neighboring to describe the structures internal to a written work. In the introduction to his analysis of Thucydides’ style, Dionysius of Halicarnassus speaks of the way that the virtues of the historian’s writing “are neighbors to his vices” (τὰς γειτνιώσας αὐταῖς κακίας, 3.2).22 Dionysius’ image of different passages within a single text existing in a kind of neighborly relationship to each other, particularly when they are of markedly divergent 21 22

Edmonson 2011: 9. My thanks to Johanna Hanink for bringing this passage to my attention. On the implications of Dionysius’ treatment of Thucydides for our understanding of reception in antiquity, see Hanink in this volume.

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character, suggests a rather elegant way of considering the distinctively paratactic construction of Works and Days (although this, I should clarify, is not really what Dionysius’ passage intends). In contrast to the genealogical connections that, broadly speaking, give rise to the structures of Hesiod’s Theogony and Catalogue of Women, the concatenation of mythical exempla, gnomic reflection, and fable that comprises Works and Days (and, as seems likely, the mostly lost Precepts of Chiron)23 would appear to partake of a model of affiliation more closely aligned with the fortuitous pairings of neighbors than the formalized structure of familial descent. “If you wish, I will tell you another story,” says Hesiod by way of transition at Op. 106 (εἰ δ’ ἐθέλεις, ἕτερόν τοι ἐγὼ λόγον ἐκκορυφώσω); “Now I’ll tell a fable for the kings,” he says, marking another transition at Op. 202 (νῦν δ’ αἶνον βασιλεῦσιν ἐρέω). More often, one tale is simply set beside the next without comment. Hesiod’s willingness to jettison “logical” progression is most marked in the almanac with which Works and Days concludes, an accounting of the year that is not even consistently organized by the chronology of its own calendar. But even in the Catalogue of Women, with its implicit genealogical logic, there is a certain degree of haphazard juxtaposition suggested by the formulaic ehoie which links so many of the discrete anecdotes that comprise the epic poem.24 Hesiod’s interest in the subject of neighbors, most prominent in Works and Days amongst his extant works, would then betoken not only an interest in models of connection that stand outside of the (pointedly problematic) strict family structure exemplified by Perses. It can also perhaps be seen as a nascent, and notably oblique, articulation of the principles on which the poem itself is constructed.25 Won’t You Be My Neighbor? In the last section, I suggested that Works and Days develops a proto-critical discourse of neighboring which can be applied 23

24 25

On which see Kurke 1990: 90–2, D’Alessio 2005b: 230–1, Stamatopoulou 2017: 8–9, 114–16. On the formulaic language of the Catalogue, see Rutherford 2000, Kirk 2017. On this reading, the dispersion and general subtlety of the neighbors passages in Works and Days would represent a further facet of Hesiod’s interest in how random proximities establish their meaning over time.

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internally as a way of describing the poem’s particular mode of parataxis. In what follows, I would like to consider how this discourse might also serve as a model for thinking about poetic affiliation across texts. Specifically, I will employ the notion of poetic neighboring to frame a discussion of the relationship between Hesiod’s work and the epinician compositions of one of his successors, the fifth-century melic poet Pindar.26 I approach this question from two distinct perspectives. First I consider the degree to which Pindar’s poetry exhibits what we might call a “Hesiodic” attraction to the figure of poetic neighborliness. My principal aim is not to establish a direct tradition of influence, though I will at times appeal to Pindar’s allusive engagement with Hesiodic texts. Rather, I would like to explore how, just as the particular form of free-associative parataxis employed by Hesiod in Works and Days might be classed as “neighborly” in structure, the designation might also be applied to the eclectic compositional approach taken by Pindar in his epinicians. Secondly I suggest that the category of neighbor might be profitably employed by contemporary scholars to describe the relationship between these two poets. This latter inquiry is focused not on reconstructing a relationship that Pindar might have imagined himself to have with his predecessor, but on the ways that the evidence available to twenty-first-century scholars permits us to imagine such a rapport. I will, in other words, make use of the taxonomic flexibility of neighborliness to shift between different temporal registers in my own treatment of the relationship between these poets. Like Hesiod, Pindar populates his epinicians with a good number of explicitly identified γείτονες. More pertinent, for our present concerns, is the range of roles played, and attributes expressed, by the various neighbors that Pindar conjures within his songs. Pindar’s neighbors, like Hesiod’s, do not bear a specific ethical status until specified. Some instances can be fit into a familiar epinician discourse of socially structured praise and blame.27 Successful neighbors may 26

27

Although I limit my discussion here to Pindaric epinician, Hesiod’s neighbors also play an important role in his reception more broadly. Most notably, perhaps, in Athenian comic drama (one wishes that Crates’ Γείτονες had survived beyond the title) and Hellenistic hexameter. Kurke 1991.

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increase one’s fame, as do the Heracleidae when they become the “far-famed neighbors” of the Tyndaridai at Pythian 1.66 (βαθύδοξοι γείτονες, ὧν κλέος ἄνθησεν αἰχμᾶς). This mutually supportive relationship amongst heroes parallels that between Catane and the “neighboring city” of Aetna whose founding the poem celebrates (πόλιν γείτονα, 31–2).28 Elsewhere, by contrast, we are warned that the gossip of envious neighbors (φθονερῶν γειτόνων) can tarnish reputations, as occurs in the case of Pelops at Olympian 1.47. But Pindar leaves unspecified precisely which characteristics confer “neighborly” status, and the figures in many of these passages inhabit the shifting and uncertain space marked out by Hesiod as the particular precinct of the γείτων. There is good reason to think that Pindar, already a perceptive interpreter of Hesiod, was alive to the subtle discourse around neighbors in Works and Days. The clearest evidence of this interest is found towards the end of Nemean 7, when Pindar breaks off from a celebration of Zeus’s power to reflect on the value of a good neighbor: εἰ δὲ γεύεται ἀνδρὸς ἀνήρ τι, φαῖμέν κε γείτον’ ἔμμεναι νόῳ φιλήσαντ’ ἀτενέι γείτονι χάρμα πάντων ἐπάξιον. If a man has experience of another man, I declare that a neighbor, loving his neighbor with a straight mind, is a delight worthy of all things. (Nem. 7.86–9)

Already in antiquity commentators noted a connection between Pindar’s gnomic assertion and Hesiod’s observations on neighbors in Works and Days. A scholium marks out Hesiod’s elevation of neighbors over kin as particularly pertinent (Σ Pindar, Nemean 7.127a: Ἡσίοδος [Op. 345]· γείτονες ἄζωστοι ἔκιον, ζώσαντο δὲ πηοί). The citation from Hesiod is presumably chosen for its bearing on the sense, rather than the specific language of the Pindaric expression. But a Hesiodic influence can be felt in Pindar’s wording as well. Most notable, perhaps, is the detail that neighborly love should be undertaken with a “straight mind” 28

On the much more overtly Hesiodic tenor of Pindar’s figuration of Typhon in Pythian 1 see recently Morgan 2015: 313–20, Fearn 2017: 177–84, Stamatopoulou 2017: 53–63; Philips 2018: 270–4.

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(νόῳ . . . ἀτενέι), a turn of phrase resonant of the straight judgments of Works and Days (ἰθείῃσι δίκῃσιν, 86), though one that is – at least in our modern texts – found verbatim only in Theogony, where Cottus describes the Hundred-handers’ loyalty to Zeus against the Titans (τῷ καὶ νῦν ἀτενεῖ τε νόῳ καὶ πρόφρονι θυμῷ, 661). Equally if not more compelling is Pindar’s verbal juxtaposition γείτονι χάρμα, which, despite the quite different sense, is nearly identical to Hesiod’s much-quoted admonition not to become the object of neighbors’ mockery through the selection of the wrong local girl as wife (μὴ γείτοσι χάρματα γήμῃς). Pindar’s somewhat perverse repurposing of this particular Hesiodic phrase within an ostensibly positive celebration of neighborly virtue suggests that the fifth-century poet was more attuned to the complexities of Hesiodic neighborliness than one might first assume.29 Pindar’s sensitivity to the nuances of Hesiodic community relations comes into even sharper focus when one considers the immediate context in which the gnomic pronouncement on neighbors in Nemean 7 is situated. The aphorism interrupts what might otherwise have been the beginning of a mythical excursus on Aeacus, who is introduced in his double role as both guest-friend and brother to Heracles (ξεῖνον ἀδελφεόν τ’, 86) and, if the manuscript reading of ἐμᾷ at 85 is correct, as resident of both his home city Aegina and Pindar’s own Thebes.30 Taken together, the twofold reduplication of seemingly incompatible identities begins a reflection on the complexities (and contradictions) of sociofamilial relationships and the ways that these relationships are inflected by questions of geographical identity. When the nascent narrative is interrupted by Pindar’s reflections on neighborly relations, the overdetermined geography of the mythical heroes spills into the world of Pindar’s laudandus Sogenes, the Aeginetan victor who, through his paternal inheritance, dwells in a house 29

30

In this regard, it is noteworthy that Pindar’s γείτον[α] . . . φιλήσαντ’ seems to pick up on the first – apparently familial, but at any rate not expressly neighborly – dinner guest of Op. 342: τὸν φιλέοντ’ ἐπὶ δαῖτα καλεῖν. Support for the reading, which was suspected by Hermann, is voiced by Kirkwood 1982 ad loc., and Most 1985: 19–200. On dual citizenships in the fifth century BCE, see Hornblower 2004: 140–1.

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that is “yoked like a chariot” on both sides by the precincts of Heracles (93–4). The uncertain affinities between Aeacus and Heracles, between Aegina and Thebes, which in the myth were explored as a matter of kinship and hospitality are now translated into the language of proximity, the logic of neighborliness. Looking to an even larger frame, one might note the conspicuous, and muchscrutinized, antagonism with which Pindar grapples with the winner-takes-all ethos of Homer’s martial poetics in the earlier part of Nemean 7.31 One might suspect that the gentler, more neighborly appraisal of Hesiod’s epic of rural comity that emerges at the conclusion of the poem is a correlate to that earlier posturing.32 Elsewhere, Pindar can be seen to explore a Hesiodic interest in the interplay between literal and figurative neighboring in greater depth, and to further develop the distinctively Pindaric topos of neighborly toggling between heroic exploits and poetic affinities. As in Nemean 7, Thebes, the city of Pindar’s birth, is at the heart of another Pindaric passage in which a strong Hesiodic influence colors an epinician celebration of neighborliness. As Leslie Kurke has persuasively argued, Pindar’s Isthmian 1 is strongly marked by the didactic voice of Hesiod’s Works and Days.33 The most emphatically Hesiodic segment of the epinician is lines 40–51, a meditation on toil and hunger which, as Kurke notes, employs themes and diction familiar from Works and Days in service of a decidedly “anti-Hesiodic” assertion that praise, not material wealth, represents the highest realm of human achievement: εὐαγορηθεὶς κέρδος ὕψιστον δέκεται (51).34 It is, notably, immediately following this protracted engagement with Hesiod’s didactic voice that Pindar identifies the god Poseidon as a neighbor (γείτον’) to be celebrated in song: ἄμμι δ’ ἔοικε Κρόνου σεισίχθον’ υἱόν γείτον’ ἀμειβομένοις εὐεργέταν ἁρμάτων ἱπποδρόμιον κελαδῆσαι . . . 31

32

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Koning 2010: 313–16 even suggests that contrast between Homer and Hesiod is implicit in N. 7.20–7. A similar development is seen in the Hesiodic coda to the otherwise markedly Homeric Isthm. 6. Kurke 1988. Kurke 1988: 109.

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1 Neighbors and the Poetry of Hesiod and Pindar And it is fitting for me to celebrate the earthshaking son of Kronos in song, as a neighbor and benefactor of horseracing chariots in return [for his aid] . . . (Isthm. 1.52–4)

As we have seen in Hesiod, the somewhat imprecise designation of neighbor is juxtaposed with more readily defined categories of affiliation: the citizens and foreigners (πολιατᾶν καὶ ξένων, 51) paired in the preceding line, and children (καὶ σέθεν, Ἀμφιτρύων, παῖδας, 55–6) found in the following. But, by contrast with the rather literally rendered Hesiodic neighbors which may well have influenced Pindar’s framing of this passage, it remains unclear precisely how the god should be considered a neighbor to the Theban poet. The denomination is particularly striking in light of the fact that Thebes herself has been named as “mother” in the poem’s first line. Thus the neighboring relationship between the poet and Poseidon stands alongside the (metaphoric?) genealogy that imagines the poet’s geographic origins in terms of familial descent. It may well be, as is generally assumed, that Pindar’s designation of Poseidon as neighbor in Isthmian 1 makes reference to a local cult or temple to the god at Onchestus.35 The usage here does resemble another confounding Pindaric invocation of neighborly affinities in Pythian 8 that has often been rationalized along similar lines, as a reference to a local temple or cult site.36 I will refrain from speculating about the precise locations of historical cult sites. But the comparison is a helpful one, since the Pythian 8 passage suggests an interpretive approach that can serve for both poems. The passage appears at the conclusion of a mythical excursus on the Epigoni, when Pindar offers praise to the Argive fighter Alcmaeon, claiming him as γείτων: χαίρων δὲ καὶ αὐτός Ἀλκμᾶνα στεφάνοισι βάλλω, ῥαίνω δὲ καὶ ὕμνῳ, γείτων ὅτι μοι καὶ κτεάνων φύλαξ ἐμῶν ὑπάντασεν ἰόντι γᾶς ὀμφαλὸν παρ’ ἀοίδιμον, μαντευμάτων τ’ ἐφάψατο συγγόνοισι τέχναις.

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Kirkwood 1982: 284. For a general discussion of “neighboring” cults and shrines, see Rusten 1983.

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Anna Uhlig And I too, greeting Alcmaeon, pelt him with crowns and besprinkle him with song, since as neighbor and guardian of my possessions, he encountered me traveling to the tuneful navel of the earth and claimed his inborn art of prophecy. (Pyth. 8.56–60)

Whether or not there was a (now irrecoverable) historical explanation – cultic, monumental, or otherwise – for Pindar’s identification of Alcmaeon as his neighbor,37 the confounding passage demonstrates a number of pointed similarities to those that we have already explored. The reference to Alcmaeon’s inborn skill (συγγόνοισι τέχναις) reprises a theme of generational continuity (that is, of affiliation through sexual reproduction) that had been the overriding concern of the preceding mythical excursus.38 By recasting Alcmaeon as neighbor, Pindar sets his own haphazard, geographically determined affinities with the hero of old alongside a more familiar logic of patrilinear inheritance. Unlike Amphiaraus, who sees his son as an extension of earlier generations (ἐκ πατέρων παισὶ λῆμα, 45), Pindar’s relationship with the Argive fighter seems to have been the fortuitous result of a chance encounter, a meeting along the road (ὑπάντασεν ἰόντι).39 What is more, the geographic logic of Alcmaeon’s neighboring status is developed within a landscape of particular significance to the Boeotian poet. As with Poseidon in Isthmian 1, the Alcmaeon passage situates Thebes, Pindar’s home (though, in the case of Pythian 8, not that of his laudandus), in an expansive lens that looks beyond the immediate boundaries of the seven-gated city. The broader Boeotian context, denoted by the mention of the Orchomenian grove of Minyas in Isthmian 1 (56) and by Delphi in Pythian 8 (59), lends a distinctively geographic, if not specifically monumental, color to both passages.40 Pindar does readily conceive of locations as “neighbors,” as with the city of Aetna at Pythian 1.32 or the sea at Nemean 9.43. Yet the assimilation of 37 38 39

40

See Slater 1971: 141–2, Gentili and Bernardini 1995: 576–7. Uhlig 2019: 230–7. The thematization of travel in Pyth. 8 is elegantly explored by Martin 2004. As with Hesiod’s use of language suggesting neighborliness in his treatment of the “smooth path” at Op. 288, it is difficult to determine just where the line between neighbor and journey should be placed. It should be noted that, alongside the Boeotian landmarks, Isthm. 1 also includes reference to Attica (Eleusis) and Euboea.

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Poseidon’s and Alcmaeon’s neighborliness to an expressly spatial discourse does not fully account for the emphasis on interpersonal relations that is present in both passages. In their capacity as neighbor, both Poseidon and Alcmaeon are identified not only as recipients of Pindar’s song but as participants in a reciprocal exchange. Poseidon serves as a benefactor to whom song is offered in return (ἀμειβομένοις εὐεργέταν). Alcmaeon is a protector who is encountered as the poet travels (κτεάνων φύλαξ ἐμῶν ὑπάντασεν). Both figures inhabit an unstable status at the juncture of place and personage, neither fully part of the landscape nor wholly agents within it. This uncertainty is, in a certain sense, inherent to the category of neighbor itself, a denomination which is entirely predicated on the logic of geography (a logic that is at once random and impersonal, yet experienced in intensely personalized terms) while at the same time operating through the idiosyncratic actions of individual personalities. As emblematized by Poseidon and Alcmaeon in these passages, Pindaric neighbors are spatial constructs, but cannot be reduced to the landscape of which they are part. Pindar and Hesiod are not identical in their approach to neighboring. Pindar is eager to pick up and further develop certain facets found in Hesiod, such as neighborly variability and the category’s orthogonal relationship to traditional ethical binaries and genealogical structures of descent. But Pindar does not seem to be interested in the temporal variability of neighboring to the same degree that Hesiod is, though there is undoubtedly some particularly charged temporal component to the meeting with Alcmaeon.41 Other features, such as geographic specificity, are given far more coverage by the epinician poet. Beyond these particulars, however, there is a more substantive link between the two poets’ interest in neighbors, insofar as neighborly contiguity is no less apt a description of Pindar’s epinician compositional technique than it is of Hesiod’s Works and Days, despite the many real differences between the two poets’ work. Scholars have long noted that Pindar’s epinician compositions can seem to be loosely structured affairs, governed by what Andrew Miller has called an “associative 41

On which, see Uhlig 2019: 234–7.

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mode” that flits between gnōmē, fable, and myth, often with little overt connection beyond the simple fact of proximity.42 And although generations of scholars have worked to uncover the complex structuring elements that assure the “unity” of Pindar’s works, it is nonetheless still true that the poet rarely draws explicit connections between the various elements in his epinicians. In most cases, one thought simply follows on from the next.43 Where Hesiod offers the occasional perfunctory nod to telling “another story” (ἕτερόν τοι ἐγὼ λόγον, Op. 106), Pindar celebrates his ability to move between neighboring ideas “like a bee darting from one bloom to the next” (ἐπ’ ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλον ὥτε μέλισσα θύνει λόγον, Pyth. 10.54). That these two poets convey their approach to poetic structure in such a different manner – Hesiod through a workmanlike declaration, Pindar through an evocative simile – serves to underline the challenge of identifying or articulating precisely what “shared something,” Aristotle’s elusive τὸ κοινόν, links these two poets. Viewed in this way, we might say that Hesiod and Pindar can themselves be said to enjoy a relationship of poetic neighboring, a connection of proximity that functions outside of, but not in opposition to, the genealogical structures that are normally thought to govern poetic “inheritance” in the ancient world. Our extant ancient sources offer no direct evidence of terminology of neighboring being employed to describe loose or indirect connections between poets. Aristotle’s desire to give a name to τὸ κοινόν seems never to have led down such a path. But the flighty bee of Pindar’s Pythian 10 may hint at an inchoate articulation of 42

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Miller 1993. On Pindar’s indebtedness to the gnomic tradition of which Hesiod’s works are the prime exemplar, see Martin 1984, Kurke 1990, and now Stamatopoulou 2017: 118–21. When Pindar does draw a link between facets of his epinicians, he most often makes use of the ostensibly hypotactic device of a relative pronoun, usually as a means of transitioning to a mythical narrative. Although the subordination in such constructions is not particularly strong, Bonifazi 2004: 61–3 has suggested that the form of these transitions is borrowed from a distinctly Homeric epic tradition, most familiar from the so-called androktasiai which give details from a warrior’s life at the moment of his death. The subordination, Bonifazi argues, permits Pindar to mark not only his move into a particular mythic tale but a shift to the “register of [Homeric] epic” (63). If these moments of hypotaxis are conspicuous for their Homeric coloring, might we then suppose that the unmarked structures of Pindar’s paratactic composition are, in some sense, un-Homeric? That they participate in a logic of affiliation that Pindar associates not with Homer but with a Hesiodic poetics of spatial proximity?

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such a notion flitting along the margins of a biographical tradition that employed an elaborate spatial shorthand in order to map Pindar’s works onto a broader poetic landscape. Moving from flower to flower across the meadow, Pindar’s bee made its way from Pythian 10 into a famous narrative that attributed Pindar’s poetic skill to an apian visitation on Mt. Helicon,44 not far from the site of Hesiod’s celebrated Dichterweihe (Th. 22–35). The story suggests a link between the two Boeotian poets, though one that is perhaps more notable for what is left unsaid than for what is actively expressed. The commonality implied by the poets’ geographic contiguity is never given specific contours, but there is nonetheless some hint of connection, a closeness that, like the Muses’ inspiration, is rendered at once both literal and figurative. Whatever the perception of Pindar’s proximity to Hesiod may have meant for ancient critics, modern readers of the two poets experience their neighboring relationship in a radically different fashion. This is due, inter alia, to the fact that links between Pindar and Hesiod are now most often drawn through the paratextual parataxis of ancient commentators drawing connections in laconic marginal notes, such as that at Nemean 7.86 discussed above.45 The marginal commentary of ancient scholars reflects a secondorder geography of the text itself. Physical papyri on which poems were transcribed provided a spatial framework onto which other works could be appended, inhabiting the margins of the central work like neighbors in adjacent properties. It is generally assumed that such connections are not drawn at random; that they betoken some significant relationship between the two works. Most often the relationship is assumed to be one of genealogical connection: the commentator notes the “parent” text from which the thought or language of the main work is drawn. But such a presumption does 44

45

At least according to the Ambrosian Vita, on which see Lefkowitz 1981: 59. Other accounts specify other loaded locations. Pausanias, much concerned with Pindar’s life and house at Thebes, situates the encounter on the road from Thebes to Thespiae (Paus. 9.23.2: a journey not unlike that on which Pindar encounters his neighbor Alcmaeon in Pyth. 8). Philostratus (Imag. 2.12) locates the event in the house of Pindar’s father in Thebes, but claims that the bees arrived from Hymettus, making reference to Pindar fr. 76 Snell–Maehler, but also reflecting the strong connections found throughout the biographical tradition between the Boeotian poet and Athens, the site of his first poetic successes. So D’Alessio 2005b: 234.

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not adequately acknowledge that there is, undeniably, a certain degree of haphazardness – of the fortuitous collocation of neighbors – at work in the citational practices of ancient scholarship. There are, moreover, particularly good reasons to attend to this arbitrariness when it comes to the appearance of Hesiod in the scholia to Pindar’s epinicians. As Zoe Stamatopoulou has recently observed, although ancient scholiasts often adduce Hesiodic passages in their commentaries on Pindaric gnomic expressions – an area in which one might expect a connection between two poets to be most strongly felt – they most often do so in ways that “refrain from using language that would explicitly frame the [Hesiodic passage] as the source of [Pindar’s expression].”46 The scholiasts, Stamatopoulou argues, drew a distinction between Pindar’s “active engagement” with Hesiod and a less direct type of affinity,47 a kind of relationship of fortuitous proximity that resembles what I have been calling neighborliness. It may be that the inherently paratactic quality of gnōmai encourages this type of reticence about overt claims of poetic paternity. Stamatopoulou does not see the same arm’s-length treatment at work when it comes to scholia regarding genealogical narratives, but it is nevertheless noteworthy that the narratives of Cyrene in Pythian 9 and Coronis in Pythian 3 – narratives that are thought to most conspicuously link Pindar to Hesiod and are generally assumed to be modeled directly on passages from the Catalogue or Megalai Ehoiai – can also be seen to call straightforward models of genealogical inheritance into question. There is good reason to believe that Pindar’s Cyrene narrative, which comprises the bulk of the first half of Pythian 9, is indeed connected in some way to a Hesiodic predecessor, presumably the same one cited by the scholiast to Pythian 9.6a who claimed that “Pindar took the story (τὴν ἱστορίαν ἔλαβεν) from the Ehoiai of Hesiod.” Pindar’s tale does match the broad contours of what we know of Hesiod’s treatment, locating Cyrene’s birth in Thessaly before her transport to North Africa and identifying her child by Apollo as called, at least by some, Aristaeus (Ἀγρέα καὶ Νόμιον, 46 47

Stamatopoulou 2017: 120. Stamatopoulou 2017: 121.

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τοῖς δ’ Ἀρισταῖον καλεῖν, 65). But, as Stamatopoulou aptly observes, Pindar’s narrative shies away from genealogical detail at the very moment when it would seem most opportune: “when asked to reveal Cyrene’s pedigree (Pyth. 9.32–3), Chiron evades the question (Pyth. 9.42–4).”48 Instead, the centaur offers a vision of the future in which Cyrene’s child, made immortal by ambrosia, is cast as a bucolic hero: “a joy to men who are dear [to him], closest attendant of flocks” (ἀνδράσι χάρμα φίλοις ἄγχιστον ὀπάονα μήλων, 64–64a). The relationships emphasized, with friends and flocks, highlight lateral connections as opposed to the vertical dynamics of genealogical inheritance. Not only is Cyrene’s lineage passed over in silence, there is no suggestion that her son will produce offspring of his own. And, although there is no explicit language of neighboring, the specification of proximity (ἄγχιστον) within a countryside setting perhaps encourages thoughts in the direction of Hesiod’s rural inhabitants.49 Given how little we actually know about the Hesiodic treatment of the Cyrene tale,50 would it not be possible to take Pindar’s non- (if not exactly anti-) genealogical stance to heart and think of the relationship between the two narratives as one governed by proximity rather than poetic genealogy? To hear the scholiast’s ἔλαβεν as a marker of neighborly borrowing rather than of direct poetic inheritance? The advantages of such an approach are likewise apparent in the case of Pindar’s account of the birth of Asclepius to Coronis (Pyth. 3.8–44). As with the Cyrene myth in Pythian 8, the scholiasts link Pindar’s account to a Hesiodic one, though in a far more circumscribed manner. The Hesiodic lines cited in the scholium (Σ Pindar, Pyth. 3.52b = Hesiod fr. 71 Merkelbach–West) reflect details consistent with Pindar’s account: both claim that Coronis 48 49

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Stamatopoulou 2017: 87–8. Particularly resonant is Hesiod’s dictum “no cattle would be lost, if not for a bad neighbor” (οὐδ’ ἂν βοῦς ἀπόλοιτ’, εἰ μὴ γείτων κακὸς εἴη, Op. 348). Additionally, one might hear an echo of γείτοσι χάρματα (Op. 701) in ἀνδράσι χάρμα φίλοις, particularly in light of the fun that Pindar seems to have with the same Hesiodic formulation at Nemean 7.87 (discussed above, pp. 36–7). In addition to the two hexameter lines quoted by the Pythian 9 scholiast, only one, quite incomplete, further fragment (217 Merkelbach–West) has been connected to the narrative.

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was punished by Apollo for her affair with Ischus. But the connection between the two narratives is somewhat complicated by the fact that, elsewhere, Hesiod is said to offer an entirely different genealogy for Asclepius, in which the healer is not the son of Thessalian Coronis, but of Messenian Arsinoe.51 Without wishing to call into question D’Alessio’s persuasive argument that the inconsistency stems from two distinct Hesiodic genealogical treatments of Asclepius, in the Catalogue and Megalai Ehoiai respectively,52 I would like to suggest that this inconsistency can serve as a warning against positing too strong a correspondence between Pindar’s account and its (imagined) Hesiodic model. It may well be, as Stamatopoulou argues, that Pindar’s Coronis narrative represents “a complex case of Hesiodic reception.”53 But it is also undoubtedly true that, as modern scholars, our perception of Pindar’s engagement with Hesiod is largely built upon assumptions underwritten by the critical parataxis of ancient scholiasts. With little more than the four hexameter lines quoted at Pythian 3.52 to go on, our own poetic genealogies are almost entirely back-projections from Pindar’s account. The distinct spatial coordinates of Coronis’ overdetermined lineage remind us that genealogy and geography are not exclusive or opposing categories. As Hesiod makes clear, neighbors can become kin. But the complex realities of such family structures require a critical toolkit that goes beyond mere “poetic inheritance.” In adopting models of familial procreation over the haphazard logic of spatial contiguity, we fail to see the way that neighbors – like those caught up in the punishment of Coronis (καὶ γειτόνων πολλοὶ ἐπαῦρον, Pyth. 3.35) – have a stake in the ancient poetic tradition. Conclusion The model of poetic neighboring that I have advanced here is multiform, expanding out from poetic depictions of neighbors to embrace structures of poetic composition and the metaphorical frames through which we conceptualize relationships between 51 52 53

Paus. 2.26.7. D’Alessio 2005a: 208–10. Stamatopoulou 2017: 76.

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poets. I have suggested that the category of neighbor is distinguished by its malleability, its temporal extension, and its independence from traditional structures of binary opposition. I believe that the most compelling, and potentially most broadly transferable, feature of thinking about poets and poetry through the lens of neighborly proximity is the way in which the category itself sits alongside – neither replicating nor repudiating – traditional structures of poetic affinities, most prominently that of genealogical inheritance. The unprepossessing category of neighbor introduces a flexible notion of commonality – of similarities born of chance proximity – that not only permits a more comprehensive and nuanced description of the often subtle and even tenuous bonds that constitute ancient poetic reception, but permits us, as modern scholars, to reflect on the ways that our own perception of such linkages between ancient authors is itself highly provisional, the result of accidents of proximity as often as anything else. To speak of poetic neighboring is to embrace what Sedgwick terms “weak theory.” As Sedgwick explains, quoting Silvan Tomkins, from whom she adopts the category: To the extent to which the theory can account only for “near” phenomena, it is a weak theory, little better than a description of the phenomena which it purports to explain. As it orders more and more remote phenomena to a single formulation, its power grows . . .54

But theoretical “weakness” is not necessarily a failing, just as the imprecision and unpredictability of the label “neighbor” does not deprive the designation of taxonomic significance. It is, rather, that the range of significance is intentionally circumscribed. Given how few ancient texts we modern classicists can call our neighbors, there is, I believe, quite a bit to be said for a weak theory of accidental proximities.

54

Tomkins 2008: 519, quoted in Sedgwick 2003: 134.

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chapter 2 S T E S I C H O R U S A N D T H E NA M E G A M E

richard p. martin

That Greek poetry flows in a continuous stream has been demonstrated abundantly by the successive waves of Richard Hunter’s work.1 What follows is an attempt, inspired by his model, to row against the current and examine from the sixth century BCE one example of a poetic habit familiar to later times – dropping other poets’ names into a composition. Some speculation about the early social and rhetorical purposes of this device (whether point-scoring, product-placement, or shout-outs) will perhaps be useful for those working on later periods. We might think of this technique as one of extreme encapsulation – reception degree-zero – whereby complex compositions, with all their concomitants (style, personality, politics), get reduced through aesthetic shorthand to literary mythemes: in each a world of verbal art has become a name. This brief project provides merely a starting point for discussions that could encompass changes, over the course of antiquity, in the notions of author and text.2 A fuller treatment would take into account the shift from a primarily oral-performance milieu to a text-based, reading culture; the necessity, in the former, of identifying a composition as one’s own work (for example, by means of a sphrēgis); and the tendency, in the latter, for performance-generated features (deixis, etc.) to survive as relics, even when the new conditions of textuality (e.g. the possibility of circulating written documents headed by an author’s name) no longer require them.3 My chapter will not attempt to trace the full story of that afterlife, but may serve as preface to it. 1 2

3

An ancient metaphor: Hunter 2012. The broad parameters for that project have been sketched recently by essays in Bakker 2017. Further features of this dynamic are examined in Martin 2018b.

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Let us begin with a curiously precise Hypothesis to the pseudoHesiodic Shield, a poem that probably crystallized in the late sixth century BCE.4 The beginning of the Shield is transmitted in Book 4 of the Catalogue up to line 56. For this reason, Aristophanes [of Byzantium] suspected that it did not belong to Hesiod but to someone else who had chosen to imitate the Homeric ‘Shield.’ Megaclides of Athens considered the poem to be genuine but censured (ἐπιτιμᾷ) Hesiod, for he said it was illogical that Hephaestus should make weapons for his mother’s enemies. Apollonius Rhodius says in Book 3 that it is his [i.e. Hesiod’s], because of the style and because he finds Iolaus elsewhere in the Catalogue driving the chariot for Heracles. And Stesichorus [fr. 168 Finglass] says that the poem is Hesiod’s (Ἡσιόδου εἶναι τὸ ποίημα).

The first three authorities are scholars or scholar-poets. From Megaclides, a Peripatetic of the late fourth or early third century BCE, we have thirteen short fragments, most likely from his Περὶ Ὁμήρου.5 It is unclear in what sort of critical work Apollonius might have expressed his opinion about Hesiod’s authorship, but several other fragments attest to his scholarly interest in the poet and, of course, his Argonautica teems with Hesiodic echoes and intertexts.6 It is the fourth name that has given modern readers pause: how, when, where, and why would Stesichorus have expressed an opinion about the Shield? More than thirty years ago, Richard Janko asked precisely that question in a valuable study of the Shield.7 I agree with his overall conclusion that the actual naming of Hesiod by Stesichorus was entirely possible. But I wish to go further by interpreting this poetic move, grounding my conclusion in a study of similar references, something Janko omitted, given his different aim. Opinions on the citation vary: while the late Martin West comfortably envisioned Stesichorus having mentioned Hesiod as an authority for his own Cycnus, Patrick Finglass, eleven pages later in the same conference volume, shies away, cautioning that the ancient 4

5 6 7

Translation: Most 2006: 19–98; on the date: Janko 1986. With gratitude I recall that my study of the Shield (Martin 2005) owes its origin to Richard’s kind invitation to a Cambridge colloquium in May 2002. Janko 2000: 138–43. On his Hesiod scholarship: Michaelis 1875: 40–6. Janko 1986: 41.

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testimony ‘may involve reckless inference from some aspect of Stesichorus’ treatment of the same myth.’8 In what follows, I shall construct a taxonomy of the naming device, as attested in melic, iambic, and elegiac verse up to and including Pindar.9 A more extensive analysis of the lattermost poet will support my argument that Stesichorus self-consciously positioned his own innovative work by explicitly invoking Hesiod. A contrast with limited remains from the archaic age may make it appear that such name-dropping erupts in the Hellenistic period, headed by the spectacular prologue to the Aitia of Callimachus, in which no fewer than ten literary figures or texts are alluded to, or singled out by name.10 For the connoisseur audience, allusion can be transmitted through every phrase; calling out a specific name, however, would seem to up the ante poetically. It is the sort of move made in court. Why do it? If there was an uptick in this habit in the third century BCE, it could well be that the agonistic and forensic atmosphere of Athenian drama, heightened by Old Comedy in particular, provided a model for Hellenistic poetnaming. The technique ranges from minimal caricatures, as when Cratinus mocks ‘euripidaristophanizing’ (fr. 342 PCG), to tossed-off jokes (Sophocles turning into greedy old Simonides: Peace, 695) to full-bore smackdowns (the Frogs, the Pytine) enacting, as well as naming, poets and their styles. Then again, the apparent frequency of naming from the fifth century onward may be a mirage arising from the wider range of sources available to us. Because we cannot fashion a consistent chronological literaryhistorical narrative from the few strands remaining, it will be more worthwhile to resort to formalist methods, constructing a tripartite taxonomy to categorize early poetic strategies as follows: (1) Passages where the mention of a poet indicates an approving attitude and alignment by the speaking poet/narrator/persona with the activity or style of the distant (less often, contemporary) poet. 8 9

10

West 2015: 74 vs. Finglass 2015: 85. Davison 1968, cited by Janko 1986: 41, considered six examples, arguing all are problematic and insufficient to establish literary chronology. Acosta-Hughes and Stephens 2002: 246.

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2 Stesichorus and the Name Game (2) Mentions that construct a broader conversational frame, giving the illusion that one poet addresses another. This can be approving but also corrective or critical. (3) Naming in the context of (potentially contentious) critique.

We can place under the first heading an interesting example by a poet singularly fond of referring to other poets by name.11 The publication of the ‘New Simonides’ (P.Oxy. 3965) demonstrated, first, that a previously known reference to Homer as the ‘man of Chios,’ pinned to a quotation of Iliad 6.146 in lines preserved by Stobaeus (4.34.28), was composed most likely by Simonides rather than Semonides, to whom it had usually been attributed.12 Second, an elegy on the battle of Plataea includes an artfully crafted periphrastic naming of Homer (fr. 11 IEG2, lines 15–18): [and they] are bathed in fame that cannot die, by grace [of one who from the dark-]tressed Muses had the tru[th entire] and made the heroes’ short-lived race a theme familiar (ἐπώνυμον) to younger men.13

Both these namings of Homer, though rather indirect, are meant favorably. The observation about human mortality, voiced by the Trojan ally Glaucus, is credited directly to the epic poet’s own skill as ‘the finest thing’ he said, while the reference in the Plataea poem to Homer’s conferral of lasting heroic fame provides an explicit analogue to Simonides’ own powers of commemoration. The rhetorical function of the latter emerges more clearly when Theocritus Idyll 16 is brought to bear. Now clearly seen to echo the Plataea elegy, this hexameter appeal for the patronage of Hiero II constructs a close parallel between, on the one hand, what Simonides achieved for his aristocratic Thessalian backers, otherwise unremembered after death (‘if the inspired bard of Ceos, with his varied songs performed on a lyre of many strings, had not made them famous among later generations,’ ὀνομαστούς ὁπλοτέροις: 16.44), and, on the other hand, what Homer did for Odysseus and 11

12

13

Sider 2001: 282 makes note of the Simonidean habit. I regret that limited space allows me only partially to engage with the compelling argumentation in Rawles 2018, the most complete treatment. Fr. 19 IEG2. Accepted by most but see Hubbard 2001. The name ‘Homer’ may lurk in line 14 of the related fragment 20 IEG2, but the text is uncertain. Translation by West based on his edition: Boedeker and Sider 2001: 29.

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his household, similarly ‘unknown if the songs of the Ionian bard had not benefitted them’ (16.57).14 In other words, Theocritus reads Simonides just as that poet wished: ‘the historical elegist proclaims himself the Homer of the Persian War.’15 A note of trust in the power of earlier poetic authorities can be heard in another bit of Simonidean naming: That this poem [Funeral Games of Pelias] is the work of Stesichorus [fr. 4 Finglass] is adequately attested by the poet Simonides, who says in his account of Meleager, ‘who defeated all the young men with his spear, hurling it over the eddying Anaurus from grape-rich Iolcus; for so Homer and Stesichorus sang to the peoples (οὕτω γὰρ Ὅμηρος ἠδὲ Στασίχορος ἄεισε λαοῖς).’ (564 PMG16)

In Athenaeus (4.172f), the verse of Simonides is adduced as if it simply affirms authorship, but in the poem’s original broader context, the naming (and eliding) of Homer with Stesichorus must have at least two further goals: it turns Stesichorus into a rhapsode singing ‘to the peoples’ – a detail to which I shall return – and it offers a reliable basis for a version of the Meleager story. In doing so, it anticipates Callimachus’ claim to sing nothing unattested (fr. 612 Pfeiffer) – note that the framing prose in Athenaeus calls Simonides himself the ‘most competent witness (martus)’ for the attribution to Stesichorus. Whether Simonides then went on to make a contrast regarding his own elaboration of the tale (e.g. ‘for so they sang . . . but I’) cannot be known, though we might expect to hear, from some source, of major divergences, if he had. One can speculate that, if a contrast was expressed, it would have been between hitherto crowd-pleasing demotic performances of the myth (Stesichorus painted like a rhapsodic Homer), and Simonides’ more personalized poet-to-patron refashioning. More obscure in intent, but plausibly also in approbation, was the mention by Simonides (609 PMG) of one otherwise unknown ‘Aeson’ (editors emend to ‘Arion’ or ‘Cinaethon’). The scholiast who preserves this naming (ad Pindar, Ol. 13.22 = i 364 Drachmann) explains that ‘there were very distinguished poets 14 15 16

On the echo, see Rutherford 2001a: 45. Parsons 2001: 64. Trans. Campbell 1991: 453.

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in Corinth,’ among them the aforementioned. The phrasing (ποιηταὶ διασημότατοι) may have picked up on some note of commendation in the original poem (or, have been purely later exegesis). By contrast, an alleged opinion of Simonides on the complementary skills of Homer and Hesiod is clearly laudatory, but late in attestation and suspiciously elaborate, in the epigrammatic style of Anthology potted literary history: Simonides said that Hesiod was a gardener and Homer a weaver of garlands, since the former planted the mythological stories about gods and heroes, while the latter wove together the garland of the Iliad and Odyssey out of them. (Hesiod T16 Most)

The weaving metaphor is deployed by Critias, as well, in explicit praise of Anacreon (said to have been his grandfather’s erastēs) in the Athenian politician’s only preserved hexameters: Teos brought to Greece the one who once wove songs (πλέξαντά ποτ᾿ ᾠδὰς) with strains celebrating women, sweet Anacreon, stimulus for symposia, seducer of women, opponent of the pipes, lover of the lyre, sweet banisher of pain. (fr. 1 Gerber)

Especially coming from Critias, praise of the αὐλῶν ἀντίπαλον, φιλοβάρβιτον poet, the louche icon of a pre-democratic Athenian elite, no doubt also works as indirect blame of the pipe-mad fifthcentury mob.17 The remaining passages potentially relevant to ‘approval and alignment’ are scrappy and ambiguous. Archilochus (303 Swift) mentioned the Margites of Homer, as did Cratinus and Callimachus, all of whom, alleges the late source (Eustratius on the Nicomachean Ethics) ‘testify (μαρτυροῦσιν) that the poem is Homer’s.’ Since, on this issue, no verses survive, it is hard to gauge the original point, but it is also difficult to believe that any of the poets named simply stated a fact of literary history. Probably it was at least to align their own satirical works with the comic poem by ‘Homer.’18 Both 17

18

See Martin 2003 on the pipes, and Kurke 1999: 183–91 on the political valence of Anacreon. On the erotic relation with Critias’ grandfather in Athens: Σ PV 128a (p. 93 Herington). Perhaps Archilochus merely cited a line that also appeared in the Margites, about the fox knowing many things, and this was taken for exact reference: cf. the report by Zenobius (201 Swift). But he could have attributed and approved (e.g. ‘as the man of Chios well said . . .’).

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Alcman and Pindar supposedly praised Polymnestus, a seventhcentury choral composer, the latter in what sounds like recognition of celebrity if not outright commendation: ‘You recognize the well-known song (φθέγμα . . . πάγκοινον) of Polymnastus, the man from Colophon’ (fr. 188 Snell–Maehler; cf. Alcman fr. 145 PMG = 225 Calame). The phrasing reminds us of the option, already seen above, of using either personal name, ethnic, or both in such references.19 Finally, in this category, we can venture to place the testimony of Pausanias (9.9.5) that the early elegist Callinus said Homer composed the epic Thebais (6 IEG2). David Sider has made the attractive suggestion that such a reference might have featured in a proem by Callinus, similar to the way Simonides deployed Homer in his Plataea elegy.20 In both these cases, it is worth noting, there is a heightened focus on the authorial voice even as it is heard to name poets of the past as rhetorical foils. In effect, mentioning ‘Homer’ – or similar figures – complements another strategy, poetic self-reference. One familiar example, probably from the sixth century, is the clever set-up by the composer of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (166–73). Taking his leave, the poet instructs the marvelous Delian maidens to tell visitors that they favor the most delightful singer, a blind man who dwells in Chios and whose songs in after-time are best.21 It is a sophisticated case of what can be labeled embedded delayed naming – that is, an imaginative projection into the future of a moment when the poet’s name will be uttered. The Hymn’s keen sense of how poetry is transmitted by social groups is shared by Theognis, another sixthcentury poet, whose sphrēgis acts out the future naming of its author in the style he imagines he will be celebrated. Since this ‘seal’ will (somehow) prevent theft of his verses, or substitution of inferior ones, everyone will say, ‘They are the verses (ἔπη) of 19

20 21

Similar but even less informative as to tone are two other reports, from Athenaeus (14.625b–c) saying that an iambist, Hipponax or Ananius (mid-sixth century BCE), mentioned Pythermus, an Ionic composer of skolia; and from pseudo-Plutarch (153 IEG2) that Hipponax mentioned how Mimnermus played on the aulos an ancient musical nomos called Kradias. Both have the ring of learned sympotic banter. Sider 2006: 336. Richardson 2010: 110 notes that the phrasing presumes his songs’ preservation and reperformance.

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Theognis of Megara, and he is famous (ὀνομαστός) among all men’ (23–4).22 If this personal note echoes actual practices – the way people, say, at symposia will talk – then we can envisage that the naming of poets during the reception of poems would feature both identification (those are the songs of X) and some sort of statement about the perceived author’s reputation (for better or worse.) In turn, those very aspects could be put into a composition, by a poet who wants to mention earlier poetry. An emphasis on the social – how poems and songs are imagined in use – characterizes my second category, the mention of poets in the construction of broader conversational frames. It so happens that the corpus of the Theognidea offers (apparently) a version of this strategy, in its three direct addresses to ‘Simonides’: lines 467–96, 667–82, and 1345–50. Debate over whether this name is the famous poet’s runs in tandem with contention about authorship. Bowra attributed all three passages to the elder Euenus of Paros (probably the grandfather of that Euenus contemporary with Socrates), and thus synchronized them with the era and concerns of Simonides and Themistocles, going so far as to identify 467–96 as a response to Simonides’ poem to Scopas (542 PMG).23 If ‘Simonides’ does represent the Cean poet, we have a parallel to the long-distance correspondence between Mimnermus (6 IEG2) and Solon (20 IEG2), the latter correcting the former about how long a person should pray to live: But if even now you will still listen to me, remove this – and do not be offended because my thoughts are better than yours – and changing it, Ligyaestades, sing as follows: ‘May my fated death come at eighty.’

Solon virtually edits his elegiac counterpart (ἔξελε τοῦτο), in what seems a friendly enough manner, although Diogenes Laertius (1.60), who quotes the exchange, uses ἐπιτιμῶντα (‘censures’) of Solon’s intervention. 22 23

Bakker 2016 has convincing parallels with the rhetoric of inscribed archaic epigram. Bowra 1934. West prints the verses with the rest of ‘Theognis’ in IEG2 but also tentatively includes them as Euenus *8a, b, and c. Corrêa (2016) prefers attribution to the younger Euenus. Of course, many other persons not known to be poets are spoken to in the Theognidea, e.g. Clearistus (511), Scythes (829), Democles (923), Demonax (1085), and the ubiquitous primary addressee, Cyrnus. It is interesting that another unknown (Academus, 993) is invited by the speaker to a song contest.

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We do not expect this literary device to stage simple agreements; the imaginative representation, of poets interacting and naming one another, focuses on differences, ranging from polite correction to stronger rejection. Between genders, the former is the norm. Three couples in the tradition supposedly call to one another. Sappho is addressed in a line (tentatively) attributed to Alcaeus (fr. 384 Lobel–Page) as ‘violet-haired, holy, sweetlysmiling Sappho,’ reading Σάπφοι as in manuscripts of the source, Hephaestion, Ench. 14.4 (p. 45 Consbruch), instead of the emendation ἄπφοι (Maas, Voigt). This may have been connected with a reply to Alcaeus (in Alcaiac meter), reported by Aristotle (Rh. 1367a) to be what Sappho said (perhaps less than politely) when her fellow poet claimed that shame had prevented him from speaking: . . . but if you had a desire for what is honorable or good, and your tongue were not stirring up something evil to say, shame would not cover your eyes, but you would state your claim. (fr. 137)24

The third-century elegist Hermesianax, who made Sappho the love object of both Alcaeus and Anacreon, is called out in Athenaeus (13.598b–c, 599c–d) for his faulty synchronism concerning the latter poet. In the same passage of Athenaeus the symposiast Myrtilus introduces the treatise On Sappho by Chamaeleon, the Peripatetic scholar, for the idea that Anacreon’s poem about ball-playing with a Lesbian girl (358 PMG) actually addressed Sappho. Her poetic reply (which he finds palpably nonSapphic) strikes me as politely pointed (just as Anacreon’s invitation was indirectly taunting): You uttered that hymn (ἔνισπες ὕμνον), oh golden-throned Muse, which from the fine land of fair women the glorious old Teian man (ἐκ τᾶς καλλιγύναικος ἐσθλᾶς Τήϊος χώρας) delightfully sang. (953 PMG)

While saying some nice things about the old Anacreon, in thirdperson reference, the idea that it was the Muse who ‘uttered the humnos in detail’ clearly takes the Teian poet down a notch.25 24

25

For full analysis and a superior alternative reading of the imagined relations among Sappho, Alcaeus, and Anacreon see Nagy 2007. For the specific semantics of ἔνισπες see Martin 1989: 238.

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Even more subversive may be the phrase ἐκ τᾶς καλλιγύναικος Τήϊος χώρας. The ethnic adjective, sandwiched in the nominative between genitives ‘with fair women’ and ‘land,’ creates the illusion that the locale in question is the poet’s own island. But it could just as easily be taken as the ‘humnos out of the land of fair women,’ in which case – given the reputation of Lesbos for its beauty contests – ‘Sappho’ might be hinting at appropriation of her own tradition.26 A final pairing is Corinna with Pindar. In one poem (664 PMG), she appears to name and defend him, in a backhanded way, while criticizing another Boeotian composer: ‘and I find fault (μέμφομη) also with clear-voiced Myrtis in that, a woman, she entered into competition with Pindar.’ Yet at another point (688 PMG) it is Pindar whom she censures (ἐπιτιμᾷ τῷ Πινδάρῳ ἀττικίζοντι) for using the word ἀγοράζειν in its Attic sense (‘spend time in the agora’). This tone better fits the anecdote related by Plutarch (De glor. Ath. 4.347f–348a), that Corinna admonished her unpoetic competitor Pindar (ἐνουθέτησεν ὡς ἄμουσον ὄντα) to employ muthoi rather than exotic turns of phrase, but laughed at his consequent mythstuffed attempt (fr. 29 Snell–Maehler). The only Pindaric response recorded is that he called Corinna ‘sow’ (T3 = Ael. VH 13.25).27 The third motivation that I have proposed for the naming of poets – outspoken criticism – is most familiar from the ferocious critique of Homer mounted by Xenophanes, himself a poet and even potential rival for audience share, given that he ‘rhapsodized’ his compositions (Diog. Laert. 9.18), which included hexameters like the famous denunciation of Homer and Hesiod for their portrayal of divine immorality (D8 Laks–Most). His own Silloi mocked contemporary poets, as well, presumably by naming and shaming (D3). Simonides he called a ‘skinflint’ (kimbix), according to Chamaeleon. As for Simonides, evidence suggests that he could be either helpfully critical, or nastily critical, of other 26

27

As recorded at Ath. 13.609e, Chalcis in Euboea was called kalligunaika by Hesiod but the travel writer Nymphodorus said Tenedos actually boasted more beautiful women; the same passage (610a) mentions beauty contests for women in both Tenedos and Lesbos. Corinna’s five victories over Pindar are mentioned in the Suda, and Aelian; one is singled out by Pausanias (9.22.3) describing her statue in Tanagra.

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composers. On the most optimistic reading, his naming of Pittacus (in tradition, a poet as well as sophos) in the Scopas poem examined in Plato’s Protagoras is fair and balanced (542 PMG): ‘Nor does that saying of Pittacus ring true to me (ἐμμελέως) although it was spoken by a wise man: he said that it was difficult to be good.’ The diction of the ode implies a genre and register distinction: literally, the saying (or song?) of Pittacus is not ‘in tune’ as a melos would be. Not being in Simonides’ own song-world, the words are ruled out from the start, even if Pittacus is still sophos. Cleobulus of Rhodes, another archaic figure on the cusp of poetry and wisdom-purveying, comes in for harsher words. Simonides responds (581 PMG) to the earlier poet’s hexameter tomb epigram for Midas (with its vision of an eternal bronze maiden statue), ‘What man who can trust his wits would commend Cleobulus . . . That was the judgement of a fool (μωροῦ φωτὸς ἅδε βουλά).’28 This harsh dismissal, with its play on the opponent’s name (‘famed for boulē’) recalls verses directed against one Agathonides (not named in the fragment, and not certainly a poet) after he gave a contest judgment in favor of Pindar against Simonides. As recorded in a scholion on Pindar, Simonides wrote abuse (λοιδορίας ἔγραψε) that ran (602 PMG): ‘New wine does not yet bring to the test last year’s gift of the vine’: that is an empty-headed saying of children.

Text and meaning are difficult to restore, especially in the final line. It seems the first two verses might paraphrase or quote Agathonides’ own words, while the last line slams them as juvenile. The scholiast then takes Pindar’s verse in Olympian 9 (‘praise wine that is old’) as answering Simonides’ response to the reviled judge. One can imagine it going the other way round, if the ‘new wine’ comment was produced (at a symposium?) as an exegetical or poetic comment on an already known Pindaric sentiment. Turning now to Pindar, it becomes obvious that no single strategy for the mention of poets prevails, and that they easily shade one into the other. Furthermore, these passages must be 28

On themes in this resistance to Pittacus and Cleobulus: Rawles 2018: 146–9.

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viewed alongside ones in which he refers more generically to the work of unspecified poets of the past. A reference to the epos . . . proteron, for example, assures his audience that the story he tells, of Achilles and Cheiron, is traditional (Nem. 3.52–3), just as the mention of older poets (palaioteroi) who found a pathway (amaxiton) to commemorate heroes accompanies explicit avowal that Pindar follows their lead, traveling the same route towards the same compositional concern (hepomai de kai autos: Nem. 6.53–4).29 His assertion that poems of praise existed long ago (Nem. 8.50–1) links his own epinician genre to an authoritative strand of transmission while stressing that the genre itself extends back to the heroic age. Such references align Pindar’s practice and poetic sophia with the past while, implicitly, approving of the statements and styles of his poetic predecessors. In contrast, some of the other non-specific allusions to previous poetry have a sharper edge. The most conspicuous example comes at the opening of Isthmian 2 (lines 1–10): The men of long ago . . . freely shot their honey-sounding hymns of love at any boy who was beautiful . . . For at that time the Musewas not yet greedy for gain (φιλοκερδής) nor up for hire (ἐργάτις) nor were sweet, soft-voiced songs with their faces silvered over being sold from the hand of honey-voiced Terpsichore.

The ‘men of long ago,’ according to the scholiast, include Alcaeus, Ibycus, Anacreon, and others who ‘made boyfriends their object of effort’ (περὶ τὰ παιδικὰ ἠσχολῆσθαι).30 Singling out individuals from the poetic past is not Pindar’s aim, since he means to contrast poets of previous generations with the current era’s mercenary flatterers.31 And these latter, of course, need not be mentioned: an indirect hit is more powerful, since fixating on one poet or a group might be taken to absolve some others. Instead, Pindar can malign an entire class of insincere or corrupt versifiers. As if to highlight

29

30 31

Cf. Pyth. 3.80–2 (saying of proteroi, paraphrases Il. 24.527–8); Pyth. 3.113–14 (craftsmen made epea about Nestor et al.); Isth. 5.28–30 (heroes provide meleta to poets); Isth. 8.47–8 (sophoi poets display Achilles’ excellence). Σ Isth. 2.1b = iii 213 Drachmann. On this complex passage see now Rawles 2018: 133–54. Maslov 2015: 259–66 brilliantly reads it as a synchronization of earlier genres, rather than a contrast of past with present.

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his own omission of the poets’ proper names, it is at this precise point that Pindar does mention a specific individual (though by ethnic, rather than the actual name, Aristodemus), citing ‘the Argive’s adage’ about money making the man. Speculation on the identity of the modern mercenaries denigrated in Isthmian 2 has since antiquity concentrated on Simonides as a lover of money. If Simonides was the critical target, we should admire the delicate poetic footwork Pindar exhibits, rather than read this as reflecting consistent animosity. At one time, a boast about Pindar’s own exclusive art form can be underscored by an allusion (again, nonspecific) to the pair of crows who may or may not stand for Bacchylides and his uncle Simonides (Ol. 2.86–8).32 But another time, when the island of Ceos requires praise in a paean, the nonspecific naming strategy subserves that goal: Truly, I too, who dwell on a rock, am renowned for achievements among Hellenes in games, and also known for providing poetry in abundance (μοῖσαν παρέχων ̣ ἅλις). (fr. 52d Snell–Maehler, lines 21–4)

The song scripted for a Ceian chorus naturally could never hint at poetic rivalries. On the other hand, Pindar need never have mentioned the island’s performative excellence. Tropes about dual excellence in athletic and musical contests (cf. Homeric Hymn to Apollo 149–50) may have induced him to mention the métier of the native sons Simonides and Bacchylides, while not deigning to name them. A similar point can be made about another example of Pindaric literary history: genre-appropriate praise trumps scoring off opponents. The origin of the dithyramb ‘delights of Dionysus,’ is mentioned without naming the alleged inventor Arion at Olympian 13.18–19 because the aim is to praise Corinth, site of the genre’s epiphany. As with Ceos in Paean 4, celebration of the victor’s home polis includes a typical merismus: ‘There flourishes the sweet-voiced Muse; there thrives Ares with the young men’s deadly spears’ (Ol. 13.22–3). The explicit naming of poets by Pindar – rather than the vaguer references just discussed – varies in shades of praise and blame, once again sensitized to genre. One would like to know the broader 32

On the passage: Pfeijffer 1994: 311–13. Another veiled attack on Simonides is imagined by the scholiast on Nem. 4.60b.

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context for Pindar’s musical lore concerning the inventor of the barbitos, the elegant instrument for soft sympotic music. Pindar said that Terpander invented it (fr. 125 Snell–Maehler) ‘as he heard, during banquets of the Lydians, the voice-answering (ἀντίφθογγον) plucking of the high-pitched pēktis.’33 We sense an approving tone: in fact, the poet, in a manner befitting the intellectual and metamusical discourse of actual symposia, is making a learned remark about the origins of performance styles of the sort that probably accompanied this very song. In this encomium, then, mention of the long-dead Lesbian composer and musician aligns Pindar with a tradition, diachronically, as it incorporates him, synchronically, into a Syracusan sympotic group.34 In a few passages, Pindar makes a similar effort to place the composition at hand within a longer tradition, while relying on audience appreciation of the named poet, either as stylist, authority, or both. A ‘saying’ of Homer is deployed to advise at Pythian 4.277–8: ‘take this one saying (ῥῆμα) to heart and heed it: he said that a good messenger brings the greatest honor to every affair.’35 Meanwhile, the next line draws a line between Homer’s human saying and the Muse’s ‘distinction through true reporting (ἀγγελίας ὀρθᾶς).’ The veracity of Pindar’s own art form is thus reinforced, as it is musical (therefore Muse-like) and yet distinct from Homer’s recited utterances. This naming strategy contains in kernel form the larger rhetorical move seen at the opening of Olympian 9, where Archilochus’ triumphal song (melos) ‘resounding at Olympia’ is explicitly contrasted with Pindar’s ongoing choral song; the instantaneous, short kallinikos shouted out on-site at the games by the victor’s friends contrasts with the art of the epinikion. The latter is the focused art of the Muses’ praise-archery aimed at Zeus (5–8). In pointed contestation with 33 34

35

Translations of Pindar are from Race 1997. A similar two-level strategy marks the mention of the unnamed Locrian aulist (140b Snell–Maehler, lines 1–6) who earlier devised a mode for pipes. Pindar’s own involvement with the instrument is expressed a few lines later (11–17) as he (apparently) compares his musical response to that of a dolphin excited by the pipes’ lovely melody. Cf. for approval of ancient wisdom Isth. 6.67, Lampon praised for recommending to sons an epos of Hesiod (Op. 412). Rather than directly praise Hesiod, Pindar commends the victor’s father for honoring the earlier poet. See also cited Hesiodic wisdom at Bacchyl. 5.191 and Maehler 2004: 128 ad loc.

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epic ‘winged words,’ epinician, too, produces a ‘sweet winged arrow’ (πτερόεντα δ᾿ ἵει γλυκύν . . . ὀϊστόν). Thus, evoking one character (Archilochus), Pindar shifts to a second, mightier foil – the Homeric. Foil-rhetoric underlies the other mention of Archilochus in the surviving corpus. The poet of iambos abuse embodies the opposite of Pindaric praise (Pyth. 2.52–6): But I must flee the persistent bite of censure, for standing at a far remove I have seen Archilochus the blamer often in straits as he fed on dire words of hatred (ψογερὸν Ἀρχίλοχον βαρυλόγοις ἔχθεσιν πιαινόμενον). And possessing wealth that is granted by destiny is the best object of wisdom.

Physical distance (ἑκὰς ἐών) expresses differences in ethos (as it also casts Archilochus into the far past). The chewing and consumption images are less easy to assess, if we focus only on these lines. What’s eating Pindar with the δάκος ἀδινὸν κακαγοριᾶν – the blame from others or the ultimate debilitating effect if he opts for blaming of others? And what is Archilochus eating, helplessly getting fat on heavy-worded hatreds? I suggest, first, that Archilochus in Pythian 2 represents the flip-side of the mercenary praisers of Isthmian 2, those professionals with faces silvered-over by patrons that commission seductive courting songs. The larger contrast framing this naming of Archilochus has to do with sources of wealth and fame, translated into food images: it is the god, Pindar repeats (lines 49–52), who grants both. The contrast is therefore between correct divine patronage (of Pindar’s clients through him and his Muse), and their debased human analogues (the blame poet’s funders). More complicated is the figure of Homer as named by Pindar. On one hand, there is the approving mention of Homer as the authoritative truth-teller who has made him (Ajax) honored among mankind, ‘who set straight his entire achievement and declared it with his staff’ (ὀρθώσαις ἀρετὰν κατὰ ῥάβδον: Isthm. 4.37–9). We are reminded of the utterance of Homer’s wise saying in Pythian 4. On the other hand, there is the reference at the opening of Nemean 2 to the habits of the Homēridai, who begin their songs with a prooimion to Zeus. In this case, Homer is neither praised nor blamed: at issue, rather than the Ur-poet, are the ‘sons of Homer’ in their capacity as performers, who begin their epic entertainments with something 62

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resembling a Hymn to Zeus. As if to mark the contrast, Pindar in these two passages offers two competing etymologies for the art of the rhapsode: from rhabdos, the notionally original poet’s straightening rod (and, more prosaically, his traveling-staff); or from ‘songstitching’ by ῥαπτῶν ἐπέων . . . ἀοιδοί. Notably, Pindar does not actually begin Nemean 2 like a Homerid invoking Zeus; instead, he indirectly alludes to Zeus by saying that the victor has started from Zeus (i.e. from Nemea). Nor does Pindar continue in any recognizably rhapsodic vein. I will return to that last aspect soon, when tackling the most difficult Pindaric naming of Homer. But before that, another strategy for mention of the epic poet must be understood more precisely.36 At Paean 7b.10–12 (fr. 52h Snell–Maehler), the poet apparently urges his chorus to make celebratory hymns while avoiding a well-worn path: κελαδήσαθ᾿ ὕμνους, Ὁμήρου [ἑκὰς ἄτρι]π ̣τον κατ᾿ ἀμαξιτόν ἰόντες, ἀ ̣[εὶ οὐκ ἀλ]λοτρίαις ἀν᾿ ἵπποις, ἐπεὶ αυ[π]τανὸν ἅρμα Μοισα[]μεν. Sing hymns, far from Homer, always going along the unworn wagon-track, not on the mares of another for [we are driving?] . . . winged chariot of the Muses . . .37

Max Treu (1967) first argued that the reference to ‘Homer’ points to a specific contrast with the Hymn to Apollo.38 Whether one supplements line 11 (with D’Alessio) to read ‘far from Homer, on an unworn track’ or prefers something like the older restoration by Snell and Lobel, [δὲ μὴ τρι]π ̣τὸν (the basis of Treu’s interpretation), Homer stands for a form of poetry that is well-trodden, as opposed to Pindar’s current choral ode. Ian Rutherford argued that the intended contrast concerned details of content: the birth of Apollo as envisioned differently in paean and hymn.39 I would emphasize, instead, a different feature of the Homeric hymn that 36 37

38 39

Detailed argumentation can be found in a forthcoming piece on Pindaric self-presentation. Text and translation as in Rutherford 2001b: 248, incorporating D’Alessio’s supplements for lines 11–12. Treu 1967. Rutherford 1988: 67.

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manifests its incompatibility on the level of form and matches more closely the Pindaric image of outworn ways of song. I propose that Pindar is responding to the specific form that the Homeric hymn takes as an extended travel narrative, a literal Apolline road trip. First, the Hymn conspicuously raises the difficulty of praising the god in terms of the infinite geographical breadth that marks Apollo’s cultic influence, ‘for in every direction, Phoebus, you have laid down a field for song, both on the heiferrearing mainland and across the islands’ (19–23). There follows a list of no fewer than eight geographical features, and then the names of thirty-five islands or regions approached by Leto when she was about to give birth to the divine twins (30–45), before reaching a deal with Delos. The rest of the Hymn to Apollo enacts one long continuous scene of travel, as the newly empowered young god wends his way to find a temple site (216–93). This is cunningly delayed by the poet through three shorter ‘travelogues’: the sites the god visited (141–5); the declaration by the ‘man of Chios’ that he will praise Apollo’s rule over Lycia, Maeonia, Miletos, and Delos (172–81); and Apollo’s trip from Delos to Olympus (182–7). One could say, of course, that the content of the story – Apollo goes a-hunting – necessitates at least one such journey. But I would counter that the Hymn’s urge to extend itself, visible in its sophisticated melding of Delian and Pythian modules, inverts the relationship of form and content. The ‘myth’ of the journey (content) is in essence an expression of the performance requirement imposed on a rhapsodic hymn – its form – in an agonistic milieu that privileges an expansion aesthetic.40 I propose that Paean 7b is Pindar’s response to that (for him, alien) form. For Pindar, on the one hand, avoiding the well-traveled ἀμαξιτόν has a deep thematic appropriateness given the picture of Apollo’s own avoidance of such pathways (cf. Hymn. 2.225–7 and 261–74). On the other hand, the basic performative differences between choral paean and rhapsodic hymn mean that Pindar must conspicuously forego the sort of leisurely narrative descriptions and references to travel upon which the Hymn to Apollo is constructed.41 In short, to 40 41

On the form and performance interplay: Martin 2000. Cf. his frequently professed rejection of long trips and stories in the epinikia: Pyth. 1.82, 4.247–8, 9.77, etc.

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go the way of ‘Homer’ in a paean to Apollo would have meant moving broadly over a great swath of territory to praise the god. To choose an alternative route (as Pindar does) is not a matter of avoiding well-worn content, but of exiting entirely from the huge road system one encounters in the form of rhapsodic art. Having interpreted the proemial move of Paean 7b in this way, we can now plumb the meaning of the best-known Pindaric mention of Homer. After asserting that great deeds require hymns of praise for the sake of recompense and continued visibility, Pindar employs a negative image in Nemean 7 – merchant sailors going too far, driven by the profit motive – as a way of introducing poetry that went too far, namely Homeric epic: I believe that Odysseus’ story (λόγον) has become greater than his actual suffering because of Homer’s sweet verse (διὰ τὸν ἁδυεπῆ . . . Ὅμηρον), for upon his fictions and soaring craft rests great majesty, and his skill deceives with misleading tales (ψεύδεσί οἱ ποτανᾷ μαχανᾷ σεμνὸν ἔπεστί τι· σοφία δὲ κλέπτει παράγοισα μύθοις). (Nem. 7.20–3)

As in Paean 7b, Homer and a winged device occur together within a few lines. Here, the ποτανᾷ . . . μαχανᾷ belongs to Homeric poetry, however, whereas at Paean 7b.13–14 it was the Muses’ vehicle in which (apparently) Pindar and his chorus rode. Homer’s flying machine can further be compared to another personalized means of elevation and memorialization, the wings of song that Theognis gives Cyrnus (237–54). Both the elegiac and epinician passages stress the temporal and spatial spread of the reputation of the laudandus. The sweetness of Homer’s words ensures the disproportionate power of the hero’s fame. In the Theognis poem, the expectation of mutual kharis – respect from Cyrnus for having been cast into song – is near the surface (253–4). Perhaps payback is implied in Nemean 7 as well, making Homer resemble the song-for-hire poets of Isthmian 2. It is not accidental that these lines immediately segue into the story of Odysseus’ best-known opponent, Ajax, whose experience in being passed over for the arms of Achilles involved shifty lies, deceptions, and flattering tales (muthoi), as Pindar depicts the episode in Nemean 8.24–33.42 Without linking them overtly, Pindar juxtaposes the 42

Hubbard 2000: 316.

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verbal power of Homeric epic with the persuasive power that convinced a blind-hearted crowd (Nem. 7.23–7) to ignore the truth and reward the wrong man in the aftermath of Achilles’ death at Troy. Put another way, sounds sweet to the ear overcame accurate vision. In terms of the poem, which has thus far laid stress on the role of Eileithyia to bring humans to light, and of mirror-like hymns to reflect fame (Nem. 7.1–4, 11–16), Homer is on the side of darkness. Homer lies and cheats and leads astray (ψεύδεσί, κλέπτει, παράγοισα): the critique resembles Xenophanes’ on the Homeric gods. Moreover, Homer’s verse has something about it (σεμνὸν ἔπεστί τι) that amplifies the effect. William Race puts a positive spin on the entire line: ‘upon his fictions and soaring craft rests great majesty.’ But the adjective semnon, while more frequently attested to mean ‘august, reverend, holy,’ modifying gods, rituals, and cult objects, had by the fifth century BCE also developed negative senses: ‘proud, haughty, pompous’ (LSJ9 s.v. III). Fittingly, the first citation in LSJ to illustrate the less common sense comes from Sophocles’ Ajax (1107), Teucer’s description of Menelaus’ imperious commands as τὰ σέμν᾽ ἔπη, ‘your pompous words.’43 The verbal register thus denoted corresponds in literary style to the Aeschylean, as Dionysus characterizes it in the Frogs: ‘you who were the first of the Greeks to rear towers of majestic utterance (ῥήματα σεμνὰ) and adorn tragic rant’ (1004–5).44 On the level of personal style, the adjective denotes assumed grandeur of an affected sort, like that of the spoiled aristocrat wife of Strepsiades (Clouds 48): σεμνήν, τρυφῶσαν. The key to this sense of semnos is pretension: the words or person described are transparently putting on airs, reaching for something higher than is merited. In short, this pejorative sense must be meant in Nem. 7.23. Pindar objects to what he perceives as the unearned grandiosity of Homeric poetry. 43

44

Translation: Lloyd-Jones 1994. Note also Andocides 4.18 describing Alcibiades, who managed to appear more important (semnoteros) and fearsome (phoberoteros) despite his illegalities; and the ‘haughty reserve’ associated with the behavior of Hippolytus (Eur. Hipp. 93). Translation: Henderson 2002. Aristotle (Rh. 1406b8), discussing extremes of metaphor, may have this caricature in mind when associating τὸ σεμνὸν ἄγαν with τραγικόν. By the conclusion of Frogs it is the loser Euripides who is lumped with Socrates as killing time ‘in pretentious conversation’ (σεμνοῖσιν λόγοισι: 1496–7).

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But what does this have to do with form, rather than content? One other crucially misunderstood term fills out the picture: muthoi (Nem. 7.23). Based on analysis of words for speech and song in the corpus, including logos, humnos, epos, and muthos, one is justified in giving muthos in Nemean 7 the full semantic weight that it bears in Homeric epic: a detailed speech, often told at length, that asserts authority.45 Most importantly, for Pindar, ‘Homer’ must stand for a kind of poetry that most characteristically contains long muthoi. That is, rhapsodic epic, as Pindar would have experienced it in the fifth century (and as Plato objected to it in the fourth) was distinctive in gaining its huge length (as compared with melic compositions) through assertive and expressive speeches by a range of fictional characters. This is what makes it both enthralling and dangerous. It so happens that Odysseus himself is a master of such speech in both Homeric poems (including his long apologoi of Odyssey 9–12). The hero and the epic poet are elided in terms of sophia, cunning, and the crafting of fictions.46 To sum up: Homer, for Pindar, in this case as in Paean 7b, completely embodies a way of composing poetry diametrically opposed to his own, in terms of authorial voice (Pindar’s vs. fictional character-speech); length (notionally compact and selective vs. exhaustive and open-ended) and performance (song and dance in melic meter vs. stichic recitation). Naming Homer in this manner foregrounds Pindar as a poet in stark contrast to his rival in commemorative art. Let us turn, finally, to apply to Stesichorus the lessons of Pindaric poet-naming and the threefold taxonomy sketched earlier. It is important to realize that any one of the three strategies will carry with it an obvious message: that Pindar believes the given named poet of the past did talk about the myth, or compose the actual words, to which he alludes. Pindar need not say in so many words ‘the Archilochus melos was really by Archilochus’: the phrasing says it all. This veridical effect is underlined when Pindar explicitly approves an epos of Hesiod, for example. Even when he disapproves of Homeric epic in 45

46

On muthos: Martin 1989. A fuller analysis of Nemean 7 in terms of Pindaric speech and song words is part of my study in progress on Pindar’s poetics. As seen by Segal 1967: 442.

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Nemean 7, Pindar leaves no doubt that the poet he names was the man who composed the work about Odysseus. So we might imagine that the original Stesichorean framing of the ‘attribution’ of the Shield resembled this sort of assertion: ‘Hesiod was truly right (or wrong) when he said that . . .’, followed by either an allusion to a narrative turn, or even to a specific verse. Put another way, a mere reference to Hesiod would function as a guarantee that Stesichorus believed he did in fact compose the Shield, without any further argumentation. But that is the bare minimum. As we have just seen, Pindar can acknowledge a predecessor’s version or expression, while simultaneously contrasting his own art form with the earlier mode, even to the verge of outright rivalry. At a minimum, we can expect that Stesichorus did name Hesiod, and most likely in an approving manner, implying perhaps that he followed Hesiod’s own version of the Cycnus and Heracles story at least in outline. This would be in line with the first of the three categorized tropes above. One piece of evidence points in the direction of this strategy, though it is as tantalizingly brief as the testimonium with which we began this exploration. Athenaeus (12.512e–513a) preserves two key details attributed to Megaclides (the Peripatetic): that Stesichorus was the first to invent the depiction of Heracles as a bandit with club, bow, and lionskin; and that a lyric poet Xanthus ‘was earlier than Stesichorus, as Stesichorus himself testifies’ (ὡς καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ Στησίχορος μαρτυρεῖ). The further information that ‘many of Xanthus’ poems have been adapted by Stesichorus, for example the one called The Oresteia,’ and that Xanthus followed Homer’s portrayal of Heracles’ gear, is not directly credited to Megaclides, though it may derive from his work. Putting together the facts that Stesichorus named Xanthus, and ‘adapted’ (παραπεποίηκεν) his poems, we can reasonably conclude that the mention went along with explicit approval of the way Xanthus handled a story: it is less plausible that Stesichorus employed Xanthus’ material only to then denigrate him. It is more difficult to imagine that the third trope in our taxonomy – naming to criticize – was operative when it comes to Stesichorus naming Hesiod. In the examples gathered above, the harshest critiques comes when the later poet perceives some sort of outrageous 68

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excess in a predecessor (Xenophanes on Homer; Simonides on Cleoboulus); when it is a matter of disagreement over proverbs or observations (Simonides on Pittacus, Solon on Mimnermus) we get a milder, more conversational tone. But I find most intriguing the possibility, suggested by Pindaric practice as sketched above, that Stesichorus named Hesiod in connection with a choice of generic form. I suggest that Stesichorus conspicuously aligned himself with ‘Hesiod,’ at least once, in explicit or latent rejection of ‘Homer’ – a version of what Pindar would do in the next century. As we saw above, Homer and Stesichorus are named together by Simonides (4 Finglass) as having sung ‘to the peoples’ an episode from the funeral games of Pelias (not in our Homeric poems). Noticing this association, along with trends in sixthcentury poetry, politics, and art, Walter Burkert suggested thirty years ago that the choral art of Stesichorus developed in open competition with epic and aimed to replace it, taking over its Panhellenic status. As he points out, Stesichorean poetry, being devoid of the personalized and site-specific features in other melic and monodic poetry, ‘is a Panhellenic fantasy world of heroic myth . . . an artistic whole in itself and thus acceptable and interesting in all places.’47 He even imagines Stesichorean tekhnitai traveling – like rhapsodes, but with choruses – to far-flung Greek poleis. From the standpoint of Simonides’ generation, it could well have been that Stesichorus resembled ‘Homer’ as a poet (whether citharodic or choral composer) who roamed widely retailing epic narratives. But would Stesichorus imagine himself, or seek to be known, in this way? And if he did, would he necessarily see Homer as the hexameter poetic model for himself, or Homer’s rival (in lore like the Certamen, going back to the sixth century) Hesiod? Here we face the question of exactly how ‘epic’ Stesichorean compositions really were. It is undeniable, as Burkert and others point out, that poems like the Geryoneis and the so-called Thebais are full of dialogue and speeches, epic language, similes, and other characteristics. Moreover, titles attributed to him echo or duplicate some in 47

Burkert 1987: 51.

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the Cycle: The Sack of Troy (frr. 98–164 Finglass), The Returns (169). But there are also The Games for Pelias, the Cerberus, and the Boarhunters (about Meleager) – all of which would presumably have covered much smaller time spans in their narratives. These are, in effect, episodes rather than epics. Patrick Finglass, who analyzed minutely the reconstructed narratives of three poems, has observed on one end of a spectrum the wide-angle lens of the Helen, which must have covered events from her father’s cursing by Aphrodite to Helen’s arrival at Troy, and perhaps beyond. But there is also, as Finglass notes, the remarkably swift and highly compact manner of the Thebais narrative: even if it did cover events from the argument over Oedipus’ inheritance to the approach of the Seven, that must have happened in cursory and shorthand fashion – very nonHomeric.48 Looked at in this way, the key evidence has been staring us in the face: the Cycnus by Stesichorus, as we know from scholiastic plot summary, covered the same narrative ground as the ‘Hesiodic’ Shield, telling of the defeat in a single encounter of the title character, a bandit son of Ares, by Heracles in conjunction with Athena.49 It has been reasonably suggested that Stesichorus’ ‘attribution’ occurred in his own version of the same episode, the Cycnus. Factoring in what has been sketched earlier about Pindar’s reaction to ‘Homer’, both the Odyssey and Hymn to Apollo, I propose that Stesichorus made a conscious choice in constructing his ‘lyric epic’ (to use West’s term), certainly in the Cycnus and other one-episode poems, and perhaps even in those that seem to us much longer. A case in point: the Geryoneis, at least 1,300 lines long, in effect dwells on one episode, a one-off encounter and slaying of a monstrous herdsman by Heracles, not unlike his killing of Cycnus. If this is ‘epic,’ it is the sort Callimachus might admire. Speaking of whom, Alan Cameron’s wry observation concerning the history of so-called epyllia (or miniature epics) like that poet’s Hecale, is perfectly apt: ‘If the Wedding of Ceyx [attributed to Hesiod] had survived along with the Shield of Heracles . . . the history of the epyllion might have worn a rather 48 49

Finglass 2015 notes the details; contrasting this with Homeric style is my extension. Davies and Finglass 2014: 465–8.

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different perspective.’50 My proposal, in effect, is that, had more of Stesichorus survived, it would have looked as Hellenistic as the Hecale. One can only speculate on the precise spin and placement given the shout-out to Hesiod in Stesichorus’ rhetoric of naming. We can be somewhat more confident that the larger generic affiliation thereby enacted would anticipate not only Pindaric practice, as I have shown, but also fit into Stesichorus’ own career path, if we might call it that. The famous Palinode story, after all, has the poet place Helen at Troy in one composition, then retract this and swear that she never went: it was over her eidōlon that men fought and died (frr. 90–91a–j Finglass). In its basic form, this decisive shift signals a bold move away from the well-known Homeric version, to a non-Homeric (though not therefore specifically Hesiodic) take.51 A more complicated scenario, admittedly, is raised by the papyrus commentary (P.Oxy. 2506 = fr. 90 Finglass) that claims there were two Palinodes, and that Stesichorus blamed in them, respectively, both Homer (for sending the real Helen) and Hesiod (for reasons unspecified). Yet even that detail fits well with the typology I have offered here. Naming the predecessor poet – rival or ally – and thereby distilling into a moment the ‘reception’ of previous verbal art, opens a performative space for the presentation of one’s own innovative self.52 It is a powerful expressive strategy that will endure in multiple forms throughout the development of subsequent Greek and Roman poetics.

50 51

52

Cameron 1995: 450. Finglass and Davies 2014: 302–3 rightly dismiss the unreliable report in a Byzantine paraphrase of Lycophron that Hesiod himself had said Helen’s eidōlon went to Troy. The ‘affiliation’ with Hesiod is taken literally, rather than as literary, in testimonia (Bloomian avant la lettre . . .) that Stesichorus was Hesiod’s son by Ctimene/Clymene: T2 Most (Tzetzes), perhaps derived from Philochorus (cf. T19). On Stesichorus and Hesiod in relation to the Helen material, see now Carruesco 2017.

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chapter 3 F R O M E P I N I C I AN P R A I SE TO TH E P O E T RY O F E N C O M I U M O N S TO N E : C EG 1 7 7 , 8 1 9 , 8 88 –9 A N D T H E HY S S A L D O M U S I N S C R I P T I O N

ettore cingano The relationship between poet and patron in Greek archaic and late archaic lyric – attested in the encomium of Polycrates by Ibycus (PMGF S 151) and in the praise poetry of Simonides, Pindar and Bacchylides – has been one of the more well-covered topics of research in the past fifty years. In this chapter I intend to investigate the evidence of such relations in a different and less-explored poetic genre, the pre-Hellenistic inscriptional epigram or poem.1 I shall confine myself to a limited number of texts dating from the late fifth and fourth century BCE whose primary bond lies in the social and political prominence of the addressee and, reciprocally, in the prominent role of the poet: another striking feature is that, with one exception, these inscriptions bear the name of the author who composed them. The texts I shall consider are the following: (A) CEG 888 (i, ii, iii = SGO 17/10/03 A; SGO 17/10/03 B, IV 51–4) and CEG 889 (= SGO 17/10/02, IV 50), dating from the beginning of the fourth century BCE. These form a sequence of inscriptional epigrams in hexameter and elegiac metres totalling sixty-one lines centred on the Lycian dynast Arbinas. The two inscriptions were found at different times in the sanctuary of Leto (Letoon) near Xanthus, in Lycia, and are inscribed on two different bases. (B) To these we can fruitfully connect CEG 177 (= TAM I 44 = Meiggs–Lewis 93), an earlier epigram dating from the end of the fifth century BCE composed in praise of the father of Arbinas, Gergis, also a Lycian dynast;2 1

2

It would be more appropriate to call these metrical inscriptions ‘poems’ rather than ‘epigrams’ if they are of considerable length, as is the case with CEG 888 and the Hyssaldomus inscription. For the complicated genealogical tree of the family of Arbinas, see the diagram in Keen 1998: 221.

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(C) CEG 819 ii and iii are two short elegiac epigrams composed by Ion of Samos, commemorating the naval victory of the Lacedaemonians over the Athenians under the command of Lysander at Aegospotami in 405 BCE; their composition is thought to be later, by a few decades; (D) I shall also briefly touch upon the so-called ‘Hyssaldomus inscription,’ a long (123 lines) inscribed poem in trochaic tetrameters discovered a few years ago in the Uzunyuva district of Carian Mylasa (now Turkish Milas), most recently edited and commented upon by Marek and Zingg 2018. Archaic and classical epigrams did not mention the name of the author. Although an argumentum e silentio may be disproved by further discoveries, to the best of our present knowledge the substantial corpus of inscribed epigrams available does not feature a single name of an author of epigrams from the eighth down to the fifth century BCE.3 We are therefore fortunate to have before the Hellenistic age the few metrical inscriptions mentioned above that bear the names of their authors: four texts, with a total of three names (the fourth is missing in a lacuna of the text in CEG 889). The only epigram that omits the name of the author is the earlier epigram for Gergis, CEG 177: regarding the absence of a signature here, it may be worth reporting the opinion of Bousquet that ‘l’auteur de l’épigramme du pilier n’a pas osé signer, à cause de la place de son poème au beau milieu de l’immense chronique en langue lycienne’ (‘The author of the epigram inscribed on the pillar did not dare sign it, because his poem was placed right at the centre of the huge chronicle written in Lycian’).4 It will become clear that these texts share a number of interesting features and themes both with each other and with the 3

4

The possibility of another signed epigram from the classical age lurks in CEG 700 from Cnidia (early fourth century BCE), a lacunose four-line funerary inscription in hexameters or elegiac couplets (sic Hansen) where the word ἐλεγε[ῖ]ον occurs at v. 3, governed by a name and a missing verb: μήτηρ Εὐφραγόρα πε[. . . | γῆν πατρίδα προλιπο ̣[. . . | ταῦτα ἐλεγε[ῖ]ον Ἴαμβ[ος . . . | Μουσῶν ἐμπείροις εὐ[. . .. This would be the first case of a funerary inscription with the signature of a poet (cf. Santin 2009: 316). Sider 2007: 116 n. 2 recalls the ascription by Stephanus of Byzantium to an otherwise unknown Philiades of Megara of an inscription honouring the action of the Thespians in the Persian wars (3.19 Cougny = 23 Preger), and remarks that ‘Stephanus does not explicitly state that Philiades’ name appeared on the stone.’ A few other signed epigrams of a later period are quoted by Page 1981: 120 n. 2. Bousquet 1992: 163. I intend to deal with the peculiarity of the poet’s signature and the sphragis of these texts in another paper. See also Martin’s chapter in this volume.

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encomiastic poems of the late archaic age. They thus form an important case study in the reception of late archaic patronal poetics. I shall start with those dedicated to Arbinas, CEG 888–9. The base of a statue of Arbinas in the Letoon displays on different sides (A = CEG 888 i, ii; B = CEG 888 iii) – along with texts written in Lycian on the two other sides – a series of metrical inscriptions, dating from the beginning of the fourth century BCE, praising the dynast; the speaking persona is mainly to be identified with the statue which carried the inscription.5 At the end of a run of seventeen hexameters (CEG 888 i 1–17), an elegiac couplet separated from the text has preserved as a sphragis the name of the poet who composed the epigram: Symmachus from Pellana, in Achaea (CEG 888 ii 18–19): Σύμμαχος Εὐμήδε͜ ος Πελλανεὺς μάντις ἀ[μύμων] δῶρον ἔτευξε ἐλεγῆια Ἀρβίναι εὐσυνέ[τω]ς. Symmachus son of Eumedes, of Pellana, a [blameless] seer wrought these elegies as a gift for Arbinas in a way easy to understand.6

The second long narrative following the sphragis (CEG iii 20–53) is a battered text with only the final verses fully preserved (51–3): it is inscribed on a different side of the monument and cannot be safely attributed to Symmachus. From what we can gauge, this anonymous poem presents a looser metrical structure corresponding to different sequences: the text is composed of a series of hexameters (23–32), followed by three elegiac couplets (33–8) before reverting to a second run of hexameters (39–49) and concluding with two more elegiac couplets (50–3).7 Another inscription on a different 5

6

7

On the Letoon see Hansen and Le Roy 2012; on the corpus of Greek and Lycian inscriptions see Bryce 1986. The text of CEG 888–9 has also been published with a detailed comment by Bousquet 1992: 156–81; Rhodes and Osborne 2003: 58–62; for a general discussion of some aspects of these epigrams see also Petrovic 2009: 196–200. On the historical and religious aspects see Asheri 1983: 97–104; Megrelis 2013. The adverb εὐσυνέ[τω]ς closing the sphragis is difficult to explain. I differ from Rhodes and Osborne 2003: 59, 61, who translate the adverb εὐσυνέ[τω]ς ‘with good intelligence.’ I take it that since Symmachus is both a poet and a seer, his words of praise for what Arbinas has notoriously accomplished (his ἔργα: see below) are authoritative and persuasive, i.e. ‘easy to understand’; Petrovic 2009: 214 suggests the same translation but with a different motivation, presuming ‘that it pertains to the numerous homerisms in the poem.’ On the structure of CEG 888 iii 20–53 see Bousquet 1992: 157–8 (‘L’ensemble peut se découper actuellement en cinq poèmes transcrits sans intervalle’), who consequently

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base in the Letoon, dedicated by Arbinas to Artemis, consists in two fragments with the beginning of eight lacunose lines which could be either hexameters or elegiac couplets. The name of the poet who composed the epigram is lost in the lacuna of the final lines (CEG 889 ii 7–8): παιδοτρίβας Ἐπ ̣[. . . δῶῤ ἐποίησε ἐλ ̣[εγῆια . . .. The trainer Ep(. . .) made as a gift the elegies (elegiac verses) . . .

Only his other profession is preserved in the text: he was a paidotribas, the athletic trainer of the young Arbinas, whose beauty and fitness are mentioned in the preceding line, v. 6 (εἶδος καὶ ψυχὴν [π]ρῶτος [. . .), conforming to the conventions of archaic encomiastic poetry (see also κά[λ]λει τε προφέρε[ις in CEG 888.42) and in general to the Greek ideal of καλοκαγαθία; the young age of Arbinas when he started to accomplish his first deeds is referred to twice in CEG 888 iii 23, 34. The figure of the trainer is a relevant motif in epinician poems for young athletes, and the role of a good trainer in securing the success to his athletes is duly praised in the epinicians of Pindar and Bacchylides.8 Here, interestingly, we have something new: the role is reversed and we are met with a trainer who praises his powerful protégé, since he happens to be a poet too. The definition by Symmachus of his long hexameter epigram as ἐλεγῆια (CEG 888.19) prevents us from determining whether CEG 889 composed by the paidotribas was in hexameters or in elegiac couplets, in spite of the likely occurrence of the same word at v. 8 (ἐλ[εγῆια]). These two occurrences show that in the fourth century BCE the plural elegeia could have a generic meaning and apply not only to ‘stretches of elegiac verse’ or to ‘tomb inscriptions,’9

8

9

adopts a different numbering of the text; see also Petrovic 2009: 197–8. It should, however, be kept in mind that the name of Symmachus could have featured also in this other epigram, defining him as the author. Bousquet 1992: 157 has suggested that his name be integrated in the lacuna at CEG iii 888.28: [π]έμψας μοι πρόπολον Σ[ύμμαχον ? ¯ ˘˘ ¯ . See also Petrovic 2009: 201 n. 29. For the praise of the trainer see Pind. Ol. 8.54–66, 10.16–21; Nem. 4.57–8, 93–6, 5.48–9, 6.64–6; Isthm. 4.71b–2b, 5.59–61; Bacch. 13.190–8. On the role and importance of the trainer see Burnett 2005: 50–3, 133–5, 216–18; Nicholson 2005: 119–210. According to West’s definition of the term elegeion/elegeia (West 1974: 3 and 4). For a more recent discussion of the ancient meaning of elegeion see A. Petrovic 2007: 270–2.

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but also to ‘an epigram which was not written in elegiacs couplets at all.’10 On the other hand, the singular elegeion preserves its original meaning in the sphragis of two short epigrams of a later date (midthird century BCE) made of elegiac couplets, where the word occurs preceded by the name of the poet in the genitive: Ἀφθονήτου τὸ ἐλεγεῖον (SEG 64:504.4 = ISE I p. 74, and 64:514.5). The epigrams were thus composed by the same person, Aphthonetus, a professional poet apparently active in the area of Larissa, since the epigrams have been found in different places in Thessaly, at Larissa and Phalanna.11 Regarding CEG 888–9, what matters in the epigrams or poems for Arbinas is that in total the narrative in an epic-elegiac mode devotes fifty-three lines (CEG 888) + eight lines (CEG 889) to the unrestrained praise of Arbinas and his deeds (erga, repeatedly mentioned at CEG 888 vv. 16, 33, 34, 46, 47; 889.5: ergōn kallistōn; cf. CEG 177.12, quoted below), in particular his conquests and military victories. They are listed sometimes with an almost identical pattern which singles out the most important event that led to his rule over a part of Lycia: the conquest and sack of the cities of Xanthus, Pinara and Telmessus, ‘inspiring fear in many of the Lycians, he was a tyrant’ (CEG 888.5–7: ἀ ̣ρ[χῆι] ἐφ̓ ἡλικίας πέρσας ἐμ μηνὶ τρία ἄσ[τη] | Ξάνθον τε ἠδὲ Πίναρα καὶ εὐλίμενον Τελ[εμεσσὸν] | πολλοῖσιν Λυκίοισι φόβον παρέχων ἐτυρά[ννει]; cf. 11–12, 22–5, 39–40, 50; CEG 889.3).12 In CEG 888 the encomiastic purpose clearly prevails over the genre of the epigram 10

11

12

Petrovic 2009: 203 who, however, thinks that CEG 889 is made of ‘four elegiac couplets’ (198); the loose meaning of the word elegeia in these texts is noted by Hansen, apparatus ad CEG 888.19. On these two epigrams, composed for different occasions, see the detailed comment of Santin and Tziafalias 2013: 253–66. SEG 64:504 is briefly touched upon by Petrovic 2009: 202, who provides a useful diagram of the signed epigrams. Cf. the similar wording of CEG 888.5–6, 12, 24–5; CEG 889.3. On the military and political implications of these verses see Asheri 1983: 99–101; Bryce 1986: 109–11; Keen 1998: 141–7. It is peculiar that the verb πέρθω, used in the aorist forms πέρσας and ἔπερσε to define the total victories of Arbinas in CEG 888.5, 12, seems to occur only three more times in the whole corpus of inscriptional epigrams: two of them are in the other signed epigrams I consider in this chapter CEG 177.8 (πέρσας) and one of the epigrams signed by Ion of Samos, CEG 819.10–11 (πέρσεν, with the collateral adjective ἀπόρθητον; for the text see below, p. 81). The third occurrence is found in a lacunose elegiac fragment from Mylasa (Caria), which may also be celebratory: I. Mylasa 585, [— γῆ]ν ̣ ἁλιτέρμον[α] ἔπερσ[εν].

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and the implicit rule of conciseness: considered in its entirety, the text can be better defined as a poem on stone than as an epigram.13 The emphatic, celebratory gist of the text is stressed by the poet’s repeated address of Arbinas either by name or with the secondperson pronoun (CEG 888 i 16 Ἀρβίνα, iii 37–40 σε . . . Ἀρβίνα, ὑμνήσει σὴν ἀρετὴν Ἀσία, 39–40 σὺ . . . σύ, 47 Ἀρβίνα, 50 σοί, and possibly 51: see Hansen ad loc.); three more mentions of Arbinas occur at CEG 888.1, 13, and 19. Regardless of the poetic genre, the main purpose of encomiastic poetry is to enhance the fame of the laudandus (kleos, at vv. 12, 37, 52: cf. Ibycus, PMGF S 151.46–8, quoted below) which will also be passed onto his family. Similar to the norms of epinician poetry, the patēr and progonoi, father and ancestors, of Arbinas are mentioned in CEG 888.1, 11–13, 52, 53 and CEG 889.1–2. Gergis, the father of Arbinas, is mentioned twice at the beginning and in the final line of CEG 888 (vv. 1, 52), and in CEG 889.1. A few years earlier, at the end of the fifth century BCE, Gergis himself had mentioned his father Harpagus and the dynasty in a Greek epigram of twelve verses (CEG 177) written in a loose combination of hexameters and pentameters inscribed on a monument in the agora of Xanthus which celebrated his double victory over Athens in 412 BCE (cf. CEG 177.5: [Γέ]ρ[γ]ις ὅδε ̣ Ἁρπάγο υἱὸς ἀριστεύσας τὰ ἅπαντα, 12 καλλίστοις δ’ ἔργοις Κα[ρ]ίκα γένος ἐστεφάνωσεν). In CEG 177 Gergis’ fame is propagated through an articulate narrative which shows familiarity not only with Homeric poetry, but also with Greek inscriptional poetry and other texts.14 The first line, [ἐ]ξ οὗ τ’ Εὐρώπην [Ἀ]σίας δίχα πόν[τ]ος ἔνεμ[ε]ν, appropriates the beginning of a famous epigram ascribed to Simonides in later times (= ‘Simon.’ epigr. 45.1 Page) 13

14

This may mitigate the ironic criticism voiced by Bowie 2010: 321 that ‘like Glaucus in Iliad book 6, later Lycians [i.e. the poets who composed CEG 177 and 888] do not quite know the rules of engagement.’ The Greek inscription on the victory memorial of Gergis was preceded and followed by two long inscriptions in Lycian which deal with motifs similar to those in the Greek text. On the Greek poetic parallels and on the peculiar distribution of hexameters and pentameters in CEG 177 see the detailed analysis by Ceccarelli 1996; see further Meiggs and Lewis 1969: 282–3; Asheri 1983: 85–97; Savalli 1988 (focusing on the Greek representation of princes and rulers); Bousquet 1992: 159–61, 175–6; Nieswandt 1995; Gygax and Tietz 2005; most recently, Facella 2017: 160–4; Cassio 2019: 21–39, with a thorough linguistic analysis of the text.

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celebrating the campaign of Cimon and Athens’ double victory over Persia at Cyprus (469–466 BCE), thus ‘turn[ing] the Greek conception of the separation of Europe and Asia into an expression of Asiatic national identity.’15 Another line boasting that Gergis killed seven Arcadian soldiers in a single day (CEG 177.10: ἑπτὰ δὲ ὁπλίτας κτεῖνεν ἐν ἡμέραι Ἀρκάδας ἄνδρας), recalls CEG 83.1–2, an Attic metrical inscription of similar length dating from c. 446–425 BCE: μνῆμα τ[όδ̓ ἔστ̓ ἐ]πὶ σάματι κείμενον ἀνδρὸς ἀρίστο· | Πυθίων ἐγ Μεγάρω δαιώσας ἑπτὰ μν ἄνδρας . . . .16 At the same time, the epigram for Gergis displays motifs which also occur in the poems celebrating his son Arbinas (see above, p. 76), such as the mention of the erga accomplished (CEG 177.12: kallistois d’ergois), the military victories with a focus on the number of enemies killed by Gergis (CEG 177.5, 7–8, 10 ~ CEG 888.5–6, 11–12, 24–5), the religious piety displayed by the Lycian dynasts exemplified also by the dedication of statues and the favour conceded by the Greek gods (Athena, Zeus and generic gods in CEG 177.5, 7–8, 10; Apollo, Leto and Artemis in CEG 888.8–10, 17, 51, 53, 889.2),17 as well as the athletic achievements of father and son (CEG 177.5–6, 888.15, 41–2) and, in the case of Arbinas (CEG 888.4), of the inner qualities of his rule, ‘mightiest in intelligence and power,’ ἄρ]ξας συνέσει δυνάσει τε κ ̣[ράτιστος]. Along with CEG 177, the sequence of epigrams assembled in CEG 888–9 celebrates the rule of Gergis and his son Arbinas through a catalogue of historical data and exploits of the two in a way which calls to mind Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ odes for kings and tyrants, such as Hieron of Syracuse in Bacchylides 3 and 5 and Pindar’s Pythian 1 (with the praise of his son Deinomenes at vv. 58–60a, 67–70), Theron of Acragas in Olympian 2 and 3, king Arcesilas of Cyrene and the Battiad dynasty in Pythians 4 and 5. In 15

16

17

Thonemann 2009: 181: cf. ‘Simon.’ epigr. 45.1 Page (ascribed to Simonides by late sources, but neither by Diod. Sic. 11.62.3 nor by Ael. Aristid. Or. 28; 46): ἐξ οὗ τ᾿ Εὐρώπην Ἀσίας δίχα πόντος ἔνειμεν | καὶ πόλιας θνητῶν θοῦρος Ἄρης ἐπέχει . . . The relation between the two epigrams has recently been investigated by Cassio 2019: 17–28. On the cultural interconnection of Lycian and Greek elements in the epigram of Gergis (CEG 177) and on the relation with CEG 83 see Asheri 1983: 87–95. On Leto, Apollo and Artemis in Lycian religion and inscriptions see Bousquet 1992: 179; Keen 1998: 194–201.

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order to enhance the praise and consecrate the power of Arbinas, the poets of CEG 888–9 consciously use Greek images blended with the traditional topics of praise poetry. The choice of Greek language leaves no doubt that Symmachus, a native of Pellana in the Peloponnese, and the authors of the other epigrams intend to proclaim the glory of the Xanthian dynasts to a Greek or Hellenized public. The stress on inborn values conferred upon one’s descendants occurs often in the epinician odes in Pindar and Bacchylides, with the manifest aim to praise the entire oikos of the winner (see e.g. Pind. Pyth. 1.79–80, 5.94–120, 6.15, 46, 10.68–72; Bacchyl. Ep. 5.31–5).18 In CEG 888.14–15 the description of the overall virtues of the laudandus Arbinas as a wise and accomplished gentleman, ‘pre-eminent among all in all the things that wise men know, in archery and courage and knowing the pursuit of horses’ (πάντα ἐμ πᾶσι πρέπων ὅσαπερ σοφοὶ ἄνδρες ἴ[σασιν,] | τοξοσύνηι τε ἀρετῆι τε, ἵππων τε διώγματα εἰδ[ώς]), recalls, for example, the praise of king Arcesilas in Pind. Pyth. 5.107–15, while at the same time reflecting the customs of the local aristocracy.19 Another epinician motif occurs in CEG 177.5–6, where the praise of the military achievements of Gergis (vv. 7–8, 10–11) is preceded by the praise of his athletic victories over his Lycian companions (vv. 5–6): [Γέ]ρ[γ]ις ὅδε Ἁρπάγ υἱὸς ἀριστεύσας τὰ ἅπαντα ̣ [χε]ρσὶ πάλην Λυκίων τῶν τότ’ ἐν ἡλικίαι.

