The Mimiambs of Herodas: Translated into an English ‘Choliambic’ Metre with Literary-Historical Introductions and Notes 9781350004207, 9781350004238, 9781350004221

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
General Introduction
About this work
Who was Herodas?
The Hellenistic age
Dramatic location of the Mimiamboi
Alexandrian poetry
The character and characters of the Mimiamboi
Mime as genre
Sex, slavery and class in the Mimiamboi
Iambics
The Mimiamb
Herodas’ Greek and the present translation
Diction
Were the Mimiamboi staged or read?
The Mimiamboi as a collection
Herodas as theorist of art
Metre
Text
Notes
Mimiamb One
Introduction
Notes
Mimiamb One: The Bawd
Mimiamb Two
Introduction
Notes
Mimiamb Two: The Brothel-Keeper
Mimiamb Three
Introduction
Notes
Mimiamb Three: The Schoolmaster
Mimiamb Four
Introduction
Notes
Mimiamb Four: Offerings to Asklepios
Mimiamb Five
Introduction
Notes
Mimiamb Five: A Jealous Woman
Mimiamb Six
Introduction
Notes
Mimiamb Six: Intimate Friends
Mimiamb Seven
Introduction
Notes
Mimiamb Seven: The Shoemaker
Mimiamb Eight
Introduction
Notes
Mimiamb Eight: The Dream
The Fragments
Introduction
The Fragments IX–XIII
Select Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The Mimiambs of Herodas

Also available from Bloomsbury Hellenistic Tragedy: Texts, Translations and a Critical Survey, Agnieszka Kotlinska-Toma Herodas: Mimes and Fragments, A.D. Knox and Walter Headlam Looking at Lysistrata: Eight Essays and a New Version of Aristophanes’ Provocative Comedy, edited by David Stuttard

The Mimiambs of Herodas Translated into an English ‘Choliambic’ Metre with Literary-Historical Introductions and Notes Anna Rist

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2016 Paperback edition first published 2018 © Anna Rist, 2016 Anna Rist has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN : HB : PB: ePDF: ePub:

978-1-35000-420-7 978-1-35006-683-0 978-1-35000-422-1 978-1-35000-421-4

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To all who taught me Greek and especially: ‘Nell’ Unwin (R.I.P.) in Sixth Form and Joyce Reynolds at Newnham College, Cambridge

Table of Contents General Introduction About this work Who was Herodas? The Hellenistic age Dramatic location of the Mimiamboi Alexandrian poetry The character and characters of the Mimiamboi Mime as genre Sex, slavery and class in the Mimiamboi Iambics The Mimiamb Herodas’ Greek and the present translation Diction Were the Mimiamboi staged or read? The Mimiamboi as a collection Herodas as theorist of art Metre Text Notes

1 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 12 15 16 17 20 21 23 25 27 28 29

Mimiamb One Introduction Notes Mimiamb One: The Bawd

35 40 44

Mimiamb Two Introduction Notes Mimiamb Two: The Brothel-Keeper

47 51 53

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Mimiamb Three Introduction Notes Mimiamb Three: The Schoolmaster

57 60 63

Mimiamb Four Introduction Notes Mimiamb Four: Offerings to Asklepios

67 70 76

Mimiamb Five Introduction Notes Mimiamb Five: A Jealous Woman

79 85 87

Mimiamb Six Introduction Notes Mimiamb Six: Intimate Friends

91 94 99

Mimiamb Seven Introduction Notes Mimiamb Seven: The Shoemaker

103 110 115

Mimiamb Eight Introduction Notes Mimiamb Eight: The Dream

119 125 130

The Fragments Introduction The Fragments IX–XIII

133 133 135

Select Bibliography Index

137 141

General Introduction

About this work With this work I aim to do for Herodas what I previously aimed to do for Theocritus1: to render the author’s surviving oeuvre into an English verse-form which will, as nearly as can be, convey not only the sense of the original but also something of its flavour and, in the case of Herodas, something of his striking metre. I have provided each poem, or ‘Mimiamb’,2 with an Introduction to make it more accessible to the general reader, and notes likely to be of interest to students in that word’s narrower usage, as also in its wider sense of all with ‘zeal’ for what may be known and admired (the sense of the Latin studium = ‘zeal’ extending itself even to our ‘love’). It is thus my hope to have brought out in the scant remains of a little-known poet much that is of abiding human relevance for a wide spectrum of contemporary readers. Even after more than 20 centuries, there is much we can relate to, not least – as must surely strike us – in his evocation of female characters and their homebound lives: be they Metriche of Mimiamb I, hearing a knock at the door which may be her man returning after long absence, or Metrotime of Mimiamb IV, come to the end of her patience with her exacting daily routine and rebellious son – to name but the first two stars in this all-star cast!

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Who was Herodas? The papyrus containing substantially eight of the Mimiamboi was published in 1891 by F. G. Kenyon. It does not provide us with the name of their author, identified from some dozen references in Greek and Roman texts, including a letter of Pliny the Younger (4.3.4). Most of these loci specify that he wrote choliambics, which we can conclude to have been his distinctive, though – as I have argued elsewhere and claim to demonstrate in the Introduction to Mimiamb VIII – not the only oeuvre3 by which he might have expected to be remembered. Regarding the poet’s name, I have bowed to the form now generally preferred: that is ‘Herodas’. Our oldest witness, the Roman Pliny, gives that name as ‘Herodes’, and although modern writers have normally preferred Herodas or the Boeotian equivalent, Herondas,4 there are reasons to hold that ‘Herodes’ would be that which he himself would have used: firstly because it is the Ionic form and the Mimiambs are composed more or less in ‘East Ionic’, the dialect of the poet’s ancient models, Hipponax and Archilochus; secondly, and not negligibly, the poet concludes Mimiamb VIII by proudly professing himself an Ionian – from which we might infer he would have a preference for the Ionic form of his name. Indeed, had he been Doric-speaking, we could presume he would have used not ‘Herodas’ but the contemporary Doric form, ‘Heroidas’.5 The presumed date of Herodas – as he shall remain in this work – is based largely on internal evidence, particularly the reference at I 26 (30) to the shrine of the ‘brother and sister gods’ – that is Ptolemy II and his sister-queen, Arsinoe – which we know to have been built by 271 B.C.; also the name Ake (II 13 (16)), since that Phoenician city had, by 266 B.C., been renamed Ptolemais. This yields 270 B.C. as the approximate date for the Mimiamboi, coinciding roughly with the floruit of three other famous poets of whom substantial

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3

works have been preserved: Callimachus, Apollonius and Theocritus. To the ‘urban’ mimes of the last-named (i.e. Idylls XIV, XV and XVI ) a similar date, or if anything slightly earlier, is to be assigned. On stylistic and linguistic grounds, the Mimiamboi are clearly Hellenistic compositions; VIII , in particular, refers to characteristic Hellenistic literary feuding.

The Hellenistic age The period succeeding the far-flung conquests of Alexander of Macedon is known by this name. After Alexander’s premature death in 323 B.C., his generals had, by 301 B.C, parcelled out his empire into three realms, centred on Pella, Antioch and Alexandria. This last would become the cultural centre of the empire of General Ptolemaios, the Macedonian Greek who founded a dynasty of which the last and perhaps best-known incumbent was Cleopatra. Toward the end of a reign which lasted from 323 to 283 B.C., this Ptolemy built the Mouseion or Institute of the Muses (more strictly a ‘sanctuary’, and de facto an institute for advanced study) which is mentioned in Herodas’ first Mimiamb (27 [31]). This the king endowed with stipends for poets and scholars, so amassing a treasury of learning and letters to which the history of civilisation is forever indebted. The ‘good king’ referred to in the previous line of Mimiamb I is his son and successor, Ptolemy II Philadelphos; he completed his father’s plan with the building of the famous Library, and may have put in charge of it the schoolmaster-poet Callimachus whose first Hymn contrives to pay a double tribute to the rulers both of heaven and earth and ends with a double prayer for those goods within their respective gift, namely virtue and riches. Under the second Ptolemy’s generous patronage, Callimachus not only maintained a large output of highly polished and erudite verses, but also compiled a catalogue of the new library:

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120 volumes of invaluable information and criticism of the contents of the books and their authors.6 Among other poets who at some time came and went in Alexandria in search of patronage were the native-born Apollonius – said to have soon retired to Rhodes, dismayed at the reception accorded his laboured-over epic, the Argonautica – and Theocritus, known as the Father of Bucolic (or Pastoral), who shows by the comparatively wooden Idyll XVII that court panegyric was not his forte. Following this bid for patronage, he too would seem to have withdrawn, perhaps strategically, to Ptolemy’s birthplace, the Ionian island of Kos, which is the dramatic site of at least one of his Idylls: that programmatic VII with which it is inevitable to compare Herodas VIII .

Dramatic location of the Mimiamboi Kos also appears as the setting for Mimiamb II (see Introduction to II ), making it the one dramatic site assignable to any of the Mimiamboi, though some have wanted to make it the location of several or all of them,7 and some go on to conclude that Herodas lived and wrote on the island. The existence of a temple of Asklepios on Kos, containing many works of art about which we have some information, has led to the assumption that the island is also the dramatic site of Mimiamb IV, though in view of the fact that none of our information about the temple coincides with the description in IV, arguably a negative conclusion should be drawn (see Introduction to IV ). Some slight indications suggest that the scene of VI and VII is the Asia Minor seaboard (see Introductions to VI and VII ). For the rest, we can be certain that the dramatic scene of I is not Alexandria, nor anywhere in Egypt, there treated as a far country – which is not to say that any of the Mimiamboi could not have been written there. On the specific

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mention of the Attic mina at II 18 (24), Cunningham observes that such coins were in use everywhere in the Greek world at the time; the mention, therefore, indicates no more than that Herodas was writing within the Ptolemaic Empire.8 We are forced to conclude that, though various Mimiambs are connected with Kos, Asia Minor and Egypt, we neither know where Herodas lived and wrote nor with any precision the locus dramaticus of seven of the eight substantially extant Mimiamboi.

Alexandrian poetry In Alexandria, and particularly under the guidance of its ‘arbiter of taste’ Callimachus, there grew up a school of poetry which became widely influential for first Greek, then Latin poets – the best known of these last being those of the first centuries B.C. and A.D.: Catullus, Ovid and Propertius – and so on into modern European literature. Classical Greek verse had retained its character as ordered speech, whether narrating history and legend in epic mode, imparting useful information in didactic, or constituting ritual, as originally the Attic drama both ‘tragic’ and ‘comic’ – and perhaps, indeed, all verse. With the spread of literacy and prose-writing, verse predominantly became more decorative, or at least more occasional, showing preference for short-scale poems, particularly epyllia – mini-epics adorned with a wealth of learned and literary allusion and making appeal to a well-read auditory of those who had profited from the Ptolemies’ encouragement of learning. Metre is of the essence of Greek poetry, Greek metrics amounting almost to a science, and that Callimachus was master of a great variety of them was consistent with his deep and wide erudition. It has sometimes been inferred – perhaps erroneously – that his authority was challenged by his pupil, Apollonius, whose Argonautica attempted out of season to revive the

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epic. Be that as it may, certain would-be epic-revivalists seem to have been the recipients of Callimachus’ celebrated gibe (Aitia 1): ‘We sing among those who love the shrill voice of the cicada; let others bray!’ Theocritus – as his epyllia also testify – was and is, in the judgment of most, the outstanding adherent to the ‘small(er) is beautiful’ school. What little is known to us of Herodas’ antecedents and style is so distinctively personal that there is no reason to suppose him touched by any such controversy. While I have argued (see Introduction to VIII ) that it is highly probable he was earlier known for a more standard oeuvre in iambic verses such as had become de rigueur for the aspiring poet, the distinctive Mimiamboi (for which, and almost alone, he would later be barely remembered) were probably received and enjoyed as decidedly relaxed entertainments for occasions when even the graver sort could appropriately let their hair down; of this more later. It is surely significant that even in the ‘low-life’ Mimiamboi he exhibits a Callimachean taste for recondite language and allusion such as seasoned offerings for fastidious palates. Understandably in the newly expanded Greek world, the preferred setting for poetry of the nouvelle vague is no longer the independent polis of ‘high’ Classical literature, with its enclosed civic life and ritual entertainments, but the variegated town and country life of that wider world for which Alexandria stood as the vital centre and where centralised and autocratic government steered minds away from preoccupation with politics – let alone Athenian-style participatory democracy – toward more personal and local interests. If Theocritus is pre-eminently the poet of this world’s (usually idealised) countryside, Herodas presents himself as pre-eminently the observer of small and not-so-small town life, concerned chiefly with its humbler representatives – those who in his then-current idiom Cunningham called ‘the urban proletariat’ – rather than the ‘top tiles’ with whom Battaros eschews comparison in II (25–6). Among the

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extant Mimiamboi, only in the persons of Bitinna of V and Herodas himself in VIII do we appear to be in the presence of the propertied classes. A restrained use of Marxist terminology is appropriate, at least insofar as it reminds us that Herodas became one rare Classical figure for whose study an acceptable case could be made in that portion of the world dominated by Communism in the fifth through eighth decades of the twentieth century – albeit the dogmatic agenda might tend to cloud perception almost as much as had its interpretative opposite: the arrogation of Herodas to the cult of gilded decadence by some fashionable young Englishmen of the inter-war period; thus in 1929 the ‘Fanfrolico Press’ printed 375 copies of a delightfully free verse translation by Jack Lindsay, ‘decorated’ with fancifully lewd – and not always very relevant – engravings by one Alan Odle and introduced by one Brian Penton in the role of disillusioned man-about-town. One imagines Herodas would have approved.

The character and characters of the Mimiamboi For Marxist critics in particular, Herodas, both in subject matter and that delineation of character at which he excels, has been viewed as a hard realist. Most recently it is thought proper to dwell on the highly stylised formal characteristics that would contradict such identification in any modern sense. Indeed, his delineations of the pettinesses and deceits of his externally ordinary characters – among whom only Metriche of Mimiamb I is painted as attractive or commendable9 – ought rather to suggest him disdainful of that vulgar humanity offered up for the entertainment of his self-consciously sophisticated audience. Herodas’ Mimiamboi are by no means popular art; rather the everyday situations and characters which might be thought to

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make them susceptible of a wider appeal are wrapped – in the esoteric fashion of his contemporaries – in an artful if not artificial diction and sometimes archaising dialect, qualifying this author to be considered among the most exacting of ancient Greek texts. Moreover, the Mimiamboi are composed with great care and attention to detail; one must never underestimate the pertinence of their choice of word and phrase. An entry on Herodas in an Italian encyclopaedia puts it well:10 ‘Sayings, proverbs, elaborate prayer-formulae, imprecations and oaths well represent the popular style, with which at the same time is comically interwoven literary allusion and parody’ (my translation). This was the stuff in which Hellenistic literati delighted; it was an age of innovation and literary experiment, and just as Theocritus gave birth to the ‘bucolic idyll’ in the hexameter metre of epic, so Herodas devised the Mimiambos by versifying the subject-matter of popular mime, casting it not into the received and expectable iambic flow, but into a version of the ‘halting’ line devised by that ‘old Hipponax’ of VIII (46), thus creating the effect of a ‘send-up’ of accepted metrics.

Mime as genre The Greek mimos is connected with words connoting ‘imitation’. It seems to be inseparable from human nature that people and situations will be imitated (‘mim-icked’) for the entertainment of others by those who have the ‘mim-etic’ gift; moreover that this exercise will tend to what we know more generally as the satirical.11 Dramatic impulses in their early socialisation generally tend to be called out in the service of religion, as is the case with the central genres of Tragedy and Comedy in Classical times, or with the development of drama in the European so-called ‘Middle Ages’. Not so with the ‘low’ and sub-literary art form known in Greek as Mimos,

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from which our word Mime; this appears confined to what we would now distinguish as a secular role and is conventionally ignored by the respectable, unless when ‘slumming’ or at some drinking party. Fortunately it is not ignored by all observers and theorists: thus we know some things about it from fragments, citations and references. In particular, from Aristotle’s Poetics (1447b4) we learn that it was normally in prose, and this alone, in a literary tradition which had long prioritised metre – still viewed by Aristotle as the formalising of speech – means that it was an ‘imitation’ of ordinary everyday talk; moreover that even when this was represented – as sometimes – in verse, its idiom, like its themes, was drawn from the daily life of the lower classes. Thus, the commentator Diomedes calls it ‘an imitation of life’, noting that mimes contain ‘both proper and improper material’ – or as, long after, Cunningham:12 ‘The situations described are set in the background and atmosphere in which the audience lived . . . This implies an acceptance of what is thought indecent in more bourgeois circles.’ Cunningham may here be referring as much to mid-twentiethcentury Edinburgh as to third-century Alexandria; even so, we draw the implication that in giving an artificially literary framework to his more vulgar themes, Herodas was offering his new creation, the Mimiambos, for the relish of a self-selecting, sophisticated audience. In origin improvised entertainments, mimes were, we may presume, first written down for the benefit of the actor or actors of them and only secondarily to record the more successful exemplars. That Mime flourished as part of a sub-culture in Classical times, and even penetrated exalted circles, we know from the orator Demosthenes’ stigmatising of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander, for surrounding himself with ‘mimers of farces’ (mimous geloiōn) and other riff-raff from the world of popular entertainment. From another source we learn that the mimoi (the word, like our derived ‘mime’, was used for both author/performer and production) might borrow plots from Comedy. It is clear that there is a connection between the origins

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of Comedy and of mime in their use of personalities and indecencies as stock-in-trade. Menander’s New Comedy is also Alexandrian and roughly contemporary with Herodas, whose surviving Mimiambs show evidence of sharing some of the same stock characters: the most obvious is the pimp Battaros of Mimiamb II , parodically and absurdly portrayed by Herodas as pleading in a court of law; also the gobetween Gyllis of I and the sexually voracious Bitinna and her jumped-up slave Gastron of V (see Introductions ad loc.). From Plato’s Republic (451c14) we infer that Mimes were divided into intersecting categories of ‘serious’ and ‘farcical’, as also ‘of men’ and ‘of women’. According to an ancient Life, Plato ‘discovered’ the mimes of the fifth-century Sicilian Sophron, which he introduced into Athens and the canon of Classical literature for a long time to come: they only disappear in the early Medieval period when, we can conjecture, their ‘low’ character would discommend them as suitable for schoolboys in the eyes of those Byzantine copyists on whom depends almost all our tradition of Classical Greek literature.13 Plato too – combining an aristocrat’s tolerance of ‘low’ life with an artist’s realism and appreciation of vitality wherever found – carried over the Old Comedy’s tolerance of indecency into an admiration for Mime of which both Diogenes Laertius and Quintilian tell us. Indeed, Sophron would appear to have influenced his choice of the dialogue form for his philosophical writings. A few quotations from Sophron have been handed down in works on Grammar and latterly some papyrus fragments have come to light; thus we know his Mimes were written in his native Doric dialect and in prose. The division, implied by Plato, into ‘Women’s’ and ‘Men’s’ mimes may have been traditional; whether it implied ‘all-male/female characters’ or only ‘all-male/female speaking parts’ is a question relevant to how we think Herodas’ Mimiamb II was to be ‘produced’. Moreover we may observe that at least three of the Idylls of Theocritus – that is II (a monologue14), XIV and XV – must be

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classified (with Herodas’ Mimiamboi) as literary Mimes15 by virtue of their urban (in the case of XIV citified or suburban) realism rather than their dramatic form.16 Of the extant Mimiamboi, the majority are concerned mainly or exclusively with women; only in half are there speaking parts for characters of both sexes. VIII must remain uncertain since – taking Annas to be the nominative form of the slave twice addressed as ‘Anna’ (see Introduction to VIII ) – too much of our precious papyrus is unreadable for us to know for sure whether he or the two women slaves ‘present’ were to speak any lines – though our presumption will be that VIII is, entirely or virtually, a monologue spoken by Herodas in propria persona. In the only other Mimiamb which may claim to be all-male (II , a virtual monologue; see Introduction ad loc.), there is a silent female, Myrtale, ‘present’ and, moreover, provocatively exhibited, so that we may presume this part, if visually presented (see below), to call for an actual hetaira and incorporate an element of striptease. It is to be noted that this Mimiamb alone offers us no insight into domestic life, and but a single reference to slavery: Battaros’ reference to the legal torture of slave-witnesses at II 72–5. Only in I and VI are there characters of only one sex (in both cases women), speaking or at least ‘present’. This greater complexity of male and female parts, moving away from what we understand to have been a tradition of Mime – as well as what it is fair to term the greater ‘realism’ in the depiction of the characters17 – suggest that Herodas’ Mimiamboi are a development of the genre to which Theocritus’ ‘mimic’ Idylls belong, and thus that they were composed somewhat later than these last. More particularly, aspects of both IV and VI might have been suggested by Theocritus XV – albeit their similarities could derive from a common source, possibly Sophron. That Herodas’ Mimiamboi use themes and mises-en-scène from Mime is substantiated by a lengthy prose papyrus fragment in which

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a termagant demands, with threats, sex with a slave: the situation underlying Mimiamb V.

Sex, slavery and class in the Mimiamboi From the above summary of the predominantly female parts in Herodas’ extant Mimiamboi, we move to the observation that, in a society which largely excludes women from public life – as, effectively, did all ancient Greek societies – it will be in popular art and drama concerning itself with the private and everyday that women come to be noticed – as also that, in such a male-dominated society, humour and satire will be derived from the typical foibles and weaknesses of women. Herodas’ extant Mimiamboi thus have to be of particular interest to a society which professes liberal values since, even if less than intentionally,18 they focus an unusually direct light on the role of women in his times, as well as on that huge underclass of ancient society, slaves. Slaves are mentioned in seven of the eight extant Mimiamboi; in only one (Mimiamb 1) is that mention relatively benign. Out of fifteen slaves named, nine are female and most are silent, their role merely to scurry about in response to their master’s or mistress’ orders. Where slaves have a speaking part – or just an ‘acting’ part, as in IV where Kydilla stands, appropriately dumb and vacantly scratching her head – they throw light as much on their owners’ characters as on their own, and not merely for modern readers: Phile’s ‘soothing’ comment on this scene must surely convey for the contemporary audience much the same presumption of superiority as her bourgeois effusions on the art-works. Here one may draw attention to the unique evidence Herodas provides for the institution of slavery as the everyday Classical world knew it – and as Classical civilisation depended on it. Aristotle seems

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perceptive beyond his times when he remarks in the Politics (1253b35ff.) that if we had machines to do our work, we would not need slaves – and one can suppose he was not the only intelligent Greek to muse on the questionableness of so using ‘barbarians’, let alone Greeks (who, it was by and large agreed, at least among intellectuals, were not to be enslaved).19 Certainly, the effects of the abundance of slave labour show up clearly in Herodas’ idle, gossiping and sex-obsessed women of Mimiamb VI , or the exigent, tyrannical Bitinna of Mimiamb V; both could be taken as exemplars of Hegel’s contention that slavery corrupts the slave-owner.20 Much as we find our nineteenth-century forefathers (or more especially fore-mothers) complaining continually about their servants, so we find Herodas’ characters ever dissatisfied with their slaves’ performance. One complaint recurs: they eat (and so cost) too much; thus Koritto (VI ), thus Kerdon (VII ), thus (presumably) Bitinna’s name (V) for her toy boy: Gastron or Gutsy. All the extant Mimiamboi except VIII introduce women of free status but with little or no social standing; of such the ordinary fabric of Hellenistic society must have been in good part composed. Most of these go beyond typecasting to present us with character portraits of notable subtlety. The exception is II , where of the silent prostitute Myrtale, there to bare all, we learn only what her relationship with the pimp Battaros and her clear affinity with her type in New Comedy suggest: she is pretty, soignée (her keeper draws attention to her being all-over depilated) and subservient, existing only for male gratification. The same, we may surmise – and by a further irony – will be the role of the hetaira who plays the role. Like most of Herodas’ servile parts, she is significantly dumb; to have her speak would have turned her into someone, a woman – instead of the ‘property’ she is in the dramatic as well as the chattel sense. Whether or not the Mimiamboi were intended to be performed by a single actor or more – this will be discussed below – those extant

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strongly suggest an all-male audience and occasion. The ‘symposium’ or drinking party has been plausibly proposed as a likely venue, and the presence of an hetaira or two would be a regular part of the entertainment – at least at less high-minded events than those famously recorded in Plato’s Symposium, where, pointedly, the flutegirl is dismissed at the outset. At the end of Xenophon’s Symposium (9.2-7), however, the (same) company is entertained by a mimed and decidedly erotic version of the lovemaking of Dionysus and Ariadne. A highlight of II , our solitary exemplar of a ‘male’ Mimiamb, would be the disrobing and displaying of Myrtale – doubtless to much heady applause (cue cries of ‘Show!’ (53–8)). The hetaira class of the ancient Greek world is a wide one, comprising low-born citizens as well as slaves and freedwomen, and ranging from the casual dancing- or flute-girl, on call for such parties as just evoked, to the salon-lady mistress of some potentate, from Pericles’ Aspasia to the future Byzantine Empress Theodora; the current English euphemism ‘escort’ can cover the variegated roles indicated. Quite otherwise than poor Myrtale of II , the intelligent and self-determining hetaira Metriche21 of I knows better than to be caught in the toils of Gyllis, a go-between grown old in the game. Specimens of low-to-middling reaches of (at least de facto) married respectability are also on display and sometimes brutally satirised: from the harassed mother, Metrotime of III , through the ignorant and pious pair of IV and the backbiting hypocrites of VI , of whom Metro reappears in VII with others of her coterie. At the top of the social fare on offer, we have in the autocratic and licentious Bitinna of V: a woman, perhaps a widow, who is mistress of her estate.22 In contrast to Theocritus (whose love for a boy is idealised) and to Comedy, the extant work of Herodas hardly makes allusion to male homosexuality. The image in Fragment XI may suggest buggery, and for another possible – and disreputable – allusion see Introduction to Mimiamb II. To what passes as the female equivalent (In these

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matters, the present writer owns to the following of Freud), there is, I believe, covert reference in VI and veiled in VII, with Kerdon’s allusions to Sappho and the Lesbian poetesses. Since Western society has become more accepting of the open practice and discussion of what Judaeo-Christian culture has seen as deviations from ‘sex’ in its original sense – what French denotes ‘la différence’ – apologies for Herodas’ sordidness or depravity are no longer requisite as they were even a half-century ago.23 What is pertinent is to remark that he is no simple sensationalist, dragging in sex for titillation. Which is not to say that he is not, as has been observed,24 often at his best when dealing with sexual situations. As he might have replied to the sort of charge implicit in the discreetness of earlier scholars, a goodly proportion of life’s preoccupations – indeed most of what ordinarily gives interest at least to socially and educationally circumscribed lives – revolves around sex; hence it is part and parcel of his interest in his characters and their lives, and so of his artistic integrity. In this, as generally in his straightforward reportage, he offers good grist for the twenty-first century’s search for information on daily living in the societies historically formative of ‘Western’ culture as we know it.

Iambics Iambics, writes Aristotle in a barely translatable phrase of his Poetics (1449a24), are ‘the most speech-like of the metres’. They are, of course, also so regarded, mutatis mutandis, in English literature; Shakespeare and his contemporary dramatists generally adopt the so-called ‘iambic pentameter’, whether or not rhymed, for the heightened speech deemed often appropriate to their stage (strikingly less ‘heightened’ than the ‘heroic’ hexameter couplets of seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury French dramatists). In ancient Greece, iambics were early

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used for all kinds of shorter poems and became the normal metre for the dialogue of Athenian tragedy and the comedy of Aristophanes, as also the New Comedy of Herodas’ contemporary, Menander. More particularly were they associated with those known as ‘iambographers’, who flourished on the Ionian seaboard in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.: the word means ‘writers of iambs’ but became synonymous with the invective and satire around daily life, and also individuals, that formed much of their output. Hence, too, their compositions became known as iamboi even when not in iambic metre; thus Aristotle’s Poetics (1448b32) tells us that the word iambos is used to denote what we might call a lampoon.

The Mimiamb The inventor and most notorious exponent of such ‘iambic’ lampoons was Archilochus of Paros. In the following century there arose at Ephesus the last of the school: Hipponax, famous for the ingenious modification of the iambic trimeter whereby the final foot is reversed into trochee or spondee and thus, as Cunningham puts it,25 ‘calls a sneering halt to the line’. This metre became known in Greek either as skazon (‘limping’) or choliambos (literally, ‘lame-iamb’). It is the metre of all the substantially surviving poems of Herodas, and seems to be alluded to at I 65. It is, however, entirely possible – or as I have asserted probable – that he had previously written straight iambics in the manner of Archilochus;26 this I believe he expects us to understand by the end of Mimiamb VIII and it is, a priori, likely enough: Hipponax had written in both metres, as did Herodas’ most authoritative contemporary, Callimachus. At the end of Mimiamb VIII , Herodas names Hipponax as his master specifically in the choliamb, his metre of choice to pack the traditional mime with iambic punch and thus produce his hybrid mimiambos.

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Hence a mimiamb may be defined as a scathing lampoon (iambos), normally trading in the squalid underbelly of ancient life in the manner of a mime (mimos). It displays affinity with the Old Comedy, albeit that treats of politically relevant themes and public personages (Cleon, Socrates, etc.). A tendency they share is the insertion, in absurd contexts, of Classical (especially Homeric) topoi familiar to the audience and so apt to provoke knowing laughter (as III 74) – rather as ‘Monty Python’s Life of Brian’ is parasitic on later sacred texts.

Herodas’ Greek and the present translation My translation aims to render Herodas’ choliambs into an English stress equivalent – always given that, unhappily, in a stress-measure the weighty counterpoint (comparable to that para prosdokian to which, in another context but analogously, Aristotle refers (at Rhetoric 3.1411a2729)) of the choliamb’s verse-endings tends to be attenuated. A detailed examination of Herodas’ Greek is outside the scope of a work offered as an English representation of it.27 Suffice it to say that by the third century B.C., the ‘cosmopolitanising’ of the Greek world had led to the diffusion of so-called koine (popular) Greek, based on Attic as the common tongue and understood everywhere with countless regional and dialectal variations. Equally inevitably it was a largely non-literary language, though over time many learned and ‘literary’ texts were composed in it, not least by Jews. Among the best known are the later texts of the Septuagint, the New Testament Gospels and Epistles and the writings of Philo and Josephus. Not surprisingly, in view of the ‘low’ subjects of the Mimiamboi, the pedagogues selecting passages for their pupils to master and imitate did not favour our author, who falling thus out of general circulation, and barring a few allusions and quotations, had to wait to be rediscovered by midnineteenth-century excavations in the Egyptian desert.

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We have seen how, in the political climate of the period, literature became the self-conscious pursuit of an élite, in contrast with its predominant role in the city-state of preceding centuries, when poetry arose from and remained connected to such public functions, in origin religious, as festivals and games. Although our notion of poetry and the poetic may have travelled a long way from its origin in the Greek word ‘poiein’ (= to make), that origin can remind us that, for the Greeks, ‘poetry’ was ‘made’ – we might prefer to say ‘crafted’ – speech.28 Thus, in the sixth century B.C., we find Solon still using poetry as a vehicle for political and other instruction and, in the fifth, Parmenides writing philosophy in the form of a poem – as would the Latin Lucretius some four centuries after. It is clear that the written word so ordered and transmitted – so crafted – was assumed to be more impressive, and also more memorable, than the erratic and dis-ordered idioms of everyday speech. Homer’s influence was, of course, everywhere; he had early become a kind of Panhellenic Bible, as well known, at least to the schooled, as was that to our Puritan forefathers, and with a similar literary impact. Indeed the situation is comparable to English in the geographically wider (though in terms of communication far smaller) world of today, when despite a supposedly high rate of literacy and a multiplication of the written and digitalised word undreamed of in the past, serious literature has not dissimilarly become the élite pursuit of a network of practitioners and critics, often centred on the university: that being a nearer equivalent to the famous ‘Museion’ of Alexandria (see Mimiamb I 27) than its Latin derivative, our ‘museum’. In our case, the apt contrast might be with Shakespeare and his fellow-dramatists’ drawing of large and socially diverse audiences to hang upon the lips of the actors who delivered their lines. There is another parallel in the religious origins of the drama, for though more urbanised, these London dramatists and actors (in the case of Shakespeare one and the same) and their audiences

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were the children and grandchildren of those who had gathered in towns such as Coventry and York for the cycles of Mystery and Morality plays. Religion as a topic had been censored from Shakespeare’s stage, but there were ways of getting round this and features of the old drama lingered in the new. So, of course, did both nostalgia for and criticism of old – and now outlawed as ‘foreign’ – customs, as well as the ‘sending up’ of authority figures such as clergy and schoolmasters: thus with Mimiamb III we can compare the scene in The Merry Wives of Windsor29 where Mistress Page complains to Sir Hugh Evans – surely reminiscent of Shakespeare’s own master, the equally Welsh-sounding Thomas Jenkins – of her William’s failure to study; or again with the pedant Holofernes of Loves Labours Lost, who, although less formidable than Lampriskos of Mimiamb III , has a similar bent for such erudite reference as to ‘Askesis’ moon’ (48) and the ‘honey’ of 77 (see Introduction to Mimiamb III ).30 Whereas English in its many contemporary forms is, for better or worse, currently in the ascendant as a literary vehicle, while traditional and archaising forms have been largely ruled out, a solution favoured by Hellenistic poets was to adapt to literary purposes the dialects of the past. Thus, Theocritus uses Doric – comparable, I have suggested, to a Burnsesque Scots31 – while Herodas contrives for his Mimiambs something of the idiom as well as the distinctive metre of the Ionian Hipponax.32 Combining these features with the frequently highly colloquial and racy speech of his characters, and their proclivity for gnomic and proverbial utterances, gives rise to a remarkable medley – into which he can throw the odd literary allusion, creating a comic incongruity, as that put on the lips of the shoemaker of VII (78 and see Introduction to VII ). For the purposes of the present translation, I have employed a mixture of standard British English interlarded with colloquialisms and somewhat archaic (if still in use at least in irony) words and

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expressions such as ‘the sorry tablet’ (III 11), ‘direst sicknesses’ (IV 7), ‘plague take it’ (V 20).33

Diction The subject-matter of the extant Mimiambs, being – with the exception of the ‘programmatic’ VIII and the main speaker of V – drawn from the commoner social classes of the Alexandrian cultural sphere, has broadly required everyday, even colloquial language, more like that I have used for Theocritus’ Idylls IV and V, as well as the more ‘mimic’ XIV and XV, than the ‘lofty’ style suitable for Idylls I and VII or the heroics of XIII or XXII . ‘Colloquial’, however, is not a word readily associated with Herodas, who combines an at times decidedly racy realism with a diction which revives (as arguably does his metre) quaint, passé or otherwise striking usages: something apparently appreciated by Greek audiences still largely reared on Homer, but eschewed in most contemporary English writing and hardly to be brought off without the excuse which, for better or worse, is mine here: to emulate this effect with a seasoning of arcane English: for example, ‘Fare well’ (at Mimiamb VI 80). Readers inclined to bridle at outworn or arcane ‘poetic’ words and phrases are invited to cultivate a sense of the relish an Alexandrian audience might have for them. Theocritus’ relationship to Herodas, with other considerations regarding diction, will receive further discussion. Herodas’ Mimiambs are not ‘poetic’ in the characteristically decorative Alexandrian vein of Callimachus or of most of Theocritus’ Idylls, being realist in tone though not in form. Only at one point do they show any tendency to slip into ‘poetry’ in any Housmanian or ‘elevated’ sense: that is at the invocation of the gods of healing that forms the tranquil opening to IV. More usually a high-flown or Homeric vein is introduced in evident satire: thus the vulgar shoemaker Kerdon of VII is stung by

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Metro’s baiting of him into incongruously ‘poetic’ – and teasingly Sapphic – flight (69–72).

Were the Mimiamboi staged or read? The Alexandrian literary character of Herodas’ work must raise the question of whether it was intended to be acted, recited – or indeed merely read, as has also been claimed by some scholars perhaps overly impressed by the sophistication of the text. Solitary, let alone silent, reading was hardly envisaged by the ancient Greeks as the destination of the written word; Euripides was viewed as remarkable when found reading only moving his lips and Greeks continued to view writing as a vehicle primarily for the spoken word. A century later than Euripides, the city-state having been subsumed into the mega-states of the postAlexander world, the select gathering is the likely destination for the savouring of literary productions – which accordingly are in the main short poems or interludes – by a self-appointed few. No doubt these few did also relish each other’s manuscripts in the seclusion of the study, but besides their marked sense of forming a literary coterie, the comparative paucity of copies would make group reading – or other vocal rendering – the destination primarily envisaged for poetic creation (poiesis). That the Mimiamboi are designed for an audience of literati is confirmed by the idiosyncrasies of their dialect. True, the dramatic vigour of the pieces might suggest they were intended for performance before an audience, whether at a private gathering or conceivably at court; indeed, at one or two points, dramatic representation seems called for if we are to understand the action; thus when, in Mimiamb VII , Kerdon presses pairs of shoes on two customers, we are left in doubt whether they are accepted (74–5). Only dumb show (‘mime’ in the modern sense) could resolve this doubt. On the other hand, whether the women do or do not decide to

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buy makes little difference to the comic effect of Kerdon’s patter. If I am right in my interpretation of VII 28–9 and following, at least some ‘props’ will be required (see Introduction to VII ). I have also suggested that Mimiamb II makes room for a measure of strip-tease unlikely to be intended merely for ‘theatre-in-the-head’34 – as also that it is probable that the silent part of Myrtale is represented by a real hetaira, viewed rather in the light of a ‘prop’. Mimiamb II thus becomes an argument for a measure of dramatic representation. However, whereas some35 have claimed that justice could only be done to Herodas’ Mimiambs by a full-scale dress-production, all parts being represented, this seems to me unlikely, as implying – at its extreme – for Mimiamb IV five actors and a change from one highly elaborate scene to another; for Mimiamb VII an even larger group of actors: these pieces being of 95 and 129 lines respectively in the Greek text, taking some ten or fifteen minutes to perform. The fact that in none of the extant Mimiamboi are there more than two main parts – further parts being extremely reduced in size and usually no more than interjections – surely leads us to suppose that they are entertainments to be performed by no more than two or at most three actors – who, when required, could double parts – relying on voice, gesture and facial expression36 to perform their roles, as also to indicate the ‘presence’ of non-speaking characters. This fits with what we know of the production of the popular mime at this time; in particular, an Athenian terracotta lamp, described by Cunningham,37 shows three actors in normal clothing and without masks acting the parts of a young man, an old man and a slave, while an inscription identifies them as ‘speakers of mime’ (mimologoi) and gives the title of the piece. It would indeed be possible for Herodas’ Mimiambs to be presented in a dramatic recitation by one skilled actor aided by gestures and a minimum of ‘props’; it is likely enough that entertainments should be improvised in this way – or that such a performer should be hired for

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parties such as the (male) symposium. The term archimimos or ‘headmummer’ implies that there can be plural actors at least in Mime proper, and that of this, as we have seen, the Mimiamb appears to be a cultivated variant suggests that subordinate actors might take part in that too.38 It is entirely possible that Herodas himself, with or without supporting parts, gave the original readings, as authors normally did – a ‘launch’ more comparable to ‘publication’ in post-printing times.

The Mimiamboi as a collection All this, if correct, can throw light on our understanding of the place of Mimiamb VIII , clearly delivered in the author’s own persona and so lending weight to the supposition that this is a ‘programme piece’, whether or not intended to wind up the collection as we have it or perhaps more plausibly – in view of the fact that VIII is followed in the papyrus by the fragmentary opening of IX – prefacing a further book with Herodas’ reply to critics of the former.39 Thus it is possible to view Mimiambs I–VII , with or without VIII , not as a fortuitous collection, but as a book – as that the order of our papyrus is of this book as Herodas composed it. This interpretation has been supported by the observation40 that the collection forms a distinct pattern: thus Mimiambs VI and VII are easily seen to form a pair (see Introductions ad loc.) but – the argument goes – so too do Mimiambs I and II , being linked by the themes of the unsuccessful bawd (I) and the unsuccessful-atlaw pimp (II ); then III and V are linked in theme, the protagonists both being violent, vengeful women bent on inflicting physical punishment on, respectively, a wayward son and an errant slave. This leaves IV, of which the ring composition (see Introduction to Mimiamb IV ) gives a centrality (which is thus at almost the centre of the whole hypothetical book: see Introduction to IV ) to the women’s

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admiration of how life-like are the sculpture and painting in the temple of Asklepios. Hence this Mimiamb – together with VIII , in which Herodas ‘places’ his own oeuvre in the literary context of past masters and present critics – has been seen as both exposition and defence of the author’s own artistic standing and a satirical critique of other fashionable options. One might add that Mimiamb I, with its elaborate praise of Egypt and Ptolemy, can, using this theory, appear as an Introduction suited to solicit royal favour (see Introduction to I). In view of the importance attached by Hellenistic writers to patterning – as evinced in the composition of several of the present pieces (see Introductions to I, III , IV and VI ) – this theory would seem to have some cogency: perhaps more, I would suggest, if Herodas is rather seen as arranging in pairs a selection of previous presentations than as composing an original ‘book’ specifically of pairs; for while VI and VII are undoubtedly a ‘diptych’,41 the resemblances of the other two ‘pairs’ seem more fortuitous. We may particularly notice that II is the only poem in the collection which can fall into the apparently traditional category of ‘men’s mimes’ (for which see above), if this implies an all-male speaking-cast, while its ‘pair’, I, has, like VI , an all-female cast. The shoemaker Kerdon is the main and titular character of VII , as is the schoolmaster Lampriskos of III . Thus of the proposed pairs, the first would be all-female/virtually-all-male; the last all-female/ male-protagonist; the central pair (III and V) male-protagonist/ female-protagonist. If our papyrus (at least with the exception of IX and perhaps of VIII ) formed a book arranged by its author (as argued by Lawall) and if this is taken to suggest that our collection was designed with a view to performance (at least potentially) on one and the same occasion, there are implications for the claim that a full-dress production was envisaged. While the length would be more

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commensurate with such a production, it would surely overtax the powers of a single actor and suggest the need for some half-a-dozen actors to supply all parts (speaking and silent). The rapid changes of scene would have to be indicated rather than staged. We must concede that a ‘stage’ production, whether or not ‘full dress’, looks rather more possible and this conclusion may seem attractive to those impressed by the dramatic potential of Herodas’ Mimiambs; however, we have to remember that there are two ‘if ’s’ on the other side of the equation. Plus a third: for if a social occasion such as the symposium was the destination for performance, then, clearly, a short, snappy interlude looks more probable. Nor would it be implausible for a collection of these to be arranged subsequently into an actual book with a reading ‘audience’ in mind.

Herodas as theorist of art? The weakest link in the theory of book-composition, as it has been normally proposed, might seem to be the supposition that in Mimiamb IV, Herodas would put artistic criticism intended to be taken seriously into the mouths of two women whose ignorance and even stupidity he is at pains to point up (see Introduction and Notes to IV ). His doing so, if it has an ulterior point, might better be taken as evidence of his ridiculing their views – not that that need add up to an incompatibility with composition as a book per se. Certainly, any ‘artistic stance’ of our author seems most reliably evidenced by his practice of presenting commonplace themes and characters in a sophisticated metre and often strikingly artificial diction. A safer – but again not incompatible – explanation of what has been pointed to as the centrality of the description of the works of art is that this theme is indeed a showpiece for Hellenistic poets. Theocritus’ Idyll XV – the women visiting the temple of Adonis at

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Alexandria – is the standard comparison with Mimiamb IV and likewise contains descriptions of works of art. There, too, we find a loquacious woman, Praxinoa, commending these chiefly for their representational realism; nonetheless, her praises are confirmed by the singer who is made to conclude the piece – and so to present what we may presume to be an authorial view – by lovingly celebrating their beauty. Theocritus’ Idyll I likewise contains a lengthy description of the wonders of a carved bowl, while the theme is also found in one of the epigrams of Leonidas of Tarentum (Anthologia Planudea 182). Dilations on works of art are a recognisable topos in Greek literature, beginning with Homer’s extended description of the shield of Achilles (Iliad, book 18). We need, however, to bear in mind that Herodas’ outlook and intentions in the Mimiamboi are self-evidently more satirically scathing than those at least of Theocritus. In Mimiamb IV, the works of art in the temple of Asklepios do not in fact stand, as has been alleged, at the heart of Herodas’ composition. Not quite: for between the descriptions of the sculpture and that of Apelles’ painting, precisely in the middle of this central section, stands the savage upbraiding of the slave Kydilla by her aggressive mistress (37–47): a piece of ‘low’ realism which surely should convey, if it conveys any message, that such is real life, as distinct from the ‘realism’ of art and the sensitivities paraded by the pair of votaries! Yet, and by a further paradox – and of this its author was surely aware – it is still Herodas’ art, with all its artifice of metre and diction, mediating this ‘real life’; thus the corollary – which we might take as Herodas’ ulterior message – is that if art is to be realistic, it must, like his own art, examine the topics of everyday life, albeit in a medium of artifice. Even so, he leaves us with philosophical enigmata. In what sense might realism in life and in art be one and the same? How far can art be subsumed to life – or vice versa? What is their relationship? They are the sorts of question his age and literary coterie liked to pose and to argue.

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Metre Herodas’ ‘choliambic’ metre is so distinctively appropriate to his subjects that if one aims to represent him in another language than his own it becomes an obligation, as well as a challenge, to attempt to reproduce the ‘limp’ which brings the long line up short with the defining trochee or heavier spondee, creating the arresting and even mocking effect which must have delighted audiences – verse being still primarily intended for recitation – brought up on what it parodies: the basic iambic trimeter, metre of choice for all non-epic poetry; one can imagine the deliverer of the lines – of whom more – at times pausing after the fifth foot to create suspense; perhaps waiting for his audience (of whom more too) to chorus or stamp out the ending. It is not possible to devise a readable English version of the choliamb which will respect every complex rule observed by the ancient practitioner; these the curious reader can find set out in numerous places.42 As every schoolchild faced with Classical Latin or Greek verse used to learn, ‘feet’ are ‘measured’ by length of syllable, not by stress as in later European verse; thus when we use such terms as ‘iambic pentameter’ (loosely said to be the ‘metre’ primarily characteristic of Shakespeare), it is by analogy with the original ‘measure’ (which is what ‘metre’ means). Later attempts to restore ‘metre’ proper in English verse have inevitably created an effect of artifice and had little success: G. M. Hopkins, of a generation still soused in the Classics – indeed a Classics schoolmaster perhaps more instinctively than a Jesuit – is at times arguably the most successful exception. What I have set myself to do is to render all complete lines – and some sadly incomplete in our one papyrus, where I have had to follow others’ conjectures and some of my own – into feet which, read aloud, will cash out into six stresses if the emphases are put where I (and I trust the sense) intend. Otherwise I have allowed myself fair latitude

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with the first four feet – which thus may be ‘iamb’ (which we may represent by ^- or ti-tum), ‘trochee’ (-^ or tum-ti), ‘spondee’ (-- or tum-tum: this counted as one stress) ‘dactyl’ (-^^ or tum-ti-ti) or rarely anapaest (^^- or ti-ti-tum) – but have sought rigour with the final two feet. What I did not expect (given the prevalence in English of so-called ‘iambic’ metre) was that of these the penultimate would give the more trouble, but English words tend to a light landing, while the culminating ‘limp’ of the Greek choliambic sixth foot (-^ or --) needs ideally to contrast with a ^- in the fifth; hence on occasions I have been driven to a compromise.43 Still, I have found it possible to provide a closer approximation to Herodas’ metre than I attempted for Theocritus’ – where anything like an English ‘dactylic hexameter’ would have been heavily out of key with the Idylls’ gracious versification.

Text Throughout I have followed what remains the best Greek text, that of Cunningham’s Teubner edition (Munich and Leipzig 2004). Where Cunningham finds the papyrus defies restoration, and in order to fulfil my aim to present a convincing English representation of each poem, I have on occasion offered what I surmise to be the poet’s likely intent, each time drawing attention to this in a note. Examples are note 3 on page 40 (Mimiamb I, line 2 in my translation); note 8 on page 75 (Mimiamb IV, lines 83–4 in my translation). In Mimiamb VII there is a passage too corrupt to do more than indicate its likely tenor, as is explained ad loc. (pages 115–116, following line 20 in my translation). Differences between Zanker’s text and that of Cunningham are hardly ever significant, at least for sense; rather Zanker will venture on textual reconstruction where Cunningham has indicated illegibility in the papyrus.