The same combination is found in epinician poems for young athletes (cf. the expanded version of the motif in Pind. Ol. 8.65–9; Pyth. 8.81–7; Isthm. 7.20–36). Furthermore, the twofold praise of military and athletic success is embodied in a gnōmē of Pindar Isthm. 1.50–1 equating kudos in war and in contests as

18 19

On these points see Savalli 1988: 106–7, 116–17. As was noted by Robert 1975: 328–30, who quotes Hdt. 1.136 and compares the customs of Persian aristocracy; see also Asheri 1983: 102–3. The qualities of Arbinas when he was young are similarly praised in the other section of the text, CEG 888 iii 40–2: σὺ δὲ τῶν α. [(˘) ¯ ˘˘ ¯ ¯] | εὖ [δε]δαώς, ἵππων τε διώγ[ματα .]ι[¯ ˘˘ ¯ ¯, ] | κά[λ]λει τε προφέρε[ις . . .. ‘you [. . .] / being an expert (being skilled), (in) the pursuit of horses [. . .] / and you excel in beauty.’ For the praise of beauty (kallos), a typical motif in the encomia of archaic lyric poetry, see also CEG 889.6 quoted above, p. 75.

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a way to win fame: ὃς δ᾿ ἀμφ᾿ ἀέθλοις ἢ πολεμίζων ἄρηται κῦδος ἁβρόν, | εὐαγορηθεὶς κέρδος ὕψιστον δέκεται, πολια- | τᾶν καὶ ξένων γλώσσας ἄωτον.20 Another significant feature narrated in one of the hexameter epigrams for Arbinas is the religious motif of consulting the oracle of Apollo at Delphi (CEG 888 i 8–10: τῶν μνημεῖα ἀνέθηκε θεοῦ φραδᾶι Ἀπόλλ[ωνος]. | Πυθῶι ἐρωτήσας Λητῶι με ἀνέθηκεν ἑαυτο ̣[ῦ] | εἰκόνα . . ., ‘The memorial of these things he has set up by pronouncement of the god Apollo. Having consulted Pytho, he has set me [the statue acting as a narrator] up as a likeness of himself . . .’). The sending of an envoy to Delphi is a practice otherwise unattested among Lycians, since ‘i legami apollinei della Licia portavano tradizionalmente a Delo, non a Delfi’ (‘Lycia’s relations with (the cult of) Apollo were traditionally oriented towards Delos, not Delphi’).21 The attention paid to the Delphic oracle must be taken as another token of Arbinas’ intention to place himself in the mainstream of Greek culture, while at the same time following in the footsteps of another nonGreek ruler, the Lydian Croesus, whose patronage of Delphi was celebrated by the Panhellenic lyric poets.22 One can also think of the good relations entertained by the Greek tyrants and kings with their generous offerings to the main Greek sanctuaries to celebrate military and athletic victories, such as Hieron’s dedication to Zeus at Olympia, and Arcesilaus of Cyrene offering the victorious chariot to Apollo at Delphi by way of his relative, charioteer and homme de confiance Carrothus (cf. Pind. Pyth. 5.34–42).23 Besides the frequent mention of divine agents (Leto, Apollo, Artemis) acting on the side of the laudandus, another similarity of the Lycian epigrams and poems on stone to epinician poetry can be found in the language of athletic victories. The frequent image of the 20

21 22

23

‘But he who wins rich renown in the games or in war receives the highest gain: to be well spoken of by his fellow-citizens and by strangers, the choicest bloom of speech’ (Loeb trans. by W. Race); see also Pind. Isthm. 5.22–8. See Asheri 1983: 101. In the early fifth century BCE the εὐσέβεια of Croesus (c. 596–526 BCE) was praised by Pindar (Pyth. 1.90–4) and Bacchylides (ep. 3.15–66); on Croesus’ donations to Delphi and Olympia see also Hdt. 1.50–1, 54–5, 85–7, 94. For Hiero’s dedications cf. SEG 11:1206; 23:253; 33:328; SIG3 35 Bb = ‘Simonides’ epigr. 76b Page. For other donations to Delphi and Olympia from the Greek Sicilian tyrants (Gelo and the Deinomenids) see further ‘Simonides’ epigr. 34 Page; Theop. FGrH 115 F 193; Phan. fr. 11 Wehrli; Diod. Sic. 11.26.7; Paus. 6.9.4.

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crowning of a victorious athlete expressed by the verb stephanoō is found, for instance, at Pind. Ol. 4.10–12; Nem. 5.4–5, 11.19–21: ἐκ δὲ . . . ἑκκαίδεκ᾿ | ἀγλααὶ νῖκαι πάτραν τ᾿ εὐώνυμον | ἐστεφάνωσαν πάλᾳ καὶ μεγαυχεῖ παγκρατίω (‘sixteen victories in local games have crowned Aristagoras and his clan in wrestling . . .’); Isthm. 2.13–17, 3.9–16. As noted, among others by Kurke, ‘These passages reveal a persistent linking of the victor’s crowns with kudos for the city,’ and the same applies to the kudos of the family.24 The image of crowning is already found with a different turn, implying military victories, in the final verse of CEG 177.12, where Gergis is said to have crowned the genos of his family with his most beautiful endeavours (καλλίστοις δ’ἔργοις Κα[ρ]ίκα γένος ἐστεφάνωσεν). In the concluding lines of the inscription to Arbinas the same metaphor is transferred onto the praise of military deeds: at CEG 888.50–1 the poet expresses the wish that Leto and Apollo may bestow the νίκης στεφάνους upon Arbinas (σοὶ δ[οῖεν] νίκης στ[εφ]άνο[(υ)ς . .]υπερ [- – - –] | Λατὼ [κἀπ]όλλων Ἀρβίναι εὐ ̣τ[υ]χίας . . .). A considerably ̣ earlier antecedent (c. 490–480 BCE?) of the image referring to a military victory is found in the recently published Athenian epitaph for the fallen at Marathon, SEG 56:430.3, βαρνάμενοι Μέδοισι και ἐσ(σ)τεφάνοσαν Ἀθένας (ed. M. Tentori Montalto). Around the mid-fourth century BCE the epinician metaphor is picked up and expanded by Ion of Samos, who employed it in a military context in his two extant signed epigrams. In that for the Spartan commander-in-chief Lysander inscribed on the base of his statue, Ion proclaims that Lysander crowned the unravaged city of Lacaedemon (CEG 819 iii 9–13 = Ion Sam. ep. 1 Page): εἰκόνα ἑὰν ἀνέθηκεν [ἐπ᾿] ἔργωι τῶιδε ὅτε νικῶν ναυσὶ θοαῖς πέρσεν Κε[κ]ροπιδᾶν δύναμιν Λύσανδρος, Λακεδαίμονα ἀπόρθητον στεφανώσα[ς], Ἑλλάδος ἀκρόπολ[ιν, κ]αλλίχορομ πατρίδα. ἐξάμo ἀμφιρύτ[ας] τεῦξε ἐλεγεῖον Ἴων. 24

Kurke 1991: 205. On the various images of the crown of victory, the praise of the city and the search for glory see Kurke 1991: 203–9; 1993: 137–41; Saïd and Tredé Boulmer 1984, esp. 161–3; Nobili 2016: 139–58, who provides the most detailed analysis of epinicians and epigrams for athletes; for a later age see Robert 1967: 18, 20–7. On the convergence of epinician poetry and epigrams in the praise of the oikos, see Robert 1968: 195–7; Day 2010: 208–10. For a non-epinician occurrence of the motif cf. SEG 64:504.3 (300–250 BCE).

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Ettore Cingano When he destroyed with his swift ships the might of the Cecropidae (i.e. the Athenians), Lysander dedicated an image of himself on occasion of this victory, having crowned his spacious fatherland, the acropolis of Hellas, the neverravaged Lacaedaemon.

The additional pentameter is Ion’s sphragis, his ‘metrical signature appended to an elegiac epigram’ (Page 1981: 120): ‘Ion, coming from Samos surrounded by the sea, fashioned elegiac lines.’ Here, as we have seen in SEG 56:430.3, CEG 177.12, 888.50–1, Ion transfers the metaphor of the crown to a military context, but reverses it into the different epinician motif of crowning the city with an athletic victory. A similar idea is found in CEG 594.3–4 (338 BCE), an Attic funerary epigram for Diognetus, who fell in battle, honouring the norm of behaviour of his ancestors (ἀντὶ γὰρ ἧς ψυχῆς ἀρετῆι πόλιν ἐστεφάνωσεν, | θεσμὸς οὐ παραβὰς εὐδοκίμων προγόνων). ‘The city was glorified as the herald proclaimed it during the coronation’:25 though it is attested in a Pindaric scholion to Pythian 5 which clarifies the manifold propaganda strategy of Arcesilaus of Cyrene, the expression τὴν πατρίδα | πόλιν ἐστεφάνωσε, ‘he has crowned his homeland/city.’ appears to have been more popular in agonistic epigrams than in epinician poetry.26 It seems to surface in a lacunose epinician epigram on the base of a bronze statue in Delphi (CEG 346.3, c. 475–450 BCE; see Day 2010: 211) and in CEG 637.2–3 (457 BCE), an elegiac epigram from Thessaly (Θεσσαλίαι στέφανον | τεύχο̄ ν, commemorating the death in battle of a Theotimus; see also ‘Simonides,’ ep. 30.4 Page), but is better attested in the fourth century BCE (cf. ep. 12, 35 Ebert; CEG 778.3–4, 869.1–2). The occurrence of the crown motif is even more significant in the second epigram of Ion of Samos celebrating the hero Polydeuces, who sided with the Spartans in the course of the battle at Aegospotami (CEG 819 ii 5–8): 25 26

See Day 2010: 211–14 on the motif of coronation of the victor and the city. See Σ Pind. Pyth. 5.34 Drachmann: Ἀρκεσίλαος καὶ βουλόμενος δι᾿ αὑτοῦ τὰς Ἑσπερίδας οἰκίσαι πέμπει μὲν εἰς τὰς πανηγύρεις ἵππους ἀθλήσοντας Εὔφημον ἄγοντα, νικήσας δὲ τὰ Πύθια καὶ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ πατρίδα ἐστεφάνωσε. See the remarks by Robert 1967: 18, to which Pind. Pyth. 9.91 should be added: ‘Si le tour στεφανοῦν τὴν πόλιν n’apparaît pas chez Pindare, certaines expressions dans les odes sont très proches: Pyth. 2.5–6; 9.73; Ol. 5.8, 17–22 où le poète demande à Zeus de glorifier la ville; 8.20; 9.19–20; Isthm. 3.13; 8.56.’

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3 From Epinician Praise to the Poetry of Encomium on Stone [παῖ Διός, ὦ] Πολύδευ[κ]ες, Ἴων [? καὶ τοῖς ]δ᾿ ἐλεγείοι[ς] [? λαΐνέαν] κρηπῖδ᾿ ἐστεφάνωσ[ε? τεά]ν, [ἀρχὸς ἐπ]εὶ πρῶτος, πρότερο[ς δ᾿ ἔ]τι τoῦδε ναυάρ[χου], [? ἔστας ἁγ]εμόνων Ἑλλάδος εὐρ[υχ]όρου. [Child of Zeus], Polydeuces, [with these] elegiacs Ion crowned [your stone] base, because you were the principal [commander], taking precedence even over this admiral, among the leaders of Greece with its wide dancing places. (trans. M. Fantuzzi)

It has rightly been noted that here Ion ‘displays a highly developed self-consciousness: as composer of the epigram, he has crowned . . . the plinth . . . of the statue, and the verb στεφανοῦν raises Ion himself to the same level as Lysander, who, as the other epigram says, had “brought glory” to invincible Sparta, or even to the level of the gods, who were represented “crowning” Lysander quite literally.’27 With an eye on archaic poetry, I would add that here Ion is operating with his hero-addressee Polydeuces in the same way as Ibycus in the second half of the sixth century BCE: in the encomium to Polycrates the double occurrence of the word κλέος refers to the fame achieved by both poet and patron, and raises Ibycus to the same level as his patron, the tyrant of Samos (PMGF S 151.46–8): . . . τοῖς μὲν πέδα κάλλεος αἰὲν καὶ σύ, Πολύκρατες, κλέος ἄφθιτον ἑξεῖς ὡς κατ᾽ ἀοιδὰν καὶ ἐμὸν κλέος.28 Among them you too Polycrates, will have immortal glory for beauty forever, as according to my song and fame. (trans. C. L. Wilkinson)

Some 130 years after Polycrates, the Spartan Lysander too was celebrated on Samos, with paeans at the festival formerly called Heraia and now renamed Λυσάνδρεια, and with sacrifices and agōnes.29 In the fifth century BCE, at Sparta the search for 27 28

29

I am quoting from Fantuzzi, in Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004: 291. See also above, p. 77. It is irrelevant for the purpose of my chapter to discuss the stop at v. 46, attested in the papyrus after aien; given the frequent combination of aiei with aphthiton in early Greek poetry, I am inclined to remove the stop and agree with the recent edition by Wilkinson 2013: 83–4, who adopts the text of Page, Davies and Hutchinson, and most recently Budelmann. On the cult of Lysander on Samos and perhaps in other Ionian cities see Habicht 2017: 1–4, 179.

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permanent fame conveyed by poetry had been anticipated by the hubristic boast of another commander, Pausanias, after he defeated the Persians at Plataea in 479 BCE. An epigram inscribed on the base of the famous snake column dedicated to Apollo at Delphi stressed the major role of Pausanias in the battle: his name stood alone with no mention of the allied forces, contrary to what had previously been agreed upon (‘Simonides’ ep. 17a Page; cf. Thuc. 1.132.2): Ἑλλάνων ἀρχαγὸς ἐπεὶ στρατὸν ὤλεσε Μήδων Παυσανίας Φοίβῳ μνᾶμ᾿ ἀνέθηκα τόδε.30

The second fatal epigram, from a different context, goes one step further in proclaiming Pausanias ‘ruler of wide Greece’: Παυσανίας ἄρχων Ἕλλαδος εὐρυχόρου (‘Simonides’ ep. 39.2 Page apud Athen. 12.536a–b; not ascribed to Simonides by the ancient sources).31 Coming back to CEG 888 iii for Arbinas, I reproduce the tentative translation provided by Bousquet (1992: 160) of the poorly preserved section running from v. 43 to 49, leaving aside his most conjectural integrations: Les flèches des dieux, moi je [sais quels effets elles ont eu?] sur les Grecs, la ville de Priam . . . Tels on raconte les exploits d’Achille et [d’Hector?] et [de Patrocle?] . . . tels on chantera ceux d’Arbinas, accomplis plus facilement que ceux d’Héraclès (?) . . . Éétiôn . . .

In English: The gods’ arrows – I [know what was their effect?] on the Greeks, Priam’s city . . . Much as legend tells of the exploits of Achilles and [Hector?] and [Patroclus?] . . . so will they sing of Arbinas, achieved with greater ease than those of Heracles . . . Eetion . . .

In spite of its lacunosity, it can be clearly discerned that this section of the ‘poem,’ which is followed by two final elegiac distichs, closes with a mythical exemplum associating the deeds of Arbinas with those of the Greeks at Troy (vv. 43–9): 30

31

‘When Pausanias, commander of the Greeks, destroyed the host of the Medes, / he set up this memorial to Phoebus.’ The epigram is ascribed to Simonides only by Paus. 3.8.2. Pausanias’ self-celebration in the navel of the world was soon erased and replaced by a new inscription bearing the names of the allied cities: see Page 1981: 216–17; A. Petrovic 2007: 267–9. On this epigram see Page 1981: 254.

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3 From Epinician Praise to the Poetry of Encomium on Stone κῆλ ̣[α] θεῶν μὲν ἐγὼ [. . . . . . . .]ο[- – - – -] Ἑλλ[ήν]ων Πριάμοι[ο πόλιν . . .]ν ̣δε[- – - – - – -] οἷα δ ̣’ [Ἀ]χιλλῆός τε κα[ὶ . . . . . . .] ἠδὲ [˘ ¯ ¯] ἔργ[α] λέγουσι τὰ με[. . . .]απον[- – - – -,] οἷα δὲ ̣ Ἀρβίνα ἔργα [. . . . . . .]ανδι[- – - -] ῥηΐδ[ι]ον τελέσαι [. . . Ἡ]ρακλε[- – - -] σω[. . Ἠ]ετίωνα το[. . . . .]λ ̣λεφυ[- – - – -·]

At v. 43 the κῆλα θεῶν are a likely reminiscence of the κῆλα θεοῖο at Hom. Il. 1.53, 383, the shafts of Apollo which cause the sudden death of the Achaean soldiers at Troy, perhaps suggesting that Arbinas acted with the gods on his side. At vv. 44–5 we read in two separate sentences the names of Priam and Achilles (Ἑλλ[ήν]ων Πριάμοι[ο πόλιν . . .]ν ̣δε[- – - – - – -·] | οἷα δ ̣’ [Ἀ]χιλλῆός τε κα[ὶ . . . . . . .] ἠδὲ [˘ ¯ ¯]), followed perhaps by the names of Hector and Patroclos or Ajax Telamonios in the lacuna at the end of 45.32 The parallel with the heroic past associating the Greeks victorious at Troy with Arbinas is effected through the correlation of οἷα (45: οἷα δ ̣’ [Ἀ]χιλλῆός, 47: οἷα δὲ Ἀ ̣ ρβίνα ἔργα [. . . . . . .]ανδι[- – - -]). There comes in the following line the mention of another paradigmatic hero, Heracles (v. 48), whose connection with the war at Troy is hard to make out however. His association with the following line, where a hero [Ἠ]ετίωνα is mentioned, also remains obscure (ῥηΐδ[ι]ον τελέσαι [. . . Ἡ]ρακλε[- – - -] | σω[. . Ἠ]ετίωνα το[. . . . .] λ ̣λεφυ[. . . . . .]), since a connection between Heracles and Eetion, the father of Andromache who was killed by Achilles (Hom. Il. 1.366–7, 6.395–6, 414–16), is unattested. The achievement of Heracles’ heroic deeds is conveyed by the verb τελέσαι (v. 48), which is also used to refer to the deeds of Arbinas in the text of CEG 888 ii 16 (. . . Ἀρβίνα, μεγάλα ἔργα τελ[έσσ]ας). The possibility of identifying Eetion with another hero bearing the same name, slain by Zeus after he dared to sleep with Demeter (cf. Hes. fr. 177.8–11 Merkelbach–West = 79.8–11 Hirschberger), does not solve the problem.33 The poet who composed these lines 32

33

See Bousquet 1992: 158 (Hector and Patroclus); for Ajax, cf. SGO/17/10/03 v. 45 and apparatus ad loc., p. 54. Merkelbach and Stauber 2002: 54 suggest: ‘Vielleicht war der Sinn: unter Arbinas blühten die Fluren wie unter Eetion, dem Liebling der Demeter’ (‘Perhaps the meaning was: “under Arbinas the meadows were in full bloom as they were under Eetion, the darling of Demeter”’).

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apparently had first-hand familiarity with the Iliad. It is perhaps worth noting that a few words in the text of CEG 888 iii are also found in book 1 of the Iliad: this might suggest that the author of the epigram/poem was familiar with that book in particular. In proximity to the κῆλα θεοῖο mentioned at Hom. Il. 1.383 (see also v. 53) and CEG 888.43 we find the mention of Eetion from Hypoplakian Thebe (v. 366 ᾠχόμεθ᾿ ἐς Θήβην ἱερὴν πόλιν Ἠετίωνος), the father of Andromache. One could add that, although it is actually preserved in another epigram on a different side of the stone, CEG 888.18 composed by Symmachus, the formula μάντις ἀ[μύμων (‘blameless seer’) also occurs in book 1 of the Iliad, at line 92, referring to Calchas (καὶ τότε δὴ θάρσησε καὶ ηὔδα μάντις ἀμύμων, ‘Then the blameless seer plucked up courage and spoke’). The encomiastic purpose of the whole text composed for Arbinas clearly applies also to the mythical exemplum, which creates an easy parallel between the achievement of the Greeks at Troy and the successful wars of Arbinas. The use of a mythicalepic exemplum is a rarity in Greek epigrams, in part because of their typically limited length.34 The unknown poet of CEG 888 iii adopted here the Greek point of view on the Trojan war: although the Lycians at Troy fought alongside the Trojans under the command of Glaucus, the grandson of Bellerophon, it appears from vv. 43–9 that the poet has deliberately used the victorious Greeks as a mythical foil to praise the Lycian Arbinas, in a way that must have pleased readers and recipients of the text, that is, both the native Greeks and the cultivated Lycian elite.35

34

35

For a rare parallel with an expanded mythical allusion to the war at Troy cf. ‘Simonides’ ep. 40a Page (never ascribed to Simonides in antiquity), which belongs to a series of three epigrams commemorating the capture by the Athenians led by Cimon of the city of Eion from the Persians, in 475 BCE: ἔκ ποτε τῆσδε πόληος ἅμ᾿ Ἀτρείδῃσι Μενεσθεύς | ἡγεῖτο ζαθεὸν Τρωικò ν ἐς πεδίον· | ὅν ποθ᾿ Ὅμηρος ἔφη Δαναῶν πύκα θωρηκτάων . . . A more concise parallel between Lycian warriors and a Greek hero at Troy occurs in SGO 17/17/01 (Choma, fourth/third century BCE), an epigram for Osses and Manossas, (v. 6): προστασίηι τε Αἴαντι ὁμωίοις Tελαμῶνος. For a survey of the Greek heroes in Lycia and of the Lycian heroes in Homer see Keen 1998: 208–12; Aceti 2008: 161–87. On the literary background of Symmachus and on other possible Homeric echoes and borrowings in the Arbinas epigrams see Bousquet 1992: 162–5, according to whom the poet of the epigram was especially drawing on the Lycian passages of the Iliad. However, Bousquet presses some parallels too far, including those of Symmachus/ Arbinas and Calchas/Agamemnon.

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To conclude with a broader issue, comparison with a preHellenistic poetic genre such as lyric poetry (including Simonides’ elegiac poetry with a commemorative-encomiastic purpose, such as the ‘Plataea elegy,’ Simon. frr. 10–18 IEG2), suggests that in the few extant signed epigrams I have examined, the poet-patron/addressee relation is of primary importance, regardless of whether the erection of a monument or statue with a poetical inscription was effected by a single patron (Arbinas and probably the Hyssaldomus inscription, see below) or by order of the Spartan state, as was the case with Lysander and the epigrams by Ion of Samos. Admittedly, the few pieces of evidence call for cautiousness on the issue. However, the recent Hyssaldomus inscription found a few years ago by Christian Marek, also dating to the fourth century BCE, seems to confirm that the close association between poet, patron and occasion exerted an influence which may have brought about the signature of a professional poet. It is one of the longest inscriptions (123 lines) known from antiquity, written on a stele of the Uzunyuva of ancient Mylasa in Caria (now Milas, Turkey), another area peripheral to the Greek world which, like Lycia, had been interacting for centuries with Greek culture and language. The text is in trochaic tetrameters catalectic, a metre whose rare occurrence in such a medium raises further interest in the finding. Although the subject, style and structure of this poem are different and it is more expansive, its encomiastic purpose is similar to the Lycian inscriptions in Greek for Gergis and Arbinas, insofar as it celebrates the various deeds of a man called Pytheas or Pytheos (cf. vv. 30, 96, 103), who may be identified with the chief architect of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus erected for the Carian satrap Mausolus, the most prominent member of the Hecatomnid family, and a patron of Greek art and literature.36 The stone is badly damaged on the right side and the text is therefore difficult to interpret, also because of some obscure allusions: only the last thirty-five lines are preserved in their entirety.37

36

37

The name of the architect seems to have been Pytheas or Pytheos: on his relation to the inscription see Marek and Zingg 2018: 131–6. For the text, context, an exhaustive commentary and overall interpretation of the inscription see Marek and Zingg 2018 (on the metre see 10–12; for a précis of the

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I quote the concluding verses of the poem with the signature (119–23), which have a clear hymnic-lyric tone: κάμὲ τὸν Μουσέων ἀοιδὸν ἐσθλὸν ἐμ μέτρωι πάν[τι] σῶιζε, ἄναξ, εἵλαος α(ἰ)εὶ σὺν τέκνοισιν ἠδὲ ὄλβωι τὴν ἀγήρατον παῤ ἀνδρῶν δόξαν ἐξ στίχων αὔξων. Ὑσσάλδωμος Εἰρηναίου ἐποίησεν τὸ πόημα. and do protect me, the singer of the Muses expert in all metres, o lord, and be always propitious with my children and prosperity, increasing among men the ageless fame of these verses. Hyssaldomus son of Irenaeus composed this poem.

The author of the poem mentioned in the subscription is the hitherto unknown poet Hyssaldomus (a Carian name) son of Irenaeus, who can be identified through the combination with the name of his father as someone represented in a treaty with the Milesians attested in a Milesian inscription (I. Milet III 148 = SIG3 588, line 15: [Ὑ]σ ̣σ ̣αλδώμου τοῦ Εἰρηναίου . . .).38 Andrej Petrovic (2010: 208) has recently claimed of Athenian public epigrams that ‘All the attributions traceable to the fourth century BCE indicate that the reputation of an epigram was connected to the reputation of its author, and it is perhaps a reasonable assumption that public epigram’s persuasiveness depended on its link to a certain author.’ I am inclined to a different conclusion: a public epigram’s persuasiveness depended on its link to a certain patron. I suggest that the rare signature of the three otherwise unknown poets (Symmachus, Ion, Hyssaldomus) in their compositions can be accounted for through comparison with the archaic and late-archaic poets Ibycus, Simonides, Pindar and Bacchylides, and their relation to prominent military and political rulers and patrons. The celebration and diffusion of their songs across the entire Greek world was facilitated by the status of their patrons and by the centrality of the religious venues of the athletic performances

38

narrative, 68); for a brief mention of the stele prior to the editio princeps see Marek 2016: 166. Hyssaldomus was surely a member of a prominent family: an earlier member of the family of Hyssaldomus is already quoted by Herodotus (7.98) in a list of the most notable Carian leaders; see also Marek 2016: 157; Marek and Zingg 2018: 64–5 (62–4 for a commentary of vv. 117–21).

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from which the poems originated. These factors granted these poets a Panhellenic status and renown which can incidentally explain why an explicit sphragis is a rarity in their poems. Bacchylides 3.97–8 and Pindar’s Pythian 4.298–9 are surely exceptions to the norm, although one should note that their sphragides do not need to name the two poets directly. Conversely, the local dimension of the professional poets (two of them in non-Greek areas)39 whose epigrams were bound to be read and/or performed on the spot regardless of their length and excellence, may have brought about the strategy of buttressing and spreading the fame and status of the author by having his name mentioned in the inscription. It might be argued that both Symmachus and the athletic trainer in CEG 889 explicitly present their poems to Arbinas as a gift (dōron), that is, it would seem that they acted on their own initiative, without being asked to compose them or asking for a fee (CEG 888 118–19: Σύμμαχος . . . | δῶρον ἔτευξε ἐλεγῆια Ἀρβίναι . . ., 889.7–8: παιδοτρίβας . . . | δῶῤ ἐποίησε ἐλ ̣[εγῆια . . .). This does not disprove my assumption, since self-advertisement with the gift of a signed poem also points to the status and prominence of the potential addressee. Most of all, the sphragis of Symmachus and the paidotribas can be associated to the notion of the gift in epinician poetry, which conveyed the idea of guest-friendship (xenia) and of reciprocity (charis), and the hope that the laudandus and addressee will be generous in reciprocating the tribute by the poet.40 In the Hellenistic age, Theocritus in Idyll 16 (the Charites) appealed (unsuccessfully, it appears) to Hieron II of Syracuse for patronage. In Symmachus’ epigram the key words δῶρον and χάρις occur in the final lines just before the sphragis, to express the reciprocal relation between Arbinas and the gods (CEG 888.16–17): 39 40

Or rather three out of four, if we add the unidentifiable paidotribas and poet of CEG 889. On charis, the laudandus and the gods see Kurke 1991: 153, commenting on Pind. Isthm. 2.13–29: ‘This imagery seems to generate in turn a chain of charis through which relations of reciprocal goodwill extend down from the divine benefactors to the human participants.’ See Kurke 1991:135–59 on xenia and the convention of the poet’s gift of his poetry to the laudandus; on the notion of δῶρον and χάρις in Pindar and anathematic epigrams see also Day 2010, esp. 107–10, 242–52. The relation between poet, song and patron, χάρις and ξενία, is exemplified by Pind. Pyth. 10.64–66: πέποιθα ξενίᾳ προσανέϊ Θώρακος, ὅσπερ ἐμὰν ποιπνύων χάριν | τόδ’ ἔζευξεν ἅρμα Πιερίδων τετράορον, | φιλέων φιλέοντ’, ἄγων ἄγοντα προφρόνως.

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εἰς τέλος ἐξ ἀρχῆς, Ἀρβίνα, μεγάλα ἔργα τελ[έσσ]ας | ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖς κεχαριμμένα [sic] δῶρα ἀ ̣[νέ]θηκα[ς], ‘To the end from the beginning, Arbinas, having accomplished great deeds, to the immortal gods you have dedicated welcome gifts’ (trans. Rhodes and Osborne 2003). Symmachus’ statement is clearly rooted in traditional expressions which endorse the relation between men and gods in Homer and in the archaic and classical epigram: compare CEG 888.17 with Hom. Il. 20.298–9 (μὰψ ἕνεκ᾿ ἀλλοτρίων ἀχέων, κεχαρισμένα δ᾿ αἰεὶ | δῶρα θεοῖσι δίδωσι τοὶ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν), Od. 16.183–5 (ἦ μάλα τις θεός ἐσσι, τοὶ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν· | ἀλλ᾿ ἵληθ᾿, ἵνα τοι κεχαρισμένα δώομεν ἱρὰ | ἠδὲ χρύσεα δῶρα, τετυγμένα· φείδεο δ᾿ ἡμέων), CEG 165.2 (Sicinus, seventh century BCE (?): τὸ δὲ σᾶμ ̓ Εὔνος ἔστασε καλὸν κεχαρισμένον ἔργον) and epigr. 17.3–4 Ebert (= Paus. 9.42.9–10, mid-fifth century BCE? to Zeus: Hieron of Syracuse and Deinomenes: δῶρα Ἱέρων τάδε σοι ἐχαρίσσατο· παῖς δ᾿ ἀνέθηκε | Δεινομένης πατρὸς μνῆμα Συρακοσίου). Dōron inserted into epigrams alongside a signature can therefore be interpreted as both an attempt at propagating poetic status and fame, and a way of asserting a bond with powerful patrons, as was craftily phrased by Ibycus in addressing Polycrates in the sphragis of his encomium. Notably, the same occurrence of dōron is found in the sphragis of the Hyssaldomus inscription, v. 118: τοῖσιν εὐσεβοῦσιν ἔρξας ἀντιλάζεαι δῶρα.41 On the ground of the texts available, we can therefore conclude that at the turn of the fourth century the role and purpose of encomiastic lyric poetry was in part taken on by the inscriptional epigram ἐν μέτρωι πάντι, if I may borrow from the Hyssaldomus inscription (v. 119): hexameters, elegiac couplets or trochaic tetrameters. The complementarity between an epinician poem performed at home and the statue of an athlete in a Panhellenic sanctuary evoked by Pindar in Nemean 5 (vv. 1–5) was embodied 41

In the light of this, I remain unconvinced by the parallel drawn by Petrovic (2009: 209) between the gift of the praise poems to Arbinas and Simonides’ initiative of paying tribute with a funerary epigram (= Simon. ep. 6 Page) to the seer Megistias, who fell at Thermopylae (Hdt. 7.228). Besides, the epigram by Simonides was motivated by a bond of ξενία between Simonides and the γένος of the deceased, as stated by Herodotus (loc. cit., Σιμωνίδης . . . κατὰ ξεινίην ἐπιγράψας), which is to our present knowledge unattested in the relationship between the inscriptional poets in Lycia and their patrons.

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in the epigrams inscribed on the base of statues,42 combining the visual power of a monument with the power of the poet’s words, which could be heard in performance or read on the spot: in the Arbinas, Hyssaldomus and Ion inscriptions, commemorative sculpture and encomiastic poetry join forces to create a powerful and lasting impression on the addressee and the community, exploiting and adapting the traditions of earlier praise poetry.

42

Οὐκ ἀνδριαντοποιός εἰμ᾿, ὥστ᾿ ἐλινύσοντα ἐργά- | ζεσθαι ἀγάλματ᾿ ἐπ᾿ αὐτᾶς βαθμίδος | ἑσταότ᾿· ἀλλ᾿ ἐπὶ πάσας | ὁλκάδος ἔν τ᾿ ἀκάτῳ, γλυκεῖ᾿ ἀοιδά, | στεῖχ᾿ ἀπ᾿ Αἰγίνας διαγγέλλοισ᾿, ὅτι | Λάμπωνος υἱὸς Πυθέας εὐρυσθενής | νίκη Νεμείοις παγκρατίου στέφανον . . . On the fifth Nemean of Pindar and its relation to sculpture see the relevant remarks of Fearn 2013: 241–5.

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chapter 4 G E O M E T RY O F A L L U S I O N S : TH E R E C E P T I O N OF E A R L I E R PO E T RY IN A R I S TO P H A NE S ’ PE ACE

ioannis m. konstantakos

Introduction Aristophanes might be called the ‘Chaucer of Greek literature’. Apart from the brio of storytelling and the inexhaustible capacity for humour, the two poets have in common above all the spirit of generic mixture and literary miscellany; they endeavour to assemble, combine and amalgamate all the multifarious forms of literary creation, such as were practised in their times, into one composite, polymorphous and omnivorous work of poetic art. The Canterbury Tales offers a veritable encyclopaedia of medieval genres of narrative: chivalric and courtly romance, fabliau and piquant novella, moral tale, exemplum, anecdote, tragic history, hagiography, animal fable, sermon, satire – all of them are collected in this wide-ranging summa of storytelling. As Helen Cooper remarks, ‘it is quite difficult to think of any literary kind available to him that Chaucer has omitted’.1 The comedies of Aristophanes provide an analogous panorama of literary forms, to an extent unprecedented in the Greek literary canon. Thanks to its composite structure and vast capacity of absorption, Aristophanic drama epitomizes almost all of the grammatological genres and forms of discourse current in its age. Through sophisticated use of poetic imitation, parody or creative assimilation, this poet fuses all the familiar literary modes into a new kind of composition and produces a critical and satirical encyclopaedia of earlier and contemporaneous Greek writing. Aristophanes reflects the myths and episodes of tragedy; he cultivates all the forms of lyric, from pious religious hymn to 1

On the generic variety of the Canterbury Tales see Cooper 1983: 52–3, 72–90.

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sympotic song and acrid iambus; he reworks the ample narratives and the heroic adventures of epic poetry; he absorbs popular folktales, humorous novellas and anecdotes that circulated on the people’s lips; he imitates ethnography, medical writing, oracular prophecy, philosophical and scientific treatises; he reproduces the artful rhetoric and verbal duels of the Assembly and the law courts All these genres of writing, types of poetic composition and species of intellectual discourse are reflected in Aristophanes’ comic text with various degrees of distortion, as though in a ‘carnival mirror’. Aristophanes also merges together the distinct thematic tendencies and artistic styles of the earlier comic tradition, in all its various forms ‒ both the literary and the pre-literary or folk ones, both those of the mainstream Attic theatre and the local species of humorous performances in other regions of the Hellenic world. Aristophanes exploits the Märchenkomödie of Crates and Pherecrates together with the pungent political satire of Cratinus and Eupolis; he reproduces the rudimentary phallic kōmoi and the materials of the coarse Megarian farce side by side with the subtle Epicharmean drama of characters and ideas. Thus, Aristophanic comedy offers not only a jovial encyclopaedia of the Greek literary production in the Archaic and Classical ages, but also, more specifically, an epitome of the history and genealogy of Aristophanes’ own comic art. It is impossible to ascertain now if any other dramatist of Old Comedy achieved such a multicollective literary cornucopia in his oeuvre. Anyhow, this kind of versatile and all-embracing art, which engulfs the entire spiritual and poetic landscape of its time, is a gift granted only to the greatest masters. As in the case of Chaucer, the kaleidoscopic reception of so many literary genres in the Aristophanic text is not pursued simply as a tour de force of poetic dexterity or as a display of erudition. The panorama of literature is used by the virtuoso author as material for the construction of an equally broad and impressive vision of reality, an ample and multicoloured fresco of human endeavour. In this perspective, the all-encompassing and quasi-encyclopaedic assimilation of a wide range of genres may be considered as the first and foremost trademark of Aristophanes’ distinctive mode of literary reception. The panoramic reflection of almost every literary form 93

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available in the poet’s milieu matches the broader thematic universality that is characteristic of Aristophanes’ oeuvre as a whole. The great comic poet’s craft, like the shape-changers of myth and fairy tale, is an ever-shifting and metamorphosing entity, which strives to replicate all the multifarious forms and creatures that are extant in its environment. The entire bodily, emotional and spiritual experience of man’s existence is included in the Aristophanic texts; from the lowest functions of the body to the most complex philosophical theories, everything is incorporated and becomes part of an immense overview of humanity. Archetypical myth is interwoven with everyday life; fairy tale and fantasy go hand in hand with relentless criticism of the contemporary reality of the polis.2 This allembracing vision of existence is the essence of Aristophanes’ art and finds its apposite expression also in the domain of literary reception, through the all-inclusive potpourri of genres described above. Aristophanes aspired to represent in toto the lachrymose comedy and merry tragedy of human life, and did so by producing a satura lanx of every kind of literary creation. The second identifying mark of Aristophanes’ peculiar mode of reception is the elaborate organization of the received texts and forms of discourse into meaningful patterns, which are intrinsically connected with the broader themes of each Aristophanic play. The many different genres and types of composition that the comic poet imitates or reworks are not simply exhibited in order to demonstrate his learning. Furthermore, the literary allusions and echoes are not haphazardly accumulated and dispersed through the script, as though entries in a polymathic compilation or materials of a manual of grammatology. Rather, the comic poet arranges his parodies and imitations in such a way as to confront the literary prototypes with each other, set them or play them off against each other within his dramatic fiction. As the scenario unfolds, Aristophanes makes texts of different grammatological provenance and generic constitution interact and hold a dialogue with one another. These intra-dramatic encounters and conversations of literary models are artfully engineered in order to follow and parallel the treatment of the central themes (ideological, political, 2

Cf. my remarks in Konstantakos 2017 and 2019.

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historical, philosophical or other) that dominate the play. The connection between the reception of literary genres and the representation of the human world, singled out above as characteristic of Aristophanes’ oeuvre, is maintained also in this respect. The present essay is a modest attempt to examine these phenomena with reference to a specific Aristophanic comedy, the Peace, which is rich in intertextual allusions to other poetic works, from the Homeric canon to the products of the comic poet’s own time. The main task is to study the multiform Aristophanic reception of all these pre-existent literary materials and analyse their artful arrangement into significant patterns which reflect the main historical concerns of the play. There is no ambition to outflank the vast extant scholarship on parody and meta-literariness in Aristophanes or to break new ground in the development of theoretical insights. A few words may nevertheless be noted as to the position of this essay in the field of Aristophanic research and its idiosyncrasy by comparison to other investigations of Aristophanic intertextuality. There are plentiful studies of Aristophanes’ uses and techniques of parody, especially with regard to parody of tragic theatre or ‘paratragedy’. Some of these studies, especially those published within the last few decades, use a complex apparatus of literary theory and criticism in order to analyse the parodic mechanisms employed by the comic poet and the metadramatic constructs created through the incorporation of tragic models into comic fiction.3 In many cases these investigations have also highlighted the close connections between Aristophanes’ choice of a particular tragic prototype and the main topics and ideological issues of the comedy in which this prototype is reworked. It has thus clearly emerged that paratragedy is not merely a means of fun and ridicule but a powerful poetic tool which serves the production of dramatic 3

The classic reference work is Rau 1967, but the most perspicacious modern discussions are offered by Silk 1993 and 2000: 42‒100, 350‒60. Other notable studies are Zeitlin 1981; Dobrov 2001; Nieddu 2004; Rosen 2005; Platter 2007: 143‒75; Jay-Robert 2009: 114‒33; Lauriola 2010: 115‒32, 181‒92; Telò 2010; Tsitsiridis 2010; Wright 2013; Nelson 2016. See also the collections of essays in Calame 2004 and Medda, Mirto and Pattoni 2006; and cf. the following footnote.

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meaning.4 Fruitful contributions have also been made with regard to Aristophanes’ reception of other poetic genres, such as lyric poetry and epic.5 On the other hand, a number of studies have been dedicated to Aristophanes’ interaction with his contemporary comic drama, especially the oeuvres of his great rivals Cratinus and Eupolis, and more generally with the history and tradition of the Attic comic theatre.6 A few scholars have also examined Aristophanes’ exploitation of other traditions of comic performance, such as popular farces and Doric humorous spectacles.7 The present essay proposes a more holistic approach, which goes beyond the aforementioned explorations of individual target texts or genres and focuses on the interplay of all these literary forms within the Aristophanic script. The object of investigation is not Aristophanes’ reception of a particular genre, be it tragedy or earlier comedy, epic or lyric poetry, but the incorporation of the total of these forms into a carefully designed dramatic structure, which serves to bring out the overall meaning of Aristophanes’ work.8 In particular, the scholarly studies regarding Aristophanes’ use of tragedy or of his contemporary comedy tend to set up Aristophanes’ own comic craft as the axis of reference and comparison. It is shown how the great comic poet distinguishes tragic poetics from his own form of comic writing, so as to proclaim the special viewpoint and value of his own creations by comparison to tragedy. Analogously, it is emphasized how Aristophanes promotes his own brand of comedy over the works of his rival dramatists (Cratinus, Eupolis, Crates, Pherecrates and others) and

4

5

6

7 8

See e.g. Zeitlin 1981; Foley 1988; Dobrov 2001: 43‒53, 97‒126, 144‒56; Tzanetou 2002; Orfanos 2006: 149‒60; Platter 2007: 42‒62; Telò 2010; Nelson 2016: 131‒40, 184‒203, 261‒84. On lyric poetry see Redondo 1993; Kugelmeier 1996; Trédé 2003; Lauriola 2010: 133‒ 41, 175‒80; Rawles 2013; Hadjimichael 2019: 59‒94. On epic see de Lamberterie 1998; Macía Aparicio 2000; Ornaghi 2004; Platter 2007: 108‒42; Bastin-Hammou 2009; Revermann 2013; Telò 2013. See, most notably, Heath 1990; Luppe 2000; Rosen 2000; Ruffell 2002; Kyriakidi 2007; Lauriola 2010: 87‒114; Biles 2011; Telò 2016. See Murphy 1972; Konstantakos 2012. Scholars such as Bremer 1993 and Zogg 2014 have offered broad overviews of all the literary genres and texts received in the Aristophanic plays, but they do not study the elaborate patterning of the literary allusions in connection with the generation of dramatic meaning.

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advertises the superiority of his own comic conceptions by comparison to their gimmicks. In the present study an attempt will be made to move beyond these binary oppositions, towards a broader synthetic view of the Aristophanic reception of literature. Within the same play, Aristophanes interweaves parodies of tragedy, adaptations of earlier and contemporary comic production, as well as echoes of other genres, and subordinates all of these to the overarching artistic vision of his work. Aristophanic art thus embodies and transcends both the tragic and the comic tradition and emerges as a new, ‘hyper-generic’ creation, which uses the various poetic forms as building blocks for the construction of its fictional world and as signs for the conveyance of its dramatic meaning. The analysis of this practice will be limited to one Aristophanic play, due to restrictions of space, but may nevertheless contribute to a better understanding of Aristophanes’ peculiar poetics of reception. The Tragedy of War The Peace displays all the distinctive marks of Aristophanic literary reception, as traced above. Many texts and genres of various different kinds are parodied, imitated or reworked in its script. These have not been chosen at random, following the author’s fancy or his artistic tastes and preferences. Neither have the target texts been selected merely because they were famous and easily recognizable to the audience; this view9 hardly does justice to the wide range and complexity of the Aristophanic arte allusiva.10 In the Peace, as in the other works of Aristophanes, the parodies and intertextual allusions are woven together into a distinctive pattern, following an underlying poetic plan which is immediately relevant to Aristophanes’ view of his own comic art, especially by comparison to tragedy and to the earlier comic tradition. Further, in the case of this particular ‘peace play’, Aristophanes’ idea of his art is also invested with a political 9

10

See e.g. Dover 1972: 75–6; Bremer 1993: 149–60; Mastromarco 2006. Cf. more generally MacDowell 1995: 3, 16–26. This point has been well brought out by Zogg 2014: 13–37; cf. Telò 2010: 279–81; Bakola, Prauscello and Telò 2013: 1–10.

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dimension and entails a prise de position on burning issues of the polis, notably the Peloponnesian War, its causes and its consequences for Athens. In an earlier study11 I applied the same form of analysis to Aristophanes’ previous play on the same theme, the Acharnians (425 BCE), which similarly advocated for an end to the Peloponnesian War. I argued that in the Acharnians the poet employs a purposeful arrangement of parodies and allusions, in order to construct an elaborate antithetical design which underlies the plot. This design is produced especially through the interplay of the two great theatrical genres, tragedy and comedy, as they are reflected within the dramatic fiction of the play; and the interaction of genres, in turn, is intrinsically connected with the central thematic concern of the text, the contrast between war and peace. In the Acharnians the rival worlds of war and peace are methodically constructed as an opposition between the two main forms of Attic theatre: war is consistently associated with tragedy, while peace is connected with comedy. The situations and realities of war are depicted through paratragedy; military circumstances and representatives are loaded with allusions to tragic texts or with mocktragic expressions, stylistic markers and motifs. The image of peace, on the other hand, is developed through routines, themes and techniques that are typical of comedy and often pertain to the simplest, most elementary form of comic delight. Thus, the portrayals of war and peace are interwoven with the poet’s reflections on the nature of his own art. With Peace, produced in 421 BCE, four years after the Acharnians and in altered historical circumstances, Aristophanes returns to the subject of the excruciating Peloponnesian War and its termination. These two homologous comedies present many similarities to each other, which hardly seem fortuitous or unconscious. Apparently, Aristophanes wished to interconnect his two ‘peace plays’; he strove to make his second work on the topic of the war look back to the first one. Therefore, the Peace takes up, reworks or further develops several elements of the Acharnians (plot patterns and models of action, character types, combinations 11

Konstantakos 2012: 149–61.

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of motifs, clusters of imagery), which overall make the later comedy look like a new variation on the themes of the earlier one.12 This practice also extends to the antithesis and interplay of the two great theatrical genres, which are used as materials for the construction of the plot. Like the Acharnians, and in an even more complex manner, the Peace interweaves thematic and textual references to tragedy and to earlier comedy in direct connection to the central themes of war and peace. The first part of the play, up to the liberation of the personified Peace (520), is set in a world dominated by armed conflict; the human universe has been abandoned by the gods (195–220), handed over to the terrible Polemus, the incarnation of war (205–6, 221–35), and is facing imminent and total destruction (56–63, 236–95). This part is built around the parody of a series of Euripidean tragedies, which provides the fabric for entire scenes and segments of the plot. It also contains many references to tragic passages and adapts characteristic techniques and motifs of tragic dramaturgy. A strong connection between war and tragedy is thus forged. Needless to say, within the Aristophanic comedy the tragic material is reflected in the distorting mirror of comic fiction; tragedy infiltrates the Aristophanic world in the form of paratragedy. The pattern is established already from the opening scenes. In the prologue a household slave describes the curious onslaught of madness that is affecting his master, the farmer Trygaeus, the protagonist of the comedy; suddenly, Trygaeus’ own voice is heard from inside the house (62–3), invoking Zeus in furious tones and offering a direct example of the hero’s mania. This is a situation familiar from tragedy; similarly, in the prologue of Euripides’ Medea the heroine’s nurse is speaking about her mistress’ distress (92–130), when Medea’s cries are heard from inside and present a concrete example, confirming the nurse’s words (96–7, 111–14).13 The very portrayal of the central hero of the 12

13

Cf. Whitman 1964: 104, 116–18; Thiercy 1986: 98–9, 112, 162–4; Henderson 1991: 62–6; MacDowell 1995: 180–98; Slater 2002: 117–18; Konstantakos 2016: 147–9; Nelson 2016: 223–5. Cf. Rau 1967: 91; Harvey 1971: 363–5; Dobrov 2001: 99; Hall 2006: 339; Zogg 2014: 100–3.

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Peace in such terms, as a man suffering from a strange attack of frenzy (μαίνεται, τῶν μανιῶν, 54, 65), brings to mind tragic figures who are similarly described at the beginning of the play by their servants or intimates and are said to be afflicted by inexplicable madness: for example, Phaedra (Eur. Hipp. 176–266) and Ajax (Soph. Aj. 201–330), for both of whom the same words (μαίνεσθαι, μανία) are used.14 Before long, Trygaeus appears in person, riding on the back of the dung beetle (80–1) in order to fly to heaven and question the gods about the war. This coup de théâtre initiates a sequence of scenes of paratragedy, in which material from three different Euripidean dramas is comically adapted. The main frame of the scene is taken from Euripides’ Bellerophon. Trygaeus’ flight on the dung beetle is a travesty of the Euripidean hero’s heavenly journey on the back of the winged horse Pegasus; the comic farmer’s anapaestic recitation during his flight incorporates a few echoes from Bellerophon’s lofty words in the tragic drama.15 Furthermore, when Trygaeus bids farewell to his daughters, paraphrases of lines from two other tragedies, Euripides’ Stheneboea and Aeolus, are incorporated into their dialogue.16 A central emblem of the world of war is the disgusting, foulsmelling dung beetle, which encapsulates the repulsive conditions of life in wartime.17 This gigantic insect is also invested with a paratragic dimension. It corresponds to Pegasus, the winged horse which Bellerophon mounted in Euripides’ play, and is accordingly described with verses which were used for Pegasus in the Euripidean text.18 Trygaeus grandiloquently styles the insect ἱπποκάνθαρος (‘horse-beetle’, 181), a pun on Aeschylus’ famous coinage ἱππαλεκτρυών (‘horse-cock’ or ‘hippogryph’, 14 15

16

17 18

Hipp. 241, 248; Aj. 216; cf. Harvey 1971; Padel 1995; Zogg 2014: 102. Compare Peace 154–5 with Bellerophon fr. 307; also Peace 76–7 with Bellerophon fr. 306. Peace 126 ~ Stheneboea fr. 669.4; Peace 114–15, 119 ~ Aeolus frr. 17 and 18. On the parody of these three Euripidean tragedies see Rau 1967: 89–97, 193; Olson 1998: xxxii–xxxiv, 82–6, 90–8; Dobrov 2001: 20, 89–104, 160, 189–93; Hall 2006: 333–5, 338–40; Mastromarco 2006: 170–4, 181–2; Telò 2010: 279–82, 297–318; Zogg 2014: 27–8, 82–3, 89–123, 128–30, 214–15, 223–6. On this function of the dung-beetle cf. Henderson 1991: 63; Bowie 1993: 134–8. Peace 76 ~ Bellerophon fr. 306; Peace 722 ~ Bellerophon fr. 312. Cf. Rau 1967: 90–7; Zogg 2014: 82–3, 96–8, 112–14, 122–3, 128–30.

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Myrmidones fr. 134), which referred to the emblem carved on one of the Achaean ships in the Trojan War.19 Thus, the creature emblematizing the world of war acquires a tragic colouring through the parody of a tragic word, which, in its authentic tragic context, was related to the instruments of war. Tragedy and war are joined in a vicious circle. This paradoxical order of things is familiar from the Acharnians. Tragedy is presented as an essential constituent of the world of war. Hence the comic hero needs to exploit tragic roles and functions, in order to fight a war against the war and establish his own vision of peace. In essence, the hero is obliged to appropriate tragedy so as to escape from it; he must perform a repertoire of tragic parts in order to put an end to a tragically constructed situation.20 In the Peace it is exactly Trygaeus’ tragiclike mania and then his paratragic metamorphosis into Bellerophon that enable him to reach heaven, from where he will eventually liberate the goddess of peace and bring her back to earth. In the same way, the hero has to manipulate a creature reflecting (however crassly and ludicrously) the legendary animals of tragedy, in order to perform his flight and execute his plan. The tragic motifs persist after Trygaeus’ arrival to the domain of the gods. While Polemus prepares to crush the Greek cities inside his mortar (236–88), the war-god’s servant Cydoemus (‘Tumult’) plays a role similar to that of the tragic messenger. Twice Cydoemus enters to report the death of an important personage (the Athenian statesman Cleon at 269–70, the Spartan general Brasidas at 281–2), in both cases using the verb ἀπόλωλε (‘he has perished’); the same word (in the simple form ὄλωλε) is routinely applied by the messengers of tragedy to this kind of disaster.21 Cydoemus’ cries of woe (οἴμοι τάλας, οἴμοι γε κἄτ’ οἴμοι μάλα, 280) recall the exclamations of distress with which the tragic angelos introduces his mournful tidings upon arrival.22 The announcement of Brasidas’ end in particular is structured like a miniature of a common routine of tragic messenger scenes. 19 20 21 22

Cf. Whitman 1964: 106–7. See Konstantakos 2012: 154–5 with regard to the Acharnians; cf. Hall 2006: 333–4. See e.g. Eur. Bacch. 1030, Med. 1125; Soph. Ant. 1175. See e.g. Eur. Phoen. 1067–9, 1335–7.

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Cydoemus enters and tersely states the sad news of the man’s death (281–2: ἀπόλωλε γὰρ καὶ τοῖς Λακεδαιμονίοισιν ἁλετρίβανος, ‘the Spartans’ pestle-man has also perished’); Polemus asks, with surprise, πῶς, ‘How?’, and Cydoemus reports the details (283–4). The same exchange between the messenger and another character or the chorus, often with use of the very question πῶς, is part of the established poetic grammar of tragic dramaturgy.23 The tragic angelos, of course, usually expands into a long speech what Cydoemus explains in two lines. Aristophanes only needs to stage a small-scale model of the corresponding tragic action in order to evoke the appropriate tragic atmosphere for the war part of his play. Apparently, the aim is not to concentrate for long on a single motif of tragedy but to offer an entire anthology of recognizable tragic commonplaces. The association of war and tragedy may also be observed in small details. Phrases and lines from tragic texts or passages of paratragic style are used to refer to the realities of war. Polemus’ endeavour to throw the Greeks into turmoil (320: κυκάτω . . . πάντα καὶ ταραττέτω, ‘let him stir up and disturb everything’) is expressed with an echo of a verse from the pseudo-Aeschylean Prometheus Bound (994). The men of the chorus deplore military service (356) with words taken from a play of the tragic poet Achaeus (fr. 29: ξὺν δορὶ ξὺν ἀσπίδι, ‘with spear, with shield’). The same practice continues after the restoration of Peace. Trygaeus curses the soldier’s haversack (528: ἀπέπτυσ’ ἐχθροῦ φωτὸς ἔχθιστον πλέκος, ‘I spit on the most hateful pouch of a hateful man’) with a parody of a line from Euripides’ Telephus (fr. 727). The warmongering taxiarch is compared (1177) to Aeschylus’ ‘tawny horse-cock’ (ξουθὸς ἱππαλεκτρυών, fr. 134). The arms dealer bursts into exclamations of self-pity (ὥς μ’ ἀπώλεσας, ‘Oh, how you ruined me!’, 1210, 1250) which recur on the lips of many desperate tragic figures.24

23

24

See e.g. Eur. Med. 1125–36, Hec. 508–18, Hipp. 1162–73, HF 910–22, Phoen. 1335–56; Soph. OC 1579–86. See e.g. Soph. El. 1163; Eur. Med. 1310, Hipp. 353, Hel. 779, Or. 130, Phaethon fr. 781.11. On all these allusions to tragic texts cf. Rau 1967: 194; Olson 1998: 135, 144, 185, 292, 304; Zogg 2014: 38–51, 93–4, 124–7.

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The Comedy of Peace In a world of this kind, which is dominated by militarism, battles and tragic poetry, there is no place for comedy. In the parodos of the play the men of the chorus enter with great enthusiasm and wish to joyously dance and celebrate the imminent liberation of Peace (301–60). At this stage, however, the goddess is still imprisoned in Polemus’ lair, and Trygaeus warns the chorus that the terrible war-god may intervene and destroy their plans at any moment; he therefore implores the boisterous men to stop dancing. The chorus initially consists of peace-loving people of every class and profession, from the whole of the Greek world (292–9), summoned to help the protagonist in the operation of freeing Peace. As the comic script unfolds, the dramatic identity of the chorus members is narrowed down, and they are specifically identified with farmers, more particularly the farmers of Attica.25 Above all, however, this group of men is the chorus of comedy, the collective incarnation of the comic genre and the comic spirit, and also the representative of the comic poet who will speak in the poet’s name in the parabasis. For such a chorus, viewed in this broader meta-literary perspective, dancing joyfully in the orchēstra means giving their comic performance – in other words, staging the comedy. They describe their irrepressible movements with the verb χορεύετον (325), which etymologically includes the term ‘chorus’; it is thus implied that the dance of these men is not only a celebration of peace but also the fulfilment of the authentic and primordial function of the chorus of comic drama.26 The parodos of Peace, therefore, represents an interlude of comedy in the tragic world of war. The hero nevertheless warns 25

26

On the shifting identity of the chorus see Sifakis 1971: 29–32; Cassio 1985: 28, 31, 56, 69–71, 74–7; Thiercy 1986: 210–13; Olson 1998: 132, 181; McGlew 2001; Revermann 2006: 173–5; Nelson 2016: 225–9. The metadramatic and self-referential use of this lexical group on the lips of a theatrical chorus is hardly Aristophanes’ invention. In tragedy and satyr play, χορεύειν and cognate words are also sometimes used by the chorus members with more or less implicit reference to the chorus’ activity in drama ‒ in other words, as a self-referential comment on their own theatrical performance (Aesch. Eum. 307; Soph. OT 896, Aj. 701, Ant. 152, 1152‒4; Eur. HF 686, 761, El. 859‒65; Pratinas fr. 3). See primarily Henrichs 1995. Cf. also Dodds 1966: 46‒7; Davidson 1986; Currie 2013: 270‒2.

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that comic performance is inopportune and perilous in this kind of world. The personified War may interrupt the comic show at any moment, in the same way as the warlike Acharnians broke in and violently stopped Dicaeopolis’ phallic procession (Ach. 237–346) – another celebration of peace which was simultaneously a return to the roots of the comic genre.27 After the liberation of the goddess Eirene, however, the general mood of the play is changed. The latter part of the script, which mostly consists in celebrations for the regained peace and its pleasures, parades a sequence of patterns and routines that are characteristic of comedy. The world of peace is thus inextricably connected with the comic genre. Like the Acharnians, the Peace offers, in this respect, a strong example of association between the design of literary reception and the main ideological issues of the play. The poet throws all the weight of his comic art into the celebration and exaltation of the long-desired peace between Athens and Sparta. As will emerge from the examination of specific examples below, the entire history of the comic genre is mobilized in order to support the end of the hateful Peloponnesian War and of the belligerent demagogues’ policies.28 In essence, Aristophanes politicizes the reception of literature, turning the intra-dramatic interplay of the received poetic genres into a reflection on the most crucial ideological questions of the Athenian polis. Many of the typical comic elements used in the second part of the Peace are borrowed from the most rudimentary forms of comic entertainment; characteristically, they are included in the lists of jokes which Aristophanes denounces as low-brow in his parabaseis and poetological prologues. The cultic ceremony in honour of the peace goddess contains a number of such motifs. Trygaeus’ slave, who is holding a basket full of barley for the ritual sacrifice, takes handfuls of barley seeds from the basket and throws them to the audience (962). The same kind of routine (the slave that casts nuts from a basket towards the audience) is mentioned in the Wasps (57–9) as a stock gimmick of Megarian farce – a local type of comic show at Megara, which is routinely condemned by Attic 27 28

See Konstantakos 2012: 151–4. On the political and ideological content of the Peace see Cassio 1985: 87‒118; MacDowell 1995: 186‒98; Olson 1998: xli‒xlii, 189‒91, 196.

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poets for its elementary and coarse humour.29 The routine was presumably a primitive scenic device for eliciting the spectators’ favour. Possibly the basket used in the performance of the Peace did not actually contain barley but small nuts, dried fruits or other titbits, which members of the audience would gladly catch and swallow.30 Later on, after a sheep has been sacrificed to the goddess, and while its parts are being roasted on the fire, Hierocles, a charlatan oracle-monger, appears and greedily tries to acquire a share of the steaming entrails (1043–60, 1100–18). Trygaeus and his slave give him nothing; at the end they beat the charlatan and chase him away, before he manages to snatch and taste a single piece (1119–26). This is a metamorphosis of another famous theme of Megarian farce, ‘Heracles cheated of his dinner’ (Wasps 60), which was also hilariously exploited on the Attic stage.31 The names Hierocles and Heracles sound similar;32 and Hierocles is dressed in animal skins (1122–4), which he has presumably claimed from previous sacrificial rituals and has draped over his chitōn, to wear them as trophies.33 Heracles, by analogy, is identifiable by the lion skin, which he regularly wore as part of his costume in comic plays.34 The sacrifice to Eirene also includes other elements of comic knockabout. Hierocles receives a thrashing on stage (1119–26), 29

30 31

32

33 34

See Pickard-Cambridge 1962: 180–1; Murphy 1972: 173–5; Kerkhof 2001: 20–1; Konstantakos 2012: 125–6, 129. Cf. Olson 1998: 254; Slater 2002: 128, 285. Cf. Reckford 1979: 197; Hubbard 1991: 146. On the comic theme of ‘Heracles cheated of his meal’ see Storey 2003; Konstantakos 2011: 238–44, 2015: 186–97. Hierocles was a historical person, a prominent chrēsmologos active since Pericles’ times; he is satirized in the Peace presumably because he was a staunch supporter of the war (Cassio 1985: 129; Olson 1998: 268–70). Nonetheless, Hierocles’ name, which sounds similar to Heracles’, may have been a contributing factor for the selection of this particular chrēsmologos, among all the relevant pro-war figures of contemporary Athens, so that he might be ridiculed in a scene based on a well-known Heraclean comic routine. Compare Lamachus in the Acharnians, who was picked out among all the warmongering military officials of the time because of his eloquent warlike name (Konstantakos 2016: 143–4). See Olson 1998: 268, 282. See Ar. Ran. 46, 495–6, 528; cf. also the terracotta statuettes which depict the comic figure of Heracles from the early fourth century BCE onwards, and many vase-paintings of comic scenes. See Webster and Green 1978: 69–71, 171, 186, 202 (AT 26, CT 11, UT 6, ZT 6); Walsh 2009: 176–81, 223–42; Konstantakos 2015: 186–97.

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and the chorus members are drenched when the slave flings over them lustral water from the sacrificial basin (969–72).35 Both these types of routine are age-old favourites of physical comedy. The ritual in honour of peace is a return to the primordial sources of comic delight. Further references to the repertoire of low-brow comic gimmicks are found elsewhere in the second part of the play. The final section of the anapaests of the parabasis (767–74), spoken by the chorus in the poet’s name, consists in goodhumoured teasing of bald men, a type of joke criticized in the Clouds (540) as a staple of vulgar comedies. If the first part of the Aristophanic work offered an anthology of tragic dramaturgical topoi, the second half is an encyclopaedia of comic schtick and slapstick. The goddess Peace is pulled out of the cave together with her two companions, Opora and Theoria (523), who incarnate the most pleasurable aspects of life in peacetime – respectively the harvest of fruits and the enjoyment of festivals. Opora appropriately becomes the bride of Trygaeus the vinedresser (706–12, 842–70), and the play ends with the merry ceremony of their wedding (1316–59). The hero’s relationship with the personified Opora brings to mind a stock character of Spartan popular farces, attested by the antiquarian writer Sosibius (FGrH 595 F 7, from Athenaeus, 14.621d–e). Sosibius describes the simple, presumably extempore comic spectacles which were performed in old times in Laconia. A recurrent theme in these shows was ‘some thieves who steal fruit’ (κλέπτοντάς τινας ὀπώραν);36 significantly, Sosibius uses the very word opōra in this passage. In a way, Trygaeus may be identified with these characters of early Doric proto-comedy, because he is literally the ‘thief of Opora’. He liberates Opora from Polemus’ lair, and his entire operation is assimilated to a theft; it is carried out clandestinely, so as not to be detected by the war-god or the supreme Zeus (309–38, 362–425);

35

36

Thus Sommerstein 1985: 97, 179 and Slater 2002: 129, 285, against the scepticism of Olson 1998: 255–6. On drenching in ancient comedy cf. Konstantakos 2015: 196–7; generally on the burlesque elements in the second part of the Peace cf. Cassio 1985: 129–38; Hall 2006: 335, 343. See Pickard-Cambridge 1962: 134–7; Kerkhof 2001: 29; Konstantakos 2012: 130–4.

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and it is committed with the aid of Hermes, the patron of thieves.37 The protagonist of Aristophanes’ play, Trygaeus the κλέπτων Ὀπώραν, is the last metamorphosis of an age-old archetypical figure of the comic genre. The personified Eirene ‘speaks’ thanks to a typically comic device. The goddess is represented by a statue. When the time comes for her to express her thoughts and feelings before the people, she is supposed to whisper her words to Hermes; the latter puts his ear close to the statue’s lips and then repeats aloud what he has heard (657–705).38 In the ancient theatre this stage practice is exclusive to comedy, which offers several examples: Strepsiades consults the herm standing before the door of his house and repeats the reply he has supposedly received (Clouds 1481–5); the bridesmaid whispers in Dicaeopolis’ ear, and the latter announces what she has told him (Ach. 1056–62); in the burlesque trial of the two household dogs, the enlivened cheese grater (whether it is played by an extra or represented by an oversized effigy which is moved around by a slave) comes as a witness to court and is interrogated by Bdelycleon, who reports the cheese grater’s testimony for the other characters to hear (Wasps 963–6). This phenomenon of mediated speech, of words that are supposedly whispered and are then audibly reproduced by another personage for the sake of the audience, never occurs in extant tragic drama, in which characters may only speak for themselves or remain silent. It was presumably contrary to the poetic grammar of tragic dramaturgy. Hermes’ oration about the causes of the war (603–48) is cast in a comic mould; it is composed in trochaic tetrameters and combines formal elements from the epirrhemes of the parabasis and from the epirrhematic comic agōn.39 The difference from Dicaeopolis’ corresponding discourse in the Acharnians (496–556) is telling: Dicaeopolis’ oration has the form of a tragic rhēsis, is written in iambic trimeters and imitates an analogous speech made by Telephus before the Achaeans in Euripides’ 37 38

39

Cf. Whitman 1964: 114–15; Thiercy 1986: 209, 308; Bowie 1993: 140–1. On the representation of the goddess Peace in the form of a statue see Cassio 1985: 46–50; Slater 2002: 122–6; Nelson 2016: 221–2. See Cassio 1985: 79–103.

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homonymous tragedy (frr. 708–10).40 Dicaeopolis is forced to deliver his speech while he is still in a world dominated by war, before he has managed to actually secure his private peace treaty. He is therefore obliged to assume a tragic disguise and speak like a hero of tragedy, as is appropriate to the world of wartime. By contrast, Hermes speaks after the goddess of peace has been set free, when the war has definitively ended and the conditions of peacetime have been established. Hermes therefore adapts to the new milieu and fashions his oration according to the epirrhematic patterns of comedy, the genre ideally suited to the world of peace. Significantly, while Dicaeopolis is said ‘to speak on behalf of the Lacedaemonians’ (Ach. 482: ὑπὲρ Λακεδαιμονίων ἀνδρῶν λέγειν) or ‘about the city’ (Ach. 498–9: περὶ τῆς πόλεως, Ach. 498–9), Hermes announces that his theme will be ‘how peace was lost’ (604). The god does elaborate on the causes of the armed conflict, but programmatically designates peace as the main focus of his oration; he proposes to explain not ‘how the war began’ but ‘how peace ceased to be’. The reference to peace at the beginning of the speech imposes the comic structure. Moreover, Hermes’ first words (603–4: ὦ σοφώτατοι γεωργοί, τἀμὰ δὴ ξυνίετε ῥήματ’, ‘O wisest farmers, mark well my words’) are a paraphrase of a verse by Archilochus (fr. 109 IEG2: λιπερνῆτες πολῖται, τἀμὰ δὴ συνίετε ῥήματα, ‘O poor citizens, mark well my words’), which had also been quoted verbatim by Cratinus in his Pytine (fr. 211 PCG), a comedy performed two years before the Peace. Thus, Hermes’ speech begins with a double reference to archetypically comic stuff.41 Cratinus was an emblematic figure of comic theatre, recognized at the end of his 40 41

See Rau 1967: 22–3, 38–40; Preiser 2000: 85–8, 310–65; Olson 2002: lvii–lxi, 200–19. Cf. Cassio 1985: 84–5; Kugelmeier 1996: 171–2; Slater 2002: 282–3; Lennartz 2010: 189, 283; Biles 2011: 142; Zogg 2014: 53–8, 167–9. The allusion to Archilochus by way of Cratinus might bring to mind the concept of the ‘window reference’, which was introduced by Richard Thomas (1986: 188‒9) for the study of the arte allusiva in Hellenistic and Roman poetry. Note, however, that in the Aristophanic script there is no attempt to ‘correct’ Cratinus’ quotation in order to ‘restore’ the more pristine version of Archilochus. If anything, Aristophanes ‘corrects’ the form used by both Archilochus and Cratinus, so as to better adapt it to the rural identity of his own chorus and the context of his own play. Indeed, Cratinus, the chronologically intermediate model, does not seem to serve as a kind of ‘window onto the ultimate source’ (Archilochus), which should be ‘otherwise not visible’, according to Thomas’ description of the Hellenistic and Roman technique. The texts of Cratinus and Archilochus are equally visible behind

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career as the ‘patriarch’ of Attic comedy.42 Archilochus, on the other hand, was the paramount author of iambic poetry, the genre which Aristotle (Poet. 1448b34–1449a5) would later single out as a notional predecessor and precursor of comedy. It is noteworthy that, whatever literary-historical relationship may have actually existed between iambus and comic theatre, the comic poets of classical Athens seem to have shared Aristotle’s opinion.43 Several times Aristophanes quotes passages of Archilochus in a way which implies that the great iambic poet is envisaged as a literary model for Aristophanic comedy, especially with regard to satirical invective, didactic pretence and the use of fable.44 Cratinus, in his comedy Archilochoi, brought Archilochus himself on stage as a dramatic character (fr. 6 PCG; cf. fr. 2 PCG), to incarnate the poetics of abusive invective and ribald humour, and ultimately to serve as a persona of the satirical comic poet.45 The double frame of reference – to the greatest representative of the earlier comic tradition and to the most illustrious iambic forerunner of comic drama – marks the oration about peace as a gradual regression in the history of the comic genre, towards the primary roots of the comic spirit.

42

43

44 45

Aristophanes’ reference and both carry the same force and generic significance; neither of them appears to be subordinate to the other. See Ar. Eq. 526–36, which is a tribute to Cratinus’ success and wide recognition, in spite of Aristophanes’ sarcastic and critical attitude. In Ar. Ran. 357 Cratinus is styled ταυροφάγος, ‘bull-eater’, a cult epithet belonging to Dionysus himself; Cratinus is thus assimilated to the god of comedy, and anyone who has not been initiated into his ‘Bacchic rites’ is excluded from the chorus’ celebration. On Cratinus’ emblematic status see Pieters 1946: 3–4, 48–51, 132, 206, 209; Rosen 1988: 37–42; Ruffell 2002; Bakola 2010: 2–5, 16–29; Biles 2011: 104–7, 134–8, 185, 231–2. Cf. the pair of jokes in Peace 695–703: the tragic poet Sophocles has survived through the war, even though he is old and affected by avarice. By contrast, Cratinus is said to have died ‘when the Spartans invaded’, because he could not bear to see a wine jar being smashed (a patently fake report – Cratinus was still competing at the Dionysia in 423 BCE, by which time the Spartan invasions of Attica had ceased). The tragic author lives through the military conflict, because his art is well adapted to the atmosphere of wartime. Comic writing, however, has no place in the world of war, and its representative must perish. See Rosen 1988; Degani 1993; Kugelmeier 1996: 163–9; Zanetto 2001; Rotstein 2010: 67–111; and Rosen 2013, against the scepticism of Bowie 2002 and Lennartz 2010: 23–5, 310–38. See Rosen 1988: 16–33; Degani 1993: 15–16, 20–2. See Pieters 1946: 32–5, 49–51, 132–5, 205; Pretagostini 1982; Rosen 1988: 42–9; Ornaghi 2004: 218–28; Bakola 2010: 18, 70–9; Rotstein 2010: 289–92; Revermann 2013: 117–18; Bianchi 2016: 13–18, 39–46, 62–71, 94–8.

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The perception of iambic poetry as a spiritual precursor of comedy may explain why Archilochus is a favourite subject of allusion in the comic versions of the world of peace. In the Acharnians (1227–34) the final victory of Dicaeopolis, the comic hero and anti-war champion, is celebrated with a quotation from the hymn to Heracles attributed to Archilochus: τήνελλα καλλίνικος, ‘too-too-too-toom, what a fine victory!’ (fr. 324 IEG2). The same effect is employed in the finale of the Peace. Two young boys, the sons of guests at Trygaeus’ wedding feast, practice the songs which they have prepared to perform as part of the celebrations (1265–304). The first boy, the son of the warmongering general Lamachus (the main antagonist of the peace-loving hero in the Acharnians), recites Homeric verses or pastiches of hexameter verse parts taken from the Iliad and other heroic poems of the epic cycle, such as the Epigoni (1270–87).46 All these epic lines describe battles and armed clashes, weapons and fighting heroes. Homer and the epic cycle appear as a kind of poetry suitable for war but inapt for peacetime. Indeed, when Trygaeus is annoyed by these warlike themes and tries to oppose the boy with a song of peace in epic style, he needs to improvise two lines (1280–1: ὣς οἱ μὲν δαίνυντο βοῶν κρέα . . . ἄριστον προτίθεντο καὶ ἅτθ’ ἥδιστα πάσασθαι, ‘thus they feasted on the flesh of oxen . . . they had their midday meal set before them, and whatever is most enjoyable to eat’), which have, as a whole, no equivalent in the extant Homeric corpus.47 In the finale of the Peace, as also in the later Contest of Homer and Hesiod, which includes two of the hexameter lines quoted by Lamachus’ son (1282–3 = Contest 107–8 Allen), Homer is the poet of war 46

47

For identification of the epic models see Olson 1998: 307–9; Compton-Engle 1999: 325; Zogg 2014: 144–63. Cf. Macía Aparicio 2000: 230–2; Platter 2007: 133–4; Zogg 2014: 156–7. Similarly in Hierocles’ scene Trygaeus presents a cento of Homeric phrases as an oracle in favour of peace (1090–3; cf. Olson 1998: 278 and Zogg 2014: 135–44 for the Homeric models). But the crucial line 1091, which describes the actual establishment of Eirene and her cult (Εἰρήνην εἵλοντο καὶ ἱδρύσανθ’ ἱερείῳ, ‘they chose Peace and installed her with a sacrifice’), is a free improvisation without any Homeric model (cf. Hall 2006: 345). Trygaeus may wish to claim Homeric textual support for his scheme of peace (1089–98; cf. Platter 2007: 123–4, 128–9, 142, 224–7; Revermann 2013: 123; Zogg 2014: 34, 140–1), but in fact he needs to fabricate and interpolate his own creations in order to make the Homeric corpus serve his purpose.

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par excellence.48 Homeric epic was also regarded as the precursor and prime model of tragedy; this idea is already set forth by Plato (Resp. 595b–c, 607a) and later recurs in Aristotle’s Poetics (1448b34–1449a5), coupled with the consideration of iambus as an antecedent of comedy. Lamachus’ son, who recites the verses of martial epic, the forerunner of warlike tragedy, is rightly expelled from the world of peace (1294). On the other hand, the second boy is introduced as the son of Cleonymus, a notorious coward and deserter, regularly ridiculed in comedy because he supposedly threw away his shield in a battle and ran away. This young guest recites some lines by Archilochus (1298–301, Archilochus fr. 5 IEG2), ironically taken from the famous poem about the warrior who discarded his shield in a battle against the Saians, in order to flee and save his own life. There are multiple levels of mockery and satire at this point, given that Cleonymus the coward was a stock target of the comic poets; Aristophanes never misses the chance to indulge in a joke against him.49 From a poetological point of view, the most interesting aspect is the antithesis between Homer and Archilochus and between their respective types of poetry. As already noted, Archilochus the iambographer, by contrast to Homer the epic bard, was perceived as the archetype and forefather of comic drama. Accordingly, Trygaeus accepts the second boy, the upholder of Archilochean proto-comedy, at his wedding feast (1302), even though he does not spare him the taunts about his father’s cowardice.50 As it transpires, throughout the Aristophanic play the contrast of war and peace is constructed as a binary opposition between tragedy and comedy; and the antithetical pattern culminates in the finale with the two boys’ singing contest, which projects the 48

49 50

Cf. Hall 2006: 323, 343–9. Regarding the use of material from the Contest of Homer and Hesiod see Richardson 1981: 2–3; Compton-Engle 1999: 327–9; Macía Aparicio 2000: 232–5; Graziosi 2001: 60, 65–6; Telò 2013: 133–5; Zogg 2014: 132–5, 157–9; Bassino 2019: 148–9. See Storey 1989; Ornaghi 2008. On the use of Homeric and Archilochean poetry in the finale of the Peace cf. Kugelmeier 1996: 42–3; Compton-Engle 1999; Macía Aparicio 2000: 226–37; Hall 2006: 343, 347–9; Platter 2007: 130–5; Revermann 2013: 123; Telò 2013; Zogg 2014: 58–70, 130–5, 144–63.

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opposition of the two dramatic genres back to their ultimate antecedents, their literary roots in epic and iambic poetry. The competition of the two youngsters is a confrontation between the epic of war and the iambus of retreat from war. Apart from the possible allusion to the old legend of the contest between Homer and Hesiod, the agōn of different types of song also reproduces a pattern used in earlier comedy, again by the emblematic Cratinus. Cratinus’ Archilochoi included a contest between Archilochus and Homer or between the representatives and supporters of iambic and epic poetry; apparently, the iambic side was victorious in the agōn, confirming the value of humour and satire versus the highbrow solemnity of heroic epic.51 The finale of Aristophanes’ Peace seems to allude to this older comic contest between epic and iambus. The generic and poetological concerns of Cratinus’ Archilochoi are combined with the thematic focus of the legendary competition between Homer and Hesiod, in which the rival poets stand respectively for the feats of war and the works of peace. The regress towards the ultimate iambic roots of the comedy of peace is filtered through the intermediary of earlier comic tradition. The celebration of peace is thus concluded with a full genealogy of the Aristophanic art.52 A Complete (Intra-)Dramatic Tetralogy The transition from the world of war to that of peace is achieved through the pivotal episode of the liberation of Eirene from her cavernous prison (426–520). This episode, together with the surrounding scenes, reworks themes and techniques of stagecraft characteristic of the satyr play.53 Already at the end of the prologue Trygaeus cries aloud and summons the working men from the entire Greek world to help him set the goddess free (292–300); 51 52 53

See above, n. 45. Cf. Telò 2013: 130–5. This is a widespread view: see Pfeiffer 1938: 12–19; Newiger 1957: 114–15; Rau 1967: 194; Newiger 1980: 227; Hourmouziades 1984: 23, 177; Goyens-Slezakowa 1990: 104–8; Jouan 1997: 222–4; Hall 2006: 340–1; Bakola 2010: 108–10; Lämmle 2013: 40; Revermann 2013: 122; cf. Cassio 1985: 42–6 and Olson 1998: 130, who have some reservations. The total denial expressed by Zogg 2014: 219–20, 228–34 seems exaggerated.

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as a result, the chorus enter (parodos of the play) and declare their willingness to collaborate in the collective effort. This is an adaptation of a common motif of satyric drama: a god or hero, faced with a difficult task, cries out for assistance, and his summons is answered by the chorus of satyrs, who appear and offer their help.54 The call is formulated in a stereotypical manner and consists in an enumeration of various professional or social classes of men of the land, who may be within earshot and hear the cry; all of them are exhorted to come. In the Peace, similarly, Trygaeus bursts into hailing an accumulation of diverse professional, social and ethnic categories of people.55 The scene of Eirene’s liberation recalls in particular the scenario of Aeschylus’ Dictyulci, which similarly revolves around a collective effort of hauling out a heavy load, so as to free a group of victims of injustice. The hero of Aeschylus’ satyr play, the mythical fisherman Dictys, summons the local inhabitants to help him drag a very heavy object out of the sea, which he is unable to pull out on his own; the satyrs come and help him haul the catch ashore, a big chest which proves to contain Danaë and her infant son Perseus, who had been cast adrift by Danaë’s cruel father (frr. 46a, 46c, 47a). In the Peace, analogously, Trygaeus calls all the 54

55

See e.g. Aeschylus, Dictyulci fr. 46a.16–21, fr. 46c; Sophocles, Ichneutae fr. 314.37–54; Adesp. trag. fr. 681.13–14. Cf. Sutton 1975: 354; Seaford 1984: 36, 193–4; Bakola 2010: 109. Aeschylus fr. 46a.18–20: ]πάντες γεωργοὶ δεῦτε κἀμπελοσκάφοι | ]ε ποιμήν τ’ εἴ τίς ἐστ[’ ἐ]γχώριος | ]οι τε καὶ μα[ρ]{ε}[ιλ]ευτῶν ἔθνος (‘come hither, all you farmers and vinediggers, and any shepherd who may live here, and the tribe of charcoal-burners’). Fr. 46c.5–6: π]άντες τ’ ἀγρῶσται κα[ὶ υ–x–υ–] βοηδρομεῖτε (‘run to my cry, all the farmers and . . .’). Sophocles fr. 314.39–42: ποι]μὴν εἴτ’ ἀγρωστη[ | b μαριλοκαυc τῶν ἐν λόγῳ παρ [ίσταται | . . . . . .]είων νυμφογεννή[τ | . . ...]ν τίς ἐστι, πᾶσιν ἀγγέλ[λω (‘shepherd or farmer, and if any charcoal-burner is present to hear these words . . . and anyone of those born of the Nymphs, I summon all’). Adesp. fr. 681.13–14: π[α]ῖδες αἰπόλων καὶ . . . σο[ | πης ποι[μένε]ς βουκόλοι μαινάδες (‘sons of goatherds and . . . shepherds, cowherds, maenads’). Peace 296–8: γεωργοὶ κἄμποροι καὶ τέκτονες καὶ δημιουργοὶ καὶ μέτοικοι καὶ ξένοι καὶ νησιῶται, δεῦρ’ ἴτ’, ὦ πάντες λεῴ (‘farmers and merchants and carpenters and craftsmen and metics and foreigners and islanders, come hither, all you people’). The allusion to this satyric topos may explain, to a certain extent, the shift of the dramatic identity of the chorus of the Peace. At the chorus’ first appearance, Aristophanes imitated the enumeration of various classes of people that was standard in the corresponding scenes of satyric drama, in order to recognizably refer to this latter genre. Afterwards, when the purpose of this literary allusion had been duly accomplished, he narrowed down the composition of his chorus to the one category that interested him for his plot, namely, the farmers. Cf. Dobrov 2001: 103.

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Greeks to assist him in hauling out of the cave the goddess Eirene and her companions, who have been wrongly imprisoned by the terrible Polemus. The ensuing parallelism between Eirene and Perseus, the wondrous infant saved in the Aeschylean play, well suits certain details of the Aristophanic text. Perseus is the hero destined to slay the Gorgon; the restored goddess of peace is similarly said to have ‘rid the people of the Gorgons’ (561: ἀφεῖλε . . . τὰς Γοργόνας), a mocking reference to the Gorgon emblem pictured on the shield of the warmongering general Lamachus, the emblematic representative of the pro-war demagogues.56 Furthermore, Perseus was helped in his labours by Hermes, who offered him guidance for his itinerary and a sickle to decapitate the Gorgon.57 The same god provides crucial assistance to the comic hero of the Peace in the liberation of the goddess. The sickle is much exalted in the latter part of the Aristophanic play as a cherished tool of the farmers, the staunchest supporters of peace and enjoyers of peacetime.58 Perseus is also connected to the birth of the winged horse Pegasus, the mythical model parodied in the dung beetle of the Peace. According to the traditional story, Pegasus sprang from the Gorgon’s severed neck, when she was decapitated; in a way, Perseus brought the winged horse into the world and gave it the freedom to fly.59 The Aristophanic version amusingly reverses the mythical pattern: thanks to the flight of the comic hero’s mock-Pegasus, the peace goddess (who corresponds to Perseus in the context of the comic imitation of the Dictyulci) is set free and brought to light. The archetype of Perseus, which is fittingly projected onto Eirene through the evocation of the Aeschylean satyr play, tallies with many aspects of the peace goddess’ comic story.60 56 57 58

59 60

Cf. Ar. Ach. 574, 582–3, 964–5, 1095, 1131, 1181; Konstantakos 2016. Apollod. Bibl. 2.4.2; Pherecydes fr. 11 Fowler; Gantz 1993: 305–7; Fowler 2013: 253–8. Peace 1200–3. Perseus’ sickle is called ἅρπη in ancient sources (Apollodorus, Pherecydes), not δρέπανον, the common appellation of the reapers’ tool, which is also used in the Aristophanic text. But clearly both words signify the same artefact, the agricultural sickle. See West 1966: 217–18; cf. Lexica Segueriana p. 446.12 Bekker (ἅρπην: δρέπανον). Hes. Theog. 280–1; Apollod. Bibl. 2.4.2; Gantz 1993: 20–1. Some scholars also detect influences from another favourite motif of satyric drama: the anodos of a female divine figure from the underworld, as exemplified in Sophocles’

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In the Aristophanic fiction the liberation of Eirene marks the end of the reign of war, which was dominated by tragedy, and the inauguration of the new reality of peace, in which the primordial sources of comedy are exploited. Appropriately, the scenes leading up to the liberation are fashioned on the model of satyr play, a mixed, intermediary and transitional genre, on the borderline between tragic and comic drama. Satyr play was written by tragic dramatists; it used language, structural patterns and dramaturgical conventions identical or very similar to those of tragedy; it accompanied the tragic dramas in performance; yet it also incorporated funny elements, ridiculous characters, mythological burlesque and a spirit of hilarity, which brought it close to the generic nature of comedy.61 Satyric drama was the ideal artistic form to provide a bridge between the universe of tragedy and that of comedy; therefore, Aristophanes selected it as the underlying literary model for the scenes of his play which effect the transition from the tragic world of war to the comic one of peace. In the context of the tragic tetralogy, the satyr play marked the end of the tragic author’s performance and (at least during the years of the Peloponnesian War, when comedies were performed on the same days as the tragic plays)62 heralded the production of a comedy that was to follow. The same function is accomplished by the intradramatic reflection of satyric dramaturgy in Aristophanes’ Peace. Indeed, this Aristophanic play virtually offers the experience of a full festival of the Dionysia within the limits of a single dramatic script.63 The three individual Euripidean tragedies that

61

62

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Pandora or The Hammerers. On this stimulating but more problematic hypothesis see Sutton 1975; Bowie 1993: 144–5; Olson 1998: xxxvii–xxxviii; Dobrov 2001: 101–3, 192–3; 2007: 253, 261–5; Bakola 2010: 109–10. On the intermediate and mixed nature of the satyric drama see Sutton 1980: 159–79; Seaford 1984: 16–33, 44–8; Krumeich, Pechstein and Seidensticker 1999: 26–8, 32–7; Seidensticker 2005: 46–51; Dobrov 2007; Bakola 2010: 101–17; Lämmle 2013: 35‒83; O’Sullivan and Collard 2013: 3–8, 25–8; Shaw 2014: 1–7, 13–26, 81–90; Nelson 2016: 74–84; cf. a more reserved approach in Griffith 2015: 15–26, 77–88, 110–35, 146–69. See Mastromarco 1975; Pickard-Cambridge 1988: 66, 83; Csapo and Slater 1994: 107, 119–20; Slater 1999: 351–3. Cf. the insightful remarks of Hall 2006: 338, 342–3, 352. Aristophanes repeated the same effect a decade later in the Thesmophoriazusae, a play which similarly strings together a virtual tetralogy of Euripidean tragedies, followed by a bawdy finale of comedy. The corresponding structure of the Thesmophoriazusae has been magisterially analysed by Angus Bowie, in terms which have largely inspired my discussion of the Peace (Bowie 1993: 224–5): ‘Thesmophoriazusae is made up of four plays of

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are parodied in the first part of the Peace – Bellerophon, Aeolus and Stheneboea – could conceivably form an interconnected tragic trilogy, if placed in a somewhat different order from the one in which they are reflected in the Aristophanic text. Aeolus was Bellerophon’s great-grandfather;64 the Euripidean tragedy named after him would come first in a chronologically arranged trilogy. The main theme of Euripides’ Aeolus was the incestuous love affair between a son and a daughter of the eponymous hero,65 a notoriously scandalous situation stigmatized in Aristophanic comedy (Clouds 1370–3). In the context of a connected tragic tetralogy, like the one imaginarily constructed in the Aristophanic play, this unlawful liaison could be perceived as generating a kind of ancestral defilement, transmittable to the family’s descendants. The two following tragedies tell the story of one of Aeolus’ descendants, Bellerophon. The Stheneboea dramatized one of this character’s earlier adventures: the unsuccessful attempt of Stheneboea, the wife of King Proetus of Tiryns, to seduce the young Bellerophon, and her subsequent plots against the virtuous hero. The Bellerophon concentrated on a later stage of the hero’s life: Bellerophon’s embitterment because of the evil prevailing in the world, and his disastrous attempt to fly to heaven in order to challenge the gods.66 Of course, these three Euripidean tragedies

64 65

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Euripides – Telephus, Palamedes, Helen and Andromeda – plus a comic coda involving a bawd, a dancing girl and a comic policeman. Is this not exactly the pattern during the Peloponnesian War of a day at the City Dionysia, with its three tragedies, satyr-play and comedy? . . . Andromeda was not a satyr-play, but the obscenity with which Aristophanes invests it, in the unappetising love-scene between Mnesilochus and Euripides and the sexually explicit language of the Scythian, who is soon to suffer from satyriasis when he sees the girl, is not inappropriate to that genre’s predilection for such matters. Not only therefore is comedy a much more flexible and versatile genre than tragedy, it can even save us from having to sit through long stretches of tragedy by abbreviating a whole festival-day’s drama into a single play . . . Finally, in Alexandros– Palamedes–Troades Euripides appears to have revived the idea of composing three connected tragedies on aspects of the Trojan story, that is, a trilogy of the type now represented only by the Oresteia. In Telephus–Palamedes–Helen, Aristophanes has done the same, by dramatising aspects of the story which, as in Euripides, relate to events occurring before, during and after the Greek victory respectively’. Apollod. Bibl. 1.9.3; Gantz 1993: 169, 173–5, 313. See Aeolus test. ii (P.Oxy. 2457); Mülke 1996: 37, 52–5; Jouan and van Looy 1998: 15–37; Hall 2006: 74–5; Telò 2010: 298–303; Xanthaki-Karamanou and Mimidou 2014. See Collard, Cropp and Lee 1995: 79–120; Jouan and van Looy 2000: 1–35; Dobrov 2001: 91–7, 189–91; Jouan and van Looy 2002: 1–27; Curnis 2003.

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did not actually belong to the same connected trilogy; although their exact dates and tetralogies are not known, there is no indication that these plays were produced together. Nevertheless, the mythographical and thematic links between the three dramas suggest that Aristophanes’ selection of them was not accidental; the comic poet chose to parody three tragedies which could be somehow connected to each other and form a homogeneous trilogy. Aristophanes complements this sequence of tragedies with allusions to a satyr play, which concludes the imaginary tragic trilogy before the transition to the world of comedy. Aeschylus’ Dictyulci draws from a different cycle of myths than the three parodied Euripidean tragedies. Still, there are perceptible associations between the former and the latter. Dictys, who fished up the chest of Danaë and Perseus, was also counted as a descendant of Aeolus, like Bellerophon; he was a scion of the same broader family of heroes.67 As has often been pointed out, the satyr play seems to have been linked to the preceding triad of tragedies through a common dominant theme, which was solemnly treated in the tragedies and recurred in the satyric text in a hilarious version, an ironic mood or an optimistic perspective.68 There are connections of this kind between the stories of Bellerophon and Perseus. Both of them are flying heroes – the former thanks to the wonderful Pegasus, the latter by means of his winged sandals – and use their flying capacity in order to combat and slay dangerous monsters. However, Perseus returns his magic flying sandals to Hermes after his labours have been concluded, and makes no further use of them;69 Bellerophon, by contrast, employs the winged horse again at a later instance, this time with a hubristic purpose (to ascend to heaven), and is destroyed by Zeus. Perseus, 67 68

69

Apollod. Bibl. 1.7.3, 9.6. See Sutton 1980: 164–7; Hourmouziades 1984: 24–47; Seaford 1984: 21–4; Sutton 1985: 349–50; Krumeich, Pechstein and Seidensticker 1999: 34–8; Lämmle 2013: 88‒ 92; Griffith 2015: 56–70, 133–4; Nelson 2016: 84–9. If the Dictyulci originally concluded an Aeschylean trilogy about Perseus’ adventures, Silenus’ wish to wed Danaë in the satyr play, doubtless thwarted after Dictys’ intervention, would have provided a humorous counterpart to Polydectes’ darker erotic attempts on Danaë in the tragedies. Cf. Goins 1997: 205–8; O’Sullivan and Collard 2013: 256–7. Apollod. Bibl. 2.4.3; Pherecydes fr. 11 Fowler; Gantz 1993: 310.

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the young hero of the Dictyulci, thus appears as a happier counterpart of the ill-starred Bellerophon, the protagonist of the parodied Euripidean tragedies. The tragic and satyric dramas selected for intertextual reception in the Aristophanic play form a sufficiently coherent and functional tetralogy. Conclusion In Aristophanes’ Peace the allusions, parodies and echoes of tragedy, earlier comedy and other literary genres, such as satyr play, epic and iambus, are not pursued merely for fun nor distributed at random inside the play. They follow a careful underlying plan and perform an important function in the thematic structure of the work as a whole. Tragic drama is identified with the domination of war – a plausible equivalence, given that tragedy regularly thematizes war and draws its plots from the numerous military clashes of Greek mythology (from the Trojan expedition to the Seven against Thebes and the patriotic battles of Theseus and his descendants). On the other hand, the earlier comic tradition and especially the cruder forms of popular comic entertainment are reworked to illustrate the joys and celebrations of peace. The same antithesis is projected onto the antecedent genres of heroic epic and satirical iambus, while the transition from tragic war to comic peace is marked with motifs typical of the intermediate form of satyric drama. The Aristophanic oeuvre incorporates all these literary genres, uses them as structural materials for an elaborate artistic scheme and ultimately transcends them by unifying them into a more composite and polymorphic vision. Nominally a ‘comedy’, Aristophanes’ creation is in fact a kind of super-generic compendium which condenses the entirety of the literary production of its age, filtered through the irrepressible irony of genius. According to a well-known anecdote, Plato sent Aristophanes’ works to the Sicilian tyrant Dionysius as an excellent source of information about the state of Athens.70 He could equally well have recommended them as a panorama of Greek literary history. 70

Life of Aristophanes, Prolegomena de Comoedia 28.46–9 (Koster 1975: 135).

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part ii C L A S S I C A L P H I L O S O P H Y A N D R HE TO R I C , AND THEIR RECEPTION

ch a p t e r 5 O N C O M I N G A F T E R S O C R AT ES

laura viidebaum

Introduction Whenever philosophy needs a reboot she turns to Socrates. It is thus no surprise that when Altertumswissenschaft started to take shape in Germany in the eighteenth century, a new periodization of philosophy (and, by implication, “Western civilization”) emerged which first introduced the concept of “Presocratic” philosophy.1 Socrates was perceived to be the turning point in the history of philosophy in a way that demanded that other philosophers and periods be understood in relation to him: they either came before or after Socrates.2 Moreover, when contemporary thinkers feel that academic philosophy needs to be better grounded in the world “out there”, they get together and vow to go back to the marketplace, just as – so they say – Socrates used to do.3 That Socrates marks a turning point in the history of philosophy was of course proposed by the ancients, too, among them Aristotle, the Stoics,4 and Cicero,5 to name just a few of the most important contributors to the debate. Since antiquity, the exemplum of Socrates has served to legitimize a philosophical idea or an innovation in philosophical method. As a touchstone or an original starting position for academic philosophy, he is regarded as a useful conversation 1 2

3 4 5

See Laks 2018: chs. 1–2. Nietzsche, even if not influential among his contemporaries, exercised a lasting impact on the view of Socrates as a turning point in the periodization of philosophy. See e.g. Geburt der Tragödie, ch. 15; Götzen-Dämmerung, Socrates 5. See also Laks 2018: 21–8. On the artificiality of the pre-/post-Socratic distinction from a purely temporal point of view see e.g. Warren 2007: 1–2. Wendland 2019. E.g. Brouwer 2014: ch. 4. Cic. Tusc. 5.10. This is another crucial moment for the history of philosophy: Cicero introducing Roman philosophy and education via discussions of Greek predecessors. Gildenhard 2007 is indispensable. See now also McConnell 2019.

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partner in sorting out current challenges in the field, be they the challenges of first-century BCE Rome or those of twenty-firstcentury public intellectuals. And Socrates himself, of course, never remains quite the same in the process of this recurring reception and reinterpretation.6 Reception studies enables us to move away from the dead-ends of those endless attempts to establish the “actual” historical Socrates and to focus instead on the much more productive approach of trying to understand the “idea of Socrates” or the “meaning of Socrates” for a particular recipient in a given historical moment.7 Yet there is also something else that makes Socrates a unique case for reception studies: he did not write. While the primary (if not sole) focus of reception studies is the recipient, the listener or viewer, of a text,8 we may wonder what happens when we consider in a more systematic way than before the possibility that a model of reception is built around a person, and a person who, for that matter, explicitly did not write himself ? 9 We often talk about the body of texts of an author, an author’s corpus, and how this participates in reception, but is the reception of an actual corpus, a human being, the same as the reception of a text (or “textual corpus”)? And an important question for the present chapter, 6

7

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Martindale 2006: 5–8. Socrates today is not an unambiguously positive or clear-cut model for philosophy. See, e.g., Socrates compared to the online “troll” in Zuckerberg 2019. Note the criticisms of Martindale 1993 and 2006: 9: classicists have often remained stuck with the explicitly positivist historical approach (e.g. trying to establish some historical truth about Socrates and his philosophy) and have not been willing to theoretically engage with reception studies. See, however, Hardie and Moore 2010 and Cheney and Hardie 2015 for recent theoretical engagements with reception theory that are inspired by, or closely connected to, Classics. Bromberg 2019: 41–51 compares the “Socratic problem” with the “Homeric problem” and works through a reception methodology from an explicitly non-historicist perspective. Richard Hunter, though wary of using the term “reception”, has done a lot to shift the focus of readers of ancient texts away from attempts to pin down one specific historically valid meaning to a given text and guide them towards more dynamic and creative approaches to reception that we notice in the ancient texts themselves. See, e.g., his inaugural lecture “On Coming After”, printed in Hunter 2008c, which probably counts as Hunter’s most theoretical and self-reflective discussion of his approach to reception in Classics. Hardwick and Stray 2008: 33 give a rough outline of the most generic ways to “do reception”. All those conceptions seem deeply rooted in writing and in texts. Martindale 2006: 3 has helpfully pointed out the broad range of meanings that “text” can encompass. Nevertheless, the primary focus in, and the archetypal form of, most classical reception analyses is a text understood as a body of writing (a textual corpus). Bromberg 2019: 44 calls Socrates a “figure of pure reception” (his emphasis).

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which seeks to trace the early reception of Socrates, is whether the ancients would even have been attuned to this difference? Did they regard Socrates as unique (also) because he left no writings, no texts for posterity to receive?10 Socrates’ own body is a topic of frequent comment in Socratic dialogues.11 Plato, for example, makes a point of commenting on his eating and drinking habits (Symp. 176c, 214a, 220a), his unusual sleeping needs (Cri. 43b, Symp. 223a), his high endurance for extreme weather and food conditions (Symp. 219e–220b) and his courage (Lach. 181a–b), and even imagines Socrates as another animal, a gadfly (Ap. 30e). In many dialogues, Socrates’ physical traits and appearance are employed for the sake of deliberately challenging or turning upside down commonly perceived morality and expectations:12 Socrates’ peculiarities are made “emblematic of a new kind of heroic self”,13 and some of the details of those descriptions will have interesting afterlives of their own.14 Socrates is systematically scrutinized to an unprecedented level of detail. Indeed, no other character, fictional or real, from Greek antiquity is afforded quite the same kind of detailed attention to his or her appearance and bodily functions as we see with Socrates.15 While different authors make use of Socrates’ body for their own aims, it is possible that the general fascination with his body comes from the fact that Socrates wrote nothing and left no “textual body” 10

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Wallace 2015: 183–5 argues that the musical theorist Damon did not publish anything during his lifetime and takes this to be a sign of Damon’s lack of ambition for Panhellenic recognition. While Damon (and in particular the reception of Damon) does not compare well with the reception of Socrates, there is indeed something about the emphasis on local reception as opposed to Panhellenic or international fame that seems relevant to Socrates as well. Socrates’ body comes up most frequently in relation to passions and desires. Moderation in bodily pleasures is fundamental to Xenophon’s portrait of Socrates. Comments are ubiquitous and scattered throughout Xenophon’s work; for a more in-depth discussion on Socrates’ schooling of his own body and desires see e.g. Mem. 1.3.5–15. On Socrates’ asceticism in Plato, see now Zoller 2018. Aristophanes also comments on Socrates’ physical appearance. See Dover 1968: xxxii– xxxiii; Brickhouse and Smith 1989: 14–15, 22; Zanker 1995; Blondell 2002: 70–5. See also Hunter 2004b: 10–15. Blondell 2002: 73. The relevance of Socrates’ sandals for Socratic reception is discussed in Hunter 2012: 109–11. Blondell 2002: 70.