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In the Notes to the individual Mimiambs I have included rather more discussion of others’ interpretations than I did for my Theocritus – and it bears observing that the surviving oeuvre of Herodas resists being titled Poems or Poetry in the derivative modern sense; rather it is highly accomplished versification. But, and as I set out in the Introduction to Theocritus, so too in this I have assumed a translator’s right to compensate, to an extent and where feasible, for what I there called the ‘entropy’ implicit in translation – the inevitable loss of the precise and contextual colouring of the original. An early example of this is where at I 72 (81 in Cunningham), I have enlarged ‘Give her to drink!’ (dos piein) to what Metriche surely would say in colloquial English: ‘Give her one for the road!’ In such ways – as also in giving priority, in places where the papyrus is defective, to a coherent rendering over that textual accountability very properly the province of scholarship – I can hope to render the liveliness of style and to make the resulting read not less but more faithful to the author.44

Notes 1 Rist (1978). Having there used the conventional Latin form of Theokritos’ name, I have retained it (‘Theocritus’) here, as well as ‘Callimachus’ (for Kallimachos). I also use ‘Apollonius’ and ‘Archilochus’. Where the present work, as often, involves less familiar Greek names, I have normally preferred the Greek forms. Line references in the introductions and the General Introduction are to my translation. Where it may be helpful, bracketed references are added to indicate the lines of Cunningham’s Teubner text. 2 Like the genre it denotes, the Greek mimiambos is a hybrid, formed from mimos (= mime) and the metric category iambos (=iamb). 3 See notes to VIII and Rist (1997). 4 This form is given by Athenaeus in the second century A.D.

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5 So Cunningham (1971: 2) Scholars have tended to prefer the Doric form ‘Herodas’ because, since at least one of the Mimiambs is set in Doric-speaking Kos, they infer him to be a native of that island, although there is no real evidence for this (see Introduction to Mimiamb IV ). At this date and in this more cosmopolitan world, there would be less differentiation of forms by region and, since our author so clearly wishes to define himself as an Ionian ‘son of Xouthos’(see the end of Mimiamb VIII ), I incline to suppose he would choose to be known by the Ionic form of his name; however, I have been persuaded to stay with the current preference for ‘Herodas’. 6 For detail see Cameron (1995). 7 In particular Lawall (1967: 120). 8 Cunningham (2002: 182). 9 By ‘character’ here I exclude the self-portrait of Mimiamb VIII . 10 Usefully cited by Mastromarco (1984: 68, note 5). 11 From a Latin word, perhaps meaning a medley, and first found in connection with the second century B.C. ‘satirist’ Lucilius. 12 1971: 10. 13 Albeit we have to remember with gratitude that the frequently devastatingly ‘low’ Aristophanes was allowed to survive – just! He was, after all, pure Athenian and a conservative! 14 It might seem preferable to have titled Herodas’ pieces – like Theocritus’ – ‘Mimes’ to avoid the cumbersome and erudite-seeming term ‘Mimiambs’, from mimiamboi. We do not know who invented this latter term or whether Herodas himself used it. It seems it was coined – perhaps late on, anyway by the time of Pliny the Younger, one of whose codices attests to it – in recognition of the two characterising elements of the new genre and to distinguish it both from traditional Mime and from traditional iambic verses. In English, ‘mime’ came early to refer to dumb show, by ‘mimes’ (or ‘mummers’, from which the colloquialism ‘mum’, meaning silent). By contrast this, in later Greek and Latin, was called ‘pantomimos/us’ (as was the dumb mimer), from which our ‘pantomime’: a popular though far from dumb show. 15 Cf. Theocritus’ Idyll III and Mimiamb VIII . 16 Among the rest, IV, V, and I, though dramatic in form, are set in a moreor-less idealised pastoral landscape, while X entertains us with the

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18 19

20

21 22 23 24 25 26

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simplicities of agricultural labourers. Of the three ‘urban’ Idylls, II and XV exhibit female characters and XIV exhibits male characters. Having been challenged over my use of the term ‘realism’, I will state that I fully agree with Zanker’s analysis of the term as applied to Herodas, while taking into account the artificiality of the metric and dialectic medium through which the latter chose to express himself (Zanker 2009: 185–86). However, since our author has so chosen – and pace Zanker and those other critics he cites (Mastromarco (1984: 93–4); Finnegan (1992: 34); Simon (1991: 41–4); Di Gregorio (2004: 143–44)), all of them male and doubtless of chivalrous habit, who view Herodas’ mockery of women as purely for masculine delectation – I maintain that we have only to read him with attention to appreciate that he is unlikely to have been unaware of some at least of the more serious social and psychological implications of what he observed around him but no doubt could only ‘sell’ primarily as entertainment. See note 17 above. Exceptions would mainly be criminals and those Aristotle regarded as sub-human by nature: probably those with Down’s syndrome or other mental impairment. The Phenomenology of Mind (trans. Baillie, London 1931) 228–40. The idea is extended by Mill to patriarchy’s corruption of men who are domineering towards their women (‘The Subjection of Women’ in Collected Works XXI : 293). If this is indeed what she is, as I have argued. For more on social roles and individual characters see the Introductions to I–VII . Arnott (1971: 132 and passim). Arnott (1971: 132). Cunningham (1971: 12). Herodas is referred to as a writer of ‘hemiambs’ – a form of ‘straight’ iambics – by the scholiast on the Theriaka of Nicander, who gives what may be an example. In Rist (1998) I set out the case for his having indeed written in straight iambics. For more on Archilochus, Hipponax and Herodas as writers of iambics see Introduction to VIII . More detailed studies of Herodas’ metre and dialect are readily available, as for example Zanker (2009: 6–11).

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28 Rather similarly, they regarded ‘persuasion’ – that is by speech – as an art to be studied; a view the Romans took into their yet-more-dominant civic life and politics as the Art of Rhetoric. 29 The only of Shakespeare’s non-history plays to be set in his own England; for all others, and surely significantly, he preferred foreign parts. 30 See, in more detail, Zanker (2009: 89, 94), Di Gregorio (ad loc.). 31 Rist (1978). 32 Interestingly, he sometimes ‘hyper-Ionicises’, using ‘Ionicising’ forms (the ‘eta’ for long ‘alpha’ is the commonest) where the Ionic, in fact, resembles other dialects. 33 American and other readers of non-British habit are positively invited to regard my native idiom as a quaint approximation to Herodas’ Ionic and, as I hope, indulgent enough to regard that as to the translation’s advantage. 34 The expression is Charles Lamb’s. 35 So influentially Mastromarco (1984). 36 They are unlikely to have adopted the hieratic masks of the Tragic and Comic stage. 37 1971: 6–7. 38 Hunter (1993) argues that the poems suggest ‘performance’ by more than one actor. 39 Some have taken VIII as a spoof on Theocritus; this can assort well with my interpretation and my emendations. 40 Lawall (1967: 118–20). Also 138 n.2, where, supposing that I-VIII form a complete book, he makes suggestions to account for the papyrus’ inclusion of IX . VIII as the Prologue to a second book has already been argued by Knox (1925: 13–15). 41 The term used by Levin (1976: 345ff.). See also Rist (1993). 42 As regards Herodas, in the ground-breaking work of Cunningham (1971) or in the comprehensive study with text (based on Cunningham) and translation ad litteram, of Zanker (2009). More generally, on Greek metre see West (1982). 43 Not uncommonly I have been constrained to allow a ‘trochee’ (/^ – the most natural patterning of English words) in the fifth foot, where also – while banning from it all trisyllables – I have on occasion allowed contiguous vowels to be counted as elided: examples are V 40, 47 and 49,

General Introduction

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where the medial i of ‘Pyrrhies’ can count as consonantal – so similarly in ‘twentieth’ at V 66. At VIII 47, it is the initial “I” of “Ionians” that is to be so regarded, yielding --/-^. 44 There has been a renewed interest in Herodas in recent years: a good conspectus of much of the modern discussion can be found in Esposito (2014). A learned commentary with a full account of virtually all earlier work on Herodas forms part of the exhaustive labours of Di Gregorio (1997, 2004). Zanker, too, has provided an often useful commentary as well as the very literal prose translation recognised in note 17 above.

Mimiamb One

Introduction Mimiamb One opens dramatically with a knocking at a house door. Threissa, a slave,1 bidden by Metriche, peers out but cannot see who is there; we sense the darkness of a winter’s evening – references to the condition of the roads (12–13) and to keeping warm (17, 33, 68) confirm the season – but also that the caller is lurking in the shadows, slow to identify herself. When she approaches closer, the servant does not know her and asks her name; she replies ‘Gyllis’, further identifying herself, with a bizarre assumption of dignity, as ‘mother of Philainis’.2 They are here interrupted by Metriche who has been half expecting someone (2) and is impatient to know who is at the door. Though she dissembles – It may be someone from ‘the countryside’3 – Metriche may be half-hoping it is her absent man returning. But it turns out to be Gyllis, an older and female acquaintance who we learn from Metriche’s greeting4 has not been this way for some five months; this the visitor excuses as owing to the muddy roads and her age (16), but there is the suggestion of the old woman still skulking and hesitant to come forward. Metriche’s mock-poetic greeting is an immediate clue to her sprightly character.5 Even if disappointed of a different ‘visitant’, she welcomes the old woman fondly and, following the exchanges on the latter’s long absence, disposes of her grumbles with banter bearing on Gyllis’ character qua bawd – paving the way for Gyllis to reveal the

36

The Mimiambs of Herodas

purpose with which she has come: to persuade Metriche to yield to the advances of a youth, Gryllos. This she works up to by way of condolences on Metriche’s solitary plight since her man, Mandris, went off to Egypt, followed by speculation as to the effect Egypt will be having on said Mandris’ affections, with repeated references to old age and death: pointed warnings to the younger woman to ‘seize the day’.6 By Gyllis’ account, Gryllos has been ‘stung by passion’ seeing Metriche at a procession representing the descent to the Underworld of the goddess Mise.7 The title of Mimiamb One8 will already have led us to expect intervention of this sort by Gyllis, nor would the contemporary audience, further alerted by the name Philainis(5), need the confirmation of the old body’s hurrying off at the end to put the same proposition to two younger women; their names – ‘Myrtale’ (also the name of the prostitute in Mimiamb Two) and ‘Sime’ – both suggest ‘loose’ women and this denouement comically contradicts her account of Gryllos’ infatuation with Metriche – who will have known all along just what Gyllis’ story is worth. There is further doubt surrounding the youth Gryllos. Though initially cracked up by Gyllis as a strong, silent type (45–9), later (54) his crying like a child is adduced as evidence of his tender feelings. Still more incongruous is Gyllis’ assertion that he is ‘a seal unsullied’ (49),9 and while this might be the ineptitude of an ignorant old body and designed merely to get a laugh from the audience, it also suggests that terms more suited to female virginity spring to Gyllis’ mind when describing the supposedly virile youth. It seems that we are to envisage him as very young, as may also be suggested when he is identified by his mother (44).10 Whatever Metriche makes of Gyllis’ confused attempts at persuasion, she is determined to remain faithful to Mandris, which constancy makes her arguably the most attractive figure in those Mimiambs preserved to us. The question arises whether, as has often

Mimiamb One

37

been assumed, she is ‘married’ (i.e. legally or religiously bound) to Mandris. In favour of this might appear to be Gyllis’ urging her to commit ‘one transgression’, if this goes against the code of behaviour expected of a married woman, while Metriche’s declaration that ‘noone has the laugh on Mandris’ (literally, ‘no-one laughs against Mandris’) might indicate a husband’s rights.11 I incline to the alternative that Metriche is an hetaira, though on a level superior to Myrtale and Sime or to the Myrtale of the following Mimiamb (II ); this might be merely because, being older, she has escaped Gyllis’ immediate tutelage; however it is evident that she has means and standing of her own. That in itself may suggest she is not a married woman, since contemporary Greek society – though less rigid in this respect than formerly – still notionally subordinated women to their husbands. Thus Metriche comes across as level-headed, knowing her own mind and used to taking care of herself, as her decisive manner of dealing with Gyllis demonstrates. She is of respectable birth, being acknowledged by her father, Pythees (67) – as it seems Gryllos is not by his – and is mistress, and possibly owner, of her own establishment and commands at least one slave. She is also literate, if at least Gyllis expects her to read in person any ‘letter’ (by way of litotes the singular, meaning a single character, is used) that Mandris might send. The wives in Mimiamb Four appear able to read inscriptions (see Introduction to IV ), but literacy might more readily be assumed of an hetaira of the classier sort. In III , the mother, a married woman (see Introduction to III ) as also the grandmother (27), are more or less functionally illiterate. Metriche is in other ways an attractive character, contrasting with others in Herodas, both female and male, in her mild manner to her slave girl, Threissa, who greets the unseen knocker on the door with a racy freedom that suggests she is not over-accustomed to reproof (1–8). Metriche’s irony and even sternness towards Gyllis is tempered

38

The Mimiambs of Herodas

with affection; she greets her by a childish term, while Gyllis addresses her as ‘Child’. This suggests long acquaintance and, conceivably, that Metriche has been Gyllis’ foster-child.12 We are not, I think, to assume that Gyllis keeps a brothel with a number of young women under her protection, which Metriche, being now rather older, has left to set up house with Mandris;13 for even if Gyllis’ assertion that Gryllos is a virgin (49) is not to be trusted, he is not presented as a client at a brothel, only as having asked the old woman to use her influence with Metriche with a view to some sort of ‘relationship’ – presumably not envisaged as a long one (53). Probably Gyllis expects a reward – Gryllos, it seems, is well off (48–9) – and it will be a concern not to miss this which impels her to go off in the hope of finding one of her young protegées willing to accommodate him.14 Metriche playfully rallies the old woman as still exercising the wiles of youth and avowedly treats her as a special case when she declares that she would not have put up with such interference from anyone else; this again points to a relationship which could be that of nurse–foster child. After she has heard Gyllis out, and responded with some annoyance, Metriche checks her reproof and has the slave pour out a stiffish drink such as she knows the old woman likes. After a polite demurral, Gyllis drinks it down and goes on her way cheered – as her parting words suggest – by the draught.15 The whole composition divides into three parts, of which the first section introduces the characters, engaging our interest by the arrival of Gyllis with her grumbles and plain speaking. The concluding section is of similar length and consists of Metriche’s repudiation of Gyllis’ proposition and tactful propitiation of her, after which the old woman departs. The long central part consists of Gyllis’ pitch for her client. It is worth mentioning that a work of Lucian, Dialogues of Courtesans, though nearly 500 years later, depicts a not-dissimilar world to that shown in Herodas.

Mimiamb One

39

Does this Mimiamb supply any clue as to its setting and the related question of where and in what form Herodas was writing? Egypt is described with what seems a certain nostalgia but is treated rather as a far country,16 while Gryllos’ having competed on several occasions at Delphi, Corinth and Olympia suggests that we are either in mainland Greece or in the Aegean not far from it: Kos, the site of Mimiamb Two (see also Introduction to IV ) might seem to be too far. All that securely appears is that we are on the edge of town or in a village, since Gyllis has come a good way over muddy tracks. Mimiamb One will turn out to be atypical in containing the only depiction, in what remains to us of Herodas, of positive moral value: here sexual fidelity freely chosen. It might seem surprising to find this virtue in that everyday world of cosmopolitan sleaze so livelily depicted in the surviving Mimiambs.17 On the positive side, we need surely look no further than human nature to suppose that a young woman in Metriche’s position – more especially if that of an hetaira – may settle on one man whom she hopes to retain as lover and protector; even so, Metriche’s constancy goes beyond expediency for, as Gyllis is anxious to point out, Mandris (like Penelope’s Odysseus) is far away, may indeed never return, and Gryllos has many advantages; yet Metriche plainly feels no overriding need for a substitute while she is patiently ‘wearing out a widowed bed’ and ‘warming the settle’ for Mandris. Implicitly in this she exemplifies the chastity conventionally expected of Greek wives – who may have their ways of evading or travestying it, as we see, for example, in Mimiamb Six. Everything else that survives of Herodas shows him to be what some might think an unabashed cynic (in the modern sense) in his depiction of human passions and their motives. Yet Metriche’s faithfulness to Mandris – who may be assumed to be unfaithful to her (20–22) – is seen to be motivated by both affection and self-respect, and to illustrate the possibility of a more disinterested strand in human nature than is accounted for by the facts as presented by Gyllis:

40

The Mimiambs of Herodas

the possibility of love – even one-sided, strictly unrequited love – between the sexes.18

Notes 1 A slave, as her name, meaning ‘Thracian’, indicates. 2 An imitation of respectable family connections which comically reveals she has named her daughter after a courtesan of the recent past, notorious as author of a treatise on sexual postures. Headlam draws attention to an epigram by Aeschrion of Samos (Anth. Pol. 7.345) applauding Philainis as a public benefactress. She seems to have made her name popular. 3 The apparently corrected reading of the papyrus, which originally had ‘from the colony’; this could mean from the Egyptian hinterland, except that Egypt clearly is treated as a distant country. My translation, while following Cunningham’s text, attempts some neutrality – being also determined by metricality. 4 She uses what is probably a childish term which I have rendered ‘Mother’ in the generalized sense the English word can bear for older women – but which may suggest Gyllis has been her foster mother, a commonplace enough relationship in days before the safe artificial feeding of infants. 5 As well as an heroic tidbit for Herodas’ audience’s recognition. 6 References which also enter into Gyllis’ oaths: thus the Bride of Hades (28) is Persephone, Queen of the Underworld; the Moirai (59) are the Fates, goddesses who determine length of life. Metriche, by contrast, responds with an oath asserting her confidence in Mandris’ return, linked with the common women’s oath by Demeter, Persephone’s mother, goddess of harvest and life – and which, after her scheme has plainly foundered, Gyllis herself will adopt (75) in praise of the cup of wine she is offered. Appropriately, Aphrodite is ‘the goddess’ of 22 and 54, and her rites are referred to in a mutilated section of the papyrus at the end (74). 7 This is the first mention we have of this Phrygian deity, a latecomer to the Eleusinian mysteries. Religious processions – like Church services later – were a commonplace venue for the sexes to meet, providing a respectable occasion for young women to be out, whether as participants

Mimiamb One

8

9

10 11

41

or spectators: such scenes – depicted also in Callimachus’ account of Acontius and Cydippe – are frequent in New Comedy. So too in Theocritus’ Second Idyll, Simaetha tells of such a procession, with female basketbearers like those depicted on temple-friezes, and how, decked in her best and borrowed finery, she went to watch with her neighbour, the nurse Thraissa (cf. our Threissa) and on the way encountered two youths coming from the wrestling-school: as with Gryllos here, athleticism is emphasized as a male attraction. The papyrus gives alternative titles, which may be translated ‘The Matchmaker’ and ‘The Bawd’, the latter probably distinguishing the piece from others known by the former title. The Mimiambs’ titles may not date back to their author. The metaphor is perhaps that of a seal-ring untouched by wax (so Zanker) but otherwise of a sealed bottle or jar: in any case meaning a virgin, so that we (with Metriche) are to suppose that Gryllos’ present dealings through Gyllis are his first. As loss of seed was held to deplete a man’s vitality, athletes were expected to exercise continence, which might make this claim the less improbable; even so, the expression seems more suited to a woman than a man. However, as we see with Mimiamb VI , it need mean no more than that his father is unknown. However, both may simply point to Metriche’s devotion to the man who supports her in the kind of ‘stable partnership’ – to use, with a difference, current parlance – which Theocritus’ Simaetha wishes to have with Delphis: that she expects to remain faithful throughout his prolonged absence and holds that he has grounds for jealousy if she does not. It is worth noting that Metriche nowhere refers to Mandris as ‘my man’ (aner), the usual term for a husband as used by the women in Mimiamb IV; though, at the same time, we must note that Simaetha conspicuously does so refer to Delphis. Cunningham suggests that ‘a wife would be less likely to be tempted by [scil. Gryllos’] wealth’ (with which Gyllis tries to tempt Metriche, though she does not succeed) and – perhaps more persuasively – that she ‘would not be placed on the same level’ with the two young women named at the poem’s end, who are clearly hetairai.

42

12

13 14

15

16

The Mimiambs of Herodas To be a hetaira (literally a ‘companion’) was the only other course open to Greek women, but there were differences among hetairai, ranging from the simple kept prostitute like Myrtale in Mimiamb Two to the pallake or Companion, a salon-lady or femme savante of whom the best known historical archetype is Pericles’ Aspasia, or in literature the Pamphile of Menander’s comedy Epitrepontes. We can surmise the same relationship of Theocritus’ Simaitha to the dead Thraissa cited above (see also note 3). Hopkinson (1988: 235), to whom I am indebted for other observations on this Mimiamb, adds that ‘Nurses often cause trouble where eros is concerned’ and compares Euripides’ Hippolytus. So Ussher (1985). The coupling of two such names suggests the owners of them are less independently placed than Metriche; nonetheless, this is hardly the way of a brothel ‘Madame’ and we surmise that Gyllis, perhaps after a career as a wet-nurse (as well as an hetaira) has carved out for herself a niche in society and a source of income as an elder to whom the young can turn for a go-between and a broker in what is also the business-relationship of a man prepared to support a hetaira who needs to live off him to maintain a degree of independence. On the propositions Gyllis carries to her young female contacts may depend their fortunes. The Greeks normally drank wine diluted with water, while fondness for wine is a stock attribute of old women in Comedy and Gyllis is a character from Comedy with her grumbles about her age and cautions about the flight of time, as also her lively arts of persuasion: both the graphic description of life in Egypt and the purposeful way she catalogues Gryllos’ advantages are riveting and her speech displays a racy inventiveness with such phrases as I have rendered ‘like the flies’ (14), ‘drunk from something fresher’ (21–2) and the image of the ship that needs two anchors (37–8). We shall regularly find Herodas’ lower-class characters adorning their utterances with proverbial and pithy sayings. Arnott (1971:131) compares Richard Hoggart’s selection of racy Yorkshire working-class sententiae. The Brother and Sister gods of line 26 are the king and queen, Ptolemy II Philadelphos and his sister-consort, Arsinoe: sister-marriage, normally abhorrent to Greeks, was taken over by the Greek Ptolemies from the

Mimiamb One

43

Pharaohs and perforce to be accepted by those wishing to stand well with royalty – as Theocritus in his Encomium (Idyll XVII) and Herodas here. The deification of the royal pair, which took place before 271 B.C., gives us a date post quem for Herodas’ Mimiambs. It may be presumed that the favourable notice of the monarch and of Egypt is meant to go not unnoticed, and it may be a further indication that this Mimiamb was indeed intended by the author to introduce his book (see General Introduction). 17 Certainly the passionate and wilful Simaetha of Theocritus’ Second Idyll is very different from Metriche, whom we do not readily imagine resorting to magic arts to restore Mandris to her. 18 The bona meretrix is, of course, a standard figure; see Esposito (2005: 51–7). We may compare (for example) Pamphile in the Epitrepontes of Menander.

MIMIAMB ONE

The Bawd

Metriche, Threissa, Gyllis ME There’s someone knocking at the door, Threissa; go, please; see if it’s not – some visitor – one of our folk from up-country. TH Who’s at the door? GY ’tis me! TH Who’s ‘Me’? Too shy, are you to come up closer? GY Hold there! Here I comes, closer! TH Well, and who be you? GY Philainis’s Mum, Gyllis! Now kindly announce to Metriche within as I’ve come! TH The, er – caller . . . ME Who is it? TH Gyllis! ME Ma Gyllis! Bustle you off, girl! Gyllis, sure some good Fate’s led you in our direction – a goddess like you to us mere mortals! It must be five months gone since anyone here, waking or, by the Fates, dreaming, saw you cross this threshold!

10

GY I live a long way off, child, and what with they muddy byways – you’re in them up to the knees, but I keeps going like the flies! It’s age that does us down, its shadow forever standing by us! ME Now, Gyllis! Don’t slander your age – you’re up to squeezing some I know! GY Stow it! Such talk’s for girls like you! ME All right, don’t get heated! GY (changes tone) Tell me, child, how long a time have you been wasting alone and wearing out a widowed bed? ’Tis ten months now since Mandris sailed for Egypt and he don’t send you not a single letter! No, he’s forgot you – drunk from fresher wells! ‘Cos that’s the goddess’ seat where it all happens! Whatever exists on earth, it’ll all be found in Egypt:

20

The Bawd

45

wealth, wrestling-schools, a life in the sun, glamour, clout, spectaculars, gurus, gold – and young gallants! The Shrine of the Brother and Sister’s there, their king’s top-hole! They’ve the Museum, they’ve wine – all the high living a man can want! Then for women – by Hades’ Bride, heaven don’t boast so many stars, and every one dazzling – fine as all them goddesses that set up Paris to judge their beauty-contest – May they not hear me! In short, what kind of spirit’s yours that you go keeping his settle warm, poor dearie! Why, before you know it, age will have got you down, your youthful prime all be vanished into ashes! Set your sights elsewhere! Try a change of – purpose: two or three days’ – license to liven up with someone else; no ship rides safe at single anchor! That’s even if he comes, even if he’s alive! Once we’re dead there’s never soul can raise us! A raging storm may wreck him; there’s no mortal as knows the future but man’s life’s all uncertain! I say! There wouldn’t be anyone within earshot, would there? ME No-one! GY Then hark to why I’ve come to find you and must ask you! Pataikion’s daughter, Mataline, her son, Gryllos, – Five times he’s taken prizes: first as a boy at Delphi, then twice at Corinth in the class of the new-bearded, then twice at the Olympics he vanquished grown men boxing! He’s all right for the readies: quiet type, not stirring a straw up! And as for Aphrodite – seal unsullied! Seeing you at the Descent of Mise – his parts swelled up – his heart was stung with passion! Now he don’t quit my house by day nor night, child, but cries and calls me Auntie! He’s dying of desire! Then just this one – transgression, Metriche, my child! To the goddess consecrate it and do yourself a favour! Age will steal up, stare you in the face! And it’s kill two birds with the one stone, for you’ll be pleasured firstly and second the gain’s greater than you imagine – just think of it and be persuaded!

30

40

50

46

Mimiamb One Believe me, by the Fates, it’s out of the love I bear you!

ME Gyllis, seems your white hairs must have bleared your senses! 60 By Mandris’ homeward voyage and by the dear Demeter, I’d not have heard another woman out with patience, but learned her limp with her lame song and view my threshold as hostile country! Be very sure, my dear, never to come again bringing me so sorry story as this, but tell to us young women tales fitting you old ‘uns! Leave then Pythees’ daughter, Metriche, to warm the settle; no-one has the laugh on Mandris! But come, as the saying has it, these are not words needful 70 For Gyllis! Threissa, polish the pearl cup up, pour in a half of wine with water – the merest dash: give her one for the road! GY Really – no thank you . . . ME Drink up, Gyllis, Show no offence taken! GY I came to persuade you . . . Still, for the rites’ . . . ME For their sake, Gyllis, do me honour! GY Then to your health! (drinks) Ah a fine dram, Metriche, by Demeter, Gyllis never drank a finer! Child, farewell and take good care of yourself! May Myrtale and Sime guard me their youthful flower while there’s breath in Gyllis!

Mimiamb Two

Introduction From the opening words of Mimiamb Two we realize that we are in a court of law. Thereafter, the entire Mimiamb, barring two lines given to the Clerk of the Court, is the speech of one Battaros in indictment of one Thales before the dramatic audience, the panel of silent judges. Battaros, an immigrant, continually tries to imitate the forms and practices of courts and of plaintiffs in them.1 Thales is likewise of immigrant status and therefore both accuser and accused need a citizen to sponsor them. Thales has brought along Mennes – the suitably thuggish-sounding name (perhaps ‘Mighty’) for a well-known boxer. Battaros is anxious that his sponsor, Aristophon, shall not be outclassed.2 Herodas thus gives us a satirical sketch of these citizen-sponsors’ fitness as guarantors of character, as well as of Battaros’ naïveté in hoping such riff-raff as is available to him can be supposed to impress the jury – with perhaps the further irony that he may be not so far wrong! Battaros’ next concern – a standard one – is that Thales’ comparative wealth shall not sway the jurors. Probably he exaggerates this, and also his own poverty, in a bid for commiseration. Thales, we learn, is a merchant who imports that most vital of commodities, corn. Battaros claims comparable utility for his trade in harlots; we thus find ourselves in the piquant situation of a pimp bringing a suit for damages to his business. And after the surprise of his calling comes another when Battaros reveals that the property he alleges has been stolen from him, in an assault by Thales on his house with axe and

48

The Mimiambs of Herodas

fire, is one of his prostitutes, Myrtale – we have met the name as that of one of Gyllis’ young women in Mimiamb I; it is a suitable name for their situation since, like the myrtle it derives from, it is associated with Aphrodite (see also Introduction to Mimiamb I). Though his occupation was not illegal, we know from Comedy that the pimp, a stock ‘low’ character, is far from respectable, and this Battaros’ bravado betrays, as he attempts to act the part of a regular tradesman who has been wronged, and further that the offence is aggravated by being ‘at night’ – when honest folk are in their beds (but a pimp will be plying his trade). Despite his lack of citizenship, Battaros poses throughout as zealous for law and democratic right and as a grateful incomer and patriot. That Battaros does indeed imply that a prostitute is equivalent to any other goods transpires ultimately when he declares openly that Thales is welcome to Myrtale, and welcome – in a sinister phrase which I have rendered metri gratia to ‘handle her whatever way you please’ – provided only he pay Battaros an equivalent from the ‘bread’ that is both metaphorically the income as well as the actual end-product of his trading as a corn-merchant.3 Battaros’‘low’ character is underscored by his overly-familiar address and vulgar expression to the official in charge of the water-clock by which he is being timed, and this further shows him up as a hypocrite in the original Greek sense of one acting a part. His uncouth behaviour continues as, taking advantage of the water-clock’s being stopped, he rudely interrupts the Clerk of the Court to deliver the law himself and to lecture Thales on the rights and duties of citizens. His next piece of effrontery is to display Myrtale naked under the pretext of showing her ‘injuries’, though really in the hope that her attractions will win over the jurors.4 Part of Battaros’ bid for respectability and attempt to overcome the disadvantages of an alien – all the while protesting a fitting humility (26) – is his profession of patriotic fervour. He appeals to the democratic traditions of Kos and to Greek respect for law (33) and

Mimiamb Two

49

winds up, in the best traditions of Greek forensic perorations, with an evocation of Kos’ mythical history and greatness (79–82), listing the island’s famous names.5 We are thus left in no doubt that Kos is the scene of this, the only one of the extant Mimiamboi of Herodas to reveal its indubitable dramatic location.6 Battaros’ grandstanding closes with a final sally against Thales’ birth and standing in his allusion to a proverbial saying (also referred to at Mimiamb V 13) that a Phrygian is better for a beating. For despite his opening deprecation of any prejudice on the part of the jurors on grounds of his own ethnicity, he himself makes much of that of his opponent. Phrygians were regarded by Greeks as ignorant barbarians; Mimiamb III 28 characterizes them as unlettered. Thales, Battaros claims, has assumed his highly respectable Greek name, his real name being Artimmes (which is oriental and perhaps servile). There is irony in his own name, Battaros, being at best risible for a pleader at law, since it means Stammerer; though in resembling ‘Batalos’ (‘l’and ‘r’ being standardly interchangeable ‘liquids’) it may suggest the ‘kinaidos’ he owns to being (61): a pimp and more particularly a male prostitute (Compare ‘Batale’ in Mimiamb IV ). There is probable further irony in that such under Athenian law were excluded from political office and may not have been eligible to plead in court. Pimps, like Madames, would have started out as themselves prostitutes; Battaros, with the effrontery of an assumed grandeur, boasts he has inherited his trade from father and grandfather before him. This is in line with his attempt all through to control the situation and assert his superiority. Thus he stages his recital of the law; thus he displays Myrtale’s nakedness, bidding her look on the jurors as ‘fathers and brothers’: an attempt to ingratiate himself with them which also aspires to present her as an appealing child; thus, when it suits him, he adopts a braggart stance, declaring that if he had been a younger man he would have attacked Thales. (He subsequently boasts of his strength

50

The Mimiambs of Herodas

and courage, and may not be particularly old.) With parting theatricality, he both offers himself to be tortured in place of a slave witness (who might be legally tortured, as a citizen could not) on the condition he receive the compensation payable to a master whose slave is injured in the process – an absurd proposal by which he inadvertently underscores his servile as well as his mercenary character. His final deployment of the rhetoric of pleading, with which he shows familiarity, is his claim that a verdict for him furthers the cause of justice for all immigrants; at the same time his words reveal that both as immigrant and brothel-keeper he will have little standing with the jury. Nor in this final manoeuvre does he fail to conceal his incongruous side. Thus, even when he quotes the proverb of the mouse and the pitch (which we also know from Theocritus, Idyll XIV ), he misapplies it, for the point is that the mouse who went to nibble became stuck in the pitch. Patently absurd is his claim that Myrtale’s being all-over plucked is attributable to Thales’ violence; prostitutes were expected to pluck their body hair. In the end, Thales (the ‘you’ (61) is singular) laughs at him and Battaros, realizing he is not cutting the figure he pretends to be, is goaded into brazening out his occupation, owning himself the son and grandson of brothel-keepers in a grotesque parody of the handing down of a respectable profession. Herodas’ skill as parodist and characterizer is at its height in Mimiamb Two, and at more than 2,000 years’ distance in time, still entertaining to us even while we need a modicum of ‘background’ to savour it. How the whole case and its verdict might have gone – and whether it could ever have come to court – is outside surmise, more especially since the whole is parody and, as such, also surely serves as scathing comment on actual law-procedures.7 In any case, Battaros’ buffoonish monologue leaves no room for other participants to comment, while appealing much to the audience’s imagination.8

Mimiamb Two

51

Notes 1 The Clerk’s interposition at line 38, being merely to read from the codebook, has the character more of a ‘prop’ than of a participation. The whole readily reminds us of the Athenian law-courts of which we know much from the Attic orators and other sources. Right at the end (80) we learn that we are on the island of Kos, off the coast of Asia Minor. Having been under Athenian hegemony prior to 354 B.C., Kos would have adopted Athenian legal practice, with a panel of citizens as judges. 2 His name sounds respectable, but Thales seems (the papyrus is defaced at this point) not entirely to wish to dismiss a rumour that Aristophon is a bandit given to the stealing of cloaks. If this is right, it is an ill-judged attempt to impress and perhaps even intimidate the jurors – or at least to offset any such effect on them of Thales’ sponsor. 3 Legally, slaves were chattels, but the ironical emphasis on Battaros’ equation of Myrtale with bread may serve to reassure us that Herodas and his audience are not prone to view prostitutes in this light. In fact, the prostitute, who like the pimp is a stock figure of Comedy – both professions having something abidingly ludicrous about them – is likely to be the more indulgently portrayed and treated. 4 Here, as in the delineations of the sponsors, Herodas is poking fun at some known incidentals of ancient Greek lawsuits: in particular it would recall a famous case where Hypereides, Counsel for the Defence, produced his client Phryne half-naked in court. More broadly, Herodas’ piece can remind us of other ‘court-scenes’ in Greek literature, and more especially Comedy, from Aristophanes ’ Frogs to (again) Menander’s Epitrepontes. 5 The eponymous Kos was a daughter of King Merops, after whom the original inhabitants of the island, the ‘Meropes’, were said to have been named; Thessalos, eponymous hero of Thessaly, was a son of Herakles by the daughter of Eurypylos, a Koan king by him slain; Trikka, in Thessaly, was held to be the birthplace of Asklepios (see Introduction to Mimiamb IV ); Leto as daughter of Phoibe and one Koios, can be supposed a Koan. 6 If we are to suppose the Mimiamboi generally sited on Kos, or if Herodas lived and worked there (see General Introduction), contemporary audiences will have known this from the start. There is, however, no direct

52

The Mimiambs of Herodas

evidence for these suppositions (See Introduction to Mimiamb Four) and in its absence they remain conjectures. 7 Hunter (2008), who has pertinent remarks on the relation of Mimiamb Two – and Herodas more generally – to Comedy and in particular to the later Roman Plautus. 8 We know that Greek jurors were liable to be swayed by melodramatic scenes and rhetorical appeals such as are travestied here. No Greek poet could forget his traditional role as teacher, and thus Herodas’ Mimiamb II has its aspect as social satire, while the pimp Battaros takes his place among his pungent cast from low-life.

MIMIAMB TWO

The Brothel-Keeper

Battaros, Clerk of the Court (Silent: Thales, Myrtale, Mennes, Aristophon, jurors etc.) BA Gentlemen of the Jury, to be sure you are not judges of our race or of our standing; nor if this man, Thales, owns a ship that’s worth five talents while I don’t have even bread, will he in law have weight one wit to prevail to Battaros’ hurt; contrariwise, bitter tears it shall cause him! Like me he’s to this city an immigrant, and we can’t live as we might like but as our lot falls out. He has Mennes to stand sponsor; I have Aristophon: Mennes is a boxing has-been! That Aristophon still holds the ring at wrestling’s proven, Gentlemen! Let him come out toward sundown; then from the cloak he wears shall be known what champion I come armed with! But perhaps he’s going to say ‘I’ve come from Ake, bringing corn, and put a stop to a feared famine.’ Well so, I brought whores from Tyre: to the populace what difference? He don’t give grist free to grind and nor do I give her for screwing free! If because he sails the seas and wears a mantle worth three minas Attic, while I live on dry land, dragging my threadbare plaid and rotting footwear, he thinks – No ‘By your leave!’ – he’ll pinch my assets – and that at night! – our public safety’s done for, Gentlemen; that free-city status you’re so proud of Thales will subvert! He ought to know himself and what base clay he’s formed of, and bear himself trembling,

10

20

54

Mimiamb Two as I do, before the least of citizens! Even those toptiles of the city, puffed with a proper pride in your birthright, don’t look down on the law as does this fellow! Note it’s no citizen has harmed me – an immigrant: laid siege to my doors by night, brought torches to set my house on fire, made off with one of my whores, but it’s this Phrygian Thales – so-called, but previously, Gentlemen, Artimmes was his name! He’s done these things: he’s not held back for any respect of law or magistrate or jury. All right, Clerk of the Court, take up the code-book; read me the count of Assault – and you, my friend, bung up that hole in the water-clock for as long as he reads, in case its arse, as the saying is, ‘utters’ and makes the drugget dirty!

30

Clerk (reads) ‘If a freeman of intent abuse a slave woman or hale or beat her, for such offence he pays double . . . BA (interrupts) Gentlemen, that law was enacted by Charondas, not by a Battaros looking to prosecute Thales! It says that if somebody breaks in a door, he pays one mina; if he smites with his fist, one mina; if he sets the house on fire or forces entry, the fine’s set at a thousand drachmas – double if someone’s hurt. He was founding a city, Thales, but you have no idea how a city is governed; you’re in Brinkindera one day, the day before you’re in Abdera; the next day someone charters you and it’s under weigh for Phaselis! But Gentlemen of the Jury, not to try you with haranguings and digressions: I’ve suffered at Thales’ hands what the mouse suffered in pitch — I’ve been punched, the door broken of a house for which I pay rent at one third of its value; my lintel burnt . . . Myrtale, you too come forward! Exhibit yourself to the court – no need to feel bashful! Think that in these judges you stand before you look on fathers and brothers! You see, my lords, her depilations below, see, and above, how smooth this paragon plucked her when he haled and forced her! God of Age, but he should offer you sacrifice! Were it not for Age, he’d have breathed his

40

50

The Brothel-Keeper blood out, like the boxer Philistos Brenkos once in Samos! You laugh? Yes, I’m a pimp; I’ll not deny it: Battaros my name, my grandfather Sisymbras, my father Sisymbriskos: all of us brothel-keepers! And for courage, I’d readily throttle a lion – if the lion were Thales! You may well desire Myrtale: hardly surprising! I love bread! You give, you’ll have! By Zeus, if something’s hotting up inside, you’ve only to pass my price on to Battarosy’s palm; the goods are yours – handle them any way you please! Finally – for that was no way addressed to you, gentlemen, but Thales! – you are to pronounce verdict, as on a case witnessed, on principles of justice! Though if it’s slaves’ bodies he’s after, to put them to the question, then I yield up my person! Take me, Thales, rack me! Just be sure you first deposit before us the compensation-moneys; then Minos with his scale could judge the case no better! For the rest, Gentlemen, don’t think you cast your vote for the brothel-keeper Battaros, but in behalf of all immigrants to your city. Now show forth how great are Kos and Merops, and how Thessalos won glory and Herakles; how Asklepios came from Trikka and how fittingly it was that Phoibe here birthed Leto! Consider all these points and guide aright your judgment. This Phrygian before you will prove ‘better beaten’; else your fathers’ saying will be found misleading!

55 60

70

80

Mimiamb Three

Introduction More than half of this mimiamb consists of Metrotime’s tirade against her son, Kottalos, whom she denounces to the schoolmaster Lampriskos, being made desperate by his waywardness and seeking condign chastisement. It appears that the boy’s father is elderly and frail (22–3) and beyond disciplining him, and it falls to Metrotime to take decisions (20) and also to handle the household expenses (6–7, 38); her status in this is thus of interest for our knowledge of Greek family life (see also General Introduction, p. 12). The family belongs to the poorest citizen class; in this Mimiamb alone is there no mention of a slave.1 It is Metrotime herself who waxes her son’s writing tablets, and from her complaint of the ‘labour’ of this we may infer her many domestic chores: the water to be drawn and carried, the fires to be lit and tended, the cooking . . . She is embittered by poverty and correspondingly vengeful towards the son whom she has put to school as the best hope for her old age and anticipated widowhood (as lines 21–2 suggest), but who does not repay the sacrifices and burdens this entails. Even Lampriskos, the grim schoolmaster – a despised and often servile occupation (though apparently not here) – seems merciful compared with the mother who, in her fury, wants to see her son flogged to within an inch of his life (65), or ‘till sundown’ (73), and who, when Lampriskos judges enough, pleads for another 20 strokes (75); who speaks only disparagingly of him (30–5) declaring herself unconcerned for his

58

The Mimiambs of Herodas

safety when he climbs on the roof of their tenement, but only for the broken tiles she will have to pay for. Of course we suspect – admiring Herodas’ psychological verisimilitude – that the very disclaimer, and her violence, reveal her fear for her son and underlying hurt, as well as her dislike of being the subject of gossip (36). In fact, she acquiesces in Lampriskos’ shortly leaving off the beating – which takes up a maximum of 12 lines of text (65–77) – and, not mollified by seeing Kottalos appear to settle instantly to his book, goes off on the time-honoured pretext of consulting her husband. Her parting threat (78–80) to return with fetters for Kottalos’ feet will, we may suppose – like the concluding threat of Mimiamb Five – prove to be idle. Clearly, Metrotime has hopes that the family may better itself through Kottalos, and this explains the degree of her bitterness at the threat to these plans from his idleness. She knows the value – if only commercial – of schooling and is probably herself not entirely illiterate, to judge from her account of Kottalos’ lack of progress and her reference to his grandmother as unlettered. She expects to be involved in her son’s education (23–4), though it is the father who goes over the spelling with him – and clearly Kottalos is still at a very primitive stage in spelling. We sense the daily anxiety of the parents, the resignation of the father and the indignation of the mother, which at this point has boiled over into action. Lampriskos is a very recognizable portrait of the dominie who believes – as does Metrotime – in the lash as an instrument of education and correction;2 nor is this surprising in a society which depended utterly on its slaves and kept them, as we see throughout the Mimiambs, subject to actual physical force or the threat thereof. Indeed at line 59 Lampriskos brings out the parallel between boy and slave.3 And he also displays the typical dominie’s sardonic humour, with his ‘if that’s your preference’ (53) and his learned reference to the moon of Akeses.4 By contrast with Lampriskos, Metrotime’s sayings

Mimiamb Three

59

are more simply proverbial, in line with lower-class speech in Herodas generally (see Introduction to Mimiamb I).5 In Kottalos we have an enduringly recognizable picture of boyhood perversity, heedless of all but immediate pleasures and liable to bad courses. Already, he has passed from childish games to gambling away money that we are to presume he obtains from his grandmother (30). That he is more than ordinarily intransigent appears from Lampriskos’ comparison of the quieter pursuits of his schoolfellows (50–1) who are called upon to lift the truant to be flogged. Probably Kottalos has become used to being governed by his mother’s abuse and threats and by a weak, aging father (22–3).6 and these have ceased to have any effect on him except to bring about a show of compliance when they become immediately threatening (67–8). Thus to save his skin he will readily appeal to those Muses for whom he ordinarily shows so little respect and touch his master’s chin in gesture of supplication (57) – yet can risk a parting jeer at his mother,7 presumably having sensed (as do we) from Lampriskos’ somewhat impatiently putting a stop to her tirade, that the latter is not entirely on Metrotime’s side. Brutal though Lampriskos must seem to modern readers, he is simply performing his métier and is judge when a beating has to stop. We further assume that he, like us, can discount the exaggerations of Metrotime’s hurt pride and inverted mother-love. This professional self-reliance, as well as Metrotime’s address to him (as 43–4), suggest he is not a slave, though very possibly a freedman. This Mimiamb is set, not quite on the edge of society, but in those lower reaches where schooling is not taken for granted. Metrotime and her family are self-respecting folk, not liking the neighbours to speak ill of them (36–7), but vulnerable to the perils of the poor, especially in the shape of the gambling-den. The scene is clearly a town, probably not a small one, and near the sea: not Delos, but presumably not far off, since a specific feature of life on that island is mentioned (41).

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The Mimiambs of Herodas

Structurally the poem falls into two halves, of which the first (1–48) exhibits ‘ring-composition’: Metrotime’s appeals to Lampriskos, with their parallel invocations of blessings from the Muses, flank her two complaints as to what Kottalos does and does not know about his school, while the centre of this section is her long account of her woes and his misdeeds. The second half (49–80) is a long coda mainly occupied with the beating of Kottalos, issuing in Metrotime’s misgiving that this has not had the effect she desired. Her parting – and on her lips comically ‘upwardly mobile’ – appeal to the presumed interest of the Muses parallels the opening.

Notes 1 Kerdon, the shoemaker of Mimiamb VII, complains – it seems disingenuously – of poverty, but has two male slaves to assist him in his shop, besides a maidservant. 2 Such a figure is familiar in countries where Puritanism – in Catholic countries Jansenism and, at any rate in Britain, Imperialism – made for the revival of Graeco-Roman mores in education almost down to our own day: or at least up to Billy Bunter’s Mr Quelch. Perhaps the cartoonist Giles’ ‘Chalkie’ was its last enfeebled appearance on the British scene. 3 The flogging schoolmaster (epitomized in the Roman Horace’s memories of Orbilius at Epodes 2.1.71 and recalled in the naming of the British Orbilian Society) appears to originate with the Greeks. Our other cultural source, the Hebraic, while it can urge that ‘He that spareth his rod spoileth his son’ (Proverbs 24), can also seem surprisingly humane in the case specifically of schooling. Thus, at Isaiah 7.14, the all-important Word is to be made palatable by the device of smearing a boy’s slate with ‘butter and honey’ – the then equivalent of giving sweets as a reward. 4 The point of this reference seems obscure, but as Headlam tells us, Akeses, the pilot of Neleus, father of Nestor, is said only to have sailed at the full moon, but having waited for that would set out forthwith. Lampriskos thus would seem to mean that the time is right to cure Kottalos of his ways

Mimiamb Three

61

with a beating. I suggest there is also a schoolmasterly facetiousness about the boy’s exposed buttocks, which I have known a French teacher (female and similarly bent) call ‘la belle lune’ and which prompt the allusion to Akeses, which seems to have been proverbial. This further ties in with a scholarly gloss on the passage to the effect that exposing oneself was one of the ritual measures employed to avert the evil of eclipses (and cf. the colloquial English ‘mooning’). 5 ‘The tears of Nannakos’ refers to the story that this king of Phrygia, foreseeing the Flood, called on his subjects to propitiate the gods with copious weeping. Metrotime’s saying at line 38 which I have translated ‘so not a tooth is loosened’ more literally is ‘so as not to move a tooth’, which Zanker refers to their lacking food, but to my mind more probably refers to a popular proverb or superstition, perhaps to the effect that telling lies loosens the teeth (rather as in the Italian folk-tale of Pinocchio’s lengthening nose). A number of other references require explanation: ‘Simon’ (19) is the name given to a throw at dice. Kottalos’ misreading reflects his obsession with gambling. The pot-fisherman’s back (39–40) would become tanned and scaly from exposure to the sun – more especially round Delos, the island sacred to Apollo, the sun-god. It seems that Kottalos is fond of spending time out on the seashore – rather than in the woods, which, being shady, would not produce this effect. Though the Greek has been taken to mean ‘in the woods’ by both Cunningham and Zanker, and possibly can be taken as meaning ‘(hardened) like wood’ (as it has also been read), to my mind the suggestion of Meister (reported by Cunningham) that the word for wood can also mean ‘sludge’ (German Schlamm), yields the best sense. The seventh and twentieth days of the month (41) were holy days in honour of the birth of Apollo; on these the school would be closed. The ‘kid-bones’ (50) are knucklebones, often referred to as a boys’ game. Girls, as we see in the following lines, are expected to be sedate, ‘not stirring a straw’ – the same expression we have seen used of Gryllos’ alleged quietness (and suggestive of his femininity) in the First Mimiamb. The ‘mouse’ (70) appears from the context to be slang for a gag.