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(corpus) to reflect upon.16 In other words, descriptions of Socrates’ body and appearance are essential features of his reception and come to stand for the textual body that was never written.17 The following discussion will consider the reception of this unique and textually un-receivable body, Socrates, in the work of arguably one of the most textual authors of the Greco-Roman antiquity – Isocrates. Unlike the “first-generation” Socratics, who had direct access to Socrates and left careful portraits of the philosopher composed by a group of like-minded admirers, Isocrates offers an interesting insight into the way in which Socrates (both his physical presence and his transformation into an imaginary model figure) was perceived to have shaped the cultural and philosophical landscape in Athens. Though sometimes also counted among Socrates’ admirers – and indeed there are important elements of Socratic imitation in Isocrates’ works that make his engagement with Socrates thoroughgoing and pervasive (more below) – the following discussion will argue that Isocrates’ works offer us a fundamentally critical reflection on Socrates and his role as a teacher in Athens. This critical insight becomes a fundamental motivation for Isocrates’ own work, and there is indeed much at stake: according to Isocrates, Athens is in need of a new teacher and philosopher figure (Isocrates himself) who would supplant the statuesque Socrates.18 Isocrates’ Relationship to Socrates The biographical tradition associates Isocrates’ intellectual formation most frequently with Gorgias, Prodicus and Theramenes.19 There is also another, much later and more dubious, tradition that connects Isocrates to Socrates. Despite the confident claim in the Anonymous 16 17

18 19

On the bodily aspects of the Greek poetic corpus, see Barchiesi 1996. The body as a site for learning seems relevant to, though unexplored in, Too’s (2000) otherwise fascinating account of Socrates as offering a paradigm for the pedagogical contract in classical Athens and contemporary Anglophone universities. On Socrates and statues, see Steiner 1996. Gorgias seems to be particularly important and the two are associated in Cicero, Orat. 176, D.H. Isoc. 1, Quint. Inst. Or. 3.1.13, Ps. Plut. Isoc. 2, Anon. Life 92–3. Too 1995: 235–9 questions this ancient tradition. Livingstone 1998: 270 expresses the most widely shared position: Gorgias “was certainly an influence on Isocrates, if not, as some ancient sources claim, his teacher.” Bons 1996: 15 has suggested that Isocrates shows most familiarity with Prodicus.

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Life of Isocrates, which states that Isocrates μαθητὴς δ᾽ἐγένετο φιλοσόφου μὲν Σωκράτους (“became the student of Socrates the philosopher”),20 and a couple of anecdotes describing Isocrates as utterly distressed about the death of Socrates to the extent of wearing mourning clothes for a year, the association between Socrates and Isocrates is of late origin and carries little plausibility.21 However, the suggestion that there was some sort of intellectual association between the two men seems to carry an irresistible allure and has never ceased to attract prominent supporters.22 This association seems to be dependent on the interpretation of Isocrates’ Antidosis in conjunction with Plato’s Phaedrus (esp. 278e–279b), and Isocrates’ only mention of Socrates in his Busiris. It is of course highly likely that Isocrates had personally encountered Socrates and, together with many other Athenians, was deeply affected by Socrates’ trial in 399 BCE and his subsequent death. Devising a career in education and laying claims to philosophy after this watershed moment must have forced Isocrates to think hard about the role of teachers and intellectuals in Athenian society. Although most scholars regard Isocrates as a staunch rival of Plato, Aristotle and other Socratics,23 it might be equally productive to regard him together with his contemporaries as trying to negotiate the Socratic legacy while developing his own unique approach to education and philosophy.24 And yet, unlike the Socratic writers, Isocrates seems to diagnose deficiencies in the educational scene as direct results of upholding Socrates as the model teacher and philosopher.25 Hence, even though responding 20 21

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Mandilaras 2003: 211. See Klaus Ries’ excellent discussion of the details of this tradition (1959: 1–8). It is bluntly brushed aside also in López Cruces and Fuentes González 2000: 894. See Kennedy’s account of Isocrates at 1963: 174–203. Isocrates is most frequently treated as imitating Socrates for his own philosophical apology in the Antidosis: see e.g. Too 1995: 192–3, 2000: 20, 2008: 24–6; Ober 1998: 260–3, 2004. Hunter 2012: 116–17 carefully draws attention to Isocrates’ deliberate departures from Socrates. See e.g. Eucken 1983, Nightingale 1995, Haskins 2004, Wareh 2012, Muir 2019. In fact, Isocrates repeatedly diagnoses the cultural milieu of his contemporaries by reference to predecessors. See e.g. C. soph. 19–21. The idea of “outdoing” the Socrates of the Apology is entertained by Ober 2004, but to my knowledge there is no more detailed examination of such a “challenge” or exploration of what such a critical reception might actually mean for Isocrates and his philosophical/educational program.

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to contemporary pressures in education and thus being in conversation with his contemporary Socratics, Isocrates sees them as mere representatives and interpreters of Socrates. Towards the middle of the fourth century Socrates was starting to reappear in public consciousness not as an outlier who flouted social norms but as a good and even exemplary citizen;26 it may come as no surprise, then, that Isocrates lumps all contemporary rivals together under the umbrella term “Socratics” and targets only one person – Socrates. Isocrates and Socrates: “Teachers” of Athens Even though (or precisely because) he had taken a rather different path in his approach to the true meaning and practice of philosophy, Isocrates must have found the sheer variety and output of all kinds of reflections and discussions about Socrates striking. It is beyond doubt that Socrates exercised a significant influence on the subsequent philosophical tradition. But was he seen as a teacher?27 And what would that even mean? From the early fifth century onwards, Athens had become a major attraction for all kinds of educational innovations, and by Socrates’ time we see a lot of different kinds of teaching taking place in the city,28 from musicians, sophists and philosophers to athletics and medical practitioners.29 Educational terminology and actual practices were not always aligned, disciplines were emerging, mixing and rivalries between different practitioners were fought out in public.30 And yet 26 27

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Zanker 1995. Scholarship is, as to be expected, vast and divisive on this topic. I have found Nehamas 1992 helpful. Wallace 2015: ch. 1 offers an engaging study of the educational environment in Athens from the perspective of musical theorists and how they engage with sophists and philosophers. Marrou 1964, though somewhat out-dated, is still valuable as a rethinking of the sophistic movement in the context of higher education in Athens. The sophists as teachers are helpfully tackled in Wallace 1998 and Ford 2002. For athletic training and education in Athens, see König 2016. For a brief overview of the Athenian educational setting, see Pritchard 2015. It is worth mentioning that all those different professionals could be lumped together under the umbrella term “sophist”. See Bromberg 2018, esp. 49–51 on poets and musicians as sophists. Most of our existing sources (and in particular those drawn from comedy, philosophy and oratory) describe the educational environment of the late fifth and fourth centuries as combative, confusing, exciting and dynamic. A good discussion of the philosophical scene (with strong emphasis on the Plato/Isocrates rivalry) is Nightingale 1995: ch. 1.

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even here, in the busy educational scene where many were trying to establish themselves as teachers (without much clarity about what exactly being a teacher entailed),31 Socrates stands out from the rest by seemingly engaging in education and yet famously claiming not to have been anyone’s teacher (Pl. Ap. 19d–e) and even more, that he knew nothing except the very fact that he knew nothing.32 For those evaluating Socrates’ legacy, much is at stake in this question: if he was a teacher, ought he not be held somehow responsible for his teaching and, by implication, for the deeds (and the consequences) of his students (e.g. Alcibiades)?33 Socratic writers were indeed very preoccupied with this question.34 While we do not find them holding a uniform view on this matter, they are all committed to demonstrating the benefits accrued by anyone who decided to spend time with Socrates.35 Indeed, despite 31

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The very general sense was clear enough: a teacher (διδάσκαλος) was somebody who imparted knowledge and/or skill to a recipient (student or group of “learners” in the broad sense). However, the term was also widely used in reference to a “source of fire” as a teacher for all mankind (A. Prom. 110–11; cf. Democr. 76 on misfortune and Th. 3.82 on war being a teacher), to poets as teachers following Homer (Ar. Av. 912), to trainers of dramatic choruses (Antiph. 6.13; cf. Cratin. 256) and sophists of all sorts (Plato’s portrayal of Euthydemus/Dionysodorus, Gorgias, et al.) as being able to impart knowledge and skill to their students. Lysias 12.78 expresses anxiety about Themistocles as teacher of the most awful deeds (δεινοτάτων ἔργων). Xenophon, though less consistent, also generally seems to agree that Socrates did not fashion himself as a teacher, most explicitly at Mem. 1.2.3. See also Moore 2018 on Xenophon’s avoidance of calling Socrates either a teacher or philosopher. For a useful overview, see Morrison 1994, Nehamas 1985, and Scott 2000. Anecdotes about sophistic/rhetorical teaching suggest that there might indeed have been an expectation for the teacher to take some kind of responsibility for the domain they taught. Blank 1985 draws attention to the Athenian law that appears to regard pre-payment as the only guarantee that the seller will be obliged to deliver the goods/services to the buyer. This arguably binds the teacher to deliver the learning promised to the student, something that Blank argues would have been particularly objectionable to Socrates. Other professions seem to have operated with a tuition requirement too. See Horstmanshoff 1990 on medical professionals and Cavanaugh 2018 on the Hippocratic oath (pp. 31–51 offers an analysis of Plato’s description of medical professionals and tuition). Plato and Xenophon seem to have a rather similar commitment to dissociating Socrates from any pretence about being a “teacher” (of virtue); cf. Moore 2018, against Dorion 2006. Morrison 2006: 114 points out that Xenophon’s Socrates is often portrayed in conversation with his friends (a context more evocative of advising), whereas Plato frequently shows Socrates talking to fellow Athenians outside his close-knit group. See e.g. Döring 2011, who discusses the plot of two lost dialogues of Aeschines – Alcibiades and Aspasia – and whose reconstruction puts important emphasis on the idea of the moral improvement that Socrates is able to bring about in his companions, even without precise knowledge (and/or the ability to teach).

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overtly denouncing the ability to teach and give practical advice, the internal characters of Plato’s dialogues often interpret Socrates’ activity as teaching and have expectations of his performance based on what they know a teaching/learning experience should be like.36 In Laches, Socrates is approached as someone who concerns himself with the education of the young and whose opinion ought to be taken into consideration.37 In the debatably Platonic Cleitophon, again, the eponymous character testifies to the inspirational impact of Socrates when it comes to his ability to spark an interest in students for learning.38 In other words, even though the Platonic Socrates explicitly disputes being called a teacher, the internal audience of the dialogue often treats him as a teacher figure and attributes pedagogical expectations to his presence. Hence, they expect to learn from Socrates and show that they are willing to follow his suggestions,39 even if that means restarting a previously failed conversation from scratch. Evidence from other Socratic writers seems to corroborate this view of Socrates as a kind of teacher. Even though fragments of and testimonia on “minor Socratics” suggest that the Socratics were a rather loose group of thinkers with various allegiances who held different philosophical positions,40 there appears nevertheless to be a subset of beliefs that many or most of them share and that justify classifying them as Socratic 36

37

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See Morrison 1994: 194–6 and Redfield 2018. It also seems that Plato might be avoiding attributing the term διδάσκαλος or forms of διδάσκω to Socrates precisely because of the widespread confusion associated with them and prefers to use instead forms of ἐπαΐω for the search for (moral and political) expertise (Tht. 145d, Cri. 48a, Prt. 314a, Phdr. 275e) and ἐπιστήμων (Grg. 448b, Resp. 599b, Tht. 208e, Plt. 301b). This is also why Scott 2000 (esp. 24–7) seems to miss the bigger picture when he defines “teacher” for Plato strictly in the sense of διδάσκαλος. Pl. Lach. 180c–181d. Here, Socrates is never referred to as a διδάσκαλος and seems to be set apart from Damon, for example, who is clearly referred to as a teacher of music. Nevertheless, Socrates is regarded as an appropriate person to help seek out different teachers (e.g. his recommendation of Damon) and to offer valuable advice on educational issues more generally (i.e. not about whether he can teach a specific skill but rather whether he regards a specific skill teachable or worth learning). Though Cleitophon also makes it clear that, to his great frustration, Socrates has not taught him anything. See e.g. the end of Alcibiades I. See also Aristotle’s assessment of the Socratics in Peri philosophias fr. 1.4 (I H4 Giannantoni).

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thinkers. We can identify five areas where most Socratics are in agreement:41 (1) the conversational and dialogical method to approach truth; (2) the focus on ethics as the source of the most important kinds of truths; (3) the willingness to challenge commonly held assumptions and beliefs, especially about external commodities (wealth, power, etc.) as goods in themselves;42 (4) none of the Socratics appears to have been involved in politics beyond writing about it as a subject; (5) an emphasis on rebutting the accusations brought against Socrates and focusing in their work on his character and body.43

As for his contemporary Athenians, Aristophanes’ Clouds suggests that by 420s BCE the Athenian general public was happy to accept the idea of Socrates as a teacher.44 Indeed, it is unlikely that Aristophanes could have utilized his name in this play as an example of a philosophy teacher unless it meant something for the Athenian audience, and if not before then certainly after the play the image of Socrates as a strange (philosophy) teacher seems to have become firmly fixed in the Athenian imagination.45 What is surprising in the depiction of Socrates in this play is not merely his portrayal as a teacher, but the detailed rendering of Socrates as a head of school. As far as we can tell, this is the first school environment thus envisioned in Athens and, as such, it comes around thirty years before the first official philosophical school is founded, around the 390s, by Isocrates. It has already been noted 41

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Some of these elements also feature in Boys-Stones and Rowe 2013: ch. 1, with specific examples. Antisth. 98 (D. L. 6.104), 114 (D. L. 6.8), 134 (D. L. 6.11); Aesch. 95 (Stobaeus, Selections 2.8.26); Eucl. 31 (Cic. On Academic Scepticism 2.129); Xen. Mem. 4.2.31–5, 4.8.6–7, On Household Management 1.10–15; Pl. Ap. 30a–b, Euthyd. 278e–282a, etc. See also Boys-Stones and Rowe 2013: ch. 2. Hence at the center of their discussions of politics we often find an evaluation of two of Socrates’ most notorious and problematic pupils, Alcibiades and Critias. Xenophon’s Socratic works avoid reference to Alcibiades except in the report of the accusation against Socrates. Socrates was the central figure in both the original and reworked versions of the play and so the potential differences between the two should not affect my argument here. See also Dover 1968: lxxx–xcviii and Sommerstein 1982: 4, who both argue that the extent of the revisions were not as substantial as is sometimes believed. The clearest expression of the lasting impact of Aristophanes’ portrayal of Socrates is in Plato’s Ap. 18a–19c, where Socrates himself laments the impression that the Clouds has made on the Athenians.

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that Aristophanes’ portrayal of Socrates the teacher has many Pythagorean traits,46 but it is worth pointing out that those elements emerge most explicitly in the imagined school setting of the Phrontistērion, an unprecedented educational institution in Athens with Socrates as its celebrated head teacher.47 It is obvious that Aristophanes’ portrayal of Socrates is not a historically accurate rendering of the philosopher. Socrates was not the head of a school and that of course is part of the joke. However, the fact that he could be conveniently imagined as one has wide-ranging implications. In fact, it is not simply a question that Socrates was portrayed as a head of school, but also how such a school was imagined to function and how Socrates could be envisioned to run it. Given Plato’s connections with the Pythagoreans,48 it is plausible that Aristophanes’ “Pythagorean Socrates” was on his mind when some time later he acquired a property near Athens and gave his teaching a permanent center in the Academy.49 Be that as it may, it seems clear from all the above that Socrates was regarded by his contemporaries and fellow Athenians not simply as a teacher (a term contested by some Socratics), but as a fountainhead for an educational movement and change. Apart from literary and philosophical sources, material evidence too suggests that contemporaries saw Socrates as a teacher and a leading figure of philosophical schools. We see, for example, that the portrayal of Socrates in statues goes through remarkable change. In the earliest portraits from the fourth century, he was associated with Silenus, the teacher of divine and heroic children. In this context, Socrates is conceptualized as larger-than-life and an extraordinary human being, where his physical appearance 46

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Rashed 2009 offers an illuminating discussion of the implications of the Pythagorean elements in Aristophanes’ comedy for our understanding of Socratic philosophy. See also Bowie 1998 and Morrison 1958. All these should be read against Clarke 1971: 51 as well as Dover 1968’s account of Socrates as a composite figure of different sophists. See Bowie 1998 for a more detailed critique of Dover. The closest parallel might be Thucydides’ Pericles, who famously calls Athens the school of Hellas (2.41.1: λέγω τήν τε πᾶσαν πόλιν τῆς Ἑλλάδος παίδευσιν εἶναι). The context here, however, is political. See Hornblower 1991: 308, Habicht 1988. Morrison 1958: 198–218 argues that the idea of a school and teaching became particularly important for Plato after he had spent time with Archytas and examined Pythagorean secret societies. Clarke 1971: 59.

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openly challenges Athenian cultural stereotypes in the same way his intelligence and inquiries were offending his contemporary Athenians.50 While these early statues emphasize Socrates’ status as an outlier in Athenian politics and as an offence against Athenian taste (of beauty), the later fourth century sees an important change: Zanker points to the possibility that the new statue of Socrates was commissioned as part of the Lycurgan “program of renewal”.51 A Roman small-scale copy of the original, with its elegant gestures, clothing and beautified body, clearly points to the fact that Socrates was no longer portrayed as an outlier but rather as a “model citizen”.52 It is no less telling that the work was completed by one of the most famous sculptors of the day, Lysippus of Sicyon (D. L. 2.43), and that it was commissioned by the popular Assembly and erected in a public building. Isocrates kept a close eye on these developments. His position in the contemporary philosophical landscape has been subject to debate. Even though few philosophers today would consider Isocrates as their intellectual predecessor,53 he was quite probably among the first to open a school of philosophy in Athens,54 and he portrays himself as proposing a radical alternative to the philosophical – or, perhaps more precisely, educational – thought of his time. We should pause on the little-recognized fact that of all the philosophical schools we know of from that period, Isocrates’ was the only one not to trace its origins back to Socrates.55 This tells us two things: first, Socrates’ influence on his followers seems to have been such that it inspired the founding of schools that, in turn, increased the professionalization of philosophy and education.56 Second, as far as we can tell, Isocrates 50 51 52 53 54

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Zanker 1995: 39. Zanker 1995 38–9. Zanker 1995 58. Few now would perhaps be as dismissive as Marrou 1964: 131–3. The foundation of the school is often dated to the 390s BCE. Cf. Blass 1892: 17–18; Kennedy 1980: 31. Ostwald and Lynch 1994 argue that Antisthenes’ school was the first one founded in Athens, closely followed by that of Isocrates. Clarke 1971: 58, forgetting Isocrates, maintains that “the later philosophical schools, with the exception of the Epicurean, all derived from [Socrates]”. See Ostwald and Lynch 1994: 594–5 on the way various Socratic schools traced their origins to the historical Socrates. It is also true, as emphasized by Boys-Stones and Rowe 2013: viii, that schools should be regarded as a side effect rather than the primary focus or aim of the Socratics, and that they were primarily geared towards horizontal conversation with each other rather than vertical institution-building.

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was the only advocate for professional schools who shows us another way of conceiving higher education in Athens.57 His views on philosophy and education evolved in post-399 BCE Athens and were in direct dialogue with, and offered criticism of, the image of Socrates that had started to form and become slowly institutionalized by the large group of Socratic writers. Throughout his writings, Isocrates is openly fashioning himself as a teacher of Athenians and he uses various means for making this clear to anyone willing to listen. A good example is Antidosis, where Isocrates suggests that his prosecutor Lysimachus entered the trial with hopes of personal gain. According to Isocrates, Lysimachus was thinking that this suit against me would bring him profit from other sources, and he expected that if he won in the debate with me, whom he claims to be the teacher of other men (φησι διδάσκαλον εἶναι τῶν ἄλλων), everyone would regard his power as irresistible (ἀνυπόστατον). (Antid. 25)

In a clever maneuver, Isocrates does not claim to be a well-known teacher himself, but rather has his opponent say it, thus rendering the statement more impressive and truthful. He makes similar subtle suggestions elsewhere in the speech,58 which all contribute to building an image of Isocrates as the most successful teacher of the day, coming (allegedly) from his worst enemy and slanderer. The passage also evokes the competitiveness of the educational market in Athens: his detractor is eager to challenge the “famous teacher” Isocrates in order to then score points for his own performance and, possibly, for his school, which would in turn gain validity and thus students from such an encounter. Isocrates is confident, however, that they change their views of him as soon as they hear him out, because ultimately – Isocrates seems to imply – truth is more persuasive (Antid. 15, 170).59 57

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To be clear, I am not suggesting that Isocrates developed his philosophical school in response to Socratic schools (because they may not have existed yet), but rather that Isocrates’ views on education and philosophy were necessarily negotiating Socrates’ legacy and that he evaluated critically the kind of image of a teacher that Socrates’ followers started to cultivate through the name and character of “Socrates” in their writings. E.g. Antid. 30–2, 35–6, 40. Aristotle shares Isocrates’ view about the persuasiveness of truth (e.g. Rh. 1355a13–17).

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In the same speech, Isocrates also talks about his profession as a teacher in a more overt way (41), mentions the benefits he has conferred on his students and discusses the kind of educational principles practiced in his school. Hence, writing his defense speech at the age of eighty-two and looking back at his career, Isocrates fashions himself through his own words, but also through clever use of his slanderer Lysimachus, as a famous teacher of other men and as a head of a successful school. Note here that the text does not say a teacher of Athenians, but rather of “other men”, probably suggesting the impact of Isocrates and his school on all of Greece. In suggesting such widespread influence for his school, Isocrates might have been thinking also of other Socratic schools that were founded outside of Athens.60 In any case, it would certainly be odd not to consider that Isocrates was well aware of the unique position of his school as the only nonSocratic school of philosophy in Athens at the time. Given that Isocrates seems to have made a conscious choice not to follow Socrates like his other contemporaries, it is worth reflecting on the possibility that he had a particular interest in, and fundamental disagreements with, Socrates. Furthermore, it is probably no coincidence that the engagement with Socrates emerges so evidently in Isocrates’ late works, at a time when the increased importance of Socrates for other philosophical schools dominates the contemporary educational landscape in Athens and beyond. It has been noted that Isocrates’ Antidosis is much indebted to Plato’s Apology.61 Even though this debt has been primarily interpreted as suggestive of admiration, there is nothing in Isocrates’ works that supports such a reading. In fact, one of the most startling aspects of Plato’s Apology, Socrates’ attitude towards the jury, is turned completely upside down in Isocrates. When discussing the role of education in shaping successful newergeneration politicians and orators in Athens, for example, 60

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Most famously the Megarian school founded by Eucleides in his hometown of Megara and the Eleans (also called Eretrians), a school founded by Phaedo of Elis, but also the Cyrenaic school that was “founded” by Aristippus of Cyrene. Isocrates is probably also appropriating here the Periclean idea of Athens as the school of Greece (Thu. 2.41.1, mentioned above). Too 1995: 192–3, 2008: 24–6; Nightingale 1995: ch. 1; Ober 1998: 260–3, 2004; Hunter 2012: 117.

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Isocrates subtly draws attention to the work he himself is doing at his school and warns the jurors not to make the wrong decision of convicting him: For you excel and are superior to others not because of your attention to military matters, or because you have the best constitution, or are the most effective guardians of the laws your ancestors left to you, but because of that feature which makes human nature superior to that of other living creatures and the Greek race superior to the barbarians, namely, a superior education in intellect and speech (τῷ καὶ πρὸς τὴν φρόνησιν καὶ πρὸς τοὺς λόγους ἄμεινον πεπαιδεῦσθαι τῶν ἄλλων). Accordingly, it would be a most terrible outcome if you vote to condemn those who wish to surpass their contemporaries in the very things in which you surpass everyone else, and pile misfortune on those who obtain the kind of education in which you are the leaders. You must not ignore the fact that our city is thought to be the teacher of all those who are skilled in speaking and teaching (πάντων τῶν δυναμένων λέγειν ἢ παιδεύειν ἡ πόλις ἡμῶν δοκεῖ γεγενῆσθαι διδάσκαλος). (Antid. 291–5)

This passage is building up to say not only that Athens is the teacher of the rest of Greece, but also that it is Isocrates’ hard work in his school that has enabled Athens to stand out internationally as the teacher of the rest of the world. While the Socrates of the Socratic dialogues revealed the underlying ignorance and complacency of his fellow Athenians – that they actually do not know what they profess to know – Isocrates takes a different path and praises his fellow Athenians for already having outdone other Greeks in education. Athenians are the leaders of the world in education, and this is due to the work teachers in Athens have been doing so successfully. And this is also why Isocrates’ defense will be successful, he predicts: Athenians will respond with reason to their most revered teacher.62 There are some malicious characters who have brought the charge against Isocrates (“some sophists”, Lysimachus: Antid. 2, 14), but rather than being pervasive in Athenian society these are the outliers. There could not be a starker contrast. The Socratics and Plato in particular tell a story of Socrates’ encounters with his fellow citizens as one of constant challenges and failures, to make them 62

Even though in some sections of the speech (e.g. 154) Isocrates addresses different members of the audience – much like Socrates in Plato’s Apology – he also says that he will not rest until he has convinced everyone of the truth about him (196–7).

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realize that they are ignorant and pursuing the wrong goals. Plato’s Socrates has no illusions about the outcome of his trial if Athenians are in charge of it. Isocrates, who clearly suggests throughout the Antidosis that he himself had an important role in shaping this superior Athens that he is portraying, seems to assimilate his own image as a successful teacher and a head of school with the international reputation of Athens as the διδάσκαλος of the Greek world. Isocrates and Athens have started to look alike – Isocrates has become Athens. Isocrates’ Attack on the Socratics While it has been noted before that Isocrates lumps the Socratics together and treats them as a more or less unified group, scholars have nevertheless taken pains to attribute different criticisms to specific individual Socratics.63 Not only have most of these attempts failed to gain widespread acceptance, but this approach also assumes, for no good reason, that we can and should look for this kind of objective and historically accurate portrayal of his rivals in Isocrates’ own prose. There is nothing in Isocrates’ works that gives justification for such an assumption. Hence, it seems much more natural to take Isocrates’ words at face value and regard his criticisms as leveled against the Socratics as a group. Following this path, Isocrates emerges as a critic who identified and targeted the core ideas that the Socratics share or might in principle be conceived of as sharing. His overarching aim, as will be clear from the following sections, is to attribute these views to the image of Socrates that emerges from his followers’ writings and to treat the Socratics as a derivative group of Socratic thinking. For Isocrates, therefore, confronting “Socrates the teacher” is a productive approach both for criticizing the current philosophical schools (as they are all Socratic) and for thinking through his own educational agenda as fundamentally different from Socrates. Passages from Isocrates’ early works, Against the Sophists and the preface to Helen, are particularly suggestive of the fact that he 63

Representative of this approach is Eucken 1983.

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is trying to lump together all of the Socratics and play down the differences between them. The former work, his teaching manifesto and protreptic to philosophia, begins by outlining the educational situation in Athens and identifies three kinds of opponents to his own school. For present purposes, we’ll be primarily concerned with the first group. These are the socalled teachers of disputation or eristics, characterized as those who profess to seek the truth, but actually end up lying to their students: Indeed, who would not hate and, yes, look down upon those teachers, in the first place, who devote themselves to eristics (περὶ τὰς ἔριδας διατριβόντων), who pretend to search for truth, but straightway at the beginning of their professions attempt to tell us lies? For I think it is manifest to all that foreknowledge of future events is not available to our (human) nature (οὐ τῆς ἡμετέρας φύσεώς ἐστιν), but that we are so far removed from this prescience that Homer, who has been conceded the highest reputation for wisdom, has pictured even the gods as at times debating among themselves about the future – not that he knew their minds but that he desired to show us that for mankind this power lies in the realms of the impossible. (C. soph. 1–2)

Scholars have wondered about Isocrates’ reference to eristics: who could these be? Many have identified this target group with the Socratics,64 but some single out Antisthenes and his associates in particular.65 There is, however, no concrete evidence that would tie the reference to Antisthenes. Indeed, the pursuit of knowledge is a quintessential concept of Socratic philosophy and as such Isocrates’ expression here is vague enough to avoid tying the criticism to any one Socratic specifically.66 Many other passages in Isocrates have met similar responses: where he is making rather generalizing claims about the Socratics, appealing to certain common denominators that would apply to most of them and separate Socratics from others, scholars have launched into investigations about particular individuals against whom the passage might be

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Ries 1959: 30, 49; Eucken 1983: 19; Zajonz 2002: 89–90. Böhme 2009: 12. This is acknowledged in Böhme 2009, esp. 12–20, who nevertheless concludes on external grounds (e.g. Antisthenes having established a school before) that the target must be Antisthenes in particular.

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motivated.67 From Isocrates’ perspective, it actually makes for a more efficient strategy not to single out his contemporaries and rivals and indeed to lump the Socratics together with the probable effect of making their views appear more ridiculous and out of tune with life around them.68 In the Helen (1–5), Isocrates argues that engaging in eristic disputations not only fails to bring benefit, but actually causes trouble for those involved. The kind of trouble Isocrates has in mind is the inability to function as fully active citizens in a democratic polis. Socrates’ trial and its outcome is clearly in the background. The problem is not simply focusing on theoretical knowledge (which is, strictly speaking, rarely associated with Socrates), but rather cultivating a set of skills and knowledge that will end up leaving us vulnerable, or simply indifferent, to the current political system. Socrates is a case in point. While not at all ignorant of the political system in Athens,69 Socrates was certainly not an active participant in it and was unwilling to comply with the expectations of the city at his trial. Pursuing his understanding of truth and knowledge had alienated Socrates from the concerns of the city, and that came at a high cost. For Isocrates, it is not really a question of the historical Socrates, but rather of the use and influence of the figure of Socrates that was being negotiated by his contemporaries and set up as the paragon of an excellent teacher. Did Athens really need a teacher figure like Socrates – someone who would persuade his students to distance themselves from the city’s political institutions and spend time on definitions and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake? Isocrates’ concern for the future of the political and cultural elite is palpable here. In other words, underpinning both of these passages is Isocrates’ rejection of Socrates as an appropriate head of school for the new generation of Athenians, who would be in charge of setting the agenda for the city’s political and cultural elite. 67

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E.g. Isocrates’ Helen 1–5 with Eucken 1983: 9–10 and 45–6. The idea of specific Socratics seems strongly rooted in scholarship. Zajonz 2002: 81–5, for instance, operates on the assumption that the primary opponent of Isocrates, and the target in this passage, is Antisthenes. On lumping together eristics and Socrates/Socratics (in Helen 5), see Zajonz 2002: 59. Cf. Zajonz 2002: 90. A welcome reminder by Blondell 2002: 298–302. See also Nightingale 2004: 24.

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Even though Isocrates seems less explicitly interested in school rivalries in his later work, he seems even more focused on tackling the influence of Socrates and makes subtle (yet undoubtedly contentious) references to the Socratics throughout. As in his Helen and Against the Sophists, Isocrates associates the Socratics with eristics,70 lumping together different Socratics with no interest in singling out one or the other. In his Panathenaicus (26), for example, he makes reference to the study of geometry, astronomy and the so-called eristic dialogues (τοὺς διαλόγους τοὺς ἐριστικοὺς καλουμένους), which might be good to pursue for a while to keep the youth out of trouble (27), but not for too long, because they are useless in one’s actual affairs unless one aims to become a teacher of these subjects. A similar comment is made in his Antidosis (261–9), where Isocrates argues that astronomy, geometry and eristic dialogues are in themselves not harmful and as such benefit students as any training of the mind would (266), but they should not be called philosophy and are useless as a preparation for real life. Therefore, these disciplines should not be practiced too long nor taken too seriously.71 According to Isocrates, the Socratics’ quest for knowledge turns the youth from looking after the well-being of the city towards prioritizing individual contemplation of personal virtues and happiness, thus depriving the city of educated and bright leaders.72 Isocrates’ concern for the usefulness of philosophy to Athens constitutes one of the pervading themes of the Antidosis and

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Gomperz 1905: 172, Ries 1959: 160, and Eucken 1983: 10 discuss Isocrates’ reference here to Plato and the Academy more specifically, but there is really no compelling reason for dissociating Plato from the rest of the Socratics in this passage. I would argue instead that here Isocrates is simply continuing his regular practice of dealing with the Socratics as a unified front. This argument mirrors Callicles’ position in Plato’s Gorgias, except that Isocrates seems far less concerned with the personal fates of individuals than with the future of Athens more generally. Hesitant attitudes towards wealthy aristocratic Athenians post-Peloponnesian War suggest that there was a continued fall in the numbers of active political elite running the city; Sinclair 1988: 43, Wallace 2015, esp. 13–19. Taylor 2007 has drawn attention to comparative evidence from the fifth and fourth centuries that suggests that the participation and influence of the wealthy elite in Athens had significantly declined in the fourth century BCE. In this context, we might look at Isocrates’ political discourses as aiming at popularizing his school among upper middle- and high-class Athenian citizens and, no less importantly, as attempts to cultivate their preparation for a political career.

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this theme will also be his primary departure from Socrates and his followers, as shown below. Isocrates against Socrates: The Philosophy of Usefulness Isocrates talks about success and the worldly rewards of his profession in the Antidosis (281–5), where he lists advantage or gain (πλεονεξία) as one of the cornerstones of his philosophy. Isocrates argues that there is a general misconception in Athens with regard to the language and terminology used to denote certain activities and people. Meanings have been turned upside down, Isocrates claims, and buffoons capable of mocking and mimicking rather than men of excellence are called “gifted” (εὐφυεῖς, 285). Tracing these changes back to the so-called ancient sophists enables Isocrates to suggest that it is not really the general public, but rather the so-called “philosophers” who have unhelpfully discredited the idea of “advantage”, which used to function as a positive term in the context of any intellectual activity. Most importantly, Isocrates is upset that wealth has recently, among his contemporaries, fallen into disrepute (Antid. 159–60), and unfairly so. I think we arrive here at what appears to be Isocrates’ explicit confrontation with “Socrates”, that is with the image of Socrates as a teacher and philosopher for Athenians. It is a central characteristic of Socratic teaching to closely scrutinize one’s reliance on, and appreciation of, external characteristics such as wealth and reputation and challenge these as goals in themselves.73 Socrates’ search for explanations and definitions often challenged the original or common meaning of a notion and aimed to demonstrate that things (or hopes, beliefs, desires) are not always what they appear on the surface or what the tradition handed down to us would have us believe.74 Through his critical lens of the political and social structures in place in Athens, Socrates has built a distance between the observer and the object so as to better contemplate matters at hand and reach a more objective and timeless decision. The move is away from the moment and 73

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E.g. Pl. Ap. 30b2–3; see also Boys-Stones and Rowe 2013: ch. 2 for the Socratics more generally. On the function of definitions and aporia in Plato’s Socratic dialogues, see Politis 2015.

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political context towards contemplating important questions of ethics in a timeless space. The philosopher who is capable of following this quest ought to be independent and free from the pressures of society in order to live that kind of critical life prescribed by Socrates. This intellectual freedom is an important reason why Socrates never charged fees.75 As Blank notes, the distinction between sophists and philosophers tended to be made on the basis of whether or not they charged fees for their activity.76 If he did, Socrates argues, he would have to talk to those who pay him and would therefore not be free to pursue his path of questioning as he chooses to.77 Isocrates saw things differently.78 According to him, everyone does everything for the sake of either pleasure (ἡδονή), gain (κέρδος) or honor (τιμή).79 This, he says, is a fact and teachers who are preparing students to become leaders in the city or to simply manage their affairs cannot and should not downplay the importance of these three motivations. He himself talks often about his reputation, thus giving the idea that to be well regarded by one’s fellow Athenians is of great importance to him and thus also a valid concern for any Athenian. Unlike Socrates, who discourages his interlocutors from following so-called external motivations, urging them to continuously search for truth and happiness, Isocrates acknowledges the relevance of pleasure, 75

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Despite the opposite suggestion in Aristophanes’ Clouds, other contemporary theatrical evidence confirms the image that Socrates did not charge fees and was poor: Eupolis fr. 352 Kock, Ameipsas fr. 9 Kock; see Blank 1985: 7 for further discussion. Blank 1985: 1, with references to Xen. Cyn. 13.8ff. and Arist. Soph. el. 1.1, 165a22. I am increasingly less convinced that the sophists stood out from other (higher) education providers in Athens for accepting fees. Given our scarce evidence, it seems plausible that higher/specialized education in Athens had always been based on private tuition and that later sources reinterpreted the situation due to Socrates’ influential views on tuition fees. This rereading would also create a more comprehensible background for Isocrates’ claims that the sophists do not charge high enough fees (more below). Xen. Mem. 1.2.6, 1.6.5, Ap. 16; Pl. Tht. 150c–151b. Plato critiques the sophists who have to teach whoever pays them: Prt. 313d, Euthyd. 271d, Meno 70b and 91b, Hp. mai. 282c. An argument has been made, most recently by Blank 2014, that Isocrates might not have demanded fees from his Athenian students, but only from those from overseas. I find this suggestion implausible, also because it would be hard to explain why Isocrates would then choose not to mention it. Isoc. Antid. 217. This contrasts Plato’s “categorization of actual and non-ideal political communities into those motivated by pleasure (democracy, Rep. 557d and 559b–d), wealth (oligarchy at Rep. 551a), and honor (timocracy at Rep. 548c)” (Too 2008: 197).

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gain and honor for the existing political and economic system and is determined to highlight the potential of higher education as a direct path to achieving these goals. Coming after Socrates and reflecting on his provocative views of education, Isocrates might appear (to us) as a conservative advocating for traditional societal norms.80 However, as someone trying to introduce for the first time institutionalized professional higher education to the intellectual and political landscape of Athens, his views were fresh and the emphasis on schools to cultivate the political elite of the city made him stand out from the rest. By making financial demands, Isocrates reminds his students that his school participates in the economy of the city, that it is not an autonomous self-absorbed entity somewhere on the outskirts of Athens,81 but rather an integral part of the city’s ongoing development. Given the potential costs of running a professionalized institution of higher education, managing such an enterprise must require fees higher than what we hear were asked by the itinerant sophists. It is no surprise, then, that Isocrates comes back to the issue of money again and again throughout his writings.82 One of the most thoroughgoing engagements with this topic is the Antidosis, where after discussing the wealth (or lack thereof) of Gorgias, Isocrates turns to discussing the changing intellectual climate regarding fees for one’s professional activity (159–60). Apparently, when he started out his business he was full of hope to recover the lost fortunes of his heritage and gain prominence through his hard work and education. Now, however, he finds himself surprisingly in a position where his foreign students who have brought him much financial support are continuously holding him in high honor, whereas Athenians, on whom Isocrates has spent his 80

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De Romilly 1954 discusses Isocrates as a moderate in his contemporary political landscape; see also Bringmann 1965, esp. p. 83. Of more recent commentators, Too 1995: 103–12 associates Isocrates explicitly with conservative thought, but (unlike de Romilly) provides no further clarification as to what this term might mean in the fourthcentury BCE context. See also Depew and Poulakos’ “Introduction” to their coedited Isocrates and Civic Education (2004), which makes pervasive associations between Isocrates and conservative politics (in the US?) without making any effort to explain the relevance of this political terminology to the fourth-century BCE context. Unlike for other philosophical schools (e.g. Plato’s Academy), we do not have information about the possible location of Isocrates’ school in Athens. Examples: Antid. 155, 240; Areopagiticus 31–4; C. soph. 3.

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resources, are the ones to bring him to trial on the charge of being (too) wealthy. In another revealing passage from his early Against the Sophists, Isocrates admonishes the sophists not for charging fees, but for charging too little for the great educational promises that they make.83 These references to the financial side of the “education business” (and there are many more scattered around his works) are certainly indicative of Isocrates’ vision of the field: money and fame matter, they reveal the place one occupies in the real economy of the city and it would risk dooming education and philosophy to irrelevance to deny that. Holding such a position sets Isocrates in direct conflict with Socrates and his followers, and thus the entire mainstream of philosophical schools that trace themselves back to Socrates. Despite his critical reception of Socrates, Isocrates never explicitly confronts Socrates, though he does mention him once. In the Busiris he attacks the work of Polycrates, who had written two paradoxical discourses: a praise of Busiris and an accusation speech against Socrates. Even though Isocrates then proceeds to rewrite the praise for Busiris,84 he argues against Polycrates not because one ought not to accuse Socrates, but rather because his accusation speech looked more like praise. Niall Livingstone has argued that Polycrates wrote the accusation speech against Socrates primarily because he regarded Socrates as a hero of his profession and therefore someone very hard for any educator to attack.85 Given that in this work Isocrates clearly conveys a very negative opinion of Polycrates, it might seem obvious to assume that Isocrates is defending Socrates and, thus, that his relationship to him is one of admiration.86 Indeed, he 83

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C. soph. 3. See also Plato’s Sophist 234a7 and Apology 20a–b for a similarly critical attitude. Most ancient sources challenge the view that sophists earned little, and there certainly seems to have been a commonplace understanding that such education was expensive and unaffordable for the average Athenian (see e.g. Socrates’ reflections on it during his youth in Lach. 186c). For a more thorough discussion, see Blank 1985: part 1. This is probably an explicitly provocative maneuver from Isocrates. By that time, defense speeches for Socrates had become standard rhetorical exercises and served as a way to display one’s excellence. By bringing up this reference and then disappointing the reader by offering a discourse on a different – more valuable? – topic, Isocrates is playing with generic expectations and downplaying the valorization of Socrates. Livingstone 2001: 36. This is also what Livingstone 2001: 38 proposes.

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chooses to offer a proper praise of Busiris rather than a “correct” accusation of Socrates! However, it is also plausible that attacks such as those leveled against Socrates by Anytus, Meletus and Polycrates (even though all on different levels and probably with different motivations) were in Isocrates’ view such serious attacks against the position of intellectuals and teachers in Athens that regardless of the individual differences and disagreements, it was a matter of urgency that they be refuted tout court.87 But, more specifically, it is striking that Isocrates’ criticism of Polycrates revolved around the figure of Alcibiades: Isocrates claims that Polycrates has falsely suggested that the ever-talented Alcibiades was a student of Socrates. Most Socratic philosophers thought long and hard about how to distance Alcibiades from Socrates and how best to address the claim that Socrates was responsible for the damage that Alcibiades inflicted on Athens. Isocrates instead embraces the excellence of Alcibiades and claims that Socrates was never his teacher in the first place, thus effectively belittling the influence Socrates as a teacher had on Athenian politics.88 Isocrates’ claim might be best understood as a twist on the paradoxical subject itself,89 but either way it is hardly supportive of Socrates as a venerated teacher and role model.90 Another implicit challenge to “Socrates” in the Antidosis is posited through references to the body of the teacher and intellectual. Isocrates dedicates considerable amount of effort throughout the discourse to outlining his own experiences and character (τὸν τρόπον), even physical condition (“I am no longer in the prime of

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It is also possible that by the mid-fourth century an accusation of Socrates would no longer have been particularly fashionable given Socrates’ reevaluation as a paragon philosopher, teacher and citizen. See above and Zanker 1995. Isocrates offers praise of Alcibiades also in On the Team of Horses (16). If it was common knowledge that Socrates was Alcibiades’ teacher, then Isocrates’ claim would do exactly what paradoxical writings aimed at: take a common subject and turn it on its head. The possibility that Isocrates is fashioning himself as the “new” Socrates is proposed, but quickly rejected, by Haskins 2004: 39. Others, too, seem to make a nod towards this interpretation (e.g. Blank 2014), but they never posit a competitive relationship between the two. It is always Isocrates who admires and attempts to emulate Socrates the teacher. But it is perhaps not irrelevant that while Socrates in Plato’s Apology requested free meals at the Prytaneum, Isocrates demanded more than that from his fellow Athenians (Antid. 95).

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my youth but eighty-two”) and vulnerabilities (“speech might appear less vigorous”, “my lack of experience”) that seem to be in conversation with the emphasis on the body in the early reception of Socrates.91 In order to compete with “Socrates” (the image assiduously created by Socratic writers), whose appearance and physique is proverbially offensive, Isocrates too will put his body on the line. This body, however, is weak and unimpressive, better suited for intellectual work and writing. This corpus of writing, however, will last forever (Antid. 7). The lateness of the Antidosis brings their similarities and differences to the fore even more clearly. While Socrates may have been a teacher of sorts in Athens, he was not a teacher of Athenians nor useful for the city. Isocrates, instead, aims to be both.

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Equally significant is the fact that Isocrates talks about his “weak voice” in To Philip 81 and Panath. 9–10, thus offering his readers information about a bodily insufficiency that turned him away from a political career and effectively into a famous philosopher. See also Too 1995: 75–8 on the reconstruction of the “weak voice” as part of Isocrates’ selffashioning.

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ch a p t e r 6 C H I M E R A S OF C L A S S I C I S M I N D I O N Y S I U S O F H AL I C A R N A S S U S’ R E C E P T I O N O F T H E ATH E NI A N F U N E R A L O R AT I O N S

johanna hanink Recent years have seen intensified interest in the classicizing program of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Greek historian and literary critic who made his career in Rome in the first century BCE. Dionysius saw ‘in the new world order established by Rome a revival of ‘classical’ Greek cultural values, and not merely rhetorical styles’: though he celebrated the achievements of Athens, he also took heart that his own age in Rome was witnessing a return to a classical set of moral and aesthetic principles.1 Dionysius’ classicism is, however, beset by a serious complication in that, on his reading, the high points of Athenian political and literary success did not actually coincide. Though a committed Atticist who wrote literary-critical essays in praise of Athenian authors (Isaeus, Isocrates, Demosthenes and others), Dionysius found much to censure in the course of fifth- and fourth-century Athenian history: Athens abused its allies, waged war against other Greek states and later showed catastrophic reticence about following Demosthenes’ advice to act to halt Macedon’s rise. The distance between Dionysius’ qualitative judgments about the models supplied by Athenian history and literature can be wide, and Nicolas Wiater has rightly observed that ‘Dionysius is well aware that the contemporaries of the authors whose texts he regards as representative of ‘the classical’ – a concept in which aesthetics, politics, and morals are inextricably intertwined – were far from conforming to [his classical] ideal’.2 The truth of that observation is particularly borne out by Dionysius’ discussions of 1

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de Jonge and Hunter 2019: 19. Other recent studies of Dionysius’ classicism include Wiater 2011 (with discussion of Roman Antiquities at 165–223), de Jonge 2008, Porter 2006c passim. Wiater 2019: 56.

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Athenian funeral orations, in which he forces himself to confront texts attributed to otherwise emulable Attic authors but which were the product of a civic institution that was, in essence, a celebration of Athens’ regrettable policies and wars. Certainly the idealized vision of Athens constructed and reproduced by the funeral orations was, as Wiater elsewhere points out, influential in shaping Dionysius’ own ‘positive image of Athenian character’ – the bar by which he measured the city’s successes and failures. And yet, Dionysius body of work preserves much that is explicitly critical of the famed Athenian patrios nomos: of both the character of the funerals, and the stylistics of particular texts that he read as examples of funeral orations.3 This chapter reads across Dionysius’ corpus in an attempt to reconstruct his view of Athenian public funerals and their symbolic significance, and to explore how this institution – and especially the texts transmitted under its banner – stood at odds with the program of classicism that he sought to articulate and promote. Dionysius remarks on three distinct examples of epitaphioi logoi: Pericles’ 430 BCE oration as related by Thucydides in book 2 of History of the Peloponnesian War, Socrates’ speech in Plato’s dialogue Menexenus, and Demosthenes’ putative speech for Athenians who fell in the 338 Battle of Chaeronea (Dem. 60). His readings of these speeches should, I propose, be read in the light of comments that he makes in his historical work Roman Antiquities about the fundamental (un)ethical quality of both the Athenian public funerals and the speeches that constituted a sine qua non of the custom. The full complement of Dionysius’ comments reveals how illusory his construct of ‘classical’ Athens proves to be: his reception of this signature Athenian institution is so beset by paradox as to leave the impression that it, like Dionysius’ own classicizing ideal, is little more than a chimera. Three essential and interrelated paradoxes underlie his approach to the funeral orations: (1) The very texts that establish the terms of Athens’ ancient greatness are products of the city’s moral and ethical failures, for Dionysius 3

Wiater 2011: 223; he repeats the observation at 2019: 58. The phrase patrios nomos occurs at Thuc. 2.34.1.

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6 Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ Reception reads the city’s funerals for the war dead against a larger backdrop of Athenian pride and greed (pleonexia, in Isocratean terms: see below). (2) Within his critical framework every epitaphios logos is therefore doomed to failure, yet he prefers to cast that failure in stylistic, rather than moral or ethical terms. If we read Dionysius’ ‘literary-critical’ comments about specific funeral orations in the light of remarks that he makes about both Athenian policy and public funerals, he seems to conflate the notional aesthetic flaws of their prose with the moral defects of their animating institution. (3) The most commendable classical texts – the literature most worthy of admiration and emulation – are also the texts most focused upon the failures of their authors’ contemporaries, and beset by nostalgia for an exemplary, but ever-receding, past.

This reading will therefore suggest that a kind of double nostalgia is a defining quality of Dionysian classicism. The works in which he discusses Athenian funeral orations themselves betray a clear preference for other, contemporary texts (Isocrates’ On the Peace and Demosthenes’ On the Crown) in which Athenians are heard upbraiding their compatriots for failing to live up to ancestral examples, rather than lauding them – in the traditional manner of funeral orators – for nobly upholding the city’s traditions by sacrificing themselves in war. If classicism is ‘traditionally understood’ as retrospective and ‘tinged with nostalgia’, it is an irony at the heart of Dionysius’ judgment that he identifies Athenian texts already colored by those very qualities as antiquity’s finest literary exempla, and the most intense objects of his own classicizing gaze and desire.4 In Dionysius’ oeuvre, the ‘classical’ is a mirage that wavers on a constantly distant horizon: an image ever-displaced and ultimately unattainable. Athenian Orations and Roman Antiquities A small canon of ‘classic’ funeral orators had already begun to crystallize before the year 322, when Hyperides delivered his oration for Athenians who had fallen in the first year of the Lamian War – the last speech mentioned and at least partially 4

Porter 2006b: 301.

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preserved by the record. First signs of the nascent canon appear in book 3 of the Rhetoric (c. 330 BCE), where Aristotle does not discuss funeral orations as a class but does make observations about figures used in three such speeches: Pericles’ lost 439 oration for Athenians who died suppressing the Samian revolt from Athens (Rh. 1365a31), Lysias 2 (Rh. 1411a31) and the oration privately delivered by Socrates in Plato’s Menexenus (Rh. 1415b31; cf. 1367b8).5 Two centuries later, Dionysius of Halicarnassus would likewise engage, in his various literarycritical essays, with the rhetorical stylistics of three separate epitaphioi logoi, yet Dionysius’ literary-critical comments on these texts take on a new hue against the background of the remarks that he makes about the funerals in his historical writing. Dionysius’ explicit critique of the Athenian public funeral appears in his Roman Antiquities. There, he mentions the Athenian custom in the course of his narrative of the splendid funeral conducted at Rome for Lucius Junius Brutus, the consul who fell in the Battle of Silvia Arsia fought by the Roman people against Tarquin, the deposed king of Rome, in 509 BCE. Dionysius’ description of the burial of Brutus is clearly modeled on Thucydides’ account of the procedure of the Athenian interments of war dead: like Thucydides, Dionysius begins with an account of the funeral procession, then shifts his focus onto the speaker, in this case Publius Valerius Publicola. Just like Thucydides’ Pericles, Dionysius describes Publicola as ‘advancing to the platform to deliver his oration’ before the gathered crowd: προελθὼν ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα τὸν ἐπιτάφιον ἔλεχεν ἐπ’ αὐτῷ λόγον (D. H. 5.17.2; cf. Thuc. 2.34.7: προελθὼν ἐπὶ βῆμα . . . ἔλεγε τοιάδε). Dionysius nevertheless departs from the Thucydidean template in omitting to include an account of what Valerius said. Instead, he pivots from his description of the funeral at hand to a digression upon the relative antiquity of the Athenian and Roman funeral oration customs. It was, he claims, the Romans and not the Greeks who first instituted the tradition of delivering orations at the 5

Pericles’ 439 funeral oration for the fallen in Athens’ Samian campaign does not survive, though Plutarch also refers to it (Per. 8.9 and 28.4, citing Stesimbrotos of Thasos, FGrH 107 F 9 and Ion of Chios, FGrH 392 F 16, respectively): see Węcowski 2013: 160–2.

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funerals of illustrious men.6 Evidence of this is that early Greek poets make no mention of such funerals, except for the Athenian tragedians, ‘who, out of flattery (κολακεύοντες) of the city, invented this legend (ἐμύθευσαν), too, around the men buried by Theseus’ (D. H. 5.17.4).7 The Athenians only ‘added’ (προσέθεσαν) funeral orations to their nomos later on (ὀψέ), in the aftermath of the Persian War battles of Artemisium, Salamis, and Plataea or perhaps Marathon, but the Battle of Marathon was in any case fought some sixteen years after Brutus’ death (D. H. 5.17.4).8 Following this chronological excursus, Dionysius weighs the Athenian and Roman institutions against each other in ethical and moral terms.9 Here, too, the Romans emerge victorious: [I]f anyone, without stopping to investigate who were the first to introduce these funeral orations (ἐπιταφίους ἐπαίνους), desires to consider the custom in itself and to learn in which of the two nations it is seen at its best, he will find that it is observed more wisely among the Romans than among the Athenians. For, whereas the Athenians seem to have ordained that these orations should be pronounced at the funerals of those only who have died in war, believing that one should determine who are good men (ἀγαθούς) solely on the basis of the valour they show at their death, even though in other respects they are without merit (κἂν τἆλλα φαῦλος γένηταί τις), the Romans, on the other hand, appointed this honour to be paid to all their illustrious men (ἐνδόξοις ἀνδράσιν), whether as commanders in war or as leaders in the civil administration they have given wise counsels and performed noble deeds, and this not alone to those who have died in war, but also to those who have met their end in any manner whatsoever, believing that good men deserve praise for every virtue (ἀρετῆς) they have shown during their lives and not solely for the single glory (εὐκλείας) of their death. (D. H. 5.17.5–6; trans. Cary) 6

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The funeral is described at Plu. Publ. 9.6–7. Plutarch notes that Publicola’s oration is ‘said to have taken place before the Greek epitaphioi were instituted, unless that custom also originated with Solon, as Anaximenes the rhetor has maintained’ (λέγεται δὲ καὶ τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν ἐπιταφίων ἐκεῖνος γενέσθαι πρεσβύτερος, εἴγε μὴ καὶ τοῦτο Σόλωνός ἐστιν, ὡς Ἀναξιμένης ὁ ῥήτωρ ἱστόρηκεν). Gabba has seen this passage as a hint ‘without a direct quotation, at the literary polemics of Dionysius V.17 about the Roman priority in delivering funeral speeches’ (1991: 214 n. 44). Most likely a reference to Adrastus’ speech (857–917) over his fallen comrades in Euripides’ Suppliants (see also below); see also Loraux 2006: 75–6 for a contrastive discussion of Athenian and Roman public funerals. Pelling 2019 cites this calculation as evidence that ‘Dionysius can indulge in chronological metrics when he wants to’ (212). Dionysius’ comparative presentation of Greek and Roman history and customs in Roman Antiquities is complex, and cannot be reduced to an argument that Rome marked a straightforward and enduring ‘improvement’ on Greece: see Peirano 2010.

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Here Dionysius effectively declares himself at direct ideological odds with a passage of the funeral oration of ‘Pericles’, a text that he likely had in mind, given his manifest debts earlier in the section to Thucydides’ description of the Athenian public funeral custom. Thucydides’ Pericles explains to the crowd gathered in the Cerameicus that it is only fair that valour displayed in war waged for the fatherland outweigh all other shortcomings. This right has canceled out any past wrongs, for the aid that they rendered collectively is greater than any harm they did as individuals. (Thuc. 2.42.3)

While Athenian funeral orations prize the noble deaths of the fallen as the greatest and only measure of aretē, in Roman Antiquities Dionysius advocates that the whole panorama of a man’s life be taken into account in the final reckoning of his virtues.10 This perspective rejects the premise of Attic funeral orations that death on behalf of the fatherland is the final measure of a man; it also prefers encomium of virtuous individuals to the ‘anonymity’ of the collective dead that is a hallmark of the Athenian speeches.11 At this point in Roman Antiquities, Dionysius expresses what appears to be a fundamental discomfort with both the Athenian public funerals and a particular premise of their orations. Other passages in the work provide further evidence of his disdain for the kinds of policies that the orations implicitly celebrated in praising the men who had fallen as a result of them. For example, and by way of contrast with the magnanimous Romans, Dionysius laments how during the mid-fifth century the Athenians and Spartans alike behaved outrageously towards peoples with whom they had kinship ties (the Samians and Messenians, respectively): having ‘dissolved the ties of kinship, and after subjugating their cities’, Athens and Sparta treated these peoples ‘with such cruelty and brutality as to equal even the most savage of barbarians in their mistreatment of people of kindred stock’. This conduct is so 10 11

On the topos of the aretē of the Athenian war dead see Ziolkowski 1981: 70–1, 110–20. Loraux observed that the Athenian epitaphioi logoi were ‘dominated by the rule of anonymity’; they ‘give the citizens no other name than that of Athenians, no other glory but a collective one’ (2006: 75).

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offensive to Dionysius’ sensibilities that he cannot bear to list further examples, though he does make a praeteritio of the many he might invoke: ‘One could name countless blunders of this sort made by these cities, but I pass over them since it grieves me to mention even these instances’ (D. H. 14.6.2; trans. Cary). Wiater is referring in part to this specific passage when he argues that Dionysius was ‘aware that the people who lived [in fifth- and fourth-century Athens] were anything but representatives of the “classical” ideal’.12 ‘They Came to Revel in Our Misfortunes’ Dionysius’ view of Athenian policy in the later fifth century appears to have been strongly conditioned by opinions expressed in one of his preferred Attic authors, Isocrates, with whom he shared his negative judgments of Athens’ behavior during the Peloponnesian War. Isocrates offers a different view of the public funerals, or at least of the spirit in which they were conducted during the era of the Athenian Empire (the arkhē): in On the Peace (c. 355 BCE), he charges that foreigners who came to witness the many funerals conducted during the Peloponnesian War did so ‘not so much to grieve with us for the dead as to revel in our misfortunes’ (8.87). This striking remark appears in a portion of On the Peace in which Isocrates is specifically railing against the fatal arrogance displayed by the Athenians over the duration of the arkhē. Whereas the men who led Athens during the Persian Wars and the early years of the Pentecontaetia – men such as Aristides, Themistocles, and Miltiades – were brave, virtuous, and trustworthy, a moral decline attended the rise of the empire and, quite naturally, turned Athens’ allies against her: ‘for who’, Isocrates asks, ‘would have put up with the reckless arrogance (ἀσέλγεια) of our fathers?’ (Isoc. 8.79). That generation of Athenians had the nerve to display the excess imperial tribute in the crowded theater at celebrations of the City Dionysia, an occasion on which it also saw fit to parade the children of the war dead. But by showing off 12

Wiater 2019: 61–3; quotation from 62.

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the sheer number of these orphans (τὸ πλῆθος τῶν ὀρφανῶν), the city only made a disgraceful public display of all the misfortunes that it had suffered as a result of its pleonexia: its imperial greed and arrogant excess (Isoc. 8.82).13 Isocrates’ On the Peace contains several elements – praise of the Athenian past and negative comparison with the present, condemnation of greed and war, and pleas for peace and unity among Greeks – that align with Dionysius’ own ethical commitments. In On Isocrates, Dionysius cites this work as one of Isocrates’ finest compositions as he poses this rhetorical question: ‘What work could better exhort (προτρέψαιτο) both individuals and entire cities to justice and piety than On the Peace?’ (Isoc. 7.1).14 He commends Isocrates for urging his fellow citizens ‘to follow the example’ (μιμεῖσθαι) set by the Athenians who lived before the Persian Wars, and not that of the men ‘who very nearly destroyed the city’ (οἵ μικροῦ ἐδέησαν ἀπολέσαι τὴν πόλιν, Isoc. 7.2) during the Peloponnesian one. To Dionysius’ mind, Isocrates was correct in teaching that ‘it is not great quantities of triremes or forcible rule of other Greeks that makes the city great, but just policy choices (προαιρέσεις) and the provision of aid to those who have been wronged’ (Isoc. 7.2). While the city should be prepared for war, it should also be peaceable and ‘commit no injustice against anyone’ (Isoc. 7.3). Dionysius caps his encomium of On the Peace with this declaration: ‘I think no one could articulate better or truer arguments than these, or ones more befitting a philosopher’ (Isoc. 7.5). Given his blanket praise of the content of On the Peace, it is easy to imagine that he also approved of Isocrates’ view that, at least by the later fifth century, the Athenian public funerals had become ugly symptoms of the city’s pleonexia.15 13

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Isocrates uses the term pleonexia more than any other Greek author. See Michelini 1998 for an overview of the ‘civic invective’ of On the Peace, which ‘attacks traditional Athenian patriotic myths and ceremonies with a violence unexampled elsewhere in Isocrates’ work’ (115). On this rhetorical question as indicative of ‘what Dionysius regards as the key elements of Classical identity’ see Wiater 2011: 72–3. Dionysius does, however, criticize the speech in On the Style of Demosthenes, where his principle complaints – raised in the context of a discussion of Isoc. 4.41–50 – are that Isocrates lacks concision (συντομία) and ought, given his material, to have adopted a harsher tone (Dem. 17–21). This critique of Isocrates serves as a prelude to his

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This particular essay also offers a glance at Dionysius’ impulse to conflate laudable (or reproachable) substance and style. When, later on, he reprises his praise of On the Peace, his compliments this time are focused primarily on Isocrates’ rhetorical successes. While he concedes that Isocrates is generally to be criticized for an excessive use of clever and precious figures of speech (of the sort particularly frequent in the Panegyricus: Isoc. 12–14), he insists that On the Peace shows him at his finest. Not only does Isocrates there demonstrate that justice is superior to injustice, he does so in a rhetorical style so praiseworthy that even its flaws – especially its lack of forcefulness – may be overlooked: His leisurely, suspended clausal structure and the elegance of his periods are found even in this speech, but the more histrionic figures are used sparingly. The reader should ignore these latter features, regarding them as unworthy of imitation, as I said at the beginning. But he should pay close attention to its other qualities. (Isoc. 15.3; trans. Usher)

In the discussion that follows, Dionysius identifies as exceptionally commendable Isocrates’ charge that his fellow citizens have fallen short of the example set by the ancestors who ‘waged war ceaselessly against the barbarian on behalf of the Greeks’ (D. H. Isoc. 17; cf. Isoc. 8.41). Dionysius’ discussion of Isocrates’ On the Peace has been interpreted as a strong indication of ‘the coexistence of the two contrasting modes of viewing the classical past, the ‘historicizing’ and the ‘idealizing’, in Dionysius’ classicism’.16 In On the Peace, Dionysius’ disapproval of Athenian politics and admiration of Athenian prose comfortably coincide in the voice of a prose stylist who censures the city for its decline into overweening arrogance and issues a call for the restoration of former values. Yet, for Dionysius, the moral and aesthetic successes of On the Peace are difficult to disentangle, and it seems a suspicious coincidence that a literary work with such a sound ‘moral’ message happens also to pass his test of fine rhetorical style with equally flying colors. Similar correspondences between ethical and stylistic

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encomium of the virtuosic Demosthenes, who is clearly Dionysius’ ‘favorite’ classical author. See Arnould 2013 on Dionysius’ critique in this essay of Isocrates’ style. Wiater 2019: 60.

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successes and failures also recur in Dionysius’ On the Style of Demosthenes, in the course of a comparison of the Socratic funeral oration in Plato’s Menexenus with a long portion of Demosthenes’ On the Crown. The Failures of Socrates’ Funeral Oration Dionysius’ most extensive critique of a funeral oration is of the impromptu epitaphios logos that Socrates delivers in Plato’s Menexenus (c. 386). The curtain of Socrates’ Menexenus rises on a conversation in which Menexenus informs Socrates that the boulē has just been deliberating about who will deliver the oration at an imminent public burial; Socrates soon turns to musing upon the splendid job the funeral orators do of eulogizing the city (Menex. 234a–235d). The majority of the dialogue is given over to Socrates’ private recitation of a funeral oration which he says he learned from Pericles’ partner Aspasia. Dionysius’ choice to single out Socrates’ embedded oration in Menexenus for unflattering comparison with a portion of Demosthenes’ On the Crown is one of the more puzzling aspects of his essay On the Style of Demosthenes. As an example, or at least a mimēsis, of an epitaphios logos, Socrates’ oration suffers from the flaw that Dionysius saw as inherent to all such speeches, namely their ideological valuing of death in war above a virtuous life well-lived.17 The speech also appears to celebrate elements of the Athenian pleonexia so roundly condemned in Isocrates’ On the Peace and, to a certain extent, by Dionysius himself in certain passages of Roman Antiquities. It includes, for example, an account and justification of Athens’ fifth-century wars against other Greeks (Menex. 242a–243d): Socrates celebrates the men who participated in the ill-fated Sicilian Expedition as liberators of Leontini and boasts that they received more praise of their sōphrosynē and aretē from enemies than other people receive 17

I leave aside the question of whether Socrates’ speech in Menexenus is meant as a ‘parody’ or ‘satire’ of a funeral oration: for a variety of recent views, see Parker and Robitzsch 2018. Earlier in the first century, Cicero, too, seems to have accepted Socrates’ speech as a valid instance of an Athenian funeral oration (Orat. 151; Tusc. 5.36).

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from their friends (Menex. 243a). Socrates then later explains that it was nothing but a spirit of jealous rivalry (φιλονικία, Menex. 243b) which led the other Greeks to seek ‘barbarian’ (that is, Persian) reinforcements against Athens in the final phase of the war. Dionysius would likely agree with Socrates’ final appraisal that the Athenians defeated themselves in the Peloponnesian War, but it is difficult to imagine that he would have approved of the encomiastic stance that Socrates takes towards the Athenians of that era, the men whom Dionysius elsewhere characterizes as having ‘very nearly destroyed the city’ (D. H. Isoc. 7.2). Despite the vast distance separating Dionysius’ view of Athenian history and the posture adopted by Socrates in Menexenus, in On the Style of Demosthenes Dionysius frames his criticism of Menexenus in terms of style rather than content. His critique of specific Platonic passages begins with an indictment of the opening of the Phaedrus, but he reserves his most extensive criticism for Socrates’ funeral speech, devoting eight long sections to its analysis (Dem. 23–30). He characteristically insists that the frankness (παρρησία) of his comments on the Platonic epitaphios will be motivated by nothing other than a desire to express the truth (ἀλήθεια), without regard for the high esteem in which the object of his criticism is otherwise widely held (Dem. 23.1). He also explains that he has elected to put Menexenus under the microscope because it is the ‘most formidable example of [Plato’s] civic oratory’ (κράτιστος δὴ πάντων τῶν πολιτικῶν λόγων) and a specimen in which he ‘imitates (παραμιμούμενος) Thucydides, even though he might claim [that his inspirations were] Archinus and Dion’ (Dem. 23.10).18 Readers are forewarned that Menexenus will not be compared with the funeral speech attributed to Demosthenes – ‘for I do not think it was really written by him’ (γὰρ οὐχ ἡγοῦμαι ὑπ’ ἐκείνου τοῦ ἀνδρὸς γεγράφθαι) – but with On the Crown, a speech 18

Cf. Menex. 234b, but Socrates makes no such claim: instead, Menexenus simply tells Socrates that he thinks Archinus or Dion will be chosen to give the oration. At 249e, Socrates classifies the oration he has delivered as a ‘political speech’ (i.e. a πολιτικὸς λόγος), and promises Menexenus that he will gladly relate (ἀπαγγέλλω) ‘many and fine political speeches by her’ (πολλοὺς καὶ καλοὺς λόγους παρ’ αὐτῆς πολιτικούς), i.e. by Aspasia, on another occasion (239e). On politikoi logoi in D. H. see Sacks 1983: 65 and Wiater 2011 passim.

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that similarly foregrounds themes of aretē and to kalon (Dem. 23.10). Dionysius launches his attack on the first lines of Socrates’ speech: ‘Plato’ starts out well enough and the beauty (τὸ κάλλος) of its first fifteen words (i.e. ἔργῳ μὲν ἡμῖν οἵδε ἔχουσιν τὰ προσήκοντα σφίσιν αὐτοῖς, ὧν τυχόντες πορεύονται τὴν εἱμαρμένην πορείαν, Menex. 236d) is fitting for their subject (πρέπουσα τοῖς ὑποκειμένοις). Those that immediately follow (i.e. προπεμφθέντες κοινῇ μὲν ὑπὸ τῆς πόλεως, ἰδίᾳ δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν οἰκείων) do not, however, match the semnotēs and harmonia of Socrates’ opening gambit: the details about the funeral procession have already been implied, and surely Plato did not mean to suggest that the most important aspect of the state funeral was the large crowd that it drew – something only a fool (ἠλίθιος) would think. If, then, the words supply neither crucial information nor necessary emphasis, what reason could he have had for including them other than his own ‘bad taste’ (ἀκαιρία, Dem. 24.8; cf. 26.5)? Other stylistic criticisms ensue: the language of the oration is overly ornate and obscure, and those errors serve not to dignify the speech (to make it μεγαλοπρεπέστερον) but to destroy its solemnity (τὸ σεμνόν) altogether. Dionysius imagines that his own critics will take him to task for criticizing Plato’s style (τὸ . . . τρόπον τῆς λέξεως) and charge that the ideas behind Plato’s words (τὰς νοήσεις) are what matter most. But he is resolute: Plato himself was less proud of what he said (τὰ πράγματα) than of the way that he said it (τὴν ἑρμηνείαν). In Socrates’ funeral oration, Plato tends to express his thoughts using strategies – antitheses and clause ‘balancings’ (παρισώσεις) – akin to Gorgias’ ‘histrionics’ (θεατρικά). Again and again, Dionysius identifies instances in Menexenus in which Plato adorns his prose with effeminate and over-wrought rhetorical ‘figures’ (τρυφεροῖς καλλωπίζει καὶ περιέργοις σχήμασι τὴν φράσιν, Dem. 26.4). Though he claims to be ashamed and hesitant (αἰδουμένῳ καὶ ὀκνοῦντι) to admit it, Dionysius submits that these figures, abundant ‘throughout the funeral oration’, signal their author’s ‘dull wit and incompetence’ (παχύτητος καὶ ἀδυνασίας, Dem. 26.9). Passages on Athenian autochthony (Menex. 237b), the gods’ contest for patronage of the city (Menex. 237c, a ‘commonplace’, κοινόν τι πράγμα, invoked by nearly all 156

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who have praised Athens: Dem. 28.1) and the Attic land’s provision of nourishing grains and olives (Menex. 237d–238b) all fail to pass inspection when held up to the harsh light of Dionysius’ standards. In his final section on Menexenus, Dionysius grants that the final portion of Socrates’ oration – the speech of the fallen Athenian fathers – is the most successful.19 The fathers exhort their living sons to be virtuous and to pursue moderation, and Dionysius cites ‘their’ words in their entirety (Menex. 246c–248e). He concludes by making this slight concession: ‘This seems good for the most part (I shouldn’t lie), except that it has more of a political (πολιτικόν) than forensic (ἐναγώνιον) form’ (Dem. 30.3). As an antidote to the flaws of Menexenus he then turns his attention to Demosthenes’ On the Crown, §§199–209 of which he quotes in full. This selection from On the Crown consists in a patriotic appeal to Demosthenes’ judges. Dionysius describes it as an ‘encomium of the city’ for always ranking her honor and glory above all else and for recognizing that these derive from noble – if sometimes unsuccessful – actions (Dem. 31.1). Despite his insistence on the objectivity and truth of his analyses and judgments, Dionysius’ choice to construct a diptych out of these two texts suggests a preference not merely for the composition but for the content of the Demosthenic passage which, for its invocation of a distant generation of Athenian ancestors, shares much with the spirit of Isocrates’ On the Peace. Demosthenes defends his policy of resisting Macedon by appealing to the Athenians’ illustrious forebears and to the city’s glorious past. The struggle against Philip marked yet another instance of Athenians preferring a risk for what is right (ὑπὲρ τῶν καλῶν) to inglorious concern for safety (ἀσφάλειαν ἄδοξον, D. H. Dem. 31/Dem. 18.201). Demosthenes lavishes praise upon the ancestors (πρόγονοι); he invokes the names of the city’s ‘founding fathers’ (such as Themistocles) and praises ‘the Athenians of old who sought neither an orator nor a general that would allow them to bear enslavement gladly’ (οὐ γὰρ ἐζήτουν οἱ τότε Ἀθηναῖοι οὔτε ῥήτορα οὔτε στρατηγὸν δι’ ὅτου δουλεύσουσι εὐτυχῶς, D. H. Dem. 31/Dem. 18.205). He insists that 19

In Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, speaker ‘M’ also showers praise on this portion of the speech (5.36).

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he was right to attempt to instill in his compatriots values worthy of the ancestors (ἄξια τῶν προγόνων), chief among them being the conviction that freedom (ἐλευθερία) is worth fighting for. The selection concludes with Demosthenes swearing upon the Athenian forefathers who fought at Marathon, Plataea, Salamis, and Artemisium – the same generation of men idealized by both Isocrates and Dionysius – ‘and many other brave men who lie buried in the public tombs’ (καὶ πολλοὺς ἑτέρους τοὺς ἐν τοῖς δημοσίοις μνήμασι κειμένους ἀγαθοὺς ἄνδρας, D. H. Dem. 31/Dem. 18.208). Without offering stylistic analysis of the sort that had so condemned Menexenus, Dionysius concludes that this part of On the Crown differs from the Socratic speech of the fathers as much as ‘true weapons of war differ from ceremonial ones and truths differ from visions of phantom images’ (πολεμιστήρια μὲν ὅπλα πομπευτηρίων, ἀληθιναὶ δὲ ὄψεις εἰδώλων, Dem. 32.1). In On the Style of Demosthenes, Dionysius thus elects to set a text that he appears to regard as an ‘actual’ funeral oration, that is, as a speech born of the Athenian custom of the public funeral for war dead, against Demosthenes’ courtroom appeal to the superior aretē of the Athenian ancestors. In its praise of the Athenian past, this section of On the Crown shares much with the portions of On the Peace that Dionysius singles out for praise in On Isocrates. Demosthenes’ own invocation of a better and bygone age is contrasted with Socrates’ encomium of Athens – in keeping with the conventions of the funeral orations – as a timeless constant, while Demosthenes’ defense of a policy of preserving Athens and Greece from barbarian ‘enslavement’ is set against a speech that found points to celebrate even in wars that Athens had waged against fellow Greeks.20 ‘High Tragedy’ and a ‘Vulgar, Empty and Puerile’ Speech At some point Dionysius set aside On the Style of Demosthenes in order to write On Thucydides, apparently at the request of 20

At Menex. 242a Plato’s Socrates claims that Athens ‘fell into war with Greeks’ because of the rest of the Greek world’s admiration (ζῆλος), then jealousy (φθόνος) at the city’s successes – perhaps an allusion to Thucydides’ famed diagnosis about the ‘truest cause’ of the outbreak of the war at 1.23.6.

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Quintus Aelius Tubero, who sought clarity on certain opinions that Dionysius had expressed earlier, though only briefly, in On Imitation (Thuc. 1.1). Dionysius’ project in On Thucydides is one of considering ‘the character of [Thucydides’] style in all aspects’ (Thuc. 3.1) and laying out the reasons for the author’s ‘practical’ and stylistic successes and failures (τοῖς τε πραγματικοῖς καὶ τοῖς λεκτικοῖς κατορθώμασιν ἢ ἁμαρτήμασι τὰς αἰτίας, Thuc. 25.1).21 Though he spends considerable time discussing Thucydides’ prose, Dionysius also criticizes the overall architecture of the History and its frequent depiction of ignoble exempla: words and deeds unworthy of imitation.22 Certain charges that he makes are of an overtly moral nature: he is dismayed, for example, that Thucydides sometimes makes human sufferings (πάθη) seem insignificant and minor (ταπεινὰ καὶ μικρά) ‘with the result that he gives no guidance to help readers appreciate the horrors’ (Thuc. 15.3). He even supplies a short catalogue of cases in which Thucydides fails to convey the magnitude of Athenian-induced suffering (Thuc. 15.4): in his descriptions of the siege of Scione and slaughter of its inhabitants (cf. Thuc. 5.32), the destruction of Euboea (cf. Thuc. 1.114), and the Athenian expulsion of all the inhabitants of Aegina (cf. Thuc. 2.27). Yet here, too, it can be difficult to disentangle Dionysius’ ‘moral’ from his stylistic criticisms. The Melian Dialogue, for example, is presented as appalling by both sets of criteria (Thuc. 37–41). Dionysius’ discussion focuses on the lines spoken by ‘the Athenians’, and he makes several criticisms regarding the author’s use of flawed rhetorical figures and contorted grammatical structures. Yet he also expresses disapproval of the message being conveyed by the Athenians, whose thinking (διάνοια) is clever (συνετός) but wicked (πονηρός, Thuc. 40). Dionysius allows that 21

22

On Dionysius’ criteria of pragmatikoi and lektikoi topoi (or meroi) see Sacks 1983: 67. These criteria are outlined in the Letter to Pompeius; Sacks summarizes the pragmatikoi topoi as follows: (1) hypothesis, i.e. ‘choosing the proper subject – it should be noble and pleasing’; (2) ‘termini of the subject’, i.e. where the historian begins and ends his narrative; (3) what material is included/omitted; (4) taxis, i.e. ‘organizational methods’ (Herodotus’ thematic approach vs. the Thucydidean diaeresis); (5) diathesis/ēthika, which includes the criterion that the historian ‘should prefer to emphasize the noble and good over the base’. See de Jonge 2017 for a useful introduction to On Thucydides, with essential bibliography.

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their reflection on the prerogative of the powerful might have been suitable for barbarian kings, but ‘no Athenian should have spoken thus to Greeks whom they had liberated from the Persians’. When the Athenians deny the Melians’ request to be allowed to remain neutral (‘No, because your hostility is not nearly as damaging to us as your friendship would be’, Thuc. 5.95), Dionysius pronounces their answer ‘a depraved argument, and one phrased obscurely’ (ἐνθύμημα πονηρὸν καὶ σκολιῶς ἀπηγγελμένον, Thuc. 39). Here again the critic has selected for discussion a passage that he regards as an unravelable tangle of poor style and content. Dionysius’ appraisal of the funeral oration that Pericles delivers in book 2 of the History is, on the surface, of a rather different character than his critique of Socrates’ speech in Plato’s Menexenus. His discontent with Pericles’ oration is framed as above all a problem with its position in the History: if Thucydides’ objective had truly been to give an account of the typical Athenian lamentations (τοὺς εἰωθότας ὀλυφυρμούς) for the war dead, ‘he would have been better off having an epitaphios delivered in any book but this one’ (ἐν ᾗ βούλεταί τις μᾶλλον βύβλῳ ἢ ἐν ταύτῃ τὸν ἐπιτάφιον ἥρμοττεν εἰρῆσθαι, Thuc. 18.1).23 Dionysius’ objection to such a speech’s appearance in book 2, amid the narrative of the first campaigns of the war, is that the Athenians who had died thus far were few, their deeds not especially illustrious: the 40,000 who perished in Sicily were far more worthy of such an honor, and Thucydides ought rather to have documented a funeral oration delivered on their behalf. So why, he asks, does the author ‘bring on’ (εἰσάγει) that most eminent of leaders, Pericles, to perform ‘that high tragedy’ (τὴν ὑψηλὴν τραγῳδίαν ἐκείνην, Thuc. 18.3) so early in the work? The theatrical vocabulary is striking. The verb εἰσάγω could mean ‘to lead or bring onstage’ already in Aristophanic comedy, and when Dionysius finally hazards an explanation for Thucydides’ choice he reprises the dramatic metaphor: it was out of a desire ‘to avail himself fully of Pericles as a character’ (τῷ Περικλέους προσώπῳ) that Thucydides composed (συνθεῖναι) this 23

See Pritchett 1975: 69–70 for some commentary on de Thuc. 18.

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epitaphios epainos (D. H. Thuc. 18.7). By Dionysius’ time, the word πρόσωπον had long since acquired the sense of (dramatis) persona.24 In Dionysius’ choice to cast Pericles’ funeral oration as ‘that high tragedy’, we should also be reminded of his claim in Roman Antiquities that it was precisely the Athenian tragedians who ‘out of flattery’ (κολακεύοντες) of Athens invented (ἐμύθευσαν) the story that a funeral oration had been delivered by the ‘men buried by Theseus’, presumably a reference to Adrastus’ speech for his fallen comrades in Euripides’ Supplices (D. H. 5.17.5; see above).25 Pericles’ funeral oration does nothing if not ‘flatter’ Athens. Yet the notion of ‘tragedy’ also seems to occupy a particular, and unflattering, position in Dionysius’ critical framework, and here he does seem to use the word τραγῳδία ‘dans le sens de discours pompeux’.26 This is the noun’s only appearance in his rhetorical works, but it is not the only passage in which he frames criticism in ‘tragic’ terms. Later in On Thucydides, he notes that, while Thucydides is successful enough in narrating the actual events of the stasis in Corcyra, ‘when he begins to dramatize (ἐπιτραγῳδεῖν) the sufferings of the Greeks in general, and to divert his thoughts from accustomed channels, he falls far below his own standards᾽ (γίγνεται χείρων αὐτὸς ἑαυτοῦ, Thuc. 28.2). In these cases, his definition of ‘tragic’ seems to approach that of ‘theatrical’ (θεατρικός), a word that he employs more often. For Dionysius, Thucydides’ famous description of how words changed their meaning (cf. Thuc. 3.82) is particularly tainted by theatrika schēmata (Thuc. 29.5) and contains instances of language ‘which would be more at home in a poetical, or rather dithyrambic setting’ (ποιητικῆς, μᾶλλον δὲ διθυραμβικῆς σκευωρίας, Thuc. 29.4). The adjective ‘theatrical’ also appears at the outset of his programmatic On the Ancient Orators, where it characterizes the form of rhetoric that displaced the ‘Attic muse’ 24 25

26

LSJ s.v. εἰσάγω A.II.; s.v. πρόσωπον A.III.2; D. H. Thuc. 18. It is odd that Dionysius mentions this example, seeing as Adrastus delivers eulogies over Argives rather than Athenians and his speech shares little in character with the Athenian funeral orations: for discussion of this problem and the ‘anachronism’ of Dionysius’ reasoning see Rood, Atack, and Phillips 2020: 67–8. Aujac 1991: 152 n. 3, with reference to p. 66.

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and began to creep into Greece around the time of Alexander the Great’s death. This upstart rhetoric was ‘unbearable for its theatrical shamelessness and was also uncultivated’ (ἀφόρητος ἀναιδείᾳ θεατρικῇ καὶ ἀνάγωγος), with nothing of philosophy or liberal learning about it (Orat. Vett. 1.3). For Dionysius, ‘theatrical’ speech was bombastic and inauthentic, and stood in contrast to the ‘naturalness’ of style on view in a praiseworthy classical orator such as Lysias.27 Dionysius’ negative view of the Periclean oration thus appears to rest on negative judgments of both pragmatikoi and lektikoi topoi.28 On the one hand, the speech is misplaced within the work. On the other, Dionysius’ characterization of it as ‘that high tragedy’ flags both the language’s ill-suitedness to its content – so few dead were not worthy of such a grand speech – and to the speech’s stylistic infelicities.29 In his criticism of the passage describing the stasis in Corcyra, Dionysius’ identification of various theatrika schēmata serves to cast the language as lofty, contorted, and overblown, more suited perhaps to an Aeschylean tragedy than a politikos logos. He does not expressly identify the presence of specific ‘theatrical figures’ in the Periclean oration, although he does indicate that it, too, marks a censurable instance of Thucydidean ‘dramatization’ (cf. ἐπιτραγῳδεῖν at Thuc. 28.2). Here we should again recall the disapproval of Athenian funeral orations that Dionysius registers in Roman Antiquities, and which he formulates with clear reference to the oration delivered by Thucydides’ Pericles (see above). Dionysius’ stylistic objections to Pericles’ funeral oration thus appear rooted in (or at the very least, bolstered by) a more general and fundamental aversion to the ideology that Athens’ epitaphioi logoi regularly put on display. Yet it is also revealing that, in On the Style of Demosthenes, Dionysius begins his stylistic critique of the Socratic epitaphios with the observation that it was an imitation of ‘Thucydides’. Dionysius does not mention any particular Thucydidean model, 27 28 29

Wiater 2011: 321–3. On pragmatikoi topoi see n. 21 above. On the ‘irony’ of D. H.’s formulation (so few war dead were not worthy of such high tragedy) cf. Porter 2016: 284 n. 6. At pp. 213–38 Porter discusses D. H.’s use of ‘language of hypsos’ (213), i.e. pertaining to the ‘sublime’.

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but given Socrates’ own claim to have been taught his speech by Aspasia, the Thucydidean rendition of Pericles’ ‘own’ oration seems the most likely candidate. Dionysius even had doubts about the very ‘authenticity’ of the Periclean oration.30 In charging that Thucydides desired ‘to make use of Pericles as a character’ at this particular point in the narrative, he submits that the historian accordingly ‘composed the funeral oration as if it had been delivered by him’ (τὸν ἐπιτάφιον ἔπαινον ὥς ὑπ’ ἐκείνου ῥηθέντα συνθεῖναι) – that is, by Pericles himself (Thuc. 18.7). This ‘as if’ (ὤς) serves to mark Dionysius’ skepticism not only about Thucydides’ fidelity to an actual Periclean speech, but also whether Pericles even delivered such an oration in the war’s first winter. Regardless of Thucydides’ historical accuracy on this point, it is clear enough why Dionysius would have been disinclined to ascribe this funeral oration to Pericles. Earlier in On Thucydides, Dionysius makes his admiration for the general and statesman clear when he praises Thucydides’ ‘encomium’ of him (the Periclean ‘obituary’ of Thuc. 2.65) as ‘worthy of the man’s widespread reputation’ (διαβεβοημένης περὶ αὐτοῦ δόξης ἄξιον, Thuc. 8.2). Thucydides’ obituary praises Pericles for the moderate policies he pursued in time of peace – when Athenian power was at its height – and the prudence of the course that he advocated during the war. To Dionysius’ mind, a speech of the sort attributed to him by Thucydides was unworthy of so great a man. It is little wonder, then, that Dionysius also dismisses as spurious – though in far more vehement terms – the funeral oration transmitted under the name of Demosthenes (Dem. 60).31 In On the Style of Demosthenes, an essay given over to lavish praise 30

31

Modern scholars have doubted not only that Thucydides provides a faithful rendition of Pericles’ oration, but that Pericles delivered the oration at all: Jacoby 1944: 56–60 followed Dionysius in arguing that Thucydides ‘composed’ the speech entirely himself (he cites Dionysius at p. 58 n. 26). He also argued that Thucydides added the ‘digression’ on the funeral oration (2.34–46) after the war had ended, but that his ‘decision to cast the full-size picture of the nature of Athens into the form of a funeral speech and the choice of the speaker are the outcome of [Thucydides’] deliberate and deep historical consideration’ (58); Jacoby moreover sees the Periclean funeral oration as a eulogy not merely for the dead of the war’s first year, but for Athens itself. He can hardly deny that Demosthenes did deliver the epitaphios logos for the dead at Chaeronea: both Demosthenes (18.287–90) and Aeschines (3.151) attest to it.

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of the orator, he twice rejects the text as inauthentic. He first explains that, precisely because it is counterfeit, he will not be comparing it with Socrates’ speech in Plato’s Menexenus (τοῦτον μὲν γὰρ οὐχ ἡγοῦμαι ὑπ’ ἐκείνου τοῦ ἀνδρὸς γεγράφθαι, Dem. 23.10). Later he goes on to elaborate that, like all of the other spurious ‘panegyrics’ transmitted under Demosthenes’ name, the funeral oration is uncharacteristic of its putative author in both spirit (ἐν τοῖς νοήμασιν) and style: it is ‘vulgar, empty and puerile’ (φορτικὸς καὶ κενὸς καὶ παιδαριώδης, Dem. 44.3).32 Once again, Dionysius deems that so faulty a speech cannot be the work of so great a man. In this case, the explicit denunciation has had far more significant consequences, for the question of authenticity has effectively dominated modern scholarship on Demosthenes 60.33 Dionysius’ view seems to have been influential in antiquity, too, for the speech is absent from the small canon of epitaphioi logoi prescribed for study by the rhetorical instructor Aelius Theon in the first, or perhaps fifth, century CE. In his Progymnasmata, Theon recommends certain classical praise-works as worthy of imitation, among them ‘the funeral orations (ἐπιταφίους) of Plato, Thucydides, Hyperides and Lysias’.34 Demosthenes 60 is the only extant complete funeral oration which does not appear on his list. Conclusion Dionysius’ negative pronouncements on aspects of Athenian funeral orations suggest that his moral aversion to the orations, and to what the public funerals had represented, colored his aesthetic responses to the individual texts. Like Isocrates, Dionysius saw both the Peloponnesian War and the Athenian policy of the period as a blemish on the city’s history. While Dionysius never explicitly articulates the point, the sum of his references suggests a clear picture: the funeral orations, which 32

33

34

On this kind of critical terminology, which tended to accompany charges of rhetorical ‘frigidity’ (ψυχρότης), see esp. Hunter 2008c: 18–19. For relatively recent overviews see Worthington 2003 and Herrman 2008; Worthington is agnostic while Herrman argues that the speech is authentic and that its stylistic differences from other Demosthenic works can be explained precisely by the difference of ‘genre’. Progymnasmata 2.68.24–8. Heath 2002/3 argues for a fifth-century CE date.

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implicitly celebrated Athenian military policy – including the city’s wars against fellow Greeks – were too tied to reprehensible behaviors and policies on the part of Athens to win critical approval on even stylistic grounds. The orators’ insistence that Athens always displayed a commitment to justice hardly coheres with Dionysius’ more pessimistic view of the course of Athenian imperial history.35 For Dionysius that failure consists primarily in the author’s poor choice of subject material, that is, in his defective prohairēsis, a key concept for Dionysius’ critical program and one which Richard Hunter has glossed as ‘what a writer plans to do, what – as we might say – his project is’. As Hunter points out, Dionysius’ main criticism of Thucydides rests on the point of prohairēsis: he charges that Thucydides’ ‘pursuit of novelty led him to choose a disastrous subject’, namely the Peloponnesian War.36 Dionysius spells out that disapproval in his Letter to Gnaeus Pompeius, in which he cites a passage from his now-lost On Imitation, where he had evidently censured Thucydides for writing: of a single war, and one which was neither glorious or fortunate (οὔτε καλὸν οὔτε εὐτυχῆ), but which had best never happened at all or, failing that, should have been consigned to silence and oblivion (σιωπῇ καὶ λήθῃ) and ignored by later generations. (3.4; trans. Usher)

Such a shameful war between Greeks – a war characterized by unspeakable atrocities – should never have been the subject of Thucydides’ focused attention. This unsound prohairēsis is what poisons the entire well of his History, even if Dionysius prefers to frame many of his criticisms (especially those which he lodges in his essay On Thucydides) in other, more literary-critical, terms: turned off as he is by Thucydides’ content, he cannot help but identify stylistic problems in his prose. Yet in the case of the funeral orations, Dionysius pushes this strand of criticism further. Not only does he pronounce negative literary-critical judgments upon them; he goes so far as to dismiss them as, to varying degrees, ‘inauthentic’. Dionysius’ Demosthenes never would 35

36

Examples of this trope in all surviving funeral orations are listed at Ziolkowski 1981: 104–5. Quotations from Hunter 2019: 38 and 41, respectively.

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have composed such a ‘vulgar’ and ‘puerile’ speech; Thucydides himself is the author of the text he ascribes to his ‘character’ Pericles; and in Plato’s Menexenus it is Thucydides, not Pericles, who provides Socrates with his model. Under Dionysius’ critical gaze, any traces of ‘authentic’ funeral orations all but disappear. It is ironic, then, that his own idealizing view of Athens seems largely predicated on familiar funeral oration tropes: as others have pointed out, the standard which the Athenians in the Melian Dialogue fail to meet is precisely the bar for justice that is set by the epitaphioi logoi and Isocratean panegyric. Dionysius observes that, whereas Thucydides depicts the Athenians behaving like ‘barbarian kings’, he ought to have portrayed them as ‘leaders of the city with the best laws in the world’, and as men who had refused to bow to the Persians and who ‘had civilized the life of all mankind’ (Thuc. 41.6).37 The encomiastic commonplaces on view in the funeral orations may be the building blocks of Dionysius’ rosy conception of the city, but the speeches themselves (like many of the wars and battles that prompted them) are unworthy vehicles for the conveyance of those ideals. In these cases, Dionysius’ classicism is one that is inherently, recursively nostalgic, for it is ultimately defined not by the funeral orations themselves, but by the valorization of authors who made a project of berating their compatriots for failing to live up to the example, and exempla, set by earlier generations.

37

Wiater 2019: 58.

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ch a p t e r 7 ‘ O UR MI N D W E N T TO T HE P L ATO N I C C H AR MI DE S ’ : TH E R ECE PT I ON O F P LATO’ S C H A R M I D E S I N W I L DE , C AVA F Y, A N D P L U TA R C H

timothy duff The Charmides was in antiquity one of the least well-known works of Plato. Scholars acknowledge only one allusion to it across the whole of Plutarch’s corpus.1 But while not particularly heavyweight in terms of its philosophical content, it is notable as being the only Platonic text in which Socrates admits to feeling sexual desire for a young man. While other texts frequently use the language of erōs to describe Socrates’ attitude to the young men with whom he converses, or play with notions of erōs as a metaphor for the attitude of the philosopher to a pupil, only in the Charmides is Socrates so unambiguously presented as sexually attracted to a young man.2 In this chapter, I wish to examine three examples of the reception of Plato’s Charmides by later authors: two modern authors, Cavafy and Oscar Wilde, and one ancient, Plutarch, who lived half a millennium after Plato. I will focus on two aspects of their reception. The first focus will be the way in which the three authors respond to the erotic and philosophical elements in the Charmides. As we shall see, all three exploit Plato’s emphasis on the youthful beauty of Charmides and his presentation of Charmides as the object of erotic desire. In Wilde, the philosophical element of Plato’s text is entirely absent, as is the person of Socrates, and the homoerotic content is merely hinted at, within a largely heterosexual storyline. In Cavafy, it is the reference to Charmides 1

2

De E 392a (Chrm. 164d–e): Helmbold and O’Neil 1959: 56; Jones 1916: 118; Giavatto 2010: 133. Contrast the frequent citation in Plutarch of e.g. the Republic, Laws, and especially Timaeus: references in Jones 1916: 107–53; Helmbold and O’Neill 1959: 56–63; Giavatto 2010. See also Ferrari 2004. The reference to Chrm. 512b in Giavatto 2010: 139, in relation to De stoic. repugn. 1039d seems to be incorrect. On this aspect of the Charmides, see Blanshard 2010: 101; Tuozzo 2011: 101–10. See also Blyth 2012.

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which serves to clarify the homoerotic tone. Plutarch, on the other hand, in alluding to the Charmides, takes for granted its homoerotic context, but rejects entirely the claim that Socrates was motivated by sexual desire; in Plutarch, Socrates’ erōs is solely a desire to educate and protect. In that way, as we shall see, Plutarch both draws on the reader’s knowledge of the Charmides, but tacitly ‘corrects’ it and brings its presentation of Socrates into line with that in other Platonic texts. The second focus will be the different means by which each of these three writers engages with the Charmides: in particular, the extent to which these texts depend on and exploit, for their proper appreciation, a detailed knowledge of the Platonic text on the part of the reader. As we shall see, although explicit engagement with Plato’s Charmides is stronger in the two modern texts, Plutarch’s engagement relies more heavily on the reader’s familiarity with Plato and expects the reader to recognize a series of detailed verbal echoes. Furthermore, whereas the allusions to the Charmides in Wilde and Cavafy stand alone, Plutarch’s allusions to the Charmides are integrated into a much wider dialogue with the other Platonic texts. Plato’s Charmides Plato’s Charmides purports to dramatize a conversation at a wrestling school between the philosopher Socrates and a handsome and well-connected young man, Charmides.3 Socrates, who narrates the dialogue in the first person, has just returned from several years of military service abroad and, eager to resume his old habits, visits the wrestling school of Taureas, where he comes across many of his friends. Socrates proceeds to ask his interlocutors whether any of today’s young men were particularly distinguished for beauty, or wisdom, or both, and is told about Charmides, whom he remembers as a child but who is now an extremely handsome youth. At this moment, Charmides himself enters and Socrates records his reaction, and that of other spectators: 3

On Plato’s Charmides, see e.g. Tuckey 1951; Santas 1973; Hyland 1981; van der Ben 1985; Schmid 1998; Press 2001; Dorion 2004; Bowery 2007; McCabe 2007; Charalabopoulos 2008; Politis 2008; Tuozzo 2011; Danzig 2013; Moore and Raymond 2019.

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7 The Reception of Plato’s Charmides in Wilde, Cavafy, and Plutarch Ἐμοὶ μὲν οὖν, ὦ ἑταῖρε, οὐδὲν σταθμητόν· ἀτεχνῶς γὰρ λευκὴ στάθμη εἰμὶ πρὸς τοὺς καλούς – σχεδὸν γάρ τί μοι πάντες οἱ ἐν τῇ ἡλικίᾳ καλοὶ φαίνονται – ἀτὰρ οὖν δὴ καὶ τότε ἐκεῖνος ἐμοὶ θαυμαστὸς ἐφάνη τό τε μέγεθος καὶ τὸ κάλλος, [154c] οἱ δὲ δὴ ἄλλοι πάντες ἐρᾶν ἔμοιγε ἐδόκουν αὐτοῦ – οὕτως ἐκπεπληγμένοι τε καὶ τεθορυβημένοι ἦσαν, ἡνίκ’ εἰσῄει – πολλοὶ δὲ δὴ ἄλλοι ἐρασταὶ καὶ ἐν τοῖς ὄπισθεν εἵποντο. καὶ τὸ μὲν ἡμέτερον τὸ τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἧττον θαυμαστὸν ἦν· ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ καὶ τοῖς παισὶ προσέσχον τὸν νοῦν, ὡς οὐδεὶς ἄλλοσ’ ἔβλεπεν αὐτῶν, οὐδ’ ὅστις σμικρότατος ἦν, ἀλλὰ πάντες ὥσπερ ἄγαλμα ἐθεῶντο αὐτόν. [154d] καὶ ὁ Χαιρεφῶν καλέσας με, Τί σοι φαίνεται ὁ νεανίσκος, ἔφη, ὦ Σώκρατες; οὐκ εὐπρόσωπος; Ὑπερφυῶς, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ. Οὗτος μέντοι, ἔφη, εἰ ἐθέλοι ἀποδῦναι, δόξει σοι ἀπρόσωπος εἶναι· οὕτως τὸ εἶδος πάγκαλός ἐστιν. Συνέφασαν οὖν καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι ταὐτὰ ταῦτα τῷ Χαιρεφῶντι· κἀγώ, Ἡράκλεις, ἔφην, ὡς ἄμαχον λέγετε τὸν ἄνδρα, εἰ ἔτι αὐτῷ ἓν δὴ μόνον τυγχάνει προσὸν σμικρόν τι. Τί; ἔφη ὁ Κριτίας. [154e] Εἰ τὴν ψυχήν, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, τυγχάνει εὖ πεφυκώς. I am completely unreliable there, my good friend: I am a mere ‘white line’ in measuring beautiful people, for almost all young men appear beautiful to me. But at that moment the young man in question appeared to me amazing in stature and beauty; [154c] and all the rest seemed to me to be in love with him – they were so astonished and confused when he was coming in – and many other lovers were following in the rear. On the part of men like us, this was less surprising; but when I observed the boys I noticed that none of them, not even the smallest, was looking at anything else, but that they were all gazing at him as though he were a statue. [154d] Chaerephon called me and said, ‘How does the youth strike you, Socrates? Isn’t his face beautiful?’ ‘Immensely so’, I replied. ‘Yet if he were to consent to strip off’, he said, ‘you would think him faceless, his body is so perfectly formed’. Well, all the others said exactly the same things as Chaerephon, and I said, ‘By Heracles, what an irresistible man you say he is, if he happens to have just one more quality too, a little thing’. ‘What?’, said Critias. [154e] ‘If he happens to be well-endowed in his soul’.

There is a strong emphasis here not only on Charmides’ physical beauty, but on the admiring, erotically charged gaze of the male onlookers.4 Even the other boys of Charmides’ age, their eyes fixed on him alone, gazed at him ‘as though he were a statue’. The comparison of Charmides to a statue, and of his admirers to viewers of a work of art or witnesses of the epiphany of a god,5 4

5

On the importance of viewing in Greek culture, by which male citizens both demonstrated their power and were also subject to controlling scrutiny, see Goldhill 1998: 105–12; cf. Wohl 2012. For the erotic ‘male gaze’ in ancient literature, see also Morales 2004. Dorion 2004: 42, Charalabopoulos 2008: 513–14, and Tuozzo 2011: 107, who point out that an ἄγαλμα, as opposed to an ἀνδριάς, usually represents a god.

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not only emphasizes his beauty but also lends to it an idealized quality. At the same time, however, it suggests an objectification of Charmides’ passive body, reinforced by Chaerephon’s insistence to Socrates that, if he saw him naked, he ‘would think him faceless (ἀπρόσωπος)’. Plainly, the interests of those who view Charmides, and who imagine him naked, are directed towards his body. Socrates too shares in this sexualized admiration. But, unlike them, Socrates is not interested only in Charmides’ face or indeed his faceless body, but in his soul too. This double interest is played out later, when Charmides comes to sit by him and looks into his eyes: Socrates catches a glimpse inside his himation (155d) and is, as he puts it, ‘inflamed’ (ἐφλεγόμην) with desire; indeed, he feels ‘out of his mind’, and overpowered by him as though by a wild animal. However, he then proceeds to engage Charmides in philosophical conversation in the presence of his uncle Critias, a discussion which takes up the rest of the dialogue. The topic of the discussion – the definition of temperance (σωφροσύνη) – is one which arises naturally from the erotically charged setting. Indeed, Socrates’ own restraint, despite his desire for Charmides, provides the reader with an example of temperance in practice.6 Charmides, and then his uncle Critias, are each in turn forced to admit their ignorance. It is now Charmides who admires Socrates, and he declares his determination to stick with Socrates, and be ‘bewitched’ (ἐπᾴδεσθαι) by him every day. The dialogue ends, rather ominously, with Socrates accusing Charmides and Critias of ‘plotting’ against him (τί βουλεύεσθον ποιεῖν;) and intending to use ‘force’ (βιάσῃ ἄρα), which Charmides admits. No one, Socrates declares, will be able to ‘withstand’ (ἐναντιοῦσθαι), and he himself will not try (176c–d).7 At one level this shows Socrates as now the object of desire, not its subject – 6

7

Tuckey 1951: 18; Rademaker 2005: 5, 258, 325–6; Johnson 2012: 25; Blyth 2012: 40. Socrates’ sexual restraint is also demonstrated in Alcibiades’ speech in Pl. Symp. 217a– 219c, and at Xen. Mem. 1.3.14–15. In the Phaedrus (253c–257b), Plato’s Socrates acknowledges that a true lover may feel sexual desire, but argues that it must be restrained. σοὶ γὰρ ἐπιχειροῦντι πράττειν ὁτιοῦν καὶ βιαζομένῳ οὐδεὶς οἷός τ’ ἔσται ἐναντιοῦσθαι ἀνθρώπων . . . Οὐ τοίνυν, ἦν δ᾿ ἐγώ, ἐναντιώσομαι.

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a trope familiar also from Alcibiades’ speech in the Symposium.8 But readers of Plato would almost certainly have been aware that the real Critias went on play a leading role in the violent oligarchic regime of 404–403, as did Charmides, who was to become one of the ten men in charge of the Piraeus; both were killed in fighting with democratic forces in the Piraeus as that regime crumbled (Xen. Hell. 2.4.19).9 This rather disturbing end to the dialogue points forward to Socrates’ ultimate failure to reform Charmides.10 Oscar Wilde’s Charmides Let us begin our study of the reception of Charmides with the least thorough-going and ambitious engagement with this Platonic text: Oscar Wilde’s 666-line poem, Charmides (published in Poems, 1881). The poem describes how a ‘Grecian lad’ travels to Athens and spends the night in the Parthenon, where he undresses and ravishes the statue of Athena; later, in anger, the goddess causes him to drown at sea. His body is cast up on a shore, where a wood-nymph falls in love with it, but she herself is slain by Athena. Finally, the two dead lovers are passionately united in Hades. The main inspiration for Wilde’s plot is the story told briefly in pseudo-Lucian, Amores (Ἔρωτες) 15–16, of a young man who falls so in love with the naked statue of Aphrodite of Cnidus by Praxiteles that he hides in her temple overnight, ejaculates on the statue, and later throws himself off a cliff or into the sea.11 But Wilde has complicated this story of excessive and transgressive 8

9

10

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See Scott 2000: 4–5. Cf. also the reversal of roles in Socrates’ meeting with Theodote in Xen. Mem. 3.10, with Goldhill 1988: 113–24. Davies 1971: 330–1; Nails 2002: 90–4; Moore and Raymand 2019: xxiv–xxvii; cf. Tuozzo 2011: 53–5, 86–90. On the political content of the Charmides, see Tuozzo 2011: 52–98; Danzig 2013. For the evidence on Charmides, see also Traill 1994–2012: 987975. He was an uncle of Plato. On this aspect, see Tuozzo 2011: 298–303; Danzig 2013. Compare the Alcibiades 1, where Socrates’ ultimate failure to reform Alcibiades must be in the reader’s mind from the start, and which ends with Socrates declaring that he fears that the strength of the city will ‘master’ (κρατήσῃ) them both (135e). Cf. Squire 2011: 97–100. Wilde was probably not inspired by the story of Pygmalion, whose statue turned to female flesh to allow him to make love to it (Ov. Met. 10.243–97); Wilde’s Athena remains hard and cold, even when undressed: he ‘kissed / Her pale and

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heterosexual desire by transforming the statue from one of Aphrodite into one of Athena. Wilde’s hero’s actions thus become more transgressive, as they involve undressing and assaulting a goddess famous for her rejection of sex.12 But what of engagement with the Charmides? Readers who know Plato’s Charmides, or who simply remember Alcibiades’ reference in Plato’s Symposium to Charmides as another beautiful young man whom Socrates had once loved (Symp. 222b), will be alerted by the title to the fact that Wilde’s poem concerns a beautiful youth, and will not be surprised that the tone is suffused with erotic tension.13 However, Wilde’s Charmides is initially the subject of erotic desire, not its object; whereas in Plato, Charmides’ admirers’ gaze objectified him ‘as though he were a statue’, in Wilde Charmides gazes on and ravishes an actual statue. But by the end of the poem, Charmides has become a completely passive object of desire: when the nymph finally lies with him, it is with his dead body. Wilde thus takes Plato’s notion of Charmides as an object of desire to an extreme; he has gone from being likened to a statue in the gaze of others in Plato, to making love to an unresponsive statue, to being the ultimate passive love object: a lifeless corpse.14 Furthermore, the homoerotic content of the Platonic text is not reproduced directly. Desire here – at least desire articulated in the plot – is heterosexual: Charmides desires Athena’s statue, and later a wood nymph desires him. But the homoerotic tone of Plato’s Charmides, and the sense of him as passive object of male desire, is not entirely absent. From the start Charmides’ beauty is emphasized, and the imagined gaze of the reader is, as in Plato,

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argent body undisturbed, / And paddled with the polished throat, and pressed / His hot and beating heart upon her chill and icy breast’ (123–6). As the poem makes clear: ‘That calm wide brow, that terrible maidenhood, / The marvel of that pitiless chastity . . . the secret mystery / Which to no lover will Athena show’ (93–4, 106–7). Compare Winkelmann’s discussion of the Athena Farnese (‘the image of virginal chastity, stripped of all feminine weakness’) in Potts 1994: 132–5. Apart from the title, however, the name Charmides is repeated only once, immediately after his death (‘And no man dared to speak of Charmides / Deeming that he some evil thing had wrought’, 283–4). We are also told shortly after this, as his body is borne by the sea towards the shore, that he was in fact an Athenian (295). Wilde’s vision, which draws not only on Victorian aesthetics of the beautiful classical male youth, but also on the Victorian cult of the dead youth, thus combines heterosexual and homosexual desire, agalmatophilia and necrophilia.

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directed towards his body (esp. 1–24). Furthermore, after he flees from the acropolis, woodmen, amazed at his beauty, mistake him for Hylas, or Narcissus or Dionysus (173–86). It was common for artists and writers in the late nineteenth century to use classical themes and settings, and especially the image of the beautiful, often naked, classical youth, as represented in statues, to allow themselves to allude to homosexual desire – at a time when homosexuality was illegal in England and punished severely.15 Many of Wilde’s readers, already aware of his own reputation, may have read the emphasis on Charmides’ beauty in this way. Readers who recognized the name Charmides and thought of the Platonic text, will have been encouraged in this reading. But the engagement with the Platonic text goes no further:16 there are no verbal similarities, no other similarities of plot or theme; the philosophical content of Plato’s Charmides, furthermore, is completely absent. Indeed, it is doubtful whether there is much further interpretative pay-off for the reader who actually knows the Charmides, beyond its erotic tone and the fact that Charmides was a beautiful male youth mentioned by Plato and desired by the men who saw him. Wilde had similarly alluded to Charmides when, in a review of Spencer Stanhope’s painting ‘Love and the Maiden’, he commented, ‘His boyish beauty is of that peculiar type unknown in northern Europe, but common in the Greek islands, where boys can still be found as beautiful as the Charmides of Plato’.17 In that case, Wilde is more explicit that it is 15 16

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See e.g. Potts 1994, esp. 118–44; Squire 2011: 16–23; Papanikolaou 2014: 280–1. It is possible that a reader determined to find allusions to Plato’s Charmides might see in the mental pain of Wilde’s young man as he caresses Athena’s naked statue (‘It was as if Numidian javelins / Pierced through and through his wild and whirling brain’, 127–8) a hint at Plato’s Charmides’ headache (155b); in the mention of wrestling (205–8) a hint at the setting of Plato’s Charmides at a wrestling school; or in the description of the hero as ‘a profaner of great Mysteries’ (266) some reference to Alcibiades’ and possibly Charmides’ involvement in the Mysteries affair in 415 (see below, n. 56) – though the reference there is primarily to his violation of the ‘mysteries’ of Athena’s body (105–8). Wilde 1877: 121 (= repr. 1908: 12). Wilde also mentions Charmides as a symbol of the beautiful Greek youth in his essay of 1891, ‘The Critic as Artist’ (Ross 2013: 136), and in his short story, written around the same time (though published in full only in 1921), ‘Portrait of Mr W. H.’, in which it is again on a dead Charmides that he focuses: ‘His [W. H.’s] true tomb, as Shakespeare saw, was the poet’s verse, his true monument the permanence of the drama. So had it been with others whose beauty had given a new

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the Platonic Charmides that he had in mind. But in both cases, the allusion seems limited only to Charmides’ beauty, youth and sexual desirability.18 Cavafy ‘In a Town of Osroene’ I have started with Wilde because his use of Plato’s Charmides provides us with a baseline for a fairly minimal intertextual engagement, against which we can set the two other examples.19 As we have seen, although Wilde exploits the erotic associations which the name Charmides would bring to mind, there is little engagement with the text of Plato, or with its philosophical ideas, and the homoerotic tone is muted. Let us now turn to another poem, this time much shorter (a mere eight lines), which alludes also to Charmides but where the allusion is more central and carries a heavier weight of meaning: Cavafy’s ‘In a town of Osroene’ (Ἐν πόλει τῆς Ὀσροηνῆς), written some thirty-five years after Wilde’s piece. The poem is set, as so many of Cavafy’s poems, at some unspecified time in the Hellenistic or Roman period, out on the eastern frontiers of the Hellenic world: Ἀπ’ τῆς ταβέρνας τὸν καυγᾶ μᾶς φέραν πληγωμένο τὸν φίλον Ῥέμωνα χθὲς περὶ τὰ μεσάνυχτα. Ἀπ’ τὰ παράθυρα ποὺ ἀφίσαμεν ὁλάνοιχτα,20 τ’ ὡραῖο του σῶμα στὸ κρεββάτι φώτιζε ἡ σελήνη. Εἴμεθα ἕνα κρᾶμα ἐδῶ· Σύροι, Γραικοί, Ἀρμένιοι, Μῆδοι. Τέτοιος κι ὁ Ῥέμων εἶναι. Ὅμως χθὲς σὰν φώτιζε τὸ ἐρωτικό του πρόσωπο ἡ σελήνη, ὁ νοῦς μας πῆγε στὸν πλατωνικὸ Χαρμίδη.

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creative impulse to their age . . . Antinous lives in sculpture, and Charmides in philosophy’ (Wilde 1970: 348 and 209). Cf. also the Rev. St John Tyrwhitt’s remark in 1877 on ‘Charmides and the divine youths whose beauties he [John Addington Symonds] appreciates so thoroughly’ (Ross 2013: 35). I refer specifically to engagement with Plato’s Charmides: Wilde certainly has other texts in mind, especially Keats’ Lamia and Endymion: Ross 2008: 451–9, 2013: 67–76. Written ὁλάνυχτα (‘all night’, a neologism) in Cavafy’s last two printings of the poem: see Hirst 2007: xxxviii, 2009: 161. Hirst prints ὁλάνυχτα in the OUP edition (2007), but Sachperoglou’s facing translation has ‘wide open’.

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7 The Reception of Plato’s Charmides in Wilde, Cavafy, and Plutarch From the brawl in the taverna, they brought us wounded our friend Remon, yesterday about midnight. From the windows which we left wide-open his beautiful body on the bed was illuminated by the moon. We are a mixture here: Syrians, Greeks, Armenians, Medes. Such is Remon too. Last night, though, when his sensuous face was illuminated by the moon, our mind went to the Platonic Charmides.

A beautiful young man, Remon, a friend of the speaker, is brought home, injured, from a fight in a taverna. It is not clear whether he is to be thought of as dead or simply hurt, but his body is presented as motionless, speechless, an object of his friends’ gaze. As the moonlight, shining through the open window, lit up his body and face, ‘our mind’, says the narrator, ‘went to the Platonic Charmides’.21 When this poem was composed in 1916 it bore the same title as Oscar Wilde’s: ‘Charmides’ (Χαρμίδης). Indeed, Cavafy, who knew Wilde’s work well,22 had almost certainly read Wilde’s poem.23 But a year later, in its first printed version of 1917,24 the title was changed to ‘In a town of Osroene’, which it bore in all subsequent printings.25 The decision to rename the poem for its first printed form, which may have been partly motivated by a desire to avoid Wilde’s title, provides readers from the start 21

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The poem is discussed in Kokolis 2000: 295–6; Pieris 2000a: 306–7; Zamarou 2005: 43–9; Phillipson 2013: 87–96; Papanikolaou 2014: 273–91; Skordi 2018: 50–4. It is possible that it inspired Napoleon Lapathiotis to use the pseudonym Πλάτων Χαρμίδης for his eleven parodic pieces ‘À la manière de . . .’, published together in 1938–9 but begun much earlier, the first of which (1924) parodies Cavafy: Vogiatzoglou 2011: 241. For Cavafy’s knowledge of Wilde, see Malanos 1957: 133–6; Ekdawi 1993; Boyiopoulos 2012; cf. Jeffreys 2006. His library contained a French translation of The Picture of Dorian Gray (Karampini-Iatrou 2003: 112). Compare e.g. ‘Kaisarion’ (Καισαρίων), written in 1914 and printed in 1918, where the young prince appears to the poet late at night as he reads a book of inscriptions, with Wilde’s description in ‘The Portrait of Mr. W. H.’ (1958: 34), of how he imagined that the fictional ‘Willie Hughes’, a beautiful Elizabethan boy-actor, used to appear to him in his rooms as he read Shakespeare’s sonnets (Ekdawi 1993: 298). It is perhaps worth pointing out that Cavafy spent part of his childhood in Liverpool and London and was fluent in English; his first poetic compositions were in English, and he spoke Greek with a slight English accent. Cf. Malanos 1957: 14; Liddell 1974: 25–7; 104; Faubillon 2003: 51; Jeffreys 2006: 58–61, and 79 n. 3. Savvidis 1991: 159. On Cavafy’s method of distributing his poems, see Jusdanis 1987: 58–63; Savvidis 1991: 14–15; Papanikolaou 2005: 243–4, 2014: 182–6. The title of this poem may have been inspired by the phrase Βάτναι, πόλις τῆς Ὀσροηνῆς in Herodian, De prosodia catholica 3.1, p. 326 and 3.2, p. 872 Lentz, and in Stephanus of Byzantium, Ethnica 2.57 Billerbeck.

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with some geographic, though not much chronological, specificity: Osroene was an area in northern Mesopotamia, including Edessa. It was a Roman province (Osrhoena) for at least parts of the late second and early third centuries AD, and otherwise formed a buffer between the Roman Empire and Parthia; it was conquered by the Arabs in AD 638, which probably provides a terminus ante quem for the setting of the poem.26 However, the renaming of the poem, and the removing of ‘Charmides’ from the title, also has an important ‘literary’ effect. The explicit mention of the Platonic text is now delayed until the last line; it is thus only when the reader reaches the end of the poem that he or she is invited to think of Plato’s Charmides. Wilde’s naming of Charmides in the title had run the risk of producing a disappointing frustration of expectations, as readers alert to the potential of the intertext to endow the poem with meaning may have sought in vain for such significance, beyond the erotic tone and the fact that the protagonist is to be seen as a beautiful loveobject. In Cavafy, on the other hand, the delay of the name aligns the reader’s reactions with the ‘we’ of the poem. This alignment of reader and narrator is reinforced by the language of the poem. The vocabulary of the first lines mirrors the ‘popular’ setting: ταβέρνα, καυγᾶς, ὁλάνοιχτα are all words of a prosaic, non-elevated tone,27 as is probably Γραικοί (rather than Ἕλληνες or Ἑλληνικοί):28 the world created here is not an idealized Hellenic one, but a down-to-earth world of tavernas and fist fights, a world in fact familiar from many of Cavafy’s non-historical poems.29 Even as the sixth line begins, with ‘Such’ (Τέτοιος), the tone is still prosaic.30 But at the moment when Remon’s group of 26 27 28

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See Wagner 1983. Zamarou 2005: 48. Cavafy normally uses the term Ἕλλην/Ἑλληνικός; the use of Γραικός here (and in ‘In church’ (Στὴν ἐκκλησία), ‘Theophilus Palaeologus’ (Θεόφιλος Παλαιόλογος) and ‘Taken’ (Πάρθεν)) is marked. Cf. his statement to Stratis Tsirkas, Εἶμαι κι ἐγὼ Ἑλληνικός. Προσοχή, ὄχι Ἕλλην, οὔτε Ἑλληνίζων, ἀλλὰ Ἑλληνικός. See Keeley 1976: 109. E.g. ‘At the entrance of the kafeneion’ (Στοῦ καφενείου τὴν εἴσοδο), ‘The next table’ (Τὸ διπλανὸ τραπέζι), or ‘One night’ (Μία νύχτα). Cf. Kappler 2000 on the lexical register in such poems. Cf. Papanikolaou 2014: 275–80, who suggests that τέτοιος, sometimes used as a slang term for gay, might strengthen the homoerotic atmosphere of the scene; cf. Babiniotis 1998 s.v. 4.

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friends, looking at his beautiful body in the moonlight, think of Plato’s Charmides, so at that moment, in the last line of the poem, the reader too is invited to think of the Charmides of Plato, and to reassess the poem in that light. The reader, that is, who has not been primed by a title or anything in the poem until this point, experiences that same sense of recognition as Remon’s grieving friends did.31 Through this brief, explicit citation, then, the reader’s mind too goes to Plato’s Charmides, both the text of that name and the young man who appears in it. The effect is that the reader brings to his or her image of Remon all the attributes which Charmides had in Plato: his beauty, of course, and the fact that he was courted by many admirers, but also his intelligence and his interest in matters philosophical. The allusion also suggests something about the narrator’s relationship with or attitude to Remon: that of an older man, perhaps, who desires Remon’s intellectual development, if we see the narrator as playing the role of Socrates, but also strongly attracted by him (Chrm. 155d). It also reinforces the homoerotic tone here: the gaze of Remon’s friends is, like the gaze of Socrates and other spectators, and of Charmides’ classmates, erotically charged. Just as Charmides’ friends looked at him ‘as though he were a statue’ (πάντες ὥσπερ ἄγαλμα ἐθεῶντο αὐτόν, 154c), so Remon’s friends gaze at his apparently motionless body lying on a bed;32 the objectification of Remon as the recipient of the erotic gaze of his male friends is reinforced in Cavafy by the fact that he never speaks.33 Indeed, Cavafy’s decision to present a motionless, and perhaps dead, Charmides, rather than the very much alive Charmides of Plato, emphasizes the passivity of his young man, who is the passive object not only of desire but also of affection from his admiring friends. Wilde too had ended his poem 31 32

33

Cf. Zamarou 2005: 43–5, 48–9; Skordi 2018: 51–4. The mention of the bed adds to the erotic atmosphere of the scene and suggests the desire felt by the ‘we’ of the poem: beds are places where dead bodies are laid out, or the injured tended, but also of sex and desire. Compare ‘From the windows . . . his beautiful body on the bed was illuminated by the moon’ with the obviously erotic poem ‘Afternoon sun’: ‘By the window was the bed, where we made love so many times . . . the afternoon sun used to reach it half way’ (Πλάϊ στὸ παράθυρο ἦταν τὸ κρεββάτι ποῦ ἀγαπηθήκαμε τόσες φορές . . . ὁ ἥλιος τοῦ ἀπογεύματος τὤφθανε ὥς τὰ μισά). Cf. Papanikolaou 2014: 281–3.

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with the dead body of Charmides being desired; but whereas in Wilde the tone was tortured and unfulfilled, in Cavafy the prone young man is surrounded by loving friends. The allusion also suggests something about the society imagined in this poem: the mixed world of Syrians, Greeks, Armenians and Medes, out on the frontier. The fact that Remon’s name is not Greek in origin, but Coptic (Egyptian Christian), makes him emblematic of the cultural mix brought out here, as the narrator stresses (‘Such is Remon too’). Readers might think of all those other poems of Cavafy which dramatize a multicultural world,34 or where individuals or populations struggle to maintain or demonstrate their Greekness in their distant outposts.35 But this is still a world in which Plato was a living point of reference, where one’s mind did go to Plato’s Charmides when one thought of a beautiful young man’s body and face.36 Indeed, the movement from the face and body of a particular beautiful young man to an idealized, intellectualized beauty is itself very Platonic, as expressed most memorably in Diotima’s speech in the Symposium (esp. 210a–211e), where she talks of ‘ascending’ from loving a single beautiful body, to beautiful bodies in general, then to beautiful souls and beautiful ideas, to finally beauty itself. Both Remon’s friends and the reader, at the mention of Plato’s Charmides in the last line of the poem, take a small step on this Platonic ascent. Thus what began as a tale of the bloody aftermath of a fight in a taverna is transformed into a reverie, an ethereal dreamlike, moonlit vision of idealized Platonic beauty, and of idealized ‘philosophical’ love. Indeed, the allusion to Plato functions not only to transform Remon into Charmides, but to transform this group of young men, in their upstairs room, united in their love for Remon and in their thoughts of Plato, into a Platonic gathering, the sort of idealized society that Plato pictures around Socrates. Might their 34 35

36

See the papers in Pieris 2000b. E.g. ‘Orophernes’ (Ὀροφέρνης), ‘Philhellene’ (Φιλέλλην), ‘Tomb of the grammarian Lysias’ (Λυσίου γραμματικοῦ τάφος), ‘That is the man’ (Οὗτος ἐκεῖνος), ‘For Ammones, who died aged 29, in 610’ (Γιὰ τὸν Ἀμμόνη, που πέθανε 29 ἐτῶν, στὰ 610), ‘Epitaph of Antiochus, King of Commagene’ (Ἐπιτύμβιον Ἀντιόχου, βασιλέως Kομμαγηνῆς); ‘Posidonians’ (Ποσειδωνιᾶται); ‘Going back home from Greece’ (Ἐπάνοδος ἀπὸ τὴν Ἑλλάδα). Cf. Keeley 1976: 103–31; Kokkori 1993. Cf. Zamarou 2005: 47–8; Sturges 2005: 1–2, 4.

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discussions, their parties, have been as philosophical as those in Plato? Or, to put it another way, might we not imagine the symposia, the gatherings at gymnasia and private houses, the conversations while walking that we read about in Plato as like this society?37 Indeed, might we see in Remon and his friends not a pale imitation of a Platonic coterie, but a more real incarnation of it – in this defiantly non-classical, ethnically mixed group of young men who frequented tavernas and got into fights, and who loved each other, who loved their comrade’s body – more real than might be found in the classicizing fantasies common in the art and literature of the time?38 Might not their appreciation of beauty, and temperance, and virtue, be as philosophical, as wise as in Plato? In posing these questions, Cavafy’s invocation of Plato’s Charmides elevates this group, whose sexuality would have placed them outside the bounds of contemporary society, into an ideal. But the allusion to Plato’s Charmides might also leave readers with a doubt. The real Charmides son of Glaucon had later been deeply involved in the oligarchic regime of 404–403. Indeed, as we have seen, the rather disturbing end of Plato’s text, in which Socrates accuses Charmides of intending to use ‘force’ (βιάσῃ ἄρα), which Charmides admits, hints at their later violent actions. Perhaps the fight in which Remon was wounded was political, too – or is the point that it was not, that political struggles do not happen, in that outpost beyond the Euphrates? That all these trains of thought can be activated by the brief mention of the Platonic original shows both its effectiveness and its extreme economy. It is worth making four final points about the Cavafian use of the Platonic intertext. First, the allusion is explicit: that is, although the revised title gives nothing away, the last line of the poem not only mentions the Platonic text and/or the character after whom it is named, but also provides readers with a model, an exemplar, in the form of the thoughts of that mixed group of Remon’s friends, that they too should have Plato’s 37 38

Pieris 2000a: 306–7; Skordi 2018: 53–4. It is relevant here that Cavafy’s vision of the Greek past is almost entirely Hellenistic and Byzantine: very few poems are set in the classical period, a feature which sets him apart from other writers, Greek and non-Greek, of his period.

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Charmides in mind. Secondly, despite the centrality of the Charmides to this poem, there are no clear verbal echoes of the Platonic intertext itself, nothing in the language of the poem which is reminiscent of, or alludes to, particular passages or lines of the Platonic text.39 Even ‘our mind went to’ is less direct than it might have been: contrast the ending of the earlier ‘Sculptor of Tyana’ (Τυανεὺς γλύπτης), with its invocation of Platonic forms: ‘It was this one I was dreaming of, when my mind was ascending to the ideal (ὁ νοῦς μου ἀνέβαινε στὰ ἰδανικά)’.40 Thirdly, the reader’s understanding of the poem is, as we have seen, broadened and enriched by the knowledge of the Platonic text which he or she brings to it.41 In other words, the allusion activates the readers’ pre-existing knowledge of Plato’s Charmides, which then in turn enriches their interpretation of Cavafy’s poem.42 Finally, the eroticism of this poem is implied rather than stated, and in this the mention of both Plato and specifically Plato’s Charmides is central. Whereas for Wilde the mention of Charmides was deployed simply to evoke a beautiful ‘Classical’ youth, with hints at his desirableness to men as well as women, for Cavafy, Charmides evokes a specifically homosexual love. In Cavafy’s Alexandria, although his sexuality was something of an open secret, homosexuality was both illegal and considered by most of society to be disgraceful. Cavafy himself was the subject of vitriolic attacks in the press because of his sexuality;43 he certainly knew of Oscar Wilde’s arrest and trial in 1895, and the two years’ imprisonment to which he was condemned and from which he never recovered, dying a mere three years later in 1900. Cavafy referred to the need to hide the homoerotic elements in several poems, such as ‘When they are roused’ 39

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41 42

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Contrast e.g. Vizyenos, who includes verbal echoes of the Phaedrus in his short story ‘The consequences of the old story’ (Αἱ συνέπειαι τῆς παλαιᾶς ἱστορίας, published 1884): see Kalligas 2011. Also the influence of Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus in Sikelianos’ erotic poems: see Skordi 2018: 63–79. Skordi 2018: 53–4, 73–4. ‘Sculptor of Tyana’ was written in 1893, rewritten in 1903 and published in 1911: Savvidis 1991: 141. For references and allusions to Plato in Cavafy more generally, see Zamarou 2005. Of course, many real readers of Cavafy may never have heard of, let alone read, Plato’s Charmides, and for them the effect of the (explicit) allusion is more limited, but still profound. Papanikolaou 2005: 243, 2014: 182–3, 202–3.

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(Ὅταν διεγείρονται), which was printed in 1916.44 His reference to Plato’s Charmides one year later in his ‘In a town of Osroene’ allowed him to discuss homoerotic love without having to state it openly.45 Plutarch’s Alcibiades Let us now turn from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to antiquity, and to the presence of the Charmides in Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades. Here, as we shall see, the invitation to the reader to think of the Platonic Charmides is implicit rather than explicit and relies instead on the reader’s ability to recognize close verbal echoing, of a type not seen in either Wilde or Cavafy. Furthermore, Plutarch’s approach to the erotic and philosophical elements in the Charmides is rather different from theirs. Plutarch does not use the Charmides as a means to hint at or sanction homoerotic love. On the contrary, while he evokes the setting of the Charmides and some of its language in order to call to mind the way in which Socrates approached young men with an educational aim in mind, he denies explicitly that Socrates was motivated at all by sexual desire for such youths. Socrates’ erōs is thus stripped of its sexual content. In removing the sexual element from Socrates’ motivations in approaching young men, Plutarch integrates the picture of Socrates in the Charmides with that in other Platonic texts: as we shall see, the allusions to the Charmides form part of a web of allusions to other Platonic texts which set Socrates’ relationship with Alcibiades in the context of an idealizing and philosophical love which aims solely at the moral and intellectual education of the beloved. In so doing, Plutarch ‘corrects’ Plato with Plato. Plutarch deals with Socrates’ relationship with Alcibiades in chs. 4–7 of his Life. He draws heavily here on two Platonic works 44

45

‘Try to keep them, poet, however few of them can be contained: the visions of your eroticism. Put them, half-hidden, in your phrases. Try to hold them back, poet, when they are roused within your mind, at night, or in the blaze of noon’ (trans. Sachperoglou, adapted). The poem was written in 1913 (Savvidis 1991: 162); on it, see Papanikolaou 2005: 242–3; 2014: 181–3. On Cavafy’s caution in expressing homosexual desire or activity explicitly in his own voice, see e.g. Keeley 1976: 45–73, 204; Papanikolaou 2005, 2014: 159–214.

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in which Alcibiades plays a prominent role: the First Alcibiades46 and the Symposium.47 In fact, while the Alcibiades and the Symposium clearly function as sources here, to talk of them simply as sources is to understate their importance: numerous allusions are made to both texts, and Plutarch’s readers are plainly meant to have in mind the relationship of Alcibiades and Socrates which is sketched out in them.48 The First Alcibiades is a dialogue between Socrates and the young Alcibiades; in it Socrates notes Alcibiades’ rejection of other lovers, declares himself the only true lover of Alcibiades, but insists that his interest is in his soul not his body (131c–132a), and tries to convince him of how unprepared he is for public life. This provides the basic scenario which Plutarch assumes in Alc. 4–7, though in Plutarch, unlike in Plato, Alcibiades’ other lovers are still very much a presence, competing with Socrates for his affection. Also heavily exploited is Alcibiades’ speech about Socrates in the Symposium (215a– 222b), where he declares his love for Socrates and describes his failed attempt to seduce him and his shame and confusion in Socrates’ presence,49 and ends by comparing Socrates’ treatment of him to his treatment of other young men, including Charmides (222b).50 46

47

48

49

50

Pace Roskam 2012: 99. I take no position here on the question of the authenticity of the First Alcibiades (on which see e.g. Pradeau 1999: 24–9 and 219–20; Denyer 2001: 14–26; Gribble 1999: 260–2; Smith 2004; Benitez 2012). For present purposes it is enough that it was considered Platonic in Plutarch’s period. I have discussed the use of Plato in the Alcibiades in Duff 1999: 224–7, 2009, 2011, and 2020. Other discussions include Russell 1966: 40–1 (= repr. 1995: 196–7), 1973: 127; Pelling 1996: xlvii–xlix, 2005: 116–25; Gribble 1999: 270–6, and, on the use made of both Plato and other Socratic writers, Alesse 2004–5. Jones (1916), in his catalogue of ‘Platonic quotation and reminiscence’ (107) in Plutarch, and Helmbold and O’Neil (1959), in their study of Plutarch’s quotations, note for the Alcibiades only the quotation at 4.4 (Phdr. 255d) and the allusions at 1.3 (Alc. 1.122b), 6.1 (Symp. 215e) and 7.3–5 (220f–221b). Verdegem (2010), in his discussion of Alc. 4–7, does not notice the allusions to Charmides, Lysis or Phaedrus’ speech from the Symposium. Only one allusion to Charmides has been noticed by scholars in all of Plutarch’s works: see above n. 1. On Plutarch’s use of the Symposium at Alc. 4–7, see Duff 1999: 216–18 and esp. 2009. Some of the material is repeated in Amat. 762b–f, De audiendo 46c–47b and Quomodo adul. 66a–b, all of which also draw heavily on the Symposium. See Duff 2011: 28 n. 6. For analysis of how such clusters of similar elements in several different Plutarchan texts might be explained, see Van der Stockt 1999a, 1999b, 2002, 2004, 2004–5; Van Meirvenne 1999. Another Platonic intertext of great importance for Plutarch’s Alcibiades 4–7 is the Republic, especially book 6: see Duff 2011: 32–7 and 39–40. Cf. also the allusion in

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Plutarch begins his analysis of Alcibiades’ relationship with Socrates by noting the stiff competition that raged for Alcibiades’ attention between Socrates and Alcibiades’ other, less high-minded admirers: Ἤδη δὲ πολλῶν καὶ γενναίων ἀθροιζομένων καὶ περιεπόντων, οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι καταφανεῖς ἦσαν αὐτοῦ τὴν λαμπρότητα τῆς ὥρας ἐκπεπληγμένοι καὶ θεραπεύοντες, ὁ δὲ Σωκράτους ἔρως μέγα μαρτύριον ἦν τῆς πρὸς ἀρετὴν εὐφυΐας τοῦ παιδός, ἣν ἐμφαινομένην τῷ εἴδει καὶ διαλάμπουσαν ἐνορῶν. Already many noble men were gathering around and courting him. The others were clearly astounded by the radiance of his youthful beauty and cultivated him, but the love of Socrates was great testimony of the boy’s potential for virtue, which Socrates could discern hinted at in his appearance and shining through. (Alc. 4.1)

We are plainly meant to have in mind here the opening of the First Alcibiades, where Socrates comments on Alcibiades’ ‘other lovers’ (οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι δι’ ὄχλου ἐγένοντό σοι διαλεγόμενοι . . . πολλῶν γὰρ γενομένων καὶ μεγαλοφρόνων); as he explains there, Alcibiades spurned them all (103a–b).51 But Plutarch states explicitly here what is implicit there: that Socrates could discern Alcibiades’ ‘potential for virtue’ (εὐφυΐα). Indeed, the fact that Socrates loved Alcibiades52 is used by Plutarch not as evidence of Alcibiades’ beauty, still less of Socrates’ sexual desire for him, but as evidence of Alcibiades’ moral potential, since Socrates was not, as Plato has him declare in Alc. 1.131e, attracted by his looks.53 But the description of the crowd of Alcibiades’ admirers, and their astonishment at his beauty, also echoes the start of Plato’s Charmides. As we have seen, there Socrates describes how, when the young Charmides entered a palaestra where Socrates and his

51 52

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Alc. 34.7 to Grg. 492c, noted by Russell 1973: 127, 1983: 124; Gribble 1999: 275; Duff 2003: 98–9. Gribble 1999: 272. But, as Pelling 2005: 117–19 points out, while it is natural to take ὁ . . . Σωκράτους ἔρως as Socrates’ love for Alcibiades, readers who remember the role reversal in the Symposium may think also of Alcibiades’ love for him too, which Plutarch discusses at 4.4 and which also demonstrates Alcibiades’ good nature; cf. Socrates’ complaint in Symp. 213c about ὁ τούτου ἔρως τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, which is similarly ambiguous. Cf. also Aeschines Soc. Alc. fr. 11c Dittmar = VI A 53.5–6, 27 Giannantoni; Xen. Mem. 4.1.2, Symp. 8.1–42; Pl. Prt. 309c. In Symp., Plato dramatizes, by means of Alcibiades’ own story of his failed seduction of Socrates (217a–219c), the notion that Socrates’ love of Alcibiades had as its goal Alcibiades’ education rather than his body.

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friends were sitting, all seemed to be in love with him (οἱ δὲ δὴ ἄλλοι πάντες ἐρᾶν ἔμοιγε ἐδόκουν αὐτοῦ), as they were so struck by his beauty (ἐκπεπληγμένοι τε καὶ τεθορυβημένοι); many other lovers preceded and followed him as he walked (πολλοὶ δὲ δὴ ἄλλοι ἐρασταὶ καὶ ἐν τοῖς ὄπισθεν εἵποντο, 154c). Charmides’ admirers wax lyrical about the boy’s beautiful body, but Socrates wonders whether he is also well endowed by nature (εὖ πεφυκώς) in his soul (154e). Socrates then engages him in philosophical conversation, to which Charmides responds enthusiastically. The allusion suggests a parallel between Alcibiades and Charmides and reinforces the notion of Alcibiades’ youth and beauty, but also his good nature – though the accusations of his promiscuity and violence as a boy, reported in Alc. 3.1–2, have already suggested that Alcibiades’ ‘potential for virtue’ is not fully realized. The crowd of admirers which surrounds Charmides, and the discussion among Socrates’ friends of the beauty of his face and body, provide a vivid template for how we might imagine the interest shown in Alcibiades by his lovers. The parallel also suggests the kind of educational relationship that Socrates developed with Alcibiades. In the Charmides, while others focus on Charmides’ looks alone, Socrates addresses him in a kindly and serious way, helping him to take his first steps in philosophy, as he gets a taste of Socrates’ method of interrogation, and thus wins his devotion (176b). So, it is implied, did Socrates behave with Alcibiades and with such natural intellectual curiosity did Alcibiades respond. The parallel set up here between Alcibiades and Charmides has another function. Readers of Plato and of Plutarch may have been aware that Charmides, like his uncle Critias, as we have already mentioned, also went on to be involved in the oligarchy of 404–403.54 Indeed, the Charmides had ended with hints at this later history. The issue of Alcibiades’ attitude towards democracy had been central to contemporary presentations of him (e.g. Aristoph. Frogs 1422–32; Thuc. 6.15.4) and the later literary tradition.55 It is also a recurrent theme throughout the Life (e.g. 54 55

See above, p. 171. See especially Gribble 1999; also Seager 1967.

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16.2–3, 7–9); he is implicated in the oligarchic coup of 411 (25.5–6, 26.1), though he manages to switch to the (winning) democratic side when it suits him; his second exile is precipitated by popular fear that that he might have wanted to overthrow the constitution and establish himself as tyrant (34.7–35.1). The allusion to Charmides here raises that question early in the Life: will Alcibiades turn out the same way?56 But there is a difference: in the Charmides, Socrates shares the general interest in Charmides’ body; indeed he himself admits his intense sexual desire for Charmides, when he sees inside his himation (155d), though he makes clear at the same time that he is interested in his soul more than in his body (esp. 154e). However, the notion that Socrates was sexually attracted to the young men in his circle was, by Plutarch’s time, something of a problem for those who wished to defend and promote his works; the Charmides in particular, set at a wrestling school where men admire youths and chat about what they look like naked, and with its frank admission of Socrates’ sexual arousal at the sight of Charmides, was a particular challenge for later Platonists.57 Plutarch’s strategy in what follows is to deny that Socrates was motivated at all by sexual desire, and to neutralize the sexual 56

57

There is also another reason to link Alcibiades and Charmides: both would be accused of involvement in the profanation of the Mysteries in 415. In fact, according to Andocides, it was in Charmides’ house that Alcibiades and others held their profanatory rites, and Charmides, like Alcibiades, went into exile as a result (On the Mysteries 16); a passage from Xenophon’s Symposium (4.31) suggests that Charmides probably, like Alcibiades, had his property confiscated. (That the Charmides mentioned in And. 1.16 is Charmides son of Glaucon, and that the latter’s poverty in Xen. Symp. 4.31 is a result of the confiscation of his property for involvement in the Mysteries affair, is argued by Wallace 1992.) For readers who recognize it and who remember Charmides’ background, the allusion also points forward to Alcibiades’ later condemnation for involvement in the Mysteries affair, narrated in Alc. 19–21, and reminds us that, for all Socrates’ attention and concern for him, Alcibiades, like Charmides, would go his own way. Cf. Dillon 1994, 2003. The Stoics Zeno and Chrysippus insisted that ‘erōs is an effort towards the creation of friendship through beauty which shines through, and should not aim at sex (συνουσία) but at friendship’ (Diog. Laert. 7.130 = SVF 3.716). This tendency to tone down the sexual nature of Socrates’ interest in Alcibiades was not universally accepted. Athenaeus puts into the mouth of a certain Masurius an attack on the version of the relationship put forward in the Symposium, in which it is Alcibiades who hunts Socrates rather than the other way round. On the contrary, Masurius argues, Socrates was in love (ἤρα) with Alcibiades and was given advice on how to press his suit by Aspasia (219a–220a): see Trapp 2000: 357–61.

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element in the Charmides by drawing on other Platonic texts which deal with the idealized love of the philosopher for a young man. Plutarch continues, in a passage dense with allusions to the Republic, as well as the Alcibiades 1, Symposium and Apology58 and including a quotation of a lost play by Phrynichus, to describe Socrates’ love for Alcibiades, the dangers posed by his other lovers and the way in which Alcibiades was humbled in Socrates’ presence (4.1–4). He sets up a contrast, familiar from the First Alcibiades, but already implied in the Charmides, between other men, whose main interest in brilliant youths such as Charmides or Alcibiades was sexual, and who aimed to corrupt and use them, and Socrates, whose love was philosophical, moral and educational. Sexual desire is now wholly that of the ‘other lovers’; Socrates, by contrast, desires to protect (ἀμύνειν, 4.1) him from their corrupting attentions, and his aim is now only the young man’s soul. The most explicit statement of the desexualization of Socrates’ love is Plutarch’s claim that Alcibiades, in rejecting his other lovers and paying attention to Socrates, ‘listened to the words of a lover who was not hunting unmanly pleasure (ἡδονὴν ἄνανδρον) nor begging for kisses and touches, but trying to expose the rottenness of his soul and squeeze his empty and foolish pride’ (4.3). The insistence that Socrates was not interested in Alcibiades’ body is probably meant to bring to mind Socrates’ rebuffing of Alcibiades’ sexual advances in the Symposium. It also alludes to Socrates’ attack on pederastic love in his speech in Phaedrus 238e–241d (esp. 239c–d): a conventional lover, Socrates says, will pursue someone used to a ‘soft and unmanly way of living’ (ἁπαλῆς καὶ ἀνάνδρου διαίτης), and will aim to make him weaker, poorer and more isolated, so he can master him more fully.59 Socrates’ aim, on the contrary, was an educational one: to ‘expose’ (ἐλέγχοντος) the flaws in Alcibiades’ character, 58

59

E.g. 4.4, ‘He thought that Socrates’ activity (πρᾶγμα) was in reality a service of the gods directed towards the care and salvation of the young (εἰς νέων ἐπιμέλειαν εἶναι καὶ σωτηρίαν)’, recalling Socrates’ own claim about himself in Ap. 30a: ‘I think that there has never been a greater good in the city than my own service to the god (τὴν ἐμὴν τῶ ͅ θεῶ ͅ ὑπηρεσίαν)’. Socrates’ πρᾶγμα alludes to Pl. Alc. 1.104d, Symp. 217c. See Duff 2009: 40, 2011: 36–7. Cf. Plut. Amat. 749f–750a. See Duff 2009: 39.

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a phrase which brings to mind the Socratic elenchus, his questionand-answer method of teaching which often resulted in the ignorance of his interlocutor being exposed, as it does in the Charmides and First Alcibiades.60 Socrates, for Plutarch, was interested only in educating and protecting such beautiful young men. Idealized Philosophical Love: Other Platonic Intertexts in the Alcibiades This notion of an idealized, non-sexual, philosophical love is reinforced by allusion to several other Platonic texts. Alcibiades, Plutarch continues, recognized the beneficial effects of Socrates’ interest in him, and was ashamed of his own shortcomings as he admired Socrates’ virtue. In fact, he fell in love with Socrates himself: ‘he acquired’, says Plutarch, ‘without realizing it, an image of love, as Plato puts it, which reflects love’ (ἐλάνθανεν εἴδωλον ἔρωτος, ὥς φησιν ὁ Πλάτων, ἀντέρωτα κτώμενος, 4.4). This is an explicit quotation of Phaedrus 255d.61 Plato has been discussing the way the true lover will approach the boy he loves, and the effect of his love on the latter. The lover, Plato says, reins in his passions, which are compared to an unruly horse, and approaches his beloved gently (253c–254e). The beloved, seeing that the lover really does love him, yields to him, and as their intimacy grows is astonished at the lover’s friendship, and when he looks into the eyes of the lover sees his own beauty reflected. The beloved boy, Plato claims, also falls in love, and ‘sees himself in his lover as in a mirror, without being aware of it (λέληθεν)’. He desires his lover, just as his lover desires him, thus ‘having an image of love in return for love’ (εἴδωλον ἔρωτος ἀντέρωτα ἔχων) (255d) – εἴδωλον here signifying both the literal image of himself that the beloved sees in the lover’s eyes, and, metaphorically, the way the beloved now shares the ‘image’ which the lover has of

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Pelling 2005: 118; Duff 2011: 36; Roskam 2012: 89. On Plutarch’s use of this passage here, see Pelling 2005: 118–19; Duff 2011: 38–9. Plutarch uses the same quotation elsewhere: Ant. 36.1–2; De virt. moral. 445b–c; De gen. 588f; Plat. quaest. 1008c–d, 1009b; cf. Galba 6.4; De tuenda sanit. 125b; De cohib. ira 453c. See Pelling 1988, on Ant. 36.1; Duff 1999: 78–9.

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him.62 Whereas the Charmides, like the First Alcibiades and Symposium, purports to give a record of how Socrates actually approached the beautiful young men with whom he was associated, and how they responded, the Phaedrus presents a more abstract or idealized blueprint.63 By invoking the Phaedrus passage here, then, Plutarch assimilates Socrates and Alcibiades’ relationship more directly to this idealized type of philosophical and pedagogical love, in which the lover exercises self-control64 and the beloved loves him in return.65 In 4.5–5.5 Plutarch leaves Alcibiades’ relationship with Socrates and narrates two anecdotes about his imperious and disdainful behaviour to his ‘other lovers’. The setting of one of these anecdotes, a dinner party to which Alcibiades arrives drunk, recalls his arrival in the Symposium – though here his behaviour is more outrageous and insulting (‘hubristic’, as other guests call it). Furthermore, the fact that the host of the party, who loves Alcibiades but whom Alcibiades humiliates, is one Anytus son of Anthemion gives this a much darker tone: Plutarch’s readers would know from the Apology that Anytus would later be one of Socrates’ accusers (Ap. 8b, 29b–c, 31a); the implication is that Alcibiades’ behaviour may have contributed to Socrates’ execution.66 Chapter 6 deals again with Socrates’ relationship with Alcibiades, and the struggle between him and his ‘other lovers’ for Alcibiades’ attention. The situation is very much that envisaged in the First Alcibiades: Alcibiades is talented but prone to arrogance and will enter politics before he is ready; he is attracted to the other lovers more because they play on his ambition than because of the pleasures that they offer. Once more there is a dense 62

63

64

65

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On the popularity of the Phaedrus in Plutarch’s period, see e.g. Trapp 1990. Plutarch’s Amatorius is heavily influenced by the Phaedrus. Though, as Dillon 1994 shows, it was the First Alcibiades that became the paradigmatic text for how a philosopher should love. Memory of the image of the unruly horse from Phaedrus 253c–254e suggests not the struggle within Alcibiades’ soul (Pelling 1996: xlviii) but that Socrates approached him as a philosopher should, that is, with self–control. On this aspect of the picture of love in the Phaedrus, see Dillon 2003. In later Platonist discussions both of these elements were considered central to ‘good’ philosophical love: Dillon 1994: 388. Hunter 2004b: 103–4; Duff 2009: 42. The same story is told in Amat. 762c–d, where Anytus’ role in Socrates’ prosecution is mentioned.

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network of allusions, not only to the Alcibiades 1, but also to the Symposium, and Republic.67 Plutarch concludes the chapter with a simile, in which the tough love meted out to Alcibiades by Socrates is compared to the effect of plunging iron heated in the fire into cold water: ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ σίδηρος ἐν τῷ πυρὶ μαλασσόμενος αὖθις ὑπὸ τοῦ ψυχροῦ πυκνοῦται καὶ σύνεισι τοῖς μορίοις εἰς αὑτόν, οὕτως ἐκεῖνον ὁ Σωκράτης θρύψεως διάπλεων καὶ χαυνότητος ὁσάκις ἂν λάβοι, πιέζων τῷ λόγῳ καὶ συστέλλων ταπεινὸν ἐποίει καὶ ἄτολμον, ἡλίκων ἐνδεής ἐστι καὶ ἀτελὴς πρὸς ἀρετὴν μανθάνοντα. So just as iron when softened in the fire condenses again under the operation of cold and its atoms contract, in the same way, every time Socrates took him back, stuffed full of softness and puffed-up conceit (θρύψεως διάπλεων καὶ χαυνότητος),68 he would squeeze and crush him with reason and make him humble and hesitant (πιέζων τῷ λόγῳ καὶ συστέλλων ταπεινὸν ἐποίει καὶ ἄτολμον). (Alc. 6.5)

This is an allusion to Plato’s Lysis.69 There Socrates advises Hippothales, the besotted lover of the beautiful aristocratic teenager Lysis son of Democrates, on how he should deal with his favourite. He should not praise him too much, he says, as this will make failing to catch him all the harder to bear; besides, handsome boys, when praised, are filled with arrogance and haughtiness (φρονήματος ἐμπίμπλανται καὶ μεγαλαυχίας, 206a). Socrates then engages Lysis in conversation, as his lover looks on. Through a series of questions, Socrates convinces Lysis of his ignorance, but also inspires him to self-examination. Halfway through the conversation, Socrates can scarcely restrain himself: καὶ ἐγὼ ἀκούσας αὐτοῦ ἀπέβλεψα πρὸς τὸν Ἱπποθάλη, καὶ ὀλίγου ἐξήμαρτον· ἐπῆλθε γάρ μοι εἰπεῖν ὅτι Οὕτω χρή, ὦ Ἱππόθαλες, τοῖς παιδικοῖς διαλέγεσθαι, ταπεινοῦντα καὶ συστέλλοντα, ἀλλὰ μὴ ὥσπερ σὺ χαυνοῦντα καὶ διαθρύπτοντα. On hearing him answer this, I glanced at Hippothales, and nearly made a blunder, for it came into my mind to say: ‘That is the way you should speak to your paidika, Hippothales, humbling and crushing him, instead of puffing him up and softening him, as you do.’ (Plato, Lysis 210e)

67 68

69

See Duff 2011: 39–40. An allusion to Pl. Resp. 494d, σχηματισμοῦ καὶ φρονήματος κενοῦ ἄνευ νοῦ ἐμπιμπλάμενον, on the effect of flattery on the talented young man. For discussion of the Lysis, see e.g. Sturges 2005: 13–39.

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The parallel between Lysis and Alcibiades is neat: both young men have admirers attracted by their beauty; Hippothales sings the praises of Lysis’ looks, family, horse-breeding and chariot victories, all attributes of Plutarch’s Alcibiades too (cf. Alc. 4.1, 10.3, 11.1–3). Both are in danger of being made arrogant by the praise of their lovers; indeed Hippothales’ fear that Lysis might be angry with him if he sees him watching him (207b) suggests that the good-natured boy treated some of his lovers with the disdain with which we have seen Alcibiades treating his (4.4–5.5). With both young men, Socrates is interested in their souls rather than in their bodies, and both he challenges intellectually. The Lysis, then, like the Charmides and First Alcibiades, provides for Plutarch a model for the sort of intellectual conversation that Alcibiades is imagined as getting from Socrates. Lysis is so inspired by his conversation with Socrates that he even invites a young friend to join in (211a); Alcibiades, we are to imagine, was similarly inspired by Socrates. Thus this allusion, like the earlier one to Charmides, suggests not just the kind of searching questions that we are to imagine Socrates putting to Alcibiades, but also how fascinated Alcibiades was with Socrates, and how well he responded to the intellectual and moral demands Socrates made of him.70 The experience may have been humbling, like being plunged into cold water; but Alcibiades appreciated it and kept coming back for more – a testimony to his εὐφυΐα (4.1, 6.1). We have mentioned, finally, that the Symposium is a presence throughout this section of the Life, and allusions and quotations are not hard to find. But Plutarch’s use of the Symposium is not limited to that part of the text in which Alcibiades is actually present or speaks. In Alc. 7.3–5, Plutarch describes Socrates

70

Socrates, Plutarch concludes (6.5), made Alcibiades begin to understand ‘how much he lacked and how incomplete he was in virtue’ (ἡλίκων ἐνδεής ἐστι καὶ ἀτελὴς πρὸς ἀρετήν), alluding to both the start and end of Pl. Alc. 1 (104a, 135e) and to Symp. 216a (cf. 4.1: Alcibiades’ ‘potential for virtue’, εὐφυΐα πρὸς ἀρετήν). Memory of these passages emphasizes Socrates’ influence but also suggests the all-too-present hold which politics had on Alcibiades. Cf. also Resp. 491d: if a plant lacks the proper food and environment, the stronger it is, the more it falls short of perfection (ἐνδεῖ τῶν πρεπόντων); so it is with talented men deprived of philosophical education. Also Cor. 1.3 (itself alluding to the Resp. passage): a good nature which is lacking in education (παιδείας ἐνδεής) is unstable. See Russell 1966: 40 (= repr. 1995: 196); Duff 2009: 45.

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defending the wounded Alcibiades on the field of battle at Potidaea. The crown for bravery, Plutarch remarks, should rightfully have gone to Socrates, but he urged the generals to give it to Alcibiades. This is all based on Alcibiades’ own description of the battle and its aftermath in Symp. 220d–221c, which serves here as a source. But Plutarch supplies Socrates with a motive for championing Alcibiades’ cause not mentioned in the latter’s speech: Socrates ‘wanted [Alcibiades’] ambition for fine things (τὸ φιλότιμον ἐν τοῖς καλοῖς αὐτοῦ) to grow’ (7.4). This alludes to Phaedrus’ speech in Symp. 178c–179b, before Alcibiades’ entry. Phaedrus has been speaking of love as bringing the greatest blessing a man can have. What love provides, he says, cannot be obtained by ‘kinship, honours or wealth’ (all advantages that Plutarch’s Alcibiades had);71 it instils in lovers ‘shame at shameful things, and ambition for fine things’ (τὴν ἐπὶ μὲν τοῖς αἰσχροῖς αἰσχύνην, ἐπὶ δὲ τοῖς καλοῖς φιλοτιμίαν, 178d). As a result of this, Phaedrus argues, lovers defend and never desert each other on the battlefield.72 By alluding to this passage, Plutarch makes more explicit what is implicit in Alcibiades’ description of the Potidaea campaign in the Symposium: namely, that Socrates and Alcibiades on campaign are to be seen as an ideal pederastic couple, with the older exercising an educational and protective role over the younger, and inspiring him towards fine conduct.73 Plutarch alludes, then, to a part of the Symposium which does not concern Alcibiades and by doing so sets his relationship with Socrates in a wider context of idealized, desexualized pederastic relations – just as the allusion to Charmides and the other Platonic texts had done. Conclusion This chapter has examined three different receptions of Plato’s Charmides. Oscar Wilde’s poem provides an example of minimal 71 72

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Alc. 4.1–2, 10.3; Pl. Alc. 1.104a–b. Cf. Lys. 14.18, 38; Dem. 21.143; Diod. 12.84.1. Cf. the military imagery in Cavafy’s prose poem Τὸ σύνταγμα τῆς ἡδονῆς (‘The regiment of pleasure’), which may have drawn some inspiration from Phaedrus’ speech: Skordi 2018: 61–2. See Duff 2009: 45–9.

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textual engagement: here, the name Charmides is invoked solely for its connotations of young, Greek, male beauty; the tone is erotically charged but the homoerotic content, though implied, is muted. Readers need only remember that Charmides was one of the beautiful young men with whom Socrates conversed in order to activate the full force of the allusion, and readers who have never heard of Charmides will not lose much. In Cavafy, by contrast, the explicit allusion to ‘the Platonic Charmides’ is central to, and forms the culmination of, the whole (much shorter) poem. The allusion brings out much more clearly the homoerotic elements of the poem, and endows the culturally mixed group of young men, and their admiration for the beauty of their wounded friend, with the prestige of a Platonic gathering and Platonic love. Note that this is not just about the reader recognizing the origin of a quotation or the source of a detail: the allusion activates the reader’s much broader knowledge of Plato’s Charmides, and perhaps of Charmides as a historical figure, which they then bring to their interpretation of Cavafy’s poem.74 Plutarch too exploits the Charmides, but there are some important differences in the way he does this. First, as we have seen, in Plutarch the allusion is implicit rather than explicit (Charmides is not named), and relies much more on the reader’s pre-existing knowledge of the exact wording of the Platonic text and ability to recognize echoes of it here. Of course, it is much less of a leap for a reader to think of Plato when reading a biography of Socrates’ most famous pupil, especially in those sections which deal with his relationship with Socrates. And Plutarch does in this section once mention Plato explicitly, when he quotes from the Phaedrus. Furthermore, the importance of the Platonic texts was highlighted 74

I leave out of consideration here the question of how much Cavafy may have been influenced in this allusive technique by Plutarch; he was certainly steeped in, and a very sensitive reader of, Plutarch. For Cavafy’s use of Plutarch, see e.g. Lavagnini 1988; Harrison 1992; González González 1994; Paschalis 1999; Papadopoulou 2001; Voutsa 2011. What remains of Cavafy’s personal library, now housed at the Center for NeoHellenic Studies (Σπουδαστήριο Nέου Eλληνισμού) in Athens, contains four volumes of Plutarch, including two volumes of Sintenis’ Teubner edition of the Parallel Lives, a French edition of Caesar, and a modern Greek translation of the (ps.-Plutarchan) On Education of Children; Michalis Peridis saw eight volumes when he inspected the library in Alexandria in 1941–2. See Karampini-Iatrou 2003: 42 and 52, 2012: 282–3.

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at the very start of the Alcibiades, when Plutarch cites both Plato and the Socratic writer Antisthenes for details about Alcibiades’ upbringing (1.3).75 But still, Plutarch’s allusive technique requires the ideal reader to recognize implicit allusions to the Charmides through close attention to the exact wording. Plutarch’s dialogue with the Charmides is therefore much more detailed than those of Cavafy and Wilde. But there is also another important difference. Whereas Wilde and especially Cavafy exploited the Charmides for its erotic atmosphere and its frank discussion of Socrates’ sexual desire for young men, Plutarch, while calling to mind the educational conversation with which Socrates engaged Charmides, explicitly denies that Socrates’ motivation was in any way sexual. Plutarch achieves this by integrating allusion to the Charmides into a broader network of allusions to other passages in which Plato describes Socrates’ encounters with beautiful young men, or the ideal relationship of a mature man with a younger beloved, in which the sexual element is entirely absent. Plutarch makes a similar move in the Amatorius, where – in a text suffused with Platonic imagery and language, and drawing especially on the Phaedrus and Symposium – Plutarch shows how Plato’s vision of ideal love might find better expression in married, heterosexual relations than in homosexual ones.76 In both cases, Plutarch, through appeal to Plato, sidelines an element of the Platonic texts that had become an embarrassment for Platonists of his period.

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Plato for the name of his paidagōgos (Alc. 1.122b), and Antisthenes for that of his nurse (VA 201 Giannantoni). Cf. Gribble 1999: 272. For analysis of Alc. 1–3, see Wohl 2002: 131–4; Duff 2003, 2008: 196–201. Goldhill 1995: 148; Rist 2001; Hunter 2012: 185–222; cf. Brenk 1988.

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chapter 8 N A K E D A P E S , F E ATH E R L E S S CH I C K E N S , AND TA LKING P IGS: ADVENTUR ES I N T H E P L ATO N I C H I S TO RY O F B O D Y-H A I R A N D O T HE R HU M A N ATT R I B U T E S

alastair j. l. blanshard

σὺν δέ σφιν ἐὺς πάις Οἰάγροιο Βιστονίῃ φόρμιγγι λιγείης ἦρχεν ἀοιδῆς· ὥς ποτε πετραίῃ ὑπὸ δειράδι Παρνησσοῖο Δελφύνην τόξοισι πελώριον ἐξενάριξεν, κοῦρος ἐὼν ἔτι γυμνός, ἔτι πλοκάμοισι γεγηθώς. And with them, the son of Oeagrus began a clear-toned song on his Bistonian lyre: how once upon the stony ridge of Parnassus, he [Apollo] slew the mighty Delphynes, even though he was a lad, still naked (beardless?), still rejoicing in his locks. (Apoll. Rhod. Argon 2.703–7) γυμνός in v. 707 presents . . . a problem (Hunter 2008a: 37)

Introduction: Naked Apes Reception thrives on problems. A resolved issue is a dead issue. A text that provides a perfect answer to a problem is a text that is going nowhere. It effectively kills its afterlife at the very moment that it achieves its greatest success. Instead, it is entanglement in the wicked problems – the ones where any solution is only ever partial or contingent – that helps to ensure the vibrant afterlife of a text.1 Texts which are firmly implicated in society’s most insoluble problems are those most likely to be replayed, reworked, and revisited. For this reason, the enemy of reception is closure. When examining acts of reception, it is worthwhile examining the way in 1

On the utility of ‘entanglement’ as a critical concept, especially when thinking through issues relating to animal and human, see McInerney 2020. Cf. ‘the notion of “entanglement” also means that answers to the questions . . . “what is a human being?” – and, of course, by implication “what is an animal?” – are never complete, never final’: Kindt 2020b: 290–1.

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which a text complicates a situation as much as it helps to clarify it. By muddying the waters, leaving loose ends, obscuring its pedigree, a text helps ensure its continued vitality. This chapter seeks to illustrate this dynamic by starting with a complicated puzzle that emerges from the problem identified by Hunter in my epigraph. What does it mean to be naked and what is at stake in claims of nudity? Every culture develops its own definition, its own limits. For example, to be γυμνός is different from being nudus. The terms overlap, but are far from coextensive.2 The fondness for translating γυμνός as ‘scantily clad’ that begins in the eighteenth century was certainly driven by a desire to save ‘modern prudery many a shock,’ but it also points to an ambiguity in that the terms γυμνός and nudus (as indeed the word ‘naked’) do not necessarily mean entirely without all forms of clothing.3 How much one can wear and still be ‘naked’ remains a point of contention.4 Moreover, how does body-hair, especially facial hair, fit into ideas of nudity? As Hunter remarks in his comments on this passage, it ‘would be very attractive’ to take γυμνός to mean ‘beardless’ and many translators have followed this inclination.5 Following this line of reasoning implicates us in more interesting and complex questions. It invites us to consider how we frame our body-hair. Is it intrinsic to us or does it exist as a separable ornament (like garments)? What does body-hair cover and expose? When do we see hair and when is it opaque to our vision? What does it mean to be hairless? How do we correlate hair, nature, and culture? Discussions about nudity and hair are rich because they conflate discourses about the body and humanity. Amongst parts of the body, hair has few rivals for the wealth of its signification. Hair 2 3 4 5

Hallett 2005: 61–2. On ‘modern prudery’: Sturtevant 1912: 324. See discussion in Barcan 2004: 20–1. A minimalist position is represented by Mann 1974. Hunter 2008a: 37 n. 37 cites the second eclogue of Nemesianus as a parallel (ambo genas leues, intonsi crinibus ambo, 17). For translations of ‘beardless’ in this passage, see Mooney 1912, Seaton 1912, Rieu 1959, and Green 1997 (with discussion at 243). Race 2008: 169 notes ‘beardless’ as an alternate translation. Vian 1976: 210 n. 1 canvasses the possibility of ‘beardless’ and rejects it in favour of ‘nudity,’ seeing here the influence of kouros statuary. Similarly, Hunter ultimately rejects the translation of beardless in favor of a version which sees γυμνός as the result of Apollonius conflating stories about Apollo slaying the serpent as a (naked) child with stories about his youth (cf. 2009: 38).

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participates as a marker of race, class, gender, age, sexual identity, and faith position.6 A similar wealth of meanings is found in antiquity. The baldness of the Egyptians in Greek art, the fastidiousness of Spartan braiding, the baroque splendour of Flavian and Antonine women’s hairdos, all remind us of this important fact. At various times, the styling of hair takes on particular urgency. The writings of Dio Chrysostom speak to the way the ‘philosophic beard’ and the trimming of hair became a lightning rod for discussion in the first century AD.7 The fact that his Encomium on Hair was still generating responses in the fourth century (and later well into the early modern period) illustrates well how works involving this topic generate a lively reception.8 In this chapter I want to examine an equally animated discussion involving hair and its reception: how some of the distinctions that Plato sets up in relation to the difference between animal and human (and the role of hair in marking this) are challenged and reworked in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers and Plutarch’s Gryllus, works that have traditionally not been seen to be in dialogue. Through this focus on the reception of Platonic texts, I want to explore how certain modes of discourse, most notably myth, prove to be such effective media for the exploration of these ideas. In its malleability and its slipperiness, myth invites reworking and redeployment. As we shall see, it is a vehicle well suited to the wickedest of problems. In focusing on the reception of these Platonic passages, this paper participates in a broader discussion which is occurring in classics in relation to the field of human/animal studies.9 As these studies show, drawing distinctions between animal and human has been a central problem since antiquity. Every generation has needed to rethink this distinction, and in doing so has continually 6

7

8

9

The writings on the cultural significance of hair are voluminous; useful surveys are provided by Sherrow 2006, Biddle-Perry and Cheang 2008, and Biddle-Perry 2018. For discussion of Dio Chrysostom on this topic as well as the works of associated authors (e.g. Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, Clement of Alexandria), see Hawley 2000: 135–6. Cf. Synesius’ On Baldness, which preserves the Dio Chrysostom text; Fitzgerald 1930: ii, 243–74, Kendal 1985. For the reception of Synesius in the early modern period, see Korhonen 2010. Kindt 2017 provides a comprehensive survey of recent work in this field and delineates clearly the key issues driving the intellectual agendas in the area. On the ‘animal turn’ in scholarship, see McInerney 2020: 18–19.

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returned to those texts and ideas which frame and contribute to this distinction; mobilizing these texts, propelling them forward.10 Even if we regard ‘one of the defining features of our age’ to be the ‘radical breakdown of the animal/human distinction,’ it is striking how profitably new posthuman ontologies revisit and refashion earlier poetic and philosophic texts on the animal and the human.11 Reception seems integral to the articulation of this discourse. Richard Sorabji’s important 1993 study Animal Minds and Human Morals established just how important the distinction between animal and human was for ancient philosophy. Other work has confirmed the importance of animals in philosophic thought.12 Traditionally, these discussions have centred around the topic of whether animals were able to exercise rational thought and whether animals were able to act morally. In this chapter, I aim to move away from thinking about the importance of cognition to thinking about the significance of aesthetics. How important is it that humans look like humans and animals look like animals? And in thinking about the aesthetics of ‘being human,’ what are the key markers? Humanity’s general lack of body-hair (its nudity) has been taken as an important sign of its difference from animals. Tracing the reception of this discussion allows us to see the way in which the animal/human distinction has been played out around the discourse relating to hair. This is not a debate limited to antiquity. Even at the birth of modern debates about the distinction between animal and human, commentators still found themselves caught up in discussions of hair. So, for example, hair features prominently in both popular and scientific debates about the value of Darwinism. The archive of Darwin’s correspondence contains letters from a number of people who sent him either clippings of their own hair, the hair of others, or 10

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For discussion of key developments in this field of thought, see Calarco 2015, esp. 6–27. Calarco and Atterton 2004 provides a useful collection of readings which, while focused on the continental tradition, engages with material outside this tradition. On the collapse of the human/animal distinction as one of the defining features of the age, see Calarco 2015: 6. A good example of this profitable revisiting and reworking of texts is provided by the essays in Bianchi, Brill, and Holmes 2019. Cf. Payne 2010. See, e.g., Heath 2005, Osborne 2007, Newmyer 2014, and Collins 2020.

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anthropological observations about the hair of different races in order to support or refute particular claims made in The Descent of Man (1871).13 In popular cartoons, Charles Darwin’s own hirsuteness was portrayed as a contributing factor to the development of his idea of man’s affinity to apes.14 Darwin’s beard became so famous that his family preserved it for posterity. In 2008, the Natural History Museum featured it as an exhibit in its own right in an exhibition celebrating the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth.15 In the twentieth century, Desmond Morris still saw the figuration of ‘hair as costume’ as sufficiently potent that he played on the idea in the provocative name of his 1967 classic The Naked Ape, the irony being that the importance of hair was a concept that Morris was desperate to discount. Man’s ‘nakedness’ (his lack of a hairy pelt) was ultimately a false signifier. It blinded us to the fact that man belonged in a continuum with the other 192 living species of monkeys and apes. Yet in framing his title, Morris was playing with an important truth, namely that when humanity wants to appreciate the distinction between human and animal, it begins with the hair on its body. Plato as Furry As Jeremy Bell and Michael Naas point out in the introduction to their edited collection Plato’s Animals (2015a), animals and animal imagery do a tremendous amount of work in Plato’s writings. Socrates is variously compared to a gadfly, torpedo ray, serpent, faun, stork, and swan – and this is just the tip of 13

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See, e.g., the letters in the Darwin Correspondence Archive (Cambridge) from David Forbes (26 March 1868, Letter no. 6054, on the hairlessness of certain South American peoples), Worthington George Smith (4 November 1870, Letter no. 7358), Frank Chance (before 25 April 1871, Letter no. 7522, with enclosure of hair and 31 July– 7 August, Letter no. 8993), W. B. Tegetmeier (before 25 April 1871, Letter no. 7712, with enclosures of beard and scalp hair), John Tyndall (23 February 1871, Letter no. 7508, with discussion of nose hair), and James Paget (17 January 1873, Letter no. 8739, with drawing of ear hair). Most famously in the depiction of ‘Prof. Darwin’ in Figaro’s London Sketch Book of Celebrities (18 February 1874). For discussion of the impact of this and other similar images, see Browne 2001. Adams 2008.

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the iceberg. Only one dialogue in the entire Platonic corpus, Crito, features no animals.16 Various attributes of animals are discussed in Plato, but two texts in particular, the Protagoras and the Statesman, take an interest in the issue of hair and hairlessness. This discussion of the status of hair is most fully treated in the Protagoras, where we can see Plato reworking earlier traditions about the status of hair. These are debates which Plato then grafts onto a wider discussion about the status of hair as a signifier of humanity. From its opening, the Protagoras foregrounds hair as an issue for discussion: Ἑταῖρος: πόθεν, ὦ Σώκρατες, φαίνῃ; ἢ δῆλα δὴ ὅτι ἀπὸ κυνηγεσίου τοῦ περὶ τὴν Ἀλκιβιάδου ὥραν; καὶ μήν μοι καὶ πρῴην ἰδόντι καλὸς μὲν ἐφαίνετο ἀνὴρ ἔτι, ἀνὴρ μέντοι, ὦ Σώκρατες, ὥς γ᾽ ἐν αὐτοῖς ἡμῖν εἰρῆσθαι, καὶ πώγωνος ἤδη ὑποπιμπλάμενος. Σωκράτης: εἶτα τί τοῦτο; οὐ σὺ μέντοι Ὁμήρου ἐπαινέτης εἶ, ὃς ἔφη χαριεστάτην ἥβην εἶναι τοῦ πρῶτον ὑπηνήτου, ἣν νῦν Ἀλκιβιάδης ἔχει; friend: Where have you been now, Socrates? Ah, but of course you have been sniffing round Alcibiades and his youthful beauty! Well, only the other day, as I looked at him, I thought him still a good-looking man – but a man he is, Socrates, between you and me, and with a beard that’s filling out. socrates: And what of it? Do you mean to say that you do not approve of Homer, who said that the youth with the greatest charm is the one whose beard is first appearing, as now is the case with Alcibiades? (Pl. Prt. 309a–b)

This opening turns hair into a complex, debatable signifier, one that requires – indeed demands – explanation. How we read Alcibiades’ beard determines how we read Socrates. At stake is the appropriateness of Socrates’ desire. In raising questions of desire at the very beginning of the dialogue, we see most clearly the filiation of the Protagoras with the Symposium, texts which share – with the exception of Aristophanes – an identical cast of characters. Like the Symposium, in the Protagoras we find Eryximachus, Phaedrus, Pausanias, Agathon, and Alcibiades all assembled as witnesses to Socratic performance. The topic of the Protagoras may be the teachability of virtue but Alcibiades’ (too

16

Bell and Naas 2015b: 2.

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full or is it just right?) beard ensures that considerations of desire are always lurking in the background. Moreover, the issue of desire is framed in a particular way in the opening of the Protagoras. The question of the appropriateness of Socrates’ alleged behaviour is intertwined with a bigger question about humanity. The use of κυνηγέσιον is marked: Socrates’ actions are likened to that of a hunting pack of dogs. Socrates’ retort invokes the polar opposite of the bestial, namely the divine. His response alludes to the final book of the Iliad, where Hermes assumes the guise of a young prince to appear to Priam and guide him to the ships of the Achaeans: βῆ δ᾽ ἰέναι κούρῳ αἰσυμνητῆρι ἐοικὼς πρῶτον ὑπηνήτῃ, τοῦ περ χαριεστάτη ἥβη. And he went his way, resembling a young prince With his first beard, which is the fairest charm of youth. (Hom. Il. 24.347–8)

The precise status of the bodies of gods when they assume mortal form is an open theological question.17 At the very least, Hermes’ appearance gestures towards humanity perfected. He may not be as good as mortals get, but he gets close. The superlatives dancing through the description here and in the Protagoras suggest nothing less. In the Protagoras one again feels the presence of the Symposium. If Hermes/Alcibiades partake so strongly in the Form of the ‘beautiful boy,’ Socrates’ love becomes not only understandable, but desirable. The ambiguity of Alcibiades’ status as loveobject in the Symposium is resolved here in the Protagoras in favor of him as seemingly one of the steps (admittedly a low one) on the ‘ladder of love.’ Certainly, this was how the passage was read by Athenaeus, who cites the Symposium in conjunction with this passage as part of an extended section on Socrates’ love life and stresses the way in which Socrates was now the pursuer, not the quarry.18

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Sissa and Detienne 2000 articulate well the different nature of divine bodies, although the nature of the transformed body remains difficult to determine and an intellectual problem; see Buxton 2009, esp. 231–8. Cf. Republic 380d and the injunction that the transformations of the gods can only result in them assuming a worse nature. Ath. 5.219e–220a. On the Protagoras as a programmatic work within the Deipnosophistae, see Paulas 2012: 414–23.

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The opening both opposes and correlates multiple forms of love – the animalistic against the human, the base against the divine. The Anonymous Companion accuses Socrates of behaving in a lowly fashion. Socrates’ response has him behaving like the most admirable of men. The difference between these two positions is the matter of how we read (Alcibiades’) hair. For the Anonymous Companion, Alcibiades’ beard is just too full (ὑποπιμπλάμενος). His masculinity is complete. The repetition of ἀνήρ underlines the fact that, as a man, Alcibiades should no longer be an acceptable love object. The erōmenos has now become the erastēs.19 This idea of completion, of filling out, adds an extra layer to the discussion of humanity. The discussion was initially about humanity: Was Socrates behaving like a beast or a man? However, as the interchange develops, a different and complementary way of thinking about humanity emerges, one that sees it as part of a continuum in which capacity and responsibility change over time. One is not born a man, one becomes one. The passage highlights the way that discussion of ‘man’ (ἀνήρ) can all too easily slip into discussion of ‘man’ (ἄνθρωπος) and vice versa. The opening of the Protagoras challenges us to think about how we recognize what it means to be a man and what it means to be and act like a human. And it does so using hair as the catalyst for thinking about these issues. In this, the opening of the Protagoras lays the groundwork for a later and more complete discussion of the role of hair as a marker of humanity, namely the myth about Prometheus and the creation of man (320d–323a). Once again, the discussion is about the presence or absence of hair. Protagoras offers this myth as a way of answering the central question in the Protagoras, namely whether virtue can be taught or not. According to Protagoras’ account, at the start of creation, the gods created all life but left the finishing touches (the distribution of abilities and distinctive features) to Prometheus and Epimetheus. In a manner that possibly points to the story’s potentially democratic origins (or at least to its congruence with 19

On hair as a literary motif for marking transitions in the Greek discourse of homoerotic love see Tarán 1985.

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democratic ideology), Prometheus and Epimetheus decide to divide up the task into one of action and one of review. Epimetheus will allot the attributes and Prometheus will review the distribution at the end. Unfortunately, Epimetheus makes a mess of the distribution. He is overgenerous in his distribution to the animals. The beasts are given many attributes including, importantly, hair and hides to enable them to endure the cold seasons. Yet by the time the distribution comes to man there is nothing more to give and man is left ‘naked, unshod, without bedding, and unarmed’ (γυμνόν τε καὶ ἀνυπόδητον καὶ ἄστρωτον καὶ ἄοπλον, 321c). This state of affairs alarmed Prometheus, who recognized the perilous predicament in which man was placed. Defenceless, he faced certain annihilation. Prometheus’ response was to steal fire and practical wisdom in order to ensure man’s continued existence. The decision was to prove a cosmic turning point. As Protagoras explains, it was the divine attribute of wisdom that caused man alone of all the animals to worship the gods, and this in turn caused Zeus to reward humanity with political wisdom so that they could band together and finally conquer all the other beasts (322a–d).20 Epimetheus’ failure starts a chain of events which leads to the separation of man from animal and establishes a divine order in which man acts as intermediary between gods and the world. Among the list of negative attributes given by Protagoras, it is clear that hairlessness occupies a particularly important place. When describing the state of man, it is his nudity that is first mentioned, and the point is reinforced by the description of him as without bedding (ἄστρωτος).21 In describing the attributes of fur, Protagoras calls it useful because it gave you something to sleep upon in your lair (321a). The other attribute is, of course, its protection against the cold. It is the lack of fur which is directly responsible for Prometheus stealing fire. Prometheus’ most famous gift is compensatory for – and specifically linked to – the 20

21

On the significance of man’s weakness relative to animals in the Protagoras, see McInerney 2020: 24. This focus on the issue of the lack of clothing and bedding is repeated in Statesman 272a. For comparison between these depictions of the early state of man, see Van Riel 2012: 152–3.

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lack of fur. Man may not have talons or fangs or hooves, but it is his lack of hair which is his most important feature in Protagoras’ narrative. Hairlessness – nudity – stands as emblematic of a whole series of missing attributes and consequently of the huge gap between man and animal. Hairlessness does a lot of work in this myth. The status of myths in Plato, and this myth in particular, has been the subject of much scholarly attention.22 Debate has circulated around the extent to which this myth is a Protagorean or Platonic invention.23 While the paucity of material attributable to Protagoras means that this issue cannot be definitively settled, the myth accords with what we know of sophistic practice in the deployment of myth in teaching.24 Morgan’s view that the myth is ‘substantially Protagorean’ seems to have gained general acceptance.25 Certainly, few have followed Havelock 1957 in seeing the myth as a largely Platonic invention designed to eliminate and replace Protagoras’ views in the public imagination. Ultimately, in terms of thinking about the reception of this text and its ideas, such distinctions are secondary considerations. Authorship is less important that the potency of the imagery. This collocation of ideas, images, and signs in the Protagoras proves to be an attractive one. Grafting sophistic distinctions onto early Greek myths and refashioning them around central human questions proves to be a successful strategy.26 At the start of the dialogue (320c), Protagoras is given the opportunity to provide an answer either by means of myth (μῦθος) or argumentation (λόγος). He chooses to give a mythological explanation because it offers greater charm (χάρις). As scholars have pointed out, for all of Protagoras’ seeming disinterest in the choice, this decision is an important one. Morgan, for example, points out how 22

23 24 25 26

For discussion of the status of myths in Plato, and in particular the Protagoras myth, see Stewart 1905; Brisson 1975, 2004; Morgan 2000, esp. 132–54; Partenie 2009; Collobert, Destrée, and Gonzalez 2012; Calame 2012; Van Riel 2012; Yona 2015; and Nathan 2017. For a survey of literature on this topic, see Yona 2015: 362–4. See discussion by Morgan 2000: 133–4. Morgan 2000: 132, 136–7. McCoy 1998 provides an overview on the relationship between Protagoras’ speech and its mythic precursors.

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the decision to resort to myth allows Protagoras to smuggle a number of untested axioms and assumptions into his argument and so mount an argument that would otherwise be impossible to sustain.27 This may be true, but it also has another effect. In offering such a vivid and compelling account of the origins of man, the Protagoras reaffirms a tradition going back to Hesiod that makes myth a privileged site for the exploration of the distinction between man and animal.28 Both the imagery found in the Protagoras and this preference for myth as the medium for these discussions are elements we can see at play in the reception of this text. Plucked Chickens, Or: Am I Just My Fingernails? One of the texts that quickly takes up the question of the hairlessness of man is Plato’s Statesman. As in the Protagoras, this issue of hairlessness and its relationship to definitions of humanity emerges out of a discussion of man’s political ability.29 At the beginning of the Statesman, Plato attempts to define kingship by means of a series of taxonomies. Through this method of definition, the text establishes that rulership is a form of herding (ἀγελαιοτροφία, 261e). The question then becomes what is herded? The answer obviously is ‘man,’ but how should ‘man’ be defined? The text attempts to do so through a series of reductive divisions.30 The first divides all living creatures into creatures of the water and creatures of the land (264d). Man obviously belongs to the latter. Within the category of land creatures, we can further divide animals that fly or walk (264e). Those that walk can further be divided into those that have horns and those that do not (265c). At this point the interlocutors face a dilemma: how should the hornless be divided? One option would be to define them into those that have cloven or un-cloven hoofs. However, 27 28

29

30

Morgan 2000: 138–47. For the way that myth functions as a genre for thinking about the human, see Willey 2020. For the close relationship between these two texts, especially in their handling of myth and their anthropocentrism, see Van Riel 2012: 152–6. Lane 1998: 33–46 provides a good introduction to the methods of argument in this section of the Statesman.

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a better suggestion seems to present itself, the hornless can also be divided into those that can interbreed (e.g. horses and donkeys) and those that cannot (265e). It is this latter division that they decide to pursue. However, before they can do so, the process comes to an abrupt end. A terrible idea has dawned on them. The Eleatic Stranger has realized that they are verging on an absurdity. This process of refinement is not without consequences. In narrowing down the categories of living things, this line of argument seems to be in danger of suggesting that man and pigs have the closest affinity.31 Will the king be seen to be nothing but a glorified swineherd? (266c). The Eleatic Stranger then proceeds to restart the process of division. The mistake lay in dividing the land animals into those that have horns and those that don’t. The better division is between bipeds and quadrupeds (266e). This quickly eliminates the problem of the possible kinship with swine. Humanity now falls into the same division as birds, but this can be quickly solved by dividing bipeds into the feathered and the featherless. The problem of humanity is solved: man is a featherless biped. Once this is established, the dialogue turns to the question of refining the nature of the statesman’s art. Within this section of the Statesman, we can see the text revisiting the differences highlighted between man and animal in the Protagoras and attempts to prioritize them. Scales, horns, and hooves are examined, the same set of physical attributes outlined in the Protagoras. Importantly, these are all rejected as either inefficient or leading to potential confusion. Arguments based on horns and hoofs get you nowhere. Once again, it is man’s nudity (his featherlessness) that proves crucial. It is this element that allows him to emerge from the animal. Where the myth in the Protagoras sought to establish the importance of hairlessness through narratological and aesthetic considerations, the Statesman establishes it through logical reasoning. The Statesman in this sense shows what Protagoras’ speech might have been like if

31

For the idea that pigs are the most problematic animal in the text, see Shorey 1917. On Plato’s denigration of the sow, see McCoy 2015.

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he had chosen to pursue his arguments through λόγος rather than μῦθος. The Statesman’s reworking of the Protagoras’ categories of difference between man and animal helped to establish its definition as a popular one, certainly one that demanded critique. In placing its focus so firmly on hairless, featherless flesh, it invited respondents to consider just how important nudity was as a signifier of humanity. The most significant response was provided by Diogenes the Cynic in an anecdote recorded by Diogenes Laertius, who took this anecdote and inserted it into a passage that came to be a virtuoso rehearsal of what it means to be human: πρὸς τοὺς ἑρπύσαντας ἐπὶ τὴν τράπεζαν μῦς, “ἰδού,” φησί, “καὶ Διογένης παρασίτους τρέφει.” Πλάτωνος εἰπόντος αὐτὸν κύνα, “ναί,” ἔφη, “ἐγὼ γὰρ ἐπανῆλθον ἐπὶ τοὺς πεπρακότας.” ἐκ τοῦ βαλανείου ἐξιὼν τῷ μὲν πυθομένῳ εἰ πολλοὶ ἄνθρωποι λοῦνται, ἠρνήσατο· τῷ δ᾽, εἰ πολὺς ὄχλος, ὡμολόγησε. Πλάτωνος ὁρισαμένου, Ἄνθρωπός ἐστι ζῷον δίπουν ἄπτερον, καὶ εὐδοκιμοῦντος, τίλας ἀλεκτρυόνα εἰσήνεγκεν αὐτὸν εἰς τὴν σχολὴν καί φησιν, “οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ Πλάτωνος ἄνθρωπος.” ὅθεν τῷ ὅρῳ προσετέθη τὸ πλατυώνυχον. πρὸς τὸν πυθόμενον ποίᾳ ὥρᾳ δεῖ ἀριστᾶν, “εἰ μὲν πλούσιος,” ἔφη, “ὅταν θέλῃ· εἰ δὲ πένης, ὅταν ἔχῃ.” ἐν Μεγάροις ἰδὼν τὰ μὲν πρόβατα τοῖς δέρμασιν ἐσκεπασμένα, τοὺς δὲ παῖδας αὐτῶν γυμνούς, ἔφη, ‘λυσιτελέστερόν ἐστι Μεγαρέως κριὸν εἶναι ἢ υἱόν.’ To some mice who had crept up onto the table, he said, ‘See now even Diogenes supports hangers-on.’ When Plato styled him a dog, ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘for I keep returning to those who have sold me.’ As he was leaving the public baths, somebody inquired if many men were bathing. He denied it. But to another who asked if there was a great crowd, he agreed. When Plato had defined Man as an animal, biped and featherless, and was applauded, Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it into the classroom saying, ‘This is Plato’s man.’ As a result, ‘having broad nails’ was added to the definition. To one who asked what was the proper time for lunch, he said, ‘If a rich man, whenever you want; if a poor man, whenever you can.’ At Megara he saw the sheep protected by leather jackets, while the children went bare. ‘It’s better,’ said he, ‘to be a Megarian’s ram than his son.’ (Diog. Laert. 6.40)

The origins of these anecdotes are most likely to be found in a Cynic tradition of self-fashioning, in which the founder of the Cynic school was promoted as a paradigm for emulation and imitation.32 So Diogenes’ rivalry with Plato was deployed to 32

On the origins of this story as part of Cynic self-positioning, see Pappas 2016: 7. On the use of such anecdotes in the practice of Cynicism, see Branham 1996 and Usher 2009.

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authorize an ongoing hostility towards followers of the Academy. While the individual anecdotes may have enjoyed an independent origin, their juxtaposition in Diogenes Laertius’ text ensures that one theme above all others remains in view and that is ‘humanity.’ In many ways, this accords with the interests of Cynic philosophy, a distinctive feature of which was a concern with what constitutes ‘man.’33 The cumulative effect of these anecdotes is to critique the Platonic position that physical attributes provide the surest grounding for a definition. Each anecdote in this selection invites reflection on what it means to be human and how difficult it is to draw the line between animal and human.34 The opening anecdote questions whether humanity is defined through social relations. The most fundamental human activity is commensality. Of course, as Diogenes points out, it cannot stand as a complete definition. We cannot define humanity as ‘those with whom we share a table,’ as otherwise we would need to include vermin as part of our definition. Other definitions prove similarly problematic. Observing behaviour is no guide. The characterization of Diogenes as a dog highlights this. Does his behaviour cut him off from humanity? Yes, according to Plato, who dismissed the philosopher as less than human. Yet, as Diogenes reminds Plato through his invocation of his unswerving loyalty to even those who betrayed him, animals are capable of seemingly virtuous behaviour as much as repellent acts. Finding behaviour that is only exclusively human is going to be a difficult task. Even when we think we have identified such behaviour, it is not always going to be a reliable guide. The story about the Megarian sheep reminds us of this fact. If you think that humanity lies in our ability to recognize humanity in others and respond accordingly, then the farmers of Megara are there to persuade you otherwise.

33 34

For Cynic interest in humanity, see Baldry 1965: 110–11 and Sellars 2007: 15. For this as a fundamental principle of Cynic philosophy, see Haslanger 2015: 29, 34–7, who argues for an effective collapse in the animal/human distinction in Cynicism (‘Long before the cultural formations we have come to call humanism and posthumanism, Diogenes considered the human as a kind of animal, and thought of the animal as a model for human life’). Sorabji 1993: 158–60 argues for a more complicated, less consistent position on the issue.

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Lines between nature and culture are hard to draw. This seems to be one of the points of the anecdote about the best time to eat lunch. Nature is always filtered through culture. The best of anything is fundamentally a question of positionality. It all depends on your vantage point. The rich man and the poor man have very different perspectives, and one needs to be wary about assuming universals that may only emerge from partial experience. So is humanity just a linguistic trick, a mere matter of naming? A man is anything that we call a man. Diogenes is certainly keen to draw our attention to the ambiguity of language. The anecdote about the baths points this out. Diogenes refusal to name his fellow bathers as ‘men’ (ἄνθρωποι) shows just how much language matters and the importance of who gets to name. Yet, for all its importance, language is slippery and can easily fool you, as the point about the ὄχλος demonstrates. It is within this extended riff on the nature of humanity that we encounter the interchange with Plato on the significance of hairlessness. In Diogenes Laertius’ Lives, Plato is the primary named interlocutor with Diogenes. Almost all the other interlocutors are anonymous. In each case, Diogenes triumphs at Plato’s expense. In some ways, this separates out this anecdote from a number of others in the passage. In those other anecdotes the problem with the definition of humanity offered (whether it was grounded in linguistic or social practice or categories of thought) was often that while it contained elements of partial truth, it couldn’t stand as a complete definition. In contrast, in the exchange with Plato, the rejection seems total. Our interpretation of this anecdote is partly determined by how we read τῷ ὅρῳ προσετέθη τὸ πλατυώνυχον (‘flat nails was added to the definition’). Does this solve the problem or compound the absurdity? The latter seems more likely. It is hard to take the addition as a serious suggestion. It is there as a joke, πλατυώνυχον punning on Plato’s name.35 Yet, it is a joke with a sting in its tail because for all its absurdity, the suggestion of examining the breadth of fingernails would not look out of place within the text of the Statesman. The Cynic attack is not just an attack on the final Platonic definition, but 35

Prince 2015: 423.

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also on the process of reasoning by which that conclusion was reached. Moreover, not only does it attack the process of reductive dichotomies that was implemented in the Statesman to arrive at the decision that man was a featherless biped, it also attacks a dialogic approach to determining truth. Where does exchange and counterexchange get you? The answer seems to be two grown men fighting over a plucked chicken. In the end, the anecdote – and, to a certain extent, all of these anecdotes – invites you to reflect on the possibility of ever determining the human. It diagnoses why such stories are both compelling and unsatisfying, foundational aspects of their reception. They point to the fact that ultimately what makes a definition of the human work is that it has to be internalized. It is never going to be a matter of determining necessary and sufficient conditions because defining humanity requires the assent and consent of those undertaking the task. Unlike defining what constitutes an apple or a chair, defining what makes you human is not something that you can do from a disinterested position. You need to be able to see yourself as encompassed by that definition. It needs to belong to a wider system of knowledge and belief. It needs to be a myth. Talking Pigs In the discussion of the Statesman, we noted the way in which the text took its cues from ideas in the Protagoras, but explicitly eschewed the mythological form in which those ideas were presented. The discussion of the difference between man and animal was grounded in the logical processes of distinction, not myth. As we have seen, Diogenes Laertius’ text shows the problems that emerge once one abandons this mythical frame. In Plutarch’s Gryllus we see the frame restored and are offered an opportunity to appreciate the way in which this effectively facilitates discussion.36 The Statesman pulled back from its first attempt to define the nature of man through reductive divisions because it threatened to 36

On the way in which the Gryllus acts as a deliberate response to Cynicism and Diogenes Laertius, see Sorabji 1993: 160, 179.

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expose the fact that the closest animal to man was the pig. The idea of calibrating man’s affinity with the porcine is a striking one, and it is productive to see Plutarch’s Gryllus as a ludic response to the seriousness of the Statesman’s taxonomies.37 The conceit of the Gryllus is a debate between Odysseus and a talking pig (the Gryllus of the title) over whether Circe did his men a favour by turning them into beasts. Odysseus puts the case that it is better for his men to be human, while Gryllus (implicitly supported by Circe) argues that they lead a better life as animals. As the premise of the dialogue implies, this is a text with a strong investment in articulating the distinction between animal and human.38 In the opening scene, Circe and Odysseus trade exchanges about form and substance, nature and the unnatural, wisdom and stupidity, the mortal and the divine. It is an argument in which Odysseus is revealed as not the surest judge of humanity or what makes men happy. He never seems as confident in his arguments as Circe. Indeed, Odysseus is so befuddled by the argument against restoring his men that he begins to doubt his own humanity and wonders if he won’t end up bestial (985e). Between metaphorical beasts, real beasts, and temporary beasts, which is the best course of action to take? It is at this point that Circe hands over to Gryllus to continue the discussion. Plutarch betrays the influence of Plato in the Gryllus in a number of ways. The reference to children’s fear of doctors’ treatments (986c) echoes a similar observation in the Laws (720a). The text openly challenges the Laches by attributing courage to the Crommyonian sow.39 This occurs in a passage which also alludes to the Laws discussion (814b) about the role of female birds in the defence of their young. The Gryllus borrows the language of the 37

38

39

See Goldhill 1995: 65–6 on the way that the Gryllus subverts and mocks Platonic ethical vocabulary. See, e.g., Konstan 2010–11. For the importance of the relationship between animals and humans in Plutarch’s thought, see Boulogne 2005 and Newmeyer 2005, 2014: 527–30. On the way in which this text participates in Plutarch’s thought on the nature of reason and the question of animals’ capacity for rational thought, see Billault 2005, Bréchet 2005, and Horky 2017. Compare Plato, Laches 196e with Gryllus 986f and 987f, where differing views of the sow are offered.

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Laws (644d) when discussing the role of fear and strategy in battle (988e). Indeed, the Laws is a constant presence in the text. We see it evoked when Gryllus compares the calm and admirable nature of animals to that of people who live far from the sea (989e), an allusion to the tradition found in the Laws that those who live close to the sea are excitable in their passions and prone to depravity.40 The text also reflects the Laws’ positive attitude to animal coupling (e.g. 840d). The influence of the Laws on the Gryllus is well established. In contrast, the impact of the Statesman has not been as well examined.41 While the subject matter of the Statesman (the nature of rulership, the personality of the ruler, etc.) is obviously reflected in Plutarch’s own interests, actual citations of the text are comparatively rare.42 However, it is clearly a text with which Plutarch was familiar. For example, the text receives an extended discussion in De animae procreatione in Timaeo, where Plutarch quotes the Statesman (273d–e) in order to understand the non-rational nature of the world soul in the Timaeus.43 For a similar reason, it is a text which also influences Plutarch’s On the Face Which Appears in the Circle of the Moon.44 Elsewhere, the Statesman’s schematic division of animals into land and sea creature finds expression in On the Cleverness of Animals, which, as its alternate title Whether Land or Sea Animals Are More Intelligent suggests, regards the division as a fundamental category of analysis. We have seen the way in which the text of the Gryllus, through its subject matter and choice of interlocutors, plays with the Stateman’s concern about the gap between man and pig. There is also another area in which the content of the Gryllus and the Statesman intersects and this concerns the role of interbreeding. The Statesman clearly states that one of the defining features of man as opposed to animals is that man does not have intercourse across species (265e). Indeed, 40 41

42

43

44

See Laws 704e. A similar point is made in Aristotle, Politics 1327a. Bréchet 2005: 50–5 shows how the Gryllus draws upon Aristotle, Plato, and the Stoics to create a ‘philosophic jumble’ (‘pêle-mêle philosophique’). For Plutarch on the figure of the statesman, see the collection of essays in de Blois et al. 2004. Statesman 272d and 273b are also cited in this text. For discussion, see Brenk 1977: 132–3. See the discussion in Bos 2004–5, esp. 181.

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it is the last distinction made between man and animal before the issue of affinity with pigs unravels the whole project. The Gryllus takes the issue of interspecies breeding and turns the accusation on its head. As part of an argument about the decorousness of animals and their ability to restrain their appetites, the Gryllus argues that it is man who is most likely to interbreed and force his lust across species barriers: τὰ δ’ ἐν ὑμῖν ἀκόλαστα οὐδὲ τὸν νόμον ἔχουσα σύμμαχον ἡ φύσις ἐντὸς ὅρων καθείργνυσιν . . . καὶ γὰρ αἰγῶν ἐπειράθησαν ἄνδρες καὶ ὑῶν καὶ ἵππων μιγνύμενοι καὶ γυναῖκες ἄρρεσι θηρίοις ἐπεμάνησαν· ἐκ γὰρ τῶν τοιούτων γάμων ὑμῖν Μινώταυροι καὶ Αἰγίπανες, ὡς δ’ ἐγᾦμαι καὶ Σφίγγες ἀναβλαστάνουσι καὶ Κένταυροι. καίτοι διὰ λιμόν ποτ’ ἀνθρώπου καὶ κύων ἔφαγεν καὶ ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης ὄρνις ἀπεγεύσατο· πρὸς δὲ συνουσίαν οὐδέποτε θηρίον ἐπεχείρησεν ἀνθρώπῳ χρήσασθαι. θηρία δ’ ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρὸς ταῦτα καὶ πρὸς ἄλλα πολλὰ καθ’ ἡδονὰς βιάζονται καὶ παρανομοῦσιν. Not even Nature, with Law for her ally, can keep within bounds the unchastened vice of your hearts . . . For men have, in fact, attempted to consort with goats and sows and mares, and women have gone mad with lust for male beasts. From such unions your Minotaurs and Aegipans, and, I suppose, your Sphinxes and Centaurs have arisen. Yet it is through hunger that dogs have occasionally eaten a man; and birds have tasted of human flesh through necessity; but no beast has ever attempted a human body for lustful reasons. But the beasts I have mentioned and many others have been victims of the violent and lawless lusts of man. (Plut. Gryllus 990f–991a)

Here the text deploys the hybrid monsters of myth as proof of both the degenerate lusts of man and the ability of those lusts to effect offspring.45 It is this latter aspect that strengthens the engagement with the Statesman, which considered not only cross-species copulation, but the viability of that copulation. It also picks up the strong note of desire that flows through the discussion in the Protagoras. It should be noted that in making its argument so forcefully, the Gryllus conveniently ignores the long tradition of animals who have attempted to copulate with humans.46

45

46

On the conceptual importance of these hybrid monsters in Greek thought, see Aston 2011. See, e.g., the incident of the he-goat at Mendes cited by Herodotus (2.46), which is revisited by Strabo 17.19, curiously citing Pindar (fr. 201 (215) Schroeder), and Aelian (NA 7.19, with 15.14).

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Yet the Gryllus is doing more here than challenging the Statesman’s claim that man was incapable of interspecies intercourse. The discussion on bestiality is not necessary to support Gryllus’ claim about the unnatural sexual degeneracy of man.47 It is only one of a series of arguments made by Gryllus. So, for example, the pig can point to the use of unnatural perfumes by women to entice men (990b), the lack of a distinct human mating season (990c), and even – taking its cue from Plato’s Laws – pederastic desire (990d–e) to show how out of tune with Nature human sexual activity is.48 Rather, the Gryllus asks us to contemplate the function of myth. In evoking the monsters of myth, this passage in the Gryllus points to a distinctive feature of Greco-Roman mythology: the high presence of animal-human sex within mythic narratives.49 It is hard to match the frequency of these stories with any other mythological system in the Mediterranean or the Near East. Most of the law codes of the Near East prohibit bestiality on pain of death.50 The closest we have in Egyptian myth concerns the copulation of Isis with Osiris in the shape of a kite after she has assembled his dismembered corpse and fashioned him a new phallus. Although, perhaps tellingly, when Plutarch recounts his version of this myth, he omits the fact that Isis was in bird-form, preferring a version where she travels Egypt as a woman in a papyrus boat.51 The Gryllus invites us to contemplate the work that myths do in providing a site for the discussion of this boundary. Protagoras importantly chose to frame his argument as a myth. The Gryllus takes this one step further, placing its discussion of human/animal divisions within its own recursive mythic frame – Odysseus discussing myth with a talking pig. Such mise en abyme heightens our awareness of myth as a mode of discourse. 47

48

49 50 51

This argument and its apparent contradictions are discussed in Konstan 2010–11: 380–1. The key passage on the unnatural nature of pederasty is Pl. Leg. 836c. This passage has been the subject of disputed interpretation. See, e.g., the discussion of the passage that erupted in a Colorado courtroom, summarized by Nussbaum 1996 with discussion of the relevant passage in Nussbaum 1994: 1623–40. For a discussion of this material, see Robson 1997. For the treatment of bestiality in the Near East, see Bryce 2019: 140 and Hoffner 1973. See Plut. De Is et Os. 18. A version of the story is also recorded at Diod. Sic. 1.22.6. On the significance of this text for thinking through the issues of animal/human/divine interactions, see Kindt 2020c: 132–7.

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This exploration of the utility of myth as a mode of discourse is manifested through the way that Gryllus repositions a number of standard mythic narratives to support his claims. He shows us the capaciousness of myth and its flexibility. While the story of the Minotaur emerging from the interspecies love affair of Pasiphae and a bull fully fits and supports Gryllus’ argument, the origin story of the centaur gets its centre of gravity subtly shifted. No longer is the focus on Ixion’s rape of the simulacrum of Hera made out of cloud by Zeus. Instead, the great crime was the bestiality practised subsequently by Centaurus, the offspring of this treacherous union.52 In so focusing on this aspect, the text effects a reconciliation between the accounts of Pindar and Diodorus Siculus on the origins of the centaurs. While these texts cannot agree on the status of the Ixion part of the myth, both agree on the act of the mating of man and mare on the slopes of Mount Pelion.53 Gryllus’ rewriting of the parentage of the Aegipans and the Sphinx is even more extreme. He ignores traditions which firmly place these monsters as the offspring of divine forces. We have a number of versions of myths which place Aegipan at the beginning of mythic narratives before the arrival of man. According to a tradition preserved in Apollodorus (1.6.3), it was Aegipan and Hermes who retrieved the sinews of Zeus after they had been taken from him during his contest with Typhon. Elsewhere Plutarch has Aegipans emerging as the battered incestuous offspring of fathers and daughters.54 Traditions of Aegipans as the product of bestiality are known, but the father is normally identified as Zeus, not a mortal man.55 While the parentage of the Sphinx is debated, none except perhaps Pausanias make her the product of bestiality.56 The desire to explain the hybridity of monsters through the mixing of human and animal goes at least as far back as Empedocles.57 The 52

53 54 55 56

57

On the issue of the representation of centaurs in Homer and other early texts, see Scobie 1978. See Pind. Pyth. 2.32–48 and Diod. Sic. 4.69. Plut. Parallela minora 22. See, e.g., Hyginus Fab. 155 and Poet. astr. 2.13.28. See Hes. Theog. 326 (a daughter of Orthus and Chimaera), Apollod. Bibl. 3.5.8 (a child of Typhon and Echidna: also Σ Eur. Phoen. 46 Cobet). For the Sphinx as a natural daughter of Laius, see Paus. 9.26.2. For the fragments and commentary, see Wright 1981: 49–53.