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The Mimiambs of Herodas

The Hydra (74) is the mythical many-headed creature slain after long battle by Herakles. Kleo is one of the nine Muses, daughters of Zeus according to Homer. From several references to the Muses we infer that Lampriskos has statues of these goddesses of poetry, and so more generally of learning, in his schoolroom, adding ton to his establishment. 6 It is surely significant of their household that Kottalos’ mother represents their neighbours as referring to him as her son (37) and not by the normal patronymic from the father. Metrotime, presumably, is known to hold the purse-strings. 7 The Greek ‘issa’ (here prolonged as ‘issai’ – as ‘tata’ becomes ‘tatai’ at 64) is said by grammarians to be used in triumph over the misfortunes of others and calls forth Lampriskos’ picturesque-seeming – and presumably ‘learned’, though the precise reference eludes us – reproof (67). That he could wish the boy’s tongue ‘washed in honey’ – and that despite himself – might appear to refer to ‘language’ rather than to Kottalos’ putting out his tongue, as has also been suggested. Either way, the reproof seems mild.

MIMIAMB THREE

The Schoolmaster

Metrotime, Lampriskos, Kottalos (Silent: Euthies, Kokkalos, Phillos and other boys) ME As may the blessed Muses grant you, Lampriskos, reap all happiness, flay me this boy’s shoulders till the vile soul but lingers on his lips; he’s pillaged outright our house with his games at spin-the-coin – poor me! For knucklebones won’t do for him, you see, Lampriskos, and we’re riding to a fall; the bitter reckoning day, though I shed the tears of Nannakos, demands payment – and where the schoolroom door is, that he could scarce tell you, yet the gaming-den, where scum hang out and errant slaves – now that he knows so well he could point a stranger to it! Then, the sorry tablet which I labour waxing each month, it lies neglected down between bedpost and wall – except from time to time he may scrawl something looking as though at Hades, then scrub it out! His dice, though, are stowed away in bags and nets and polished more than our household oil-flask! He don’t so much as recognize the letter Alpha without you bawl it at him five times! The other day his father spelled out ‘Maron’ for him: ‘Maron’ he wrote and ‘Simon’ this fine fellow reads it! I declare I’m witless, training him up for reading instead of grazing asses – thinking to have insurance against misfortune! His father – an old man now and failing in hearing as in sight – or I, if we should bid him recite a passage, as one would a child, he’ll let it trickle out as though from a leaky basin, mouthing

10

20

64

The Mimiambs of Herodas ‘Apollo . . . Hunter . . .’ ‘This’, I tell him, ‘even your grandma can manage, and she unlettered, wretched boy! So can any passing Phrygian!’ But start complaining somewhat more freely, for three days he’ll not set foot over the threshold, but fleece his grandma, old and poor though she is! Or else he’ll straddle our roof-tree like some ape, peering down at us! What do you think my innards suffer – poor me! – seeing him! Not, I mean, that he’s so much my worry as that the tiling’s shattered and I am to pay groaning an obol and a half for every tile, come winter – the other tenants with one voice declaring, ‘This is the work of Kottalos’, the son of Metrotime!’ and it’s no more than the truth, so not a tooth is loosened! Just see his back, how scaly it’s become, all woodlike, from idling away his best days like the pot-fishers in the sea round Delos! But your sevenths and twentieths, those he can better calculate than the astronomers – never asleep to when you’ve holidays! So may these Muses, Lampriskos, grant you success in life and to meet with blessings – give him nothing less than . . . LA Have done with your pleading, Metrotime! He’ll have no less . . . Euthies, where’s he, and Kokkalos, and Phillos? Look sharp! Lift him on your shoulders; expose him to Akeses’ moon! So, Kottalos, I congratulate you on your progress! No longer satisfied to play at snatch with kid-bones as these do! No, you must make the gaming-house, ring your coin among scum! But meeker than a girl I’ll make you, not stirring up a straw, if that’s your preference! Where’s my swingeing thong, the ox’s tail with which I chastise those fettered and sequestered? Hand it me quick, someone, before I choke on choler! KO No!! I beg, Lampriskos, by the Muses – by your chin, and by poor Kotty’s life, don’t beat me with the swinger! Use that other!

LA (begins to beat him) Kottalos, you good-for-nothing; a slave-dealer

30

40

50

Mimiamb Three

65

wouldn’t have a good word for you, no, not even in some district so run down the mice can only nibble rust! KO Lampriskos, how many more? How many are you going to lay on my . .? LA Don’t ask me; ask your mother!

60

KO Mummy, mercy! How many must I be given? ME As many as your wretched hide will bear, if I’m to keep on living for you! KO Stop, no more, Lampriskos! LA Then stop your evil ways! KO I won’t do it – no longer, I swear to you, Lampriskos, by the darling Muses . . . LA What a big tongue you’ve grown, you villain! Any more of your squealing and perhaps I’ll need to get my mouse-gag! KO Look, I’m shutting up. Don’t, I implore you, kill me! LA Kokkalos, set him down. ME Don’t let him off, Lampriskos. Flay his hide till sundown! LA His hide is well mottled, more than a Hydra! ME The good-for-nothing should have – yes, poring over his book! – twenty more, though he read better than Kleo herself! KO (mutters) Go sucks! LA Would you might surprise us and wash your tongue in honey! ME On second thoughts, Lampriskos, I’ll go home: tell the old man about it. But I’ll be back bringing shackles so the goddesses he scorns can watch him hop it to school with both his feet fettered!

70

Mimiamb Four1

Introduction In its opening, Mimiamb IV would appear simply to present a temple sacrifice in thanksgiving and supplication to those patron gods of health, Asklepios and attendant deities, whose temple is approached by four women, two of whom are slave girls accompanying their mistresses. The temple displays works of art, some of them notable: gifts to Asklepios2 or thank-offerings for cures.3 In a prayer of invocation which opens the Mimiamb serenely and with dignity, one of the women, Kynno,4 greets, in due and known form, the representations of the gods which confront them, perhaps in the portico – but then swerves off into a wordy apology for the smallness of her offering (denoted ‘epidorpia’, ‘afters’ or an addition to the main meal): a hint of bathos to come. Finally, she directs another of the women, Kokkale, as to the hanging up of a votive tablet. To the presumed cultured audience or readership (see General Introduction), Kynno and Phile both are portrayed as entertainingly naïve – though it is worth noting that Kynno can read an inscription and seems to expect her friend to do likewise (20–2). But even in displaying her good taste and religious correctitude, Kynno can descend into virulent abuse of her slave (38ff.) or an absurd invocation of punishment on those she deems of lesser discernment than herself (68–9). Phile mainly goggles at the lifelikeness of the artworks, among which one statue reminds her of an acquaintance,‘the daughter of Myttes, Batale’: both names signal ‘low’ status, the onomatopoeic

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The Mimiambs of Herodas

Batale probably denoting a stammerer,5 while Myttes would seem to suggest (at the least)‘over-sexed’. Of the other names here, the Byzantine scholiast Hesychios tells us that Kynno is related to kuon (gen. kunos), the Greek word for ‘dog’, making it all but inevitable to regard our protagonist as Ms Bitch – though in view of her genteel pretensions we may perhaps allow her ‘Biche’. Phile as a proper name is more neutral, as befits this role as foil to Kynno. It can also suggest a rather non-specific ‘girlfriend’. Yet even though these names’ associations clearly are intended to be comic low-life, we are not to conclude that Mistresses Biche and Friend – properly, even if somewhat questionably attended – come out of the stews. There is the reference to ‘our andres (the word will indifferently equal ‘men’ or ‘husbands’) and children’ (76). Thus a doubt remains: was Herodas’ audience to respond to this line with ironic laughter, as being an affectation of respectability by Kynno for the sake of the temple attendant? If these ‘ladies’ come not from the stews but at least from the red-light environs of their place and day, that would explain the peculiarly suggestive moniker of the one servant named, for Kokkale, according to Hesychios, relates to the female pudenda – read ‘Nellie’ or ‘Fanny’.6 That all ultimately is for the entertainment of the audience is confirmed in the conclusion, the punishment of hanging by the foot being a motif from Comedy (cf V 57). This Mimiamb provides another clear example of ring composition, the religious activity at beginning and end flanking the pronouncements on the works of art, while at the centre stands the upbraiding by Kynno of her slave for slowness and inattention to her mistress’ commands; this theme we have already met more gently adumbrated in Metriche’s admonition to Threissa in Mimiamb I to ‘bustle off ’ and it will recur, with variations, in succeeding Mimiambs. Clearly, the everyday situation of master/mistress versus slave is readily exploited for dramatic, and particularly for humorous,

Mimiamb Four

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effect; thus as Kydilla stands scratching a head which it seems is none too clean, and presumably lousy, Kynno’s threat (47) – which rather than to brand is probably to beat Kydilla on the head, as Herodas also threatens to do to his servant Psylla at VIII 8 – is backed up incongruously by appeal to one of the gods of healing to whose statue she points (44). The better-natured Phile’s ‘soothing’ interposition reminds us, as well as Kynno, that a slave is, after all, to be regarded as feeble-minded, if not sub-human.7 The piece ends with good auspices and prayers. A leg of the cock – again Kynno deprecates the victim’s smallness – is set aside for the temple attendant and an offering made to the snake, Asklepios’ ‘familiar’ and associated with healing. Originally this would have consisted of a morsel of meal mixed with honey and oil, dropped through a hole in the snake’s den. Before this time, as appears from both archaeological and literary evidence, the offering had been commuted into a coin dropped into a collecting-box, though the archaic terminology is retained. And there are real barley-cakes to be dipped in honey or oil (80) and laid on the altar – this is a regular feature of sacrifices – and besides a ‘greater quantity’ of bread is offered. The bulk of the offerings are to be taken away, whether to home or to a separate chamber to be shared with the temple personnel: the verb used for ‘we shall feast on’ has also the sense of ‘we shall distribute’ and though the remains of sacrificial offerings might be eaten at home, they sometimes were not allowed to be removed from the sanctuary area – as may better fit the case of a shrine of Asklepios, partaking of features of a sanatorium or hospital and so housing patients, as well as staff, in buildings other than the temple itself.8 Apart from Kynno’s not untypical (cf. Mimiambs V, VI and VII , but contrast Mimiamb I) roughness with her servant, the two women arouse our amused sympathy with their enthusiasm for the statuary and painting and their desire – of which Kynno is the mouthpiece (though her reference to plural ‘husbands’ (76), implies that her

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The Mimiambs of Herodas

friend is included9) – to obtain and preserve good health for themselves and their households: this in a society in which illness was little understood and life-expectancy all uncertain.10 As will have appeared, in my view we should not take too seriously the claim that in this piece Herodas is out to assert a ‘typically Hellenistic’ theory of art.11 Though the lifelike character of the sculpture is emphasized, the satire already evident in the nameassociations is very obviously at work here too, ‘sending up’ our wouldbe sophisticates’ exaggerated declarations that lead them into absurdities (31–4, 53–5, 60–3, 67–8), the accumulating grotesqueness of which is surely the author’s final comment upon them.

Notes 1 This Mimiamb can be dated to – at the earliest – the death (occurring before 280 B.C.) of the painter Apelles, who is spoken of in the past at 64ff, and at the latest that of ‘the sons of Praxiteles’ (20) by 265 B.C. Though ‘both’ these sons – known sculptors – might appear still to be living at the dramatic date if Phile’s prayer at 22–3 that they be rewarded by the god of healing is to have its literal implication, succeeding utterances assignable to this character rather suggest it an instance of that impulsive and ignorant naïveté which, in my view, should guide us in assigning the dramatic ‘parts’ – in the papyrus only indicated where names are used in address. My translation follows what I regard as the distinctive characterization of the two main roles, with the self-confident Kynno the decisive ‘lead’. 2 Of the deities named, Asklepios is a legendary figure who appears in the second book of the Iliad as a Thessalian prince and famous physician. Thereafter he is worshipped – as here – as the patron of the medicinal arts. Other deities – both named and unnamed, in a typical formula aiming at completeness – are members of Asklepios’ family, beginning with the great Apollo, said to be his father and having in Greek tragedy the title by which Asklepios is here addressed: Paieon (a trisyllable). In Iliad V, and

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as the disyllabic Paian, the latter is still a separate deity who heals the wounds of Ares and Hades; he only later becomes assimilated to Asklepios. We can notice that while the correct Kynno and the Temple Attendant use the trisyllabic form, Phile alone uses the shorter ‘Paion’ (22). Koronis is Asklepios’ mother and Health (Hygieia), whom Asklepios, in the group viewed by the women touches with his right hand (as also in a statue now in the Vatican) is probably his wife. His daughters are Panake (Healer of all Ills), Epio (whose name is presumed to mean The Gentle One, though she is otherwise unknown) and Ieso (Healer). Podaleirios and Machaon are sons of Asklepios, as we also learn from Iliad Two, where they are named among the Greeks who sailed for Troy. Laomedon was the first king of Troy, who caused the city’s walls to be built by Apollo and Poseidon. 3 The known existence on the island of Kos of a temple of Asklepios containing artworks, including – at some stage – a famous painting by Apelles of ‘Aphrodite Rising from the Sea’, has led to an assumption that this mimiamb, like Mimiamb II , is sited there, but gives no sure grounds for this; however, the absence of reference to the Aphrodite or other prominent works of art known to have been located there might merely indicate that the Mimiamb predates these: indeed, in 1978, the archaeologist Sherwin-White proposed that the poem relates to the expansion of the shrine and cult at Kos. Nevertheless, the fact that this Mimiamb is silent on known art-works of the Asklepieion of Kos together with the lack of mention in ancient sources – including pseudo-Hippocrates in a letter to the people of Abdera, about Kos and its cult of Asklepios (Ps-Hippocrates HC IX Littré; cf. Sherwin-White 352) – of works here described, or of the sons of the renowned Praxiteles and of the famous painter Apelles, when taken together suggest that the Asklepieion of IV is non-specific, even if reminiscent of an actual temple or temples (see Introduction to Mimiambs I and II and General Introduction) and to that extent recognizable to Herodas’ audience. As Cunningham (1966) puts it: ‘Herodas . . . does not usually trouble to set his characters in a definite locality, being more interested in the characters themselves than in places or things. It would be quite consistent with his practice for a more or less imaginary temple to be the scene.’ Kos may lurk in the background rather than be recognisably evoked.

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4 The distribution of parts in this Mimiamb has been controversial, some – as Mastromarco (1984) – claiming that Phile in the text is not a proper name but an endearment used by Kynno to her ‘friend’ (the meaning of ‘phile’) – as it is beyond dispute twice used by that friend in addressing Kynno herself (18, 51); further that this provides a clearer contrast in characterization of the two women; further that it makes Kokkale the prime votary and predominant part, in keeping with the performance of Mimes, where an archimimos regularly played a lead role (see General Introduction). Views vary as to how speech is to be distributed on this assumption. As will further appear, my reading strongly disagrees with the claim as to characterization and follows Cunningham in having Kynno the leading suppliant who brings the modest offering of a cock on behalf of her family and acts as a guide to her companion, who has not previously visited the temple and whom Kynno addresses as ’phile’: though whether that be the name Phile or simply the commonplace feminine adjective, meaning ‘friend(ly)’ or ‘dear(one)’, we shall consider further. This reading indicates Kokkale to be Kynno’s servant, whereas for the alternative reading, Kokkale is Kynno’s ‘friend’. Since the papyrus does not use initial capitals to distinguish names, there might seem to be no way of judging Herodas’ intention; yet Phile, it should be noted, is a perfectly good name derived from its meaning – we might compare ‘Chérie’, from the French meaning ‘cherished’, or the English Amy from French Aimée (also a proper name) – and we have met its male counterpart, from the masculine adjective ‘philos’, as Phillos in Mimiamb III (48). That the same Mimiamb III gives us Kokkalos, the masculine counterpart of Kokkale and there clearly a free (not servile, cf. Mimiamb I 1) name, need not be relevant here – any more than it would be safe to conclude Kydilla – beyond dispute the name of the second slave girl in this Mimiamb – a ‘servile’ name as belonging also to the Kydilla in Mimiamb V; who, though born a slave, has been reared as her mistress’ own child and can be assumed to have been named by her. Thus in the assigning of parts in the present Mimiamb, we need to look for clues other than assumptions as to ‘servile’ and ‘non-servile’ names. We know that in the humbler reaches of the citizen-class to which our two

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votaries clearly belong (Women were not of themselves citizens but possessed the status of their fathers and husbands), there is little distinction between names of slaves and ‘free’ – which is what we should expect, given that manumitted slaves could enter the citizen class across what is, at this societal level, a persistently wavering line. This leaves the claim that the part of Kokkale is that of Archimimos. Against this – even apart from the fact that Mime and Mimiamb are formally different, and there is doubt as to the type of performance (if any) of the latter – is that it needs to explain away one piece of hard evidence in the papyrus: namely the indication of a change of speaker (paragraphos) at 31 (line 35 of Cunningham’s text). The technicality of the paragraphos is too complex to be gone into here, but being backed also by the line’s verbal indications of a change of speaker (Phile is trying to play up to her friend in the art-appreciation, but her attempt is cut across by Kynno), I believe we should take it, with Cunningham, as decisive – albeit it is, of course, possible that the papyrus has it wrong. On this reading, and contrary to what has been claimed (See 4 above), an in fact more distinct characterization of the two votaries is obtained, with a more subordinate part in the action being taken by Phile, whom I have indicated as distinct from her friend in her markedly greater ignorance and her naïve impulse to imitate Kynno’s characteristic grandstanding and show of sophistication. She further reveals herself as the less dominant personality of the two, speaking soothingly (while still expressing contempt for the girl) when Kynno flies into a rage at her slave’s ineptitude. In this difference of temperament, Kynno and Phile can be compared to Praxinoa and Gorgo in Theocritus’ Idyll Fifteen, of approximately the same date, and which also depicts a visit to a temple, though at a generic as well as cultic, and arguably also a geographical remove from Mimiamb IV. 5 Stammering was an affliction regarded as unseemly if not culpable (and before we respond with contemporary correctitudes about the ‘differently abled’, we might reflect that this and other disabilities were not unknown ingredients of the comic repertoire before that all but disappeared from our contemporary stage and media). The name ‘Batale’ may also indicate how she ‘stands’, or ‘goes’ (from bainein = to walk): standing, with an ample

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behind protruding, might assort better with the less well attested explanation of ‘Batale’ as having reference to the buttocks and lead us to translate her name as ‘Bumma’ (rather than ‘Stamma’). Alternatively, the meaning of the text (here needing restoration) might be ‘has turned out like Batale’ even the naïve Phile not supposing that the obscure Batale has had her statue placed in a temple notable for its artworks. Either way – and it can be both – it shows Phile comically misapplying Kynno’s little disquisition on the lifelikeness of the sculptures, so adding to the character-differentiation but also to the argument (which becomes argument for my preferred assignment of parts and names) that both women – albeit in unequal competition – parade their enthusiasm for these. 6 So Skinner (2001), to whom I am indebted for the reference to Hesychios – but who egregiously enlivens her contribution by suggesting as title to this Mimiamb, ‘Ladies’ Day at the Art Gallery’. Or alternatively, as has been suggested to me (by my dear husband, encourager – and superior research assistant in this book) ‘Broads do Cult and Art’. Perhaps justice lies somewhere between. 7 The fact that it is this episode that stands almost dead-centre of the ring composition should affect the claim (Cunningham (1966): ‘the raisond’être of the piece’ – yet at variance with his assertion in the same article that the poem is primarily a description and discussion of the works of art) that it is a ‘programme piece’ for an entire hypothesized book (see General Introduction). Rather, it provides occasion for a favourite topos, women at religious festivals – as in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazousai, and Theocritus’ Idyll Two – or, more generally, taking part in cultic activities, as Theocritus’ Idyll Fifteen and here: events recognizable to the audience and a characterization of two caricatured yet not untypical votaries – particularly entertaining to a masculine auditory such as that of the symposium (see General Introduction 14). Beyond the satirical (and freed from anachronistic importations such as what has been termed ‘the feminine gaze’), if any art-critical stance of the author must be read into this Mimiamb, it would suggest that a lifelike naturalism is an assumption of the naïve uninstructed – in which case the only alternative at that date would be nostalgia for the classicizing past.

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9 10

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Thus, when Kynno – who has clearly been there before – leads the way into the inner temple where is a painting by the great (and by now dead) Apelles, depicting the sacrifice of a bull, she is made to utter a vigorous defence of the Master’s ability to treat all subjects in a lifelike way. This surely is characterization rather than art theory: Kynno parading her knowledgeableness before the less assured Phile and before us her opinionatedness, all culminating in the characteristically overdone and at the same time bathetic assertion of the ‘treatment’ due to dissenters from her views. This interpretation fits with the best sense I have been able to make of the highly corrupt concluding two lines: namely that it is better to suffer the loss of a little bread – so declares the prudent Kynno – than to lose the benefits to health which the god offers in return. It also further justifies Cunningham’s assignment of names and parts (see Note 4 above). Attention has already been drawn to the inevitability of comparing this mime with Theocritus’ Idyll Fifteen – a dramatic piece probably written after 272 – in which two women with their slave girls go to the Festival of Adonis in Alexandria. However, despite the Mimiamb’s comparable opening, the lyric power Theocritus displays most potently in the Adonis Ode is lacking, while Herodas’ satirical wit is mordant and far less subtle. Both poems shed light on contemporary Hellenistic cults and mores, but both their locations and their intents are different. (See also my Introduction to Theocritus’ Idyll XV.) We have only to note the fact, ascertainable in numerous museums, that Hellenistic sculpture – all unlike that of the idealizing Classical period – loves to present subjects caught in some action of daily life. Such is the thorn-puller in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, such the boy with the goose in the Vatican Museum – of which lines 28–9 above are reminiscent (though clearly their objects are not identical).

MIMIAMB FOUR

Offerings to Asklepios Kynno, Phile, Temple Attendant (Silent: Kokkale, Kydilla) Greetings, Lord Paieon, thou who rul’st Trikka and in sweet Kos and Epidauros thy home makest! Likewise Koronis who bore you, and Apollo likewise; also that Hygieia thou with thy right hand touchest; also those other powers of these esteemed altars: Panakea and Epio and Ieso – greetings! Likewise we greet those physicians of direst sicknesses who destroyed Laomedon’s house and fortress: Podaleirios greetings! And Machaon, with gods as many as dwell at your hearth, and the goddesses, Father Paieon! May you deign to come hither and graciously accept this cockerel, the herald of our homestead walls, I sacrifice – mere afters to your feasting: we draw on no abundant or ready source, else would offer ox or pig all deep in crackling, no mere cock as thank-offering, Lord, for illnesses which you have wiped from us, stretching forth your hands of healing! You, Kokkale, place the tablet on Hygieia’s right side. PH Ah, dear Kynno! Such beautiful statues! Whoever carved this stone and who donated it? KY Praxiteles’ sons; don’t you see those letters carved on the pedestal? Praxon’s, son, Euthies, donated it. PH Then Paion be gracious to them and to Euthies, for works of such beauty! KY See that girl gazing upward to the apple! Phile! Wouldn’t you say that if she does not grasp it she’ll surely faint away! PH And, Kynno, that old man there . . .

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Offerings to Asklepios KY Ah, by the Fates, see how that little child throttles the goose! If it could be made somehow not of stone lying before our feet – you’ll declare it’s going to speak! Believe me the time is coming when men will be able to strike life even into stones! PH Yes, for do you not see, Kynno, how this statue stands, like Batale, Myttes’ daughter? If anyone hasn’t seen Batale in the flesh, yet looking only on this likeness, he wouldn’t need the real one! KY Phile, follow me; I’ll show you something lovely, – an object such as you’ll not have seen in a whole lifetime! Kydilla, go and call the temple-attendant. You there! It’s you I’m speaking to, and you just stand there gawping this way and that! Bless me, but she’s not paid one bit of heed to my instructions, just stands and stares back at me more bulge-eyed than a crab! Go, I tell you, call the temple-attendant. Swine! No lay nor pious mistress would have a good word for you, for in every way you’re downright lazy – and I call this god to witness, Kydilla, that I’m not prone to be provoked, yet you inflame me! Yes, I tell you, that day is coming – be he my witness! – you really will have cause to scratch your filthy noddle! PH Don’t be so easily vexed, Kynno; she’s a mere slave-girl and idly rubs her slavish ears! KY But day’s breaking; the crowd grows greater! You there – wait! The door opens, the curtain’s being loosed . . . PH Ooh, d’you see! Dear Kynno, what works of art! You’d say it’s Athene there carving this beauty! Hail to you, our Lady! But oh, Kynno! if I scratch this naked boy, won’t he be hurt – so warmly his flesh throbs in the panel! And those tongs, all silver! If Myellos or Pataitiskos, Lamprion’s son, should see them, they’ll pop their eyes out, thinking they’re real silver! The bull and the man who leads it – and the woman who follows and this hook-nosed man and that one with spiky hair! Don’t they all seem as though they look on the living light! But that

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Mimiamb Four I’d think it unbecoming in a woman, I’d have screamed, Kynno, afraid the bull would harm me, its eye so glaring sidelong! KY Of course, Phile, in whatever genre Apelles of Ephesus chose his subject, it would result lifelike; you’d never call him a finick painter! Whatever came to mind – even gods he was keen to tackle; and the man who can view him or his works and not find them the greatest – he should be hung by the foot from the fuller’s wash-line!