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important issue here is to note the way in which in doing so the Gryllus not only explores myth as a mode of discourse, but also those texts which deploy myths. Here we can see a way in which the text offers another form of critique of the Statesman. Whereas in Diogenes Laertius, we saw the Statesman refuted by literalist and pedantic demonstration, here we see it undercut by the deployment of mythic narratives. The Statesman has a curious structure. Following its exploration of definitions through the establishment of reductive dichotomies, the dialogue shifts into mythic mode with an elaborate myth about the nature of the cosmos and the cycles of human history. This disjointed structure is one of the dialogue’s most distinguishing features and has posed a problem for its interpreters.58 In showing its inability to reconcile the first part of the dialogue with myth, the Gryllus exposes this tension between the logical and the mythical and casts a critical eye over the structure of the dialogue. As before, the discussion of human and animal gives way to a broader consideration of philosophic reasoning in which Gryllus shows how difficult it is to reconcile the various ways man has tried to understand the world. The Gryllus shows just how much is at stake when we attempt to divide man from animal, but also just how difficult that division is. It is both crucial and impossible. The Gryllus exposes the structures of knowledge we use to police the division and, more importantly, the contingency and friability of those structures. These latter qualities are the most important ones for understanding the nature of reception. The Gryllus illustrates the point that it is better to think of reception as less a history of robust ideas and rather as a series of encounters around a storm of anxieties in which metaphors, images, and ideas repeat themselves unable to escape the maelstrom in which they churn. Here it is the flexibility of a text, its indeterminate state that means it lacks the ability to provide endurable succour or to permanently close the wound, that guarantees its afterlife. It succeeds because its success hangs by a thread or, more properly, a hair.59 58 59

For problems with the structure of the dialogue and bibliography, see Merrill 2003. Cic. Tusc. 5.62: In hoc medio apparatu fulgentem gladium e lacunari saeta equina aptum demitti iussit.

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part iii H E L L E N I S T I C AN D R O M A N P O E TI CS

ch a p t e r 9 B E F O R E T H E CA N O N : T H E R E C E P T I O N O F G R E E K T RAGEDY IN HELL ENISTIC P OE TRY

annette harder

Introduction Greek tragedy, which flourished in fifth-century Athens, was carefully preserved in later centuries, its impact reaching far beyond the city as the plays gained authority and were re-performed in various parts of the Greek world.1 The plays were also diligently collected in the Alexandrian library,2 where Alexander Aetolus was given oversight specifically of this genre in the third century BCE, and made accessible by means of copies of the texts, commentaries, summaries, and selections of passages, of which we have evidence in papyri from other parts of Egypt from the Ptolemaic period and later.3 In recent years much research has been done into tragedy after the fifth century BCE, both the reception of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides4 and the fragments and further evidence of later authors, particularly in the fourth century BCE. The picture that is created by this research is that of a world in which the tragic theatre was still a very important medium and the genre flourished all through the Greek world. The emphasis in this research has 1 2

3 4

See e.g. Wilson 1996; Ceccarelli 2010. The anecdotal tradition reports the acquisition of the official text from Athens; see Nervegna 2018: 109–10 and 116–17; Nelson 2018: 227. The strong interest in tragedy in Alexandria may have been foreshadowed by the interests of Alexander the Great, who, following in the footsteps of Archelaus of Macedonia, showed a distinct interest in the theatre, connecting it with cultural and political claims; see on this topic Le Guen 2014, 2018: 152–4. See in general Schmakeit 2003: 10–13; Hanink 2010: 45. These authors had acquired canonical status by the late fifth century, as is evident from Aristophanes’ Frogs, and were re-performed on a regular basis from 386 BCE onwards, while their texts were specially preserved thanks to the arrangements introduced by Lycurgus. See e.g. Nervegna 2014: 157–8, 2018: 114; Duncan and Liapis 2018: 180–3, 188–90; Hanink 2018: 327–9.

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been mostly on theatrical reception and performance,5 but attention has also been paid to (dis)continuity of form and contents,6 the Hellenistic attitude towards ‘the tragic’ in general,7 and ancient scholarship on tragedy.8 In this chapter the emphasis will be on the creative reception of tragedy in the work of Hellenistic non-tragic poets, in which the plays seem to have been used as examples of poetic language and style, models for story patterns, and sources of mythological knowledge.9 This may be considered as a specific form of reception, recognizing the authority and impact of the earlier texts and employing them in a new context. There will be a special focus on the now-lost plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in order to acquire some idea about the reception of the plays which were not included in the later selection of tragedies.10 A tool used for finding examples of tragedy as an object of creative reception can be the study of intertextuality and the various kinds of allusions to the plays, on a large scale as well as on a more minute level. Thus one may observe how, for example, Apollonius Rhodius often refers to the Medea of Euripides and shapes his Argonautica as a sort of prequel to that play, showing its prehistory and including hints of the later developments between Jason and Medea.11 On a generic level, Apollonius modernized epic poetry by including the element of romance often found in the 5

6

7 8

9

10

11

See e.g. Nervegna 2014, who gives evidence of the ongoing popularity of many nowlost plays and also shows that Aeschylus was somewhat less popular than Sophocles and Euripides; Le Guen 2018. On the reception of Aeschylus in the Hellenistic period see also Nervegna 2018; on the issue of re-performance in general, Hunter and Uhlig 2017. See on this issue Dunn 2018; Liapis and Stephanopoulos 2018, who also observe in the fourth century a tendency to engage with the canonical authors of the previous century: ‘fourth-century tragedians seem eager to emulate their illustrious predecessors, whether by revisiting the same or similar tragic myths or by offering new and sometimes remarkably innovative treatments of traditional material’ (25). See Sistakou 2016. See Hanink 2018, with a useful section on Hellenistic scholarship on tragedy (pp. 335– 40); Nelson 2018, with a focus on the reception of comic poetics, but containing also much that is relevant for tragedy. On early indications of this kind of reading and informal studying of plays see Hanink 2018: 325. Also in connection with performance, the relation between now-lost plays and canonical plays is still a topic for further research; see Nervegna 2014: 187. On Apollonius’ debt to tragedy see Cusset 2001; Schmakeit 2003 (pp. 49–199 on the reception of Medea; pp. 200–25 on tragic elements in the Lemnian episode, and pp. 226–60 on Phineus); Sistakou 2016: 141–67; and for brief remarks acknowledging the debt e.g. Hunter 1989: 18; Nelis 2001: 138.

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plays of Euripides (where it was probably a modernizing element as well),12 which later inspired Virgil to include the episode of Dido and Aeneas in his Aeneid.13 Another example of playing with tragic conventions on a generic level is Lycophron’s Alexandra, a work in iambic trimeters shaped like a messenger’s speech the length of a tragedy, and offering a survey of the world’s history.14 At a more minute level, we find in the Hellenistic poets phrases which suggest knowledge of tragic style and vocabulary, as in, for example, Call. Aet. fr. 95.4 αἰαῖ καὶ μαλ[ (from the Attic story of Leimonis), which has a tragic ring; fr. 110.51 ἄρτι [ν] εότμητον (‘just cut off’) in connection with the lock of Berenice, which recalls Sophoclean phrasing;15 and Hymn 5.94–5, where the image of the mourning Chariclo as a nightingale recalls tragic usage.16 There is ample evidence that the plays preserved in medieval manuscripts which now form our canon of Greek tragedy were known and used by Hellenistic poets.17 Papyrus finds, however, confirm that the Hellenistic and Imperial canon of fifth-century tragedy was by no means confined to these plays. Thus there are, for example, Ptolemaic papyri with remains of prologues of Euripides’ Iphigeneia in Tauris, Archelaus, Hecuba, and perhaps Hypsipyle, Alcmene, and Thyestes (P.Hamb. 118–19), and also Imperial papyrus finds include many lost plays (particularly of Euripides, but also of Aeschylus and Sophocles), while one particular papyrus with summaries of Euripidean plays (P.Oxy. 2455) includes a large selection of lost plays. Evidence from ancient 12 13 14 15 16

17

See Schmakeit 2003: 65. For full discussion see Nelis 2001: 67–185. For a recent discussion see Sistakou 2016: 168–92; Hornblower 2018. See further Harder 2012 ad loc. For references see Bulloch 1985 ad loc. One may now add Eur. fr. 448a.82–6 TGrF (Cresphontes). Examples of complete plays alluded to by Hellenistic poets are, apart from Euripides’ Medea, e.g., Euripides’ Bacchae in Theocritus 26; Aeschylus’ Supplices in Callimachus’ Fifth Hymn (as argued by Boychenko 2017); Euripides’ Heracles in Callimachus’ Aetia frr. 32–40 (see Harder 2012 ad loc.); and perhaps Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Phoenissae in the Syrma Antigones in Aetia fr. 105–105b (see Harder 2012: ii, 780–1). For the technique of alluding to relevant passages in fifthcentury tragedies, an early example is provided by Theodectas, TGrF 1.72 F 6, alluding to both Euripides’ Theseus and Agathon’s Telephus. For evidence and discussion see Dunn 2018: 261–3; Liapis and Stephanopoulos 2018: 54.

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authors presents a similar picture. Thus, for example, in the first century CE Dio Chrysostom (Or. 52) discusses at length the Philoctetes of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. All this suggests that for poets like Callimachus, Theocritus, and Apollonius Rhodius, a large corpus of Greek plays was still available and accessible. The focus of this chapter will be particularly on the lost plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, which are relatively unexplored in connection with Hellenistic poetry. The reception of Greek tragedy in Hellenistic poetry will be studied in connection with intertextuality,18 a specific subsection of reception, by which later authors recognize the importance and relevance of earlier texts by alluding to them. Which plays are referred to and how is this done? Which works or passages seem to be popular? Is there a focus on plays on certain themes or myths, and can this be explained by the interests of the Hellenistic poets? How do these findings relate to other evidence of the reception of Greek tragedy in the Hellenistic period and later antiquity? Can we see tendencies towards the development of a certain canon of most popular plays? Or was there in Hellenistic poetry a more in-depth mode of reception and a broader selection in comparison with the later and relatively small canon of seven plays of each tragic poet, which may represent the preferences of a wider and less scholarly audience? If so, what can we infer from this? This chapter does not claim to provide definite answers to all these questions; instead it will attempt a first sketch of the ways in which Hellenistic poets dealt with the reception of plays that were lost in later generations, and to draw some provisional conclusions which may serve as a starting point for further research. It should be noted that, given the nature of the material, the approach is necessarily somewhat speculative. Even so, a ‘maximalist’ approach has been adopted deliberately in order to see where it would lead and suggest possibilities. Allusions to Now-Lost Tragedies in Hellenistic Authors As was indicated above, allusions to Greek tragedy take various forms. They can be small-scale, referring to an aspect of 18

For a similar approach see Schmakeit 2003.

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vocabulary or phrasing or to a specific passage or scene, but they can also be on a more generic or thematic level and connected with genre conventions, story patterns, themes, or subjects of plays.19 With fragments there are a few caveats that should be borne in mind throughout. Sometimes we seem to have explicit indications in ancient sources, like scholia quoting a fragment, that a Hellenistic author used a certain play. Thus, for example, the scholia on Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 4.282–91b state that Apollonius was following Aeschylus, Prometheus Lyomenos F 197 (ἀκολουθῶν Αἰσχύλωι) in his views about the river Istrus, and that in Sophocles’ Scythae F 547 and Callimachus, Aetia fr. 9 the Argonauts sailed home along the same route as on their outward journey. One should bear in mind, though, that this might also mean simply that Apollonius used the same version of the geography of the Istrus as Aeschylus, without implications of a direct connection. Sometimes the connections are less explicit, and we cannot always be certain that what looks like an allusion is not just a coincidental similarity due to the use of a common source or of a phrase already reused by others. Thus, for example, Call. Hymn 5.56, μῦθος δ’ οὐκ ἐμός, ἀλλ’ ἑτέρων (‘and the tale is others’, not mine’),20 could be an allusion to Euripides, Melanippe F 484,21 κοὐκ ἐμὸς ὁ μῦθος, ἀλλ’ ἐμῆς μητρὸς πάρα (‘and the tale is not mine, but my mother’s’); but as the phrase is also found at Helen 513 and parodied at Plato, Symposium 177a,22 we cannot be certain. In other instances one should be aware that the reception could be indirect: the allegory of Sophocles’ Crisis (see pp. 225–6 below) could have found its way into moralistic literature before Callimachus, and the horse simile in his Tyro (see p. 237) could have been included in literature on animals at an early stage, as it certainly was later, when Aelian discussed and quoted it (NA 11.18). Epic themes could have been derived by Hellenistic poets from now-lost, earlier hexameter poetry, which could have influenced tragedy independently. 19

20 21

22

For a good survey and detailed discussion of the various possibilities as explored in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius see Schmakeit 2003. Translations from this hymn are by Bulloch 1985. See Ypsilanti 2009, who argues that Callimachus thus may have invited his readers to compare the fate of Teiresias to that of Melanippe. See further Bulloch 1985: 161–2 n. 2.

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This chapter is organized in four sections, as there are a relatively large number of allusions to plays with Trojan, Argonautic, and Argive themes, as well as an interesting category of ‘other myths’. Trojan Plays Although Aeschylus focuses in, for example, Philoctetes (F 249–57) and Oresteia on the last stage and the aftermath of the Trojan War, and in his Palamedes (F 181–82a) on a minor hero, in several plays he reworks Homeric episodes directly. Thus, for example, in Phryges (F 263–72) he dramatizes the last book of the Iliad, and in Myrmidones (F 131–42) the central part, where Patroclus is killed by Hector.23 Sophocles’ treatment of the Trojan War is more consistent in showing distance from Homer. He wrote many plays on Trojan subjects (more than Aeschylus and Euripides),24 but almost always uses stories that are marginal in Homer and drawn from the epic cycle instead. In this respect Sophocles differs from Aeschylus, but he shares this preference for un-Homeric episodes with Euripides.25 Thus there is a clear line from the plays of Sophocles and Euripides to the Hellenistic poets, who focus similarly on the more marginal heroes and episodes of the Trojan War and/or on episodes that came before or afterwards.26 Heroes like Ajax, Palamedes, and Nauplius often appear in Hellenistic epigrams;27 Callimachus includes stories of an obscure companion of Odysseus terrorizing Temesa, of the fate of Peleus after the war, and of the feeding of the Greek army at Delos in his Aetia (frr. 98–9b, 178–85b, and 188);28 and Apollonius includes a brief appearance of Achilles as a baby in his Argonautica, 23

24 25

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Duncan and Liapis 2018: 183–4 observe that also in the fourth century there was a tendency to draw plots from Homer rather than from the epic cycle. Lyndsay Coo is now preparing a commentary on these plays. See for these observations Radt 1983: 194–203 (= 2002: 270–6, including a survey of Sophoclean titles and subjects on pp. 194–6 = 270–1), to which this whole section owes a great deal. See in general Sistakou 2008 and on the treatment of the Trojan War in Callimachus’ Aetia Harder 2012: i, 18–19. See Harder 2007. Perhaps one could also connect Call. Aet. fr. 35 about the Locrian Ajax with S. Ajax Locrus (F 10a–18), but the story is widely attested (see Harder 2012 ad loc.) and there are no concrete points of contact.

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when Peleus sails with the Argonauts (Argon 1.553–8). One may thus suspect that when it came to choices of subject matter, tragedy (in particular Sophocles and Euripides) played a part in the development of a Hellenistic aesthetic of originality.29 An example of the reception of plays on marginal heroes after the war is the treatment of the story of the death of the old Peleus at Icus in Callimachus’ Aetia (fr. 178–85b). In fact, fr. 178 as a whole may point the reader to consider the reception of Greek tragedy and epic poetry in Alexandria. The celebration of an Attic festival at the Alexandrian home of the Athenian Pollis shows the presence of Attic culture in Alexandria, and the references to Orestes in fr. 178.2 and to Erigone in fr. 178.3 would remind the reader of the plays in which Orestes figured, perhaps including Sophocles’ Erigone (F 235–6), on Erigone the daughter of Aegisthus, who killed herself when Orestes was acquitted of the murder of her father.30 The symposium as an occasion for telling stories and the various allusions to the Odyssey evoke the epic tradition of Homer, and towards the end of the fragment the narration of the story of Peleus may point to the Peleus of Sophocles and Euripides (F 487–96 and F 617–24, respectively).31 Thus the readers’ attention is drawn to the way in which epic themes and heroes appear in the plays of Sophocles and Euripides, which are subsequently used as an object of reception by the Alexandrian poet Callimachus, who in his turn innovates by turning the epic-tragic story into an elegiac tale in an epic setting against an Attic background. On a textual level an example of Callimachus’ reception of a play by Sophocles about the prehistory of the Trojan War is found in his fifth hymn, where Athena is said to want not perfume but plain olive oil (13–32), and does not look into a mirror, unlike Cypris: Κύπρις δὲ διαυγέα χαλκὸν ἑλοῖσα | πολλάκι τὰν αὐτὰν δὶς 29

30 31

This thematic preference of the Hellenistic poets may fit in with the comparison of Aeschylus and Euripides in Callimachus’ Aetia prologue (fr. 1.9–20), where Callimachus, referring to the weighing episode from Aristophanes’ Frogs, also evokes the different subjects dealt with by Euripides and Aeschylus. To complicate matters, it may well be that also Aeschylus’ Psychostasia (F 279–80a), covering the weighing of the fates of Achilles and Memnon, was alluded to in this passage. See Harder 2012 ad loc. See Harder 2012: ii, 954.

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μετέθηκε κόμαν (‘but Cypris took the translucent bronze and frequently twice rearranged the same lock of hair’, 21–2).32 Very probably Callimachus is here alluding to the allegorical interpretation of Aphrodite and Athena which, according to Athenaeus, was part of Sophocles’ satyr play Crisis (F 361). In this play, as Athenaeus tells us, Aphrodite, who was perfumed and looking in a mirror, stood for pleasure and Athena, who used only olive oil, stood for good sense and virtue, so that for Paris the real choice was between pleasure and virtue, as for Heracles at the crossroads in the story told by Xenophon (Mem. 2.1.21–34). Although Antony Bulloch argues on the basis of literary and visual art that Callimachus is using traditional elements,33 it is perfectly conceivable that Kenneth McKay is right that by means of alluding to the Sophoclean allegory Callimachus prepares his readers for the moral justification of Athena in his poem when she will punish Teiresias for trespassing on her while bathing.34 Plays about the Argonauts The treatment of the story of the Argonauts is also worth exploring. This is a subject frequently dealt with in the third century BCE and, given its popularity, it is likely that plays about the Argonauts’ journey and its aftermath were consulted by the Hellenistic poets.35 Aeschylus (Argo, Cabiri, Hypsipyle, Lemniae, and Phineus) and Sophocles (Amycus, Colchides, Lemniae a and b, Rhizotomi, Scythae, and Phineus a and b) wrote several Argonautic plays, now preserved only in fragments. Euripides, on the other hand, wrote only Medea, Peliades, and Hypsipyle. On a general level it is interesting to see that Aeschylus and Sophocles focused on episodes from the Argonauts’ travels, whereas Euripides focused on the aftermath of the expedition and particularly on Medea and Hypsipyle, favouring the women’s stories as in most of his Trojan plays. 32 33 34

35

Translations from the fifth hymn are by Bulloch 1985. Bulloch 1985: 130 n. 1. McKay 1962: 61, with references; further references and discussion at Ambuehl 2005: 127–8 with n. 134. See also Schmakeit 2003: 14–17 on Apollonius’ reception of lost plays.

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There are good reasons to assume that Hellenistic poets, with their obvious interest in the Argonauts, used these plays and found inspiration in them on a thematic level. For instance, Apollonius included several episodes in Argonautica 1–2 that recall plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles, like the episodes of the Lemnian women, Amycus, and Phineus. He also described the early stages of the relationship between Jason and Hypsipyle in book 1 and that between Jason and Medea in books 3–4, leaving out what came after, but in a way including Euripides by writing a prequel to his Hypsipyle and Medea and alluding to him at various points. Here, of course, epic versions of the stories like the work of Eumelus of Corinth and the Naupactica may also have played a part and dictated what should go into Apollonius’ epic, but even so tragedy may well have inspired Apollonius’ choice and arrangement of particular episodes. A few examples, ordered in accordance with the Argonautica, may illustrate the Hellenistic reception of Argonaut plays in more detail. The Catalogue of Argonauts The first example concerns the catalogue of Argonauts. Both Sophocles in his Lemniae (F 384–9) and Aeschylus in his Cabiri (F 95–7a) included catalogues of Argonauts (as attested by Lemniae F 385 and Cabiri F 97a). Apparently this was an attractive element for plays about epic expeditions: we see something similar in the catalogue of Greeks sailing to Troy in Euripides’ Iphigeneia at Aulis (164–302). Euripides’ play, where a chorus of local women admire the Greek army, shows that a writer of drama could find creative ways of reshaping an epic catalogue to fit the dramatic context.36 In the Argonautica Apollonius probably had the same epic examples as the tragic poets, but it is worth exploring a passage where he deals with two characters also mentioned in Sophocles Lemniae F 386: Φερητίδης τ’ Ἄδμητος ἠδ’ ὁ Δωτιεὺς | Λαπίθης Κόρωνος (‘and Admetus, the son of Pheres, and Coronus, the Lapith from Dotion’). Although one should allow for the possibility that more was said about these heroes in Sophocles’ play, the brief mention invites comparison with the Argonautica, 36

For further discussion see Stockert 1992 ad loc.

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where Apollonius in two lines offers some details about Pherae, where Admetus lived (Argon 1.49–50), and tells about the bravery of Coronus’ father Caeneus in eight lines (Argon 1.57–64). Between these two passages he mentions Erytus, Echion, and Aethalides (Argon 1.51–6). Apollonius’ treatment could be read as a return to epic elaboration after the brevity of Sophocles, but as the Sophoclean fragment lacks wider context no firm conclusions can be drawn.37 The Lemnian Episode Connections with Greek tragedy may also be found in the Lemnian episode. An interesting aspect of this episode is the way in which the Lemnian women react to the arrival of the Argonauts. In Apollonius, the women arm themselves and rush to the beach, ‘like Thyiades who eat raw flesh’ (Θυιάσιν ὠμοβόροις ἴκελαι, 1.636). In the end, no fighting takes place and the Argonauts are received on the island and indulge in romance with the women, but the expectation of a battle is briefly raised and the reader may be put in mind of events in Aeschylus’ Hypsipyle (F 247–8), where the Lemnian women threatened to fight the Argonauts until they promised to go to bed with them, and Sophocles’ Lemniae (F 384–9), where a battle actually took place.38 Perhaps Apollonius was deliberately reminding his readers of these tragic versions of the story to increase the tension at the Argonauts’ arrival and draw attention to his treatment of the earlier tradition. For the character and position of the Lemnian queen Hypsipyle, tragic precedents are also relevant. Apollonius’ Hypsipyle is clearly different from that of Euripides in Hypsipyle: there she is a slave in Nemea and dependent on her masters, whereas in the Argonautica she is still the confident queen of Lemnos. Nevertheless, the event which will lead to her being exiled and becoming a slave (i.e. saving the life of her father Thoas), is told at some length in Apollonius (Argon 1.620–6), so that readers

37

38

On these fragments see also Schmakeit 2003: 15–16. In Pindar only Admetus is mentioned (Pyth. 4.126). See Σ Arg. 1.769–73 (included in the testimonia of Aesch. Hypsipyle F 247–8 and Soph. Lemniae F 384–9) and the discussion at Schmakeit 2003: 211.

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may remember what ‘later’ became of her.39 In fact Apollonius’ phrasing in 618 (ἀμφ’ εὐνῆι)40 and 636 (quoted above) may recall that of Euripides in Hypsipyle F 759a.1598–9, where Hypsipyle tells Euneus what happened to her: οἷά τε Γοργάδες ἐν λέκτροις | ἔκανον εὐνέτας (‘like Gorgons they killed their bedmates in their beds’). Moreover, in the Argonautica Hypsipyle is not yet a mother: she and Jason allude to the possibility in their farewell speeches at 1.898–909, and Jason asks her to send her son, when he has grown up, to his parents if he does not return from Colchis. In Euripides’ Hypsipyle, however, her sons Euneus and Thoas are grown up and lost to her and, according to F 759a.1614, had been taken to Colchis on the Argo, so that they must have been born before Jason left Lemnos, but at the end of the play they are reunited with their mother. The mention of a possible child in the Argonautica may have reminded readers of this tragic sequel of the story. As to the Argonauts’ stay on Lemnos, there is evidence that Aeschylus in his Cabiri (F 95–7a), perhaps a satyr play (F 96 and 97 have been related to wine production), put the Argonauts on stage while they were drunk (Aesch. T 117a). It has been suggested that this was while they were staying on Lemnos on the outward journey. An important argument for this (and for Apollonius’ familiarity with the Cabiri) is F 95, ὄρνιθα δ’ οὐ ποιῶ σε τῆς ἐμῆς ὁδοῦ (‘I do not make you an ill omen of my journey’), which seems to refer to a journey still to come and which Jason may be alluding to when he addresses his mother at Argonautica 1.304: μηδ’ ὄρνις ἀεικελίη πέλε νηί (‘and do not become an ill omen for the ship’).41 In the Argonautica, the Argonauts on Lemnos indulge in dances and meals and celebrate with songs and sacrifices (1.857–60), but there is no mention of drunkenness. It could be implied, but on the whole unrestrained indulgence in drink seems to be reserved for the boorish Idas (Argon 1.472–4). Interestingly, the drunkenness of the Argonauts 39 40

41

As also observed by Schmakeit 2003: 200–25 in her discussion of the Lemnian episode. The phrase in Apollonius allows both the interpretation ‘in bed’ and ‘because of affairs of the bed’; see Hunter 1993: 48, who compares Medea’s motivation in Euripides, and the scholia on Arg. 1.618; also Schmakeit 2003: 206–7 n. 34. See also Schmakeit 2003: 203 n. 17.

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is associated in Athenaeus 10.428 F with the drunkenness of Aeschylus when writing his plays, for which he was allegedly reproached by Sophocles (see Aesch. T 117a–g). There are no earlier attestations of this tradition, but given the metapoetical aspects of heavy drinking (also apparent at Call. Aet. fr. 178.11– 12), it is conceivable that by presenting his Argonauts as sober heroes Apollonius deliberately contrasted them with the drunken Argonauts of the Cabiri and thus reminded his readers of this kind of discourse, by implication dissociating himself from poets like the ‘drunken’ Aeschylus. Amycus Among the various episodes detailing the Argonauts’ travels, the story of the barbarian king Amycus who forced all foreigners to fight with him, dealt with at Argonautica 2.1–97 and Theocritus 22.1–134, provides a good example of the reception of Greek drama. As in Apollonius and Theocritus, the theme of Sophocles’ satyr play Amycus (F 111–12) very probably was the fight between Amycus and Polydeuces and, as this was a satyr play, the presentation must have been humorous and not too serious.42 In Theocritus, too, the episode has a relatively happy end, as Amycus surrenders and promises to mend his ways (128–34), and contains humorous elements, particularly in the dialogue between Amycus and Polydeuces, where, for example, Polydeuces politely asks Amycus: ἄγριος εἶ, πρὸς πάντα παλίγκοτος ἠδ’ ὑπερόπτης; (‘are you a savage, perverse and haughty always?’, 58).43 The fact that the dialogue at 54–74 is presented largely as a stichomythia, with a speech introduction only in 53 and a speech conclusion in 75, also recalls drama. Theocritus’ treatment perhaps reflects the humorous approach of the satyr play44 in contrast with the serious epic treatment of Apollonius. The different approaches may be part of a dialogue between the poets about these issues. 42

43 44

See also Sens 1997: 164: ‘the conclusion of Sophocles’ satyr drama Amycus is unknown, though its genre argues against the killing of Amycus’. Translations of Theocritus are from Gow 1950. In a similar way, in Theocritus 11 the bucolic Cyclops may owe something to the ‘bucolization’ of the Cyclops in Euripides’ Cyclops; see Hunter 1999: 9 and 217.

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Phineus Both Aeschylus and Sophocles wrote plays (tragedies or satyr plays) about Phineus. There may be a connection with Argonautica 2, where the Argonauts stay with Phineus and receive his instructions for their journey (2.178–536). Although we know little about these plays, a few bits of evidence suggest a connection with Apollonius. Thus the scholia on Argonautica 2.178–82b and c inform us that, according to Sophocles, Phineus blinded his two sons by Cleopatra, persuaded by their stepmother, but that in the Argonautica he is punished because he told people too much. So, as with Apsyrtus (discussed below), Apollonius is using a tradition which differs from that followed by Sophocles. Even so, as in the case of the children of Aeetes, here too Apollonius may be using a verbal allusion to indicate that he knew Sophocles’ version. In Sophocles Phineus F 712, νεκρὸς τάριχος εἰσορᾶν Αἰγύπτιος, we probably have a description of Phineus, macerated by his long lack of food and ‘looking like a mummified Egyptian corpse’. Similarly, Argonautica 2.197–206 contains a description of Phineus’ extreme weakness and bad state, with only his skin keeping his bones together (201), and compares him to ‘a lifeless dream’ (ἀκήριον ἠύτ’ ὄνειρον, 197).45 Although the allusion may not be entirely compelling, the fact that both authors compare Phineus to a lifeless entity suggests a connection, and Apollonius may have used the shared imagery to draw attention to his different characterization of Phineus. The Episode at Colchis and the Death of Apsyrtus Also in the Colchian episode we find connections to lost tragedies and possible traces of a dialogue between the poets on aspects of the story. A good example is their treatment of the events in Colchis and the homeward journey. There is good evidence that Sophocles’ Colchides (F 336–49) also dealt with this theme, and that in this play Medea killed her little brother Apsyrtus at home in Colchis (F 343), whereas in the Argonautica Apsyrtus is already grown-up and living on his own (3.239–46), pursuing the 45

Schmakeit 2003: 252 also compares Euripides, Aeolus F 25 and gives further evidence for the metaphorical use of the noun to indicate weakness.

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Argonauts on the homeward journey and killed by Medea and Jason on the island of Artemis (4.452–81). Callimachus, however, who in his Aetia probably dealt only briefly with the Colchian episode and gave little attention to Medea’s falling in love,46 follows Sophocles’ Colchides and Euripides’ Medea 1334 and says that Medea killed Apsyrtus in Colchis (fr. 8).47 Perhaps to underline this fact, he also has the Argonauts return home along the same route as they came, unlike Apollonius, who makes them follow a different route, but like Sophocles in the Scythae (F 547), so that they do not even reach the ominous island of Artemis. On the other hand, there are also indications that, though opting for an adult Apsyrtus, Apollonius followed the Colchides in another aspect: the scholia on Argonautica 3.1040c tell us that Sophocles introduces Medea helping Jason with his task, an element clearly present in the Argonautica, and at Argonautica 3.414–16 the idea that Aeetes also fights the armed men sprung from the dragon’s teeth is a detail not found in Pindar’s version of the Argonauts’ story in his fourth Pythian, but is attested in Colchides F 341. All this shows that the poets knew the plots of the plays,48 but there is also a possible allusion in the Argonautica, which suggests that they reacted to mythological details in the text. Thus it seems that Apollonius wanted to draw attention to the fact that he did not follow Sophocles’ description of the little Apsyrtus in Scythae F 546 (quoted in the scholia on Argon 4.223–30a).49 This is when he reports that Apsyrtus is living in a different building than Aeetes and his wife Eidyia and that he is the son of Aeetes and the Caucasian nymph Asterodeia and was born before Aeetes 46 47

48

49

See Harder 2016. Perhaps Aeetes’ angry speech in Aet. fr. 7c.9–16 is a reaction to the murder; see Harder 2012 ad loc. For another possible connection see Hunter 1989 in his commentary on Apollonius, Argonautica 3.616–824, concerning Medea’s struggle to decide to help Jason and her approach of Chalciope: ‘In the confrontation between the two sisters the loss of Sophocles’ Colchian Women is keenly felt, as Electra and Antigone show that poet’s interest in such family relationships’. Indeed, the thought that Apollonius may have used the Colchides in the third book of his Argonautica is both tempting and plausible, and derives support from the evidence collected here. On Apsyrtus as a small child see also Pherecydes, FGrH 3 F 32a, quoted in the same scholion. For the idea that Apollonius followed Sophocles’ Scythae see also Wilamowitz 1924: 197.

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married Eidyia. He adds that the Colchians called Apsyrtus Phaethon, because of his outstanding qualities among the young men, which also draws attention to the fact that he is an adult (Argon 3.239–46). Later, Apollonius suggests that Medea must be considerably younger than her half-brother, because she also has a much elder sister, Chalciope, who must have been born after Apsyrtus and breastfed Medea as a baby together with her own sons (Argon 3.732–5). All this is emphatically different from Scythae F 546, where Sophocles says that Apsyrtus is the child of Aeetes and a Nereid, whereas Eidyia, a daughter of Oceanus, had borne Medea already sometime before the boy was born. The notion of ‘before’ is indicated by πρίν at Argonautica 3.243–4, πρίν περ κουριδίην θέσθαι Εἰδυῖαν ἄκοιτιν, | Τηθύος Ὠκεανοῦ τε πανοπλοτάτην γεγαυῖαν (‘before Aeetes had made Eidyia, the youngest daughter of Tethys and Oceanus, his wedded wife’),50 and Soph. Scythae F 546.3–4, τὴν δ’ | Εἰδυῖα πρίν ποτ’ Ὠκεανοῦ τίκτει κόρη (‘before Eidyia the daughter of Oceanus bore her’ [sc. Medea]). Apollonius’ line may be thought to echo the Sophoclean as, in addition to πρίν, it also mentions Eidyia as the daughter of Oceanus, but with emphasis on her status as κουριδίην . . . ἄκοιτιν instead of just Ὠκεανοῦ . . . κόρη.51 Argive Myths Argive myths were obviously popular with Hellenistic poets, because they provided an opportunity to connect the Ptolemies and their Macedonian ancestors with Greek myth, as their ancestor Heracles came from Argos and was descended from Danaus, who went to Argos from Egypt with his daughters, being of Argive descent himself. In several passages, especially those dealing with the Danaids and Heracles, we may detect connections with plays 50 51

Translations from Apollonius are by Race 2008. The above discussion does not exhaust the possibilities. Apollonius may also have known and used, e.g., (1) Aesch. Argo (F 20–1), a play which referred to the speaking wood of the Argo and used an alternative name for Tiphys; (2) Soph. Rhizotomoi (F 534–6), because of the magic rituals (see Nelis 2001: 141 n. 72); (3) Soph. Colchides F 345, about Ganymede, and perhaps F 1135, about fire-breathing bulls (see Schmakeit 2003: 72); (4) Soph. Lemniae F 387, spoken by Polyxo about Hypsipyle? (see Schmakeit 2003: 202–3) and about Polyxo as a tragic nurse (Schmakeit 2003: 213–17).

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on Argive themes. For similar reasons, some of the Heraclid plays by Euripides may also have been creatively reworked in the Hellenistic period. Thus topical issues were anchored in the tradition through the creation of links with tragedies on thematically related subjects, and these plays could be co-opted to boost Ptolemaic ideology. The Danaids were prominent in several plays by Aeschylus who, apart from the Suppliants, wrote Egyptians, Danaids, and Amymone (a satyr play), possibly following the Suppliants in a trilogy.52 There is a clear allusion to Aeschylus, Suppliants 1018–29 at Callimachus, Aetia fr. 66.7–9,53 and one may suspect that there were allusions to the other Danaid plays as well (though as to the contents, one should bear in mind that there was an epic Danais as well).54 Thus at Apollonius, Argonautica 1.133–8 Nauplius is described as a descendant of Amymone and Poseidon, perhaps recalling the story of Amymone, the subject of Aeschylus’ eponymous play (F 13–15). In the request to go for water to Physadeia or Amymone at Callimachus, Hymn 5.45–8 and in the poems of which we have remains in Aetia frr. 54a and 65–6 about Amymone and the other Argive springs, also called after Danaids, there may have been more allusions, perhaps also to Danaides (F 43–6) or Aigyptioi (F 5). The obvious interest in the Danaids makes it likely that the Hellenistic poets consulted plays on this subject. The treatment of Heracles in Hellenistic poetry may also owe something to tragedy. Obviously Heracles was of great interest for the Ptolemies as an ancestor as well as as a moral example, as we can infer from the interest paid to him in, for example, Theocritus 17 and 24, Callimachus’ Aetia, and the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius. Sophocles’ satyr play Heracliscus (F 223a–b) evokes questions regarding the tradition about the young Heracles strangling the snakes sent by Hera to destroy him, known from Pindar, Nemean 1 and Theocritus 24. The play may have been used by 52 53

54

See Radt on Aesch. T 70. On the way in which Callimachus used Aeschylus’ Supplices and made the Danaids ‘present’ in his fifth hymn see in general Boychenko 2017. For a testimonium indicating that the epic had a length of 6,500 lines and fragments see West 2003: 266–9.

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Theocritus, but there are no clear indications, as very little is known of it. On the other hand, there may be a concrete connection with Hellenistic poetry in a fragment from Sophocles’ Heracles Satyricus (F 224–7). F 225 is interesting because the speaker says that he was collecting the wood (τὰ ξύλ’) to make sure there was material for lighting fires. Molorcus’ reference to the lack of wood for the fire (ἀξυλίηι, because the Nemean lion prevents him from going out to cut it and thus from offering a hot meal to Heracles) at Callimachus, Aetia fr. 54b.23–5, may have alluded to this play, particularly as a hungry Heracles could conceivably be a character in a satyr play. Heraclid themes in Greek plays may also have left traces in Hellenistic poetry. To bridge the gap between Heracles and the later Macedonian kings and hence the Ptolemies, and to create a link between Egypt and the Greeks, the genealogy of Heracles, including both his ancestors and his descendants in a genealogical narrative, must have been of great importance. We have seen how tragic texts about Danaus and his daughters were used by Hellenistic poets to probe aspects of Heracles’ ancestry. Among the fragmentary plays about the Heraclids we could explore the reception of Euripides’ Archelaus, Cresphontes, Temenus, and Temenidae, which dealt with their rule and impact in various parts of the Greek world, including Macedonia.55 One instance of the possible reception of these plays may be discussed here. Euripides wrote the Archelaus at the end of his career, probably at the court of the Macedonian king Archelaus,56 which began with a long genealogy (F 228–228a) showing how Archelaus descended from Heracles, who in turn was both a son of Zeus and a descendant of Danaus, a notion which was to fit in neatly with later Ptolemaic ideology.57 It may therefore not be a coincidence that this prologue was included in a selection of prologues in a Ptolemaic papyrus.58 Knowledge of tragic and epic 55

56 57 58

On this issue, see in general Harder 2017; on the possible reception of Temenidae F 740 see Harder 2017: 63–6. On this play, see in general Harder 1985; Hecht 2017: 40–57. See also Hanink 2010: 52; Hecht 2017: 57. P.Hamb. 118 and 119; see Harder 1985: 139–43, 2017: 59–60. Other indications for the lasting popularity of the play in the Hellenistic period are the performances in Argos and Dodona between 276 and 219; cf. TGrF 5.1 Archelaus Test. II b. Apart from the

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examples, including perhaps the prologue of the Archelaus, may be detected at Apollonius, Argonautica 1.620–4: οἴη δ’ ἐκ πασέων γεραροῦ περιφείσατο πατρός ῾Υψιπύλεια Θόαντος, ὃ δὴ κατὰ δῆμον ἄνασσε, λάρνακι δ’ ἐν κοίλῃ μιν ὕπερθ’ ἁλὸς ἧκε φέρεσθαι, αἴ κε φύγῃ. Alone of all the women, Hypsipyle saved her aged father Thoas, who in fact was ruling over the people. She set him to drift on the sea in a hollow chest, in the hope that he might escape.

This passage is about Hypsipyle as an exception among the Lemnian women, who killed all the men on the island. Her behaviour may recall that of Hypermnestra as an exception among the Danaids when they kill their husbands, the sons of Aegyptus,59 as described in similar terms at [Aeschylus], Prometheus Bound 865–6 (μίαν δὲ παίδων ἵμερος θέλξει, τὸ μὴ | κτεῖναι σύνευνον: ‘desire bewitched one of the girls, so as not to kill her husband’) and mentioned in much-damaged lines at the beginning of Euripides, Archelaus F 228a.1–2. The fate of Thoas in a chest at sea (and his subsequent rescue on Oenoea) recalls the fate of Perseus in similar circumstances with his mother Danae, as described in Hesiod fr. 135.4 Merkelbach–West, Πε]ρσῆα, τὸν εἰς ἅλα λά[ρνακι (‘Perseus, whom on the sea in a chest . . .’), after mentioning Hypermnestra and her son Abas in 135.1–2 (of Hypermnestra only ]τρη ̣ remains (135.1), and indicated by the mention of Acrisius, Danae, and Perseus at Euripides, Archelaus F 228a.7–10. The way in which Thoas is saved by fishermen on

59

attractive genealogy, the Archelaus (as well as Temenus and Temenidae) also contained many moralizing passages, which could be read as a kind of Fürstenspiegel and praised moral values similar to those in the story of Heracles at the crossroads in Xen. Mem. 2.1.21–34. For further discussion of the Heraclid plays as examples of Fürstenspiegel and of their material remains in a Ptolemaic context, including discussion of a possible allusion to Euripides, Temenidae F 740, see Harder 2017. The Lemnian women and the Danaids as groups of murderesses were also grouped together e.g. in the chapter Quae impiae fuerunt in Hyg. Fab. 255.2: Danaides coniuges suos patrueles occiderunt. Lemniades in Lemno insula patres et filios occiderunt. The exceptional behaviour of Hypermnestra must also have been an issue in a play from the fourth century, i.e. Theodectas’ Lynceus, which focused on the fate of Abas and his father Lynceus; on this play, see Dunn 2018: 248; Liapis and Stephanopoulos 2018: 56–7, discussing TGrF 1.72 F 3a.

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Oenoea may be reminiscent of Aeschylus’ Dictyulci, on Perseus (F 46a–47c).60 Thus Apollonius may be very subtly evoking tragic passages in which distant ancestors survived precarious moments in the Ptolemaic genealogy.61 Other Myths Tragic treatments of other myths also seem to have left an impression, and we can observe that striking tragic images inspired Hellenistic poets or elements of tragic plots were briefly referred to. Thus, when at Aetia fr. 75.10–11 Callimachus describes the fear of the sacrificial oxen when they see the knife above their heads mirrored in the lustral water, he may have been inspired by a striking and moving simile in Sophocles, Tyro F 659, where Tyro compares her mourning to that of a female horse which sees in the river, as in a mirror, how its mane has been cut off. As to elements of plots, we may find traces of Euripides’ Antiope in the brief reference to her fate at Apollonius, Argonautica 4.109062 and perhaps at Callimachus, Aetia fr. 137a. In particular, plays about Attic myth like Sophocles’ Aegeus and Theseus and Euripides’ Aegeus63 may have been used in Callimachus’ Hecale, as was suggested by Hollis: ‘Both Sophocles and Euripides composed an Aegeus; although it seems doubtful whether Callimachus followed the plot of either tragedy, he may have taken the occasional hint from each of them. The bandits Sciron and Cercyon, overcome by Theseus, were also thought fit subjects for satyr plays and comedies’.64 However, like Apollonius in relation to the Argonaut plays, Callimachus 60

61

62

63

64

See also Clauss 1993: 112–13; Schmakeit 2003: 210 n. 49. The fate of Danae is mentioned again at Argon 4.1091–2, where Arete compares her with Medea. For a similar story cf. Call. Aet. frr. 24–25d, where Heracles prevents the starvation of Hyllus. For the prologue of Euripides’ play as an important factor in the myth’s transmission see also Hunter 2015 ad loc. On the popularity of Attic themes in the works of Sophocles and Euripides and a survey of the relevant Sophoclean titles see Radt 1983: 195–7 (= 2002: 270–2). Hollis 2009: 6. On Sciron in drama see Hollis 2009: 209. S. F 730c suggests that he may have been a character in Sophocles’ Theseus too (on this play, see also Hollis 2009: 150). Another element in the Hecale that Callimachus may have derived from tragedy is the birth of Erichthonius, for which Hollis 2009: 227 refers to several passages from Euripides, Ion and F 925 from an unknown play.

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went his own way. As Hollis shows, he cannot have followed the plot of Sophocles’ Aegeus, where Medea tries to kill Theseus after he has conquered the Marathonian bull, because the diēgēsis to the Hecale makes it clear that she plotted against him immediately after his arrival in Athens.65 On the other hand, as Hollis suggests, Callimachus may have taken small elements from tragedy in fr. 68, where the dragging of the bull recalls Sophocles, Aegeus F 25, and fr. 69.1, which because of the noun κορύνη (‘club’) may recall a fragment attributed to the Theseus of Euripides by Kannicht (F **386b, perhaps also alluded to at Hecale fr. 165). In addition to Hollis’ observations, one may wonder whether Sophocles’ Euryalus could have provided an example for the Hecale, where Medea tries to kill Theseus before his father recognizes him, because there Penelope tried to convince Odysseus to kill his bastard son Euryalus before he had recognized him.66 Conclusion The evidence discussed above suggests that Callimachus, Apollonius, and Theocritus knew and used many Greek plays that are now lost and that these plays were often a point of reference for them.67 It could be the plays’ plots or subjects, but sometimes the poets also referred to striking tragic imagery, apparently regardless of the plays’ subjects. One gets the impression that they made good use of the material available in the library at Alexandria in the third century BCE. It seems likely, though, that what we see is just the tip of an iceberg, because the remains of the many tragedies are very small, while the remains of Hellenistic poetry are not extensive either. It is striking, however, that in the 65 66

67

Hollis 2009: 139–40. There are no fragments of this play, only a testimonium; see Sophocles TGrF 4 pp. 194–5. This fits in with the conclusion of Le Guen 2018: 178–9 concerning performance: ‘In any case, the evidence suggests that the “old” tragedies performed by later actors, who included them in their repertoire as old favourites, were by no means limited to those pieces that have come down to us after a process of selection made by philologists and grammarians according to very different criteria’. Hanink 2018: 345 observes that when Athenaeus wrote his Deipnosophists, ‘a range of tragic texts was . . . still in circulation, even if those texts were now largely reduced to excerpts gathered in anthologies and gnomological collections’.

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well-preserved Argonautica there are relatively numerous points of contact with tragedy. From a thematic point of view, we find many references to plays with Trojan, Argonautic, and Argive myths. These myths were prominent in Greek tragedy and we see this again in Hellenistic poetry. Apparently these were myths that both made good stories and were good to think with in various cultural and historical circumstances, as the Hellenistic poets may have discovered when exploring the themes dealt with by their predecessors. It is striking that Theban plays (preserved as well as lost), with their grim family affairs, are largely absent.68 The nature and purpose of the references vary. They may allude to tragic elements of subject or style in a general way, but also evoke specific passages. Sometimes tragedy was used as a background for formulating and shaping views on literary criticism, as in the treatment of the Trojan War with a focus on its prehistory, minor episodes, or aftermath, hinting at a tendency to take ‘untrodden paths’ in relation to Homer, or as (perhaps) in the treatment of drunken Argonauts. Also issues of genre seem to have been addressed, as we saw in the discussion of Apollonius’ catalogue of Argonauts and in the story of Amycus, which Apollonius and Theocritus approached from different angles, possibly in connection with the satyr play Amycus of Sophocles. Other references concern aspects of the mythological tradition, like the age of Apsyrtus, the characterization and biography of Hypsipyle and Phineus, the readiness for battle of the Lemnian women, or the route of the Argonauts’ return journey, where Apollonius in particular could be seen to innovate and vary in relation to his tragic predecessors. A special case was Argive myth, focusing on Heracles and his ancestors and offspring, which helped to highlight issues of Ptolemaic ideology. The use of plays with Attic subjects in Callimachus’ Hecale fit in with the picture gathered from the Argonautica that when a specific subject demanded it, the poet would consult and use the relevant tragedies in an independent way. Sometimes we also see that the poets could be inspired by 68

Interestingly, they later became an important point of reference for Ovid in his Metamorphoses, as argued by Keith 2010.

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tragic imagery or phrasing in plays not thematically related to their own text, as in the reference to Sophocles’ Tyro. All this suggests a thorough knowledge of the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, in particular, but not exclusively those which were of thematic interest for one’s own poetry. Apparently the plays were still an object of active reception and consulted with eagerness, especially when they dealt with themes that were popular with the Hellenistic poets.69

69

Further research on various aspects of the plays’ reception is possible. As to the development of a tragic canon, it would be rewarding to go through all the tragic fragments (including those of the ‘minor poets’) systematically and check them for reminiscences in the poets of the third century BCE, and to compare the use of the lost plays with the allusions to the preserved plays (interestingly, Hanink 2018: 333 observes that Hellenistic scholarship is almost silent about fourth-century tragic poets and that their names do not appear again until the work of Athenaeus). Here one should bear in mind that one can find more allusions to the preserved plays simply because there is more text available. It would therefore be useful to see also how much an investigation of the indirect tradition of the preserved plays and the papyri would yield. It would also be worth investigating how the state of affairs in the third century BCE relates to papyrus finds from the Ptolemaic period onwards of the plays discussed here, as well as of other fragmentary plays and of the plays preserved in the medieval manuscripts, and whether the papyrus finds suggest a preference for plays with other subjects than those that appeared to be relevant for the early Hellenistic poets and/or a gradual narrowing of the selection and developments towards our canon of plays. Additionally the evidence from the authors quoting fragments of tragedy could be explored further in an attempt to establish who still knew them from first-hand knowledge. Another study could be a comparison with later Hellenistic poetry in order to see whether later poets give less evidence of being widely read in Greek tragedy or show a preference for different plays.

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emily gowers Culinary wordplay? That sounds like a doubly trivial subject to bear the weight of Rome’s reception of Greece. Yet as a marker of an often-perceived gap between ‘ethereal’ Greece and ‘bodily’ Rome, it might just turn out to be an apt one. I offer here a slightly different model of reception from the other chapters in this volume: reception as admixture, hybridization, surfeit – even bungling. With several ‘foodie’ decades behind us, cookery has still not shaken off its lowly cultural status, for all Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s attempts to salvage it as a high art form and Claude Lévi-Strauss’ success in elevating it into a ritual enactment of the operations of culture in general. Once puns, anagrams and other forms of wordplay enter culinary discourse, blending as they do dissimilar concepts through irrational likeness, all pandemonium is likely to break out. Depending on one’s level of tolerance, puns either wilfully disrupt rational order or do justice to the world’s genuinely mixed qualities and serendipitous collisions. Anagrams, too, which mix and mash in quasi-culinary fashion,1 can be said to mimic the operations of bricolage at both the cosmic and the atomic levels.2 What more appropriate candidate for the longest agglutinative word in Greek than the gargantuan conglomerate that ends Aristophanes’ Eccleziasousae, whose letters and

It is a pleasure to come full circle to my first and only supervision from Richard Hunter (on Petronius) and remix for him a paper first presented at ‘Les mots sous les textes: Interpreting wordplay in Greek and Latin poetry’, Fondation Hardt, Vandœuvres, 7–8 November 2014. I don’t have words for all his kindness since then. The section on the Moretum expands Gowers 1993: 46–8 and contracts an undergraduate essay (Cat Lambert spotted one of the anagrams when she was the same age). 1 E.g. the crossword clue ‘Mashed treat’ can be solved as ‘tater’. 2 On the puns and anagrams that shape poetic worlds, see pioneers Friedländer 1941 and Snyder 1980 (Lucretius); Ahl 1985 (Ovid). On ancient wordplay, see more recently Katz 2013, Kwapisz, Petrain, and Szymanski 2013, Winter-Froemel and Thaler 2018.

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ingredients are gummed together to make one inextricable edible?3 λοπαδοτεμαχοσελαχογαλεοκρανιολειψανοδριμυποτριμματοσιλφιοκαραβομελιτοκατακεχυμενοκιχλεπικοσσυφοφαττοπεριστεραλεκτρυονοπτοκεφαλλιοκιγκλοπελειολαγῳοσιραιοβαφητραγανοπτερυγών. (Ar. Eccl. 1169–83)

Ratty’s fantasy picnic in The Wind in the Willows is just one modern descendant:4 Coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscresssandwichespottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater. (Grahame 1908: ch. 1)

Can such word concoctions be redeemed, at least in part, by their status as verbal approximations of cultural overload – or hangover? Can they also be redeemed by the affinities they have helped to suggest across the centuries with other, more abstract forms, from mixed genres to mixed political constitutions? Since Aristotle in the Politics dictated the right proportions of one in many, political thinkers have followed in his footsteps and illustrated their theories with culinary analogies. Sometimes the emphasis has been on harmonious blending, sometimes on continued heterogeneity (freedom, diversity, mixture). Even the Aristophanic monster-word just quoted has its political dimension. Suzanne Saïd once called it ‘un mot-merde’, because its ingredients are too pulped to be distinguished, so illustrating the analogy that Praxagora draws between eating excrement and embracing communism earlier in Ecclesiazousae (in what seems to be an extended parody of utopian ideas, like those later presented in Plato’s Republic).5 Centuries later, Friedrich Engels criticized preMarxist socialism as an incoherent Mischung (mishmash) of muddled, eclectic ideas, their edges all worn smooth; Marx himself would ridicule contemporary utopianism as ‘recipes for the 3

4

5

The exaggerated polysynthesis probably mocks the breathless dithyrambs and long gastronomic compounds of Philoxenus of Leucas (PMG 836; Ussher 1973 ad Eccl. 1168–76) – unless he is an invented parody of Philoxenus of Cythera, another gourmand (LeVen 2014: 117). See Olson 2006–10 ad Ath. 1.5b on the confusion; even Athenaeus is confused (Ath. 4.146f). Deschanel 1897: 216 compares the German ‘Saucissenkartoffelbreisauerkrautkranzwurst’ (where kranz (‘ring, garland’) ties up the long word string). Ar. Eccl. 595–600. Saïd 1979: 55; see also Dawson 1997: 37–43.

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cookshops of the future’.6 More recently, and more positively, William Fitzgerald has argued that the attractions of diversity (as opposed to ethnic assimilation) in modern democracies owe much to the ancient aesthetic of poikilia/uarietas, with its emphasis on multiple viewpoints and individual forms of fulfilment.7 In between came Rome, and we should not underestimate the extent to which Romans conceived of their global society as an unholy mess, as reflected in the nomenclature of their best-known literary invention. Many edible mixtures have inspired the names of written miscellanies – pastiche, farce, macaronics, even ‘miscellany’ itself (originally a hash eaten by Roman gladiators) – but it may be on cultural as much as literary-historical grounds that Quintilian (10.1.93) celebrates satura (‘full or mixed dish’) as quintessentially Roman. Satire’s own tolerance for food puns – on sapere (‘taste/have sense’) and ius (‘law/sauce’), for example – helped cement the genre’s identity as perverted organ of wisdom and imperfect filter of the ways of the world.8 The tasting menu I propose here, however, draws on other genres: comedy, epic and epyllion (with an extra bite from the novel). My aim is to examine the relationship between verbal concoctions and the different ‘worlds’ they piece together, utopian and otherwise. The various courses will be sprinkled with puns and anagrams: the result a dog’s dinner – or a rat’s picnic? More seriously, my survey will explore the potential of cooking language across literary spheres to suggest the state of many-inoneness or to miniaturize larger containing forms, domestic, poetic or cosmic, while reducing their solemnity (and sometimes also ‘naturalizing’ certain acts of exclusion). The Roman kitchen turns out to be an unlikely scene both for the reception of early Greek philosophy and for the conceptual frameworks of ancient and modern politics. Let us first climb down the ‘vortex’, as Fitzgerald calls it, of ‘the one and the many’.9 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word 6

7 8 9

Engels 1973 [1882]: 201; Marx 1976 [1867]: 94: ‘Rezepte . . . für die Garküche der Zukunft’. Fitzgerald 2016: 79–83. Gowers 1993: 109–26. Fitzgerald 2016: 5.

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was a cooking word – for Heraclitus, at any rate, who envisaged the cosmos as a stirring together of all the elements into one giant smoothie. The text of his compressed gnōmē on the subject is uncertain. As transmitted by Theophrastus, the fragment makes little sense: . . . καὶ ὁ κυκεὼν διίσταται κινούμενος. . . . and the posset, too, separates if it is stirred. (Heraclitus fr. D59 Laks–Most)

Most editors have added μή before κινούμενος. But M. M. Mackenzie has since argued for a more consciously paradoxical reading, her justification being that Heraclitus conceived the world as a collection of situations and entities which are intrinsically contradictory but internally coherent, examples of what she calls ‘one under many’. She proposes ἵσταται κινούμενος instead, translating: ‘The posset stands still as it moves.’10 Whatever the solution, stirring is intrinsic to the identity of a concoction whose name derives from κυκάω (‘stir’). Barley was the posset’s main ingredient, along with cheese, soaked in liquid (water, milk or wine) – an ancient ancestor of frumenty or Scots ‘Atholl brose’.11 At Il. 11.638–41, Homer gives a recipe: ‘Hecamede mixed a posset (κύκησε) for Nestor and Eurymedon with Pramnian wine, and on this she grated cheese of goat’s milk with a bronze grater, and sprinkled over it white barley meal; and she bade them drink, when she had prepared the posset (κυκειῶ).’ At Od. 10.234–6, Circe adds seductive honey and narcotics: ‘She stirred them a brew of yellow honey and Pramnian wine, with cheese and barley meal. But she mixed in wicked drugs, as well, so they might wholly forget their native land.’ The Roman equivalent, coc(c)etum, was said to include poppy seed and honey.12 All these mixtures had associations with the corn goddess Demeter (Ceres), an unfermented version of κυκεών being the drink with which participants in the Eleusinian Mysteries ritually broke their 10 11

12

Mackenzie 1986; cf. 1988: 15; contra Mouraviev 1996. Hainsworth 1993: 293–4. Glaucon at Pl. Resp. 406a underplays its medicinal value in the Iliad: ἄτοπον γε τὸ πῶμα (‘rather a weird potion’). Festus: genus edulii ex melle et papauere factum. Among the miscellany titles listed at Tert. Adv. Valent. 1.2 as analogies for Christ’s multiplicity are Acci Patinam (Persius’ olla Thyestae) and Nestoris Coccetum (the Iliadic κυκεών).

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fast.13 This was a reviving drink, with a high concentration of energy-giving ingredients. Grotesque Baubo gives it to grieving Demeter to cheer her up (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 207–10). What it loses in aesthetic perfection, the mixed dish or drink gains in its capacity to stimulate joy and laughter.14 Contents aside, what made the posset distinctive and a good image for Heraclitus’ theory of cosmic harmony was its consistency: it was a suspension, a precariously homogeneous one. To quote G. S. Kirk: If change between opposites ceased, then the opposites themselves would cease to be connected with each other; the only unity between them, and so the only unity subsisting in the world, would be destroyed. There would be no such thing as κόσμος, just as there would be no such thing as κυκεών if its ingredients existed in isolation from one another.15

It was a quintessentially rustic drink,16 cited by Lucian to suggest a panorama (Icar. 7) or the contradictions of life (Vit. auct. 14), while Epicurus (Diog. Laert. 10.8 = fr. 238 Usener) satirically called Heraclitus himself κυκητής (‘muddler’). Among subsequent transformations of the cosmic κυκεών, best known is the image of the universe being stirred together in a giant mixing bowl in Plato’s Timaeus, perhaps the most precisely measured recipe of all antiquity and one that aspires to perfect purity.17 At the centre of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a rustic cheese, ‘a lump of pressed milk’ (lactis massa coacti, 8.666), crowns the primeval feast of Philemon and Baucis, a post-lapsarian reminder of the poem’s originary cosmic moulding. Menocchio, the heretical sixteenth-century miller who told the Inquisition that the universe came into being when chaos ‘curdled like a cheese, from which later great multitudes of worms were born’, may have drawn, Carlo Ginzburg suggests, on a Vedic myth of the coagulation of primordial waters into ghee, beaten by the creator 13

14 15 16

17

Delatte 1955; Richardson 1974: 344–8. At Ov. Met. 5.448–54, Ceres drinks water mixed with polenta. Fitzgerald 2016: 33–6, 57–60. Kirk 1954: 256. Heraclitus drank one to illustrate the virtues of a simple life: Plut. De garr. 17 511B = fr. P7 Laks–Most. Platonic aesthetics allow little room for variegation: Porter 2010: 38. An Orphic poem, Mixing-Bowl, may have concerned either cosmic mixing or immersion/purgative drinking for the soul: Parker 1995: 486; Edwards 1992.

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gods.18 So, perhaps, did Heraclitus and Plato before him. The utopian socialist Charles Fourier (1772–1837) would later be mocked for envisaging a more temperate future when the polar icecap would melt and the ocean, transformed by boreal citric acid, taste not unlike salty lemonade.19 Ass You Like It A simple starter. Long before Lucretius conjured up the world through cosmic anagrammatizing, Plautus came up with a far less momentous instance of transformative alphabetic stirring, one that merely sums up the compressed muddle of the comic stage. In so doing, he built on a Greco-Roman metatheatrical tradition of applying cooking language – kneading, mincing, roasting – to both kinds of comic ‘plot’: overarching drama and internal intrigue.20 There are no boastful cooks in Asinaria, but the notion of ‘getting in a pickle’ can be extracted from the warnings of the play’s puritanical matron, Artemona: ecastor cenabis hodie, ut dignus es, magnum malum (‘Today you’ll damn well dine on your just de(s)serts’, 934).21 With this in mind, listen carefully to the play’s other female character, the worldly-wise madam (lena), as she sermonizes on the helplessness of her male clients: quasi piscis itidem est amator lenae: nequam est nisi recens – is habet sucum, is suauitatem, eum quouis pacto condias uel patinarium uel assum, uerses quo pacto libet. To a madam, a lover’s like a fish: useless unless he’s fresh. That’s when he’s juicy, that’s when he’s tasty, that’s when you can season him any which way, pan-fry him or roast him, flip him this way or that. (Plaut. Asin. 178–80)

18 19 20

21

Ginzburg 1980: 58. Fourier 1996 [1808]: 50. Gowers 1993: 78–107. An ancestor of Plautus’ Aulularia (= Ollularia, from olla, pot), Alexis’ Lebes (‘The Cookpot’), had blazoned its own virtues in a recipe for a flavoursome hotchpotch (fr. 132 PCG = 127 Kock). Even the play’s title is a pun: either feminine singular (asinaria [fabula], ‘The one about the asses’) or neuter plural (‘Asinine goings on’) or even a feminine substantive (‘The female ass-driver’, i.e. the killjoy lady of the house who makes asses of all the men, above all her errant husband and son); Henderson 2006: 211.

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A man is as easy to flip, she says, as a fish in the kitchen: ‘pan-fried or roasted’. There, in her instructions uel patinarium uel assum, is a rough jumble or word salad of the play’s name, Asinaria, which we are invited to ‘flip’ or ‘unravel’ – uerses, as(s) you like it – a verb that recalls the work of Plautus the translator, who ‘messes barbarically’ (or ‘translates into barbarian’), uortit barbare, by inventing a new joke that only works in Latin. In his commentary, John Henderson accuses the lena of ‘outrageously encrypting the play in paragrammatism, and telling us so, into the bargain’.22 Turning Tables Wordplay in Plautus is plausible enough, but a food pun in Virgil might be disconcerting, were it not that mysterious riddles stressing the role of hunger as an incentive to starving migrants are a traditional feature of ktistic or foundational epic.23 At their first picnic on Italian soil, Aeneas and his Trojan refugees fulfil the earlier prediction of the Harpy Celaeno that they will settle in a place where they are so hungry that they will ‘eat their tables’: sed non ante datam cingetis moenibus urbem quam uos dira fames nostraeque iniuria caedis ambesas subigat malis absumere mensas. But you shall not gird with walls your promised city until dread hunger and the wrong of violence towards us force you to gnaw with your teeth and devour your very tables! (Aen. 3.255–7)

Notoriously, Aeneas misremembers the source of the riddle and attributes it instead to his father Anchises, so activating a suspicion that he is trying to suppress what the Trojans as marauders and scavengers have in common with the Harpies.24 The unflattering alliance is fuelled by the Trojans’ table manners (uiolare being the operative verb): Aeneas primique duces et pulcher Iulus corpora sub ramis deponunt arboris altae,

22 23 24

Henderson 2006: 172. Plautine puns: Fontaine 2010. Horsfall 1989: 13: ‘unlikely and comical’; 2000: 110–11. O’Hara 2007: 82; Horsfall 2000: 112 suspects an allusion to an alternative narrative.

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Emily Gowers instituuntque dapes et adorea liba per herbam subiciunt epulis (sic Iuppiter ipse monebat) et Cereale solum pomis agrestibus augent. consumptis hic forte aliis, ut uertere morsus exiguam in Cererem penuria adegit edendi, et uiolare manu malisque audacibus orbem fatalis crusti patulis nec parcere quadris. Aeneas, his chief captains and bonny Iulus rest their bodies under the branches of a high tree and spread the feast; they place cakes of meal on the grass beneath the food – as advised by Jupiter himself – and crown the wheat base with wild fruits. As it happened, when they had finished the rest, the short supplies drove them to dig their teeth into the thin cakes – to profane with hand and daring jaw the fateful circles of crust, and not spare the broad loaves. (Aen. 7.107–15)

Some readers have seen in these violations an enactment of world conquest; the loaves on which the picnic fruit is spread are miniature orbes, globes, divided into quarters (patulis . . . quadris).25 Nicholas Horsfall, for one, draws the line at seeing play in fatale crustum (115) on the earth’s crust: ‘Crust’, he says, ‘does not enter into it’. It is left to Ascanius/Iulus, prodigious child and agent of other kinds of disruption, to supply a new version of a klēdōn (or accidentally prophetic utterance) which is also a jarring pun (adludens):26 ‘heus, etiam mensas consumimus?’ inquit Iulus, nec plura, adludens. ‘Hey! Are we actually eating our tables?’ said Iulus in jest; and said no more. (Aen. 7.116–17)

Are these paleo wafers salvaged ship’s biscuits (cf. Aen. 1.178: fruges receptas) or some kind of Mediterranean flatbread – pitta, tortilla, pizza, or focaccia? They evidently contain no yeast, the mark of final settlement as well as an agent of fermentation in this book of raised temperatures. Alternatively, mensa is a cipher for an Umbrian word, found in the Iguvine Tables (no pun intended): mefa, sacrificial cake.27 For Horsfall, that is again a leap too far: ‘V[irgil] normally helps us with dialect-plays and this one, by his 25 26 27

Alessandro Barchiesi, Gray lecture, Cambridge 2001; Rogerson 2017: 178–9. E.g. Hdt. 5.51.2. Vine 1986.

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standards, is too hard.’28 But Jennifer Ferriss-Hill, who does believe that mefa is encrypted here, has argued that the ritual biscuit is just one of several accumulated ‘Sabellicizing’ etymologies which foreshadow the adoption of indigenous Italic religious habits.29 Indeed, Aeneas’ barking instructions promptly normalize (or Romanize, or sacralize) the archaic picnic, turning liba (cakes) into libations (libate, 7.133) and wheeling on some more conventional tables (mensis, 7.134) of the sacrificial kind: haec erat illa fames, haec nos suprema manebat exitiis positura modum. ... nunc pateras libate Ioui precibusque uocate Anchisen genitorem, et uina reponite mensis. This was that hunger foretold, this the last strait awaiting us, that was to set an end to our deadly woes! . . . Now pour your cups to Jove, and call in prayer on my sire Anchises, and stock the tables with wine. (Aen. 7.128–34)

This is by no means the only pun in the Aeneid (think of the Golden Bough’s mystical auri . . . aura (‘glimmer of gold’), Aen. 6.204), but it is one peculiarly appropriate for the seventh book, which tirelessly traces (or invents) lines of continuity between Italian past and Roman present – ethnographic, religious, etymological. The focus on childish things is striking: a nanny (Caieta), a toy (the top simile) and a pet (Silvia’s stag), all at a time when civilization – peaceful settlement, marriage, childbirth, agriculture – is being swept away by the derailment of the epic plot.30 Cooking, too, is under pressure. Queen Amata is in a stew: quam super aduentu Teucrum Turnique hymenaeis femineae ardentem curaeque iraeque coquebant. with a woman’s distress, a woman’s passion, she was seething with frenzy over the Trojans’ arrival and Turnus’ [abandoned] marriage. (Aen. 7.344–5)

Angry Turnus, meanwhile, is compared to a boiling cauldron, recalling Homer’s simile for the river god Sarpedon raging against Hephaestus (Il. 21.362–4), as suggested by the mock-heroic 28 29 30

Horsfall 2000 ad Aen. 7.116: mensas. Ferriss-Hill 2011. Mack 1999; Gowers 2011: 107–9.

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vocabulary that describes the bubbling cooking water – amnis (‘river’) and unda (‘wave’): . . . magno ueluti cum flamma sonore uirgea suggeritur costis undantis aëni exsultantque aestu latices, furit intus aquai fumidus atque alte spumis exuberat amnis. nec iam se capit unda, uolat uapor ater ad auras. . . . Just as when flaming sticks, crackling loudly, are heaped under the sides of a billowing cauldron, and the waters dance with the heat; within seethes the liquid river, steaming and bubbling up high with foam; and now the wave contains itself no longer, and the black smoke soars aloft. (Aen. 7.462–6)

Excitable Italians, it is implied, will need to simmer down if the new ethnic mixture ordained by Jupiter is to settle in harmony (Aen. 12.838: genus Ausonio mixtum quod sanguine surget, ‘the blended race that will rise up from Italian blood’). But this blend will remain in uneasy suspension for years to come. Poet’s Pesto Culinary heroics and epic eugenics collide again in my central example: the Moretum, that 122-line Virgilian pseudepigraphon and poetic epitome of the world in paruo whose title E. J. Kenney wittily translates as ‘The Ploughman’s Lunch’.31 More accurately, moretum is the garlic-and-herb-flavoured cheese that is the poem’s climactic relish, assembled early one morning by a peasant farmer to accompany a loaf of homemade bread and restore his energy after a hard day’s work in the fields. This ‘product of the mortar’ (so the -etum ending suggests)32 looks like a more solid descendant of the κυκεών or coccetum.33 Speckled with green herbs and unusually garlicky, it also evokes a noonday snack in Virgil’s Eclogues and the tear-jerking fumes of its cheese-based Greek relative, the μυττωτός.34 31 32 33

34

Kenney 1984. Livingston 2004: 25, 27: cf. coccetum, tuccetum. Recipes at Col. 12.59.1–4, Apic. 1.21; cf. Ov. Fast. 4.367–72. For Sueius, author of a similar poem, see Macrob. Sat. 3.18.11: in idyllio quod inscribitur Moretum. Verg. Ecl. 2.11; Hippon. 35.2; Ar. Ach. 174, Eq. 771, Pax 247; Eup. 179. See also Gowers 1993: 280–310 on garlic.

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The short poem is itself a conscious blend of earlier poetry and prose. The Greek names of its protagonists, Simulus (the ploughman) and Scybale (his African servant or helpmate), have connotations respectively of ‘satyric’ imitation and second-rate ‘leavings’.35 Above all, the Moretum shadows its nobler hexameter cousin, epic.36 The plot expands two Homeric similes: an Iliadic vignette of a woodman making his lunch and an Odyssean one of a weary ploughman looking forward to his supper.37 This is not just a compressed sequel to Virgil’s Georgics (at its centre is a miniature of the postponed gardening poem) but also a prequel (it ends with a plough launched in segetes).38 The hero’s activities domesticate the Herculean labours (labores) of the Aeneid (whose final verb is likewise condit).39 At line 8, the author uses paruulus, Virgil’s only epic adjectival diminutive (Aen. 4.328), among words that highlight the poem’s Callimachean tininess (paruus, exiguus, etc.).40 Equally, he reproduces the mock-heroic fervour of Virgil’s cauldron simile in describing boiling water to make dough: tepidas super ingerit undas (‘he poured warm waves on top’, Mor. 44).41 Epic aside, it is Hellenistic antecedents for this vivid slice of rural domesticity that are usually stressed: Callimachus’ Hecale and her successors Hyrieus and Celeus in Ovid’s Fasti and Philemon and Baucis in his Metamorphoses. But further back in Greek literature, in Aristophanes’ Peace, War comes on stage with a giant mortar in which he plans, using Brasidas and Cleon as pestles, to pound up the cities of Greece into a μυττωτός: Prasiae is represented by leeks (πράσον), Megara garlic, Sicily cheese and 35

36 37 38 39 40 41

Simulus = ‘little snub-nose’; Scybale = ‘dung’, ‘garbage’. Fitzgerald 1996: 401 observes that the hierarchy between master and slave is upheld, with Scybale playing scapegoat for ‘the aesthetic ugliness of Simulus’ existence’. See n. 46 below. Ross 1975: 254–63; Kenney 1984: il and passim. Hom. Il. 11.84–90, Od. 13.28–35. Höschele 2005: 255–9. Fitzgerald 1996: 401. Kenney 1984 ad loc. The cento De Panificio reapplies dignified Virgilian units to a baking context (possibly via the Moretum: Clément-Tarantino 2013: 11–13): e.g. tunc Cererem corruptam undis (3) turns bread spoiled by shipwreck (Aen. 1.177) into viable dough. McGill 2005: 60 treats undis as a novel metaphor for ordinary water, comparing Mor. 44, tepidas super ingerit undas, but ignores the pre-existence of the mock-heroic ‘storm in a saucepan’ at Aen. 7.462–6, here ‘restored’ to the kitchen.

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Attica honey (Pax 242–54).42 The steaming acrid fumes induce sniffy laughter. But the cartoon dish also serves a serious political purpose, as a manifesto for Greek unification and regeneration. Trygaeus asks Peace to ‘blend us Greeks again from the beginning with the juice of friendship and mix with our minds a smoother forgiveness’ (Pax 996–8). A Puck cartoon of 1889 shows America, girded with the star-spangled banner, stirring a greater array of immigrant groups in the ‘Mortar of Assimilation’, with only a recalcitrant Irishman resisting.43 Similarly, Israel Zangwill’s play The Melting Pot (1908) ends with a vision of ‘the great Alchemist’ stirring together ‘Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian, – black and yellow’ until their differences are obliterated.44 There is a further possibility, still: that the Moretum, both the thing and the poem, harks back in a more abstract way to Heraclitus’ paradoxical κυκεών, in particular to its ability to encapsulate ‘one under many’. The eponymous pesto is just one of several internal metonyms of the self-consciously miniature work in which it appears.45 It caps a series of small-scale blends of polar opposites, each one serving to characterize the tiny but boundary-bursting spaces of the poem. The exaggerated geometry of a human body, that of Scybale, caricature of African otherness, is mimicked in the emblematically ‘small but varied’ garden of its central line (exiguus spatio, uariis sed fertilis herbis, 62), with its medley of telescoped vegetables:46 interdum clamat Scybalen. erat unica custos, Afra genus, tota patriam testante figura, torta comam labroque tumens et fusca colore, 42

43 44 45 46

The dung beetle has already demanded a diet of well-kneaded excrement; at Pax 712, Trygaeus is offered a medicinal κυκεών to counteract the effects of too much fruit. Illustrated in Collors 1986: 101. See Collors 1986: 66–101 on the history of the ‘melting pot’ metaphor. Gowers 1993: 47; Fitzgerald 1996: 414; Horsfall 2001: 314; Höschele 2005: 266–7. Haley 2009: 42–3 shrewdly observes how white male translators have colluded in exaggerating Scybale’s racial characteristics and assimilating her to the stereotypical ‘Mammy’ figure. While she is correct that the text yields no evidence that Scybale is either old or a slave, her attempt to neutralize the terms of a description which specifically labels itself an ethnic stereotype (‘her whole appearance bearing witness to her native land’) suppresses the uncomfortably unaesthetic resonances of e.g. tumens and iacens.

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10 Wor(l)d-Blending in the Roman Kitchen pectore lata, iacens mammis, compressior aluo, cruribus exilis, spatiosa prodiga planta. Meanwhile he called for Scybale. She was sole caretaker, African by race, her whole appearance bearing witness to her native land: crinkly hair, puffed lips, dusky skin, broad chest, drooping breasts, hollow stomach, spindly legs and generously splayed feet. (Mor. 31–5) hic holus, hic late fundentes bracchia betae fecundusque rumex maluaeque inulaeque uirebant, hic siser et nomen capiti debentia porra grataque nobilium requies lactuca ciborum, * * * crescitque in acumina radix, et grauis in latum dimissa cucurbita uentrem. uerum hic non domini (quis enim contractior illo?). Cabbage flourished here, beet with its wide-spreading arms, fertile sorrel, mallows and elecampane; here grew siser, the so-called ‘headed leek’, lettuce that affords relief after rich dinners . . . and radish which grows into a point and the pregnant gourd which grows swelling into a wide belly. None of this produce was reserved for the master, though (who was tighter than he?). (Mor. 71–7)

Just as Scybale’s puffed lips and broad chest collapse into sunken belly and spindly legs, so the beets with their spreading arms expand (late fundentes suggesting latifundia, Roman agribusiness), then contract (bracchia, ‘arms’, is from Greek βραχύς, ‘short’). The pointed radish conflates two ends of a plant, tip and root (radix = radish/root), while the swelling gourd shrinks into the ‘tight-fisted’ master. Human and vegetable merge in Scybale’s generous (prodiga) feet, where spatiosa . . . planta (‘outsize foot’, 35), anticipates the rangy plants (uarias . . . plantas, 68). The poem’s small-scale processes also suggest more holistic analogies with the creation of the cosmos. The word orbis appears in various cases at the end of lines 26, 47, 57, 95, 110, describing, respectively, the circular movement of grinding corn, rounds of dough, a round cheese, the round mortar and the rotations of the pestle. These circles recall larger ones: the world-embracing Shield of Achilles in Iliad 18 and its successor, the Cyclopean Shield of Aeneas in Aeneid 8, as well as the rotating seasons of the farmer’s year.47 Along the way, some celebrated acts of cosmic 47

Verg. G. 2.401: redit agricolis labor actus in orbem. Other microcosms include poetic representations of Archimedes’ armillary sphere, a miniature of the cosmos as a set of

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creation are miniaturized, starting with the Promethean act of laying a fire and ending with a domestic demiurge’s creation of a spherical mixture. In between, Simulus bakes his daily bread, another miniglobe with four quadrants – his diurnal roll, we might call it: iamque subactum leuat opus palmisque suum dilatat in orbem et notat impressis aequo discrimine quadris. Now the kneading was done, and with his hand he smoothed the dough and spread it out into regular rounds, marking each loaf with segments impressed at equal intervals. (Mor. 46–8)

The circular movement here reproduces that of the bread-grinding at a nearly symmetrical point in the first half of the poem: aduocat inde manus operi, partitus utroque: laeua ministerio, dextra est intenta labori. haec rotat adsiduum gyris et concitat orbem (tunsa Ceres silicum rapido decurrit ab ictu). interdum fessae succedit laeua sorori alternatque uices . . . Next he called on his hands to assist the work, allotting it to this side and that: the left hand was occupied with supply, the right with the hard labour. The right hand turned the round stone and kept it in swift incessant circular motion (the grain, crushed, ran from the rapid strokes of the millstones) and from time to time the left took over from her wearied sister and changed places . . . (Mor. 24–9)

In other words, the poem’s self-conscious ring composition itself evolves from ideas of repeated rotations (as gyrus and orbis in similar positions indicate).48 The ploughman’s routine is one of wheels within larger wheels: days, years, the cosmos.49 Shortly after the Moretum was composed (c. AD 25?), another author envisaged units of life – childhood, adulthood, days, months, years – as a collection of differently spaced concentric circles:

48 49

concentric rings: stat globus, immensi parua figura poli (Ov., Fast. 6.278); iam meus in fragili luditur orbe labor (Claudian, Shorter poems 51.4). Thanks to Peter Kelly for these references. Kenney 1984 ad Mor. 26: gyrus is far more common in Latin than in Greek. Perutelli 1983 ad 26 gyris: ‘trasferimento dal grande al piccolo’. Fitzgerald 1996: 414: the action of the mortar figures the ploughman’s life, ‘a repetitive and grinding labor’.

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10 Wor(l)d-Blending in the Roman Kitchen tota aetas partibus constat et orbes habet circumductos maiores minoribus: est aliquis qui omnis complectatur et cingat – hic pertinet a natali ad diem extremum; est alter qui annos adulescentiae excludit; est qui totam pueritiam ambitu suo adstringit; est deinde per se annus in se omnia continens tempora, quorum multiplicatione uita componitur; mensis artiore praecingitur circulo; angustissimum habet dies gyrum, sed et hic ab initio ad exitum uenit, ab ortu ad occasum. Our span of life is divided into parts; it consists of large circles enclosing smaller. One circle embraces and bounds the rest; it reaches from birth to the last day of existence. The next circle limits the period of our young manhood. The third confines all of childhood in its circumference. Again, there is, in a class by itself, the year; it contains within itself all the divisions of time by the multiplication of which we get the total of life. The month is bounded by a narrower ring. The smallest circle of all is the day; but even a day has its beginning and its ending, its sunrise and its sunset. (Sen. Ep. 12.6–7)

Thomas Habinek remarks: ‘There is, to my knowledge, no other extant classical text which likens human life to a set of concentric circles.’50 Yet, as he points out, Homer had referred to ‘circling years’ (περιπλομένους ἐνιαυτούς, Il. 23.833), while none other than Heraclitus may have described youth as a circle: hoc tempus genean uocari Heraclitus auctor est, quia orbis aetatis in eo sit spatio; orbem autem uocat aetatis, dum natura ab sementi humana ad sementim reuertitur. Heraclitus is the authority for calling this length of time [thirty years] a ‘generation’ because there is in it a circle of a lifetime. He calls it the ‘circle of a lifetime’ because nature runs from one human sowing to the next sowing. (Censorinus 17.2 (= DK A19); trans. Parker 2007)

No surprise, then, that it is to the ‘obscure’ Heraclitus that Seneca turns for another motto: ideo Heraclitus, cui cognomen fecit orationis obscuritas, ‘unus’ inquit ‘dies par omni est’. Hence Heraclitus, whose obscure style gave him his surname, remarked: ‘One day is equal to every day.’ (Ep. 12.7)

This riddle may simply imply that each day is as long as any other. But a subtler interpretation is that Heraclitus was drawing an 50

Habinek 1982: 66.

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analogy between two units of time: as each lifetime is divided between light and darkness, so is each day.51 One is the other in miniature, a concept fittingly transplanted to Seneca’s epistolary daybooks, with their unwavering eye on death and eternity, as well as the ‘life in a day’ that is the Moretum. Thinking about cooking as self-fulfilling analogy both for the creation of a poetic work and for the cosmic circles it embraces brings us to the end of the Moretum, where the climactic cheeseblending is in full swing. There have already been some fine instances of figura etymologica along the way. The word mortaria, used of the pestle and mortar used to pound the mixture, ‘clarifies’ (cf. clara . . . uoce) the origins of moretum:52 et clara famulam poscit mortaria uoce. and he called to the servant for mortar and pestle in a loud voice. (Mor. 91)

Watercress, nasturtium, wrinkles Simulus’ already uptilted nose, giving the author a chance to etymologize its name from nasum (‘nose’), plus torquere (‘twist’):53 quaeque trahunt acri uultus nasturtia morsu. or watercress, which with its sharp bite screws up the face. (Mor. 83)

The link between that splayed organ and its owner’s name, from σιμός, satyrically snub-nosed, is then cemented at 106: simo . . . uultu.54 Yet something far more ingenious occurs with the letters that compose the final product. As the stirring moves from jerking to smooth, the cheese mixture becomes ever more homogeneous, even if uarietas is never quite lost:55 51 52

53

54 55

Stégen 1972: 830; Habinek 1982: 67. See now Edwards 2019: 94–5, 102–3. Horsfall 2001: 305; Kenney 1984 ad loc.; Perutelli 1983: 141–2; and Walde and Hofmann 1954: 112 give other possibilities: μορέω (‘labour over’ or ‘crumble’) and μόρος (‘part’). Kenney 1984 ad loc.; Grazzini 2011. On La Torta, Giacomo Leopardi’s juvenile translation of Moretum, see Stefani 1972; Bertolio 2011. Incidentally, Leopardi also wrote a commonplace book, Zibaldone (‘Hodge Podge’), related to zaba(gl)ione, from Latin sabaia, Illyrian barley beer (cf. Amm. Marc. 26.8.2) – a descendant of the κυκεών? ‘Snubkins’; Kenney 1984 ad 3. Stellio, turned by Ceres into a spotted lizard (Met. 5.448–54), sports permanent traces of the goddess’ speckled drink (uariis . . . guttis, 561).

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10 Wor(l)d-Blending in the Roman Kitchen it manus in gyrum: paulatim singula uires deperdunt proprias, color est e pluribus unus, nec totus uiridis, quia lactea frusta repugnant, nec de lacte nitens, quia tot uariatur ab herbis. Round and round went his hand: gradually the original ingredients lost their own properties and one colour emerged from several, not wholly green, since the milky fragments held out, nor shining milk-white, being variegated by all the herbs. (Mor. 101–4)

Kenney invites us to remember Lucretian cosmogonic language:56 inde coire globum quasi in unum et conficere orbem. Then these as it were gather into one globe and cohere in a sphere. (Lucr. 5.664)

Yet he resists giving globus a broader sense here: ‘a word that would naturally suggest itself in [a cooking] connection’.57 Still, there is plenty to make us recall Ovid’s Lucretian-influenced creation-narrative, first the settling of the cosmic dough, then its shaping by the mysterious demiurge: . . . circumfluus umor ultima possedit solidumque coercuit orbem. The water flowing round gathered up the outer elements and brought together a solid sphere. (Met. 1.30–1) principio terram, ne non aequalis ab omni parte foret, magni speciem glomerauit in orbis. He began by packing the earth into the shape of a huge sphere, to make it equal at every point. (Met. 1.34–5)

Equally Lucretian in its alphabetical manipulation is the poet’s description of the mixing and ‘pulling back’ of the cheese: ergo Palladii guttas instillat oliui exiguique super uires infundit aceti atque iterum commiscet opus mixtumque retractat. So he poured in some drops of olive oil and on top added a tiny drop of pungent vinegar, and once again mixed and thoroughly remixed the mass. (Mor. 111–13) 56 57

Cf. Kenney 1984 ad 114–15. Salanitro 2002 finds globus in other culinary contexts (Cato, Agr. 79, 80; Apic. 8.327; cf. Perutelli) and, ‘con evidente effetto straniante’, in astronomical ones.

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For, give or take one letter, the second word of line 113, iterum, is a backwards rendering of the genitive singular moreti, the form of the noun moretum that is duly ‘produced’ (effecti) two lines later: tum demum digitis mortaria tota duobus circuit inque globum distantia contrahit unum, constet ut effecti species nomenque moreti. Finally with two fingers he wiped round the whole mortar and brought together the parts into a single ball, so as to produce a moretum, perfect in appearance as in name. (Mor. 114–16)

With hindsight, then, retractat doesn’t just mean ‘pulls back’ (or ‘knocks back’, as one says of dough). It also figures the backwards pull of the letters as they emerge, minutely altered, in the outcome of all this beating: the finished cheese, ‘perfect in appearance as in name’. Iconically elastic, the palindrome replicates on the page, through the species (‘appearance’) of a nomen (‘name’), the very essence of the final product: a moretum comes about, or comes together (constet), through repeated pounding, ‘again and again’ (iterum).58 The intervening string of words summarizes the union (inque globum . . . unum) of opposites (distantia) represented by iterum and moreti, banished to either end of the sentence. Just so, Virgil used near-anagrams or palindromes to describe rebounding sound: gemitu nemus omne remugit. All the woodland re-echoes with their bellowing. (Aen. 12.722) consurgunt gemitu Rutuli totusque remugit mons circum et uocem late nemora alta remittunt. The Rutulians start up with a groan: all the hills re-echo round about, and far and near the lofty woods send back the sound. (Aen. 12.928–9)

The word games are not over yet. As the final lines of the poem pull us back full circle to the larger orbit of the farmer’s daily round, the real purpose of the moretum is revealed – to drive away the fear of hunger that was the motivation for all this activity in the 58

As κύκησε (‘pounded’, Il. 11.638) begins Homer’s recipe and κυκειῶ (‘pounded drink’, 641) ends it.

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first place (tristia uenturae metuens ieiunia lucis, ‘fearing grim hunger in the approaching day’, 4): eruit interea Scybale quoque sedula panem, quem laetus recipit manibus, pulsoque timore iam famis . . . Meanwhile, Scybale, also active, dug out the bread, which Simulus joyfully received in his hands, and with the fear of hunger banished . . . (Mor. 116–18)

Now, the line-ending timore hands us a second (this time perfect) anagram for moreti, two lines above. Fear is driven away (pulsus) – or even ‘pulsed together’ – by the action of pestle and mortar, as the poet definitively beats up the ingredients of Simulus’ world: inque diem securus Simulus illam ambit crura ocreis paribus tectusque galero sub iuga parentis cogit lorata iuuencos atque agit in segetes et terrae condit aratrum. And free from care for that day, he wrapped his legs in a matched pair of leggings and with skin cap on head he mustered his obedient bullocks under the thonged yoke, drove them fieldwards and plunged the ploughshare into the earth. (Mor. 119–22)

But before we start to commend the poem as an exemplar of Roman diversity, we should note that he does not do the same for Scybale’s world. All Americans are familiar with the political afterlife of Mor. 102, [color est] e pluribus unus (‘[one colour] emerges from many’), ever since this description of the inbetween hue of the cheese (neither green nor white) became the motto for the confederation on the Great Seal and every (green and white) dollar bill: E pluribus unum – minus the contentious word color, as William Fitzgerald has brilliantly pointed out.59 The omitted word, he writes, ‘alludes to the continuing scandal in the imagining of an American national unity forged in the ethnic melting pot, namely racial intolerance . . . the mingling of white European immigrants in a relatively democratic society was made possible by the exclusion and exploitation of non-whites’.60 It 59

60

Kenney 1984 ad loc.; Fitzgerald 1996: 416. Fitzgerald 2016: 80 finds the imperfectly assimilated colours (Mor. 102–4) ‘more appropriate to the politics of diversity than to the metaphor of the melting pot’. Fitzgerald 1996: 416.

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should be added that the Moretum provides its own culinary analogue for racial segregation. As Simulus sifts the flour and his skivvy Scybale (‘Garbage’, ‘Dregs’) cleans (mundauerat, 49)61 the hearth, ‘black dross’ remains in the sieve (atra manent summo purgamina dorso, 40) while ‘pure’ and ‘clean’ grains are filtered through it (subsidit sincera foraminibusque liquatur | emundata Ceres, 41–2), ready to be mixed with water (admixtos nunc fontes atque farinas, 44) to make a whiter sphere (orbem, 47).62 With our minds on anagrams and hunger, let us roll back for a second look at the table-eating prophecy in the Aeneid. The Harpy episode had placed special emphasis on the word fames, hunger, from the dangling half-line that describes the birdwomen’s starved appearance (Aen. 3.217–18: et pallida semper | ora fame, ‘and faces ever gaunt with hunger’) to Celaeno’s prophecy, the one misremembered by Aeneas: sed non ante datam cingetis moenibus urbem quam uos dira fames nostraeque iniuria caedis ambesas subigat malis absumere mensas. But you shall not gird with walls your promised city until dread hunger and the wrong of violence towards us force you to gnaw with your teeth and devour your very tables! (Verg. Aen. 3.255–7) haec erat illa fames, haec nos suprema manebat exitiis positura modum. This was that hunger foretold, this the last strait awaiting us, that was to set an end to our deadly woes! (Verg. Aen. 7.128–9)

Is it too trivial to mention that fames happens to be an anagram of mefas, the Umbrian shadow behind Ascanius’ mensas? And that dira fames, not just ‘terrible’ but also ‘ominous’ or ‘prophetic’ hunger, is exactly what instigates the crucial blurring of mensas and mefas in the first place? Could we even see in Celaeno, whose

61 62

Ross 1975: 258 n. 63 notes the implied oxymoron. In a forthcoming article, ‘E pluribus unum: Reassessing Race Relations in Ancient Rome through Scybale’s Gender’, Francesca Bellei argues compellingly for a consistent sexual thrust to the poem’s imagery, one that hints at the eventual production (in the guise of a bicoloured moretum) of Simulus and Scybale’s mixed-race child (cf. Juv. 6.600: decolor heres, ‘coloured heir’; Mart. 6.39).

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Greek name suggests ‘the dark one’ (κελαινός), another riddling Heraclitus?63 Amuse-Bouches: Petronius’ Satyrica Finally, no Roman text is so abjectly dependent on puns as Petronius’ Satyrica. Indeed, its decadent narrator Encolpius, declaiming against declamation in the opening words of the fragmentary novel, declares that Greco-Roman rhetoric has gone down the drain, among other things because of its fondness for wordplay: mellitos uerborum globulos et omnia dicta factaque quasi papauere et sesamo sparsa . . . leuibus enim atque inanibus sonis ludibria quaedam excitando effecistis, ut corpus orationis eneruaretur et caderet. (Sat. 1.3)

In William Arrowsmith’s robust translation: Action or language: it’s all the same: great sickly honeyballs of phrases, every sentence looking as though it had been plopped and rolled in poppyseed and sesame . . . by reducing everything to sound, you concocted this bloated puffpaste of pretty drivel whose only real purpose is the pleasure of punning and the thrill of ambiguity. Result? Language lost its sinew, its nerve. Eloquence died. (1959: 21)

These metaphors for cultural decline, blamed on contact with Asia, are later realized in a snobbish account of the denatured dishes at a rich freedman’s dinner party (Cena Trimalchionis), where ersatz concoctions and unsettling wordplay capture the freedmen’s twilight existence between slavery and freedom, reality and fantasy.64 Tangential though it might seem to the heavier consequences of bourgeois misbehaviour, the Cena Trimalchionis makes an unexpected appearance in Adultery in the Novel, Tony Tanner’s study of fictional infidelity. That is because Tanner sees anticipated in its sequence of groan-inducing puns the disintegrating mores he is anatomizing in the English and French novel: 63

64

For Heraclitus’ nickname, ὁ σκοτεινός (‘the dark one’), see Cic. Fin. 2.15; Lucr. 1.639; Strabo 14.25. Veyne 1961: 246: ‘ce monde des ombres’.

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Emily Gowers Complaints about atrocious puns are frequent throughout the book, and we may say that puns and ambiguities are to common language what adultery and perversions are to ‘chaste’ (i.e. socially orthodox) sexual relations. They both bring together entities (meanings/peoples) that have ‘conventionally’ been differentiated and kept apart; and they bring them together in deviant ways, bypassing the orthodox rule governing communications and relationships. (A pun is like an adulterous bed in which two meanings that should be separate are coupled together). (1979: 53)

Jokes familiar to all readers of the Cena include the nudge-nudge Carpe, carpe (‘Carver, carv’er’) pun which Trimalchio hurls at a slave who happens to be called Carpus; the food ‘sent away’ (missus), thus returning ‘manumitted’ (a pig wears a freedman’s cap and a boy is dressed as Bacchus Liber); party favours of illassorted doublets linked together by Saturnalian puns; and a giant zodiac dish that serves up the cosmos on a plate, divided satirically according to the star signs of its various constituents. In Trimalchio’s world, labels can change identity and Heraclitean flux is the name of the game.65 The gustatio or appetizer course deserves a closer look. Not only does it whet the appetite for puns: it also poses some interesting questions about authorial intention. The internal narrator, Encolpius, a typical scholasticus (oh-so-clever but ohso-easily-gulled), enters the dinner a naïf and emerges a battered clown. In between, he gets wise to the spirit of the entertainments and becomes blasé – only to be further tripped up by the tyrannical host.66 At this early stage, he can hardly be expected to take in anything that is going on. However, his retrospective narrative reveals, unnervingly, that he already appears to understand at least some aspects of the underlying jokes. The first dish to be described is a donkey made of Corinthian bronze (that is, bronze alloyed with gold or silver, with ‘the brazen uppermost’, as Byron put it), holding panniers of black and green olives, while side dishes emblazon Trimalchio’s substantial wealth:

65 66

Perkins 2005. Beck 1973.

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10 Wor(l)d-Blending in the Roman Kitchen ceterum in promulsidari asellus erat Corinthius cum bisaccio positus, qui habebat oliuas in altera parte albas, in altera nigras. tegebant asellum duae lances, in quarum marginibus nomen Trimalchionis inscriptum erat et argenti pondus. On a large tray stood a little donkey made of Corinthian bronze; on the donkey’s back were two panniers, one holding green [lit. ‘white’] olives, the other, black. Flanking the donkey were two side dishes, both engraved with Trimalchio’s name and the weight of the silver. (Sat. 31.9–10)

Hybridity, duality, bicolouredness: category confusions are already in the air. ‘Corinthian bronze’ will be a recurrent topic. Not surprisingly: with Trimalchio’s name conspicuously doubled on its margins, the ensemble hints that the world of freedmen, neither freeborn nor slaves, is one of half-and-halfness. Trimalchio spells this out later when he discourses on the invention of the alloy – ‘genuine Corinthian bronze’ (uera Corinthea, Sat. 50.2; Corinthea uera, Sat. 50.4) – so reinforcing its oxymoronic affinity with the freedmen’s indeterminate status and failure to assimilate completely: sic Corinthea nata sunt, ex omnibus in unum, nec hoc nec illud (‘That’s how Corinthian bronze came about, everything mixed into one, neither one thing nor the other’, 50.7).67 Yet in 1845 Ralph Waldo Emerson would cite ‘Corinthian brass’ as a positive analogue to the American immigrant (s)melting pot, which in his view so successfully incorporated ‘the energy of Irish, Germans, Swedes, Poles & Cossacks, & all the European tribes, of the Africans, & of the Polynesians’.68 Next up are dormice in hammocks: ponticuli etiam ferruminati sustinebant glires melle ac papauere sparsos. little soldered bridges held dormice, dipped in honey and poppyseed. (Sat. 31.10)

The flavours here offer a small clue that the Cena, discovered in the mid-seventeenth century long after the other fragments of the novel, is intimately related to the rest. For realized here in culinary form is something very close to one of the rhetorical metaphors in the preface: decadent language as ‘sickly honeyed globules 67

68

‘You win some, you lose some’ is a philosophy with which the freedmen make sense of their chequered lives; cf. Sat. 45.2: ‘modo sic, modo sic’, inquit rusticus: uarium porcum perdiderat (‘“Bit of this, bit of that”, as the peasant said when he lost his spotted pig’). On Trimalchio and Corinthian bronze, see Baldwin 1973. Emerson 2010: 291.

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sprinkled with sesame and poppy seed’ (Sat. 1.3). The recipe here mixes honey with poppy seed, ‘a favourite combination in Classical Antiquity’.69 But it is not just a matter of taste. The dormice are acting out a visual and conceptual pun, a curious aetiology. As if lulled to sleep after ingesting opiates, they exhibit their folkloric quintessence (for Aristotle and Pliny as well as for Lewis Carroll): their doziness.70 Finally come barbecued sausages, served on a gridiron with burning coals underneath, in a trompe l’oeil which brings not nature but the kitchen to the table: fuerunt et tomacula [Schmeling: thumacula] super craticulam argenteam feruentia posita, et infra craticulam Syriaca pruna cum granis Punici mali. On a silver grill, piping hot, lay small sausages, while beneath the grill were prunes [lit. ‘Syrian plums’] and pomegranate seeds. (Sat. 31.11)

Prunes, specifically from damsons (whose English name also comes via Syrian Damascus), are garnished with red pomegranate seeds to represent glowing embers. Punici māli (‘Punic apple’), suggests a pun on Punicum mălum (‘Punic evil’), evoking the deviousness of the ‘snake Hannibal’ (stelio Hannibal), to whom Trimalchio later attributes – what else? – the invention of Corinthian bronze (Sat. 50.5). Is this dish bipartite autobiography, too, the sausages (tomacula/thumacula) echoing Trimalchio’s name and the fruit signalling his Syrian origins, plus a dash of Carthaginian wile?71 This time, the pun works on a vocal as well as a visual level, the right word in the right case being chosen to create the confusion. Latin pruna (n. pl.), prunes or plums, looks identical to pruna (f. sing.), the word for a burning coal. Schmeling writes: ‘There is probably a pun.’72 That goes without saying. The two things not only look the same on the table: they also look the same on the page, such that we might even suspect, wrongly, that the word for 69 70 71

72

Schmeling 2011 ad loc. Arist. Hist. An. 600b; Plin. HN 8.233; cf. Verg. Aen. 4.486: soporiferumque papauer. Bodel 1989 prefers thumacula, thyme-flavoured sausages. Trimalchio identifies himself as Asian at Sat. 75.10. For his name as a blend of Greek tri (‘thrice’), Syriac-Phoenician malchos and Latin -io, see Bremmer 1981. Schmeling 2011 ad loc.

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burning coals is a metaphor derived from the word for plums, or vice versa.73 But Schmeling’s cautious ‘probably’ is all to do with intention. It is unclear whether Petronius the hidden author is handing us the joke, or the host Trimalchio, making of Syrian plums a pun that incidentally could not work in his native Syriac, or Encolpius himself – not that we will ever know if he realizes it. For a moment, the illusion of a baffled narrator seems to crack: he and the host are already winking at each other. We have travelled a long way from Heraclitus and his barley drink. But these scenes from the Roman kitchen have, in their different ways and contexts, embraced that early conception of suspended many-in-oneness and taken it in new directions: from the confusion of the comic stage expressed in Plautine word-flipping to the hybrid freedman culture exemplified by Trimalchio’s riddling appetizers. We have seen the universe (and the United States, with its simmering racial tensions) miniaturized in a herb-speckled cheese and Virgil’s only self-acknowledged pun frame as ‘child’s play’ a significant moment in etymological, culinary and territorial history. These verbal conglomerates were not just clever jeux de mots, adroitly extemporized for the often festive contexts in which they appeared. Thanks to their special conceptual or alphabetic flexibility, they also helped to suggest meanings beyond the immediately ludic, from metapoetics to politics to cosmogony: words within worlds within worlds.

73

Ernout and Meillet 1985: 541 derive pruna (‘burning coal’) from Greek πίμπρημι (‘burn’) and prunus/prunum (‘plum’) from Greek προῦμνον (‘plum’).

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ch a p t e r 1 1 P O W E R F UL P R E S E N C E S : H O R A C E ’S C AR ME N SAECULARE AND HELLENISTIC CHORAL TRADITIONS

giovan battista d’alessio Horace’s Carmen Saeculare (henceforth CS) is a text simultaneously unique and traditional, a paradox that has not failed to attract critical attention.1 Located within a ritual context not to be repeated within anyone’s lifetime, it purports to fit within a secular Roman tradition of ritual song performance. Its referential models are, unavoidably, in the very first place Greek ones, however. According to current scholarly consensus, in composing it Horace looked back at the archaic and classical Greek tradition of choral performances. While this is undoubtedly an important aspect in the poem’s literary and cultural background, this approach has by and large failed to locate the CS within the lively ‘synchronic’ tradition of Greek public cultic poetry and to bring to light its fundamental rootedness in Hellenistic lyric tradition. The usual assumption, indeed, is that in this poem Horace intentionally avoided looking at these models.2 In this study, on the contrary, I will attempt to place it firmly within this continuing and changing choral practice, as well as to show its crucial link to Callimachean poetry, and, more specifically, to what I would call the Callimachean ideology of choral performance. Choral Presences in the Epistle to Augustus A good starting point for any reading of the CS is Horace’s own Epistle to Augustus. One of the key themes recurring in its subtly 1 2

See especially Barchiesi 2002. Cf. e.g. Cameron 1995: 295, according to whom Horace may have turned his glance towards this tradition, ‘even if only in order to reject it for more ancient models’; Feeney 1998: 41–2; Barchiesi 2002: 121 (‘the poetics of the Carmen is a return to classical Greece’).

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complex structure is that of ‘presence’, and of ‘present-ness’. In what sense can poetry be ‘present’, and relate itself to the ‘present’, and to the ‘presence’ of power? In this theoretical and practical network, poetry and power are mutually – though, of course, not entirely symmetrically – implicated.3 Recognition of power, as well as that of poetry entails here both a value judgement and an issue of chronology. Judgement on literary history is introduced, tortuously, at first sight, via religious history. The model for Augustus’ ‘presence’ is found in the past, in the apotheosis of ‘cultural’ heroes, such as Romulus, Liber Pater and the Dioscuri. These were recognized as gods only posthumously, though (as only death puts an end to envy of superiority (5–14)). For Augustus, such recognition happens in his ‘presence’: praesenti tibi maturos largimur honores (‘we grant you, in your presence, proper honours’, 15). As he is bestowed divine honours during his lifetime, Augustus is revealed as a ‘present’ god, a term suggesting divine epiphany.4 The issue of past vs present, and of Greek models vs Roman instantiations soon turns out to be relevant for the poet as well as (but not in the same terms) for the princeps. In this case, in fact, the ‘present’ (and future) time rejects what does not lie in the past: poets who are not ancient enough are in danger of being located among quos et praesens et postera respuat aetas (‘those spurned by the present and later age’, 42). The theme is explored from different angles, and the conclusion is that present-time Rome has abandoned its old solid and practical concerns, turning towards a popular writing frenzy. This ironical, negative portrait of ‘present’ poetic pursuits, however, is gradually qualified: modern poets may not partake in the good old values, but can nevertheless be useful to the community. The focus on the poet’s social utility soon shifts to the formative and educative value of his poems, the emphasis on moral issues getting stronger and stronger. The exercise of poetry gives (almost literally) shape to children’s mouths, moves them away from obscenity, moulds their hearts with friendly advice, and corrects their roughness, envy and anger. 3 4

Cf. Feeney 2002, Freudenburg 2015. On the religious implications of praesens here cf. Brink 1982: 49–53, Rocco 2016, with bibliography.

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Poetry provides historical examples for the young and, more generally, in a crescendo of psychological effectiveness, ‘consoles the poor and the suffering’ (inopem solatur et aegrum, 131). All of this builds on a common and widely shared tradition of poetry as a fundament of education.5 The discourse moves from the justification of the existence of poetry to a firm declaration of its power, restoring it to a rightful ‘present-ness’, in a section that occupies geometrically the centre of the Epistle, in lines dedicated to choral poetry:6 poscit opem chorus et praesentia numina sentit, caelestis inplorat aquas docta prece blandus, avertit morbos, metuenda pericula pellit, inpetrat et pacem et locupletem frugibus annum: carmine di superi placantur, carmine Manes.

135

The chorus asks for support and feels the presence of divinity, pleads for celestial waters, pleasant with his learned/learnt prayer,7 keeps away diseases, dispels frightening dangers, obtains peace and a year rich in fruits of the earth: through song the gods of above are appeased, through song the infernal ones. (134–8)

This passage is conspicuously central from more than one point of view, in making explicit the link between the two themes intertwined so far, that of the ‘value’ of present poetry, and that of the recognition of the ‘presence’ of divinity, that of poetic power and of religious sanction. Horace’s description of the functions of choral songs is paralleled by ancient definitions and instantiations of choral genres (and of the paean in particular) in Greek sources, poetic, erudite and inscriptional, and – a point to which we will return soon – is clearly meant to evoke Horace’s own CS.8 It has proved more difficult, however, to identify convincing theoretical models for the notion that the chorus ‘feels the presence of divinity’ (praesentia numina sentit).9 In the communicative strategy of the Epistle the inclusion 5 6 7 8

9

Cf. Brink 1982: 155–7 and 165–73. Fraenkel 1957: 391, Brink 1982: 159, Lowrie 2002: 153. On docta cf. Curtis 2017: 152–5. Cf. Norden 1939: 249–50 nn. 1–4, La Penna 1963: 112 and 171 n. 1, Brink 1982: 156–7 and 173–9. The link with the CS is made already in the commentary of Pseudo-Acron on v. 133. See Brink 1982: 175.

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of the praesens Augustus (15) among the praesentia numina, perceived by the chorus (135), remains only potential, and no actual identification between the two levels is explicitly suggested. This silent connection, though, is fundamental to any reading of the poem. In the two passages the language is that of religious epiphany, and has parallels in the description and re-enactment of mythical and actual rituals, as well as in the philosophical elaborations about divine presence, and its perception by human individuals.10 The specific link between choral performance and epiphany emphasized by Horace, however, is rather more implied in Greek texts and contexts than explicitly affirmed. Plato, in his Laws, comes very close to formulating such a nexus when the legislator indicates the gods themselves as fellow dancers of the choreutēs (in particular 2.653d, 654a and 665a).11 It is in Hellenistic poetry, however, and especially in Callimachus’ work, that the mutual implication between choral performance and epiphany comes to the fore in the most unequivocal and explicit way. The book of his Hymns resonates with echoes of choral performances conveying the experience of epiphany. The conceptual constellation that will guide my reading here therefore involves the nexus of three themes: epiphany, political power and choral performance. As I argue in this chapter, the most important literary and theoretical models for Horace’s ideology of the choral performance are not, in the very first place, classical, but Hellenistic and, more precisely, Callimachean. Callimachus’ Choral Worlds Before dealing with the crucial ideological role of chorality in Callimachus, and with its influence on Horace, it will be necessary

10

11

For a recent synthesis on epiphany, cf. Platt 2011; Petridou 2015 is also useful, but less directly relevant to the issues discussed here. On choral performances in Plato’s Laws cf. Kowalzig 2004: 44–9; on the choreia as ‘a machine for the production of pure presence’, cf. Kurke 2013: 167–8 n. 45, with bibliography, and references to some poetic passages that imply divine epiphany; Prauscello 2014: 129–30, 144–5. This implicit assumption also, of course, underlies the cases of divine epiphanies in dramatic choruses (particularly evident, for example, in Euripides’ Bacchae, on which see, e.g., Bierl 2013, with bibliography).

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to touch, as briefly as possible, on the long-debated issue of the role of choral performance in the Hymns themselves. My position is (1) that the Hymns were not meant as a script for choral or sung performance, but as a translation of the experience of such performances in a different medium (see pp. 270–3), but (2) that this, far from being a nostalgic operation due to the fading of the archaic and classical world of ‘song-and-dance culture’, was a grand tribute to the great contemporary vitality of such ‘culture’ well into the Hellenistic period (pp. 273–9, 280–2, 284–7). The Hymns and Performance Callimachus’ so-called mimetic Hymns (2, 5–6) inscribe in recitative metres ritual performances that included choral participation of different degrees of formality. It is widely believed that the performance evoked in these Hymns did not imply their own performance in the same circumstances.12 This complex issue does require some closer consideration in this context though, also in order to examine recent dissenting positions advocating, in different ways, the performative status of these poems. In a vigorous attempt to identify the Hymns as performance texts, as opposed to literary exercises, in 1995, Alan Cameron revived an old idea according to which these Hymns ‘were performed at festivals, but “outside the formal framework of the festival itself”’.13 Barring new external evidence, of course, we have no way of knowing if and when these Hymns were ever recited at local festivals. There is nothing inherently impossible in it but, formulated this way, the hypothesis misses the point. These texts pretend to be sung choral performances (as is the case of the Hymn to Apollo) and/or to be deeply and inextricably embedded in the ritual action. The fact that they could be recited outside of their pretended and textually constructed context (Cameron’s theory) does not affect this issue at all: they are not what they pretend to be. They are textual entities evoking 12 13

Cf. e.g. Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004: 30–1 and 364. Cameron 1995: 65: the reference is (among others) to Cahen 1929: 281.

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a pragmatic context which cannot be their own. They may have side-glanced at a ‘real context’, but this is not necessary for their existence. To all intents and purposes, the context already exists thanks to the texts themselves: Callimachus effectively translates one medium into another, and gives choral and ritual performances a second life in his world of words. Cameron’s point has, at any rate, an additional relevance for our present discussion of the CS in that he finds a ‘close parallel’ for this kind of ‘side-performance’ precisely in Horace’s CS. Following Fraenkel, Cameron gives great weight to the circumstance that, according to the Augustan acta of the ludi saeculares, the CS was performed sacrificio perfecto (147), ‘once the sacrifice has been completed’ (the reference here is to the offering of cakes to Apollo and Diana on the Palatine), and, therefore was ‘a typical Horatian ode, not meant to be part of the religious ceremonies but to be an ideal image of them’ (so Fraenkel, quoted by Cameron). Fraenkel’s interpretation (and, by implication, that of Cameron) is based on two serious misconceptions, however. The first is that even archaic and classical cultic songs (as opposed to the ‘typical Horatian ode’) would have been unavoidably and inextricably linked (as potentially revealed also by linguistic markers) to the cultic action: anyone familiar with Pindar (or, for that matter, with the inscriptional hymns) knows that they were not. The second misconception is that sacrificio perfecto should mean that the CS was no longer part of the ritual itself, when it simply means that the ode was sung after the sacrifice (twice, by the way, on two different occasions: first on the Palatine, eo[dem]que modo in Capitolio, ‘and in the same way on the Capitol’), according to a proviso attested also in several Greek leges sacrae.14 Anyway, the CS was meant, after all, for a choral performance, while Callimachus’ Hymns were arguably not (even according to 14

Cf. Cancik 1996. To Cancik’s general and sensible remarks add, for example, the comparison with passages such as the inscription describing the hymns in honour of Queen Apollonis at Teos in 166/159 BCE (OGIS 309) to be performed μετὰ τὸ συντελεσθῆναι τὰς κατευχὰς καὶ τὰς σπονδὰς καὶ τὰς θυσίας (‘once the prayers, the libations and the sacrifices have been completed’). For a recent assessment of the relationship between hymn and ritual, cf. also Schnegg-Köhler 2002: 229–44 (with discussion of bibliography). Scheid 1995: 306 notes the analogy with the carmen arvale, performed after the completion of the sacrifice to the goddess Dia.

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Cameron). And this not only because their metre was not the right one for choral performances at the time,15 but, more importantly, as Legrand demonstrated already more than a century ago, because the extratextual events evoked in the text cannot be synchronized with a real performance of the text itself.16 More recently, in a book rich in important and useful comments on the religious and cultic background of Callimachus’ Hymns, Ivana Petrovic has argued in favour of the possibility of an actual choral performance of these Hymns during the cultic action described in the text (and not on their margin, as in Cameron’s reading).17 Her own answer to Legrand’s fundamental objections is in my opinion unsatisfactory, however. Petrovic takes at least some of the extratextual events referred to in the texts as imaginary: so, in the Hymn to Apollo, while the shaking of the palm tree at 4–5 and the opening of the temple door at 6–7 are explained as conceivably due to the effect of automatic devices, the singing of the swan at 5 (taking place just in between the two other events) is explained as metaphorical or, at least, as not to be taken literally. In the Bath of Pallas, Petrovic’s answer to the alleged impossibility of synchronizing the performance of the hymn with the horse’s sneeze (2) and the noise of the goddess’ chariot (14) is that these noises would have been inaudible during a real performance anyway and are, consequently, to be interpreted as purely imaginary. This reading of the text may work only by obliterating the very 15

16 17

Hexameter hymns performed by choruses are not clearly attested until well into the Imperial period. There is no reason to think that Epidaurus, IE 3 fr. A Wagman might have been choral. SGO 06/02/02 might have been (if it is to be linked to SGO 06/02/01). The hymn of the ludi Severiani certainly was. Legrand 1901. I. Petrovic 2007. In various contributions, dating from the 1970s to the 1990s, Francis Cairns has paid particular attention to a ‘choric’ interpretation of Callimachus’ Hymns: cf. e.g. with various oscillations, Cairns 1979: 123 n. 24, 1984: 150, 1992: 10–16. Cairns does not address Legrand’s objection, nor does he convincingly show that stichic hexameters might have been used for choral performances during the Hellenistic period (at 1992: 14–15, he refers to a third/fourth-century CE Epidaurian inscription (IE 3a Wagman) of a song which might go back to the Hellenistic period, but there is no evidence of a choral performance there: see n. 15 above). His analysis of the choric features of these and other literary works, while not always equally convincing, is valuable and perceptive. But in leaving every possibility open, Cairns misses what is, in my opinion, one of the most distinctive features of these poems, the very gap they create between text and context, between ‘literature’ and ‘performance’.

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features that are meant to produce a literary enargeia (‘vividness’) and to convey a ‘performance effect’, that would have been either pointless or positively unmanageable within a real performance context.18 Callimachean Choruses The overall evidence, thus, overwhelmingly suggests that Callimachus’ Hymns were not meant for choral performance, and yet choral performance does play an extraordinarily important role in the whole collection. Even more than the three ‘mimetic’ Hymns, it is in particular the triad of Hymns 2–4 (with Hymn 2 belonging to both groups) that should be read as a real encyclopaedia of (past and present, cosmic, mythical and real) choral performances. The Hymn to Apollo focuses on the choruses of young men, the Hymn to Artemis on those of young women and the Hymn to Delos elaborates chorality almost as a cosmic metaphor, with Delos, island of the choruses, at the centre of a choral world. A close analysis of the motif would involve a complete reading of the three Hymns. Here the selection of a few key passages, crucial for my following reading of the CS, shall suffice. In the Hymn to Apollo the epiphany of the god is strictly connected to the choral performance of the νέοι, the ‘young men’, in the sense that the god’s presence prompts the performance, and that those who take part in the performance shall be able to perceive the god’s presence: οἱ δὲ νέοι μολπήν τε καὶ ἐς χορὸν ἐντύνασθε. ὡπόλλων οὐ παντὶ φαείνεται, ἀλλ᾿ ὅτις ἐσθλός· ὅς μιν ἴδηι, μέγας οὗτος, ὃς οὐκ ἴδε, λιτὸς ἐκεῖνος. ὀψόμεθ᾿, ὦ Ἑκάεργε, καὶ ἐσσόμεθ᾿ οὔποτε λιτοί. μήτε σιωπηλὴν κίθαριν μήτ᾿ ἄψοφον ἴχνος τοῦ Φοίβου τοὺς παῖδας ἔχειν ἐπιδημήσαντος, εἰ τελέειν μέλλουσι γάμον πολιήν τε κερεῖσθαι, ἑστήξειν δὲ τὸ τεῖχος ἐπ᾿ ἀρχαίοισι θεμέθλοις. ἠγασάμην τοὺς παῖδας, ἐπεὶ χέλυς οὐκέτ᾿ ἀεργός. 18

10

15

I. Petrovic 2007: 127, 131, 134. Petrovic argues that the Hymns might have been performed in a combination of solo and choral singing, without addressing the issue of whether stichic hexameters might have been appropriate for this kind of performance.

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Giovan Battista D’Alessio Young men, make ready for the song and the dance. Apollo does not appear to everyone, but to whoever is good. Whoever sees him, this man is great; whoever does not see him, he is of no account. We shall see you, O One Who Acts From Afar, and we shall never be of no account. The young men should not keep the cithara silent or the dance step noiseless when Apollo is present, if they are going to celebrate their marriage, or live long enough to dedicate a lock of grey hair, and if the city is to remain firm upon its ancestral foundations. I do admire the boys, seeing as the tortoise shell is no longer idle. (Callimachus, Hymn 2.8–16; trans. Stephens 2015, slightly modified)

The performance of the νέοι is a prerequisite not only of their own future well-being, but of the survival of the polis itself. The chorus enters into a triangular relationship that involves the kings, the god and the chorus itself. The god is the apex of a triangle, interacting, albeit with a different symmetry, with both social agents: ἱὴ ἱὴ φθέγγεσθε· κακὸν μακάρεσσιν ἐρίζειν. ὃς μάχεται μακάρεσσιν, ἐμῶι βασιλῆι μάχοιτο· ὅστις ἐμῶι βασιλῆι, καὶ Ἀπόλλωνι μάχοιτο. τὸν χορὸν ὡπόλλων, ὅ τι οἱ κατὰ θυμὸν ἀείδει, τιμήσει· δύναται γάρ, ἐπεὶ Διὶ δεξιὸς ἧσται. οὐδ᾿ ὁ χορὸς τὸν Φοῖβον ἐφ᾿ ἓν μόνον ἦμαρ ἀείσει, ἔστι γὰρ εὔυμνοc· τίς ἂν οὐ ῥέα Φοῖβον ἀείδοι;

25

30

Give the ritual cry (hiē, hiē). It is a bad thing to quarrel with the Blessed Ones. Whoever fights with the Blessed Ones, let him fight with my king. Whoever fights with my king, let him fight with Apollo. The chorus that sings what is pleasing to his heart, Apollo will honour. He is able to do this because he sits at the right hand of Zeus. Nor will the chorus sing of Phoebus for one day only, since he is a copious subject for hymns. Who would not readily sing of Apollo? (25–32; trans. Stephens 2015, slightly modified)

This relationship traces its origin back to a foundational event, the first choral performance that took place in newly founded Cyrene: ἦ ῥ᾿ ἐχάρη μέγα Φοῖβος, ὅτε ζωστῆρες Ἐνυοῦς ἀνέρες ὠρχήσαντο μετὰ ξανθῆισι Λιβύσσηις, τέθμιαι εὖτέ σφιν Καρνειάδες ἤλυθον ὧραι. ... οὐ κείνου χορὸν εἶδε θεώτερον ἄλλον Ἀπόλλων, οὐδὲ πόλει τόσ᾿ ἔνειμεν ὀφέλσιμα, τόσσα Κυρήνηι, μνωόμενος προτέρης ἁρπακτύος. οὐδὲ μὲν αὐτοί Βαττιάδαι Φοίβοιο πλέον θεὸν ἄλλον ἔτισαν.

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95

11 Horace’s Carmen Saeculare and Hellenistic Choral Traditions Indeed Phoebus greatly rejoiced when the men girt for War danced with the fairhaired Libyan women, when the ritual Season of the Carneia came for them . . . Apollo had seen no other dance more divine than that, nor to a city did he allot so many useful gifts as he allotted Cyrene, mindful of his earlier carrying off of the nymph. And the descendants of Battus do not worship another god more than Phoebus. (85–7, 93–6; trans. Stephens 2015, slightly modified)

In the Hymn to Artemis, the goddess selects her own archetypal chorus of young girls, requiring from Zeus a group of little singers and dancers, in the same way a παιδονόμος, the civic magistrate in charge of education, would select the chorus members for a contemporary civic performance (13–14; cf. also 42–5 below, p. 285). The famous passage describing the performance of her chorus culminates in the image of the sun god never failing to halt his chariot in admiration, with consequences for the duration of the day:19 ἐπεὶ θεὸς οὔποτ᾿ ἐκεῖνον ἦλθε παρ᾿ Ἠέλιος καλὸν χορόν, ἀλλὰ θεῆται δίφρον ἐπιστήσας, τὰ δὲ φάεα μηκύνονται.

180

Since the god Helios never goes by that fair chorus but, stopping his chariot, admires it, and the daylight is lengthened. (Callimachus, Hymn to Artemis 180–2; trans. Stephens 2015, slightly modified)

The passage clearly works as a counterpart to Apollo’s reaction at the first Carneia performance at Cyrene. In both cases, the event is foundational for the symbolic value of future, and contemporary, choral performances. In the Hymn to Artemis, there are two choruses playing this crucial function. The first, as we have just seen, is that of her nymphs. The second is that of the Amazons in Artemis’ sacred city, Ephesus (237–50). Here, too, the description culminates in a vision from above of the consequences of that performance: τοῦ δ᾿ οὔτι θεώτερον ὄψεται ἠώς οὐδ᾿ ἀφνειότερον· ῥέα κεν Πυθῶνα παρέλθοι. Dawn will see nothing more divine than this, nothing richer. It would easily surpass Pytho. (249–50; trans. Stephens 2015) 19

The link between θεός (‘god’) and θεάομαι (‘to watch, to admire’) goes back to Il. 7.443–4 (the motif is arguably implied also at Od. 5.73–6).

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Once again, line 249 strongly recalls 93 of the Hymn to Apollo, reinforcing the ideological link connecting the choruses and the success of the communities they represent. The Hymn to Delos further elaborates the motif of choral performances by transforming it into a cosmic image. It includes a sequence of seminal choral performances: the chorus where Delos, the island of the choruses, becomes the chorus leader of the dance performed by all the islands of the Mediterranean (16–22), the chorus of the swans celebrating the birth of the god, and dancing in a circle around the island (249–58), that of the young boys and girls who, having come from the land of the Hyperboreans, died on the island, becoming the paradigm for the girls and the boys of Delos, who perform prenuptial rites in their honour (296–9), and culminating in the final description of Delos’ choral glory: Ἀστερίη θυόεσσα, σὲ μὲν περί τ᾿ ἀμφί τε νῆσοι κύκλον ἐποιήσαντο καὶ ὡς χορὸν ἀμφεβάλοντο. οὔτε σιωπηλὴν οὔτ᾿ ἄψοφον οὖλος ἐθείραις Ἕσπερος, ἀλλ᾿ αἰεί σε καταβλέπει ἀμφιβόητον. οἱ μὲν ὑπαείδουσι νόμον Λυκίοιο γέροντος, ὅν τοι ἀπὸ Ξάνθοιο θεοπρόπος ἤγαγεν Ὠλήν· αἱ δὲ ποδὶ πλήσσουσι χορίτιδες ἀσφαλὲς οὖδας.

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Asteria, redolent of incense, the islands have formed a circle around and about you, and surround you as a chorus. Hesperus with his thickly curled hair looks down upon you, who are neither silent nor noiseless, but ever sounding on all sides. The men accompany the hymn of the old Lycian, which the seer Olen brought to you from Xanthus. The girls in the choir beat with their feet the secure ground. (Hymn to Delos 300–6; trans. Stephens 2015, slightly modified)

Line 302 of the hymn conspicuously reshapes the exhortation to the male choral performers that opens the triad of the Hymns (Hymn 2.12). Callimachus very rarely repeats his own words: it is particularly remarkable, therefore, that two such cases have the function of highlighting crucial moments of his evocation of choral performances (Hymn 3.14 = 43 and Hymn 2.12 is slightly modified in Hymn 4.302), underlining their fundamental role in attracting the attention of divine entities. The island encircled, once again, by circular choruses is, again, a spectacle from above (just as Delos, seen from the sky as a τηλέφαντον . . . ἄστρον, ‘star appearing from 276

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afar’, was in a famous Pindaric poem, the first of his Hymns, fr. 33c Snell–Maehler):20 Hesperus enjoys the performances, just as Apollo, Helios and Eos had done in the two previous Hymns. The last choral dance is the circular one performed by Theseus and his young followers around the altar of Aphrodite, a famous mixed chorus of ἠίθεοι and παρθένοι (‘young boys’ and ‘young girls’).21 For the first time here the two differently gendered choruses converge in a single location, and, ideally, in a single performance (even if the two groups do play two different roles). To this original dance (ἔνθεν) is connected the continuous performance of the Athenian theōria: the choruses, very much alive, establish a link between men and gods, and between past and present. In this hymnic triad, Callimachus sketches what amounts to a theological, much more than a sociological, view of the function of the chorus. Callimachus sees the choral performance as the point of intersection between the human community and the world of the gods. The chorus is the natural place for experiencing the presence of the god; the epiphany coincides with the performance: Hymn 2.4 οὐχ ὁράαις; (‘don’t you see?’), 11 ὀψόμεθ(α) (‘we shall see’) (cf. also, in a context that is not explicitly choral, Hymn 5.3 ἐσάκουσα (‘I heard’), 14 ἀίω (‘I hear’), 137 ἔρχετ᾿ Ἀθαναία νῦν ἀτρεκές (‘now clearly comes Athena’)). The chorus stands for the community as a whole: they pray for the stability of the city as well as for their own well-being (Hymn 2.14–15). If the god enjoys the chorus, he rewards the city (Hymn 2.93–4). Nevertheless, the chorus is exclusive: it has to be selected, and only the worthy are allowed in it.22 The final section of Hymn 2, with Apollo chasing away Envy, literally and literarily enacts the proverbial saying φθόνος γὰρ ἔξω θείου χοροῦ ἵσταται (‘Envy stands outside of the divine chorus’, Pl. Phdr. 247a). At the same time, as the near-final lines of Hymn 3 (266–7) warn, once you are included in it, you are bound to it. All in all, it is one of the paradoxes of Hellenistic literature that what is arguably the greatest poetic exaltation of the choral performance should coincide with its translation into a different medium, that of book-poetry. 20 21 22

Cf. Mineur 1984 ad loc. Cf. Calame 2001: 53–8 (= 2019: 115–21). Cf. Bassi 1989.

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At least two other Callimachean poems are relevant to the issue, belonging to the group of four lyric odes that follow the series of Iambs 1–13.23 The second of these (Iamb 15) has very much in common with the so-called ‘mimetic’ Hymns, and is particularly important for its representation of a different kind of choral performance. It is a pannychis, and the setting is convivial. A chorus is performed, and the poem opens, once again, with an epiphanic experience: Ἔνεστ᾿ Ἀπόλλων τῶι χορῶι· τῆς λύρης ἀκούω· καὶ τῶν Ἐρώτων ἠισθόμην· ἔστι κἀφροδίτη.24 Apollo is present in the chorus: I hear the lyre. I sense the Erotes too: there is also Aphrodite. (fr. 227)

In this case it is not a cultic act, such as a sacrifice, that entails the gods’ manifestation. Apollo’s presence is revealed by the choral performance itself, and, more particularly, by the sound of his lyre that accompanies the dance. The Erotes and Aphrodite preside over the sympotic atmosphere. Once again, the use of verba sentiendi, just as in Hymn 5, is remarkable: ἀκούω, ἠισθόμην.25 The beginning of the next poem, known as the Apotheosis of Arsinoe (Iamb 16), also evokes choral performances: Ἀγέτω θεός, οὐ γὰρ ἐγὼ δίχα τῶνδ᾿ ἀείδειν π]ροποδεῖν Ἀπόλλων ]κε ̣ν δυναίμαν κατ]ὰ χεῖρα βᾶσαι. Let the god lead, as without these I [can?]not sing . . . precede in the step Apollo . . . I could not . . . along the hand moving. (fr. 228) 23

24

25

I consider these probably still part of the book of Iambi (D’Alessio 20074 (= 1996): 43–7). Brink 1982 quotes this as an illustration of a linguistic precedent for Horace’s praesentia numina sentit; its thematic relevance is noted in Hardie 1998: 282. On its ‘mimetic’ character, cf. Albert 1989: 77–8; D’Alessio 20074 (= 1996): 657 n. 5. Lelli 2005: 134 presents my position on this passage (not a cultic epiphany, but the presence of the gods as expressed in the performance) as if it were his own. His remark that the acoustic sphere evoked by ἀκούω does not belong to mimetic poetry (suggesting instead that it is an indicator of real performance) is flatly contradicted by the passages from Hymn 5 quoted above. His general idea that the poem enacts a pannychis in honour of Dionysus (who is mentioned neither in the preserved portion of the text nor in the diēgēsis) is unsubstantiated.

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The initial request to the god creates the setting for a choral performance. The closest parallel is provided by the incipit of a Pindaric partheneion, Pind. fr. 94c Snell–Maehler (ὁ Μοισαγέτας με καλεῖ χορεῦσαι | [ Ἀ]π ̣ό λ̣ ̣λων ̣[, ‘The leader of the Muses calls me to perform a chorus, Apollo . . .’), in responsion with a request addressed to the god’s mother, Leto (ἄγοις, ὦ κλυτά, θεράποντα, Λατοῖ, ‘may you lead your servant, O famous Leto’).26 The occurrence of π]ροποδεῖv and of κατ]ὰ χεῖρα βᾶσαι in the following lines of the Apotheosis, the latter apparently evoking movements of a group of female performers, reinforces the idea that the poem is presented as if it were performed by a chorus. The image interferes with another topos, that of the poetic task that cannot be performed ‘without the Muses’.27 Choral Epiphanies Callimachus’ poems, with their ‘choral’ theology, thus provide the most relevant frame for understanding the background of Horace’s vision of the chorus in the Epistle to Augustus as well as being, as I am going to argue below, of great importance to understanding some key features of the CS itself. If the chorus is instrumental in the recognition of the god, Hellenistic choruses turn out to be among the most apt media to recognize the power of divinity and the divinity of power, an implication of which Horace was all too aware. A conspicuous counterpart to the idealized ‘theological’ view of the chorus of Callimachus is offered by the slightly earlier, famous and infamous Athenian ithyphallic song in honour of Demetrius Poliorcetes, preserved by Duris (291–290 BCE, BNJ 76 F 13, via Athenaeus, 6.253d–f: cf. also Demochares, BNJ 75 F 9 = FGrH F 2; 7–8, 15–19):28 ὁ δ’ ἱλαρός, ὥσπερ τὸν θεὸν δεῖ, καὶ καλὸς καὶ γελῶν πάρεστι . . . 26

27 28

7

As parallels to the Callimachean passage Lelli 2005: 158 quotes Eur. Bacch. 114–15 (not addressed to the god) and (more appropriately) Tro. 325–8 (where the address to the god is not incipitary). Cf. D’Alessio 20074 (= 1996): 660 n. 10. Cf. Chaniotis 2011, Platt 2011: 143–7, Versnel 2011: 444–56, Holton 2014, Bartol 2016, all with previous bibliography. See also Fantuzzi 2016, who makes a good point in comparing the divinization of Rhesus in the second stasimon of the eponymous drama with the ithyphallic hymn to Demetrius.

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Giovan Battista D’Alessio ἄλλοι μὲν ἢ μακρὰν γὰρ ἀπέχουσιν θεοὶ ἢ οὐκ ἔχουσιν ὦτα ἢ οὐκ εἰσὶν ἢ οὐ προσέχουσιν ἡμῖν οὐδὲ ἕν, σὲ δὲ παρόνθ’ ὁρῶμεν, οὐ ξύλινον οὐδὲ λίθινον, ἀλλ’ ἀληθινόν . . .

15

And he (Demetrius) joyful, as the god must be, and beautiful, and laughing is present here . . . other gods are far away, or have no ear, or do not exist, or do not pay any attention to us. But we can see you here present, not made out of wood or stone, but real . . .

The abundant bibliography on this text too often overlooks the circumstance that the mode of its performance as an ithyphallic song (i.e. by a chorus with extra-large phalli, or, at any rate, accompanying Dionysus’ phallus) and wearing masks of drunken people,29 would arguably have implied more than a certain amount of comic licence. Its underlying assumption, however, is a very serious one:30 it is the chorus that has the capacity (and, by implication, the authority) to recognize the god. This is one of the reasons why the choral medium, far from fading out, proves to be so successful and popular during the Hellenistic period and beyond: it provides one of the most suitable venues for the polis to stage its position within the larger world, taking into account, in various ways, the ‘powers’ affecting its existence, and integrating them into a system of values the community could recognize as traditional and as their own. It is not unusual for modern scholars to assimilate these civic performances to the public parades of children and young citizens in twentieth-century totalitarian regimes.31 There is, at any rate, an important aspect of these kinds of choral performance which has to be taken in consideration: the fact that such choral celebrations would in most cases be seen not as prompted by the higher power itself, but as a local ‘political’ response to it, as a way of translating an alien power into the traditional structures of the ideology of the polis (or, if you prefer, of giving a more acceptable appearance to power relations). 29 30

31

According to the description of the genre provided by Semos of Delos, BNJ 396 F 24. On the compresence of playfulness and ‘serious’ religious participation here, see in particular Versnel 2011: 459–60, and n. 70. Cf. e.g. Roueché 1993: 134 n. 40, quoting Jones 1940: 229; Marrou 1964: 180 and n. 33, who referred to the presence of young people; and Hunger 1990: 27, dealing with the Byzantine period; Barchiesi 2002: 107 (on the CS, and on Fraenkel’s reaction to it).

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Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo and the ithyphallic hymn for Demetrius represent two different poles in this communicative context. Political power can be represented as one of three elements interacting in a triangular relationship (chorus/gods/kings, as in the Callimachean hymn), or it can be collapsed with one of them, with a full, or merely hinted identification of political and divine power (as in the ithyphallic hymn). In both cases the ritual performance of the chorus is the seat for legitimizing such recognition.32 The ideological representation of the ‘choral’ polis during this period may with some profit be compared to other ways in which Hellenistic poleis represent their cultic reactions to the external power of the kings’ political and military power.33 Through its choral performances the Hellenistic polis situates itself within an apparently traditional world, integrating its successful existence within a network in which the divinity of power and the authority of the praising community need each other. All choral songs honouring the powerful sovereigns and generals attest, on the one hand, to the peripheral position of the polis, which, on the other hand, is able to provide an ideological representation of its centrality thanks to the theological function assigned to cultic performance, in general, and to its choruses in particular. Callimachus’ ‘choral’ Hymns offer an instructive spectrum of representations of political power. The Hymn to Apollo presupposes, as we just saw, a clear triangular structure (performers/gods/kings). In the Hymn to Artemis there is no mention of kings or leaders in the section on just and unjust cities (122–35), and the only king to appear at all is the impious Scythian Lygdamis, punished by the goddess (251–8). In the cosmic fantastic vision of chorality of the Hymn to Delos the focus is much more on interstate relationships 32

33

This is not the place to go into the broader theoretical frameworks that have examined the relationship between ritual action and political power: for a useful survey, though, see Bell 1992: 169–223, particularly pp. 190–3, on ‘complicity’ (with Bourdieu), and p. 200, on movements ‘from the bottom up’ (with Foucault). For an instructive approach to these mechanisms under this perspective, cf. especially Ma 1999: 219–26, taking cues from the cultic interactions with Antiochus III at Iasos and Teos. On divine/regal epiphany seen, from a similar perspective, as ‘a powerful diplomatic tool by which the blessings of divine presence could be tightly bound to issues of civic security and autonomy’ (with the case of Demetrius in mind), cf. Platt 2011: 146. More generally, on the vitality of the polis and of its ideological structures during the Hellenistic period, cf. Gruen 1993: 354.

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than on the internal dynamics of the polis: in this context, the future divinity of the king of Egypt is framed in a proleptic, prophetic speech of the god to-be-born (162–90). Divinization takes place at a remove, and is not mediated by the chorus, but voiced, in a playful and somewhat surreal mode, by Apollo himself.34 It would be interesting for us to know how a civic choral performance from Alexandria might have been articulated. There is very scanty, if any, evidence about the existence itself of collective self-representation of the community through the medium of choral performances at Alexandria.35 It is probably not due to chance that Callimachus’ Hymns never suggest an Alexandrian setting. The King of Egypt explicitly emerges only in the Hymn to Delos, and at Delos choral performances (though not by a civic chorus, but a local female one) on behalf of ‘King Ptolemy and the city of the Alexandrians’ may have actually taken place.36 But there is no trace of the ‘city of the Alexandrians’ in Callimachus’ Hymns.37 It is with the CS, which was performed at Augustus’ ludi saeculares of 17 BCE, and composed by Horace himself, that, for the first time, we have the chance of seeing the choral self-representation of a civic community that can claim full centrality vis-à-vis power. It is an experiment unique in many respects. This is the only text meant for choral performance for which we have both epigraphic evidence and a manuscript transmission within the corpus of a canonical ‘literary’ author.38 It notoriously presents itself as belonging to a secular Roman 34 35

36

37

38

Cf. D’Alessio 20074 (= 1996): 10–11. We know nothing, for example, about the form and content of the songs performed by choruses during the grand procession of Ptolemy II (on which see Rice 1983). How far Alexandria might be fittingly described as an ordinary polis is, of course, a complex issue, on which cf. e.g. Selden 1998: 294–300. The inscriptional lists of donations include offerings of golden cups for the sacred delegations on behalf of ‘King Ptolemy and the city of the Alexandrians’: cf. Bruneau 1970: 93–114. Many of the entries specify that such offerings were linked to the performance of the Deliades, but this indication is missing for the entries relative to the ‘city of the Alexandrians’, though it is present in several of the entries relative to King Ptolemy. We have no clues about the content of the songs performed on these occasions. Alexandria is mentioned in PMG 1035, more evocative of a sympotic paean than of a poem meant for a choral self-representation: cf. D’Alessio 2017: 236–8. The only other case of double transmission is Ariphron’s Hymn to Health, which was not included in a literary corpus but was transmitted along with musically performable songs: cf. D’Alessio 2017: 247–9, Recchia 2019. Bitto 2012 argues that the CS was originally the last poem of book 4: I am not convinced, but the issue does not affect my argument.

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tradition of song-performance but, as all interpreters have emphasized, it very clearly looks back to Greek models. Even from a metrical point of view, it exploits a structure such as the Sapphic stanza that, after a long Greek performative tradition that must have been predominantly ‘a solo’, had lately become a favourite metre for non-performative book-poetry mainly, if not only, among Latin writers.39 The CS and Hellenistic Chorality The CS is presented as an instantiation of an ancient ritual and performative tradition, alleged to go back several centuries, within a frame that was prompted and defined by a Greek hexameter oracle, attributed to the Sibylline Books,40 and was carefully detailed within the inscriptional acta.41 As we saw in the introductory section, it is generally assumed that in composing it Horace must have focused mainly on the archaic and classical tradition of choral performances, dismissing the later Hellenistic tradition as faded and debased, and/or identifying it with that of the encomia for sovereigns and generals.42 I have no reason to deny the importance of the ancient, ‘classical’ models, for a poet such as Horace, and for the CS in particular, and excellent research has recently been done on this subject.43 I wish, however, to draw attention here to the crucial importance of Hellenistic practical and

39

40

41

42

43

In contrast with the lack of fixed caesuras in the Sapphic hendecasyllables in Sappho and Alcaeus, in books 1–3 of Horace’s Odes there is an almost exclusive caesura after the fifth element; in the CS and (to a lesser degree) in the odes of book 4 there is also a conspicuous number of lines with a caesura after the sixth element. Rossi 1998: 171–80 argued that this was the result of Horace’s new experience with a song meant for actual performance, the CS. This theory (which was in fact advanced as early as Wilamowitz 1916: 353) was, however, effectively refuted already by Heinze 1918: 68 (= 19724: 277), still the best treatment of Horace’s lyric metres. Phlegon of Tralles, BNJ 257 F 37 132–69 and Zosimus 2.6.1. Cf. Viscardi 2016, with bibliography. Cf. Pighi 1965, Schnegg-Köhler 2002, with abundant bibliography. For the reconstruction of the earlier stages of the tradition, Coarelli 1993 is particularly important. See above, p. 266 n. 2. Partial exceptions are Norden 1913: 160, with Wilamowitz’s addendum in Norden 1923: 392, Norden 1939: 251 (with reference to a by then faded tradition), Nisbet and Hubbard 1970 on Hor. Carm. 1.21. Cf. Putnam 2000: 104–12, 167–8 and especially Barchiesi 2002, with bibliography.

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ideological precedents for the understanding of this performance song. From the point of view of the authorities, who had prompted such a performance, and of that part of the audience familiar with the contemporary Greek world, this performance at the ludi saeculares would not have been perceived (only, nor, indeed, mainly) as an archaizing literary operation. The song performance sponsored by Augustus and enacted thanks to Horace belongs in fact to a kind very popular among contemporary Hellenistic poleis. Civic choruses are an important and well-documented feature of public performance in the Hellenistic Greek world, thriving at least until to the third century CE,44 and many aspects of Horace’s song can be easily paralleled within Hellenistic and later performance tradition. For the general spectators of the festival, and for the religious and political representatives this aspect might have been more important than any intertextual play with archaic models. In the next section of this chapter, I concisely point at (1–5) some important elements of comparison between the CS and the post-classical, and ‘Hellenistic’, tradition of civic choruses, and (6), more particularly, at some key Callimachean signposts for the background of its choral ideology. (1) The choral performance of the CS is presented as being requested by an oracle and its oracular origin is inscribed in the text itself (quo Sibyllini monuere versus, 5), and the Greek hexameter oracle is actually preserved. An analogous oracular request is actually inscribed in Philodamus’ Paean (Delphi, fourth century BCE: θ ̣[εὸς] κελεύει . . . δε[ῖξαι] δ᾿ ἐγ ξενίοις ἐτείοις θ[ε]ῶν ἱερῶι γένει συναίμωι τόνδ᾿ ὕμνον, ‘the god commands . . . to display this hymn during the yearly hospitality rituals in honour of his sacred consanguineous kin’, 105–11) and in the hexameters introducing Isyllus’ Epidaurian Paean (late fourth or late third century BCE).45 Oracles, often in hexameters, just as in the case of the Sibylline Books, prompting civic 44

45

According to a very well-established vulgata, exemplified, to quote only one of its most recent instantiations, by Curtis 2017: 236, in the Hellenistic period the ‘world of Greek collective performance culture’ belongs ‘increasingly . . . in the realm of the imagination’. The actual documentation for Hellenistic choruses, however, is very rich indeed. A full treatment of this important topic is not possible here: for the moment I refer to some of the materials collected in Bowie 2006; D’Alessio 2016a, 2017; Barbantani 2018. Cf. LeVen 2016a and 2016b, with bibliography. For other fourth-century prose oracles on choral matters see the oracles 282, 283 Parke–Wormell (with Stehle 1997: 47 n. 66).

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11 Horace’s Carmen Saeculare and Hellenistic Choral Traditions choral performances were a very familiar feature in the Hellenistic and early Imperial Greek world. Particularly relevant are the numerous hexameter oracles from Didyma and Claros: most of those preserved are of the Imperial period, but the tradition was obviously older (cf. the ἀρχαῖον λόγιον, ‘ancient oracle’, mentioned already in SGO 01/20/34, 10, third/second century BCE).46 (2) The emphasis on the selection process of the chorus, specified in the acta (pueri XXVII quibus denuntiatum erat patrimi et matrimi et puellae totidem, ‘twenty-seven boys who had been summoned, whose fathers and mothers are alive, and as many girls’), in the oracle, and inscribed in the text itself (virgines lectas puerosque castos, ‘chosen maidens and chaste boys’, 4) follows usual Hellenistic (and later) procedures. The following examples provide useful comparisons: Teos (OGIS 309: 166/159 BCE): τοὺς ἐλευθέρους παῖδας . . . καὶ τὰς παρθένους τὰς ἐπιλεγείσας ὑπὸ τοῦ παιδονόμου, ‘the free-born boys . . . and the girls chosen by the paidonomos’; Magnesia (197/6 BCE: I. Magnesia 98 + p. 295): ἀποστέλλειν δὲ τοὺς παιδονόμους παῖδας ἐννέα ἀμφιθαλεῖς, ἀποστέλλειν δὲ καὶ τοὺς γυναικονόμους παρθένους ἐννέα ἀμφιθαλεῖς, ‘the paidonomoi should send nine boys, with both their parents alive, and the gynaikonomoi nine girls, with both their parents alive’; the request inscribed in the text of the hexametric section of Isyllus’ Paean (14–16): οἵ κεν ἀριστεύωσι πόληος τᾶσδ’ Ἐπιδαύρου, | λέξασθαί τε ἄνδρας καὶ ἐπαγγεῖλαι κατὰ φυλάς, | οἷς πολιοῦχος ὑπὸ στέρνοις ἀρετά τε καὶ αἰδώς, ‘choose and announce in every tribe those men, who excel in this city of Epidaurus, who possess in their breast valour and sense of respect protective of the city’ (and see also above, p. 275, on Artemis’ selection of her own chorus in Callimachus’ Hymn). (3) The mixed composition of the chorus of the CS, made up of boys and girls, is described in the acta, requested by the hexameter oracle (18–22) and emphasized in the text itself. This feature caused some perplexity in recent interpreters, who have looked for classical antecedents,47 but finds clear parallels in the Hellenistic and later 46 47

Cf. D’Alessio 2016a. On Claros: Ferrary 2014: i, 115. Hardie 1998: 274–7 compares the situation of the CS with the male performers mentioning or addressing girls in Pindar’s Paean 6 and Simonides PMG 519 fr. 55 (criticized by Barchiesi 2002: 117 and 231 n. 27; I do not accept Barchiesi’s suggestion of a bookish origin of the feature). This might have been an innovation as far as Rome was concerned (unless we assume that Catullus 34 was meant for performance), but was clearly a common feature in Hellenistic and later choruses. Whether the two groups sang at the unison is a different matter. According to the Sibylline Oracle, boys and girls performed their paeans separately as they did, for example, at Teos. It has been argued that this may have been the case also for Horace’s CS: cf. bini chori, in the acta, and Schnegg-Köhler 2002: 26–7, 84, 147 and n. 394, 237 n. 39. Speculations about a possible division between the two choruses can be found in Schmidt 1985. The two choruses apparently performed in unison in the ludi severiani: cf. Pighi 1965: 293–4.

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Giovan Battista D’Alessio tradition. Apart from the case from Teos (and, more uncertainly, from Magnesia) quoted just above,48 double choruses are requested, for example, in several of the performances prompted by the oracle of Claros (e.g. in SGO 02/12/01, 22–3: παῖδας παρθενικῆισιν ὁμοῦ Κολοφῶνα νέεσθαι | μολπού ς,̣ ‘let boys and maidens go together as singers and dancers to Colophon’),49 and elsewhere, as in the oracle SGO 03/02/01, 13, ἔν τε χοροῖς ἔν τ᾿ εἰλαπίναις κοῦραί θ᾿ ἅμα παισίν, ‘in choruses and banquets girls along with boys’ (second century CE, Ephesus). The interplay between the two gendered choruses is also an important feature underlying the triad of Callimachus ‘choral’ Hymns at a structural level (see above, p. 277). It would have been felt to be particularly appropriate for conveying a sense of the full participation of the whole community. (4) Horace’s use of the expression tempore sacro in the opening prayer has been very aptly compared to the opening of Pindar’s Paean 6 (and to other Pindaric passages where ὥρα and related words have a similar sense).50 This feature too, however, continues in later songs, as in Philodamus’ Paean, which opens with a request to Dionysus to come ἱεραῖς ἐν ὥραις (4).51 Also relevant here is the role played by καιρός (and by manipulations of the sacred calendar) in the ithyphallic hymn for Demetrius Poliorcetes.52 (5) A point that has been considered peculiar to the CS by the few commentators who have paid attention to it, but for which Horace had both Hellenistic (as well as classical) antecedents, is the request of probi mores (‘upright morals’) for the boys and quies (‘serenity’) for the elders (45–6: di, probos mores docili iuventae, | di senectuti placidae quietem (date), ‘gods, (grant) upright morals to the educable youth, god (grant) serenity to placid old age’).53 An unnoticed ‘classical’ parallel is provided by Pindar’s Paean 2 for the Abderitans (50ff.): τὸ δ᾿ εὐβουλίαι τε καὶ α[ἰδ]οῖ ἐ ̣γκείμενο[ν] αἰεὶ ̣ θάλλει μαλακαῖς ε[ὐ]δίαι[ς·] κ ̣αὶ τὸ μὲν διδότω θ ̣ε ̣ό ̣ς (‘what lies embedded in good counsel and sense of respect always flourishes in gentle fair weather: and may god grant this’), where εὐβουλίαι τε καὶ α[ἰδ]οῖ roughly correspond to probi mores and ε[ὐ]δίαι[ς to quies. This motif too, however, continues well into the Hellenistic period: in the hexametric section preceding Isyllus’ Paean (above, point 2), for 48

49 50

51 52 53

Cf. Norden 1913: 151–2 n. 4, 160 n. 2. Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: 253 on Hor. Carm. 1.21 quote the Magnesia inscription: note, however, that it makes no explicit mention of choruses, only of a procession. Ferrary 2014: i, 116. Cf. especially Barchiesi 2002: 115–16 (with bibliography: the comparison with Paean 6 was already made in Kiessling and Heinze 1958: 473). Cf. also D’Alessio 2006 for other poetic occurrences of ὥρα in similar contexts. Thonemann 2005: 75; Chaniotis 2011: 161–2; Holton 2014: 379–80. Kiessling and Heinze 1958 ad loc. note the lack of close parallels.

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11 Horace’s Carmen Saeculare and Hellenistic Choral Traditions example, αἰδώς is one of the prerequisites for the selection of the citizen chorus (the following lines of the poem, with the request for health, political stability, peace and wealth for the community, are also relevant for this section of the CS), and αἰδώς was arguably the object of a request addressed by the chorus to Apollo Paean in a remarkable late second-century BCE paean from the agora of Cyrene (SECir 80, p. 262), where at line 5 I suspect we should read]ν ̣ ἄναξ αἰδῶ ἰὴ ἰὼ ἰὲ Παιάν (against the vulgate ἄιδω, ‘I sing’), that is, a request to the god Paean to grant αἰδώς (‘a sense of respect’) to performers and community. (6) At a more general, and literary level, however, it is the idealized representation of the chorus in Callimachus’ Hymns 2–4 to which Horace directs the attention of his readers (and, I would imagine, of part of his audience as well). The first three strophes of the hymn form the first of a series of triads.54 The first two strophes introduce the double chorus, and describe the ritual setting of their performance (1–8). The chorus members present themselves and address a prayer to the Sun: alme Sol, curru nitido diem qui promis et celas aliusque et idem nasceris, possis nihil urbe Roma visere maius.

10

Nourishing Sun, who on your luminous chariot bring forth and conceal the day, and are born another and the same, may you behold nothing greater than the city of Rome. (9–12)

The implications of this address have been widely debated, the main issue being whether Horace (and his audience) might have meant an assimilation between Phoebus, who at 2 is (along with Diana) lucidum caeli decus (‘a brilliant ornament of heaven’), and the Sun, whose chariot was represented on the fastigium of Apollo’s temple on the Palatine, and who is identified with Φοῖβος in the Sibylline Oracle.55 Whatever the ‘religious’ answer to this question, the passage also has an important, if surprisingly overlooked,56 literary intertext. To a careful reader of Callimachus’ Hymns the prayer addressed by Horace’s chorus would have resonated with the impressive cluster of related choral 54 55 56

On the structure, cf. Fraenkel 1957: 370–1, Schmidt 1985. Cf. Fraenkel 1957: 371–3, Barchiesi 2002: 111, Hijmans 2004. The only, partial, exception, to my knowledge, is Bornmann 1968: 120, who, in his commentary on Hymn. 3, noted the similarity between Hymn 3.249–50 and the CS passage.

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representations of divine visions of the performing community from heaven that feature in the triad of Hymns 2–4:57 οὐ κείνου χορὸν εἶδε θεώτερον ἄλλον Ἀπόλλων (‘Apollo saw no other dance more divine than that’, 2.93); ἐπεὶ θεὸς οὔποτ᾿ ἐκεῖνον | ἦλθε παρ᾿ Ἠέλιος καλὸν χορόν, ἀλλὰ θεῆται | δίφρον ἐπιστήσας, τὰ δὲ φάεα μηκύνονται (‘since the god Helios never goes by that fair chorus but stopping his chariot he admires it, and the daylight is lengthened’, 3.180–2); τοῦ δ᾿ οὔτι θεώτερον ὄψεται ἠώς | οὐδ᾿ ἀφνειότερον (‘dawn will see nothing more divine than this, nothing richer’, 3.249–50); Ἀστερίη θυόεσσα, σὲ μὲν περί τ᾿ ἀμφί τε νῆσοι | κύκλον ἐποιήσαντο καὶ ὡς χορὸν ἀμφεβάλοντο. | οὔτε σιωπηλὴν οὔτ᾿ ἄψοφον οὖλος ἐθείραις | Ἕσπερος, ἀλλ᾿ αἰεί σε καταβλέπει ἀμφιβόητον (‘Asteria, redolent of incense, the islands have formed a circle around and about you, and surround you as a chorus. Hesperus with his thickly curled hair looks down upon you neither silent nor noiseless, but ever sounding on all sides’, 4.300–3). In the Callimachean corpus these passages form, as we saw above (pp. 274–7), a conspicuous network that, as a whole, provides a fundamental background for the choral prayer in Horace’s CS. The glance of a god from above is prompted by a choral performance. In the Hymn to Apollo, it is a chorus of boys who sing for Apollo: the god has never seen anything more divine than this, and, consequently, has bestowed many gifts on their city. In the Hymn to Artemis it is Helios, the Sun, who stops his chariot in order to admire the choral performance of girls, and even time stops. The third passage completes the parallelism with the first: foundational choral performances in honour of Artemis, and the building of her temple establish the wealth of Ephesus. The point of view is always the same: the performance is meant to be seen not only, nor mainly, perhaps, by its mortal audience, but from a celestial vantage point. The fourth Callimachean passage unites the parallel allusions of the previous two Hymns into a vision from heaven of the choral centre of the world, Delos, where, as a climax, a double, mixed chorus performs. Horace alludes to this Callimachean cluster by having his double chorus (as in Hymn 4) address their prayer to a god that 57

Cf. above, pp. 274–7.

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can be simultaneously (alius et idem) the Apollo of Hymn 2 and the Sun of Hymn 3.58 The poet who, in the wake of Callimachean book-poetry, had so subtly experimented with the literary ‘mimesis’ of performance, now explores the ways of real performance by constructing, in real practice, an ideal Callimachean chorus, a pure intersection point between the world of humans and that of gods. The allusion here is not merely a literary one. It underpins the ideological representation of the body of the performers as the city.59 The CS is unique, however, at least to our knowledge,60 in applying the formula to a city that claims to embody a/the global power. Horace chooses to do so by deftly manipulating the Hellenistic choral ‘anxiety’ that represented power as an external agent entering into a dialogue with the city and its gods.61 The same poet who, on other occasions, had come very close to acknowledging Augustus’ status as a prasesens divus,62 conspicuously avoids hailing his divine presence in his most public poem.63 Augustus appears in the song instead (at 49–52) as the chief performer of the rite. The princeps is not explicitly named but obliquely blended – as clarus Anchisae Venerisque sanguis (‘famous blood of Anchises and Venus’) – with Aeneas, mentioned at 43 (before the immediately preceding prayer examined above, no. 5).64 The communicative strategy of the CS plays against its Hellenistic background, adopting a geometry much closer to the 58

59

60 61

62

63 64

For the pun with ἀέλιος, cf. Feeney 1998: 33 and Barchiesi 2002: 110. Cf. also Callimachus, Hecale fr. 103 Hollis, for the syncretism between Apollo and Helios. This intertextual and ideological cluster impacts on the debate about Horace the ‘Callimachean’ vs Horace the ‘fascist’: Lowrie 2002: 167 n. 31; Horace Callimachean and fascist: cf. Fowler 1995: 257 n. 24. This dilemma, however, arguably tells us more about Horace’s reception than about his interpretation within an ancient context. See above, p. 282 and nn. 36 and 37, on Alexandria. This is meant to complement the important remarks of White 1993: 124–7 and Barchiesi 2002: 120–2. Gods praesentes: Carm. 1.35.2 (Fortuna), 3.5.2 (Augustus), 4.14.43 (Augustus), and Epist. 2.1.15 and 135 discussed above (with Lowrie 2002: 159–60); Rocco 2016 (in my opinion overemphasizing a potential Epicurean background). For a possible implication of Carm. 4.6.3, cf. Hardie 1998: 282. In 4.2.45–8 Horace imagines himself taking part in a public celebration hailing Augustus as sol pulcher (‘beautiful Sun’) in line with the Athenian celebrations for Demetrius (Barchiesi 2002: 121). See e.g. White 1993: 124–5. Cf. Putnam 2000: 78–80. The oblique identification is reinforced by the clear overlap between 51–2 and Verg. Aen. 6.851–3.

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triangular relationship of Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo (gods/ kings/choral performers) than to the collapse of divine and political power exemplified by the ithyphallic hymn to Demetrius. In contrast to Callimachus, however, one of the apexes of the triangle is occupied here not by ‘kings’, but by Augustus in his ritual role of the chief among the XVviri sacris faciundis, ‘the Fifteen in charge of sacred rites’.65 By emphasizing the presence of the praying community while disguising, as a ritual agent among them, that of the effective holder of the political power, the choral performers perpetuate the rhetorical representation of the legitimizing role of the civic chorus. It is in the reading provided by Horace himself in the Epistle to Augustus that the ideological ambiguity underlying this strategy will come, at long last, to the fore. With the unavoidable link between the ‘presence’ of Augustus (praesenti tibi, 15) and that of the gods perceived by the chorus (prasentia numina sentit, 135),66 the ‘presence’ of divinity in (choral) poetic performance is finally revealed as inextricably and structurally implicated with that of the divine presence of (political) power.

65

66

The textual focus on the ritual role of Augustus as the chief among the XVviri sacris faciundis is indeed a peculiarity of the CS in comparison to any Greek model. While it was usual for members of the elite in Hellenistic poleis to invest in the political and social prestige of ritual priesthoods (cf. e.g. Dignas 2006; Dignas and Trampedach 2008, with bibliography), the centrality attributed to this role in the CS (effectively covering Augustus’ political power) is unprecedented and reflects also the key function of religious networks in the shaping of Augustan politics (cf. Rüpke 2018: 187–95). See above, pp. 268–9.

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part i v M U LTI M E D I A A ND I N T E R C U LTU R A L R E C E P T I O N S I N T H E SE C O N D S O P H I S T I C AND BEYOND

ch a p t e r 1 2 R E C E I V E D I NTO D A N C E ? PA RT H E N I US’ E RŌ T I K A PAT H Ē MATA I N T H E PA N TO M I M E I D I O M

ismene lada-richards

The subject of this chapter is Parthenius of Nicaea, the Greek intellectual from the province of Bithynia who was captured during the Mithridatic wars and brought, as a luxury possession, to Italy by Cinna,1 probably the neoteric C. Helvius Cinna, author of the mythological epyllion Zmyrna. Given the paucity of Parthenius’ extant output, the ‘celebrity’ treatment lavished on him since Clausen’s seminal piece2 and the publication of two major studies around the turn of the millennium,3 there are few surprises left. Unless . . . unless one takes a very Callimachean ‘untrodden’ path. I will place Parthenius where one would least expect him to be found: the dancing floor. In so doing, I will introduce a different reception pathway to the volume, namely reception into the non-verbal, kinaesthetic and thoroughly embodied medium that is the art of dance. My primary Parthenian focus will be the bizarre mythological collection of racy stories entitled Erōtika Pathēmata (henceforth EP), that is to say Sufferings in Love or Disastrous Love Stories.4 My unconventional handle on it is a passing comment in the Hermeneumata Leidensia, a bilingual schoolbook attributed to ps.-Dositheus, a shadowy teacher of the third century AD. Wishing to commend the mythological collection from which he is excerpting,5 he singles out its value for three categories of professional users – painters, grammarians and pantomime dancers: Part of the research for this article was made possible by the generous support of the Leverhulme Trust, in the form of a Major Research Fellowship. So the entry ‘Parthenius’ in the Suda: οὗτος ἐλήφθη ὑπὸ Κίννα λάφυρον, ὅτε Μιθριδάτην Ῥωμαῖοι κατεπολέμησαν (T1 Lightfoot). 2 Clausen 1964. 3 Lightfoot 1999; Francese 2001. 4 So translate Lightfoot and Francese respectively. 5 Ps.-Dositheus calls it the ‘world famous’ Genealogies of Hyginus, but it is a relative of Hyginus’ Fables. 1

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Ismene Lada-Richards ζωιγραφία τοιγαροῦν τούτου τοῦ κόπου πολλοῖς τόποις δίδωσι μαρτυρίαν ἀλλὰ καὶ οἱ γραμματικοὶ τέχνης ταύτης οὐ μόνον ἐπαινοῦσιν τὴν εὐφυΐαν ἀλλὰ καὶ χρῶνται. μῦθοι μὲν τῶν ὀρχηστῶν ἔνθεν λαμβάνουσιν ἔπαινον καὶ μαρτυροποιοῦνται ἐν τῆι ὀρχήσει ἀληθινὰ τὰ γεγραμμένα (fabulae quoque pantomimorum inde accipiunt laudem et testantur in saltatione vera esse quae scripta sunt).6 Painting, for example, testifies to the value of this labour in multiple places; but teachers too not only praise the cleverness of this art but also apply it to their own purposes (it is from this work that the stories danced by the pantomimes derive praise and, being danced, bear witness to the truth of what is written).

In the mind of this particular grammarian at least there is a strong correlation between what is presented on the stage and what is contained in mythographical compendia, so much so that the rhythmic and kinetic embodiment of such mythical plot lines is tantamount to validating their existence, proving their veracity. Given that myth was, throughout antiquity, the very lifeblood of pantomimos orchēsis as a genre, to the extent that a late firstcentury BC inscription designates the dancer as a μύθων ὀρχηστής tout court,7 the proposition that a pantomime would profit from perusing an epitome of myths is easy to defend. With the aid of handbooks a pantomime can, with minimal trouble, enrich his general paideia; lay his hands on reliable, systematic gatherings of cognate narratives (e.g. local stories, aetia, catasterisms, love stories); refresh his memory regarding the main ingredients of various plots; achieve a more secure embedding of similarities and differences between typologically kindred myths;8 and facilitate repertoire selection in response to a particular audience’s tastes or in accordance with geographical location.9 Lucian’s stipulation that ‘above all’ (πρὸ πάντων) the pantomime dancer ought to know ‘the loves of the gods, especially of Jupiter himself’ (Salt. 59), brings to mind ready-made thematic lists as, for example, the conspectus of the mortal women who ‘slept with Jupiter’ and a series of other gods in the lost chapters 226–32 of Hyginus’ Fables. Lucian’s second ‘must-have’ item in a dancer’s 6 7

8 9

Text in Goetz, CGL iii 56.30–57.2, discussed in Cameron 2004: 229–30. IGR 1.975, commemorating the victorious performance of a Roman citizen in the theatre of Gortyn in Crete; cf. Crinagoras (AP 9.542.2), where mythos designates the pantomime libretto. Cf. Luc. Salt. 80. See Luc. Salt. 39–59, a geographical categorization.

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repertoire (Salt. 57), myths of transformation in four main subdivisions (trees, animals, birds and transgender), also recalls the proliferation of specialized mythographical works dealing with just that, metamorphosis.10 The question this piece sets out to explore, however, will take us well beyond the comfort zone of an overall convergence between mythographical collections and the dancer as a repository of mythical tradition. Besides a putative afterlife in the poetry of ‘neoterics’, Augustans and beyond,11 I would like to ask whether Parthenius’ ‘little notebook’ (hypomnēmation), dedicated to Cornelius Gallus as raw material for epic or elegiac compositions (εἰς ἔπη καὶ ἐλεγείας ἀνάγειν, Pref. 2), might also have enjoyed an afterlife ‘in the flesh’, re-mediated into fabulas for pantomime dancing. Unsurprisingly, a project of this kind is bedevilled by problems. The ‘Cinderella’ of reception studies across the disciplinary board, dance reception is still struggling to emancipate itself from performance or theatre history,12 its closest generic siblings, who are themselves latecomers on the block. Despite the incontrovertible diachronic fascination exercised by the figure of the ancient dancer,13 dance reception seldom makes more than a fleeting appearance in classical reception volumes; despite being championed by some of the reception giants in the field,14 it has not yet earned a permanent and central place under the overall ‘Classical reception’ banner.15 Considerably more complex is the meaningful inclusion of the dance in the remit of ‘reception in antiquity’, 10

11 12

13

14

15

E.g. the poetic collections of Nicander and Boeus; Antoninus Liberalis’ Metamorphoses; Theodorus’ Metamorphoses, Antigonus’ Transformations, Didymarchus’ Metamorphoses (for these last texts we have titles only). Parthenius’ own Metamorphoses, probably in hexameters, falls into the same category. On the difficulty of tracing vestiges of Parthenian influence, see Lightfoot 1999: 297. It was while standing on the turf of performance history that Macintosh (2008: 254–5) addressed to ‘classical reception scholars’ a ‘reminder . . . of the necessity of including dance within their sphere of study’. As richly exemplified by all the contributions in Macintosh’s pioneering edited volume The Ancient Dancer in the Modern World (2010); with a different focus, see Billings, Budelmann, and Macintosh 2013. Besides Macintosh, Naerebout 1997 and Foley (e.g. 2007, 2012: 76–121) are also among those pioneering the field. For example, dance reception did not even feature among the ‘future paths’ highlighted in Porter’s overview (2008) of emergent lines of reception research in Classics; one of the most recent handbooks to the reception of Greek drama (van Zyl Smit 2016) does not include a reception into dance section.

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the present volume’s overarching theme: even allowing for the fact that the very object of the quest, the danced event itself, would be completely irrecoverable (to match the total loss of fabulae salticae, dance libretti), there is lamentably scarce first-hand, definitive evidence for the fool-proof connection of particular texts with securely identifiable, specific choreographic reconfigurations. Is then this line of inquiry futile, teetering perilously close to the proverbial wild goose chase? Working against the grain, I will use the example of the EP to argue that writing dance into the bigger narrative of ‘reception in antiquity’ is a valuable, indeed exciting undertaking, provided two simple caveats are met. In the first instance, dance (including cultural ‘traffic’ in and out of dance) must be a documented presence in the Erwartungshorizont (Jauss 1970) of a given time and place; secondly, the ultimate desideratum must be other than the creation of new archival knowledge in the form of lists of documented performances. When a text is involved in the reception chain the research objective should be more imaginative and less fact-driven. One could try, for example, to identify properties endemic to the verbal narrative itself, features that might be deemed entirely consonant with known modalities of the dance idioms prevalent at the posited time of reception (e.g. pantomime dancing between the first century BC and the sixth century AD). Although unlikely to trigger discipline-wide paradigm shifts, a dance reception lens judiciously applied can prove a versatile interpretative tool: eliciting new meanings, suggesting possibilities for further exploration or simply bringing to the fore aspects of a text that might have otherwise remained invisible, it will expand scholarly horizons and enrich our ways of reading. Most importantly, the study of ‘reception into dance’ should be considered enmeshed not only with mainstream literary reception but literary history itself. For intermedial reception is by no means a one-way road. It thrives on material that ‘circulates’ vigorously and freely across representational categories and borders, much like Jupiter’s adulterous love life, a thematic cluster that Augustine perceived as weaving its way through the arts, feeding into the work of painters and founders, smiths and sculptors, 296

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writers, reciters, actors, singers, dancers.16 What started life as a text may come to exercise its greatest impact on the textual tradition not in a linear fashion, without cross-media intermediaries, but having first cut off its moorings from the written word by means of mutating into one or more different forms. It was, for example, after having inspired Debussy’s symphonic poem Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894), choreographed in turn by Vaslav Nijinsky for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (1912), that Mallarmé’s poem L’après-midi d’un faune (1876) gained iconic status in the traditions of literary modernism. Our interpretative linking of the dots must be guided by an understanding of reception not as ‘an achieved state’ but as ‘an ongoing process’ – as Whitmarsh (2006: 115) puts it, ‘not reception . . . but recipience’. The charting of ‘recipience’ then, the unpredictable, meandering and fluid process of reception, is precisely what should be at stake in the case of dance-oriented readings of Parthenius’ EP or similar ‘high-end’ literary products. If even a handful of Parthenius’ stories (or scenes and characters from these stories) provided the backbone for the creation of narratives and songs to accompany mimetic dancing;17 if, moreover, a likely period for such translations from the ‘page’ to the ‘stage’ was within Parthenius’ lifetime, in the first century BC, all the while Greekinflected, continuously evolving dance dialects were very much in search of an identity,18 the entire way we appreciate the cultural landscape of late Republican/Augustan Rome is radically affected. 16

17

18

August., Ep. 91.5: tot locis pingitur, funditur, tunditur, sculpitur, scribitur, legitur, agitur, cantatur, saltatur Juppiter adulteria tanta committens. Similarly protean in modern times has been the figure of Salome who, having started life as a couple of lines in the Bible, found herself on an incredible journey through painting and sculpture, music, literature, theatre and dance (for a classicist’s take, see Webb 2010). The only secure link between an EP story and the pantomime repertoire concerns the specific version of Daphne in EP 15.4, which combines the maiden’s flight with arboreal transformation. For Apollo/Daphne as pantomime, see Luc. Salt. 48; Lib. Or. 64.67; AP 11.255 (Palladas); Jacob of Sarugh, Homily 5. The explosive entrance of Pyladean and Bathyllean pantomime in the late twenties BC was the culmination of a gradual maturation process spanning several decades. See primarily Jory 1981; Wiseman 2008, 2014. For a historical sketch of pantomime’s protracted period of gestation in both the east and west of the Mediterranean basin, see Garelli 2007: 147–208. Parthenius’ collection itself can be placed at any time between c. 52 and 27/6 BC (Lightfoot 1999: 215).

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In the first place it would appear that an artistic synergy was in the process of developing between avant-garde literary production and dance, an art that clamours to be placed at the centre of the cultural and even literary history of the first century BC. Secondly, we may, at long last, have become more willing to concede that the afterlife of Hellenistic aesthetics is not to be sought exclusively in other texts, the written literary tradition of the canonical Augustan poets, but most intriguingly in flesh and blood, in the bodies of the pantomime dancers who enthralled the world until the end of pagan antiquity. I will return to this all-important notion of ‘embodiment’ in my conclusion. For the time being, let us read with an eye on the dance, hoping to understand what a heuristic focus on ‘reception into dance’ might contribute to our reading experience and interpretation of Parthenius’ collection.

Eis pantomimon orkhēsin harmozein? The strongest node of contact between Parthenius’ EP and the world of pantomime dancing should be sought in their lusciously erotic subject matter: mythical love stories were, quite simply, the mainstay of ancient pantomime,19 a fixation on libidinal narratives – its irreducible core.20 Moreover, Parthenius’ cauldron of molten love has a particular taste, namely the guilt – and fascination – of perverse, pathological passion: wallowing flagrantly in taboo sexuality, a sizeable proportion of the EP stories are fuelled by unbridled lust and replete with transgressive desire,21 so much so that sexual nonconformity becomes the most important thematic key to the collection. Pantomime, too, however, brimming with ‘lecherous females’ (ἐρωτικὰ γύναια), ‘the lewdest among women of old’

19

20

21

See, e.g., Cyprian, Don. 8; August. Ep. 91.5; cf. Arn. Adv. nat. 4.35, 7.33; Sid. Apoll. Carm. 23.281–97. For Ovid, pantomime is where ‘fictitious lovers are constantly portrayed in the dance’ (illic assidue ficti saltantur amantes, Rem.am. 755). Novatianus, for example, speaks of ‘ancient fabled lusts’ (fabulosae antiquitatum libidines, Spect. 6.6). Examples of incest in the EP: 5 (Leucippus and his sister), 11 (Byblis and brother Caunus), 13 (Clymenus and daughter Harpalyce), 17 (Periander and his mother), 31 (Euopis and her brother), 33 (Assaon and daughter Niobe). Transgressive love for the enemy: EP 9 (Polycrite), 21 (Pisidice), 22 (Nanis).

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(τῶν πάλαι τὰς μαχλοτάτας, Salt. 2), thrives in sexual impropriety. The site where deviant desire is constantly under construction (ἐπιθυμίας ἀτόπου κατασκευή)22 and illicit pleasure routinely glorified23 seems an ideal destination for the sexually overt material of Parthenius, who ‘titillates’24 his reader with the consummation of erotic passion. Yet not all material, whether in verbal or aural form, is suitable for a recalibration into dance. Tchaikovsky’s and Stravinsky’s music attracts choreographers in droves, even when not originally composed with dance in mind;25 Ravel’s La Danse, conversely, composed specifically for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, was rejected by Diaghilev himself as undanceable, ‘a masterpiece . . . but . . . not a ballet’.26 Lucian (Salt. 74) appears to understand the ‘congeniality’ criterion when stipulating that, in addition to a set of intellectual and physical attributes, the ‘perfect dancer’ (τὸν ἄριστον ὀρχηστήν) ought to be highly discerning (διαγνωστικόν), able to ferret out the best (τῶν ἀρίστων), that is to say the most stage-friendly, subject matter, from the mass of poems (ποιημάτων), songs (ἀισμάτων) and tunes (μελῶν) vying for his attention. So how useful might the EP have seemed to those on the lookout for raw material for the composition of a pantomime libretto? First and foremost, the vast majority of the EP stories are in perfect complicity with performance practices foregrounding the visceral language and expressive potential of the moving and gesturing human body. Even as mere synopses they do contain markedly gestural distillations of inner turmoil, from the teardrenched, fetishistic clinging to poignant objects27 to the stretching of hands (χεῖρας ἔτεινεν) into the air in amorous expectation (ἐελδομένη φιλότητος)28 or the drawing of a sword (σπασάμενος τὴν μάχαιραν) while rushing to use it for the kill (ὥρμησε 22

23 24 25

26 27

28

John Chrysost. PG 60.301; cf. John Chrysost. PG 62.428 on theatre spectacles brimming with ἔρωτας ἀτόπους. See, e.g., Novat. Spect. 6.6 (amatur quicquid non licet); Tert. De spect. 17.1. So Francese 2008: 166. So, e.g., Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings in C, Op. 48, choreographed by Balanchine in 1934. Poulenc’s reminiscence, quoted in Nichols 1987: 118. EP 2.2, Polymele clinging to Odysseus’ spoils from Troy and ‘rolling about on them in floods of tears’ (trans. Lightfoot). Pisidice, EP 21.3, from the embedded poetic extract from the Foundation of Lesbos.

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διεργάσασθαι τὴν κόρην).29 Creating moments of heightened dynamism and supreme narrative intensity, they build their climaxes around bodies under physical or emotional duress, caught in the extremities of passion. Parthenius exploits a set of core passions (from love to anger and hate, from fear to hope, from sorrow to despair) for all their dramatic potential, and the resulting lush emotional landscape makes his stories supremely attractive not only to the stage in general, since the ‘un-emotional’ (τὸ ἀπαθές) is practically synonymous with the ‘un-histrionic’ (ἀνυπόκριτον),30 but more specifically to the particular modalities of pantomime dancing, the genre predicated on the sensational display of ‘character’ (ēthos) and ‘passion’ (pathos, Luc. Salt. 67). Bringing on stage (εἰσάγουσα) ‘now someone in love (ἐρῶντα) now someone in the grip of anger (ὀργιζόμενον) and another one deranged in his mind (μεμηνότα) and another one consumed by sorrow (λελυπημένον)’ (Salt. 67), the pantomime mode would have provided an ideal site where Parthenius’ exuberant emotional colours could have been appropriated by the subjectivity of a living human body. Besides, the emotional cocktail brewed in the EP is such that it could have thrived at the edges of articulate language, in that heterotopia where corporeal expressiveness, the dialects of ‘gesture, nod, leg, knee, hand and spin’ (Sid. Apoll. Carm. 23.269–70), can act as a substitute for words. Yet ancient pantomime was not simply interested in the display of an accomplished state of passion – it was the progressive live creation of a passion, the ‘getting in and out’ of dispositions, the transition itself that mattered the most. Marked by a strong interest in narrative development, the clinical tracing of a pathēma from the first germ to the complete undoing of the experiencer’s self, Parthenius’ collection would have provided rich material to a dancer either eager to display the subtle, step-by-slow-step gradations of a passion or perform abrupt and startling emotional shifts. Take Periander, the object of his mother’s incestuous love. Even in the lapidary form of EP 17, Periander’s role would have required a dancer to navigate a bewildering array of emotions, 29 30

Diognetes, EP 9.4. Demtr. Eloc. 194.

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moods and dispositions: moral steadfastness while facing the lure of immorality (17.3); the dissolution of moral scruples and progressive yielding to pressure (συγκατατίθεται, 17.3); sensual pleasure (17.4); the hesitant, first dawnings of incipient love mixed with mounting curiosity regarding the identity of his erotic partner (17.5); full-grown, overwhelming passion (εἰς πολὺν πόθον, 17.5); frustration (17.5) morphing into unrestrained, murderous anger (17.6) and finally a wholesale personality change, leading straight to the practising of brutish savagery (17.7). Or take Cleoboea in EP 14. A dancer would have been required to negotiate the exceptionally challenging transition from love (14.1) to anger, to love contaminated by thoughts of vengeance (14.2), to pretence of being cured of love (τοῦ μὲν ἔρωτος ἀπηλλάχθαι προσεποιήθη, 14.3). When vengefulness blossoms into a murderous disposition and culminates in slaughter (14.4), a second bout of strong desire leads to remorse (ἐννοηθεῖσα ὡς δεινὸν ἔργον δεδράκοι) and quenches itself in self-destruction (14.4). Not only would remorse, a recurrent state in the EP, have inspired a choreographer to think of an entire array of expressive gestures, from a profusion of tears to the sensational staging of a suicidal act; it would also have allowed a performing artist to spiral into ever greater depths of inwardness and suffering. Indeed, in the affective economy of pantomime dancing the audience is invited to peer directly into the performer’s soul. As the fabula’s characters are spun into an emotional abyss, all manner of internal conflicts are laid bare, in particular the violent collision of lustful impulse and excessive, raw desire with a regulating, restraining power, be it reason or a sense of shame and moral duty (aidōs). Lucian (Salt. 70) has recourse to Plato in order to convey the interplay of passion, erotic desire and rational control (ideally acting throughout as a bridle) in the dancer’s performance. But this supremely histrionic tug in diametrically opposite directions is a near ubiquitous building block in the EP, where the victim of erotic suffering is reported to have fought against the affliction before being finally obliged to surrender. The example of Clymenus, who fell in love with his stunningly beautiful daughter Harpalyce (EP 13.1), is typical of the anguished struggle at the heart of the collection: resisting valiantly at first (ἐκαρτέρει) and remaining in control of 301

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his passion (περιῆν τοῦ παθήματος), he ultimately gave in when the disease became impossible for him to handle (ὡς δὲ πολὺ μᾶλλον αὐτὸν ὑπέρρει τὸ νόσημα).31 While the mythographer’s restricted narrative economy suppresses duels of warring passions, a librettist would nevertheless have found in the EP no shortage of fertile cues for the creation of expansive cantica to accompany the dancer’s predicament; taken inside that dancer’s splintered heart, an audience would have been thrilled to experience, vicariously, the agony of characters hemmed in by irresistible forces and ultimately ruined. And yet the energy of ancient pantomime is far from being expended within the dancer’s own soul in connection with a single role, for pantomime’s aesthetic pivots on a protean continuum of transformation, wherein the dancer ‘will assume every role himself, one after another, and in his single person will represent a crowd’ (solusque per omnis | ibit personas et turbam reddet in uno, Manilius, Astron. 5.480b–1). A mimetic dancer’s change of mask from Paris to Oenone (EP 4), from Niobe to Assaon (EP 33), would have offered an audience a feast of affective versatility every bit the equal of the emotional journeys hailed as ‘most incredible’ (τὸ γοῦν παραδοξότατον, Salt. 67) in Lucian’s treatise, where the pantomime lover extols the single body split into a multiplicity of souls (Salt. 66) so that Within the same day (τῆς αὐτῆς ἡμέρας) he displays himself (δείκνυται) now Athamas in the throes of madness (μεμηνώς) now a terrified (φοβουμένη) Ino; at other times he is Atreus himself, then, a little later (becomes) Thyestes, then Aegisthus or Aerope. (Salt. 67)

Travelling from Athamas to Ino and from Atreus to Thyestes ultimately becomes an exercise in empathic understanding and perspective taking, seeing from another’s point of view, as the dancer merges with the ‘I’ and the body of his characters, sharing in their feelings and being affected alongside them.32 Some of the stories in the EP could have formed the basis for pantomime’s prime structural mode of a diptych design wherein the current of 31

32

Further examples of resistance to the pathos and subsequent capitulation: EP 5.2, 13.1, 16.1, 17.1–2, 36.3. Cf. IG 14.2124, hailing a deceased pantomime as ‘empathizing’ (συμπάσχων) with the characters he danced.

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emotional energy bounces back and forth between two main characters per scene positioned by means of gender, age and social station at opposite extremes to one other.33 Choosing to stage a ‘Caunus and Byblis’ pantomime, for example, the dancer would have needed to ‘feel himself’ just as much ‘into’ the despair of the incestuous girl, perishing of love for her own brother, as ‘into’ the disgust (ἀποστυγήσαντα) of that same brother shunning the illicit love (EP 11.3). Standing ‘outside’ his character was not an option for the dancer. Only by absorbing, ‘draw[ing] over his limbs the aspect of fortune’s every vicissitude’ (Manilius, Astron. 5.483; trans. Goold) would he have had a chance of winning the audience’s heart both in the guise of Byblis, consumed by guilt, hanging herself and ultimately melting away into ‘an everlasting spring’ (EP 11.4), and in the role of Caunus, obliged to roam the earth in flight. Whether ‘Caunus and Byblis’ were ever re-mediated into dance is of course impossible to establish, but a faint trace of the dynamic involved in the telling of a story from two conflicting subject positions with which the dancing soloist is called upon to identify has been preserved in the performance history of ‘Apollo and Daphne’, the only Parthenian myth verifiably recalibrated into dance in the distinctive version found in EP 15.4.34 The overall synergy and congeniality between the material contained in the EP and the aesthetic register of pantomime dancing should now be obvious. Parallel explorations of emotional landscapes, deep forays into subjectivity, especially into the darkest corners of the female psyche, pantomime and Parthenian plots seem cut from the same aesthetic cloth. The precise negotiations at the posited interface of literature and dance are irrecoverable, but the fireworks of delirious passion that could have punctuated the choreographies created for Parthenian heroines of the EP are easy to imagine. To paraphrase choreographer Roland Petit, the EP would have offered first33 34

Cf. Cassiod. Var. 4.51.9. See Lib. Or. 64.67 on the dancer impersonating both ‘Daphne fleeing’ (τὴν Δάφνην φεύγουσαν) and ‘Apollo pursuing’ (τὸν Ἀπόλλω διώκοντα); in Homily 5 (fol. 22 recto a–b), Jacob of Sarugh taps freely into the affective structure of a ‘Daphne and Apollo’ pantomimic plot line as enacted in the Euphrates region at the turn of the sixth century AD.

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century BC dancers inspiration for some of the best plots pantomime could ever dream of.35

Parthenius’ Collection: A Choreographer’s and Dancer’s Opportunity? Arguing that some of the stories in Parthenius’ collection would have thrived in their transition to the stage is not tantamount to arguing that they would have lived happily ever after as classical tragic plots. In fact, nothing would have been further from the truth, for the overall aesthetics underpinning the EP is distinctly ‘non-Aristotelian’ and even reminiscent of the extreme sensationalism of nineteenth-century European melodrama.36 But the melodramatic mode is in itself exceptionally akin to the ancient pantomime idiom in several respects,37 common ground consisting in emotional intensification and sensuous excess; the downgrading of articulate language as a medium of communication; a non-classical narrative structure that advances a stirring plot line by means of short, self-contained scenes moving from climax to thrilling climax and punctuated by pictorial still-frames held up for extended contemplation; situations of extreme suspense and a deep investment in visual display, turning ‘showing’, as opposed to ‘telling’, into the most privileged performative dialect. Indeed this last shared element brings us to the core of ancient pantomime, wherein all forms of astonishment, from horror (including death and violence) to marvel (including somatic transformation), are displaced from the realm of the ‘heard’ to the realm of the ‘seen’, the physically enacted, the performer’s corporeal and gestural space. Libanius (Or. 64.110) could hardly have been more explicit when summing up pantomime as the place where you would take your fill not only of the world’s greatest misfortunes unfolding as you watch (ὁρῶν) but also of death itself, enacted in flesh and blood on stage. In plots where excessive violence is involved, everything rests on the exhibitionist foregrounding of vigorous 35 36 37

Quoted in Mannoni 1984: 43, ‘les plus belles histoires de ballets dont on puisse rêver’. See primarily Sistakou 2016: 211–20. For a cursory comparative look, see Lada-Richards 2019a.

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action, death and carnage as they fall upon and ravage dancing bodies: And if the dancer is required to show (δεῖξαι) Achilles as he behaves in Troy, you will see (ὄψει) the hero killing and brandishing his ashen spear and stirring up fear and confusion and butchering Hector and dragging his corpse and leaping farther than the pentathletes. (Lib. Or. 64.68)

It is precisely pantomime’s signature way of converting the ‘indirect’ or ‘virtual’ seeing of ‘Aristotelian’ drama to ‘direct’, open, physical vision that would have been ideally suited to the artistic realization of the highly packed, episodic plots of the EP. Take EP 21, whose plot involves Achilles’ sacking of islands and plundering of cities (21.1) and (in the embedded poem) an infatuated girl’s cold-hearted gazing at the slaying of parents and the enslavement of women, dragged to the ships in chains (21.4). Distressingly palpable, this paroxysm of sensation would have been magnified if shown in 3D, its visceral eloquence fleshed out by a dancer skilled at evoking scenes of total disaster with his very body: ‘he will compel you to see Troy falling here and now and Priam cut down before your very eyes’ (cogetque videre | praesentem Troiam Priamumque ante ora cadentem), is Manilius’ précis on the projected destiny of the man born under the sign of Cepheus (Astron. 5.484–5), and the prediction dovetails with Libanius’ reference to ‘the collapsing of ancient kingdoms’ as part of the dancer’s repertoire.38 EP 13 is also a series of ‘shockers’ which, in the poetics of traditional, ‘Aristotelian’ drama, would have been merely reported in a Messenger speech. The most horrific sequence, Harpalyce’s triple crime of dismembering, cooking and serving her younger brother’s limbs to her father/lover,39 is also a combination of attested pantomimic themes (sparagmos and tecnophagy), the stories of Procne and Tereus or Thyestes’ cannibalistic banquet being the most infamous examples.40 The heart-stopping plot culminates in Clymenus’ suicide and Harpalyce’s transformation 38

39 40

See Or. 64.115: δεῖξον αὐτῶι (sc. the spectator) δι᾽ ὀρχηστοῦ παλαιὰς βασιλείας καθηιρημένας. Cf. Luc. Salt. 76 (Capaneus scaling the Theban walls). See EP 13. 3: κατακόπτει; σκευάσασα τὰ κρέα τοῦ παιδὸς παρατίθησι τῶι πατρί. Lucian mentions sparagmos explicitly for Iacchus (Salt. 39), Orpheus (51), Apsyrtus (53) and implicitly for Actaeon and Pentheus (41); for Actaeon, cf. Varro, Sat. Men. fr. 513 Astbury. Tecnophagy: Luc. Salt. 80 (Cronus and Thyestes); Sid. Apoll. Carm. 23.277 (Thyestes), 278–80 (Tereus); Jacob of Sarugh, Homily 5, fol. 21 verso b.

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into a bird (13.4), metamorphosis being one of the most beloved pantomime topics throughout antiquity.41 No less histrionic would have been a climactic death by suffocation, stoning or the noose,42 as in Parthenius’ own versification of Byblis’ fate in EP 11 or the suicide of Thymoetes’ wife, hanging herself through fear (δέος) and shame (αἰσχύνην) when her incestuous liaison with her brother is revealed to their father (EP 31.1). Following her suicide, the narrative changes focus just as surely as the dancer would have changed his mask in a danced version of the story. Parthenius now closes up on Thymoetes himself, victim of a novel pathēma instigated by the sight of a corpse – a beautiful girl – spewed up by the sea. The explosive mix of pathos compressed in this story is only detonated when the necrophiliac slays himself (ἐπικατασφάξαι αὑτόν) over the great tomb built over the body of his beloved (EP 31.2), a climactic moment whose impact would have been immeasurably enhanced by pantomime-style choreography.43 Broadly speaking, then, in the aesthetic of extreme spectacularity that permeates pantomime just as much as the EP, no atrocity and no calamity is too appalling for on-stage imitation. Even what we would have thought impossible to stage without substantial technical support – for example, storms at sea and shipwrecks – seems to have been part of pantomime’s stockpile of ‘special effects’ achieved through the performing body’s virtuosity.44 The range of verbal pictures that could have accompanied such bodily enactments can be gauged not only from Seneca’s pantomime-inflected nautical imagery45 but also, closer to Parthenius’ aesthetic world, from Euphorion’s Philoctetes (poetic fr. 48 Lightfoot) containing a quintessentially melodramatic, ‘this is it’ moment of drowning: clinging on to life (λιλαιόμενον βιότοιο) as 41

42

43 44

45

See primarily Luc. Salt. 57. Cf. Arn. Adv. nat. 4.35, 7.33; August. De civ. D. 7.26; Sid. Apoll. Carm. 23.281–95; Prudent. Perist. 10.221–7; Jacob of Sarugh, Homily 5, fol. 22 recto a. Suffocation (EP 9, Polycrite); stoning (EP 21, Pisidice); hanging (EP 28, Cleite; 31 Euopis); beheading (EP 8, Herippe); sparagmos by dogs (EP 10, Leuconoe). For a similar moment in pantomime-inflected literature, see Achill. Tat. 3.16–17. Luc. Salt. 46 includes the entire Ὀδύσσειος πλάνη in his pantomimic catalogue as well as the famous wreck of the Greek fleet off the Euboean coast. See, e.g., the shipwreck of the returning Argive fleet, as described in Sen. Ag. 465–556, with Zanobi 2014: 193–9, highlighting the reference to a mimicum naufragium in Sen. De ira 2.2.5 as possibly meaning ‘mimetically enacted’ (199).

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the sea submerges him (fr. 48.1), gasping for air (3), Iphimachus stretches out his arms just visible above the surface (2), ‘tossing his hands on high’ (χεῖρας ὑπερπλάζων), mouth overflowing with brine (5). Such graphic, almost ‘gestural’ writing could have been perfectly at home in a canticum providing a running commentary to a ‘death by water’ scene and would have been equally applicable to a fabula based on, say, Alcinoe’s experience in mid-ocean (EP 27.2): regretting her flight from home and family in the thrall of a stranger and weeping copiously, as she invokes now husband now children, she throws herself into the sea and drowns. The melodramatic economy of spectacularized shock, horror, fear and suffering seems to have been as much a part of pantomime as of the darker corners of the Parthenian and Euphorionic worlds. The further we delve into the virtual universe of the EP, the deeper the equivalences with the pantomime mode. Adapted into dance, Parthenius’ plots would have offered ample opportunity for the creation of dynamic, athletic choreographies, a distinctive feature of pantomime entertainment enabling the performer to showcase a stunning virtuosity, his brilliance off the floor, in eye-catching ‘turns and twirls and jumps and back-flung poses’ (Luc. Salt. 71). A frantic leap off a cliff, travels or madness or the two combined, as in Clymenus’ deranged chase of his own married daughter in a morbid pursuit of sexual gratification (EP 13.3),46 would be excellent vehicles for the dancer to display the kind of dazzling acrobatics mentioned by our sources.47 But ancient pantomime was not bravura technical display only. Fast-paced, sensational plot lines notwithstanding, an aesthetic trademark of the genre was the creation of climactic moments of unbearable tension where everything would freeze, where story would melt into picture, where the accumulated surplus of emotion would channel itself into the dancer’s motionless gestures and ‘attitudes’ (skhēmata, Plut. Mor. 747c). Both Plutarch and Libanius speak of bodily configurations arrested in space and time as in a picture, all the while the dancers ‘retain their attitudes like figures in a painting’ (ὅταν . . . γραφικῶς 46

47

Travels: EP 1.1 (Lyrcus), 2.1 (Odysseus), 11.1 (Caunus), 36.1 (Rhesus). For μανιώδεις ὀρχήσεις, see Ath. 14.629d–e, including the thermaustris, which Pollux describes as a ‘strenuous’ form of dance ‘full of great leaps’ (πηδητικόν) (Onom. 4.102). See, e.g., Galen, De sanitate tuenda 2.11; cf. Lib. Or. 64.104.

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τοῖς εἴδεσι ἐπιμένωσι, Plut., Mor. 747c), their statue-like stillness culminating in a tableau vivant on stage (μετὰ δὲ τῆς στάσεως ἡ εἰκὼν ἀπαντᾷ, Lib. Or. 64.118). Opportunities for sophisticated interplay between the narrative and the pictorial abound in the EP. In a librettist’s hands, Arganthone, who, after Rhesus’ demise in battle, wanders (ἀλωμένη) around the place of their first union, calling vainly on the dead and abstaining from food and drink until she perishes of grief (διὰ λύπην, EP 36.5), could easily have been ‘written’ into a heart-rending tableau, the stillness of her dying body providing a strong ‘visual summary of the emotional situation’, as Brooks (1995: 48) writes on Victorian melodrama. Similarly, the Liebestod of broken-hearted Oenone (EP 4.7), shrieking and wailing copiously (ἀνώιμωξέ τε καὶ πολλὰ κατολοφυραμένη) at the sight of Paris’ inanimate body on the ground, would have made a memorable climactic picture of total despair, perhaps deliberately contrasting with the opening scene of pastoral and marital bliss in Paris’ mountain quarters (EP 4.2), before he was famous. By the fourth century AD it seems to have been a fixture of the dancer’s art to evoke virtual pastoral landscapes appearing more real than reality itself to the admiring viewer’s eye.48 A pantomime dancing the ‘shepherd’ Paris49 would not only have created corporeally his own tableau teeming with vegetable and animal life but would also have immersed the spectator straight into the middle of the action, inviting him now to amble vicariously through groves, now to savour the sights and sounds of a bucolic world.50 This particular EP was, I submit, especially likely to have been earmarked for virtuosic modulation into dance, as pastoral themes constituted a distinct branch of pantomime entertainment favoured by Bathyllus himself,51 the vanguard artist who, alongside Pylades, made of dance an 48

49

50 51

Lib. Or. 64.116: ‘For what painting (γραφή), what meadow (λειμών) offers a sight more pleasant than the dance and the dancer (ἥδιον ὀρχήσεως καὶ ὀρχηστοῦ θέαμα)’. A role better known from the ‘Judgement of Paris’, a pantomime hit throughout antiquity. See primarily Luc. Salt. 45; Tert. Apol. 15.2; August. De civ. D. 18.10 (drawing on Varro) on the story among those ‘sung (cantantur) and danced (saltantur) in the midst of theatrical applause’. An entire performance in the pantomime mode is described in Apul. Met. 10.30–4. So in Lib. Or. 64.116. For Bathyllus’ ‘lighthearted’, bucolic strand of dancing, see Plut. Mor. 711e–f; for pastoral characters implicated in first-century BC Roman references to dance, see Hor. Sat. 1.5.63, Epist. 2.2.124–5.

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ambitious commercial enterprise as well as a powerful artistic statement in the last decades of the first century BC. Finally, the creation of absorbingly emotional pictorial scenes as part of pantomime’s signifying practices was closely interwoven with recurrent shifts between movement and stasis. A whirl of acrobatic virtuosity would precede the freezing of the narrative flow into stillness, as the dancer would hold a ‘suddenly crystallized posture’ (τὴν ἐξαίφνης . . . πάγιον στάσιν) or ‘a figure held fixed in position’ (τὸν ἐν τῇ στάσει τηρούμενον τύπον, Lib. Or. 64.118). As Libanius further explains, dancers ‘whirl around as if borne on wings, but conclude their movement in a static pose (εἰς ἀκίνητον στάσιν), as if glued to the spot (ὥσπερ κεκολλημένοι)’ (Or. 64.118). One can imagine this very sequence underlying choreographies of chase and transformation, as in the securely ‘received into dance’ story of Apollo and Daphne, where ‘at the point of being overtaken’ (ὡς δὲ συνεδιώκετο), the girl finds herself all too literally rooted into the ground as a laurel tree (EP 15.4). In EP 17 the ending is perhaps more graphic still. Having lunged at his own mother with the intention of killing her (ἐπὶ τὸ διεργάσασθαι αὐτήν), Periander is suddenly kept in check (κατασχεθείς), ‘glued to the spot’ at the sight of some divine apparition (ὑπό τινος δαιμονίου φαντάσματος) intervening to avert the matricide (17.6–7). Libanius’ conceptualization of the dancer as the sculptor of his own form, imitating characters not by means of stone (οὐκ ἐν λίθωι μιμούμενος) but in and by himself (ἀλλ᾽ ἐν αὑτῶι παριστάς) and challenging ‘even the best of sculptors’ in a contest of statuary beauty (Or. 64.116), would seem all the more appropriate at such prolonged moments of repressed action on the stage, laden with pathos. This section will end the way it started, with a caveat. ‘Received into dance’ should not be taken to imply ‘translated’ into dance word for word and scene by scene. A competent librettist would have been able to identify a plot’s highlight moments (apices rerum in Cassiod. Var. 4.51.9) and most astonishingly visual scenes and would have chosen to give corporeal form to a character’s inner torment at nodal narrative points of exquisite pathos. If the migration of monumental literary works such as Shakespeare’s tragedies or even novels such as Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du 309

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temps perdu involved wholesale adaptation,52 we should envisage drastic remodelling when thinking of Parthenius’ ‘reception into dance’. ‘Strange Stories’ for Up-Market Dinner Guests My discussion has so far eschewed a potential snag. The EP is not exactly the kind of manual ps.-Dositheus would have had in mind when flagging the value of mythological handbooks. With the supernatural playing a minimal role in the collection, Parthenius’ compendium is far from the stories of divine love affairs prominent in pantomime’s erotic repertoire. Some of its stories can only be called ‘myths according to the broadest definition of myth as non-historical narrative’ (Lightfoot 1999: 232) and border more on literary fiction than what Lucian (Salt. 61) considers the hard core of pantomime dancing, namely Hesiodic, Homeric, tragic mythology.53 In addition, these stories cannot be considered mainstream – most are truly arcane or, as Artemidorus would put it, ἱστορίαι ξέναι καὶ ἄτριπτοι (‘strange and untrodden stories’).54 Would pantomime, the preceptor of elementary mythical alphabets to the illiterate masses (Or. 64.112), have trafficked in similar subject matter? Pantomime was a diverse, capacious genre. Original creations aside (and there must have been thousands of them), it seems to have been sustained by adaptations of tragedy (so much so that tragedy became integral to the definition of the pantomime genre and its artist),55 epic56 and a smattering of other genres, including 52

53

54 55

56

See, e.g., José Limón’s The Moor’s Pavane (1949), a modern dance classic derived from Othello, and Barren Sceptre (1960), reducing Macbeth to a duet for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth; cf. Roland Petit’s Proust ou les intermittences du coeur (1974, for the Ballets de Marseille). Episodes from Odysseus’ travels (cf. EP 2, 3, 12) are specifically singled out as raw material for pantomime plots in Luc. Salt. 46. Oneir. 4.63 = T7 Lightfoot. For full references to sources, see Robert 1930; cf. Lada-Richards 2007: 181 n. 21. On the common ground shared by tragedy and pantomime, see Luc. Salt. 31 and Lib. Or. 64.112. Regarding Ovid, see primarily Tr. 2.519–20 and 5.7.25–6. For Virgil, see primarily Suet. Ner. 54; Luc. Salt. 46 and Macrob. Sat. 5.17.5 (Aeneas and Dido); August. Serm. 241.5 = PL 38.1135–6 (Aeneas in the Underworld).

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bucolic poetry and novels.57 Regarding non-mythological salacious matter on the dancing floor, a close parallel would be the overwhelming, illicit passion of Antiochus, son of Seleucus, for his stepmother Stratonice, daughter of Demetrius Poliorcetes. Explicitly mentioned in Lucian’s list of pantomime subjects as a Phoenician ‘must-have’ in a dancer’s repertoire (Salt. 58), Antiochus’ pathēma is also narrated in prose versions that encapsulate the essence of corporeal dramaturgy at its best. Lucian’s, Plutarch’s and Valerius Maximus’ narratives,58 similar in length and overall feel to several among Parthenius’ stories, cannot be far from what a prose summary, a hypomnēma, of a fabula saltica on the erōtikon pathēma of Antiochus might have read like. As for the question of obscurity and the ‘untrodden’ path, it would seem that pantomime too could have a taste for the unhackneyed tale, if we believe Lycinus’ assertion that erudite and recherché, intricate plots with countless vicissitudes (πολυμαθέστεραι καὶ μυρίας μεταβολὰς ἔχουσαι) are what differentiates pantomimic from tragic versions of the same myths (Luc. Salt. 31). An adult pantomime mask from Thessalonica (second century AD) bearing the inscription ‘Astyanax’ gives a glimpse of the lure of recondite mythical alternatives endemic to the genre.59 A fabula following the bizarre, convoluted plot line of Parthenius’ EP 33, entitled ‘Assaon’ but concerning the story of Niobe ‘related differently from the majority version’ (διαφόρως . . . τοῖς πολλοῖς ἱστορεῖται, EP 33.1), would have contained sufficient ‘coups de théâtre’ and deviations from the mainstream to fit the bill of Lucian’s more varied (ποικιλώτεραι, Salt. 31) and learned plots. The sociocultural milieu where the daringly new palette offered by Parthenius’ EP would have been particularly welcome in a theatricalized form is the triclinium and/or grounds of the aristocrat’s estate, which sometimes included designated performance spaces ranging from a simple stage (e.g. in the peristyle garden of 57

58 59

On Virgil’s Eclogues and pantomime dancing, see Lada-Richards 2019b; Chariton’s Callirhoe was probably recalibrated as a fabula saltica by Persius’ time in Rome (Pers. 1.134 with Tilg 2010); on pantomime and the novel, see Morales 2004: 67–77. Luc. De Dea Syria 17–18; Plut. Dem. 38; Val. Max. 5.7.ext.1. For the ancient sources of the ‘adult’ Astyanax tradition and a full discussion of the mask, see Jory 2012.