Temple Attendant Ladies, your rites duly performed portend you favour! 70 The omens point to prosperity; none have been more pleasing to Paieon than you have. Hail, hail Paieon! For these good gifts they bring be pleased to be propitious unto these women and to their kith and kin be likewise! Hail, hail, Paieon! Amen! KY Amen, o greatest! And might we hither return with health abounding, bringing greater offerings, with our husbands and our children! Kokkale, remember to carve its little leg off the cock daintily and present it to his reverence. Place the serpent’s dole in the hole in holy silence. 80 Dip the barley-bannocks; of the rest we’ll make our house-feast. And you[to other slave], remember to take the bread of offertory along, and see you with an open hand dispense it. With sacrifices it’s by far the best of bargains to lose a little bread in return for a longer life-span!

Mimiamb Five

Introduction This is the second of the three surviving Mimiambs (I, V, and VI) which take us inside a household for an intimate look at the lives of the mistress of that household and those about her. The slave Gastron (I have initially translated his name as ‘Gutsy’, since that is what it implies) has been selected – purchased at a good price (20), presumably for his virile looks, though his name might suggest he has become flabby with good living – to be what we must denote his mistress’ toy-boy and so treated as a favourite (14–15). Bitinna now accuses him of infidelity with one ‘Menon’s Amphitaie’ and is bent on vengeance. We see in Bitinna, though a distinct contrast with the gentler Metriche of Mimiamb I, another self-determining woman, accustomed to give orders and to be obeyed. Bitinna rules over a substantial household – line 17 indicates that there are more slaves than the three named – and disposes of the male slaves with an authority which suggests she has inherited the estate they presumably work, whether from father or husband: widowhood is a condition which, in some later Greek societies, could be emancipating for women. Both she and Metriche of Mimiamb I might be regarded as de facto higher-class hetairai, but there are clear differences. Metriche, whether legally or not, can be said to be ‘wedded to’ Mandris. Bitinna keeps a slave for sex  – as might be not uncommon with emancipated women of wealth  – yet that she has concern for appearances and reputation appears from lines 39–40 and 45–6.

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The (traditional) title, ‘A Jealous Woman’, suggests that Bitinna is presented as an exemplar of excess in jealous anger, excess being ever the Greek conception of sin, as in the motto ‘Nothing in excess’ (meden agan). Clearly Bitinna abuses her power, even by the standards of a slave-owning society that constituted the owner absolute master over his slaves. But is she also being satirized as incontinent in having recourse to a slave for sexual gratification? Certainly the stigma of sexual license in general would be less than Judaeo-Christian mores would later make it, while the availability of slaves, who could be commanded and threatened, would make conduct like Bitinna’s unusual only insofar as most women would be contained within marriage and ruled by husbands.1 The Mimiamb also gives us a realistic view of the inhuman methods found necessary to ensure servility in a society entirely dependent on its many slaves. (It is inevitable to compare the American South up to and beyond Emancipation.) At first Gastron tries with some dignity to deny Bitinna’s charge of infidelity (4–6), but his attempt to occupy the moral high ground infuriates her the more. At line 12 she is out to ‘disfigure’ him, probably by tattooing, which is the punishment he expects at line 26. When he decides to admit the infidelity and ask pardon – which he later claims was in hope of placating her (24–6) – this intention gives way to the order to have him so severely beaten that, had it been carried out, he must have died. The mention of the proverbial ‘case of the Phrygian’ (line 14, with which compare the end of II) may show that she has flogging in mind from the start, or she may be using the saying to refer more generally to punishment. However, Bitinna proves irresolute in her fury. Her jealousy may urge that Gastron be flogged to death at the hands of the public executioner (to whom could be assigned the corporal punishment of slaves) but this very jealousy already leads us to suppose that she still feels his attraction. Pyrrhies, his fellow-slave, is told to haul Gastron

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off for execution, and begins to do so with a will (50–1), having been threatened for his earlier procrastination (21–2). The slave-girl Kydilla, on a nod from her mistress, at whose side she has been from the beginning (8), intervenes with a passion that might betray a partiality beyond a sense of justice outraged: it has inevitably been conjectured that Herodas means us to understand that she is Gastron’s lover, but this can hardly be; we know that Bitinna will not brook a rival and, as we discover, Kydilla enjoys her own privileged position in the household. The warmth of her intervention, however, does serve to underline Gastron’s male personableness as well as the uprightness of her character, in that she acts out of a strong sense of that loyalty which should obtain between fellow slaves and for the lack of which she reproves Pyrrhies (50–1), further warning him that he will, in fact, rue it if the order is carried out. We learn that Pyrrhies himself has recently been in fetters; it may be he is a new slave who does not know the ways of the household and that the headstrong mistress of it is likely later to lay the blame on him. In warning him, Kydilla shows that she well knows her mistress’ arbitrary character and that her very rage reveals she is still infatuated with Gastron. That Kydilla has indeed voiced her mistress’ underlying feelings and knows how to appeal to them soon appears. Bitinna first changes her plan in favour of tattooing – albeit the phrase ‘in one and the same journey’ suggests the tattooing is to be preliminary to the flogging. Here, though, Herodas surely is graphically presenting the confusion caused by uncontrolled emotion; there is scarce point in branding someone who is imminently to be beaten to death and we sense, and soon see, that Bitinna’s resolve is weakening despite herself; the psychological realism is maintained as she emphasizes the preparations for tattooing: Gastron is to ‘be gagged and hung up Like his Honour Daos’ – probably a reference to a typical slave’s punishment in Comedy.2 Lines 65–6 imply that it is the old Delphic motto, ‘Know thyself ’, which is to be tattooed onto Gastron’s forehead: he is to know

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that he is no ‘human’ (his claim to dignity at line 24) but a chattel who must not cross his owner.3 Finally, at the pleading of Kydilla, Bitinna agrees to defer punishment until after the coming festival of the Gerenia. This is otherwise unknown but seems to be a local festival of the dead (67), probably involving libations of honey. Gastron, Bitinna is saying, will have an unhoneyed (i.e. a bitter) festival to follow it, but the deferment, perhaps implying a religious scruple about what she has been threatening, also suggests that she is preparing to overlook the matter.4 Kydilla is an interesting figure whose ‘quality of mercy’ is a foil to her vengeful mistress. Presumably born on the estate, she has been reared by Bitinna, who declares an affection for her equal to that which she has for Batyllis (67–9), her daughter – as we have inferred from 58–60 – and to whom Kydilla knows her devoted. This softer side of Bitinna’s nature contrasts with her harsh treatment of the male slaves, creating a complex character and suggesting a type of woman perhaps not unfamiliar in our own society, empathizing strongly with their own sex while regarding men with hostility or as sex objects merely. It is an attitude evinced also by the women in VI and we may suppose to have been not uncommon among Greek women, disfranchised by their societies to an extent hardly matched in subsequent Western history.5 That free women, even among the poorer classes, may have some self-determining status in a male-dominated society we have already noticed in Metrotime of III. Through Kydilla, Herodas shows us both that a slave (Kydilla herself) may have more human feeling than a free woman and how a slave (Gastron) is also a man who can be abused. That this is part of his intent is surely shown in the play on the contrast of man (anthrōpos = human being) and slave throughout the mime – also reminiscent of key contrasts in Shakespeare (such as that of folly and wisdom in ‘King Lear’). Bitinna holds that her favour has set the slave Gastron ‘among mankind’ (15,

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where I have translated it ‘in society’), thus encouraging him to have ideas above his station – and that this arrogance reveals his true nature, that of a ‘sevenfold slave’ (62) who must be made an example of (19–20). The stripping off of his cloak is symbolic of reducing him to his servile status: slaves did not normally wear cloaks; the fact that Gastron wears one is a sign of his rise to a superior standing in the household attributable to his personableness and consequent relation to his mistress. He would appear to be wearing nothing else. (The piece opens with Bitinna indicating his penis with a demonstrative ‘this’ and ordering it covered as he is led off – using to denote it a word meaning ‘without name’ (40).) It seems we are to understand that Bitinna has pulled off his loin-cloth just as the Mimiamb opens; as to the cloak – unless Herodas has simply been unable to resist two piquant but not very compatible details – we can speculate that Gastron, summoned from his work, has seized it to cover the strippeddown state in which he has been caught working and to lend him dignity before his mistress and fellow slaves. Gastron begins by taking refuge in the plea that he is but a slave (6) and at Bitinna’s mercy, but as her threats mount up, he tries another tack: he is but a man (anthrōpos), with human frailties. This plea is turned by Bitinna into a gibe at lines 64–6: a ‘man’, according to Greek ideas, should ‘know himself ’, which, paradoxically in this case, is the self of a slave. Bitinna’s prevailing savagery is summed up in Gastron’s weary plea that she shall not ‘drink my blood both night and daylong’ (7): the image is of a leech and carries erotic overtones; in Theocritus’ Second Idyll, ‘tormenting Eros’ is compared to a leech. It further intimates the totality of her unbalanced personality: the nightly demands made by her sexual voracity, with her proneness by day to jealous bouts of rage like the present – which Kydilla clearly expects to be allayed. Of course, the strictures of ‘nothing in excess’ and ‘know thyself ’ apply, in the eyes of the average Greek, no more to women than they do to

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slaves; yet Herodas leaves open the door to the reflection that, if Gastron is mocked by Bitinna for failing to make good his claim to be a man among men,6 she too suffers judgment in setting herself up to rule her household like a tyrannical master.7 Not for nothing does Herodas have her swear ‘by the goddess Turannos’ – which I have made into ‘Tyrannous’, as her own tyrannous nature is surely implicit in this otherwise unknown oath.8 There is no indication as to the location of this Mimiamb. From Bitinna’s masterful attitude, the number of her slaves and the allusion to a well which is not communal (10–11), we may suppose we are on a country estate; clearly Gastron is to be haled some little distance to town for execution, and the whole set-up is reminiscent of the New Comedy: of Menander, Plautus and Terence. There is a single neighbour, Mikkale (45), who may occupy an estate similar to Bitinna’s, along the main road to town, and there is also another route, which must be a country road since no-one is likely to show curiosity as to who goes by on it. Bitinna’s anxiety to avoid gossip, which we have noted, may relate in part to her not wanting it to be known that she fears a rival in Amphytaie, who is probably another neighbour; at all events she is not another slave, since she is given the patronymic, ‘Menon’s Amphytaie’. We notice that whereas Bitinna at first in her rage (11–13) wanted to make Gastron an example ‘to the whole neighbourhood’, her first sign of hesitation is when she orders his private parts – for which she professes a disdain both ‘Freudian’ and uncomfortably reminiscent of a certain kind of feminist raving – to be covered (39–40): a nice touch from which we infer her sense of his continuing sexual appropriation to herself.7 Thereafter she gradually comes to realize that her treatment of him will be seen as excessive, whereupon prudence, as well as self-interest – perhaps even a grudging pity – suggest withdrawal from her iron stance. Kydilla’s reminder of the date – we have met twentieths as holidays in Mimiamb I – and of another approaching festival seem to provide

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a pretext for clemency. – perhaps even an additional motive. The Gerenia are otherwise unknown, but would appear to be a probably localized, commemoration of the dead, to whom libations of honey are to be poured. Perhaps Bitinna beneath her arrogance is superstitious – even in her own way pious – and the reminder of the departed owner of the property – and it may be of the slave – whether her father or her husband or both, serves as scruple to her as heir. Perhaps she is reminded of retribution in an afterlife for sins of excess.

Notes 1 In considering Greek societies, whether Classical or Hellenistic (and importantly including the apostolic parts of the New Testament), we have to bear in mind that a frequent domestic pattern is a man in his thirties (likely to have done military or other state service) wedded to a girl still in her teens, and so in experience as well as legally her superior. In any case, behaviour such as Bitinna’s was, according to much ancient evidence, necessarily secretive; from the fact that she is anxious to avoid gossip (45– 6), we may take it that Herodas does not view her conduct as socially acceptable, any more than he considers the sexual practices of VI to be so; both poems are satirical and in both the women’s propensities are ludicrous because demeaning: surely the age-long response to sexual licentiousness. 2 As possibly in the lost Andria of Menander. 3 The famous ‘homo sum, humani nihil alienum’ of the slave in Roman Comedy – as in the Heautontimoroumenos of Terence – may derive from a common origin, perhaps Menander. 4 Di Gregorio (2004: 55) remarks that such withdrawals from carrying out threatened punishments of slaves are common in the literature. 5 Positive valuation of women in antiquity can seem rare – though less so in Hellenistic times – and the discovery of Herodas contributes substantially to what evidence we have. We may note, however, the fleeting evocation of a girl-child’s dearness to her mother in Theocritus’ Fourteenth Idyll (37–8 in my translation).

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6 Certainly we should be cautious in attributing to Herodas the intention of arousing our sympathy for a slave’s hard lot; rather his temperament as societal observer and artist leads him to depict things as they are – harsh but in the typical Greek view inevitable, human destiny being fated. It took many centuries for even the doctrine of the equality of men in the sight of God to change (at least in theory) the more normal human assumption – persisting even beyond the industrialization of society – that some men are (‘by nature’ according to Aristotle at Politics 1.1254a – who, as we noted, may be thinking of people of defective or low intelligence) little better than chattels to serve and be used by others. This assumption had made pre-industrial civilization possible (see also General Introduction). Gastron is one typical figure of a slave, and the accepted view that such are debased by their very condition would not serve to endear him to Herodas’ audience, alerted ab initio by his name (Gastron = Bellied) characterizing him as greedy and greasy- and with the slave’s shiftiness well known to us from New Comedy, he twists his excuses in accordance with what he hopes will get him off more lightly. 7 As we have observed, she is all along caught in the ambiguity inevitable in the sexual relationship of a woman with her own slave. We might compare the ambiguity which evolved in the English usage of ‘mistress’ (so Arnott (1971: 124)) though here we have the inverse: a man’s mistress is dependent on him and another (and inferior) word has to be coined for the woman who is notionally his equal: hence ‘Missis’, ‘Missus’, ‘Mrs’ – down to our hardly pronounceable ‘Ms’. 8 ‘Turannos’, in Greek originally simply a ruler or prince (though often nonhereditary), by Herodas’ time has decidedly taken on the negative colouring of our derivative, ‘tyrant’.

MIMIAMB FIVE

A Jealous Woman

Bitinna, Gastron, Pyrrhies, Kydilla (Silent) Drechon BI Tell me, Gutsy, is this cock of yours so sated that it no longer suffices for me to shuffle my legs to your tune, but you’re making up to Menon’s Amphytaie? GA Me? To Amphytaie? Have I even seen that woman you refer to? BI You drag out your prevarications daylong! GA Bitinna, I am a slave; you can use me at your pleasure so you don’t drink my blood both night and daylong! BI What a deal of tongue you have grown to boot, you . . . Kydilla! Where’s Pyrrhies? Call him for me! PY I’m here; what would you? BI This man – bind him! Don’t just stand but there untie the well-rope from the pitcher; and make haste! By heaven, (to Gastron) if I don’t disfigure you and make you an example to all the neighbourhood, don’t set me down for woman! Is it not the case of the Phrygian? And I am to blame, Gastron, Yes I, for setting you up in society! But though I erred then, you’re about to find Bitinna’s no longer the dupe you thought her! Look sharp now, that man! Off with his cloak, and you bind him!

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GA No, Bitinna, no! I clasp your knees begging . . . . BI Strip him, I say! You need to understand you are but a slave I paid three minas for – and plague take it, the day that brought you here! Pyrrhies, you’ll rue it:

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Mimiamb Five I see you doing everything but the thing needed! Tie his arms together – tight till the rope saws them!

GA Bitinna, forgive me this once; I am but human; I erred, but if ever again you catch me doing what you dislike, then you can tattoo me! BI Don’t you trifle with me – you can keep all that for Amphytaie with whom you tumble and treat me like a doormat! PY There, he’s tied securely. BI Watch he doesn’t slip his bonds! To Hermon take him, at the gaol: tell him to hammer in one thousand on his back, another thousand on his belly!

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GA Bitinna, do you mean to kill me without so much as inquiring first whether the charge be truth or falsehood? BI Didn’t you plead just now with your own tongue, (mimics) ‘Bitinna, forgive me this offence!’? GA Yes, because I hoped to quench your anger! BI (to Pyrrhies) You stand staring and don’t take him where I tell you! Kydilla, knock the villain’s snout in! Drechon, you are to follow on – See you look sharp now! – wherever he leads you! Girl, give this accursed wretch some 40 rag to cover his obscene tail! Pyrrhies, I charge you a second time, tell Hermon he’s to lay on a thousand on this side, on that side too one thousand; d’you hear? If you omit any part of what I tell you, you’ll pay for it – with interest! Be off, then! Only not by Mikkale’s, mind, but keep straight on! Stay! It’s as well I have remembered . . . Call, girl, run and call him before they get ahead! KY Pyrrhies, wretch! Blockhead! She’s calling! Heavens, people will think that he’s lambasting some tomb-robber, not a fellow-slave! Pyrrhies! See 50 how you’re hauling him brutally to torture, can’t you? Heavens! Within a week Kydilla with these two eyes will see you at Antidoros’ mill, your ankles chafed with those Achaean fetters you only just discarded!

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BI (bellows) You there, come back! No, bring him bound, just as he is and Tell Kosis, the tattooer, from me to come bringing his needles and black dye and this same trip shall make you speckled! Let him be hung up and gagged like Milord Daos! KY No, Auntie, I entreat you! Let him go now! So may your own Batyllis flourish and may you see her brought to a husband’s house and take in your arms her children: this one fault forgive . . . BI Kydilla, don’t you cross me or I’ll quit the house! What, I to let this sevenfold slave off? What she that met me would not spit in my face, rightly? No, by the goddess tyrannous! He claims he’s ‘human’ – Yet has not ‘known himself ’, so now he’s going to know it from the inscription on his forehead! KY (counting) . . . Today twentieth . . . In four days the Gerenia . . . BI For now I’ll free you. Keep your thanks for Kydilla, whom I love as I love Batyllis, since with these hands I reared her. But after we’ve poured libations to the departed, you’ll keep a second feast unhonied!

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Mimiamb Six

Introduction Mimiamb VI is to be taken in conjunction with Mimiamb VII, which forms its sequel. Metro, one of two ‘Women on Their Own’ (the piece’s alternative title), will also play a key role in VII, of which the main and titular character is Kerdon the Shoemaker, the subject of Metro’s question at VI 14–15 and of the explanations ensuing. Thus the topic of Mimiamb VI underlies the greater surface respectability of the sequel, that topic being the supplying of the aid to female masturbation here called a baubon (apparently from a Greek word meaning ‘to lull to sleep’) but elsewhere (as in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata 109) an olisbos (apparently meaning ‘slider’).1 Metro’s visit to her rather superior-seeming ‘friend’ is prompted by learning that she is the possessor of an especially fine baubon, and as she commiserates (15ff ) and deprecates (31ff ), working to ingratiate herself and learn who crafted it, she reveals her own gossipy and unscrupulous character – to be further filled out when in Mimiamb VII we find her using, and having used, all her wiles on the man who makes them and sells them dear. The present Mimiamb thus exhibits a private ‘low’ side of the life of these bourgeois women. For while the protagonists, Metro and Koritto, are outwardly respectable, with their slaves and their town connections and gossip interlarded with pious and proper expressions (33,47,66), the subject certainly is not, as appears from Metro’s anxiety to prevent the slaves from overhearing (12), and the secrecy with

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which the items are supplied, information being circulated among a coterie of townswomen conscious of themselves as a feminine society with its own code of honour among friends (34) and its recognized failings of untrustworthiness (21–2) and talkativeness (35). Thus they invoke the female deity, Adrasteia, who punishes excess (30) as well as Athene, goddess par excellence and also patron of craftsmanship, which here is assumed to include – with some irony as Athene is a virgin goddess – the cunning making of baubons (57). Other members of the town sisterhood get a passing mention, especially Euboule, whose untimely interruption of Koritto’s blandishments of Kerdon has already earned her the dislike of the former (68–9) and whom Koritto disparages as having abused her own kindness in lending a baubon by passing it on to ‘Nossis, Erinna’s daughter’ – for whom Koritto conveys disdain (29). Both names are striking as having ‘lesbian’ connections, Nossis being a third-century poetess who claimed to rival Sappho of Lesbos, and Erinna, her teacher and the close friend of the poet Baukis, to whom Nossis addressed a celebrated love-poem, ‘The Distaff for Baukis’ (see also Introduction to VII).2 A dead member of the group, Kylaithis, is piously commemorated by the sententiously correct Metro (47–8) as the mother of Myrtaline – who, being known by her mother’s name is presumably of unknown father and not – or not acknowledged as – the child of that other Kerdon whom Kylaithis is said at line 47 to have ‘used’ and who ‘couldn’t stitch a plectrum for a lyre’.3 Another, Artemeis, in an obscure and damaged line, is, without irony (except as regards Herodas’ audience), commended for her energy and talents as a go-between (72–5) and is used by Kerdon as his contact with other townswomen.4 As the daughter of the local tanner, Artemeis would have an easy connection with the shoemaker with a sideline in superior leather dildoes. Kerdon himself, unflatteringly described as to his physical appearance (51),5 is greatly admired for his craftsmanship. His name is from the Greek word kerdos, meaning ‘gain’ – though I suggest it could

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in the general way of slapstick also suggest kerkos, meaning a tail and hence penis (cf. V 40) – so further suggestive of baubons. That he sells these from his home and not his shoe shop is ascribed by Koritto to the prying of tax-collectors (54–5), but that this is not the only reason appears in lines 75 and 77: the wares have to be kept so secret that Kerdon would not reveal the name of another customer to Koritto. We do not know whether at this point in his career he is to be supposed also to sell his shoes secretly so as to avoid taxes; by the time of VII, however, he has become prosperous (see Introduction to VII) and sells shoes, at least, openly enough. In all this secrecy, no doubt the outrage of husbands is envisaged – even apart from the disparagement of their sexual adequacy already implied in the use of baubons and made explicit by Koritto (59–60). Kerdon, it seems (64, 77–8), stands to gain in other ways than financially – but everywhere female propriety is to be upheld (67).6 The claim (by Levin, 1976) that Koritto and Metro cannot be married women or they would feel no need for baubons is surely unsustainable; its propounder has just pointed out the irony of Koritto’s professing herself willing to engage in sex with Kerdon for the sake of the baubons he makes – and we already have her expression of dissatisfaction with what men can provide (59–60); moreover, the women’s insatiability is one element of the satire.7 Like I, Mimiamb Six concerns a visit. There is an introductory section in which Koritto welcomes Metro and they commiserate on the Hellenistic equivalent of ‘the servant-problem’ and a brief concluding section after Metro’s hurried departure, in which Koritto gives rather oddly stressed orders to the slave-girl assigned to her sideline in chickens, regarding the need to keep things (like baubons?) under lock and key.8 The centrepiece of VI, however, unlike that of I, is a complex exchange and the whole is less evenly balanced. Mimiamb Six is also like I in having alternate titles, ‘Women Friends’ and ‘Women on their Own’; the latter could have been added later

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to distinguish different pieces known by the former name, but has added point in that Mimiamb Six demonstrates how women talk in private, in contrast to its sequel, where they are in a frequented place and much has to be conveyed by innuendo (see Introduction to VII ). The domestic setting also recalls Mimiamb I and is emphasized at the close when Koritto instructs the servant in charge of the henhouse to lock up and count the chickens: an apparently reasonable precaution at nightfall7 – yet can it be nightfall if Metro is off to call on Artemeis before returning home, ostensibly to prepare dinner? That apart, Herodas has chosen to end in this way, leading up to Koritto’s closing observation, underlining her ‘careful’ character: her keeping a close watch on valued possessions – which include baubons (27) – and her suspiciousness of others ‘stealing a march’.9 This Mimiamb allows some indications as to dramatic location. That Kerdon is distinguished, by his accent, from one Prexinos (51–3), whom Koritto thinks he closely resembles, leads her to suppose he comes from ‘Erythrea or Chios’. The mention of a month called Taureon in the following VII will strongly suggest Asia Minor, where it is found in inscriptions. The island and city of Kos, near the coast of Asia Minor and the scene of II – and thus in the general region of Erythrea and Chios – would be not inconsistent with this evidence. Finally, this comparing of Kerdon with Prexinos, who is unknown and has no further function, may lead one to suppose that – as in the Old Comedy – at least some figures introduced are expected to be recognized by the audience (see General Introduction).

Notes 1 For later such implements, English has the curiously childish-sounding word ‘dildo’, but I have preferred Cunningham’s adaptation of the Greek

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baubon for these leather ‘phalluses’ which, it should be noted, are equipped with straps – those here (61) have more agreeably soft ties – presumably so that, like the phallus of comedy, they can be attached to the body for encounters by a woman aping a man’s sexual role. Whether used à deux by a pair of ‘lesbians’ – the word derives from Sappho and her associates on the island of Lesbos – or for strictly autoerotic purposes, the women clearly think it desirable to possess a pair of them, but Koritto has failed to get a second one out of Kerdon, who has reserved it for a more favoured customer (62ff, 75–7). This fits with vase-paintings depicting two baubons, and one in particular which seems to show a woman about to use a pair, one of them orally (Cunningham (1964) 34, notes 2 and 5). In my interpretation, it ties in – indeed rather literally – with ‘pairs of shoes’ in VII (for which see my Introduction and notes). 2 The coincidence might indicate simply that their names had become fashionable, accounting too for Mimiamb Seven where two styles of footwear are named after Nossis and Baukis. Some have seen reference to rival poets and a hint of a characteristically Alexandrian recondite layer of meaning whereby the craftsman Kerdon stands for Herodas himself and the baubon for his art – leading Stern (1979: 252–53) to conclude that ‘like the baubon Herodas’ verse has a superficial ugliness but contains hidden layers of meaning . . . the wares of Kerdon, like those of Herodas, are grotesque on the surface but subtle and strangely beautiful beneath . . .’ This may appear ludicrous, or at least to be stretching things too far in an attempt to redeem the poem from the charge of obscenity; what is undoubted is the association of these poetesses with Sappho and the Lesbians (see note 1 above); The names Nossis and Baukis, while not as notorious as that of Philainis (see Introduction to Mimiamb I), would raise an appreciative laugh in Herodas’ audience, more or less literary and essentially all male (see General Introduction p. 13): one might say the counterpart – and even raison d’être – of female coteries such as that evoked here. Cue masculine scoffing at women aspiring to poetry, and at the subjects and style of their verses. 3 An odd saying since, so far as we know, plectra were made of bone or other hard substance: possibly Metro is thinking only of the shape as penile. Otherwise, and unless she is being shown to be absurdly ignorant,

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4

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The Mimiambs of Herodas the absurdity is deliberate: meaning Kerdon couldn’t even make a useless object. She is given the patronymic Kandatis and is thus Kandas’ daughter rather than his wife. Greek women, unlike Roman women, did not leave the paternal family when they married: hence are known by their father’s name or, where he is unknown, by their mother’s, as Myrtaline above. We know from Plato and others that craftsmen were traditionally regarded as poor specimens of men, being small, round-shouldered from bending over their work-benches, and frequently bald (Republic VI 495de). The only allusion to husbands would seem to be the slighting reference to their virility (59–60), unless ‘someone’s’ being hungry and requiring Metro’s return home (81) is to be taken as meaning her man. At least on the face of it, it is reminiscent of Theocritus’ Idyll XV, the Adoniazousai (149, 150 in my translation), where Gorgo speaks of needing to go home and attend to her husband’s dinner. However, as Cunningham suggests, here it rather conveys Metro’s own ‘appetite for a baubon’ – which interpretation receives support from VII 38–9 (see also Introduction to VII). The probable relationship of Herodas’ Mimiambs IV and VI to this ‘mimic’ poem of Theocritus has been touched on in the General Introduction and I suggest that the twist in Koritto’s allusion here to ‘someone’s’ hunger is deliberately ambiguous, in keeping with the facade of respectability maintained among the sisterhood. It can also raise a laugh by reminding the audience of the topos at Theocritus’ Idyll XV – where it is unambiguous and without sexual reference. As already mentioned (see General Introduction) it further indicates the priority of Theocritus’ Idylls. It is in any case highly unlikely that two ‘respectable’, and presumably fairly young, women are unmarried, and even more unlikely that all the members of their circle – who are likewise interested in baubons – are unmarried. Even if they or any of them were hetairai, they would be under the ‘protection’ of men; thus this particular argument could only have force if they were celibate widows. This would seem a reasonable precaution at nightfall – yet can it be nightfall if Metro is off to call on Artimeis before returning home, ostensibly to prepare dinner? Alternatively, are we to suppose this order

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given merely in view of the mistress preparing to leave the house? The papyrus at this point is sadly fragmentary, but discernible are words for chickens and for selling and the reflection on those who will filch them even if you keep them in your kolpos. That word commonly means a fold and specifically the folds of the peplos over the chest where objects might be carried – hence it is often translated ‘bosom’. But a hidden meaning has been long suspected and Zanker (2009: 180) points out that the Greek words for ‘bird’ (unspecific) and ‘kolpos/bosom’ have known slang connotations of the male and female genitals respectively. The ‘bird’ here is specific: a chicken and also (in the likely reconstruction of the papyrus) fledgling/chick; still, we know little about such connotations (compare our own slang use of ‘chick’). In any case the inference from ‘chicken’ to ‘bird’ is an easy one and I suggest the whole nexus, as well as Metro’s previous reference to ‘someone’s’ hunger, attests to Herodas’ psychological realism. Intimated on both readings, is that, even as she attends to domestic matters, Metro’s mind is still hovering around ‘the baubon problem’. 9 Unaimiable traits which Freudian psychology would identify as ‘anal’, they contrast with the superior and fastidious tone the same Koritto adopts with Metro, professing to be generous with her possessions (23–4), critical of others’ lower ton (27–8) and mindful of her own (28–9,67), laughing archly when Metro reveals her anxiety to obtain a baubon (38–9). For her part, Metro plays up to her superior-seeming friend; though in imitating Koritto’s imperious high-handedness with slaves, she in fact falls into vulgar scolding (11–13). She is also more given to cliché, as are other of Herodas’ ‘common’ characters (See Introduction to I and passim). Koritto and Metro pride themselves as ‘respectable’ but they are in decided contrast to the would-be-respectable but impoverished Metrotime of III, whose excess of vindictiveness can be seen to be brought about by her hard lot, with which she grapples determinedly as she also stands by her frail and elderly husband. The bourgeois women of VI pass their time in gossip and sexual intrigue, as do the rest of their circle; only conventional stigma (34–5) attaches to their autoerotic or ‘lesbian’ pursuits, these being viewed rather as the way for a sensible woman to make an idle life pleasurable.

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The Mimiambs of Herodas We are not to assume that this permissiveness is shared by Herodas and his audience. Mimiamb VI is intended to entertain and, as usual, to satirize; to an extent it may be presumed to be exaggerating, as it certainly is ridiculing, social manners, and to be joining in age-old jesting on the subject of sex, and of the other sex in particular. The women of the satire ridicule men, as Herodas and the men of his audience (see General Introduction) are ridiculing women; thus while overtly and in intention, in what is a male-dominated society, the jest is about women, it none the less also yields aspersions on men.

MIMIAMB SIX

Intimate Friends

Koritto, Metro (Silent: two slave girls) KO Metro! (grandly) Pray sit down! (to slave) Get up, you! Bring this lady a stool! (to Metro) I have to tell her everything; (to slave) you, hussy, left to yourself you do nothing but lie about, by heaven, like some stone in the house, not a slave; yet when I measure your meal out, you count the grains, and if but so much drops off, the walls won’t bear your muttering and fuming daylong! So now you scrub the stool and polish it, when it’s needed? Swindler, reverence this lady; but for her I’d give you a taste of my hands! ME Dear Koritto, we both labour 10 under the same yoke! Day and night I’m barking just like a dog, bawling out these unspeakable girls! But the reason I’ve sought you out . . . Get out, blockheads! KO Get the hell out! All eyes, all tongues except when you’re taking time out! ME Darling Koritto, I beg you! Tell me the truth! Who was it stitched you (stage-whispers) the scarlet dildo? KO And where, Metro, did you see that? ME Erinna’s daughter, Nossis had it two days ago – what a stupendous find, by golly! KO Nossis! And where did she get it? ME If I tell, you won’t betray me? KO No, dear Metro, by these sweet eyes I swear no-one shall hear from Koritto’s lips anything you tell her! ME Euboule, wife to Bitas, she gave it her, but cautioned she shouldn’t let it be known! KO Women! And that woman will be the end of me some day! I pitied her pleadings, Metro,

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Mimiamb Six and gave it her even before I’d had a chance to use it! So she latches onto it as if she’d found it; she even makes it a gift to those she’d no business to! Farewell to such a friend – and she can look on someone else, not me as her friend! Lending my belongings – and to Nossis, who I reckon – though I’ll be sounding off more than woman should, but Adrasteia, don’t you listen! – if I’d a thousand, I’d not give her, for all her pleadings, even a mouldy one! ME My dear Koritto! Don’t let the bile rise up your nose so, just because you learn some stupid fact! An honourable woman bears all! I am to blame for this because I too much prattle! My tongue should be cut out! But what I specially wanted to ask you is: Who stitched it? If you love me, tell me! Why look laughing at me? Is this the first time you’ve seen Metro? Why so coy then? I implore you, dearest Koritty, love, don’t trifle with me! Tell who stitched it!

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KO Gracious, why ‘implore’ me! It was Kerdon stitched it. ME Which of the Kerdons; tell me! There are two Kerdons. One’s the neighbour of Myrtaline, Kylaithis’ daughter: grey eyed – He couldn’t stitch even a lyre’s plectrum! The other lives near Hermodorus’ apartment-block, where you turn off Main Street. He might once have been someone . . . Now he’s old. Kylaithis, the late-lamented – used him: by all her kin may she be remembered! KO No, Metro, as you say, it’s neither of these, but this man – whether he comes from Erythrea or Chios, I don’t know, but he’s bald and short – the image of Prexinos, you’d say, for you’d not find two figs so alike, except for when he speaks – and then you will know it isn’t Prexinos but Kerdon. He works at home, trades in secret; these days every doorway’s crawling with tax-collectors! But his works – what works they are! To see, you’d rather think them Athene’s handiwork than Kerdon’s! So I – and, Metro,

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he brought a pair! – My eyes fair popped out with excitement! Men don’t get their pricks – we’re on our own, it’s all right! – 60 so straight! Not only that, but the smoothness of sleep! They’ve dinky woollen laces, not thongs; a woman might keep looking and not find so considerate a craftsman! ME Then how come you let the second go? KO Metro, what did I not try, what persuasions not press upon him! Kissing, stroking his bald spot, pouring him wine with honey, fondling . . . I only stopped short at my person! ME If he asked for that, you should have yielded! KO True, but when the time’s wrong it’s unseemly. Euboule, Bitas’ slave, was in the offing; she’s been wearing our millstone down to slag all day- and night-time 70 to save her the four obols to get her own re-whetted! ME How did he find his way to you? Koritto darling, tell me the truth! KO Artemeis, Tanner Kandas’ wife sent him and pointed out our house. ME She’s always onto something, is Artemeis: always drinking deeper of the pander’s bumper! But since you couldn’t prize the two out of him, you should’ve found out who had splashed on the other! KO I made a dead set, but he swore he wouldn’t tell me! It seems, Metro, he’s also her lover! ME What you’re telling me means I must straight away set out for Artemeis’, to find out more about Kerdon. Fare well, Koritti! Someone’s hungry and it’s time we got going. You, poultry-maid! Bar the door and count those chickens to see they’re all safe. Throw them some darnel. There’s no way but thieves’ll rustle ’em, though you kept them in your – bosom!

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Mimiamb Seven

Introduction The action of Mimiamb VII takes place some time later than that of VI , with which it is clearly paired, for not only has Kerdon come up in the world and opened a shop – which is perhaps an extension of, or contiguous to, his home; the word I have translated neutrally as ‘place’ more regularly means a house1 – but Metro, who in VI (41ff) did not know who Kerdon was, by VII has become a very special customer of his (75) and a conduit for further custom. In keeping with her admonition to Koritto (VI 66), she has used her sex to attach him to her, though how far this has gone is not clear; Kerdon’s ambiguous and high-flown declaration at lines 73–7 could contain a cry of passion or merely be flattery of the type he judges the lady appreciates. We already know from VI that Metro’s cultivation of Kerdon has been motivated by his skill in making baubons. VII , on its surface, treats of Kerdon’s pitch to sell shoes to a party of women brought by Metro to his shop, none of whom is given any lines.2 But throughout there are indications that the ladies are also being introduced as prospective customers for the baubons which in VI Kerdon makes and sells in secret at home (VI 53, 54).3 Thus the audience is already alerted – as is Kerdon – from Metro’s opening lines, that the ‘cunning work of your hands’ can refer to more than shoes. Kerdon’s rejoinder also is ambiguous: on the surface it means ‘It’s lucky (literally in the Greek, ‘It’s not in vain’) for me to

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have this custom’, but it can also imply ‘It’s lucky for you that I’m willing to supply you with my top-quality baubons’. That the women’s real interest is in baubons accounts for their notable lack of interest in the shoes, hard though Kerdon appears, at least, to take advantage of the situation to make sales of these – at lines 77–83 actually fitting shoes on two women and praising the result, but at his initiative, not theirs and nothing in the text indicates that they in fact buy them.4 Rather, it is his ‘under-the-counter’ trade that interests them,5 and in this connection we should note two odd phrases. At lines 44ff, Kerdon implies that he will ask a substantial price ‘if you . . . want the authentic work of pairs’6 – an odd expression if used of shoes, since shoes inevitably come in pairs; but, as we have seen, there is evidence from vase-paintings that baubons might be used in pairs – and the women in VI certainly think it desirable to have two (see Note  1 to VI ). Thus this expression – also oddly circumlocutory if referred to shoes – is understandable as a cryptic reference to baubons. Then at line 52 Kerdon, challenged, names his price as one mina, adding ‘whether you look above or below’. Various explanations are offered for this, among which Cunningham (as also Zanker) accepts Headlam’s ‘whether you look happy or sad’ – meaning, presumably, ‘whether you like it or not’; but while it is an odd way of expressing this, its further significance springs into focus when it is seen that it can mean ‘whether you look at the shoes I am holding up or at what is in the box below them’. It can also suggest, ‘whether you look at the ostensible sale or at that for which it is a “front” ’. It seems to me more than likely that where Kerdon has Pistos get out all the boxes and invites the women to look them over themselves (31–2), accompanying action should show that in one or more boxes there is hidden a pair of baubons.7 Furthermore, although Kerdon initially has Pistos hold up what is clearly one of a pair of shoes, while he descants on its perfections, it would be inexplicable, were the context merely shoes, that he

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should climax in an extravagant prayer to Aphrodite, under her title Ruler of (the isle of) Paphos, for his customers to ‘have joy of whatever you yearn for’.8 Significant, too, is his connection of these ‘yearnings’ with the colour of the leather (19–20); we have seen in VI that its scarlet colour is an important feature of the baubon, and we know that the phallus of Comedy was red, that being the colour of heat (93) and of the penis in erection, so evocative of sexual arousal. Then too, at the point where Kerdon invites the women to look over the boxes themselves, he reels off a list of styles, some of which will contain double-entendre recognizable to Herodas’ audience as referring to baubons. The most suspect candidates are ‘smoothies’ and ‘scarlets’, both recalling the qualities of the article in VI (14 and 60). ‘Nossises’ and ‘Baukises’ could perhaps refer to styles favoured by the – ‘Lesbian’ as connected to Sappho (see Note 2 to VI ) – poetesses Nossis and Baukis, but in any case must evoke their amorous propensities and, like the name of the courtesan Philainis in I , be intended to raise a knowing laugh from the audience.9 (See also General Introduction and Introductions to I and VI .) It is noteworthy that Kerdon makes at line 78 what appears to be a verbal reference to a well-known line of Sappho (‘That man appears to me equal to the gods . . .’) But the plainest allusion to baubons surely is the proverbial saying about women and dogs both eating leather (39), a graphic enough allusion to the use they are put to and the ‘appetite’ they are to satisfy (cf. VI 81 and its Introduction). Again, that the allusion is cryptic only confirms that their use was a topic not to be spoken of in ordinary social contexts. It further suggests that it was nonetheless widespread. The contemptuous tone of it may strike us, but is hardly different from slights on women current at all times (feminists are free to add ‘in male-oriented societies’) or from age-old humour about sexual topics, particularly irregular ones.

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It has been disputed10 that the line has this cryptic reference, but apart from the difficulty of referring ‘eating’ to leather shoes, it has been overlooked that a variant of the proverb, found in Theocritus (X 10), uses a word (chorion) meaning ‘membrane’ – and hence, I suggest, food that is wrapped in membrane, that is a sausage: an association which surely has telling reference to the shape and structure as well as the ‘appetizing’ quality of the stuffed leather baubon.11 Following Kerdon’s ‘spiel’ about styles, the women, with Metro as their spokesperson, begin to talk prices – whereupon it transpires that those proposed by Kerdon are so outrageous as to make it evident that he is not over-concerned with selling his shoes; he can do much better than that.12 Even were he the only shoemaker in town – and he is not, or how would Metro in VI not know of him? – he could hardly rig his prices to that extent. The clear implication is that they are understood by all to be the prices not merely of shoes but of baubons, Kerdon’s being exceptionally high-quality specimens. A possible conclusion is that he is inviting the women to choose shoes on the tacit understanding that with them, and for the stated price, he will supply (probably in the same box – even tucked into each shoe) a pair of baubons. The ‘copper shaving’ (54) that would not ‘drop’ (from the price) ‘were Athene’s self the customer’ (we have again the irony of the virgin goddess envisaged as buying baubons: cf VI 56) must allude to the common currency in which Kerdon presumably expects his price will be paid. Kerdon frequently invokes the gods: significantly, at line 19, Aphrodite and at lines 45–6 Hermes, god of cunning; also Kerdeon or Gain (presumably his personal name-god) and Peitho or Persuasion whom he associates with Gain (since that is what his persuasion aims to bring him). It all forms part of his salesman’s patter, in evidence also in his reeling off of the styles of footwear stocked by him (32 ff ).

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Metro alludes sarcastically to Kerdon’s bombastic speech at line 41 and again at lines 68–9. I agree with Zanker and others that, where she becomes abrasive, she is countering his tendency to effuse about their relations (l0ff ), so maintaining a dignified front before the women she has brought along – though it seems one, overcome by giggles, breaks free of the group and retires sniggering to the doorway; alternatively this woman is not of the group, but a chance comer into the shop who has entered, stood by the door waiting to be served and noticed what is going on: either way, her laughter is to be shared by the audience. Kerdon, annoyed, offers her the pair he holds up at a price even higher than those he has been demanding; this, besides being an aggressive response to her laughter, can also have the advantage for him of suggesting to Metro’s group that he is making reasonable prices for them. He further insults the woman as whinnying like a horse (86–7): an expression that also conveys sexual innuendo.13 Kerdon’s reminder to Metro (90–1) to come specially for some ‘crab-shoes’ – even though he apparently already has some in stock (37) – will suggest, beyond being a gift to a clear favourite, that she is to be rewarded for bringing him custom – and perhaps for other ‘favours received’. He is at very least giving opportunity for another kind of assignation. His final riddling utterance about stitching the baitē (a coat made of skins) that warms him well (90–1) will also evoke the making of the baubon (as the skin of the sausage is evoked by association with the proverbial dog at line 38).14 Like his injunction to Metro to come for crab-shoes, so too, Kerdon’s offer to communicate with the ladies in their homes via his slave-girl (89) seems unnecessary where ‘sandals’ (37) are concerned, while ‘those things you like to slip on at home’ (89) will suggest more than masculine condescension professing not to remember the name of some feminine frippery. Kerdon is intimating to his customers that now that they have been introduced and made aware of his terms,

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they will know where to find him for those transactions not seemly to be conducted in open shop.15 Whether or not the women Metro brings to Kerdon in VII have an interest in baubons has been disputed. I trust my analysis has shown beyond reasonable doubt that baubons are the underlying subject of VII as they are overtly of VI . The obscurity in which they are wrapped, explicable in terms of the conventions of propriety, is no doubt increased by the intervening millennia and our reduced ability to visualize the interplay and verbal understanding between the original audience and the enactor(s) of the Mimiamb (see General Introduction). That one cannot but be struck by the contrast with the frankness of VI – a private conversation between two women in the home of one of them, where ‘we are on our own’ (58) – is because that is precisely what is intended. Although the women of VI are prepared to go to any lengths (VI 66ff ) to obtain Kerdon’s rare specimens of the commodity – Koritto with a demurral as to appearances and Metro in VII to avoid paying his exorbitant prices – baubons are not mentionable before the servants (VI 12–13) and the trade in them is by personal contact and discreet assignation in the vendor’s home. In the shop of VII, before Kerdon and his slaves and where passers-by16 or other customers (perhaps the lady with the horsey laugh) may overhear, we should expect them to be kept well out of the public eye and only indirectly discussed between shopkeeper and customers.17 Kerdos in Greek meaning ‘gain’, Kerdon’s name clearly signals his commercial character. The related word kerdo means ‘fox’ (i.e. the wily one), while the plural kerdea can also mean wiles or cunning, which is the point of the invocations of Hermes and Persuasion at lines 45–6, cunning being an attribute of Hermes.18 Thus, we have a complicated word-play, the sum of which is to characterize Kerdon as foxy – he has that animal’s own brand, the fox-mange, as well as its guile – and fond of gain. Another indication of this latter characteristic is his adaptation of a proverb, ‘the agora’ (the place

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of political debate but also of trade) ‘has need of deeds, not words’: Kerdon substituting what I have rendered as the English colloquialism ‘brass’ (literally ‘bronze ’, i.e. money) for ‘deeds’. In regard to gain it is inevitable to compare him with Battaros of II, a more forthright merchant of sex. Kerdon at least has an honest trade, though it is not that that brings him and his large family the luxuries to which Metro alludes (53–4). Shoemakers, as we know from a host of references, were proverbially low-class and poor, and we have noted examples of Kerdon’s low breeding. He professes to be concerned as to where his next meal is to come from (47–8), but despite his plea of thirteen idle children to feed (23), certainly exaggerates his neediness – again like Battaros in II . He is by now well set up in a shop with at least three slaves (two male and one female are referred to) and Metro points out that when an event such as a wedding takes place, he – by now the town’s fashionable shoemaker – can expect to make a killing from his legitimate business (60). At the same time, her dismissive commenting on prosperity so unexpected in a shoemaker indicates that it has been founded on his secret trade with herself and her friends in the dramatic time since VI when he was in business only in a small way and she had not yet found him out (VI end). It is in keeping with Kerdon’s bombastic style that his threats against his slaves do not appear to be carried out; they are, in his word, ‘warnings’ (9). In V, we saw threats that came near to being carried out and still might be at a later date.19 In the following VIII , Herodas, in his own persona, complains of his slave-girl’s proclivity for sleep, as does Kerdon here of Drimylos’, but in what seem good-humoured terms and only token threat.