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the House of the Golden Cupids at Pompeii) to a real open-air theatre, as in the palatial villa of Vedius Pollio at Pausilypon (Posillipo) on the Bay of Naples. The presence of (mostly eastern) dancers as ὀρχηστοδιδάσκαλοι, hired entertainers or members of resident dancing troupes in a domestic context, is securely documented and inextricably interwoven with the private staging of mythological enactments.60 A party guest will easily immerse himself in the heretic pleasures of incestuous lust embodied in the culturally familiar guise of, say, a Phaedra saltata (especially if in conjunction with a wall painting on the same myth), but the house or villa owner can defamiliarize incest and complicate his guest’s vicarious role playing by having a dancer incarnate the incestuous Clymenus instead, in a fabula recasting Parthenius’ EP 13. Similarly, while sparagmos would have been commonly associated with Pentheus or Actaeon, a danced Leuconoe torn apart by dogs (EP 10. 3) would not only have enabled the villa owner to ‘cash in’ on doctrina but also allowed the mythographical knowledge of his guests to be challenged to the extreme, as a series of first-rate ‘puzzles’ would have ‘sharpened’ their mind (cf. Lib. Or. 64.113) and tested their command of competing or arcane traditions.61 The added ‘fizz’ that comes with the dancing of a famous myth with an unexpected twist (e.g. the Niobe of EP 33, who is not morphing into stone) or with plot lines providing variations on well-known mythical motifs (e.g. incest, adultery, betrayal, violent death) would have easily transformed the performance space of the wealthy into prime ground for the display of erudition and the experiencing of new sensations. Who might have been responsible for adapting EP stories or even chosen parts of EP stories into danceable matter in the first century BC? My first suggestion, no matter how seemingly implausible, is Parthenius himself. The fact that we would never have known about Statius as a composer of fabulae salticae had it 60 61

See Csapo 2014: 179–91; Wiseman 2016; cf. Sick 1999. The existence of further collections of recondite myths or weird versions of familiar myths in high circles indicates there was a widespread appetite for games of recognition based on intellectually demanding mythological matter. Roughly contemporary with the EP would be Conon’s Diēgēseis, the Collections of Mythical Stories by grammarian and poet Sostratus of Nysa and a similarly recondite mythological handbook by Sostratus’ brother, Aristodemus of Nysa.

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not been for Juvenal’s passing comment (7.87) on his ‘virgin’ (intactam) Agave sold to (and perhaps commissioned by?) the illustrious pantomime Paris, ought to be acting as a sobering reminder throughout. Not only is Parthenius’ ‘Byblis’ fragment62 dramatic, visual and gestural par excellence (especially lines 4–6) – a perfect catch for an A-list performer in search of arista poiēmata – but some of our scarce indications concerning Parthenius’ poetic output led to the heart of the pantomime repertoire. Myrrha, given celebrity status by Cinna in his Zmyrna but also treated by Parthenius,63 was a pantomime heroine throughout antiquity64 and so was Scylla Nisi, featuring in Parthenius’ Metamorphoses (fr. 24 Lightfoot).65 Indeed, the distinctive element of Parthenius’ Scylla, the etymology of the Saronic Gulf from σύρεσθαι (‘to be dragged’), commemorating Minos’ binding of the traitorous girl to his ship and dragging her along over the sea,66 evokes a visual sequence perfectly compatible with the modalities of pantomime performances. For here too dancers, moving so fast as if they were borne on wings (ὡς μὲν γὰρ ὑπόπτεροι, Lib. Or. 64.118), give the impression of being ‘dragged’ (ἐπισυρομένους) across the orchestra (John Chrysostom, PG 49.195) by means of their flowing, trailing garments, sweeping the floor ‘like a broom’ (καλλύντρου δίκην, Clement, Paedagogus 2.10.70–4). Did Parthenius ever versify his own Daphne of EP 15.4,67 the version that travelled into dance? Questions arise faster than they can be tackled. No historically verifiable conclusion is possible but, if Harrison (2007: 51) is right that the ‘conjunction of metamorphosis and unhappy love can be seen as particularly Parthenian’, Parthenius’ artistic world is in full confluence with that of pantomime. And there is more. If Parthenius’ elusive 62 63

64

65 66

67

Fr. 33 Lightfoot, versifying his own version of the story in the EP (11.4). See Catull. 95; Cinna frr. 6 (a very ‘Parthenian’ glimpse of the heroine in anguish) and 7–8 Courtney; Parthenius fr. 29 Lightfoot. On the reason why Cinna’s and Parthenius’ versions can be considered related, see Clausen 1964: 191; Courtney 1993: 220; Lightfoot 1999: 183. Certainly by Lucian’s time (Salt. 58) but also earlier (see Joseph. AJ 19.94 with reference to Rome in AD 41). Luc. Salt. 41 on Scylla Nisi and Minos. Fr. 24a Lightfoot: ἐπισύρεσθαι τῆι θαλάσσηι. ὅθεν Σαρωνικὸς . . . ἐκλήθη; 24b: ἀφῆκε σύρεσθαι διὰ θαλάσσης. So thinks Lightfoot 1999: 165, as part of the Metamorphoses.

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Crinagoras (SH 624) was dedicated to Crinagoras of Mytilene, ‘court versifier’,68 friend of both Julius Caesar and Augustus and part of the circle of Augustus’ sister Octavia, one further piece can be added to our puzzle. For Crinagoras appears fully immersed in Rome’s emergent ‘celebrity’ culture, now conjuring up a fan’s reaction to a singing star (AP 9.429),69 now enjoining the singer/ citharode cum librettist Philonides to compose a multirole libretto to elicit firework displays from Bathyllus, the trailblazer from Alexandria and grand passion of Maecenas himself (Tac. Ann. 1.54.2).70 Like Crinagoras, Parthenius too was probably rubbing shoulders with the dancing stars who, moralizing prejudice aside, were, so to speak, the cult of fashionable Rome, basking in the aura of legitimation provided by supremely powerful arbiters of taste.71 To paraphrase Virgil’s bon mot regarding Gallus in Ecl. 10.3, neget quis cantica Bathyllo? Beyond Parthenius himself, contemporary poets of modernist aesthetic predilections, courting the unconventional and the risqué, could have trifled with ephemera cantica serving as playful yet mannered fodder for private danced entertainment, whether to be provided by an amateur upper-class dancer or a professional male soloist or even a female artist, like the teenage Licinia Eucharis, whose dancing was said to have graced the ‘games of the nobles’ (nobilium ludos) in the 50s, some of which must have been private engagements.72 Did the consul Munatius Plancus’ pantomime-style dancing of the merman Glaucus at an eastern banquet73 have anything to do with the literary Glaucus of the praetor Quintus Cornificius,74 composer of ‘light work’ 68 69

70

71

72 73 74

Bowersock 1965: 124; cf. Bowie 2011: 186–95. The subject of the song, the consequences of Nauplius’ revenge on the returning Greeks, is also a pantomime topic (Luc. Salt. 46). As for Crinagoras’ AP 9.545, it accompanies the gift of a copy of Callimachus’ Hecale offered to Marcellus, Augustus’ prematurely deceased nephew in whose memory were given the games hosting the official launch of pantomime as a ‘grand spectacular’ in Rome in 23/2 BC. See Jory 1981. Is the plot thickening sufficiently for us to take notice? AP 9.542, with Garelli 2007: 149. Is Maecenas perhaps the true, albeit unnamed, recipient of this laudatory epigram? See Bourdieu 1993: 51 on the importance of ‘consecration bestowed by the dominant fractions of the dominant class’. See Wiseman 1985a: 30–1, 45–7. See Vell. Pat. 2.83.2: Glaucum saltasset in convivio; Wiseman 1985a: 47. See Courtney 1993: 226; Hollis 2007: 150–4.

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(leve . . . opus, Ov. Tr. 2.436) and widely travelled in the pantomime strongholds of Syria and Cilicia? Or even with the evident vogue of ‘Glaucus’ poems in the Hellenistic tradition?75 The open-ended possibility should act as a warning against any uncritical assumption that stylish Hellenistic/neoteric work and corporeal performance dialects could not have much in common. The net can be spread much wider still. Erudite trifling with Parthenian arcana would not have been out of character, so to speak, for an upper-class amateur versifier like P. Volumnius Eutrapelus,76 patron of celebrity mima Volumnia Cytheris77 as well as of Crassicius Pansa, the culturally amphibian grammaticus who achieved fame when he prised open the closely kept secrets of Cinna’s Zmyrna but started off in the theatre, ‘assisting the writers of mimes’ (mimographos adiuvat) in their task (Suet. Gramm. 18.2).78 Did Crassicius ever adapt the Zmyrna into a form that could be danced? Given Parthenius’ closeness with Cinna, was he ever tempted to reconfigure a Parthenian plot as a fabula saltica? Grammatici like Crassicius, very often Greek and in various stages of dependence (e.g. slaves, freedmen) on noble households, would have been ideally placed for executing a patron’s wish for the provision of refined entertainment fare, culled from less accessible corners of the literary tradition and destined not for a broad, indiscriminate circle of ‘consumers’ but for the upper crust, his peers and equals. Similarly ideal for reshaping and repurposing Parthenius into danceable forms would have been a whole roster of highly positioned Greek intellectuals79 who, in the intimate entourage of powerful Romans, might have been invited, as opposed to pressured, to add an aura of privileged, sophisticated frivolity to the more mainstream hedonistic amusements of the triclinium. In the absence of new evidence, we are unlikely to ever ascertain whether any sophisticated, hybrid, cross-genre performances 75

76 77 78 79

For a list, see Knox 2011: 194. ‘Glaucus’ is also present in Parthenius’ line Γλαύκωι καὶ Νηρῆι καὶ εἰναλίωι Μελικέρτηι (fr. 36 Lightfoot), famously imitated by Virgil in G. 1.437: Glauco et Panopeae et Inoo Melicertae. See Hollis 2007: 164; Courtney 1993: 234. See Servius on Ecl. 10.1: Cytheridem meretricem, libertam Volumnii. See Wiseman 1985b. See primarily Bowersock 1965: 30–41, 122–39; Rawson 1985: 66–83.

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wrought around the material assembled by Parthenius in his EP did actually materialize in the twilight of the Roman Republic. Frustrating though it is, however, this absence must not stifle further inquiry. Purposefully experimental, in a way that will hopefully encourage others to pursue further research and research to advance, this chapter has argued that Parthenius’ hypomnēmatium was ‘good to think with’ in the context of the dance, especially in the period leading up to pantomime’s grand, flamboyant entrance into Roman public life. ‘Embodied’ Reception, Reception into Dance: Closing Thoughts The last word belongs to embodiment, the overarching conceptual framework and critical paradigm that places the body at the vital centre of our ability to create and communicate thought and meaning. What are the broader epistemic shifts involved in the process of a verbal artefact’s reception into dance, the art form par excellence where the creative agent’s ‘lived bodiliness’ lies at the very centre of the aesthetic experience? In the first place, the whole range of discursive knowledge (linguistic, literary, aesthetic, factual) residing in the verbal text will be repurposed, distilled into ‘corporeal’, ‘bodily’ knowledge, meaning not simply the dancer’s technical ‘know-how’ but rather what Bourdieu (1990: 166) identifies as ‘a way of understanding which is altogether particular, and often forgotten in theories of intelligence: that which consists of understanding with one’s body’. While the textual, verbal register ‘knows’ the sentient beings that populate it by means of their linguistic, emotional and intellectual capacities, the dancer understands and feels them deeply in his flesh and bones, knows them by the way they shape his body, instruct his limbs and ligaments to move, and compel his heart to race and veins to throb. This is primordial, ‘embodied’ knowledge,80 cultivated and handed down like a precious ‘heirloom’ (Roach 1996: 82) through the 80

On embodied knowledge in ancient pantomime, see Lada-Richards 2007: 105–8, 130– 4; Webb 2017.

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performance genealogies created by ‘master-and-pupil’ or ‘family’ ties. Marginalized in academic scholarship,81 embodied knowledge sediments in the dancer’s sensorium and neuromusculature, thereby becoming corporeal habitus and ‘blood’ or ‘body’ memory. As such, not only is it easily accessible, forever ‘at hand’ (πρόχειρα in Luc. Salt. 61); crucially, it transforms the dancer himself into a living, bodily archive,82 a milieu de mémoire (‘environment of memory’)83 for the experiencing and re-enactment of a community’s traditions. By Lucian’s time, the dancer could be hailed as the marvellous site where the entirety of Greek inheritance was made carnal, Greekness engraved on the flesh (Lada-Richards 2007: 98–103). Secondly, the change of register from the textual to the corporeal affects the mode of engagement with the end product of reception into dance. For among embodied performance practices it is the dance par excellence that forges a connection with its viewers kinaesthetically, bringing them in sympathetic alignment with the energy, emotion and corporeal disposition of the dancer himself.84 Finally, the mediation of embodied practices in the reception of a literary artefact leaves an imprint even on the original receiver’s reception of the original text – in our case, Parthenius’ Sufferings in Love. Having placed the EP at the starting point of a journey into dance, I read it differently. Rather than registering words flat on the page, I allow the imaginary dancer to ‘lead’ me ‘around’, as Libanius would put it (Or. 64.116), so that I might enter his world as an embodied subject, proprioceptively, feeling the pull of gravity, the direction of movements, the pathways into space. In this immersive experience Parthenius’ stories come alive in 3D and I begin to ‘know’ his characters not in spite of my body but because of the deep visceral continuity enabled by my body. Even as a heuristic, interpretative 81

82

83 84

See, e.g., Klein 2007. On elite denigration of ancient pantomime’s intellectual credentials, see Lada-Richards 2007: 104–11. See, e.g., Lepecki 2010. Famous examples of lost dance masterpieces revived partly through the original dancers’ body memory are Nijinsky’s L’après-midi d’un faune (1912) and Rite of Spring (1913). As in Nora 1989. For ancient sources on kinaesthetic response to pantomime dance, see Lada-Richards 2007: 131; on kinaesthesia and Greek choreia see Olsen 2017. Bibliography on kinaesthesia is voluminous and mounting. An excellent starting point is Foster 2011.

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tool, ‘reception into dance’ is neither inferior nor futile, but simply ‘other’ to the discursive practices legitimated by scholarly convention. As such, it is immensely liberating, empowering and potentially pathbreaking. At the very least, it stands poised to sound the clarion call for a move beyond the textual paradigm85 in the way we classicists think of the vagaries of the reception of high-end literary works.

85

On the importance of including an ‘embodied’ or ‘proprioceptive’ dimension in our interaction with Greco-Roman antiquity, see now Slaney 2017.

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ch a p t e r 1 3 SA P P H O I N P I EC ES

susan a. stephens

Within the last fifteen years there have been two remarkable additions to Sappho’s corpus: the Cologne fragment on old age, published in 2004,1 and the more recent Brothers and Cypris poems, published in 2014.2 The appearance of these texts not only excited the academic world, it attracted considerable interest in the print media as well as in the virtual sphere of blogs and wikis. Apart from the interpretative challenges that any new poem must present, these new finds raise hopes about Sappho’s survival in antiquity and the possibility of further discoveries – why not a whole poetry book, or at least part of one, as with the recent discovery of a roll of Posidippus’ epigrams? This is possible, since the discovery of any particular literary text is serendipitous, and if something new does come to light it will surely be from Egypt. But notwithstanding the fact that so much of what we now have of Sappho comes from Egyptian cast-offs, there is a general tendency to treat Egypt as idiosyncratic: useful when some aspect of a recovered text fits a scholar’s notion of Sappho’s poetic practice or ancient reception in the Archaic or Classical period, but otherwise dismissed as irrelevant in taste and in patterns of survival. But is the reception of Sappho in Egypt atypical? In order to answer this question, I shall consider the survival of Sappho’s poetry from two perspectives: what ancient Greek sources outside of GrecoRoman Egypt reveal about literate (as opposed to performative) reception and how papyrus and parchment sources recovered from the sands of Egypt nuance that picture. As these two sources intersect or diverge, they will also shed light on the processes 1 2

MP3 1449.01 (third century BC), on which see Greene and Skinner 2009. MP3 1445.02 (second century AD), on which see Bierl and Lardinois 2016.

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and biases inherent in our modern attempts to recover ancient texts. The reception of Sappho is particularly challenging because, to quote Daniel Mendelsohn’s wry comment in the New Yorker, “the greater problem for Sappho studies is there’s so little Sappho to study. It would be hard to think of another poet whose status is so disproportionate to the size of her surviving body of work.”3 This gap between the survival of her texts and modern interest in her existence as a female, perhaps lesbian (in the modern sense) poet from antiquity, both within and outside of the scholarly community, conditions her reception.4 Because Sappho was not only a poet, but a woman nearly unique for her time and place, these two Sapphos have experienced in antiquity, as now, divergent receptions. Her poetry can be analyzed: witness Longinus, who not only quotes fr. 31, but also discusses how she achieved her poetic effects. But about Sappho the woman we know nothing, and the sheer absence of evidence encourages conflicting interpretations of everything including her social position, sexual preferences, audience for, and performance of her poems, while what information we do have comes from randomly surviving sources or from the fragments themselves. The Byzantine encyclopaedia, the Suda, carries this doublethink to its logical conclusion with two entries: one for Sappho the poet and another Sappho the woman who committed suicide because of her love of Phaon.5 Today studies of the ancient reception of these Sapphos fall into roughly four phases: attempts to reconstruct Sappho in her seventh-century Lesbian milieu; attempts to account for the transmission of her poems from that distant time to third-century Alexandria with emphasis on sympotic performance primarily in Athens; the Hellenistic moment when her texts were collected and canonized, and when, for the first time, we can see how other poets engage with her poetry; and finally the long Roman period in 3 4

5

March 16, 2015. On her ‘fragmentariness’ see, e.g., Dubois 1995: x: “Sappho is only a name, the name a tradition assigns as the putative origin of a set of fragmentary texts.” Or Williamson 1995: 5: “whose image has most often been inscribed on the blank page, hers or that of her readers?” See Most 1995 for the persistence of this division of erotic and poetic Sappho in her reception.

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which Sappho, though not often quoted, becomes an object of praise for her poems and of fantasy for the anomaly of her gender. Sappho in the papyrological record partakes of this same bifurcation, though to a far lesser extent. Within Greco-Roman Egypt, not only have fragments of her book-rolls survived, their very concreteness coupled with their find contexts allows more secure insights about how she was read and copied in the Greek-speaking spaces of the Roman Empire. The questions that I shall attempt to answer are whether Egypt’s reception of Sappho is unique and what, if anything, it can contribute to our understanding of her textual survival. For my inquiry I begin with glimpses of Sappho in the main ancient Greek sources outside of Egypt (and which are usually cited in imagining Sappho and in reconstructing her texts). As a brake on the tendency to overinterpretation, I have employed a crudely objective tool – the occurrence of Sappho by name, and the context in which she is mentioned. While this will not capture verbal allusions in texts,6 it will provide a rudimentary metric for the kinds of interest shown in her poetry in contrast to or in tandem with other lyric poets from antiquity.7 As part of this survey, I shall note the lineation of various pieces of information about her and, where appropriate, what modern scholars have made of these passages. Classical Sappho How Sappho’s poems were composed, performed, and transmitted after their original moment in Lesbos are central topics of modern Sappho scholarship.8 On the basis of images of a female singer named as “Psapho” on four Attic vases from the late sixth and early fifth centuries, scholars have conjectured that her poems were sung in symposia, and that this was a principal means of 6

7

8

My exception is Hellenistic poetry, where allusion to Sappho is easily spotted and well documented. For this purpose, I have used Voigt’s index as well as TLG searches. Sappho papyri are cited by their number in the Mertens–Pack3 database and listed in the chart that follows this chapter. For the main lines of argument see, e.g., the recent survey in Rayor and Lardinois 2014: 14–16 and 97–164, which provides an accessible overview of the sources of Sappho’s best-preserved fragments.

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transmission of her poetry.9 But references to Sappho in writers of the Classical period are, in fact, quite limited, and none gives clear evidence of reading.10 Herodotus is the earliest writer to mention her, but whether from reading her poems or other sources is moot.11 His subject is the supposed monument building of the courtesan Rhodopis from Naucratis. He tells us that she was a lover of Charaxus, ἀδελφοῦ τοῦ δὲ Σαπφοῦς τῆς μουσοποιοῦ (2.135). At the end of the section Herodotus remarks that “after Charaxus freed Rhodopis, he returned to Mytilene; Sappho denounced him often (polla) in a song.” Accounts derived from Herodotus are later found in Strabo (17.1.33) and in Athenaeus (13.596b–d).12 Athenaeus claims that Herodotus was mistaken, that the courtesan in question was not Rhodopis but Doricha, and he bolsters his claim by citing, not Sappho, but an epigram of Posidippus, although the name Doricha appears in one of Sappho’s fragments (15 Voigt) and has been plausibly restored in another (9 Voigt). The most recently discovered fragment, with its recall of a brother’s journey that seems to intersect with Herodotus’ anecdote, has renewed scholarly effort to flesh out the background and relationships of Sappho, her brothers, and the courtesan (whether Rhodopis or Doricha).13 Her next Classical appearance is in the Athenian comic tradition, though again the evidence for this is not robust.14 Athenaeus, our principal source, depends on the Peripatetic Chamaeleon (see below). Athenaeus (Chamaeleon) attests to a Sappho by Antiphanes, Diphilus, Ephippus, and Timocles.15 For only two 9

10

11

12 13 14

15

See, e.g., Bowie 2016, Nagy 2011, and Yatromanolakis’ lengthy discussion (2007: 287–362). The Archaic poet Anacreon writes about his rejection by a girl from Lesbos (Ath. 13.599c = PGM 358) but does not name Sappho. Lidov 2002: 227–30, for example, argues that Herodotus’ anecdote was dependent on a comic source; a sympotic context is also a possibility, see Yatromanolakis 2007: 312–26. On the derivative nature of these later accounts, see Lidov 2002: 204–6. See, e.g., chapters 5, 7, 9, and 14 in Bierl and Lardinois 2016 and below. Aristophanes alludes to certain sexual practices as λεσβιάζειν, though he does not name Sappho (see Frogs 1308, Wasps 1346). The verb is usually taken to refer to fellatio (μολῦναι τὸ στόμα). Elsewhere it occurs mainly in lexicographers without mention of Sappho. Yatromanolakis 2007: 299 n. 58 lists other passages of Aristophanes that might allude to Sappho. The attestations for Ameipsias (Pollux 9.138, and restored on that basis in P.Oxy. 2659) and Amphis (Lexica Segueriana Bekker s.v. διενεχθῆναι) are not secure; see Yatromanolakis 2007: 300–7.

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of these plays do we have information that extends beyond a title: in Diphilus’ Sappho, Archilochus and Hipponax vie for her affections (Ath. 11.486c, 13.599c), while Antiphanes’ Sappho features her literacy and her ability to pose riddles (Ath. 10.450e–451b). The fact that she is in the company of other lyric or iambic poets aligns these two plays, at least, with other comedies named after literary figures, such as Alexis’ Archilochus, Cratinus’ Archilochoi, Teleclides’ Hesiodoi, and the comedian Plato’s Cinesias.16 Plato is widely cited as praising Sappho as the “tenth Muse,”17 but in fact she is named only once in his dialogues.18 In the Phaedrus Socrates rejects the uniqueness of the embedded erotic speech allegedly by Lysias, claiming rather that wise men and women of old have already spoken and written on the subject (περὶ αὐτῶν εἰρηκότες καὶ γεγραφότες). Socrates lumps Sappho with Anacreon and other writers: δῆλον δὲ ὅτι τινῶν ἀκήκοα, ἤ που Σαπφοῦς τῆς καλῆς ἢ Ἀνακρέοντος τοῦ σοφοῦ ἢ καὶ συγγραφέων τινῶν (235c); the studied vagueness of the remark (που, the twice repeated τινῶν) underscores the commonplace quality of the sentiments expressed in the speech by “Lysias,” but scarcely privileges Sappho for erotic expertise. The phrase “the tenth Muse” itself comes from what is surely a Hellenistic epigram, later attributed to Plato: ἐννέα τὰς Μούσας φασὶν τίνες· ὡς ὀλιγώρως· ἠνίδε καὶ Σαπφὼ Λεσβόθεν ἡ δεκάτη. Some say that the Muses are nine. But negligently, Since Sappho too from Lesbos is the tenth. (AP 9.506)

Denys Page pointed out that the conceit was a well-known type found in epigram (fourth Grace, eighth wise man), and the style of this particular example does not inspire confidence that it was, in fact, written by Plato.19 Aristotle says very little about Sappho, though in his Rhetoric (1367a8–14) he does describe her engaged in a poetic exchange on 16

17 18

19

Yatromanolakis 2007: 300–7, who argues against Attic comedy as creating the image of Sappho as, well, Sapphic. See, e.g., Greene 1996: 1. In contrast, he mentions Pindar fourteen times and Simonides, mainly in the Protagoras, thirty-nine times. FGE ‘Plato’ XIII, pp. 173–4. See below, n. 31, for epigrams themed Sappho as Muse.

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shame with Alcaeus.20 In a similar gesture, the Peripatetic Chamaeleon in his life of Sappho quotes Anacreon’s poem on his rejection by a Lesbian girl and includes the supposed response from Sappho. These sources belong to the stratum of Sappho ‘biography’ found in Attic comedy that links her poetically (if not erotically) with other Archaic poets – usually her fellow Mytilenean, Alcaeus, or Anacreon (no doubt because of his poem on the Lesbian girl),21 but also achronologically with the iambicists Archilochus and Hipponax (in the Diphilus fragment). Socrates’ comment ἤ που Σαπφοῦς . . . ἢ Ἀνακρέοντος seems aligned with these depictions. Hellenistic Sappho The pivotal moment for the ancient reception of Sappho came in early Alexandria. Although writing about Archaic poets was already taking place within earlier Peripatetic circles, it was in Alexandria that the corpora of lyric poets were organized into books, and Sappho’s apparently on the basis of meter.22 Book I was supposedly composed of poems in Sapphic stanzas; book II in glyconics with a dactylic expansion (gl2d); book III in greater Asclepiadeans (gl2c); book IV seems to have been in acephalic hipponacteans with choriambic expansions (hipp2c);23 book V in various meters. After book V, the situation is murky.24 Papyrus finds seem to confirm this metrical arrangement (at least for book I) as well as Edgar Lobel’s impression that the poems within book I were organized in a roughly alphabetical order (by first letter only). In addition to gathering her poems together from separate sources, during this period Sappho as well as the other lyric poets were subjects of biographies; their oeuvres were discussed in 20

21

22 23 24

Yatromanolakis 2007: 352–4 discusses this material in the context of Athenian sympotic vases depicting Sappho and Alcaeus. Sappho’s response on shame is quoted by a number of other sources as well; see fr. 137 Voigt for details. The early Hellenistic poet Hermesianax follows suit, claiming in his Leontion that Alcaeus and Anacreon vied for Sappho’s affections (fr. 3.47–56 Lightfoot = fr. 7.47–56 CA). Aristophanes of Byzantium is credited with work on her colometry. See now Prauscello 2016 on the metrical composition of book IV. For recent discussions see Liberman 2007 and Acosta-Hughes 2010: 92–104.

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commentaries; grammarians, metricians, and lexicographers recorded dialect and rare words; and these compendia came to be circulated along with the texts themselves. As a result of these activities, the physical texts of lyric poetry became more accessible to Hellenistic and later Roman readers.25 For example, Posidippus of Pella, writing around 260 BC, recalls Sappho’s poetry in at least one, and possibly three of his epigrams. The intact and more famous Doricha epigram contrasts the fate of the courtesan’s mortal body at death with the enduring qualities of Sappho’s songs: Σαπφῷαι δὲ μένουσι φίλης ἔτι καὶ μενέουσιν | ᾠδῆς αἱ λευκαὶ φλεγγόμεναι σελίδες.26 The description of her poems as σελίδες very deliberately marks them within the context of reading, not performance, since σελίδες are the columns of text inscribed on papyrus rolls. In his newly discovered roll of epigrams, if the restorations are correct, Posidippus also juxtaposes Sappho-like song and female exchanges to female death (51.6 Austin– Bastianini: Σα[πφῶι’ ἄισμ]ατα, θεῖα μέλη; 55.2 Austin–Bastianini: Σαπφώιους ἐξ ὀάρων ὀάρους, where Σαπφώιους is an editorial emendation not universally accepted). In these two epigrams Sapphic utterance would seem to play a similar role to that in the Doricha epigram – the immortal fame of Sappho contrasts with the ephemeral existence of the average woman. In all three of these epigrams Posidippus locates Sapphic song exclusively within the world of women as both comfort and contrast. It is not aligned with male performance practice and her sexuality is irrelevant. In addition to Posidippus, Sappho influenced other early Alexandrian poets, as is obvious from multiple allusions to fragments 1 Voigt, 31 Voigt, and the Cologne fragment on old age. Callimachus uses her images in the Lock of Berenice, the final poem of his Aetia; Theocritus used her even more extensively in Idylls 2 (Simaetha) and 18 (the Epithalamium for Helen and Menelaus).27 Idylls 28–30 were written in the Aeolic dialect 25

26 27

Although he is talking about Pindar, Ucciardello’s conclusions about the interaction of scholarship produced in Alexandria with that in other locations of the Greek-speaking world are quite plausible and relevant for all the lyric poets (2012: 105–8). Ep. 17.4–5 Gow–Page = 122 Austin–Bastianini; cf. Sappho fr. 55 Voigt. See Acosta-Hughes 2010: 62–82 for Callimachus and Sappho, pp. 16–40 for Theocritus and Sappho.

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and with themes that reflect Sappho.28 Apollonius’ description of Medea as she is stricken with desire for Jason conforms to the erotic pathology of fr. 31 Voigt.29 We do not see this kind of poetic engagement with Sappho again until the Roman poets, whose interest in Sappho was likely spurred by the activity of these early Alexandrians.30 However, these poets did not limit their interest in Archaic lyric to Sappho: Alcaeus, Alcman, Anacreon, Bacchylides, Simonides, but especially Pindar, provided them with models suitable for individual poetic expression and themes adaptable to an imperial court (e.g., praise, victory, desire, marriage, loss, death, poetic immortality). In Hellenistic and later epigrammatists, Sappho occasionally appears as either a subject or even as author along with her fellow lyricists. It is notable that she does not appear in sympotic contexts.31 Sappho under Roman Rule As Sappho’s texts move beyond Alexandria, she appears in Greek authors in the two ways adumbrated above: anecdotes about her as a female poet and, to a lesser extent, in direct quotation. There is no doubt that the authors discussed below had access to texts of Sappho that were descendants of the Alexandrian editions, as did readers in Roman Egypt. But when she appears in their works, it is in service of their own agendas, and how her lines were quoted may have depended as much on memory as on reading. Both circumstances place limitations on constructing the historical Sappho as well as her modern text.32 Our most significant non-papyrological sources of Sappho’s fragments are three rhetorical treatises on style that range in date from the second century BC to the first century AD. The earliest, 28

29 30

31

32

See Acosta-Hughes 2010: 107–22 and Prauscello 2006: 185–213 for what Theocritus’ adaptations can tell us about the survival and performance reception of Sapphic song. Argon 3.284–90 and see Acosta-Hughes 2010: 40–61. See now Thorsen and Harrison 2019: 14–20 and the essays on Sappho and individual Roman poets. Sappho as subject (AP 4.1, 6.269, 9.26, 66, 184, 189, 506, 521, 16.310); said to be author (AP 7.489, 505); Sappho as or among the Muses (9.66, 189, 506, 521, 16.310). For Sappho in Hellenistic epigrams, see Gosetti-Murrayjohn 2006. See, e.g., de Kreij 2016: 63–6.

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Demetrius’ On Style, is particularly concerned with figures of speech.33 We owe the preservation of fr. 1, the first poem of her first book and the only one of hers that we have complete, to Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ treatise On Composition 23, where he praises her sophisticated style, eloquence, and grace. In Dionysius, Sappho is not alone: she is usually in company with other lyric poets (Alcaeus, Simonides, Anacreon). Longinus in his treatise On the Sublime provides the longest quotation of her best-known poem: fr. 31.34 Longinus refers to her only in his citation of fr. 31, which he then paraphrases and commends for the intensity and skill with which she describes erotic passion, an assessment that is commonplace in ancient references to her poetry. But he too mentions other lyric poets (Pindar, Alcaeus, Simonides, Bacchylides). These three men were scholars who treated only her poems; they have nothing to say about Sappho’s personal life or her place in performance culture. After them, Plutarch, Athenaeus, and Apollonius Dyscolus are the richest sources of her non-papyrological fragments. Plutarch, who lived at the end of the first and beginning of the second centuries AD, was a prolific writer of moral essays as well as biographies. His references to Sappho come mainly from the former and what he says reflects his philosophical predilections. He mentions Sappho fourteen times:35 three times in extended discussion of fr. 31. In The Perfection of Virtue (81d) he even transfers her description of the effects of desire from an erotic encounter to philosophy: “to the young man who has tasted true progress in philosophy, these words of Sappho are associated: ‘my tongue is broken, and a subtle fire runs under my skin.’”36 In the Sympotic Questions (711d) he discusses the Roman habit of performing the dialogues of Plato at symposia, to the disapproval of some of his auditors, one of whom exclaims: “Even whenever Sappho’s songs are sung or those of Anacreon, out of 33

34

35

36

He cites frr. 101a, 104, 105, 111 Voigt. If Liberman 2007: 59–61 is correct, these fragments belonged to the final book. De subl. 10.1. His dates are at best a guess, but it does no harm to assume, with Donald Russell (1964: xxviii–xxix), that Longinus belongs to the late first century AD. The treatise is dedicated to a Roman. Plutarch refers to other lyric poets as much as or more frequently than Sappho. Pindar, for example, is mentioned one hundred times. In the Amatorius 763a and the Life of Demetrius 38.4 he also paraphrases these physical symptoms of love. Pseudo-Lucian does so as well in the Amores (46.8, 53.19).

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respect I deem it right to put down my cup.” He also informs us that Sappho’s songs were sung at a symposium hosted by the Roman senator Sosius Senecio (622c).37 In the Amatorius, which is not sympotic, Plutarch demonstrates the magic of Sappho’s verses in this vignette: the young lover, Daphnaeus, is exhorted to recite (ἀνάμνησον) what “the fair Sappho” says when her beloved appears (ἐρωμένης ἐπιφανείσης). After his recitation (λεχθέντων . . . τῶν μελῶν), his father describes Sappho’s words as “a case of divine possession,” “a supernatural agitation of the soul,” rather like the Pythia at her tripod (763a). This is surely a deliberate echo of Plato’s characterization of poets in the throes of composition, where he uses the same image of the Pythia (Laws 719c3–10). Plutarch’s passage is usually quoted by modern scholars for the fact that, almost as an aside, his language (ἐρωμένης) indicates that Sappho had a female beloved, as might be inferred from the poem itself.38 Elsewhere Plutarch comments on the charm of her poetry (397a), uses her as an example in comparing the occasional equality of female and male accomplishments (243b), and several times quotes lines attributed to her that function like aphorisms (456e). He twice quotes fr. 55 in a slightly truncated form: κατθάνοισα δὲ κείσεαι, οὐ γάρ τις μναμοσύνα σέθεν ἔσσεται· . . . οὐ γὰρ πεδέχῃς βρόδων τῶν ἐκ Πιερίας. You will lie there dead, and there will not be any recollection . . . since you do not partake of the roses of Pieria. (146a and 646f)

This sentiment is similar to that found in Posidippus’ Doricha epigram discussed above. The Alexandrian Apollonius Dyscolus, who lived in the second century AD, is widely regarded as the inventor of systematic grammar, and his work influenced all subsequent Greek writers, who often epitomized or quoted him. He cites a Sapphic word or phrase fourteen times, though very rarely with any additional information. Along with other lyric poets (and in roughly proportional numbers to them) she is cited in works by rhetoricians, 37

38

While often cited, the actual relevance of these passages to earlier Greek performance practice is not obvious, but note that once again she is joined with Anacreon. See Rist 2001: 571 for the importance of Sappho in Plutarch’s argument. For the history of Sappho as a lover of women, see Williamson 1995: 27–32.

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grammarians, lexicographers, metricians, encyclopaedists, and scholiasts on other ancient writers. These sources occasionally have useful nuggets of information; however, their repetitive nature is a clear sign that they are borrowing from earlier sources and does not encourage belief that (m)any of them were actually consulting rolls or codices of her poetry.39 The late second-century AD polymath Athenaeus from Naucratis in Egypt far exceeds other ancient sources in the frequency with which he mentions Sappho (fifty-one times). He is a major source of her book fragments, often providing lines from her poems that are otherwise unknown.40 His Philosophers at the Dinner Table (Deipnosophistae) is a massive compendium of informational soundbites ranging from food to dining habits to music and poetry. Besides quotations from Sappho’s poems, he provides almost all of the indirect evidence for Sappho in the Athenian comic tradition that was discussed above. Given the breadth of his subject matter, he must have used compilations of earlier scholars (e.g. didascalia, hypotheses, and scholarly works on dramatic poets). A witness to this is his quotation of the fragments of Chamaeleon on poets that records the so-called poetic exchange between Anacreon and Sappho.41 The appearances of Sappho (whether her texts or her persona) in later writers such as Lucian, the Philostrati, and the novelists are few, predictable in character, and do not alter the picture sketched above.42 Sappho in Egypt The fact that Athenaeus was from Naucratis in Egypt should alert us to the possibility that the Egyptian reception of Sappho, or what we can infer of it from papyrus finds, may not differ from what we 39

40

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42

For example, there are well over one hundred citations of Sappho concerned solely with the declension of her name, a feminine ω-stem. He quotes or alludes to frr. 1, 2, 44, 57, 58, 94, 101, 122, 138, 141–3, 160, 166, 167, 176 Voigt. Remarkably, he does not cite fr. 31. He mentions Alcaeus, Alcman, Pindar, and Simonides as frequently as Sappho, as well as the iambicist Archilochus. Ath. 13.599c. See de Kreij 2016: 61–2 on this exchange. Athenaeus is also the source for Chamaeleon on other lyric poets: Alcman, Stesichorus, Pindar, Simonides, Anacreon (frr. 24–6, 28, 31, 33–6 Wehrli). For the repetitive, not to say clichéd nature of the ancients’ comments on Sappho, see now Thorsen and Berge’s useful collection of Greek and Latin testimonia in Thorsen and Harrison 2019: 301–402.

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take to be her mainstream Greek reception. Papyrus finds fall into three categories: fragments of her poetry books, commentaries, and citations within fragments of other writers. The total number of papyri of her poems that have been identified with certainty is meager (twenty). Another seven fragments may, on the basis of dialect and find context, belong either to Sappho or Alcaeus. There are also remains of ten commentaries, some with lemmata. Of the twenty certain fragments, twelve are from second- to third-century Oxyrhynchus. Two early Ptolemaic texts from the Fayum include Sappho fr. 2 Voigt preserved on an ostracon and a poetic anthology on papyrus. One fragment is late Ptolemaic or early Roman; two parchments are from the sixth or seventh century AD. Ten papyri come from book I; two from book II (frr. 44, 45 Voigt); four from book IV (two each from frr. 58 and 88 Voigt); and two from book V (frr. 96, 98 Voigt). Those with doubtful placement include one from either book I or II; another remains unassigned to a book. In addition, the earliest fragment comes from an anthology, the third poem of which seems not to be by Sappho at all.43 The end title attached to MP3 1445 identifies it as book I, containing 1,320 lines (end titles also occur in books II and IV but without surviving line counts).44 We can infer from the higher number of distinct fragments securely located in book I that it was copied and circulated more than the rest, and this is the normal pattern found with the surviving papyri of multi-book authors. How do these fragments fit into the overall picture of Greek literary finds? Despite the fact that the publication of Greek literary texts has been privileged by editors – indeed, it was the purpose of the original ‘excavators’ to find lost Greek literature – and notwithstanding their many impressive discoveries, the overall finds of Classical literature have been relatively small. They represent less than 10 percent of the total number of published papyri recovered from Egypt whose date falls roughly between 300 BC and AD 640.45 Of the Greek fragments that the 43 44

45

Gronewald and Daniel 2005; West 2005; Greene and Skinner 2009. See Obbink 2016 for the impact of the most recent finds on our understanding of the composition of book I. The total number of published papyri exceeds 90,000. As of this writing the Mertens– Pack3 inventory of Greek papyri from Egypt classified as literary lists 7,419 texts. Numbers will vary slightly as new fragments are added and/or adespota identified.

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Mertens–Pack3 database has assigned to literary and subliterary genres, the following picture emerges: papyri of the Homeric poems account for about one-fifth of the total. Homer, in combination with ancillary materials like glossaries and paraphrases, occupies a central position in the educational system. His epics were used to teach Greek reading and, for the generations so educated, Homer would have been the text that all knew, thus providing a kind of literary and cultural koinē. Next there is a large category of school texts (494)46 and a relatively high figure for oratory (543), much of which was either used for instruction or, like the rhetorical exercise, was a by-product of it. This material substantiates what is already well known, namely, the need to produce and maintain a literate elite who serviced first the Ptolemaic and then the Roman bureaucracy. If texts used primarily for educational purposes dominate the literary finds, this is a category to which Sappho, by virtue of her dialect and subject matter, did not belong. (This would have been true outside of Egypt as well.) Other categories included in literary texts owe their existence to Greco-Egyptian professional activities: medical and pharmacological writings (363) and mathematical, astronomical, and astrological material (410), again for a population unlikely to read Sappho. A relevant factor for this discussion is the uneven distribution of Greek literary papyri over the period of Ptolemaic and Roman occupation. Of the papyri categorized as literary almost half belong to the second and third centuries AD; about 10 percent are Ptolemaic (about 800). The low numbers for very early Ptolemaic material in part reflect the fact that Greek readers were not yet as numerous as they became in later centuries, and it is likely that a number of owners of these texts were assimilated Egyptians learning Greek to work under their new masters.47 The site that by far has produced the largest store of literary papyri is Oxyrhynchus. Its rubbish dumps have yielded about 2,500 fragments. Some finds suggest that whole libraries were disposed of at one time – and these are quite helpful in assessing reading 46

47

These consist of word lists, writing, grammatical, and simple rhetorical exercises, on which see Cribiore 1996. See van Minnen 1998.

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Susan A. Stephens Oratory Astronomy, Mathematics History Medicine Comedy Tragedy Lyric Philosophy 0

100

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Fig. 13.1 Fragments of texts from known genres

patterns.48 The third largest site to have produced literary papyri is Hermopolis and its environs. Hermopolite papyri (about 600), in the main, belong to the fourth and later centuries.49 If we turn to the canonical genres of Classical Greek literature, within the nearly thousand-year period from which papyri have been found, the aggregate numbers shrink to a little more than 2,500. The bar graph in Figure 13.1 gives the relative numbers of the major occurring categories of Greek literary and subliterary genres represented by discrete texts (oratory, astronomy and mathematics, history, medicine, comedy, tragedy, lyric poetry, and philosophy); of these fragments fewer than 10 percent belong to lyric poetry (238 fragments). Within these categories, surviving fragments of only a few authors apart from Homer total more than 100. These are, not surprisingly, Plato, Menander, Isocrates, Hesiod, Euripides, and Demosthenes, as the graph in Figure 13.2 shows. Because most fragments of lyric poetry are very small, assignment to an author is often problematic. The relatively high numbers of adespota (107) in the bar graph in Figure 13.3, while identifiable as lyric on the basis of dialect, vocabulary, and meter, do not provide enough context for a viable assignment to an author. Of the known lyric poets, Pindar does the best, probably because the epinicia surviving in a manuscript tradition provide an 48 49

See Houston 2014: 130–79 and below. For an overview of the Hermopolis material, see van Minnen and Worp 1993.

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Plato Menander Isocrates Hesiod Euripides Demosthenes 0

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Fig. 13.2 Most frequently occurring authors (excluding Homer)

Anacreon Simonides Stesichorus Bacchylides Alcman Sappho Alcaeus Pindar Unidentified 0

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120

Fig. 13.3 Surviving fragments of lyric poets

easy means of identifying fragments with even a few letters. Alcaeus and Sappho are next. But the fact that there are five times as many lyric adespota as fragments of Sappho suggests that while she was read, she was by no means the most read, and Alcaeus’ fragments and commentaries occur as frequently. It is possible that small bits of Sappho are lurking in lyric adespota, though these cannot be many. (In fact, conjectural assignments on dialect and metrical grounds, if correct, are more likely to swell the numbers of Bacchylides, Simonides, and Stesichorus.) Since Sappho’s dialect and meters are so distinctive, any scrap in Aeolic will have been carefully scrutinized by its editor, and if not actually attributed to Sappho or Alcaeus, will 333

Susan A. Stephens

likely be listed in Voigt’s appendix of adespota. A few fragments that have a high likelihood of Sapphic authorship are discussed below. With one exception, the texts from Oxyrhynchus all look alike; two were even copied by the same scribe. They are all book-rolls written by hands that are workmanlike but not calligraphic. The exception, MP3 1450.01, contains very small fragments of a roll of Sappho in a calligraphic hand, comparable to that of the Hawara Homer. But even this copy has marginal comments.50 Commentaries, most of which are also from Oxyrhynchus, look similar to the texts themselves, that is, workmanlike in their writing style. To the extent that commentaries can be associated with a book, we have one on book I 31 Voigt; another apparently on book IV, and a third that may be on IV, VIII, or IX.51 The only other poetic fragments (whether certain or dubious) that fall later than the third century include two sixth- to seventh-century parchments. MP3 1440 belonged to a codex that contained at least book I; MP3 1451 held several poems from book V. This latter Eric Turner thought to be an orihon, that is, a short text folded into accordion-like pleats; if this is correct, it would have held only a few poems.52 These parchment scraps are the last copies of Sappho’s poems known to have survived from antiquity. This fits well with what we know about her subsequent reception – she did not survive apart from book fragments into the Byzantine and later periods.53 The reasons for this are in part the dialect difficulty (as the numerous citations of her language in grammarians attest), but also changes in readerly tastes as Christianity prevailed, even in intellectual circles.54 It may also have to do with the fact – visible in papyrus remains – that texts for practical (i.e. educational and technical) purposes must always have been far more numerous than those for a specialized reader.

50

51 52 53 54

Prauscello and Ucciardello 2014. Its fragments were commingled with others from comedy and from Plato’s Critias written in the same or a very similar hand. Marginal comments are usually taken to be the mark of a scholarly reader. See discussion below. Turner 1979: 114–15 and notes. Pontani 2001. The absence of lyric texts from fourth-century Hermopolite finds may reflect this trend.

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13 Sappho in Pieces

These data suggest that within Greco-Roman Egypt Sappho was almost exclusively the preserve of an elite set of scholarly readers in Oxyrhynchus. Such a reader was surely the owner of the collection of at least thirty-five book-rolls containing a very high proportion of lyric poets (at least four rolls of Alcaeus, four of Pindar, books I and IV of Sappho, as well as Bacchylides and Ibycus) found together in an Oxyrhynchite rubbish dump. Additionally, this collection included a papyrus with short biographies, including Sappho (MP3 2070). Of course, the fact that one man (or his family) possessed so many rolls of lyric reduces the potential number of readers even further, and raises the possibility that even more of the Oxyrhynchus Sappho papyri were in the possession not of several discrete individuals, but only one man.55 In addition, if so many lyric texts were discarded at one time, it could indicate a waning readerly interest in Archaic lyric in general. In early Ptolemaic Egypt (presumably before the Alexandrian edition of her texts) Sappho’s presence was limited to an anthology, which seems to have been a typical means of circulating short poems in the period, and an ostracon, which is a writing surface used for ephemera. In addition to fragments that can be assigned to Sappho with certainty, there are a number of small bits of Aeolic verse that have been identified as “Alcaeus or Sappho?” on the rational assumption that these two poets must account for the bulk of Aeolic survivors.56 Two fragments merit discussion as illustrations of the hazards (and the editorial biases) in working with such fragmentary poets. The original editor, Edgar Lobel, identified MP3 1901 as Sappho, though with reservations, since the scrap contains the hitherto unattested ὀλισβ.δόκοις, a word that prima facie should mean “receiving the dildo.” About the inclusion of this fragment in Sappho’s corpus, Denys Page wrote in his edition in 1955:

55

56

The Oxyrhynchite papyri of Aeschylus provide another example; of the thirty or so fragments from his plays, at least eight fragments from different plays found at Oxyrhynchus were copied in the same hand; this suggests that one man possessed a set, not that these individual plays belonged to eight different readers, see Johnson 2004: 17–19. MP3 lists seven such fragments: nos. 67, 1898–9, 1900–3, the majority of which have not been accepted either by Lobel and Page or by Voigt.

335

Susan A. Stephens [ὀλισβ.δόκοις] appears to prove that Sappho used in her poetry a word of quite unusual coarseness, referring to practices about which silence is almost universally maintained . . . The judgement passed by the ancients on the women of Lesbos will now appear to be easily intelligible.57

Lobel did assign the fragment to Sappho and Page accepted it, although both expressed reservations. But subsequent scholars have preferred to assign it to Alcaeus (and it now resides in Voigt as Alcaeus fr. 303A). A reverse trend may be seen with MP3 1900, which contains part of a hymn to Artemis. This fragment (said to be in Aeolic dactyls) was originally assigned by Lobel and Page to Alcaeus (304 Lobel–Page), on the grounds that the lengthening nu ephelkustikon at col. ii 11 (θνάτοισιν) had parallels in Alcaeus but not Sappho.58 Max Treu subsequently assigned it to Sappho, in part because of a remark in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana (1.30) that “a Pamphylian woman who was an associate of Sappho composed the hymns which they sing to Artemis Pergaia in the Aeolian mode.”59 It is listed in Voigt as Sappho fr. 44A. Neither fragment can make an unassailable claim to its current attribution. We do not know enough about the compound ὀλισβ. δόκοις to dismiss Sappho out of hand. Martin West, for example, has pointed out that in this fragment ὀλισβ.δόκοις “agrees with χόρδαισι [lyre strings], which would mean that ὄλισβος was once a synonym of ‘πλῆκτρον’.”60 The real interest of this fragment, however, is that it serves as a Rorschach for gauging the psychopathology of modern editors (as Page’s remark above makes clear).61 Philostratus would seem a bit more trustworthy, but here too it is wise to be cautious. The passage actually claims that a companion of Sappho composed these hymns, which is inherently unlikely. But what is not, is that even ancient writers would tend to regard hymns in Aeolic written to a female divinity as belonging to the sphere of Sappho rather than Alcaeus. 57 58 59 60

61

Page 1955: 144–5. Lobel and Page 1952: 3. Treu 1968: 161–4. It may be relevant that the Suda (Σ 107, iv 322–3 Adler) claims that Sappho was the first to discover the plectrum (πρῶτον πλῆκτρον εὗρεν). For the ὄλισβος as plectrum, see Nelson 2000. See Stephens 2002: 78–81 and West 1970: 324.

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13 Sappho in Pieces

A third example of interpretative quicksand is the Ptolemaic ostracon containing fr. 2 Voigt. Roughly the size of a small book page (11 x 16 cm.), it looks to have been written from dictation in a fluent hand but riddled with errors.62 By virtue of its material it suggests ephemera. Since they were cheap and easily available, ostraca were used to record everything from tax receipts to school exercises to magic spells to occasional lines of literary texts. Franco Ferrari has suggested that the ostracon might be an exercise written within a dedicated school of girls, but we have no corroborating evidence that such a school ever existed in Egypt.63 Another possibility is that this was an exercise in scribal writing practice, namely, a short text selected to fit the material without much interest in topic and without much relevance to context. However, because the first line of the ostracon differs from what follows, a third possibility is that it was a text selected for later inclusion in an anthology, which would bring it into conformity with the Cologne anthology with its fragment on old age, and like that fragment the ostracon has been viewed as an aide-mémoire for performance.64 A few other papyri are useful to gauge the scope of interest in Sappho in Greco-Roman Egypt, and again they are not likely to have belonged to a casual reader. A handful of citations of Sappho occur in marginal comments on papyri of other lyric poets, and in commentaries on lyric, dialect, and meter.65 She is cited in a passage of Chrysippus (MP3 246), along with other lyric and elegiac poets, and by Philo Judaeus (MP3 1344). She is also the subject of a few poetic biographies. The late second-century AD papyrus MP 3 2070 contains a biographical miscellany that includes (at least) Simonides, Aesop, Thucydides, and Demosthenes. This is the entry on Sappho: Sappho was Lesbian by birth, from the city of Mitylene; her father was Scamandrus, but according to some Skamandronymus; she had three brothers, 62 63

64 65

See now de Kreij 2016 on the textual issues. Ferrari 2010: 154 n. 1, citing Vetta 1999: 128. However, at least one ancient commentary claims she was educating upper-class girls not only locally but from Ionia (P.Köln 2.61 = MP3 1455.1 = SLG 261A). See e.g D’Alessio 2016b: 443. MP3 59, 84, 1949.01, 1949.3, 2143, and 2172.

337

Susan A. Stephens Erigyius, Larichus, and the eldest, Charaxus, who sailed to Egypt, was an [intimate?] of Doricha and spent considerably on her. She was fonder of the young Larichus, and she had a daughter named Kleis, named for her own mother. She was accused by some of being irregular in her behavior and a lover of women (κ[α]τηγόρηται | δ’ ὑπ’ ἐν[ί]ω[ν] ὧς ἄτακτος οὖ | [σα] τὸν τρόπον καὶ γυναικε | [ράσ]τρια); she seems to have been insignificant and very ill-formed, for she was dark in complexion and quite small in height. The same is true of [. . .] who was smaller . . . [as?] Chamaeleon ([ὥσ]περ Χαμαιλέω[ν) . . . says [she used the Aeolic] dialect and wrote [. . .] books of lyrics.

This is a typical example of the reception of Sappho in commentaries: her family history was probably derived from her poems;66 her sexual proclivities and physical characteristics, if not inferred from the poems themselves, probably came from a comic/satiric tradition. The reference to Chamaeleon locates this Egyptian commentary securely within an earlier Peripatetic tradition,67 and as late as the tenth century this same material was being repeated in the Suda lexicon.68 Finally, there are two papyri containing incipits that have been claimed for or are important for understanding Sappho’s transmission. (1) P.Mich.inv. 3498 + 3250b recto, 3250a and c recto is Ptolemaic (probably second century BC). It contains what appear to be incipits from lyric poems. Initially R. Merkelbach restored one of the lines on the basis of a known fragment of Sappho, but new joins require a different restoration.69 While a number of Sapphic parallels have been adduced for other incipits on the papyrus,70 most recently H. Bernsdorff has made a strong case that these are all from Anacreon or Hellenistic Anacreontea.71 (2) MP3 1455 belongs to the second century AD. It contains a series of unrelated lyric lines in Aeolic meters and dialect, followed by the tantalizing title in line 17: ἐπιθα]λάμια. In conjunction with the broken numbers in line 14, ] στίχ(οι) ρλ[.], the title has led to considerable efforts at reconstruction and is an element in the 66

67 68 69 70 71

MP3 1950 = SLG 276, a now fragmentary commentary on poets including Stesichorus, Alcman, Sappho, and Alcaeus with lemmata, would appear to contain similar entries about her brothers. See Johnson 2010: 181–92 on scholarly communities in Roman Egypt. Σ 107 (iv 322–3 Adler) and see above n. 5. Borges and Sampson 2013: 9–10. Borges and Sampson 2013: 23–4, 26–8. Bernsdorff 2014. D’Alessio 2016b: 444 n. 42 concurs.

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13 Sappho in Pieces

theory that Sappho’s ninth book consisted of epithalamia. The text has been discussed in detail most recently by Yatromanolakis 1999 and Puglia 2008. While they reach different conclusions, the former argues that the papyrus is discussing the eighth book, the latter the fourth, both provide cogent arguments that the fragment is not about a ninth book and that the incipits of epithalamia in question are more likely to have come from other locations. Although the purpose of the list remains unclear, it too seems to be a scholarly product, probably from a commentary, though the lacunose nature of the papyrus makes further deductions circular, dependent more on how the text is supplemented than on what it demonstrably says. Summary The number of papyrus fragments of Sappho’s texts, in comparison to those of authors of the Classical period such as Demosthenes, Thucydides, Plato, or even Pindar, is small (see Table 13.1). Her fragments are mainly from book I, commentaries are focused on mundane biographical issues that replicate what can be found in earlier or contemporary Greek writers, and the majority of the Sappho readers that we can identify belong to second- to third-century AD Oxyrhynchus. For these reasons, it is fair to conclude that her readership in Greco-Roman Egypt was not widespread, even among those who owned papyri of other Greek literature. Apart from Alexandria, Ptolemaic cities would not have had large populations of Greek readers, and even later locations like Hermopolis, although thriving intellectual centers, show almost no interest in lyric poetry. But second- to thirdcentury Oxyrhynchus, with its cluster of lyric manuscripts and commentaries, probably had a small readerly population that resembled the elite readers of Alexandria and, to judge from the ancient Greek writers reviewed above, Egyptian readers did not differ from those found in other cities in the eastern Roman Empire. What all ancient testimony, both within and outside of Egypt, tells us is that Sappho’s texts did not seem to attract any special attention. She is usually coupled with Alcaeus or other lyric poets in citations and in discussions of poetry; she occurs in 339

Susan A. Stephens

biographies along with other figures from antiquity. What the papyri tell us about performance is minimal. The Cologne fragment alone holds out some possibility that it represents a text created for performance,72 but it is not obvious what kind of performance or what, if anything, it could say about earlier, more distant performance practices. Even among scholars who have devoted considerable attention to the question there are divergent views on the value of the evidence that are not easily reconciled.73 Interest in Sappho today – and in antiquity – is not so much about Sappho’s poetic texts but Sappho the woman. For both ancients and moderns, she has been an example of a powerful female creative artist (a “tenth Muse”) and of lesbian desire. Then as now she is the creation of mainly male speculation about all aspects of her life and sexuality. But to what extent was she actually read? My argument throughout has been that the evidence for more than a specialized readership cannot be made and that when she was read, she was treated no differently than other lyric poets, who do not, however, enjoy the same modern attention. Ancient readers may have known Sappho’s name or heard anecdotes about her, they may even have heard a few poems like fr. 31 recited or paraphrased, but very few were actually reading her poems. 72 73

See, e.g., Bierl 2010. D’Alessio 2018: 34 points out that “there has too often been a tendency in recent criticism, especially of the newest fragments, with scholars taking for granted what are mostly a priori assumptions about performance scenarios, without sufficient discussion of the methodological issues involved.”

1449.01

1449

1446 1447 1448

1445.01 1445.02

1443 1444 1445

1441 1442

1438 1439 1440

M–P3

P.Oxy. 23.2357 P.Oxy. 10.1232 P.Oxy. 17.2076 same scribe as 1438 P.Oxy. 15.1787 + 18.2166 + P.Hal. 3 P.Köln 11.429+430 inv. 21351 + 21376

II? III/II VII

P.Oxy. 21.2288 PSI 13.1300 BKT 5.2.9–10 = P.Berol.inv. 5006 P.Oxy. 3.424 P.Oxy. 1.7 = P.Lit. Lond. 43 P.Oxy. 21.2289 PSI 2.123 P.Oxy. 10.1231 + 17.2081 +18.2166a GC inv. 105 P.Sapph.Obbink Fayum? same roll as 1445.01 Oxyrhynchus Oxyrhynchus Oxyrhynchus Oxyrhynchus ?

II III I/II II III BC

I? fr. 103C V II frr. 43–44 V with title II fr. 44 V with annotation and end title IV fr. 58 V –partial textual overlaps with 1449.01 IV fr. 58 V + anonymous lyric = anthology

cartonnage

papyrus roll

papyrus roll papyrus roll papyrus roll

papyrus roll papyrus roll

I 5, 9, 16, 18? I 5, 16

papyrus roll ostracon parchment codex papyrus roll papyrus roll

Material

III III

I fr. 3.6–18 V I fr. 5 V

I fr. 1.1–21 V I fr. 2 V I frr. 3.1–10, 4 V

Book

I 3.5–18?, 6.4–8 V papyrus roll I 16.1–22, 17.3–12 V papyrus roll I 15–30 V end title, 1320 lines papyrus roll

Oxyrhynchus ? Medinet elFayum Oxyrhynchus Oxyrhynchus

Provenance

II? Oxyrhynchus Late I BC Oxyrhynchus II Oxyrhynchus

III III

Date

Publication

Table 13.1: Table of Sappho papyri

Publication

? ? ?

VI/VII I II

Oxyrhynchus

P.Oxy. 21.2294

1455

II

Oxyrhynchus Oxyrhynchus

1344

1453 1454

mid-II BC Memphite Serapeum II/III Oxyrhynchus

Oxyrhynchus Oxyrhynchus

Provenance

II/III II

Date

PSI 11.1207 + P.Haun. 1.8 + P.Oxy. 11.1356 + P.Oxy. 18.2158 P.Oxy. 21.2292 II P.Oxy. 21.2293 II

1450 1450.01

P.Oxy. 21.2290 P.Oxy. 64.4411, frr. 51 +78, 85+86, 6, 82+58 1451 BKT 5.2.10–18 = P.Berol.inv. 9722 1452 P.Haun.inv. 301 + P.Mil. Vogl. 2.40 1452.1 P.Köln 2.60 COMMENTARIES AND QUOTATIONS 246 P.Paris 2

M–P3

Table 13.1: (cont.)

papyrus roll

papyrus roll

papyrus roll de luxe papyrus roll orihon?

Material

fr. 213 V commentary on IV? fr. 90 V lemmata Atticized Sappho VIII? commentary with incipits? frr. 103, 234 V

papyrus roll

papyrus roll papyrus roll

Chrysippus quoting Sappho papyrus roll frr. 51, 56 V Philo Judaeus quoting Sappho papyrus codex fr. 139 V

?

V fr. 98 V

V frr. 92–7 V

IV fr. 88 V IV fr. 88a–b V

Book

frr. 28–41 incert. V Sappho or Alcaeus? fr. 27 incert. V II fr. 44A V = 304 L–P Alcaeus fr. 303A V Alcaeus fr. 103B V fr. 42 incert. V

II/III I BC/AD I Oxyrhynchus III BC IV Hermopolis II/III III II/III I/II

P.Oxy. 15.1800

P.Oxy. 21.2299 P.Mil.Vogl. 1.7 MPER 1.6a–b (P.Vindob. inv. G 29777a–b) P.Fouad 239

P.Oxy. 21.2291

P.Oxy. 21.2308 P.Oxy. 23.2378

2070 SAPPHO? 67 1898 1899

1901

1902 1903

1900

Oxyrhynchus Oxyrhynchus

Oxyrhynchus

Oxyrhynchus

? Oxyrhynchus

II/III I/II

PSI inv. 1357 P.Oxy. 29.2506

1949.01 1950

papyrus roll papyrus roll papyrus palimpsest papyrus roll

papyrus roll papyrus roll

papyrus roll

papyrus roll cartonnage papyrus codex? papyrus roll

papyrus roll more than one papyrus roll? miscellaneous bibliographies papyrus roll

commentary on Alcaeus or Sappho commentary commentary on lyric poets

Oxyrhynchus

I/II

1903.1

commentary commentary on I 31 fr. 31 V Lyric and tragic incipits

? ?

II II/III II

P.Köln 2.61 PSI 15.1470 P.Mich.inv. 3498r +inv. 3250a, b, cr P.Oxy. 39.2878

1455.1 1455.2 1596.1

ch a p t e r 1 4 H E S I OD I C R H A P S O DY: TH E S I B Y L L I N E O R A C L E S

helen van noorden

Introduction: The Sibylline Oracles as Tradition in Action For scholars of the ancient receptions of Homer and Hesiod, fields through which Richard Hunter has illuminated various tracks,1 the Sibylline Oracles offer still underexplored territory. These Greek hexameter oracles are ‘Judaeo-Christian’2 recreations of a literary Sibylline voice addressing predictions (post eventum) to Jews, Romans and cities of Greece and Asia, while reviewing world history from the earliest times, and sketching rewards and punishments due at the end of days. Composed, updated and re-edited over several centuries from the second century BCE onwards, these (now) Judaeo-Christian oracles offer no straightforward identifications of date or provenance, not least because of the studied vagueness of reference in their style.3 Equally promising questions for a classicist are those about the oracles’ literary ‘texture’ and strategies in re-presenting scriptural and apocryphal material in archaic hexameters. This chapter begins with a striking Sibylline passage of Homeric critique and proceeds to re-evaluate it through ‘Hesiodic’ aspects of the corpus. I then build up a multifaceted case for viewing the collection as latter-day

I am indebted to audiences in Cambridge, Durham, Athens and Oxford, and in particular Olivia Stewart Lester, Andrew Faulkner, Anna Lefteratou and the editors of this volume, for insightful comments. I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Isaac Newton Trust for funding research leave in 2019–20, and of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 754513 and the Aarhus University Research Foundation. 1 See Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004: chs. 2, 3 and 5; Hunter 2005, 2008b, 2009b, 2014, 2018. 2 For justification of this usually problematic label, see Lightfoot 2007: viii. 3 Gruen 1998b highlights their aim of re-applicability to new historical circumstances. For a history of the debate about book 3, which contains the oldest material, see Bacchi 2020: 13–20.

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14 Hesiodic Rhapsody: The Sibylline Oracles

‘Hesiodic rhapsody’,4 whose blend of universal history and ethical exhortation is informed by supra-Homeric perspectives. The extant Sibylline compendium has been derided as literature because it presents a late-stage result of particularly ‘tralatician’ writing in which earlier oracles are incorporated and reinterpreted; ‘synthetic mantic verse’,5 added or edited by different hands, some echoing or expanding earlier sections. The oracles are grouped into twelve sections (‘books’) of unequal length,6 and assorted fragments. Book 3, ‘perhaps the most arresting example of Jewish ingenuity in adopting Hellenic forms’,7 contains the earliest material in the collection; still, as Gruen cautions, ‘on any reckoning, it is a composite, with some verses referring to events of the second century BCE, others to the late first century BCE, and still others to the Julio-Claudian period’.8 My discussion will also involve material from books 1, 2, 4 and 5, which variously refer to figures and events of the first century BCE and first and second centuries CE. Difficulty in demarcating any more than very broad stages in the growth of this literary tradition9 is testament to the Sibyllists’ success in creating a recognizable, replicable voice and aesthetic. On one level, the existence of this group of texts testifies to an ‘embrace of the revelatory’ in an expanding concept of oracular discourse in antiquity, that is, oracles no longer envisaged as merely prescribing specific rituals for specific events, but as a source of knowledge about cosmic history.10 However, the Sibylline Oracles’ closest generic affiliation, to oracle collections, does not fully capture 4

5 6

7 8 9

10

Hesiod is credited as ‘the first to rhapsodize’ in Σ Pi. Nem. 2.1d = FGrH 376 F 8. On the rhapsodic qualities of Hesiodic poetry, see González 2013: ch. 8; for a receptionoriented extension of the term ‘rhapsody’ along the lines pursued in the present chapter, see Capra 2010 on Platonic ‘philosophical rhapsody’ in the Timaeus–Critias. The phrases of Lightfoot 2007: viii, x and 163. Their modern numbering (1–8 and 11–14) reflects numbers from three different classes of manuscript published respectively in the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries (books 9, 10 and 15 in the third class duplicated material from the first two collections). For an overview of research and of the manuscripts, see Buitenwerf 2003: 5–69. Gruen 2010: 423. Gruen 2016b. Bacchi 2020 reconstructs possible references to Ptolemaic politics in Sib. Or. 3. Lightfoot 2007: 23, 90–3 traces shifts between Jewish and Christian conceptions of the Sibyl herself; an exploration developed for Sib. Or. 4–5 by Stewart Lester 2018: 169–88. Struck 2016: 217–19, 222–3. The dynamic trajectory observed of ancient prophetic discourse is a clear example of the thesis, outlined for Hellenistic poetry by Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004 passim, that literary ‘traditions’ present a series of innovations even as they invoke predecessors.

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Helen Van Noorden

the length and degree of self-citation in the corpus (in particular, book 3 is now understood as inspiration and foundation for other parts of the collection, such as the schematic world history in books 1–2),11 its intermittent narrative coherence or the intricacies of its polemic against Homer.12 The surviving assortment presents a window onto a long ‘Sibylline discourse’ between receptions of texts and traditions, both ‘Sibylline’ and not.13 Its long gestation and evidence of multiple redactions also supports recent emphasis on continuities between the Hellenistic and imperial periods.14 The Sibylline Oracles contain both ‘the apocalyptic of Hellenistic Diaspora Judaism’ (in book 3) and ‘the earliest Christian hexameter poetry’ (parts of books 2, 6, 7 and 8; all of books 1–8 were transmitted with a didactic preface by a Christian compiler after the fifth century CE).15 This chapter navigates from material to symbolic Sibylline debts to Homer, Hesiod and the ‘Hesiodic’, comparing various ancient methods of recasting archaic epic poets as form and frame for cosmic truths. It argues that the literary texture of the Sibylline Oracles can be illuminated by and itself develops our current picture of interaction between tracks of Homeric and Hesiodic receptions. Challenging Homeric Epos Any case for viewing the Sibylline Oracles through lenses of Hesiodic receptions must take on the obvious objection that the ‘Sibyl’ nowhere unambiguously asserts her relation to Hesiod, as she does to Homer. After a brief, oblique but far-reaching prediction in book 3 of the Trojan War, viewing the ‘descendants of Aeneas’ (i.e. Romans) as originating from the blood(shed) of Ilium (3.410–12), and noting both distress and never-ending fame for Trojans caused by ‘a Fury from Sparta’ (413–18), the 11 12 13

14

15

Lightfoot 2007: 94–104. Cf. e.g. Euclus’ ‘prophecy’ of Homer (cited by Paus. 10.24.3). On the concept of a ‘Sibylline discourse’, see Stewart Lester 2018: 142–68. Bacchi 2020: 64–7 usefully describes the Judaean Sibylline Oracles and the Roman Libri Sibyllini as different ‘branches’ of a fluid Sibylline tradition. On shared rhetorical preoccupations, see Whitmarsh 2017; on ‘Hellenistic Jewish’ literature from the Philostratean ‘Second Sophistic’ period, see Gruen 2017. See Collins 2012: 185 citing Philip Vielhauer: Lightfoot 2007: 154 citing Agosti and Gonnelli 1995: 291.

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14 Hesiodic Rhapsody: The Sibylline Oracles

Sibyl foretells the existence and work of Homer, asserting Sibylline ownership of the story: καί τις ψευδογράφος πρέσβυς βροτὸς ἔσσεται αὖτις ψευδόπατρις· δύσει δὲ φάος ἐν ὀπῇσιν ἑῇσιν· νοῦν δὲ πολὺν καὶ ἔπος διανοίαις ἔμμετρον ἕξει, οὐνόμασιν δυσὶ μισγόμενον· Χῖον δὲ καλέσσει αὑτὸν καὶ γράψει τὰ κατ’ Ἴλιον, οὐ μὲν ἀληθῶς, ἀλλὰ σοφῶς· ἐπέων γὰρ ἐμῶν μέτρων τε κρατήσει· πρῶτος γὰρ χείρεσσιν ἐμὰς βίβλους ἀναπλώσει. And a certain false writer will exist in his turn, an elderly mortal of feigned fatherland. The light in his eyes will go out. Great intelligence will he have, and speech fitting his thoughts mingled under two names; he shall call himself a man from Chios and write the story of Ilium, not truthfully, but cleverly. For he will master my words and metres, since he first will open my books with his hands. (Sib. Or. 3.419–25)16

Having identified Homer by the traditions of his blindness and the claim of provenance from Chios, the narrator proceeds to complain about Homer’s creating gods to stand beside his ‘emptyheaded’ heroes (3.426–30). Homer is mentioned in the Sibylline Oracles only here. In a detailed reading of this passage in conjunction with the Sibyl’s sphragis (3.809–29), Greensmith highlights its several implicit comparisons with popular traditions about ‘Homer’.17 For example, the Sibylline poetic coinage ψευδόπατρις at 3.420 refers to the multiple claims to be Homer’s birthplace.18 Likewise, many communities adopted the Sibyl as a local prophetess.19 A second analogy (as the Sibylline persona constructs it) is that Homeric and Sibylline traditions of composition and transmission shift from oral to written forms (‘my books’, 3.425). A third is the liminal status of the two authorfigures between mortal and divine in their respective receptions. 16

17 18

19

The text of the Sibylline Oracles given here is that of Geffcken 1902a. Translations of the Sibylline Oracles are adapted from Collins 1983. Greensmith forthcoming. Contrast its meaning at Sib. Or. 11.40 (the only other use of the word in the corpus) of Moses as ‘a Theban man of false fatherland’ referring to his adoption by an Egyptian princess. On the Sibylline coinages and other lexical notes see Panayiotou 1987. For a map of the proliferation of ‘sibyls and their cities in the Roman world’, see Potter 1994: 76.

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This striking passage at the centre of book 3 is worth considering as part of the ‘self-image’ of Jewish Sibylline prophecy, since we find several of the 829 lines of this book reapplied in other books.20 Wider implications of the form of its approach to Homer are worth pursuing even if this particular passage is counted among later insertions into a ‘core’ dated to the second century BCE.21 The pseudepigraphic collection accrues insertions because they were judged to resonate with an already existing Sibylline ‘aesthetic’. Book 3 concludes with a sphragis22 acknowledging but refuting the narrator’s Greek appellations such as the Erythraean Sibyl (who was said to have predicted the Trojan War) and the daughter of Circe and ‘Gnostos’.23 Actively to choose this book for the central insertion would be to draw readers’ attention to polemic aspects of the Sibyl’s engagement with Homer as something to expect across this collection, a filter particularly familiar from Second Sophistic literature.24 If the ‘predictions’ of Troy and of Homer’s work function to highlight the broader aspirations of Sib. Or. 3 to the reach and reputation of Homeric hexameter poetry, then we should expect to see mindful engagement with Homer beyond book 3 of these Sibylline productions, something beyond merely the ‘words and metres’ (Sib. Or. 3.424) that the Sibyl takes up. ‘Compositional’ use of Homer, at least, is in evidence throughout the corpus. Lightfoot offers examples of how Homeric formulae are directly borrowed and adjusted (especially for beginnings and ends of lines), expanded (especially epithets for divinity) or paraphrased.25 Rzach’s 1891 edition of the Sibylline Oracles 20

21

22

23 24

25

Indeed, a selection of the lines on Homer are made over into a prophecy about Virgil in Sib. Or. 11.163–71, but Virgil is not accused of being ‘false’. This thread of reuse and reemphasis is one example of how this tradition of Sibylline writing encompasses both ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ traditions of rivalry with epic poets (respectively Homer and Virgil). Collins 1974: 21–33 on Sib. Or. 3.1–92 and 350–488 as outside the ‘core’, based on Geffcken 1902b. The only relatively secure ‘external’ evidence of dating any part is that Alexander Polyhistor (fl. 40s BCE) cited Sib. Or. 3.97–104. The structure of book 3 may therefore reflect both classical verse, in which programmatic statements often come at the start or end of a book, and the action of a later Sibyllist judging the centre of a book a suitable place for a methodological highlight. On the Odyssean connotations of this title, see Bacchi 2020: 133–5. Cf. Greensmith (forthcoming) on its articulating connections between earlier and later strands of discourse; she also wonders if its composition was inspired by the Sibylline signature to book 3. Lightfoot 2007: 164.

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identifies loci similes from Homer, the Homeric Hymns, Hesiod and later pagan hexameter poems.26 These are presented by Rzach merely as fuel for emendations, but there is a suggestive preponderance of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter over other Homeric Hymns in his list of loci similes for sections of the Sibylline Oracles containing end-time visions (e.g. books 2 and 8). One may well speculate that the world-changing, underworld-focused storyline of that Hymn to Demeter influenced Rzach’s identifications of parallels (in those years before the TLG) – in other words, that Rzach, at least, was thematically as well as metrically influenced in cataloguing epic adaptations. Let us now consider the possibility of intertextual thoughtfulness from the Sibyllists themselves. Persuasive evidence of contextual adaptation is found in Amir’s ‘concordance’ to the Sibyllists’ extended reshuffling of Deuteronomy 28 (Moses outlining curses upon the Israelites if they do not keep the commandments) in Sib. Or. 3.520–44, a set of threats against Greece (within the earliest stratum of book 3 in Collins’ reckoning) using Homeric line-structures whose Iliadic context is Greek (Achaean) sufferings from disease and warfare.27 For example, Sib. Or. 3.538 shares five words with Il. 1.61 (Achilles’ observation to Agamemnon that the Greek army is crushed by fighting and plague, which motivates the turn to Calchas for help). Sib. Or. 3.526 recalls Il. 9.594 (Meleager’s wife reminds him that women and children on the losing side are led into slavery). The Sibylline reuse of the phrases may evoke the prophetic and female voices in the contexts of the first two passages. Amir also notes that Sib. Or. 3.552–3 (regarding the first kings who set the Greeks on the wrong path of idolatry) rewrites Il. 1.6, ‘from the time when first [strife arose . . .]’. For Amir, echoes of the Iliad’s proem invoke its tragic pattern of hubris, punishment and disaster.28 The first Sibylline treatment of the Trojan War (Sib. Or. 3.410–18) differently exploits Homeric contextual similarity. Greensmith 26 27 28

Rzach 1891: 240–316. Amir 1974: 80–7. In support of this association, we may cite the shorthand ‘Iliad’ for the suffering associated with the Trojan War tradition, already proverbial in Demosthenes’ expression κακῶν Ἰλιάς (‘an Iliad of evils’, 19.148.7).

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argues that its prediction of Trojan suffering and fame arising from Helen’s move from Sparta participates in post-Iliadic meditation on the causal role of Helen. She further finds a neat overturning of the Iliadic context, in that Sib. Or. 3.418 (ἀγήρατον δ’ ἔσται κλέος ἐσσομένοισιν, ‘but your fame will be ageless for future generations’) applies to Troy at large the phrasing of the Homeric Helen (at Il. 6.357–8) on herself as a subject of song for future generations, and connects its source to Homer’s text. This is the sort of move we associate with Second Sophistic critique of Homer, ‘using the fabric of Homer’s text to surpass him’.29 Still, this passage is one of only two references in the Sibylline Oracles to a topic covered by the Homeric poems that go into any detail (the other extended meditation on the fall of Troy is at 11.122–43, repeating some lines from 3.410–18, but focusing on the Wooden Horse).30 The Sibyl, although tying the fall of Troy to the rise of Rome (as also in her account in book 11, framed as the succession of eras ‘ruled’ by Agamemnon and Aeneas), also puts Homer in his place by casting his topic as a briefly narrated event (dominated by a symbolic or gnomic perspective on it as the ‘beginning of evils’) within a longer view of world history. As Gruen observes, surveying Jewish literature in Greek genres, its focus is not Greek heroes and stories, but on rewriting biblical narratives and shaping Jewish identity in the larger Hellenistic world.31 Telling, in this context, is the wider structure of this Sibylline perspective on Troy. A distinctive feature of the book 3 account is that as much space is expended on a warning sign as on the main event: eight lines recount the effect of an earthquake at Dorylaeum as ‘evidence’ for the Trojans (3.401–9) before the eight-line prediction of the Trojan War and its fame (410–18). Here is the Sibylline take on Dorylaeum: 29 30

31

Greensmith forthcoming. Briefer predictions of Troy’s fall at 3.205–6, 7.51–2, and reference at 3.815 to a false assertion of Circe as mother of the Sibyl. Gruen 2010: 416: ‘Jewish intellectuals . . . saw no value in recounting the tale of Troy, the labors of Heracles, the Persian Wars, or the contest of Athens and Sparta. Their heroes were Abraham, Joseph, and Moses’. As Anna Lefteratou points out to me, a similar combination of syncretism and appropriation of classical heroes for selfdefinition of a monotheistic religion applies to Christian poets in the Roman world.

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14 Hesiodic Rhapsody: The Sibylline Oracles ἔσται καὶ Φρυγίῃ δὲ φερεσβίῳ αὐτίκα τέκμαρ, ὁππότε κεν Ῥείης μιαρὸν γένος ἐν χθονὶ κῦμα ἀέναον ῥίζῃσιν ἀδιψήτοισι τεθηλός αὐτόπρεμνον ἄιστον ἰῇ ἐν νυκτὶ γένηται ἐν πόλει αὐτάνδρῳ σεισίχθονος ἐννοσιγαίου, ἥν ποτε φημίξουσιν ἐπωνυμίην Δορύλαιον ἀρχαίης Φρυγίης πολυδακρύτοιο κελαινῆς, ἔστ’ ἄρα καιρὸς ἐκεῖνος ἐπωνυμίην ἐνοσίχθων κευθμῶνας γαίης σκεδάσει καὶ τείχεα λύσει. There will also immediately be evidence for fertile Phrygia when the abominable race of Rhea, ever recurrent in the earth, flourishing with unthirsting roots, will disappear root and branch in a single night in the city of the earthquaking land-shaker, with its inhabitants, which at one time they will call by name Dorylaeum of ancient, much-lamented dark Phrygia, until32 indeed the critical time, that one called earth-shaking, will scatter hiding places in the earth and break down walls. (Sib. Or. 3.401–9)

A striking feature of this difficult passage is that it frames in theogonic terms the Sibyl’s overlap with the topic most closely associated with the Homeric epic tradition. An earthquake is presented as the destruction of a ‘recurrent’ (in the oxymoronic metaphor ἐν χθονὶ κῦμα) ‘race of Rhea’, evil in the earth. Sib. Or 3.110–55 already presented a version of the succession from Cronus and start of the Titanomachy (including the non-Hesiodic detail at v. 140 that Rhea took the infant Zeus to Phrygia, so facilitating the link to 401–9, which identifies Phrygian (Trojan) worshippers of Rhea as later incarnations of the Titans, her γένος). This earlier account, part of a rewriting of Genesis, is a ‘deviant’ semi-euhemerizing version drawing on many classical sources, but retaining details prominent in Hesiod’s Theogony, such as Cronus held in bonds in the earth (3.151), implicitly recalled by the present passage (3.402–3; cf. Hes. Theog. 717–21).33 The 32

33

I here follow Michael Reeve’s suggestion to take ἔστ’ as elided ἔστε rather than, as current translations interpret it, the reading of ms. Ψ: ἐσσετ’ ἄρα beginning a new sentence. On the Sibylline Titanomachy see first Lightfoot 2007: 207–12 and Bacchi 2020: 159–92; the latter argues that references to Phrygia reflect both knowledge of competing Greek myths and the rise of Rome (descendant of Troy) as a power in the Mediterranean.

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effect of Titanomachic terminology in 3.401–9 is to present the subsequent evils visited upon Troy as part of a much longer cosmic history of a type first recounted by Hesiod. Signalling such a shift into a longer, typological perspective, in which earlier events offer retrospective ‘proof’ of the pattern of later ones, is the dramatic ending of 401. τέκμαρ – ‘evidence’ – is used only here in the Sibylline collection rather than the more Homeric term, σῆμα (the fall of Dorylaeaum is reglossed at 3.410 as σήματα). τέκμαρ in a Hesiodic fragment has been attributed to the Melampodia (fr. 210 Most), and it is possible that the genre of the Melampodia as oracular genealogical catalogue also has more specific bearing on the self-image of Sibylline oracular production. In order to reassess the nature of Homeric engagement across the Sibylline Oracles, therefore, we may first survey their debts to Hesiod. Considering the Sibylline Oracles as (in origin and inspiration) a specimen of late Hellenistic literature,34 it would be unsurprising to find the use of Hesiodic poetry given programmatic importance, a classicizing gloss on (or cipher for) the expression of an alternative to Homeric authority and wisdom. Invoking the ‘Hesiodic’ It may not be coincidence that the only other Jewish Hellenistic literature so far acknowledged to be seriously indebted to Hesiod is the Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides,35 a multifaceted set of ethical exhortations, one section of which is embedded in the Sibylline Oracles as 2.56–148. Hesiodic oppositions between justice and injustice are also found in exhortations and prohibitions elsewhere (e.g. Sib. Or. 3.626–34, with advice to sacrifice).36 However, the Hesiodic legacy in the Sibylline Oracles is felt first through the strikingly extensive, even structural, use of myths familiar first from the Theogony and Works and Days. Apart 34 35 36

For this emphasis, see Bacchi 2020. Wilson 2005: 14–15. Lightfoot 2007: 166 cites Op. 226 in Sib. Or. 1.341 (Noah hectoring his contemporaries) and Sib. Or. 2.24 combining Iliad 16.388 (the famous simile of Zeus punishing injustice) and Op. 221 (on the consequences of injustice). Prescriptive: Op. 137 echoed in Sib. Or. 2.55.

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from the interweaving of the Titanomachy’s origins with an account of the Tower of Babel, near the start of book 3, Hesiod’s myth of discontinuous human races (Op. 106–201), though filtered through several subsequent models, like the Titanomachy, lies behind several of this Sibyl’s historical periodizations, especially a sequence of ten generations forming the spine for extended world history in books 1–2.37 The most classically influential part of Hesiod’s account, the ‘Golden’ race, combined with his portrait of the just city (Op. 225–37), is reflected in this world history especially in the Sibylline description of the sixth race of humans (Sib. Or. 1.283–303), described as ‘the first one of gold’ (χρυσείη πρώτη, 284), which flourished after the Flood.38 The apocalyptic dimension of Hesiod’s narrative, which turns to the future tense as he situates himself in the Iron Age and foretells its destruction by Zeus (Op. 174–201), is far less often picked up in his classical receptions.39 Distinctively Hesiodic, therefore, are passages of Iron Age-style cosmic doommongering in the Sibylline Oracles, such as Sib. Or. 4.152–61 on the consequences when trust and justice disappear from among men (with Op. 194–200), and especially Sib. Or. 2.155 on a warning sign: ‘when children are born with grey temples from birth’ (with Op. 181).40 Further, in her intermittent predictions of Jews living an idealized restoration of life on earth or being translated to Elysium (e.g. 2.313ff., especially 334–7) while the rest of the population goes to hell, this Sibylline voice picks up, as do few classical receptions of the races narrative, the interruption of straight decline in Hesiod’s sequence as he recounts the destiny of ‘more just and better’ heroes on the Blessed Isles (Op. 167–73).41 37 38

39 40

41

Kurfess 1956; detailed analysis in Wassmuth 2011: 138–47. ‘Golden race’-style descriptions of a new γένος of Jews (3.573–90) and of the end time (3.743–59). Van Noorden 2015: 274. In this context, the Sibyl’s situating herself in the story at 1.288–90 as part of Noah’s extended family who survive the Flood is ‘post-Hesiodic’ Jewish creativity; insofar as she is born into a generation following several described with Hesiod’s Iron Age features, she takes up Hesiod’s mysterious wish to be born later (Op. 174–5). See Van Noorden 2015 on post-Hesiodic texts finding in Op. 175 a hint that a better age lies ahead. See first Most 1997 on ancient simplifications of the sequence into one of straight decline.

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By interweaving the divine succession myth and the myth of discontinuous races with stories from Genesis, these oracles draw into one idiosyncratic orbit different forms of ‘Near Eastern’ literature which probably encountered each other much earlier.42 The point at which this idea is thematized in the Sibylline Oracles itself draws on the Hesiodic account of poetic inspiration. At the close of book 3, the Sibylline narrator establishes her account as the primordial joint heritage of Jews and Gentiles, rooting herself in universal history43 through extended self-identification as a relation of Noah (3.809–29). She first accounts for several appellations with a story of travel, and claims to be authorized by divine instruction to reveal to mortals the past and future (τά τ’ ἐσσόμενα πρό τ’ ἐόντα, Sib. Or. 3.822; cf. Hes. Theog. 32). She continues: ὅτε γὰρ κατεκλύζετο κόσμος ὕδασι, καί τις ἀνὴρ μόνος εὐδοκίμητος ἐλείφθη . . . ... τοῦ μὲν ἐγὼ νύμφη καὶ ἀφ’ αἵματος αὐτοῦ ἐτύχθην, τῷ τὰ πρῶτ’ ἐγένοντο· τὰ δ’ ἔσχατα πάντ’ ἀπεδείχθη· ὥστ’ ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ στόματος τάδ’ ἀληθινὰ πάντα λελέχθω. For when the world was deluged with waters, and a certain single approved man was left . . . ... I was his daughter-in-law44 and I was of his blood. The first things happened to him [Noah]. All the last were revealed: So let all the things from my mouth be accounted true. (Sib. Or. 3.823–4, 827–9)

In this context, Sib. Or. 3.828 transfers Hesiod’s comment at Theog. 34 on the shape of his poem (‘to sing of the Muses first and last’, πρῶτόν τε καὶ ὕστατον) to the Sibyl’s overview of ‘the first and last events’ in world history, before reasserting (3.829) the truth of all that is covered in her speech. Sib. Or. 4.1–23 is likewise concerned with asserting the Sibyl’s inspiration and truth-telling of ‘what is and will be’ (ὅσα νῦν τε καὶ ὁππόσα ἔσσεται, 19). I will 42

43 44

Overview of hypothesized connections between Hesiod and Near Eastern literatures in Rutherford 2009; on the analogy with Hebrew prophets, see e.g. Scodel 2014. Lightfoot 2007: 218. This translation of νύμφη is informed by the more detailed autobiography given at Sib. Or. 1.288–90, on which see n. 40 above, and Lightfoot 2007: 412 ad loc.

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return in my conclusion to the significance of this emphasis on truth. Hesiod’s Theogony is recalled in the Sibylline Oracles not only for its accounts of cosmic kingship and poetic inspiration, but for its spatial map of the cosmos. On a structural level, Sibylline Oracles books 1–2, a blend of world chronology and topography of the underworld, recall the outlines of Hesiod’s Theogony as a poem which operates both genealogically and geographically to describe the universe.45 Hesiod’s famous measurement of the distance to Tartarus (Theog. 720) is echoed at Sib. Or. 8.374 in the voice of God declaring knowledge of the cosmos. Apart from thematic and structural inspiration, these Sibylline constructions evoke notorious Hesiodic mannerisms. The Sibylline Oracles are in ‘great part taken up by names’,46 both short lists of names alone (e.g. of cities to be destroyed, at 3.341–7, 514–17; cf. lists of offspring in Theog. 223–31, or of nymphs in 243–62), and with repetition of the construction and brief circumstantial detail (e.g. extended woe-sayings at Sib. Or. 3.433–88, 504–13, as in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women). Other forms of syntactical and verbal repetition distinguish this Sibylline voice as an heir to ‘oracular’ Hesiod:47 anaphora (Sib. Or. 1.162–6, 2.182–4 and 6.9–11 in the context of a hymn – cf. Theog. 632–6, 833–5 and Op. 5–7), especially in ‘negative descriptions’ of paradise at Sib. Or. 2.208–12, 3.238–42, etc. (cf. Op. 228–31, of the just city), polyptoton (Sib. Or. 1.194, 273–4: cf. Op. 182–3 and Theog. 211–13) and etymologizing wordplay48 – Hesiod’s pun on the name of Zeus at Op. 1–2 is echoed in the Sibylline Oracles at 3.141.49 Finally, on the level of sound, this Sibylline voice, like that parodied by 45 46

47

48

49

Pucci 2009: 41, 64. Cf. Quintilian 10.1.52 on Hesiod, and Schwartz 1960: 43–4 on ancient judgement of the ‘Hesiodic character’ of a few catalogues in the Iliad. See Lightfoot 2007: 192–202 focusing on ‘indexical’ features of repetition and rhyme, noting also the possible influence of Semitic parallelisms represented in Greek in the Septuagint. See first Vergados 2020 on etymologies in the Theogony, links between language and ambiguous reality in the Works and Days and key ancient receptions of Hesiod’s ‘conception of language’. Lombardi 2015 examines Hesiod’s pressing of traditional phrases. For a brief overview of etymologizing wordplay in the Works and Days, see Canevaro 2015: 166–72; on the Theogony see Scully 2015: 18–19. ‘Callimachean’ etymologizing of Delos in a sequence at 3.363–4 is repeated at 4.91–2 and 8.165–6.

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Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, amplifies Hesiodic ‘germs’ of rhythmical repetitions, alliteration and assonance, in both ‘apocalyptic’ (Op. 176–7) and ‘hymnic’ sections (Op. 1–10).50 In view of such a range of material and stylistic debts to Hesiodic poetry, we should wonder what Hesiod signifies for this Sibylline voice. Homer is marked out as the rival to beat, but the Sibyllists’ reasons for taking up markedly Hesiodic stories and modes have not been examined. While the challenge to Homer targets the specific cachet and currency of the Homeric poems with defined subjects as their focus, the Sibyl’s not naming Hesiod points us towards reception concepts of the ‘Hesiodic’ as a mode or set of styles more widely adopted and exploited. Bearing in mind the potential for Sibylline transposition of aims and interests judged ‘Hesiodic’ in antiquity, I now sketch three trends in the ancient receptions of Hesiod and Homer which bear on the rhetorical projects of the Sibylline Oracles. Hesiod and Homer Compared and Contrasted ‘Ideas’ of the Hesiodic in classical antiquity as teaching ethics are manifested increasingly by the citation and adaptation of memorable passages, such as the steep path to Virtue,51 taken from the Works and Days in contradistinction to the Iliad.52 Christian classicizing poetry, however, emphasizes the didactic potential of the Theogony as well.53 Whether Hesiod’s poetry itself directly espouses anything closer to monotheism or ‘Judaeo-Christian’ ethics than does Homer is still debated.54 However, reassessments of its ‘theology’ have judged that the encoding of poetic inspiration in both the Theogony and Works and Days assures the ‘higher 50 51

52 53

54

Lightfoot 2007: 192, 197. Overview in Van Noorden 2018: 404, 407. Whitby 2014: 449–54 surveys further Christian poetic receptions of the image. Graziosi 2002: 175–7. On the ‘idea’ of Hesiod as didactic see first Hunter 2014. van den Berg 2014 argues that Proclus treated the Works and Days as propaedeutic to the Theogony; Agosti 2016 highlights the importance of the Theogony for the fourthcentury Codex of Visions, as a divinely inspired poet, as a repository of wisdom and as an ethical model. Mondi 1986 argues that Hesiod in the Theogony has modified the theme of cosmic disturbance to glorify Zeus (his ‘one God’). Allan 2006 sceptically reviews ‘progress’ across and beyond the Homeric poems to Hesiod.

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form of moral articulation’ that underpins the stories about Zeus and his concern for justice in the end.55 By contrast, the senses in which Homer too was counted as ‘didactic’ in antiquity are less direct; while allegoresis and other methods were needed to accommodate, for example, the ‘theomachy’ of Iliad 21 to a didactic frame, Hesiodic poetry repeatedly frames itself as explicating the enigmatic will of Zeus (Op. 483–4). The poet in this role has a ‘mantic’ aspect. In the broadest terms, the ‘horizon of expectation’ about Sibylline epos shared by the various (Hellenized) authors and editors of our collection riffs on the overlap between ‘oracular’ and ‘epic’ poetry, both forms of hexameter epos.56 As a topic of explicit discussion in antiquity, Hesiod was unfavourably compared with Homer as being μαντικός.57 In recent years, the oracular facets of Hesiodic poetry have drawn more attention,58 along with its long legacy of ‘signreading’ poetry; pre-Hellenistic versions of the Works and Days appear to have concluded with a section on bird omens,59 and the weather-signs and other omens concluding this poem were picked up in the Phaenomena of Aratus, with its own snowballing effect in the Aratea.60 From a Sibylline viewpoint, the most telling aspect in which the ‘Hesiodic’ contrasts with Homer is in its ‘broad-brush’ history as opposed to the few weeks or months covered by the Homeric poems (for all the interpretative potential of their spatially ‘cosmic’ images),61 and its ‘rhapsodic’ approach to its projects. Hesiod’s broad narrative of the diverging developments of the worlds of gods and mortals is presented in several (strictly speaking incompatible) ways, sometimes within the same poem. On a larger scale, the ancient stitching of the Catalogue of Women to the end of the Theogony testifies to the sense of Hesiodic poetry as 55 56 57 58

59 60 61

Martin 2018a, citation from p. 139. On ‘genre’ and epos see e.g. Ford 1992: ch. 1. E.g. Lucian, On Hesiod 8; Aelius Aristides, Oration On Rome 26.106 Keil. See González 2018 on ‘ainetic’ Hesiod, Loney 2018 on the telos-oriented Works and Days and Theogony, and González 2010 on the total end in store for the age of heroes in the Catalogue of Women. Fernández Delgado 1986 compares the gnomic utterances of the Works and Days with the style of Delphic oracles. See e.g. Cingano 2009: 103–4. See Volk 2012 on Aratus. See first Hardie 1985 on the Shield of Achilles.

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offering an entire history of the world from primeval creation, through the formation of the Olympian order, the age of heroes and on up to the present day (the Works and Days, cross-referencing the Theogony on Eris, completing the trilogy). Given that classical receptions of Hesiod, from Plato to Ovid, in various ways imitate the temporal range, rhapsody and ‘interconnectedness’ of Hesiodic works,62 the Sibylline Oracles is in good company in drawing inspiration from these features of Hesiodic poetry.63 Such impressions of Hesiod offer prisms through which to evaluate the coherence64 of the Sibylline Oracles’ repetition and variation of theme across different books,65 in their presentations of total world history. The concept of ‘rhapsodic’ stitching can be extended from the thematic amplification and repetition of oracles to the combination of different interlocking styles (historical review, explicit prediction, diatribe, hymn, ethical advice) which make up the Sibylline conception of prophecy. Insofar as the paralleling, contrast and cross-reference of Hesiodic to Homeric poetry was in antiquity framed as competition, highlighting the Hesiodic subjects and ‘stitching’ of the Sibylline Oracles helps to foreground the competitive element of Sibylline engagement with Homer.66 The Contest of Homer and Hesiod, formed in stages between the fourth century BCE and second century CE, offers prose evidence contemporary to the formation of Sibylline Oracles 1–5 for a combination of Hellenistic interest in Hesiod as conscious alternative to Homer67 and ‘Second Sophistic’ prose critique of Homer. The popularity of the Contest narrative, indeed, seems to have eclipsed Hesiod’s own account of his quarrel with Perses (Op. 34–9) in 62

63

64

65

66 67

See Capra 2010 on Plato’s Timaeus–Critias as reflecting Theogony–Catalogue, Hunter 2004a on Callimachus’ Aetia as ‘sequel’ to the Theogony, Ziogas 2013 and Van Noorden 2015 on evocations of Hesiodic poems in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Nelson 2005 on the ‘interconnectedness’ of Hesiodic poetry. Lightfoot 2007: 107 struggles to explain Sibylline diachronic prophecy only with reference to biblical sources. Cf. Hunter 2016: 224 on a collection of Italian scholarship seeking a kind of ‘rhapsodic coherence’ in Hesiod. See Lightfoot 2007: ix on the ‘bewilderingly inconstant scenarios’ in Sibylline visions of the ‘last things’. See first Graziosi 2002 on the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. See e.g. Schroeder 2006: 288–90 for an overview of possible configurations of Hesiod as ‘anti-heroic’ and ‘anti-authoritarian’.

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‘biographies’ of Hesiod in antiquity.68 In verse, within the Homerizing Posthomerica of Quintus Smyrnaeus (third century CE?), the use of (Stoicized) Hesiodic images such as the ascent to Virtue (Op. 287–92) on the Shield of Achilles at Posthomerica 5.49–56 has prompted the suggestion that Hesiod represents, for Quintus too, a didactic critique of Homeric ethics of excellence.69 The Sibylline Oracles as Hesiodic Rhapsody Eschatologizing Homer With this ‘competition’ tradition in view, reminiscences of Hesiodic poetry offer a way for Sibylline genealogies of portended destruction to express both Homer’s falsehood and his limitations in describing the cosmic significance of the Trojan War. Within a longer mythological sequence of human races, Works and Days 167–73 offers a high-speed, ‘apocalyptic’ take on the Trojan War (since the heroes’ demise is part of a divine plan for human history). Analogously, the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, as an early poetic reception of heroic epic poetry,70 frames in a larger genealogical context the heroic generation that are the protagonists of Homer’s poems, and foretells their end. Echoes of Hesiodic poetry may therefore work as a vehicle for the ‘eschatologizing’ project of the Sibylline Oracles (i.e. rewriting its sources towards collective destruction or redemption, in predicting a new and permanent condition of things),71 even as Homerizing language is used. Consider, for example, how this Sibyl introduces her account of the war of the Gentiles on Zion: ὁ φθόνος οὐκ ἀγαθὸν πέλεται δειλοῖσι βροτοῖσιν. ἀλλὰ πάλιν βασιλῆες ἐθνῶν ἐπὶ τήνδε γε γαῖαν ἀθρόοι ὁρμήσονται ἑαυτοῖς κῆρα φέροντες. 68 69

70

71

Stamatopoulou 2016. See Maciver 2007 on Quintus’ didactic transformation of Homer through Stoic lenses, and Pang 2019 for the specific suggestion about Quintus’ use of Hesiod here. González 2010; this is not to dismiss e.g. the scholia to Il. 1.5/Cypria fr. 1 bringing out the apocalyptic potential of the Trojan War story as part of the plan of Zeus to purge the human race. For this label for this text, see Tobin 2016: 352–62. Looser and stricter definitions of eschatology (i.e. involving an ‘end of the world’ or not) are discussed with reference to the Sibylline Oracles by Collins 1974: 149 n. 1.

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Helen Van Noorden Envy is not good for wretched mortals. But again the kings of the peoples will launch an attack together against this land, bringing doom upon themselves. (Sib. Or. 3.662–4)

This introduces one of many biblical motifs ‘placed in a deeper, eschatological perspective’.72 Jeremiah 15, an image of foreign kings setting their thrones around Jerusalem, glosses this event as punishment for the wickedness of those who have forsaken the Hebrew god. In Sib. Or. 3.667–8 the same image is portrayed as part of a final eschatological assault on the Temple. But the event is prepared for in Homeric language, at Hesiodic speed: envy is presented as the cause, the generalized reference to the kings’ combined attack on Jerusalem seems to repeat the pattern of the collected Greeks’ warring on Troy, and the prediction of dire consequences for the attackers recalls the perspective of Cassandra, that the Greeks will effectively ‘lose’ the Trojan War. Adding the reflexive pronoun to the Homeric phrase κῆρα φέροντες makes the line echo the reflection at Hesiod, Op. 265–6, finessed as the essence of the ‘Hesiodic’ by Plato and then Callimachus, that the doer of evil brings evil upon himself.73 So far I have argued that the Sibyllists exploit cosmic, ethical and self-assertive aspects of Hesiod along with Homeric references to bring the Trojan War into their orbit as a subject of biblical significance. I now present three case studies of how Sibylline processes of rewriting scripture as didactic epic to rival Homer are aided by a view of Hesiodic poetry as an ‘intermediary’ cosmic contextualization of Homeric subjects. The first analysis begins from a Sibylline description of cosmic upheaval with divine agency, involving spatial and temporal amplification of biblical and Homeric scenes. ἠλιβάτους κορυφάς τ’ ὀρέων βουνούς τε πελώρων ῥήξει, κυάνεόν τ’ ἔρεβος πάντεσσι φανεῖται. ἠέριαι δὲ φάραγγες ἐν οὔρεσιν ὑψηλοῖσιν ἔσσονται πλήρεις νεκύων· ῥεύσουσι δὲ πέτραι αἵματι καὶ πεδίον πληρώσει πᾶσα χαράδρα. 72

73

Lightfoot 2007: 226, citing Barton 1986: 136 on ‘second-order prophecy’ as more longrange and more international than the Old Testament prophets. Lightfoot’s phrase draws on Hartman 1966: 72–3 regarding the use of the ‘earthquake motif’ in 1 Enoch vis-à-vis the Old Testament. On its Callimachean reception see Hunter 2008b.

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14 Hesiodic Rhapsody: The Sibylline Oracles He will break off the steep summits and the heights of the huge mountains and dark Erebus will appear to all. Deep ravines between lofty mountains will be full of corpses. The rocks will flow with blood and every torrent will fill the plain. (Sib. Or. 3.680–4)

This passage is based on 1 Enoch 1:6, but that text has mountains as its subject. Commentators point to Il. 20.54–66 as a ‘supplementary motif’ for the idea that the earth could break open and Hades become visible. Yet the Iliadic context has mountains being shaken as gods first clash in their own war, the ‘theomachy’, and Hades’ fear is precisely that Poseidon would break open the earth (also using ῥήγνυμι, in the optative). Longinus 9.6 quotes as an example of sublimity the lines from Iliad book 20 alongside lines from the creation narrative in Genesis.74 I find Hesiodic precedent for such association of destruction with creation operating in Sibylline poetics. Edwards’ commentary on Iliad book 20 emphasizes how striking lines 54–66, describing the onset of the ‘theomachy’, are within the Iliad – all parts of the universe are shaken, in a ‘Hesiodic’ moment of scaling-up to focus on sound. He rightly compares three passages of ‘cosmic disturbance’ from divine conflicts in Hesiod’s Theogony. One is Hades’ fear at the clash of Zeus and Typhoeus, the last monster to oppose his rule (i.e. a final conflict), at Theog. 847–52.75 It shakes all parts of the cosmos, like the earlier conflict of the Olympians and the Titans, where mass engagement produces something like an earthquake (Theog. 678–82) felt even in Tartarus, again described with an emphasis on sound (682–6). The section following this, Zeus’s display of strength against Typhoeus, continues the theme of universal impact (693–9). Hesiod then steps back and broadens the vision: the general melee is compared to the coming together of Earth and Sky in the creation of the world (which was described at the start of the Theogony):

74 75

Usher 2007 explains the possible associative process that led to this blend of contexts. Edwards 1991: 293–4 ad loc.

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Helen Van Noorden καῦμα δὲ θεσπέσιον κάτεχεν χάος· εἴσατο δ’ ἄντα ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ἰδεῖν ἠδ’ οὔασιν ὄσσαν ἀκοῦσαι αὔτως, ὡς ὅτε γαῖα καὶ οὐρανὸς εὐρὺς ὕπερθε πίλνατο· τοῖος γάρ κε μέγας ὑπὸ δοῦπος ὀρώρει, τῆς μὲν ἐρειπομένης, τοῦ δ’ ὑψόθεν ἐξεριπόντος· τόσσος δοῦπος ἔγεντο θεῶν ἔριδι ξυνιόντων. A prodigious conflagration took possession of Chasm; and to look upon it with eyes and to hear its sound with ears, it seemed just as when Earth and broad Sky approached from above: for this was the kind of great sound that would rise up as she was pressed down and as he pressed her down from on high – so great a sound was produced as the gods ran together in strife. (Theog. 700–5; trans. Most 2006)

Sib. Or. 3.680–4 follows up the ‘Hesiodic’ Homeric cosmic upheaval with the idea that rocks will flow with blood, adapting an Iliadic expression, ‘the ground ran with blood’. Its first use in the Iliad (4.451) is the first major clash between Trojan and Achaean armies after the truce breaks down (a context recalled by the repetition of the line at Il. 8.51, when Zeus settles to watch their renewed engagement). In Iliad book 4, the scene is amplified by an amazing simile of two rivers rushing together, whose sound (δοῦπος, as in Hesiod) is heard far away.76 The Sibylline poet seems to have drawn inspiration from two Iliadic passages of ‘first conflict’ on divine and human scales to create a picture of the ‘last display’ of God’s strength, and for this move I suggest that Hesiodic poetics paved the way. The second dimension of Sibylline ‘eschatologizing’ of Homeric epic along Hesiodic lines is in the universal application or magnification of individual events, in a manner akin to the final fragment of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. For this we turn to Sibylline Oracles 5, which most scholars link with book 3 as having a provenance in Egyptian Judaism,77 and for which the terminus ante quem appears to be 132 CE. An end-time image offered in five different versions in this book is the return of Nero as eschatological adversary. Nero is a δεινὸς ὄφις φυσῶν πόλεμον βαρύν (‘a terrible snake blowing out war’, Sib. Or. 5.29) and at his 76

77

Hunter 2018: 55–64 treats this scene’s portrait of Eris reaching to Heaven as a cosmic magnification of an important moment. See first Collins 1974. Papyrological evidence attests to the popularity of the Catalogue in Egypt: see Cingano 2009: 107.

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appearance ‘the whole creation was shaken’ (Sib. Or. 5.152). The phrases point to Typhoeus, presented in Hesiod’s Theogony as a ‘terrible snake’ and ‘monster of typhoons and winds’ (825, 845–6).78 The Book of Revelation (likewise late first/early second century CE) offers a more developed ‘eschatological’ treatment of Nero as the (Typhonic) Beast who represents the Antichrist.79 Sibylline depictions of a Typhonic Nero support Sib. Or. 3 in pointing to a monstrous background to the Trojan War, since ‘terrible snake’ recalls also the end of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, in which both a storm (fr. 204.124–7 Merkelbach–West) and a δεινὸς ὄφις (fr. 204.36) appear in the eschatological context of Zeus planning to end the entire heroic age (apparently via the Trojan War: fr. 204.98–100). Interpretation of the snake as recalling the omen for the Greeks at Aulis which portended the fall of Troy after ten years80 is supported by the scraps of surviving lines towards the end of the fragment as we have it, which do amplify the sense of an agent of destruction biding his time in hiding (141–3). For the Sibyllists, Nero will provoke another ‘Trojan War’ at the end of time. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, as an early poetic reception of both Hesiod’s Theogony and Homeric heroic themes, paves the way for the Sibylline Oracles to highlight not only Typhoeus as an eschatological adversary81 (comparable to the Egyptian tradition of denoting enemies as ‘Typhonians [followers of Seth-Typhon]’ found in late Hellenistic texts such as the Oracle of the Potter),82 but also, in tandem with this, the Trojan War as an eschatological form of collective destruction. A different example of the ‘eschatologizing’ combination of Hesiodic and Homeric scenes in the Sibylline Oracles comes from book 4 (usually dated to the late first century CE, provenance 78 79

80 81

82

Usher 2013. On Hesiod’s Typhoeus and Revelation, see Louden 2018: ch. 8. On Nero as Antichrist, see Horbury 1998. Clay 2005: 33, followed up by Most 2008: 57–64. Differently in different books; Hesiod’s description (Theog. 307) of Typhoeus, as ‘terrible, overbearing and lawless’ is at Sib. Or. 2.259 reapplied to human sinners in hell, which Lightfoot 2007: 166 finds ‘contextually bizarre’, but it both makes plural Typhoeus’ resistance to ultimate divine rule and anticipates its defeat. The Oracle of the Potter, a frequent comparandum for the Sibylline Oracles, may have influenced Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos (see Laukola 2012), whose wordplay on Delos at 4.53 is found also at Sib. Or. 3.363–4.

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unclear), which in 192 lines reviews world history and predicts conflagration in the end times. The finale begins: κόσμος ἅπας μύκημα καὶ ὄμβριμον ἦχον ἀκούσει. φλέξει δὲ χθόνα πᾶσαν, ἅπαν δ’ ὀλέσει γένος ἀνδρῶν καὶ πάσας πόλιας ποταμούς θ’ ἅμα ἠδὲ θάλασσαν· ἐκκαύσει δέ τε πάντα, κόνις δ’ ἔσετ’ αἰθαλόεσσα. The whole world will hear a bellowing noise and mighty sound. He will burn the whole earth, and destroy the whole race of men and all cities and rivers at once, and the sea. He will destroy everything by fire, and it will be smoking dust. (Sib Or. 4.175–8)

This picture is usually taken to be a loose reflection of Stoic notions of ekpyrosis, which were common intellectual property by the first century CE. However, the emphasis on sound as the ‘whole earth’ and sea burn again recalls those Hesiodic scenes of Zeus’s final clash with Typhoeus (especially Theog. 695–700),83 and the final phrase recalls two characters who in different ways encapsulate the mortal condition. κόνις αἰθαλόεσσα (178) is found in two contexts of individual mourning in Homer – Achilles for Patroclus (Il. 18.23) and Laertes for Odysseus (Od. 24.316, both in the accusative). The Sibyl has literalized and made cosmic the mourner’s ritual pouring of ash over his head to indicate a world destroyed. Correcting Homeric Values Along with echoes of Hesiodic exhortations to piety (see above, p. 352), we find in the Sibylline Oracles that Homeric burial ethics, concept of Hades and emphasis on the glory of the warrior come in for pointed correction from a monotheistic perspective. This may be illustrated initially from more of the finale to book 4. It recounts a resurrection (based on Ezekiel 37): God kindles the fire that destroys, but then reshapes such remnants into living beings again, acting as the ultimate cre(m)ator84 in a striking sequel. Then comes the judgement: 83

84

West 1966: 351 ad Theogony 695, ‘the whole earth boiled’, compares Hebrew literature on the melting of the mountains at the approach of Jehovah. I owe this formulation to Ioannis Konstantakos.

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14 Hesiodic Rhapsody: The Sibylline Oracles καὶ τότε δὴ κρίσις ἔσσετ’, ἐφ’ ᾗ δικάσει θεὸς αὐτός κρίνων ἔμπαλι κόσμον· ὅσοι δ’ ὑπὸ δυσσεβίῃσιν ἥμαρτον, τοὺς δ’ αὖτε χυτὴ κατὰ γαῖα καλύψει Τάρταρά τ’ εὐρώεντα μυχοὶ στύγιοί τε γεέννης. ὅσσοι δ’ εὐσεβέουσι, πάλιν ζήσοντ’ ἐπὶ γαῖαν . . . πνεῦμα θεοῦ δόντος ζωήν θ’ ἅμα καὶ χάριν αὐτοῖς . . . And then there will be a judgement over which God himself will preside, judging the world again. As many as sinned by impiety, these will a mound of earth cover, And broad Tartarus and the repulsive recesses of Gehenna. But as many as are pious, they will live on earth again . . . when God gives spirit and life and favour to them . . . (Sib. Or. 4.183–7, 189)

A confrontational adjustment of Homeric burial ethics is found in the Sibyllist’s conjunction of a Homeric phrase χυτὴ κατὰ γαῖα καλῦψει: ‘a mound of earth will cover [them]’ (Sib. Or. 4.185) with an echo of the Hesiodic Theogony’s introduction of murky Tartarus (119), substituting ‘the repulsive recesses of Gehenna’ for the end of the Hesiodic line (Sib. Or. 4.186). In Homer, the mound of earth covers good men, such as Hector (at least in hope, Il. 6.464) and Tydeus, the father of Diomedes (Il. 14.114). The Sibyl, however, is emphasizing that sinners will be covered by a mound of earth. The ‘sinners’ are the pagans, contrasted with the pious (Jews) who will gain restored life. In Homer, Hector is recognized by the gods as pious; but for the Sibyl, as mentioned above, p. 347, all Homer’s heroes are ‘empty-headed’ (Sib. Or. 3.430). Another oracle in this collection, certainly composed or redacted by Christian hands, more closely targets the Homeric emphasis on the finality of death. ‘A nice paradox’85 is found when Agamemnon’s gnōmē about unyielding Hades (δμηθήτω· Ἀΐδης τοι ἀμείλιχος ἠδ’ ἀδάμαστος, Il. 9.158) becomes in Sibylline Oracles 2 the basis for the angel Uriel’s successful assault on its bolts and bars: καὶ τότ’ ἀμειλίκτοιο καὶ ἀρρήκτου ἀδάμαντος (‘Then [Hades’ bars] of pitiless, unyielding adamant [Archangel Uriel shall burst and break]’, Sib. Or. 2.227–9). I wonder if the Sibyllist in producing this line has ‘read’ as applying to Hades Agamemnon’s statement with its opening third85

Lightfoot 2007: 166.

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person imperative ‘let him give way’, which in the Iliadic context applies to Achilles. Already in Sibylline Oracles 3, however, we find the Homeric possibility of memory as a form of eternal life for mortals efficiently overturned: κοὐκ ἔσσεται ἄλλος οἶκος ἐπ’ ἀνθρώποισι καὶ ἐσσομένοισι πυθέσθαι, ἀλλ’ ὃν ἔδωκε θεὸς πιστοῖς ἄνδρεσσι γεραίρειν. There will be no other house among men, even for future generations to know, except the one which God gave faithful men to honour. (Sib. Or. 3.773–5)

These lines are part of a vision of paradise as life on earth restored for the righteous. The end of line 774 echoes a Homeric phrase often found in the context of men about to die who are concerned with their reputation after death (irrespective of whether or not they are actually granted glory by the poet)86 – for example, Hector (Il. 22.305), Elpenor (Od. 11.76) and Antinous (Od. 24.433). The Sibyllist, by contrast, picks up the phrase precisely to deny any form of post-mortem fame to mortal households; the implication is that immortal glory is reserved for the Temple (as μέγα κῦδος is granted to God, at 4.30).87 At least one Jewish Hellenistic poet did attribute Homeric glory to Jewish heroes: Philo senior (second century BCE) is concerned to confer κῦδος upon the race of Abraham through his own epic poetry.88 However, Simon Goldhill in this volume emphasizes how problematic it is when Cometas, unlike most Christian Greek poetry in Homerizing hexameters, attributes to Jesus that most loaded quality, κλέος. By citing these instances of Sibylline challenges to the underlying values and principles of the Homeric world I do not mean to suggest that the Sibyl always directly asserts Hesiodic ideas in their stead, even if there are grounds for a Sibyllist to read Zeus in 86 87

88

For more detail on the use of this phrase, see Finkelberg 1991/2. Kleos is granted sarcastically in the description at Sib. Or. 3.431 of Homer adorning the heroes. Cf. Lightfoot 2016: 336 on the polemic use of epithets of God turned back on pagan targets. Faulkner 2015: 240–6.

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Hesiod as closer to the ‘one God’ and/or as more extensively and explicitly associated with justice (e.g. Op. 276–80), and hence as more of a model than a target.89 Rather, in the context of her extensive Hesiodic debts elsewhere in the work, the Sibyl’s Homerizing treatment of biblical stories, thoughts and lines gains ‘Hesiodic’ force, in the sense that Hesiod, in his Hellenistic and later receptions (such as the Contest narratives of his poetic victory), came to represent successful challenge to the cachet of Homer. Conclusion: The Sibylline Oracles among Homeric and Hesiodic Receptions Viewing the Sibylline Oracles in the framework of longer and wider ‘didactic’, ‘oracular’ and ‘universal’ strands in the reception of Hesiodic and Homeric epos suggests that for these Helleniceducated Jewish and Christian Sibyllists, Hesiod and the ‘Hesiodic’ represent an ethical and eschatologizing frame in which to counteract the prestige of Homer with biblical truth. I have distinguished several strategies by which the Sibyl transforms biblical material with Homeric colouring into apocalyptic and eschatological visions. She amplifies the spatial scope of scenes of destruction, makes cosmic visions out of personal actions and polemically counters heroic epic values with Jewish monotheistic principles. In each of these moves, ideas of ‘the Hesiodic’ generated by its ancient reception provide, if not direct inspiration, a cipher for the critique or adjustment of the Homeric cosmos implied by Sibylline rewriting of Jewish and Christian scriptures in the direction of universal history. Small- and largescale ‘Hesiodic rhapsody’, as much as the circumscribing of Homer, offers a guide to the projects and literary texture of the Sibylline Oracles. Further investigation of the Sibyllists’ simultaneous appropriation and subversion of Homeric phrases and ideas through ‘Hesiodic’ matrices would benefit from comparison with other 89

Contrast the clear adaptation of Hesiodic ethics in Christian verse paraphrases and other classicizing poetry (Whitby 2014: 449–54).

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Hellenistic Jewish ‘expropriations’ of Egyptian or Greek myth.90 Equally, when the Sibylline Oracles are viewed from the standpoint of their redactions in late antiquity, there is mutual benefit to be gained from comparison with Christian forms of archaic ‘rhapsody’, an area in which scholarly models of the reception of preChristian poets are ever-evolving. I am thinking in particular of two intertextual practices basic to the composition of cento, the ‘patchwork’ of Virgilian or Homeric hexameters into which the biblical stories were rewritten (and re-edited) in Latin and Greek by late antique Christian poets,91 and its resulting ‘double vision’ of the original: Usurpation (taking over e.g. divine epithets) and Konstrastimitation (reusing phrases or ideas within an overthrow of their original narrative context).92 Kontrastimitation is now well used to describe Hesiodic intertexts in certain fourthcentury Christian compositions such as Gregory Nazianzus’ poem Against Women Wearing Ornaments (1.2.29) and Apollinaris’ Metaphrasis Psalmorum, but has also been criticized as insufficient to account for the use of both generic and specific Hesiodic echoes alongside Homer in other late antique Christian poetry, especially Nonnus’ Paraphrase of the Gospel According to John.93 The functions of certain Hesiodic intertexts in the Sibylline Oracles are equally hard to pin down. For instance, the famous image concluding Hesiod’s apocalyptic vision, of the last forces for social cohesion fleeing from earth at the end of the Iron Age, (Op. 197–200) is picked up at Sib. Or. 3.377–8 within a prediction of paradise regained: ‘Bad government will flee from men, and 90

91

92 93

See Gruen 1998a: 41–72, 2016a; Bacchi 2020: 34 applies the term to Sibylline Oracles 3. Eustathius (twelfth century CE), commenting on Homer’s Iliad, explicitly compares these ‘Homerocentra’ as he discusses the derivation of ‘rhapsody’ from ῥάπτειν (1.10). His account of rhapsodes bringing together Homeric poetry lying ‘scattered’ (σποράδην) intriguingly recalls the fifth-century Christian compiler’s description of his work on σποράδην Sibylline compositions in his prologue to the extant Sibylline Oracles (line 9). In the context of my argument for direct or indirect Hesiodic influence on the ‘rhapsody’ of the Sibylline Oracles, Aloni 2017 on Hesiod’s Works and Days as a sylloge like the Theognidea is also particularly suggestive. See e.g. Agosti 2011: 287–8. See respectively Faulkner on the Metaphrasis Psalmorum, and both Accorinti and Hadjittofi on Nonnus’ Paraphrase, with the editors’ Introduction in Hadjittofi and Lefteratou 2020; cf. in the same volume Paschalis on Kontrastimitation as too restrictive to describe Juvencus’ use of Virgil.

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envy’. The Sibyllists may be correcting Hesiodic pessimism, or one could say that they are inspired by Hesiod to produce a Hesiodic expression for the event that the Golden Age will return.94 The Sibylline Oracles, which bridge the temporal and stylistic gap between Hellenistic investment in Hesiod and the revival of Homer-engagement in Christian hexameters, prompt further explorations into the use of Hesiod and the ‘Hesiodic’ alongside the treatment of Homer in early Jewish and Christian poetic literature.95 Comparison to other forms of Christian Greek poetry may also contextualize the emphasis on truth versus falsehood in the Sibyl’s challenge to Homer at Sib. Or. 3.419–25. The claim of priority is a classic move for Jewish authors of Greek literature,96 but the Sibyl’s further claim that Homer is a ‘false writer’ (ψευδογράφος) who cleverly hid the truth he gained from her neatly overturns interpretative traditions of finding cosmic truth in Homeric fictions.97 While engaging with broader Greek literary trends of one-upmanship, in a Sibylline context it resonates with the emphasis on true prophecy marked especially at the start and end of book 3 and the start of book 4 (see again 3.814–18, 829, 4.1–23, but also 3.3, 2.5).98 In these contexts, whose phrasing evokes the poetic initiation in the Theogony, one striking omission is the assertion of Hesiod’s Muses that they can utter plausible fictions,99 although the Sibyl elsewhere imitates their tone of scorn for humankind (Sib. Or. 3.9, 29ff.). This suggests that for this Sibyl, Hesiod is aligned with truth rather than fiction,100 94 95

96

97

98

99 100

See n. 40 above. Cf. Agosti 2016 on Hesiod in the Codex of Visions, cited above, n. 53; debate is ongoing about the relation of its author ‘Dorotheos son of Quintus the poet’ to Quintus Smyrnaeus, whose use of Hesiod is cited above on p. 359. See Gruen 1998a: 159 on Artapanus on Moses as teacher of Orpheus, and 246–91 (= ch. 7 ‘Pride and Precedence’), which emphasizes Aristobulus especially in the ‘favored fiction . . . [of] derivation of Greek ideas from Jewish roots’. As Greensmith (forthcoming) notes, the verb ἀναπλόω used of Homer himself in v. 425 can mean both ‘open’ and ‘interpret’. I note that in the adaptation of these lines at Sib. Or. 11.171, Virgil is also predicted to ‘open’ the Sibylline writings, but then to ‘conceal’ (κρύψει) them until his death. Worries about interpolations into oracle collections appear very early; see Parke 1988: 9 on Herodotus 7.6.3. As Lightfoot 2007: 22 notes. Koning 2010: 298–318 traces the wider trajectory of truth and fiction ascribed to Homer and Hesiod in their early receptions.

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within a larger discourse about cosmic religious truth as opposed to human facts (which may be covered up by epic fictions). I have argued that the texture of the books of the Sibylline Oracles is reminiscent of Hesiodic rhapsody, which likewise used to be viewed as a repository of diverse sources to the detriment of its evaluation as literature. It is to be hoped that the renaissance of interest in the way different myths and ideas are stitched together within Hesiodic poems and over the corpus attributed to Hesiod will be extended to this Sibylline literature. I hope to have shown that the Sibylline Oracles is not an outlier but may be linked with wider trends in Homeric and Hesiodic reception, and that, in this most ‘tralatician’ genre, there is still room for creativity in the recasting of Homeric and Hesiodic poetry with a Sibylline spin.

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ch a p t e r 1 5 H O M E R A N D T H E PR E C A R I T Y O F T R A D I T I O N: CAN JESUS BE ACHILLES?

simon goldhill

Is not all that we now categorize as literature a form of reception? By the very virtue of being generic – and all literature is recognized through genre: ‘there are no genreless texts’1 – an artwork is composed saliently in response to earlier artworks. Even novelty is perceived only through a contrastive engagement with earlier exemplars. Even if we allow that ancient Greek and Latin writing may not be best approached through the eighteenth-century category of literature, the writing of antiquity demonstrably and explicitly has a strong sense of inherited and often named forms (epic, comedy, epigram, tragedy, and so forth).2 To author a text is to mark a dynamic construction of and self-placement within a cultural tradition. Yet some forms of literary writing are incomprehensible without an appreciation of a more specific, purposive and systematic interaction with particular earlier works. The tragedies of classical Athens are a machine for rewriting the inherited stories of the epic tradition for the new politics of the city. Hellenistic literature, ever self-conscious of its own placement in a modern world, looking back over its shoulder to the foreign country of the past, obsessively recomposes the language and forms of Homer in particular, but other genres too: so, to take a familiar example, the story of Medea in Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica integrally relies on and rewrites Euripides’ Medea. The affiliation of a work of literature to a generic or other model is an act of historical self-positioning, which is also a cultural agenda and a politics. But when Apollonius’ Argonautica is in this way systematically written through Euripides and Homer in particular, 1 2

Heath 2004: 163. Goldhill 1999a; Uhlig forthcoming; Conte 1994.

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a more precise and theoretically directed sense of reception is required, which allows both for the specifics of self-conscious literary allusion and for the broader cultural and political work of the transformation of expressivity. The central problematic of this book is constructed, then, between the poles of the classicists’ long-lasting love of the ‘cf’ – how to trace the allusive expressivity of ancient writing – and a question about how tradition is constructed and the purchase of tradition within a politics of culture and self-understanding. The critical vocabulary here has become a constant and muddied battleground – in arguments which embody different deep-seated positions about time, change, and continuity.3 Julia Kristeva, for example, coined the term ‘intertextuality’ for a systematic transposition of a set of signs over time. All literary texts, she argues, are polyphonic – made up of tissues of borrowed citations – but the diachronic transformation of a discourse into and for a new condition necessarily has a political valence: a constitutive shift of dispositif, as Foucault would have it.4 Indeed, Foucault’s Les Mots et les choses (1966), as an attempt to explain how the discourses of the human sciences change over different periods, could be taken as one of the fullest and most influential expressions of the politics and epistemology of such linguistic change. As a technical term, however, for most literary critics in the discipline of Classics today, ‘intertextuality’ has markedly lost this ideological and transformative edge, and it is often used as no more than a synonym for allusion. The terminology of reception, tradition, classicism, inheritance, is equally fraught, as is often noted, in its competing intellectual and political agendas.5 In short, this book is a contribution to a continuing, necessary, and jagged critical argument that takes shape in the triangulated and dynamic space between a modern scholarly project of understanding ancient literary allusiveness, the cultural 3

4 5

Allen 2011 records some of the diversity of usages of intertextuality; Hinds 1998 tries to bring some order; Pucci 1998, Goldhill 1999b, Martindale and Thomas 2006, Goldhill 2011, Pelttari 2014, among others, add to the theoretical debate. Kristeva 1980; Foucault 1976 – much discussed especially after Agamben 2009. Exemplary are: Martindale 1993; Martindale and Thomas 2006; Hall 2009; Postclassicisms Collective 2020.

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work of historical and literary self-placement within the writing of antiquity, and the long tradition of later classicism, as the performance of self-expression through the past of antiquity. There is no place where these issues are more pressing than in the transformation of the empire into a Christian culture in late antiquity. Between aggressive and recidivist attempts to regulate the language of virtue and ethics, explicit controversy over the value of inherited literary or cultural traditions, a newly developing intellectual matrix of theological ideas, and a continuing elite engagement with educationally privileged monuments of a contested textual past, how Christian writing should, then, understand its own place within Greek and Latin textual history becomes a fundamental and insistent cultural question of the era, a question which has never stopped being fundamental to Christian theology.6 Reception here is both practice and ideological obsession. In this chapter, therefore, I shall explore the central question of this volume, the ancient reception of antiquity, through the specific issue of how a Christian author can appropriate Homer – what the new religion makes of the oldest fountainhead of inherited literary culture. And we will see shortly why I have used the verb ‘appropriate’. My main focus will be on Cometas, a little-known author preserved in the Palatine Anthology. The brief surviving works of Cometas will reveal that, although it is necessary to understand how Homeric language is reworked in later literature, it is also essential to recognize how such rewriting also performs a more precarious and contested construction of tradition, a selfconscious historicizing gesture of cultural affiliation to the past which has its own religious and political polemic. Indeed, it will prove especially telling to trace how Cometas’ theology becomes worryingly precarious precisely by virtue of his commitment to a Homeric language. What is more, Cometas is also involved with the scholarly work of the establishment and preservation of the text of Homer. Tradition is formed in part at least by the preservation, deployment, and transvaluation of the physical materials of the past, including its written words. Cometas, this chapter argues, 6

See Gagné 2020.

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is a particularly interesting figure because he reworks Homer both by adapting Homeric language to new Christian stories, and by reformatting the very text of Homer.7 To set up the terms of my discussion of Cometas, I will begin with two very brief examples from earlier texts. I will open with a prose work on which Richard Hunter co-produced the now standard commentary, Plutarch’s De audiendis poetis.8 In the course of his discussion of how to engage with poetry, Plutarch notes (26f) that some lines of the Iliad have been excised from the text by Aristarchus – and, indeed, these lines are not transmitted in any of our manuscripts of the Iliad, nor mentioned in the scholia, though some editions after Wolf do print them on Plutarch’s authority, now usually in square brackets or in the apparatus.9 The lines come from Phoenix’s speech to Achilles in Book 9 (Il. 9.458–61), in which Phoenix explains that in his anger he wanted to kill his father, but a god prevented him, and thus preserved him from the reproach he would have received as a parricide. Aristarchus excised the lines, explains Plutarch, ‘because he was frightened (φοβηθείς)’.10 The lines are, however, to be retained, he claims, because they are ‘correct for this moment/precise juncture’ in the narrative (πρὸς τὸν καιρὸν ὀρθῶς) and have a didactic function, educating the young about the need to control anger and change one’s mind (μετανοεῖν) towards the better course.11 Plutarch is here rewriting Plato, as Hunter has discussed, suggesting a more complex pattern of exemplarity than allowed for in Plato’s rigid censorship of poetry, but maintaining Plato’s insistence that ‘usefulness’ – moral didacticism – is the criterion by which poetry’s propriety is to be judged. ‘Usefulness’ is a value 7

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It should be self-evident why such a topic is eminently suitable to offer to Richard Hunter, my close and valued colleague and friend at Cambridge now for some forty years, from our graduate days together onwards, who has written so tellingly on tradition and innovation, and on the reception of Homer in antiquity (Hunter 2009a, 2018). He will also appreciate the point of turning to the barely known Cometas, as he has also written so well on Theocritus, for whom the name Cometas (in its Doric form, Comatas, as he would quickly point out) signals a poetic voice of the past, lost in the nested boxes of pastoral fantasy (Hunter 1996, 1999; see also Goldhill 1991: 234–40). Hunter and Russell 2011. Also quoted (slightly differently) in Plutarch’s Coriolanus 32. On the transmission see Hunter and Russell 2011: 151; Hainsworth 1993 ad loc. It is not clear what ‘frightened’ means precisely: see Hunter and Russell 2011 ad loc. On the value of metanoia, see Goldhill 2020: ch. 5.

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with a long history back at least to Thucydides (1.22), here invested with a direct moralism.12 This criterion of moral usefulness is also adopted as the watchword in later Christian apologetics for continuing to read Greek literature – that is, literature ‘from outside’ (ἔξωθεν) the Christian community, or so-called ‘pagan’ writings. So, Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 6.89), perhaps sixty years after Plutarch, as he complains that some Christians are ‘vulgar’ (agroikos) and display ‘ignorance’ (amathia) in their resistance to Greek paideia, insists that Christians must focus on what is ‘useful’ (khrēsimon), by which he means literature that leads to ‘the true philosophy’ of his Christianity.13 Similarly Basil, a century and a half later, in his defence of reading Greek literature, exemplifies this criterion of usefulness, which he has also explicated as a desideratum, by reading the famous episode of Odysseus’ naked shipwreck on the beach in Odyssey 6 to indicate the magnificent display of virtue embodied in Odysseus (Greek Lit. 4). As his friend Gregory of Nazianzus also testifies, fourthcentury Christian communities continued to be passionately divided about the place of Greek paideia in Christian education and thinking, a division which Julian the Apostate’s interventions in the politics of culture exacerbated.14 Moral usefulness was a bulwark in the battle over what Christian culture should mean and specifically how it should relate to the Greek past. Christian anxiety about its own Greekness has been a source of contention since its beginnings, and has continued to be ever since:15 arguments over the genealogy of culture are arguments over value and self-understanding in which literary self-expression plays a fundamental role in the construction of the imaginary, the expression of the self within (a history of) culture. Reception here is best understood as a battle over what tradition is to mean or what is to count and be discounted in and as tradition.

12 13 14

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Hunter 2009a: 169–201, especially 195–8. For the vocabulary of philosophy in Christianity see Otto 2018, especially 17–22. Elm 2012. Gregory dismisses Christians ‘who despise learning (paideusin diaptuein)’ and especially learning from non-Christian traditions (exōthen), as ‘treacherous and dangerous and keeping us far from God’ (Funeral Speech for Basil = Or. xliii 11). For objections even to books, see Middleton 2019: 233–6. Gagné 2020 – up to the pope’s Regensburg address in 2006.

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From this opening example of Plutarch, I want to take forward two points towards my discussion of Cometas. First, in the construction of literary tradition through rewriting, critical discussion, and gestures of genealogical affiliation, the integrity of the text as an artefact is set at stake. It is only through Plutarch that these lines have an existence (now). Aristarchus excises lines from the text of Homer, according to Plutarch, with the evident success that they are physically absent from all manuscripts of the Iliad: they become not Homer; Plutarch reinstates them with the success that we still know and discuss the lines (they become again Homer? Or Homer sous rature; that is, Homer in the apparatus, below the line). Tradition requires the act of curating the material of what is to be valued. What is in the text is open to regulation and control in transmission, as expressions of value. Second, one crucial criterion of value for interventions into the material preservation of the text is the moral usefulness of poetry: what texts survive and what survives within a text can depend on such decisions. Engaging with – curating the very materiality of – poetry books is designedly replete with ideological transvaluation. It should not be forgotten that the vast majority of what we read as classical literature survives because a Byzantine Christian decided to copy it, preserve it, value it. My second example is from Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus paints the celebrated vignette of how Scipio, as he watched the destruction of Carthage, cried and quoted verses from Homer: ἔσσεται ἦμαρ ὅτ᾽ ἄν ποτ᾽ ὀλώλῃ Ἴλιος ἱρὴ | καὶ Πρίαμος καὶ λαός (‘A day will come when holy Troy will fall, and Priam and his people’, 32.24). As Denis Feeney has discussed, these lines are spoken twice in the Iliad, once when Agamemnon threatens the destruction of Troy (Il. 4.164–5), once when Hector fears the fate of his city (Il. 6.448–9).16 As Scipio, the Roman general whose state has arisen from the destruction of Troy, watches the destruction of another kingdom, there is a deeply layered sense of the transience of empires. ‘He sees the fate of Rome in Carthage and Troy is the model for both’.17 A Roman turns back to the epic of Greece, 16 17

Feeney 2007: 55–6. Feeney 2007: 55.

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which is foundational in culturally intricate ways for him, and speaks Greek, in order to imagine his own empire’s future destruction, as a necessary stage in the history of empires.18 Diodorus is also quoting Polybius, however, who was an eyewitness to the event, and who directly asks Scipio what he means by quoting Homer – and who has his own theory of empires.19 Diodorus, the Greek historian, is strikingly quoting another Greek historian, in this story of quotation to indicate the recognition of the repeated pattern of history. Yet one fact studiously avoided by historians and literary critics is that this passage of Diodorus is not in the lacunose manuscript of Diodorus, but comes to us from the Excerpta Constantiniana. The Excerpta Constantiniana is a fifty-three-book collection of themed historical excerpts produced at the centre of the Byzantine court at the height of the renaissance of Hellenism most strongly associated with Constantine VII.20 The explicitly programmatic prose proem of the Excerpta is instructive. This is a composition, it announces, of designed selection (eklogē), but it is specifically not a ‘summary’ (sunopsis), but an act of ‘appropriation’ (oikeiōsis).21 It redistributes passages from historical works, separate from their original context, to suit the historical accounting of the court – to express a Christianizing historiography. It announces an aesthetics of form, which, by virtue of its subject matter and patronage, is also a politics of form. The story of Scipio, with its recognition of the destruction of empires, is now to be reframed by the Christian reader, not only by the tradition of prophecy, especially the seminal image in the book of Daniel of the four earthly empires, each destined to pass away in turn, but also by the new Christian temporality, where the heavenly kingdom is everlasting, and the church a model to transcend Caesar’s transient power. In the Excerpta Constantiniana, Diodorus’ 18 19

20 21

On Roman literature and Greek, see Goldhill forthcoming. For bibliography on Polybius and empire, see Feeney 2007: 235–6 n. 68. Polybius’ text is lost. The story is also told in App. Pun. 132. See Neméth 2018 for discussion and bibliography. Kaldellis 2007 is seminal. Oikeiōsis is a technical term from Stoicism (primarily), picked up and developed by Philo, Clement, and, for Christianity, particularly by Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, used here in Byzantine Greek with rather weak echoes of its philosophical background: see Ramelli 2014.

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redrafting of Polybius’ story of Homeric quotation to explain the repeated transience of history is redrafted into a contrast between the eternal power of God’s kingdom and the inevitable precarity of human traditions. Quotation of the Greek past, and especially quotation of passages about the use of quotation for the expression of political understanding of history, are turned through oikeiōsis into a newly charged ideological construction of tradition, a new positionality with regard to the texts of the past and the historiography of the present: the classical tradition as epitomized by Scipio’s use of Homer is subordinated to a Christian triumphalist historiography.22 Excerption here is an ideological act of reception through reframing. There is, as Paolo Odorico writes, a ‘cultura della silloge’ in the writing of this era.23 This Christian oikeiōsis too must be taken forward to help us understand Cometas. The poet and scholar Cometas, who probably dates from tenthcentury Byzantium, the same era as the Excerpta Constantiniana, and from the same broad cultural context of a revival of nonChristian Greek literature within a Christian court, is little read today, barely understood, and yet much reviled when he is read. My aim here is certainly not to try to wheedle Cometas into the pantheon of great literature, but to show how his Christian and scholarly engagement with Homer – where reception crosses not only the cultural differences of centuries but also the horizons of expectation provided by different and competing religious frameworks – offers a telling insight into the central concern of this book. Cometas is known primarily from four poems in book 15 of the Palatine Anthology. The first three epigrams (15.36–8) are about Cometas’ own scholarly output on the text of Homer and are ascribed to Cometas himself – they are poems of self-praise. There are several other such poems in the Palatine Anthology, imagined to be inscribed on the works they discuss, or circulated as if advertisements;24 some are obviously pseudepigraphical, literary engagements with the exercise of criticism and the 22

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A specific historiography founded by Eusebius: see Johnson 2014 and the excellent Corke-Webster 2019. Odorico 1990: 12. See especially AP 9.185–207, 210.

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dissemination of judgement; others, like these of Cometas, appear to be gestures of self-assertion, which could perhaps be best described as pseudo-pseudepigraphical: that is, poems that imitate the critical judgements of past texts, now of contemporary texts, proclaiming their present and future influence and success. The poetics of the blurb . . . The first proclaims how Cometas has made old Homeric texts flourish lastingly anew: ἀμφοτέρας, πολύμυθε, Κομητᾶς σεῖο ἀθρήσας κύρβεις γηραλέας, θῆκεν ἀειθαλέας. Teller of many tales, Cometas saw both your tablets To be old, and made them freshly flourish forever. (15.36)

Homer is addressed as polumuthe, ‘teller of many tales’. This is a layered address, that demonstrates how complex the notion of reception must be when we walk on the buried life of words. On the one hand, polumuthos is itself a Homeric word. When Antenor, in the Iliad’s teikhoskopia, describes to Helen the speaking styles of Menelaus and Odysseus, he contrasts the ‘winter snowflakes’ of Odysseus’ rhetoric with the directness of Menelaus, who is described as ou polumuthos, ‘not one for many words’ (Il. 3.214). Similarly, when Eurymachus, a leader of the suitors, speaks in the assembly at Ithaca to attack Telemachus, he declares that he is not afraid of Telemachus, μάλα περ πολύμυθον ἐόντα (‘for all his many words’/‘long speeches’). Muthos here, as usual in Homer, is indicative of authoritative utterance.25 Telemachus indeed ends up throwing down the sceptre in tears, incapable as he now is of performing the persuasive success of his father, in whose seat he is sitting. His long speeches do not terrify the suitors – though within the moral economy of the epic, they should do so. It is not by chance that both Homeric uses of polumuthos are in explicit and implicit comparison with Odysseus, who is frequently described with polu- compound adjectives (a mark of his polytropic character, as Pucci in particular has articulated)26 – and especially associated with the spinning of multiple and complicated tales. On the other hand, Homer himself, 25 26

Martin 1989. Pucci 1982, 1987.

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as the figurehead of epic, is especially associated with the multiplicity of tales. Aristotle in his Poetics defines epic as polumuthon (1456a), which Halliwell translates as having a ‘multiple plot-structure’ (and the Odyssey is the prime example of this poikilia).27 Longinus famously calls the Odyssey the product of Homer’s old age, when men are more philomuthoi, ‘lovers of tales’ (Subl. 9.12). By the time of Longinus, muthos no longer has the sense of authoritative narrative that its Homeric usage suggests, and, after the fifth-century BCE intellectual revolution, is troped negatively in contrast with history, science, truth, philosophy:28 calling old Homer philomuthos is a gentle dismissal of the Odyssey as the product of the poet’s anecdotage . . ..29 Triphiodorus, in his version of the Homeric theme of the sack of Troy, asks Calliope, the Muse of epic, to speak ‘through many a tale’ (πολύν διὰ μῦθον, Hal. Il. 3), though Triphiodorus contrasts epic’s abundance with his own desire to rush quickly to an end. Calliope is also invoked as polumuthos in the anonymous poem AP 9.523 and asked to bring forth ‘a second Homer’ to sing the praises of a lover described as a ‘second Achilles’, an epigrammatic promise of a lover’s epic prolixity to come. Especially when self-consciously imitating or playing with the notion of imitating Homer, the language of ‘many a tale’ is prevalent. Epic and Homer within the literary tradition, and Odysseus within Homer, thus embody the idea of polumuthos – and the association of Homer, the bard, with Odysseus who tells his own multiplicity of tales is deeply inscribed in the narrative of the Odyssey. So, to invoke Homer as polumuthe is to evoke a long literary and critical tradition of epic. In an epigram, however, a form which prides itself on its brief and sharp expressivity, the single word polumuthe also smartly marks the contrast between the subject of the poem and its own (not polumuthos) form. Cometas’ address is a wonderful example of how the language of Homer – both the words of epic and the critical discourse of epic – are re-formed in the expressivity of the different genre of epigram, from a much later period. In a poem about making Homer new, for the first time (in our 27 28 29

Halliwell 1987. See Martin 1989; Detienne 1981; Hawes 2014. In Od. 4, we might note too, the ou polumuthos Menelaus is markedly verbose.

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surviving literature at least) Homer himself is described as polumuthos: an old word, flourishing anew. The Iliad and the Odyssey are then referred to as ‘both your tablets (κύρβεις)’. Kurbeis are inscribed tablets, made of stone or wood, often formally recording laws. The texts of Homer are imagined, in markedly material terms, as if inscribed for display, but needing restoration. If polumuthe cues a long literary tradition, the epigram insists that the poet has turned the old inherited stone or wood to new and permanently flourishing freshness – as if, before Cometas, Homer was just ageing into decrepitude, as if the tradition needs his helping hand in its precarity. The Byzantine revival is here imaged as cleaning ancient stone or wood, with Cometas as a lead figure in the process. The second of the poems makes a similar claim: σεῖο βίβλους, μεγάθυμε, Κομητᾶς, Ὅμηρε, δύ᾽ ἄρδην εὑρὼν γηραλέας, τεύξατο ὁπλοτέρας. γῆρας ἀποξύσας γὰρ ἀριπρεπέας τε βροτοῖσι πάμπαν ἔδειξε σοφοῖς, οἷσιν ἔνεστι νόος. Great-spirited Homer, Cometas found your two books Totally aged, and made them younger. He scraped off old age and revealed them Fully shining to wise men, who have understanding. (15.37)

Once again, the Homeric language to describe Homer is marked. The poet is megathume (‘great spirited’) as so many of his heroes are (and now named, as he never is in his own verse), and the books are made hoploteras (‘younger’), a word which occurs often in Homer but rarely outside epic. In Homer, it is used only of people, so to describe books as hoploteras looks decidedly odd, even catachrestic. As he announces his refit of Homer’s text, his Homeric language creates a certain discomfort in the well-read reader. The two books are treated, again, to a material cleansing – ‘scraped off’ – so that they appear ‘shining’ to the scholarly audience. The familiar trope of speaking to those who understand not only interpellates an audience who will appreciate Cometas’ excellence but also suggests a scholarly disagreement behind such self-assertion. Indeed, the scholarly audience that copied out the poem into the Palatine Anthology was not amused. The copyist 381

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known as J writes an iambic verse of his own in the margin of the manuscript: Κομητά, ταῦτα δυσκόμιστα πάντ᾽ ἔπη (‘Cometas, all these words are intolerable’). Duskomista, ‘intolerable’, puns on the name Kometas. As Cometas puts his own name in the middle of the first line of each of these poems of self-praise, the rebuff from the copyist focuses precisely on the name itself to mock the poem’s pretension. Cometas’ self-praise comes already framed with scholarly disdain. The third epigram makes it clearer what Cometas claims to have done for Homer and the epic tradition. It is the only poem of Cometas which has prompted any detailed scholarly commentary: εὑρὼν Κομητᾶς τὰς Ὁμηρείους βίβλους ἐφθαρμένας τε κοὐδαμῶς ἐστιγμένας, στίξας διεσμίλευσα ταύτας ἐντέχνως, τὴν σαπρίαν ῥύψας μὲν ὡς ἀχρηστίαν, γράψας δ᾽ ἐκαινούργησα τὴν εὐχρηστίαν. ἐντεῦθεν οἱ γράφοντες οὐκ ἐσφαλμένως μαθητιῶσιν, ὡς ἔοικε μανθάνειν. I, Cometas, found the Homeric books Ruined, and in no way punctuated. I punctuated them and chiselled them smooth artfully. I cleansed off the filth as useless. I wrote and rejuvenated their usefulness. Henceforth writers study them without error, As it is proper to study. (15.38)

In this iambic poem, as indeed one might expect from a description of the act of writing, there is little Homeric language (Homer, of course, does not represent the technology of writing). Indeed, the materiality of Cometas’ work is again stressed. The ‘books’ (bibloi) are ruined and unpunctuated, but he has ‘chiselled them smooth’ (diesmileusa), and ‘cleansed them’ (rhupsas) of dirt, as if they were carved memorials. But here he indicates what he has achieved and who his proposed audience is. He has punctuated (stixas) the text of Homer – usually taken to indicate that he has transliterated the epics into miniscule, with punctuation. Future scholars and copyists, he claims, will proceed without error in their scholarly work. This contribution to the transmission of Homer has led Cometas to be hailed as ‘a figure of capital 382

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importance, nothing less than the pioneer of the first Byzantine Renaissance’,30 a judgement inevitably and immediately questioned by less celebratory scholars (from J onwards). It would seem, however, that Cometas has produced a new edition of Homer, which may have been drastically edited – ‘thrown away the filth’ – and which had a new physical form – miniscule – which explains Cometas’ repeated emphasis on the materiality of his production. In the Christian court, Homer is made new, both in material form and in its reception. Like Plutarch, Cometas makes ‘usefulness’ a key criterion in his intervention in the textual history of Homer, and, as with Plutarch, his ideology is barely concealed beneath the claims of appropriateness and correctness. Getting Homer right – ὡς ἔοικε (‘proper’) – is making Homer useful. We may take this to mean turning Homer to a religious agenda, which, as we saw with Basil, can mean finding not so much a high-flown Neoplatonic spiritual understanding of Homer, as the moral, religiously informed message for the reader’s edification.31 For Cometas, this work requires chiselling, washing, scraping the monuments of the past: attacking – restoring – its material form – reformatting. Cometas’ reception of Homer here is the re-editing and rewriting of the material text, producing a new, corrected Homer for scholarly eyes: not reproducing tradition but making a (new) version of tradition. These epigrams, with their flashes of Homeric language (a form of reception), produce an image of the construction of a text of Homer as a stonemason’s work (another form of scholarly reception), as a reforming of tradition anew (a further act of cultural reception). But it is Cometas’ longest surviving poem that shows most vividly how Homer can become part of this religious project – and also shows how painfully dislocated the language of Homer can become when appropriated to this agenda. If the first three poems show Cometas boasting of how he has changed the materiality of the Homeric text (the appearance and form of the verse), here he takes the material of the text – its language – and redeploys it in his own constructed verse. AP 15.40 is a fifty-seven-line 30 31

Cameron 1993: 309. See Aubreton 1969; Lemerle 1971: 166–7. On Neoplatonic Homer, see Lamberton 1986, 1992; Agosti 2005, 2009.

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hexameter poem that retells the story of Lazarus from the New Testament. Alan Cameron calls the work ‘the single most unmetrical poem in the Anthology’, and it is certainly true that, even allowing for changes in pronunciation, the knowledge of the standard procedures of epic metre and especially correption is extremely low, and evidences, as Cameron sniffily adds with regard to Cometas’ self-promotion, ‘poor qualification for a “restorer” of the text of Homer’.32 The copyist J also reserves his most strident and extended ire for this poem. In the margin of the manuscript of the Anthology against this poem he snorts, ‘All these words, Cometas, are disorderly’ (akosma, again punning on the name of Cometas),33 ‘Cometas, you are Thersites. But how then have you put on the mask of Achilles, wretch? Cast off these things from your uncultured (amousos – deprived of the Muses) heart. Throw them to hell! Or on to your hump, these verses full of the rottenness of dung!’ Homer’s own iconic figures – and the Homeric locus classicus for the swapping of insults and rebarbative treatment of critics – become the matter with which to insult Cometas’ poem of Homeric restitching: Homer reworked to attack the reworker of Homer (the flyting poetics of the Bearbeiter . . .). Cometas may be seeking heroic glory for his literary efforts, but in the eyes of this commentator he is no more than the most fake and misshapen of Homeric heroes who deserves his beating at the hands of an Odysseus, the master of deceptive words. Needless to say, neither Alan Cameron nor J actually discusses the poem itself. The story of Lazarus is paradigmatically narrated in chapter 11 of the Gospel of John. Cometas retells the story in a mix of phrases taken directly from Homer, adaptations of Homeric language, and what could be called references to or echoes of Homeric phraseology. That is, the material of Homeric language is systematically reworked in the reshaping of the Gospel narrative about rebirth: the revival or rejuvenation of Homer that Cometas announces in AP 15.36–8 is embodied here in the re-formation of Homeric verse, the matter of Homeric 32 33

Cameron 1993: 309. For kosmein as a description of the work of a literary scholar see Ael. Arist. Or. 32.24.

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language, quoted, shifted, mirrored, and echoed – in a tale of how a miracle of coming back to life was enacted. As we will see, Cometas is not the first author to retell Lazarus’ story in Homeric verse: the revival of Lazarus indeed becomes a repeated site for the revival of Homer’s language in Christian dress. Editing transforms the text of Homer in one sense; redeploying Homeric language in this Christianizing manner does so in another. Christian Homerizing takes multiple forms in late antiquity. The writing of Homeric centos, for example, is a familiar generic practice that flourished particularly in late antiquity, along with epic paraphrases and other forms of glossing.34 This provides one crucial background to Cometas’ poem (especially through Eudocia and Nonnus, as we will see). While a full history of so complex and variegated a genre, which has such contested boundaries, is not suitable here, it is essential to mark at least some lineaments of this broad field of rewriting the Bible, of which the cento is one part, in and against which Cometas is composing. The Septuagint is advertised as the first – and certainly the most influential – rewriting of the Bible in Greek: rewriting as translation.35 The Septuagint became the Bible of the Greek-speaking Christians. For our purposes, however, the most salient Greek tradition of rewriting the Bible begins with Gregory Thaumatourgos, who produced a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes in the fourth century.36 Unlike a translation, this explicitly Christian rewriting designedly redrafts the text’s apparent acceptance of an easy life of drinking and eating towards a more austere morality of justice and good deeds – a straightforward example of how paraphrase, as a genre, embodies an ideological perspective and can perform a radical reassessment in the name of retelling, a strategy that may recall Plutarch’s insistence on the moral usefulness of literature. But it is in the fifth century that paraphrase seems to have flourished in particular. Ps.-Apollinaris composed a paraphrase of the Psalms, which includes a long programmatic introduction – which provides an important insight into the self-conscious awareness of 34 35 36

Usher 1998; Smolak 2001; Whitby 2007; Faulkner 2014. See also n. 38 below. Rajak 2009. Jarick 1990.

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the theoretical possibilities of the genre.37 Eudocia, the empress of Theodosius II who was exiled to Jerusalem in the mid-fifth century, not only wrote a three-book paraphrase of the Vita Cypriani of which 900 lines survive, but also a much-discussed Homeric cento – to which we will shortly return.38 Eudocia, who also provides a programmatic preface to her cento, requires us therefore to compare and contrast the paraphrase (from prose to verse) and the cento (redrafts into/out of existing epic language) as different, if interrelated gestures of Christian (re)writing, from the very centre of the elite in the eastern Greek world. The most interesting and sophisticated Greek biblical paraphrase in the fifth century, however, comes from the most influential fifth-century Greek poet, namely, Nonnus of Panopolis. Nonnus’ paraphrase of the Gospel of John turned the language of ordinary people – to give an ideologically charged and muchdebated name to the koinē of John’s philosophically loaded prose – into the highest cultural language of hexameter verse, the highly artificial poetic tradition of 1,300 years earlier, and reformulates this traditional language with a Neoplatonic philosophical agenda.39 The late antique culture of the Greek East – in which we can conventionally locate the Egyptian city of Panopolis, a hotbed of literary production – seems to have had a long and complex history of assimilation between Christianity and traditional Greek education and aesthetic values.40 For all the violent acts of aggression between a militant Christianity and the surrounding long-established cultures – the destruction of the Serapeion, the banning of so-called pagan teaching – there is also an evident narrative of continuity between pagan and Christian education, in which a training in rhetoric, philosophy, and artistic appreciation continued, much as the traditional institutions of power across the Empire were replicated in Christian structures of rule – and many of the same elite continued in positions of privilege and wealth. In this light, Nonnus’ epic 37

38 39 40

Golega 1960; and Faulkner 2014 for the preface, with Faulkner 2020 for translation and a return to the claim that this work is actually by Apollinaris. See Usher 1998; Bevegni 2006; Whitby 2007. See Goldhill 2020. Miguélez Cavero 2008; Elm 2012.

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paraphrase of John takes its place as a striking example of how the privileged language and artistic forms of traditional culture and education reappropriate or redesign the Christian message. The battle lines of Nonnus’ project reclaim the simple and prosey words of the Gospels for the language of traditional cultural and educational privilege. It is not by chance that it is the most philosophically charged of the Gospels that receives this treatment. For an elite readership, trained in the philosophy and literature of classical Greek tradition, Nonnus’ Paraphrase undoes the self-consciously popularizing gestures of the Gospels’ stylistic register. It produces a new frame of comprehension, a new horizon of expectation. For an elite intellectual committed to a Neoplatonic theological agenda, to rediscover the profound philosophical import of John’s Gospel is to make the text – in his terms – more Christian. Nonnus’ Paraphrase is designed to make the Gospel into a Christian text for the cultural values of its time: paraphrase as conversion. For Nonnus, as for Eudocia, redeploying Homeric language is an intervention in how Christianity will understand its own historical relation to the tradition of Homer and what it stands for in terms of cultural value. We could profitably expand such a discussion of the rewriting of scripture to include commentary, typology, and the practice of glossing, and widen our range of authors considerably to include Origen or Gregory of Nazianzus along with the other Church Fathers on the Greek side, or Juvencus, Sedulius, and Aratus for Bibelepik in Latin, or the arguments over translation between Augustine and Jerome, or the educational practices of the grammatici. We could also include the very extensive Jewish practices of Pesher, Midrash, and Targum, each of which has close connections with the authoritative interpretative Greek communities of Alexandria.41 But enough has already been said to recognize that the rewriting of Bible stories, even and especially into epic verse form, was not merely a literary exercise to be judged according to the metrical skills of versification, but was a freighted cultural intervention. How the narration of scripture was (to be) performed 41

See Herzog 1976; Roberts 1985; Kaster 1998; Green 2006; Chin 2008; Dohrman and Stern 2008; Cain 2009; Niehoff 2011; Hartog 2017; Pollman 2017.

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remained a political question of insistence, not least, as we have seen, in a fiercely Christian court where a relation to the Hellenic, pagan past, troped in Greek as Greek, was becoming an increasingly pressing cultural issue: where, as I emphasize again, reception is both a pervasive practice and an explicit ideological debate. In comparison to Nonnus’ Paraphrase, Eudocia’s Cento and the epics of Sedulius, Juvencus or Arator, Cometas’ poem is designedly very brief: more like an epyllion than an epigram.42 The Gospels are easily divided into perikopai, of course, but there are actually very few hexameter poems of such a length that retell Bible stories, especially in the tenth century. Anastasius the Lisper (AP 15.28) produces a fourteen-line hexameter account of the Crucifixion (also based on the Gospel of John to judge by the reference to a male disciple at the scene of death). Yet this appears to be a form of ecphrasis, as it closes with the striking homiletic injunction that ‘Any proud man will be a child, if he reflects in his heart and sees these things in paintings’. This leads to a densely expressed conclusion that asserts the mystery of the Incarnation as the message which should be recognized in the icon of suffering that is the Crucifixion: ‘For as God, He is greater than man, but as man, He is no way better’.43 The vivid description of the Crucifixion is designed to culminate in a vivid comprehension of the theology of the Incarnation. Anastasius’ language is also quite different from that of Cometas, with barely any direct quotations or echoes of specifically Homeric phraseology. Like many ecphrastic poems, Anastasius’ hexameter ‘epigram’ leads to a smart and paradoxically expressed observation about what is to be recognized in looking at an image; 42 43

See Baumbach and Bär 2012; Goldhill 2020. The punctuation and comprehension of the last three lines are not straightforward. See Brannan 1959. I have taken tis in line 12 as an indefinite ‘Any proud man . . .’, and take it to mean ‘will be as (or reduced happily to) a child’ – which is a privileged (if apparently paradoxical) state for the acceptance of a Christian message: ‘Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein’ (Matthew 19:14). Tis could be taken as an interrogative (so Brannan, following the texts of Jacobs and Dübner). Then we must take one of the adjectives in this line adverbially (‘What man will be foolishly proud . . .’ – so Brannan); or possibly the two adjectives are to be taken as a kind of hendiadys: ‘What man will be foolish-proud’ (that is, foolishly proud, and proudly foolish). The connection to the last line is not changed by any of these readings. Paton, however, cannot be right to print an interrogative (τίς) but translate it as an indefinite. Paton singularly fails to understand the last line, which he thinks ‘so silly . . . it must be corrupt’.

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like many a Christian ecphrastic poem, it leads to an accepted theological conclusion that asserts the permanent truth of things, as a Christian vision demands. Cometas’ poem, however, does not have the homiletic pointedness of Anastasius. Nor does it have the aggressive philosophical self-positioning of Nonnus. It has none of the paratextual framing or narrative expansiveness of Eudocia. It uses and adapts Homeric language, but is not formally a cento, as only some lines directly reproduce lines from Homer’s epics. What, then, is Cometas’ poem for? I would suggest that, as with the long tradition of epyllion to which Cometas’ short hexameter form also necessarily looks back, the poem offers a rescaling and reframing of a received story to construct a new positionality. Specifically, it takes the two grandest narratives from the tradition of non-Christian Greek literature and Christian Greek literature – Homer and the Gospels – and produces a single, short composite poem that requires its audience to read Homer through the Gospel and the Gospel through Homer.44 And what better story for such a contribution to the so-called Byzantine Renaissance or revival of Greek letters in the Christian court than a privileged story of bringing the dead back to life? Death is a battleground for Christianity’s claims of its superiority as a religion: the promise of an eternal afterlife in a glorious heaven, and the reward for goodness and the punishment of sinners is integral to Christian theology and rhetoric of persuasion. Jesus’ defeat of death and his own resurrection is anticipated in his resurrection of Lazarus. In Homer, even Achilles, the best of the Achaeans, laments his demise and wishes to return as the humblest hired hand to a life on earth. What it is worth dying for is a grounding question of the Iliad, but it is the dissatisfaction with the prospect of life after death that motivates the search for ‘immortal glory’. Rediscovering the power of the Christian promise of immortality in and through Homeric verse is at one and the same time an insistence on Christian polemic and a recognition that always already in Homer there is the language to re-vision tradition to this new message. Yet this melding of the epic language of Homer and the narrative of the Gospel produces both some remarkable tensions – and 44

Crucial background here in Lamberton 1986, 1992; Agosti 2005, 2009.

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some theological crises. My first example is a single word. When Lazarus comes from the tomb, smelly, bandaged, but breathing (a description that echoes the Gospel), the first word to describe him is λυσιμελής, ‘limb-loosening’. This is not only a familiar epic term, but also a term much echoed from epic in other literature. It has a particular and charged range of usage. On the one hand, it is common to describe the collapse of the body in death. On the other, it is also used for the overwhelming feelings of sexual desire. Here, it immediately suggests that Lazarus is staggering (a detail not in John), but it also saliently indicates the triumph over the death which lusimelēs so often precipitates – a resurrection described with precisely the term used paradigmatically for the body’s incipient death – and, one might add, with sub-notes of the triumph over sexual desire which in Christian theology is a sign of the fall, and man’s subsequent inevitable death, that Christ’s resurrection is to reverse. In the Gospel (John 11:44), Lazarus is bandaged on his hands, feet, and eyes as he emerges, and Jesus says lusate auton, ‘Unbind him’ (which no doubt has a full symbolic weight).45 The injunction of Jesus (lusate) has been turned into a Homeric adjective (lusimelēs) to release a semantic and theological richness in both the Homeric and the biblical language. Such redeployment of Homeric language, however, does not always seem so richly pertinent. Jesus speaks to the disciples who are described lavishly as beloved, ‘as if they were sons of God, from whose tongues flowed a voice sweeter than honey, and words like winter snowflakes’ (καὶ ἔπεα νιφάδεσσιν ἐοικότα χειμερίῃσιν, 22–4). ‘A voice sweeter than honey’ quotes Homer’s description of Nestor (Il. 1.249), not a straightforward model of successful oratory, and this last image precisely quotes the celebrated description of Odysseus’ rhetoric that I have already cited in contrast to Menelaus ou polumuthos (Il. 3.222). The disciples do take the good news of the Gospels and spread it through the world, and this poem is retelling a story from St John, the disciple who is 45

Origen, Commentary on John 28.6, sees the story of Lazarus as an apostate’s return to true belief; for further references, and discussion of Augustine and Irenaeus (who regard the release as a release from the deadness of sin), see Kremer 1985: 128–33. Elowsky 2007 has the bare record of these readings; see also Hakola 1999.

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described in the Gospel of John as the special beloved of Jesus (John 19:26). They are the receivers of the Word who spread the Word. Yet it might seem awkward at least to associate the word of the Gospels with the persuasiveness of Odysseus. Even in the Odyssey, Odysseus is renowned for his guile and deceptive language (it is part of how he is polumuthos), and in later Greek literature he becomes the icon of dangerous trickery, which manipulates and leads the listener astray. Can a description of the Word of the disciples with this precise quotation of Homer’s description of Odysseus escape the dangerous implications of the hero’s dodgy persuasiveness? Or is a reader of faith to understand that the rhetoric of persuasiveness associated with Odysseus, master of manipulative words, has been replaced by the true persuasiveness of the Word? Can we, as Basil does with Odysseus on the beach, see in Odysseus purely verbal virtue? How much conceptual work – faith – would it demand of a religiously committed reader to maintain such an interpretation? There is no place in Cometas’ poem where the tension between the deployment of Homeric language and the theology of Christianity is more evident and difficult than in the words used to express Jesus’ intention in raising Lazarus from the dead, and its result. Both at the moment Jesus decides to go to Bethany, and after Lazarus has arisen, the same language is used to express Jesus’ motivation, and the consequence of his success, once in the voice of Jesus and then, in fulfilment, in the narrator’s voice. First, Jesus explains that he will go to raise Lazarus from the dead, ‘so that I can have immortal glory’ (ὄφρα κλέος ἄφθιτον ἴσχω, 29). In the last line of the poem, the poet ringingly summarizes that ‘the great Father of the good Son has immortal glory’ (καὶ κλέος ἄφθιτον ἔσχε, 57). Kleos aphthiton is a cardinal phrase in the dynamics of the Iliad’s behavioral logic that has been much discussed by recent critics.46 Achilles, the human closest to divinity in the Iliad, immortal except for his heel through which he will be killed, chooses to die young in return for the immortality of glory. How Achilles’ choice is fulfilled makes up the narrative of the Iliad. 46

Redfield 1975; Nagy 1979; Finkelberg 1986 (with e.g. Edwards 1988) and 2007; Goldhill 1991: 69–93.

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Although the phrase kleos aphthiton itself occurs only once in the Iliad (9.413), in the embassy scene where we began with Plutarch’s editorial intervention, the economy of kleos is multiply explored in the narrative, and the phrase itself – with the verb ἔχω – is picked up in later poetry pointedly.47 Kleos aphthiton proclaims its status as a marker of heroic identity and the memorialization and celebration of heroic achievement. Jesus’ express intention to win ‘immortal fame’ for himself is, however, theologically a very challenging (or even absurd) idea. The expression does appear to engage with the narrative of John. In John, Jesus announces that Lazarus’ death is ‘for the glory of God so that the Son of God may be glorified by it’ (ὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ Θεοῦ ἵνα δοξασθῇ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ, John 11:4). This is a complex and much-glossed sentence. The first miracle of Jesus at Cana is expressly said to be for the manifestation of his glory (δόξα, 2:11), and so here too the miracle will glorify the Son; but the ‘glorification of the Son’ is also regularly used to indicate Jesus’ death and resurrection (7:39, 12:16, 13:31), so that the Lazarus story is not just a parallel to Jesus’ return from the dead but a step towards its coming. The connection between the glory of God and the glory of the Son – specified through the purpose clause – suggests that the Father’s glory is in order that the Son might be glorified, that is, not just that the Father and Son purposively share glory (a theologically charged notion, for sure, fully expressed in the idea that Father and Son are one (10:30, 38)), but also that the Father’s glory will be intentionally expressed in the Son’s glory (the Crucifixion) – also a theologically laden notion. These ideas also seem to be picked up in Cometas’ concluding remark that ‘the great Father of the good Son has immortal glory’ – as if the promise of John (rather than the prophecy of his own poem) has been fulfilled. The complexity of the discourse of doxa in John perhaps culminates in 13:31–2, when Judas leaves. Jesus says, ‘Now is the Son of man glorified, and in him God is glorified; [if God is glorified in him], God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once’. The first sentence is clear enough: Judas’ 47

See (from many cases) Theognis 237–54 with Goldhill 1991: 109–19; Simonides fr. 9 Page; Tyrtaeus 9.31–4.

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treachery produces the glorification of Christ – his death and thus resurrection – through which God is glorified. The second is harder, and not helped by the textual uncertainties – the conditional clause, bracketed by Nestle–Aland, is not in the most reliable manuscripts. The verse appears to suggest a transformation taken by many theologians to indicate Jesus’ ascension, the long future of the position of the Son at the right hand of the Father (the future tense of δοξάσει), as well as the immediate future of the coming Crucifixion (νῦν, εὐθύς). Much more could be said here, but it should be clear that the notion of doxa, glory, is integral to the narrative rationale and theological implications of the Gospel of John. Doxa indeed is a very common word not just in the Gospels but also in the Septuagint, which provides so much of the language of the Gospels. Doxa is the standard translation in particular of kavod, the Hebrew term standardly translated as ‘glory’ and often ascribed to God. It becomes a technical term of JudaeoChristian Greek, although it is perhaps not the most precise or expected translation of kavod for at least classical Greek, coming as it so often does with negative overtones of mere reputation or appearance. The Greek term kleos, however, which could have translated some senses of kavod, is extremely rare in the Septuagint (it occurs only twice (Job 28:22, 30:8), to express the sense ‘report’ or ‘public life’); and even rarer in the New Testament, where it appears only once, in 1 Peter 2:20, ‘What glory (κλέος) is it if you are beaten for doing wrong?’ Turning the Gospel into Homeric Greek has led Cometas to translate the expected doxa into kleos, and to have Jesus, like a Homeric hero, claim it as a motivation for his actions. The consequences of this are potentially severe. It seems to imply not just that Jesus is engaged in the competitive boasting world of heroic renown, but also and more worryingly that the very logic of kleos, that is, that a hero fights to preserve his name because of his mortality, is applicable to Jesus. That it is in the first person makes it even worse: it implies that Jesus assents to such a motivation, such competition. If it is hard to interpret the writers of the Gospels as speaking like Odysseus, it is even harder to see Jesus seeking to win kleos – let alone asserting that God the Father 393

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enters this fray of reputation. Here is a place where Cometas’ adaptation of Homeric language seems to clash painfully with standard Christian theology. A comparison with Eudocia’s Cento and Nonnus’ Paraphrase from the fifth century emphasizes the difficulty of Cometas’ version – and we are lucky to have three hexameter versions of the same scriptural passage – as a cento, a paraphrase, and a free-standing recomposition (which indicates something of the difficulty of defining generic boundaries in this region of biblical retelling and Christianized Homer). Eudocia’s account (Homerocentones 1228–99) is considerably longer than Cometas’, and is made up of lines from Homer’s epics, as one would expect. Yet, despite the many expressions of the search for glory in Homer, she surprisingly offers no representation of Jesus’ motivation and does not mention the glory of God at any point in her telling. For her, the culmination of the story is the amazement of the observers and their turn to prayer. Nonnus, by contrast, takes fully 188 lines to tell the story. He has only one, characteristically intricate, sentence on Jesus’ motivation. Jesus explains that Lazarus’ sickness is for ‘the superior glory [κῦδος] of god, so that through him the dear son of man, the lord, may be exalted with immortal honours (ὑψούμενος . . . τιμαῖς ἀθανάτῃσι)’ (Paraphrase 11.3–4). Kudos is not a biblical word (neither Septuagint nor New Testament), and although it has an epic flavouring, it does not bring the specific engagement with mortality and memorialization that kleos encodes.48 More striking is Nonnus’ refusal to repeat the same language of glory through the sentence (as John does). The aim (ophra) of God’s glory in Nonnus’ version is that Jesus may be ‘exalted with immortal honours’. Hupsoumenos implies not just glorification but specifically raising on high, that is, the ascension that is Christ in glory. ‘Immortal honours’ certainly recalls Homeric discourse, where heroes are honoured as if gods, and struggle over timē, the signs of honour which 48

Kudos is associated with victory and other successes primarily in the present, and is not associated with epic song and its immortalization in the same way as kleos, although it is obviously part of the economy of praise in the Iliad. Kudos and timē are linked in the Iliad as the gift of Zeus, and such association with the theos hupsistos may echo in Nonnus’ words.

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define status. But here ‘immortal honour’ implies also the divine status of Jesus who, as a human, suffers on the cross – the mystery of the Incarnation. Here, again, Homeric language is turned into Christian language and marks the difference between the heroes’ search for the immortality of honour and praise, and the Christian understanding of the immortality of Jesus. Nonnus, however, does use kleos as a translation of doxa elsewhere in the Paraphrase. At 1.42, ‘we’ – the Christian community – ‘saw his glory’ (kleos – where John has doxa); a man, too, is said to seek his own reputation (7.66, again kleos for John’s doxa); and twice Jesus refers to his own kleos (8.11, 152), in one case where God the Father exalts Jesus, the other where Jesus dismisses his own apparent exaltation of kleos as opposed to the witness of the logos. At no point, however, is kleos qualified by aphthitos, nor does Jesus seek kleos for himself. It does show, however, that the hard and fast distinction between kleos and doxa can occasionally slip in classicizing verse. The most striking parallel – the only parallel – for Cometas’ use of kleos aphthiton, however, is in Gregory of Nazianzus, the most Hellenizing of Christians, who also regularly uses the language of kleos in the memorialization of his own dead mother.49 In his poem ‘On Silence at the Time of Fasting’ (II.1.34), he writes a detailed, classically informed praeteritio of the subjects he will not sing, starting from Troy. When he turns to the subjects he will sing, he specifies first: ‘the kleos aphthiton of the sufferings of Christ, by which he made me divine’ (83). After his dismissal of the subjects of classicizing poetry, Gregory assertively adopts the distinctive language of Homer to celebrate his own subject, in a way which is ideologically laden: he is triumphantly appropriating the privileged aim of Homer’s hero and Homer’s poetry for his own Christian project. Now, the poet as a human and Christian is immortalized by Christ. The echo of Homer is ironically turned against Homer, though, at the same time, ‘the real news for Christians is that their own “eternal glory” is now expressed in Homeric language and metre!’,50 that is, theology and poetics 49 50

See Goldhill and Greensmith 2020, with bibliography. Simelidis 2009: 37. On allegorical interpretations of Jesus and Achilles, see Sellew 1989. For a formalist approach, see Caprara 2000.

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together are working to create an elite and knowing Greek Christian culture in the image of Gregory, the author. The kleos is the subject of poetry, not the personal aim of Jesus. From Gregory of Nazianzus, we also know that the exegesis of Lazarus in particular became a site of contention over how the Incarnation was understood.51 Gregory was especially revered in Byzantium, where his bones were taken and reinterred in the tenth century. His prose became part of the liturgy of the Byzantine church. One of the most magnificent illustrated manuscripts of the era contains his work, and has a picture of the raising of Lazarus and under it a single line quotation from Gregory that emphasizes the issue of the Incarnation: ‘He asks where Lazarus was laid, for He was man, but He raised Lazarus, for He was God.’52 Here is an excellent example of how the manuscript’s intermedial form functions. The painter encourages us to see in the scene of Lazarus the human and divine embodied in the figure of Jesus by adding a line from Gregory’s third Theological Oration (Or. 29.20), which is a christological exegesis of John 11:33 and 43. By this titulus (as it were), the manuscript aims to perform exactly what Anastasius the Lisper demanded: that we see the mystery of the Incarnation in a picture. The quotation from Gregory provides a recollection of the biblical text interspersed with Gregory’s authoritative interpretation of it: it tells us how to view.53 This picture of Lazarus is juxtaposed to a picture of Jesus at the house of Simon and the Entry into Jerusalem, which is not mentioned in the Oration, but which is a story that performs the recognition of Jesus as Messiah by the people. The pairing of the two pictures forms a commentary on the nature of Jesus as Christ. The scene of Lazarus is, in short, key in thinking through the humanity and divinity of Jesus. Nonnus may hint at such issues. But Cometas, by using the language of kleos absent from these other retellings of the Lazarus story, offers a confusing and confused image of both God the 51

52 53

Winslow 1971, especially 391. On Gregory’s poems on his mother, see Goldhill and Greensmith forthcoming. der Nersessian 1962: 204; Brubaker 1999. This interpretation was a commonplace of the patristic era and did not originate with Gregory (see e.g. Athanasius, Contra Arianos 3.26, with as background Wilken 1965). Gregory, according to Winslow 1971: 391, was ‘dissatisified with his own argumentation . . . embarrassed by a position he is forced to hold’.

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Father and Jesus seeking for memorial and lasting renown, like Homeric heroes, by their miraculous interventions. Competition between pagan models and Christian exemplars is a recognized part of Christian rhetoric, of course: Gregory of Nazianzus compares his mother’s transition to heaven with Heracles, Empedocles, Trophonius, and Aristaeus, as mortals who were not ‘blessed in their suffering’ (οὐ μάκαρες παθέεσσι, AP 7.29),54 and the wild exultation of Tertullian, De spectaculis 30 revels in the post-death suffering of the enemies of Christ in contrast to the blessings of Christian immortality. These texts paradigmatically compare Christian and pagan humans. It is harder to compare Christ with a human, especially in terms of ‘fame’. But even if we imagine that Cometas is seeking to emphasize the imperishability of Jesus, or, more provocatively, that Cometas is constructing a sort of typological argument whereby Jesus wins a truly immortal glory denied to the pagan Achilles, the association of Jesus with the violent, angry Achilles, and the pursuit of a kleos predicated on the grim necessity of mortality, remains theologically unsettling, and, like the association of the apostles with Odyssean rhetoric, salvageable, if at all, only by an act of faith. Cometas’ Homerism represents, I would suggest, a disjunctive and disruptive moment in the history of Homeric reception where the appropriation of the language of Homer leads to a theologically baffling hybridity. As far as I have found, only Cometas, before or after, uses kleos to describe the glory of God. Perhaps J’s wrath was provoked by more than the metrics or wording of Cometas’ unparalleled poem. Cometas is a minor poet at best, and it is hard to judge the importance of his scholarly efforts, especially from no more evidence than his own self-praise, violently dismissed as it is by the very scholar who preserved it. But he opens a fascinating window onto one of the most significant and broad-ranging arenas of reception in antiquity: the process of transvaluation and the contested construction of tradition that is integral to Christian engagements with its inheritance of the privileged non-Christian literature fundamental to the education and culture of elite Greek society. We have 54

Cf. also Gregory, Or. 4.59.

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seen how Cometas reworks Homer by redrafting the material of Homeric language to retell a biblical story, encouraging us to read Homer through scripture and scripture through Homer. While such reworking of Homer is a strategy familiar from all periods of Greek writing (and much Latin too), and one that has been much in evidence in this book, Cometas’ bizarre use of the Homeric formulas of the pursuit of personal glory introduces a deep theological confusion precisely in the dynamics of mortality and immortality, central in such different ways to the logic of the Iliad, on the one hand, and to the theology of the Incarnation, on the other. To see Jesus as Achilles is a typological step too far that reinscribes a gulf between the epic tradition of Greek literature and the Christian theological imperative. Cometas shows us how ‘reception’ can also be a crisis in signification, a failure of the gestures of appropriation and assimilation that the construction of tradition demands. Cometas shows us the deep ambivalence at the heart of the Christian work of oikeiōsis. Cometas’ scholarly project, however, also reworks Homer by editing, punctuating, reformatting his text – a process that Cometas himself describes in strikingly material terms. He treats the text as a piece of stone or wood to be carved, cut, cleaned. Cometas’ scholarship on Homer is another, interrelated part of the construction of tradition, a different sense of reception as reworking. Cometas is part of a Christian enterprise that preserves the past in and through scholarly intervention, that treats Homer as a monument which has its own place in the cultural and educational world of Christian society. Cometas’ two projects, as recorded in the Palatine Anthology, along with the graffito the copyist adds, ask us to think how reworking Homer’s text plays an integral role in the battleground of tradition within the Christian empire – and how the process of constructing such a tradition can produce violent tensions between contrasting systems of thought. Cometas provides striking testimony to just how contested and unresolved particular junctures in the ancient reception of antiquity can prove.

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INDEX

1 Enoch, 361 Achaeus TGrF 29, 102 Aeschylus, 113–14 Dictyulci, 113, 114, 117, 118 fragments (TGrF) 131–42 (Myrmidons), 224 13–15 (Amymone), 234 134 (Myrmidons), 102 181–2a (Palamedes), 224 197 (Prometheus Unbound), 223 247–8 (Hypsipyle), 228 249–57 (Philoctetes), 224 263–72 (Phryges), 224 43–6 (Danaids), 234 46a.16–21 (Dictyulci), 113 46a–7c (Dictyulci), 237 5 (Aigyptioi), 234 547 (Scythae), 223 95–7a (Cabiri), 229 95–7a (Cabiri), 227 plays on Argonautic themes, 226 plays on Danaid themes, 234 plays on Trojan themes, 224 Prometheus Bound 865–6, 236 994, 102 Suppliants 1018–29, 234 Testimonia (TGrF) 117a–g, 230 TGrF 134 (Myrmidons), 100 TGrF 279–80a (Psychostasia), 225 African features, mockery of, 252–3 Agathonides abused by Simonides, 58 Agonistics, in reception. See Competitiveness Alcaeus, 59 Alcaeus (fragments)

446

384, 56 Alcibiades, 143, 181–91 Alcman, 54 Alexander Aetolus, 219 allusion, 2 Anacreon, 56, 59, 338 358 PMG, 56 anagrams, 241–65 Anastasius the Lisper AP 15.28, 388 animals, 194–215 Antiphanes Sappho, 322–3 Aphrodite of Cnidus, 171 Apollonius, 49 Argonautica 1.49–50, 228 1.51–6, 228 1.57–64, 228 1.133–8, 234 1.304, 229 1.472–4, 229 1.553–8, 225 1.620–4, 236 1.620–6, 228 1.636, 228 1.857–60, 229 1.898–909, 229 2.1–97, 230 2.178–536, 231 2.197–206, 231 2.707, 194 3.239–46, 231, 233 3.243–4, 233 3.414–16, 232 3.732–5, 233 4.452–81, 232 4.1090, 237 reception of Sappho, 326 Scholia to Argonautica

Index 2.178–82b, c, 231 3.1040c, 232 4.223–30a, 232 4.282–91b, 223 Apollonius Dyscolus on Sappho, 328 Arbinas (Lycian ruler), 73–86 Archilochus, 112 as model for Aristophanes, 109 Cratinus, Archilochoi, 109, 323 fragments 109, 108 303, 53 324, 110 5, 111 in Diphilus’ Sappho, 323 named by Pindar, 61–2 Argonauts dramas about, 226–33 Argos dramas about, 233–7 Aristarchus of Samos, 376 Aristophanes, 92–118, 129 Acharnians, 98 237–346, 104 496–556, 107 1056–62, 107 1227–34, 110 Clouds 48, 66 1481–5, 107 Ecclesiazousae, 241, 242 1169–83, 242 Frogs, 24 1004–5, 66 Peace, 92–118, 251 62–3, 99 181, 100 236–88, 101 242–54, 252 281–4, 102 301–60 (parodos), 103 320, 102 426–520, 112 603–48, 107 657–705, 107 695, 50 767–74, 106 969–72, 106

996–8, 252 1119–26, 105 1177, 102 1270–87, 110 1316–59, 106 Wasps 57–9, 104 963–6, 107 Aristotle, 23–4, 42 on Sappho, 323 Poetics, 9–11 1447b, 23–4 1448b, 10 1448b–49a, 109, 111 1456a, 380 Politics, 242 Rhetoric 1365a, 148 1411a, 148 1415b, 148 Athenaeus, 322 Deipnosophists 10.428f, 230 13.598b–c, 56 5.219e–20a, 200 13.599c–d, 56 on Sappho, 329 Attic myth, 237 Atticism, 145 Bacchylides, 60 3.97–8, 89 Basil Address to Young Men on Greek Literature 4, 375 Bathyllus (dancer), 308 Baubo, 245 beards, 199–200 Bernsdorff, Hans, 338 Blank, Thomas, 140 Blanshard, Alastair, 15 body, the, 194–215 Bourdieu, Pierre, 316 Bowra, C. M., 55 Brutus, Lucius Junius, 148 Burkert, Walter, 69 Callimachus, 16, 50, 70 Aetia

447

Index Callimachus (cont.) 1.9–20, 225 7c, 232 9, 223 35, 224 54a, 234 65–6, 234 66.7–9, 234 75.10–11, 237 95.4, 221 110.51, 221 137a, 237 178.11–12, 230 178–85b, 225 fragments (uncertain) 612, 52 Hecale, 237–8 Hymns, 266–90 2 (To Apollo), 273–5 2.4, 277 2.8–16, 274 2.11, 277 2.12, 276 2.14–15, 277 2.25–32, 274 2.85–7, 275 2.93, 288 2.93–6, 275 3 (To Artemis), 276 3.180–2, 275, 288 3.249–50, 275, 288 3.266–7, 277 4 (To Delos), 276–7 4.300–3, 288 4.300–6, 276 5.3, 277 5.13–32, 225 5.14, 277 5.45–8, 234 5.56, 223 5 (The Bath of Pallas) 94–5, 221 5.137, 277 Iambs, 278–9 15, 278 16, 278 Lock of Berenice, 325 performance of Hymns, 270–3 Callinus, 54

448

Cameron, Alan, 270, 70, 384 canon, the, 11 Cavafy, Constantine, 15, 174–81 CEG (Carmina epigraphica Graeca see Abbreviations) 177, 77–8, 79, 81 346, 82 594, 82 637, 82 778, 82 819, 81, 82 869, 82 888, 72–7, 80, 81, 84–6 888–9, 78–9 889, 72–7 Censorinus 17.2, 255 Chamaeleon On Sappho, 56, 57, 322, 324, 338 chorality, 16, 266–90 Christian literature, 344–70, 371–98 Christianity, 18, 26 Chrysippus, 337 Cingano, Ettore, 14 Cinna Zmyrna, 293, 313, 315 Clement of Alexandria Paedagogus 2.10.70–4, 313 Stromata 6.89, 375 Cleobulus of Rhodes, 58 closure, 194 coc(c)etum, 244 Comedy, Old, 323 Cometas, 18, 371–98 AP 15.36, 379–81 AP 15.37, 381–2 AP 15.38, 382–3 AP 15.40, 397 Competitiveness, in reception, 8, 14, 27 Contest of Homer and Hesiod, 358 107–8, 110 Cooper, Helen, 92 Corinna (poet) 664 PMG, 57 688 PMG, 57 alleged links to Pindar, 57 Cratinus, Archilochoi, 109, 323, 112

Index fragments (PCG) 2, 6 (Archilochoi), 109 211 (Pytine), 108 342, 50 Crinagoras AP 9.429, 314 Critias (fragments) 1, 53 crown (as poetic motif), 82 D’Alessio, Giovan Battista, 16, 46 dance, 293–318 Darwin, Charles, 197 Demetrius Poliorcetes ithyphallic hymn to, 279–81 Demetrius, On Style, 25, 327 Demosthenes, 145, 155 evaluated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 157–8 Funeral Oration, 146, 163 On the Crown, 147, 157–8 Deuteronomy, Book of 28, 349 Dio Chrysostom, 196 Encomium on Hair, 196 Orations 52, 25, 222 Diodorus Siculus, 214 32.24, 376 Diogenes Laertius, 206–9 Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 1.60, 55 6.40, 206 Diogenes the Cynic, 206–9 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 15, 145–66 Letter to Gnaeus Pompeius 3.4, 165 On Composition 23, 327 On Imitation, 25 fr. 6.1, 11 On Isocrates 7.1, 152 7.2, 152, 155 7.3, 152 7.5, 152 12–14, 153 15.3, 153 17, 153

On the Ancient Orators 1.3, 162 On the Style of Demosthenes, 154 23.1, 155 23.10, 155, 164 24.8, 156 26.4, 156 28.1, 157 30.3, 157 44.3, 164 On Thucydides, 160–3 1.1, 159 3.1, 159 3.2, 33 8.2, 163 15.3, 159 15.4, 159 18.1, 160 18.3, 160 18.7, 161, 163 25.1, 159 28.2, 161 29.4, 161 29.5, 161 37–41, 159 39, 160 40, 159 41.6, 166 Roman Antiquities 5.17.5–6, 149 5.17.2, 148 5.17.4, 149 14.6.2, 151 Diphilus Sappho, 323 dithyramb, 60 Duff, Timothy, 15 Duris of Samos, 279 Edmondson, George, 27, 33 Edwards, Mark, 361 Eetion (father of Andromache), 85 elegeion, 75–6 Eleusinian Mysteries, 244 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 263 encomium, 72–91 Engels, Friedrich, 242 Epicurus, 245 epigram, 73–86

449

Index epinician, 61, 72–91 epiphany, 279–83 epitaphioi logoi. See funeral orations eristics, 136–9 Eudocia, 386 Homeric cento, 394–5 Euenus of Paros, 55 Euphorion fragments (poetic) 48, 306 Euripides, 115–18, 161 Aeolus, 116 Bellerophon, 116 fragments (TGrF) 228–28a (Archelaus), 235 386b (Theseus), 238 484 (Melanippe), 223 617–24 (Peleus), 225 708–10 (Telephus), 108 759a.1598–9 (Hypsipyle), 229 Iphigeneia at Aulis 164–302, 227 Medea 92–130, 99 Stheneboea, 116 Excerpta Constantiniana, 377 Feeney, Denis, 376 Ferrari, Franco, 337 Ferriss-Hill, Jennifer, 249 figura etymologica, 256 Finglass, Patrick, 49, 70 Fitzgerald, William, 243, 259 food, 241–65 Foucault, Michel, 372 Fraenkel, Eduard, 271 Freud, Sigmund, 27 funeral orations, 146–50 Gallus, Cornelius, 295 gay love, 15 gender, 1 Genesis, Book of, 361 Gergis (Lycian ruler), 77–80 Ginzburg, Carlo, 245 Goldhill, Simon, 18, 366 Gowers, Emily, 16 Greensmith, Emma, 11, 347, 349 Gregory of Nazianzus, 375, 395, 396 Orations

450

29.20, 396 Gregory Thaumatourgos, 385 hair, 199–200 Hanink, Johanna, 15 Harder, Annette, 16 Heracles, 85 Heraclitus, 245, 255 D59, 244 Hermesianax, 56 Herodotus 2.135, 322 Hesiod, 7, 18, 23–47, See also ps.-Hesiod fragments 71, 45 135.4, 236 204.124–7, 363 Melampodia, 352 named by Stesichorus, 68–9 reception of, in the Sibylline Oracles, 344–70 Testimonia 16, 53 Theogony 32, 354 34, 354 661, 37 700–5, 362 717–21, 351 720, 355 847–52, 361 Works and Days 21–6, 28 86, 37 106, 34, 42 167–73, 353 174–201, 353 202, 34 225–37, 353 288, 32 342–6, 29 700–1, 31 Homer, 6–8, 112 as viewed by Pindar, 65–7 author of Thebais?, 54 identified by Simonides, 51 Iliad 1.92, 86

Index 1.383, 86 9.158, 365 9.458–61, 374 11.638–41, 244 21.362–4, 249 24.347–8, 200 Margites, 53 Odyssey 10.234–6, 244 reception of, in late antique poetry, 371–98 reception of, in the Sibylline Oracles, 346–52, 356–9, 364–7 Shield of Achilles, 253 Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 63–5 149–50, 60 166–73, 54 Homeric Hymn to Demeter 207–10, 245 Homeridae, 62 homosexuality. See gay love Horace, 16 Carmen Saeculare, 266–90 45–6, 286 49–52, 289 5, 284 9–12, 287 Epistle to Augustus, 266–9 131, 268 134–8, 268 15, 267 42, 267 humans, 194–215 Hunter, Richard, 3, 4, 19, 24, 48, 165, 195, 344, 374 Hyperides, 147 Hyssaldomus inscription, 87–91

261–9, 138 281–5, 139 291–5, 134 Busiris, 142 Helen 1–5, 137 On the Peace, 147 8.41, 153 8.79, 151 8.82, 152 8.87, 151 Panathenaicus 26–7, 138 Isyllus Paean 14–16, 285 ithyphallic hymn to Demetrius Poliorcetes, 279–81

iambos, 62, 112 Ibycus, 59, 83, 90 151.46–8 PMGF, 83 intermediality, 17 intertextuality, 2–3, 372 Ion of Samos, 81, 82 Isocrates, 121–44, 164 Against the Sophists 1–2, 136 Anonymous Life of, 125 Antidosis 25, 132

Lada-Richards, Ismene, 17 Latour, Bruno, 5 Lazarus, 391–7 Libanius Orations 64.68, 305 64.110, 304 64.113, 312 64.116, 309 64.118, 308, 309, 313 Licinia Eucharis (dancer), 314 Livingstone, Niall, 142

Janko, Richard, 49 Jeremiah, Book of, 360 Jewish literature, 6, 18, 344–70 Pesher, Midrash, and Targum, 387 John Chrysostom, 313 John, Gospel of 11:4, 392 Juvenal 7.87, 313 Kenney, E. J., 250 Kirk, G. S., 245 kleos, 391–6 Konstantakos, Ioannis, 14 Kristeva, Julia, 2, 372 Kurke, Leslie, 38, 81

451

Index Longinus. See ps.-Longinus. Longinus, On the Sublime, 327 Lucian, 245 Amores 15–16, 171 On the Dance 2, 299 31, 311 57, 295 58, 311 59, 294 67, 300, 302 70, 301 71, 307 74, 299 Lucretius 5.664, 257 Lycophron, Alexandra, 221 Lysander, 81, 83 Mackenzie, M. M., 244 Manilius Astronomica 5.480b–1, 302 5.484–5, 305 Marathon, Battle of, 149 Martin, Richard, 14, 67 Martindale, Charles, 4 Marx, Karl, 242 masculinity, 201 McKay, Kenneth, 226 Megaclides On Homer, 49 Megarian drama, 105 Mendelsohn, Daniel, 320 Merkelbach, Reinhold, 338 Miller, Andrew, 41 Mimnermus (fragments) 6, 55 Moretti, Franco, 6 Morris, Desmond, 198 names (of poets), 48–71 naming in epigrams, 73 neighbourliness, as model for reception, 23–47 Nero, 362 Nonnus

452

Paraphrase, 387, 394–5 nudity, 194–215 Odorico, Paolo, 378 Odysseus, 209–15 Oracle of the Potter, 363 otherness, 252–3 Ovid Metamorphoses 1.30–5, 257 8.666, 245 Oxyrhynchus, 319–40 Page, Denys, 323, 335 Palatine Anthology 9.506, 323 9.523, 380 pantomime, 293–318 Papyri, 319–40 Brothers (Sappho), 319 Cologne (Sappho), 319 Hamburg 118–19, 221 MP3 1455, 338 MP3 2070, 338 Oxyrhynchus 2455, 221 P.Mich.inv. 3498 + 3250b recto, 3250 a and c recto, 338 paratragedy, 95–6 parody, 95–6 Parthenius, 17 ‘Byblis’, 313 Crinagoras (SH 624), 313 Erōtika Pathēmata, 293–318 4, 308 11, 303, 306 13, 301, 305, 307 14, 301 15, 303, 309, 313 17, 300, 309 21, 305 27, 307 31, 306 33, 311 36, 308 Pref. 2, 295 Metamorphoses, 313 Pausanias (general), 84

Index peace, 103–18 pedagogy, 126–31 Pericles, 148 funeral speech, evaluated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 160–3 Petronius Satyrica, 261–5 1.3, 261 31.10, 263 31.11, 264 31.9–10, 263 50, 263 Petrovic, Andrej, 88 Petrovic, Ivana, 272 Philo of Alexandria, 337 Philodamus Paean 105–11, 284 Philostratus, 12, 336 Heroicus 19.5–7, 11, 12 Pindar, 5, 14, 23–47, 54, 58–67 alleged links to Corinna, 57 fragments 29, 57 33c, 277 52d, 60 94c, 279 125, 61 188, 54 Isthmians 1.40–51, 38 1.50–1, 80 1.52–4, 39 2.1–10, 59 2.13–17, 81 4.37–9, 62 Nemeans 3.52–3, 59 6.53–4, 59 7.20–3, 65 7.23–7, 66 7.86–9, 36 7.93–4, 38 8.24–33, 65 8.50–1, 59 Olympians 1.47, 36 2.86–8, 60

9.2, 61 13.18–19, 60 13.22–3, 60 Paeans 7b, 64 7b.10–12, 63 52b.50–4, 286 Pythians 1.31–2, 36 1.66, 36 2.52–6, 62 3.35, 46 3.8–44, 45 4.277–8, 61 4.298–9, 89 5.107–15, 79 8.56–60, 40 9, 44 9.64–64a, 45 10.54, 42 Scholia Νemean 7.127a, 36 Pythian 3.52b, 45 Pythian 9.6a, 44 Olympian 13.22, 52 Pittacus, 58 Plato, 9, 15, 123, 128, 167–93, 194–215, 374 Alcibiades I, 182 103a–b, 183 Charmides, 167–93 154b–e, 169 criticized by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 154–8 Lysis 210e, 189 Menexenus, 146 234a–5d, 154 236d, 156 237b, 156 237c, 156 237d–8b, 157 242a–3d, 154 246c–8e, 157 on choral dancing, 269 on Sappho, 323 Phaedrus 235c, 323

453

Index Plato (cont.) 238e–41d, 186 247a, 277 255d, 187 278e–79b, 125 Protagoras, 200–4 309a–b, 199 320d–3a, 201–3 Republic, 242 393d–4a, 9 595b–c, 111 607a, 111 Statesman, 204–6 273d–e, 211 Symposium 178c–9b, 191 220d–1c, 191 Timaeus, 245 Plautus Asinaria, 246–7 178–80, 246 934, 246 Plutarch, 12, 15 Alcibiades, 181–91 4.1, 183 4.4, 187 4.5–5.5, 188 6.5, 189 7.3–5, 190 Amatorius 763a, 328 Comparison between Aristophanes and Menander, 25 Gryllus, 209–15 990f–1a, 212 How a Young Man Should Listen to Poetry 26f, 374 Life of Aemilius Paulus 1.2, 12 on Sappho, 327–8 Sympotic Questions 711d, 327 747c, 307 The Glory of the Athenians 347f–8a, 57 The Perfection of Virtue 81d, 327

454

Polybius, 377 Polycrates of Samos, 83 Polydeuces (hero), 82 Polymnestus of Colophon, 54 Porter, James, 7 Posidippus of Pella, 325 51.6, 325 55.2, 325 122, 325 poststructuralism, 2 prohairēsis, 165 ps.-Dositheus, Hermeneumata Leidensia, 293 ps.-Hesiod Shield of Heracles Hypothesis, 49 ps.-Longinus On the Sublime, 25 9.6, 361 9.12, 380 13.4, 12 ps.-Phocylides, Sentences, 352 ps.-Virgil Moretum, 250–61 24–9, 254 31–5, 253 44, 251 46–8, 254 71–7, 253 83, 256 91, 256 101–4, 257 102, 259 111–13, 257 114–16, 258 116–18, 259 119–22, 259 Pucci, Piero, 379 Puck (magazine), 252 puns, 241–65 Quintilian Education of the Orator 10.1.93, 243 Quintus of Smyrna, 11 Posthomerica 5.49–56, 359

Index race, 1 racism, 252–3 rhapsodes, 63–5 Rutherford, Ian, 63 Saïd, Suzanne, 242 same-sex love. See gay love Sappho, 7, 319–40 31, 327 55, 328 137, 56 addressed by Anacreon?, 56 biography, 57 Brothers and Cypris papyrus, 319 Cologne papyrus, 319 Hellenistic editions of, 324 in the classical period, 321–4 in the Hellenistic period, 324–6 in the Roman Empire, 326–9 reception in Egypt, 329–39 satura, 243 satyr play, 113–14 Scopas, 58 seal, poetic. See sphragis Second Sophistic, 17 Sedgwick, Eve Kosovsky, 27, 47 Seneca, 255 Epistles 12.6–7, 255 12.7, 255 Septuagint, 385 Sibylline Oracles, 18, 344–70 1.283–303, 353 2.155, 353 2.227–9, 365 2.334–7, 353 2.56–148, 352 3.110–55, 351 3.377–8, 368 3.401–9, 351 3.410–18, 349 3.419–25, 347 3.520–44, 349 3.662–4, 360 3.680–4, 361 3.773–5, 366 3.809–29, 347, 354 3.823–9, 354

4.1–23, 354 4.152–61, 353 4.175–8, 364 4.183–9, 365 5.29, 362 8.374, 355 Silvia Arsia, Battle of, 148 Simonides, 51–3, 57–8, 60, 87 ‘New Simonides’ (P.Oxy. 3965), 51 542 PMG, 55, 58 564 PMG, 52 581 PMG, 58 602 PMG, 58 609 PMG, 52 AP 6.197, 84 Plataea Elegy 10–18, 87 Socrates, 121–44, 167–93 as teacher, 126–31 Solon, 55 fragments 20, 55 Sophocles, 66 fragments (TGrF) 69.1 (Aegeus), 238 111–12 (Amycus), 230 223a–b (Heracliscus), 234 224–7 (Heracles Satyricus), 235 235–6 (Erigone), 225 25 (Aegeus), 238 336–49 (Colchides), 231 341 (Colchides), 232 361 (Crisis), 226 384–9 (Lemniae), 227, 228 386 (Lemniae), 227 487–96 (Peleus), 225 546 (Scythae), 232, 233 547 (Scythae), 232 659 (Tyro), 237 712 (Phineus), 231 plays on Argonautic themes, 226 plays on Trojan themes, 224 Sorabji, Richard, 197 Sosibius FGrH 595 F7, 106 sphragis, 48, 54, 74, 76, 82, 89, 90, 347, 348 Stamatopoulou, Zoe, 44–5, 46 Stephens, Susan A., 17

455

Index Stesichorus, 50, 67–71 fragments 168, 49 Palinode, 71 style, 24 sublimity, 12 Symmachus (Lycian poet), 75, 88–9 Tanner, Tony, 261 teaching. See pedagogy Terpander, 61 theatrical language, 160–2 Theocritus, 89 22.1–134, 230 Idylls 16, 51 reception of Sappho, 325 Theognis, 54 1345–50, 55 23–4, 55 237–54, 65 467–96, 55 667–82, 55 Theon, Aelius, 164 Progymnasmata 2.68.24–8, 164 Thucydides, 146, 155 1.114, 159 2.27, 159 2.34–46 (Pericles’ funeral oration), 160–3 2.34.7, 148 2.42.3, 150 3.82, 161 5.32, 159 5.95, 160 evaluated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 158–64 Tomkins, Silvan, 47 tragedy, 6, 9, 16, 149, 219–40 Treu, Max, 63 Triphiodorus, 380

456

Troy dramas about, 224–6 Uhlig, Anna, 14 Van Noorden, Helen, 18 Viidebaum, Laura, 14 Virgil Aeneid, 247–50, 260–1 12.722, 258 3.255–7, 247, 260 7.107–15, 248 7.116–17, 248 7.128–34, 249 7.128–9, 260 7.344–5, 249 7.462–4, 250 12.838, 250 12.928–9, 258 Eclogues 10.3, 314 Georgics, 251 Moretum. See ps.-Virgil war, 97–102 West, Martin, 49, 70, 336 Whitmarsh, Tim, 297 Wiater, Nicolas, 145 Wilde, Oscar, 15, 174 Wind in the Willows, The, 242 Xanthus (poet), 68 Xenophanes, 8 Silloi D3, 57 D8, 57 Xenophon Memorabilia 2.1.21–34, 226 Zangwill, Israel, 252 Zanker, Paul, 131