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Notes 1 It has been pointed out that Kerdon’s selling of his baubons from home does not necessarily imply he has no shoe shop; however, that this is out of fear of tax-collectors (II 53–4) does suggest that at this point he is relatively indigent or starting out, whereas by VII he is prosperous (according to Metro at VII 51–2, and no doubt on the proceeds of his superior craftmanship in both shoes and baubons) and – as I and others interpret and as I claim to show convincingly – is conducting an under-the-counter – or probably under-the-shoes – trade in the latter. 2 Mastromarco (1984: 56–8) wishes to divide Metro’s part with an unspecified number of the women she has brought with her. In particular, he holds that lines 106–10 of Cunningham’s text (effectively 74–5 in my translation, which offers a conjecture for the sense of Cunningham 104–5) are clearly not addressed to Metro. However, that they are not addressed to Metro does not entail that others than Metro take part in the dialogue as given; indeed, nobody but Kerdon speaks thereafter. And that lines 73–4 of my translation are not addressed to Metro – as I agree they are not – does not entail that lines 74ff are not addressed to her. If they were, we would be left to suppose Kerdon to be making highly suggestive advances to a woman he has not met before and in front of others – trampling on the niceties which Koritto claimed restrained her at VI 67. On the other hand, if lines 76ff are addressed to Metro, they clearly allude – under guise of an immoderate compliment – to her previous cultivation of him and to the hopes hinted at in the concluding lines. Mastromarco’s other arguments I find even less convincing. 3 For the reasons which here appear, I agree with Cunningham (1964) and others that this is the situation in VII , against Lawall (1976: 165–69) and others and the modified version of Lawall proposed by Ussher (1985: 64, n.98). They of the latter persuasion seem to me to be too niceminded to suspect under the ‘respectable’ exterior of VII the innuendo, with its clear relation to VI , with which the unsqueamish Herodas seeks to entertain us.

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4 See General Introduction for this as evidence for the Mimiambs’ being acted. 5 Zanker (2009: 215) seems to follow Di Gregorio in preferring what he calls ‘a middle position’, namely that only Metro is complicit in the sale of baubons. Yet everything – the women’s indifference to shoes, the prices named – shows that these are what are really being mooted. 6 A literal rendering of the Greek. 7 It seems not unlikely that women buying baubons under the guise of shoes was a stock joke familiar to the audience – as condoms used to be slipped in with the change by barbers, following the question (which became a variety-turn stock-in-trade): ‘Something for the weekend, Sir?’ 8 A literal rendering of the (supplemented) Greek text; the papyrus is here defective and I interpret it as its sense is most probably to be retrieved. 9 ‘Crab-shoes’, too, could suggest red-coloured. From a reference to these (in Pherecrates) we know that this is a genuine style of shoe: perhaps a sandal with thongs radiating from a central round of leather, as a crab’s legs and claws from its shell. 10 By Lawall (1976). 11 Its Latin cognate corium, meaning skin or leather, is used by Horace in what is essentially the same proverb about dogs (corio being qualified there by uncto, meaning ‘greasy’, ‘fatty’, with overtone of ‘rich’, or perhaps ‘delicious’: Satires II .5.83). What all this indicates plainly enough is that an ‘edible’ and appetizing leather item is insinuated. It has been claimed (Williams 1959: 97–100) that these examples are both part of a series of proverbs different in meaning from the present (and from some other exemplars); these are said to relate not to dogs’ liking for lights or carcasses (that is, to eat them) but to their learning the trick of gnawing through their leather leads or tethers. To this it can be pointed out that even if these two meanings are distinguishable, the verb in the present instance means to eat rather than to gnaw through, and that this is the appropriate meaning to equate with female ‘appetite’ for baubons – which, as Cunningham points out, appear from vase-paintings to have been used orally as well as vaginally. Again the

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visual (dramatic) realization is indispensable in bringing out the point: here the comparison to a dog with a sausage. Furthermore, it is likely that ancient dogs, like modern ones, were normally chained up; the practice is not one that changes, if only for the reason that a dog tied up for any time with a leather lead is likely to strain to break it, rather than to gnaw through it. Plainly skin used for food or for footwear was less differentiated in days when processes such as tanning were homeindustries, so that the carcass from which it was proverbially impossible to separate a dog could be regarded under either light – as in Horace’s corio uncto above. 12 A century and a half previously, Aristophanes gives eight drachmae as price of an expensive pair of shoes, while nearly five centuries after, in the Dialogues of Lucian, a pair of shoes costs two drachmae. The mina that Kerdon proposes (50–1) is worth 100 drachmae: certainly not a serious price for a pair of shoes. The five staters Kerdon says Eueteris offered him (71), if they are of silver are worth four drachmae apiece, already an inflated price; if they are of gold, 20 drachmae apiece – hardly different from the four darics (a Persian coin, named after several kings called Darius) which Kerdon adds that he will not accept from her; but it accords with the prices he is asking his present customers if my interpretation of the damaged lines 71–2 (104–5 in Cunningham’s text) is right: that is, three darics a pair as an inducement, seven darics for three pairs as a bargain (74). 13 The word I have translated ‘giggling’ is said by Clement of Alexandria to denote lewdness. And the demonstrative pronoun I have rendered as ‘this lot’ could well indicate ‘this baubon’ or (better) ‘these shoes with accompanying baubons’. Kerdon has shown signs of blowing the women’s cover before, first when he speaks of his love for Metro and then, in defiance of her warning frown or other sign – accounting for his ‘Don’t contradict me!’ – when he bursts into most indiscreet praises of her attractions, made ludicrous, but also further suggestive, as recalling for the sophisticated audience’s edification some well-known lines of Sappho (77–8). Is it not conceivable that at this point we are meant to see him finally break the bounds of that correctness expected by his customers, and enunciated by Koritto at VI 66, by actually waving a baubon in the

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direction of the giggler (and the audience)? By no means impossible, even for a single actor. 14 If we assume the warmth referred to is that of sexual stimulation, either the crab-shoes are indeed a cover-up for a baubon, or perhaps more likely (if we are to assume that Metro has acquired a sufficient supply of these latter in the time between the action of VI and VII) for that for which the baubon stands, intimating that Kerdon anticipates sexual relations as suggested by 76–8 and by VI 64–5. Or both. The riddle thus unpacks as ‘Come for a gift of crab-shoes’ (baubon or sexual come-on), ‘for it’s worth my while to ply my trade stitching things’ (especially baubons) ‘which bring sexual gratification’ (to my customers and to me as Metro’s lover). 15 We have to suppose that references obscure to us would have caused knowing mirth in Herodas’ audience, as being familiar with the idea that women bought baubons under the pretext of buying shoes – and perhaps further aware of – at least receptive to – that sexual symbolism of the foot to which Freud notoriously drew attention (63–4). 16 Shops of course opened onto narrow streets. 17 We do not know who gave their titles to Herodas’ pieces, but whoever gave VI its distinguishing subtitle, ‘Women on their Own’, understood the distinction: conclusions which will appear of anthropological interest as illustrating sexual shame near the beginnings of European culture, and in particular before Christianity, to which it is popularly attributed in ignorance of such evidence as this. What, then, is the sanction that makes Herodas’ characters so reticent? A characteristic way in which Greeks explained ‘sin’ (literally hamartia or wandering, losing one’s way) was as excess, and this may be implicit here. We have found it elsewhere as the subject of Herodas’ exposés, notably of Metrotime in III and of Bitinna in V. More fundamentally, the doctrine of excess is a piece of characteristically Greek intellectualizing, in this case as regards that sexual shame (a manifestation of Homeric aidos) which appears a deep-rooted reflex in human behaviour. 18 The related word, kerdo, or ‘cunning one’, meaning a fox, is, as already noted, found instead of the normal Greek alopex, which last Kerdon uses at line 46, in a probably common play upon alopecia (‘fox-mange’) – still

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the medical term for a skin disease causing the baldness which at VI 50, Koritto gives as one of the distinguishing marks of this Kerdon – and Plato as common in workmen (see Note 5 to VI above). 19 Herodas’ very interesting evidence for the day-to-day treatment of slaves is in conformity with other literary evidence showing threats as a major recourse for controlling them and of course such threats would have at times to be carried out for them to remain effective. Insofar as Herodas is a moralist – which perhaps means insofar as he is a satirist – we have seen that it is the Delphic maxim ‘Nothing in excess’ which provides him, as it provided Greeks in general, with an ethical norm. We may assume that his propensity – if the surviving Mimiambs are at all representative – for exhibiting the abuse of slaves by their owners, bears reference to this maxim.

MIMIAMB SEVEN

The Shoemaker

Metro, Kerdon (Silent: a group of women, Drimylos, Pistos, a female slave, another woman customer) ME Kerdon, I’m bringing these ladies to see if you’ve some cunning work of your hands worth showing them. KE I’m fortunate, Metro, to love you! Here, place the larger bench for these ladies, won’t you? – I’m speaking to Drimylos: What, again, sleeping? Pistos, bash his snout in, until he pours the sleep out, or better – tying the thorn-brush to his neck should nicely keep him awake! Rouse up, Kerkops; stir stumps pronto! Perhaps you prefer wearing them in irons – they’ll clank louder than these warnings! Ah, now you give it a good shine up! Smooth-bum: I’ll shine your bottom for you! Sit down, Metro! Pistos, open the showcase – no, not that – the one higher! Jump to it! Bring down the honest labours of craftsman Kerdon. Ladies, Metro, what works you are to see! Belt up, glutton, and open the shoe-box! See here – you first, Metro! – the sole constructed of perfect hides: you too, ladies, look! See how the heel is fashioned, how fit out with cunning wedges: not a case of some things well done, others less – all’s equally crafted. Do note the colour! So may she who ruleth Paphos grant you have joy of whatever you yearn for. . .! There follows a section of papyrus of 17 lines too damaged to be read adequately for translation. The remains indicate that Kerdon expatiates on the fine points of his wares and their value to his customers, among whom is mention of Kandas, presumably the tanner whose wife Artimeis is

10

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Mimiamb Seven praised by Koritto as a go-between (VI 75). Finally on the troubles of a poor shoemaker: It’s a wretched life, a cobbler’s: no time for grub till evening; no time for booze till dawn! It ain’t all Mikion’s honey! And that’s without counting the thirteen brats I’m raising, because, ladies, they’re all idleness; even when Zeus rains they only know this burden: ‘If you’ve got summat, give it!’ For the rest they lie around like chicks, warming their bottoms. But the market, as it’s said, has need of brass, not speeches! Metro, if this pair here doesn’t please these ladies, he’ll fetch another and another, until your minds are satisfied that Kerdon’s telling no tall stories. Pistos, get out all the boxes! It’s right, ladies, you not return home without a good – investment! Look them over yourselves; here are all varieties: Sicyonian, Ambracian, Nossis-styling Or Baukis-; smoothies, parrots, Cannabises, slip-ons, button-up Ionians, night-walkers, high-boots, crab-shoes, Argive sandals, scarlets, manlies, flatties . . . Speak each her heart’s desire – so that you may perceive how dogs and women both devour things made from leather! ME How much are you asking for the pair you just now held up? And mind, don’t thunder or you’ll rather send us scuttling!

30

40

KE You make your own price, if you like; you calculate how much they are worth; the man who allows this is scarce out to rip you off! But, lady, if it’s pairs you’re talking and you want the genuine article, you’ll name some margin – yes, by this ashen head on which the fox has rested – such as to bring bread to a craftsman of smooth works! (aside) Hermes and Kerdon’s Gain, and you, Goddess of Gain, Persuasion! if something doesn’t land in our net and pretty pronto 50 I can’t see our cookpot faring better! ME Why d’ you mutter instead of with frank tongue naming what your price is?

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KE Lady, this pair’s worth a mina whether you look it up or down! Were Athene herself the client, not one copper would drop off the price! ME It’s very clear, Kerdon, how you come to have your nice place that’s full of knick-knacks and pretty things! Keep your eye on them, for come the twentieth Taureon, Hekate’s holding Artakene’s wedding, and they’ll need footwear – who knows, you rogue, but with your luck they’ll run to you! Or rather they surely will, so do you stitch up your money-bags for fear pole-cats pillage your minas! KE Hekate can come, but she’ll not carry them off for less than the one mina; nor will Artakene! Would you care to have a look at this pair? ME Isn’t it your good fortune, Kerdon, that allows you to touch the little feet that are touched by Loves and Yearnings! But you’re a scurvy knave and a rascal! You won’t get much out of us! That other pair there, for how much will you sell it to this lady? Blow out another bluster worthy of yourself! KE Eueteris the harp-girl haunts me daylong, yes, by the gods, she begs to have them for five staters, but she shan’t, nor for four darics; I hate her for jeering at my wife with gross insults! But come; if cash is a problem, I’m prepared to make it three darics: a gift! Plus these and these: they’re yours for seven, for love of Metro here! (To Metro) Ah, don’t deny it! Your voice could send a shoemaker of stone flying up to the gods, for yours is not a tongue, it’s pleasure’s sieve! And he stands not far from the gods, that man whom you open your lips to night and day! Bring here that little foot and let me place it on the sole . . . It’s perfect! You wouldn’t add or take away one bit! All fair things fit the fair! You’d say Athene herself cut out the sole! You too, there, give me your foot! Ah, you lot were fitted by a kicking ox with scabby hoof! There! If you whetted a knife against the sole, the work would not lie

60

70

80

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Mimiamb Seven so snug as snug it lies, no, by the hearth of Kerdon! You, Madam, by the door there, with the giggles louder than a horse, will you take this lot at seven darics? And if you ladies have other needs, for sandalettes or those things you like to slip on at home, I’ll send my girl here. And you, Metro, be sure to come to me next ninth for your crab-shoes. Yes, the man with wits inside his brainbox must stitch the goodly coat of skins that keeps him heated!

90

Mimiamb Eight

Introduction The final poem of those that have come down to us in anything approaching completeness is unique, having Herodas, in his own persona, recount a dream which he relates to his calling as a poet. Mimiamb Eight, indeed, might be regarded as less an interlude to be enacted than, in some respects, a narrative poem. Thus, although three slaves are addressed by name, none of them speaks, not even the slave called upon to interpret the dream, who merely provides the pretext for ‘Herodas’ ’ own explication (so far, that is, as we can tell, for large sections of the poem are lost owing to the damaged and fragmentary state of the papyrus).1 Yet even though one may assume the poem to be a monologue, it involves the ‘presence’ of the three slaves addressed and whose wintry waking hour sets the scene. It is thus only at a remove from the construction of II, consisting of Battaros’ speech to the jurors, only briefly broken in on when he calls for the law to be cited, the Clerk of the Court reading out the law being thus less a participant in dialogue than a stage prop (see Introduction to II). Yet even with the virtual monologue which is II, we know we are in the presence of a court of law and are continually conscious of Battaros’ likely effect on the judges, who thus are also present to us. In VIII, after the introductory section, and despite the invocations of the slave Annas at lines 12 and 25 (14 and 43 in Cunningham’s text), the narrator (clearly Herodas himself and from now on to be so

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named) addresses not even so much his ‘stage’ audience as us, the wider world, directly, in what becomes an implicit apologia for his career and art. The scene which frames the dream is rural, presenting the narrator as a small farmer, so that it is tempting to suppose Herodas is evoking his own actual household.2 This setting is evoked by the realistically sketched ‘dialogue’ with his slaves before the narrative of the dream takes over; this, being situated within a mimic context, conveys dramatically the powerful effect on Herodas the dreamer, and his urgency to have it interpreted and to offer sacrifice (10–12) on account of it. Before this, all has opened deceptively ordinarily with the firstperson author (‘I say’ (phemi) 5) on his farm, waking before sunrise – and before his slaves (3), whom he rouses, scolding them for not being already up: but, we may note, more humorously and less roughly than Kerdon’s bullying tone toward Drimylos at the beginning of VII. We recall that sloth was also the charge in IV (40ff ) and VI (2–9) – in those cases joined with the implication that the slave’s labour does not repay what he or she eats. To this Herodas does not stoop, though there is the (empty) threat to use his stick to awaken the slumbering Psylla – a detail that suggests the dreamer (as distinct from his alter ego, the athletic champion of his dream) is not young.3,4 Two of the slaves are female, of whom Psylla is sent to ‘pasture the sow’ (6–7)5 and Megallis is employed at wool-work (10). Of her Herodas demands a head-band such as was worn by Greeks for festive and religious occasions, being a woollen band entwined with appropriate plants: here probably ivy, plant sacred to Dionysus and with which the god is crowned in the dream (20). Thus we infer that it is to Dionysus, god of nature, wine and mirth, but also of drama and poetry, that the dreamer is intent on offering sacrifice. The third slave is most probably male and called Annas.6 To him Herodas turns to confide the strange dream he has had, and which we

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have to piece together from the remains of both his narrative (14–35) and his interpretation (35ff ). The dream appears to fall into two parts. In the first, Herodas has been dragging a goat through a rocky cleft when it is seized upon by goatherds; in the second he is taking part in a festival of Dionysus. At such festivals, as we know (for example from Vergil’s Georgics II 380ff ) the sacrifice of a goat was followed by games, making it likely that the goat is the link between the two parts and that its sacrifice at the festival is the destination to which, in his dream, Herodas has been dragging it. But before the latter episode, someone turns up who is evidently the god, since he is clad in the fawnskin, ivy and high boots associated with Dionysus – the last being the cothornos or buskin normally worn by women or tragic actors and so suggesting both his ambivalent sexuality and his histrionic character.7 There ensues the rustic game known as askoliasmos – mentioned in the passage of Vergil cited above, as well as elsewhere in connection with festivals of Dionysus. This consists in seeing who can longest trample down or dance on – whichever way it is viewed, a stepping motion is indicated – a blown-up and greased wine-skin. This Herodas interprets symbolically as a test of poetic skill in which he triumphs,8 but while he is treading the wineskin gamely beneath his feet, he is threatened by an old man wielding a stick. By this figure Herodas has often been assumed to represent ‘Hipponax of old’ (the literal rendering of line 46), originator of the choliambic or ‘limping’ variant on the iambic trimeter: in adopting this as the metre for his Mimiambs, our poet – the assumption goes – has in effect issued a challenge to the choliamb’s master.9 But whereas the choliamb or ‘limping iamb’ has come to be identified with Herodas in the Mimiamboi – evidently his most original and ultimately ‘successful’ work – it is sufficiently probable that the more common iambic metres should be those for which he, at the point in his life projected by the dream, recalls himself as chiefly

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known and as mounting a challenge – an upstart youth – to established older poets. Indeed, at line 43 he appears to allude, perhaps humorously, to other work by the word epea – which (like our derivative ‘epic’) applies normally to ‘heroic’ and certainly serious verse. Epea appears qualified in the next (defective) line by iambōn (‘of iambics’); neither term seems to indicate choliambs.10 As I claim to show,11 the question of what must be Herodas’ missing oeuvre is raised by his dreamaccount’s symbolism and bound up with the identity of the ‘old man’. But we return to the goat, which, at the outset of the piece, Herodas is dragging along, which is subsequently seized upon, divided up and eaten by goatherds, and which he himself interprets (37) as a gift (the Greek dōron has often the sense ‘gift of honour’) awarded him by Dionysus. Now the Greek for ‘goat’ is tragos – and the word we have inherited from that word, ‘tragedy’ – in Greek, tragoidia – means literally ‘goat-song’. An ancient explanation of this is that in early days the prize awarded for the performances that came to be so-called was a goat: precisely Herodas’ ‘gift’ in his dream, and moreover somehow associated with the ‘prize’ (aethlon, which word connects to our ‘athlete’) that he earns by maintaining his supremacy on the wineskin. This would quite normally be a goatskin, and might be filled with wine – another Dionysiac symbol for poetic inspiration – as the competition’s prize. That it is so filled, I suggest is confirmed by the adjective ‘windless’ (apnoun) and its associations, at line 42.12 ‘Goat-songs’, or tragoidiai, did not originally have the narrower sense which, from their development at Athens as heroic dramas, passed into later usage, nor did they necessarily deal with ‘tragic’ events in the derivative modern sense.13 Rather it seems likely that it was from the choruses – the original ‘goat-songs’ in honour of Dionysus (to which dialogue was a later addition) – that ‘tragedy’ received its name at Athens. And in contradistinction to ‘tragedies’ (in this original sense) would be light or comic verses or interludes, most certainly including that Ionian invention, the ‘limping iamb’, or choliamb, which

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travesties the straightforward iambic metre which Aristotle claims14 is the closest to natural speech – and which, persisting as the accepted metre of serious poetry (or tragoidiai), was that in which a beginner poet would normally aim to make his mark. The ‘old man’, on this theory, would be a notable writer of iambic poetry whose pre-eminence Herodas’ own iambic work has challenged: not, therefore, Hipponax, who is specifically identified as Herodas’ master in choliambics. The next most favoured identification has been Herodas’ contemporary, Callimachus, the recognized arbiter of Alexandrian poetry. Without going into technicalities, we may sum up the arguments against him in the words of Cunningham: ‘To all appearances he (Callimachus) and Herodas would have been allies, not opponents, in any literary dispute.’15 Moreover, poetic convention regularly portrayed ‘the ancient’ poets as old men, whereas Herodas, a near coeval of Callimachus, is portrayed in the dream as youthful, a vigorous athlete.16 Iambs, while universally the idiom of verse of many kinds, were in a special sense connected with invective and the work of those known consequently as ‘iambographers’, of whom the sixth-century B.C. Hipponax was a famous exemplar, writing in both straight iambics and the choliambic metre he invented and which Herodas uses for his Mimiamboi. But by far the most renowned as a redoubtable lampoonist and the inventor and ‘grand old man’ of iambography, was the seventhcentury Archilochus.17 That Archilochus is the old man of Herodas’ dream, to whom Dionysus declares him equal, is my conclusion, and there is a further pointer, which would not be lost on ancient audiences: the portrayal of the old man as angered by Herodas’ claim to supremacy; Archilochus was famous for anger! Moreover Hipponax himself was said to have learned from him, though also to have carried forward the genre in more dramatic ways. Thus in Herodas’ dream, when the young man (33 – unmistakably Dionysus) proceeds to declare him and the ‘old man’ equals in the

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contest, Herodas, I maintain, is hereby claiming to be accepted on the highest authority, that of the god associated with ‘tragedy’, as the equal of Archilochus in poems of straight invective, while in the choliamb he proclaims himself the pupil of Archilochus’ disciple, Hipponax. This, I further venture to suggest, explains his performing twice (26) upon the wineskin18 – once in honour of each genre and his master in it. It is Dionysus who has presented him with that poetic ‘gift’ that is symbolized by the traditional ‘tragic’ prize of the goat which will be seized on and ‘devoured’ (scilicet) by those critics the dream has presented in the guise of rude goatherds.19 And if that were not enough to stand up my thesis of the two masters, in the concluding lines of VIII – regardless of whether we read ‘of (ex) iambs’ or ‘of six (hex) iambs’, and despite the papyrus’ lacunae – Herodas has written of its being his ‘second’ skill (filling out gnōsis or gnōme) to sing choliambs. He hardly could be plainer! Finally, we observe that the dream is indeed dreamlike in its sudden changes of scene and activity, suggesting that Herodas could be describing – even if embellishing – an actual dream. For which and for the several reasons that have appeared, and although we have it only in a fragmented state, VIII is a most interesting piece, and a forbear, with Theocritus’ Seventh Idyll (different though that is in tone) of what became known in literature as the ‘bucolic masquerade’, whereby through a fictitious scenario the poet comments on his own work and standing. Herodas’ own concluding words state that his audience consists of the progeny of Xouthos, ‘my own Ionians’ (the Ionians’ eponymous founder, Ion, being the son of Xouthos). This constitutes Herodas’ only surviving indication as to his location in the Greek world of the third century B.C. and accords with the siting of at least II on the Ionian island of Kos. Since Hipponax was a native of Klazomenai on the Ionian seabord, and Archilochus of the Ionian island of Paros,

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Herodas can be seen in this expression – as in this poem – to be placing himself geographically, generically and culturally among their descendents and heirs.

Notes 1 The gaps in the text present an obstacle to understanding as to translation. I have attempted to fill them where at all feasible, using what I find to be the plausible conjectures of scholars, plus one or two of my own. I have indicated substantial lacunae by leaving lines truncated in the English metrification, followed by reconstructions of the general sense in bold type. 2 This may be autobiographical or it could be a literary device, as when Theocritus depicts himself and companions in a rustic setting in Idyll VII, a poem with which the present one inevitably provokes comparison. In Theocritus’ poem – probably written first – the setting is patently idealized and he uses pseudonyms. Herodas’ tone is everyday realistic and he appears at no pains to conceal his identity. 3 The word is found elsewhere for old men’s staffs, whereas a more generic word is used at line 30. 4 The ‘Latmian sleep’, of which ‘Herodas’ complains hyperbolically, refers to the legendary sleep without end of Endymion on Mount Latmos in Caria. It seems to be proverbial. 5 ‘Sow’ being a standard reference to female pudenda, it suggests a double-entendre. We might compare the Americanism, ‘Get your ass out of here’. 6 More likely than female and called Anna, but both are Semitic names and it may be that slaves of Semitic origin were commonly credited with or claimed this ability; we recall how in the Bible Joseph, as a slave in Egypt, was known as an interpreter of dreams. 7 As we know (signally from Euripides’ tragedy Bacchai, to which the present poem surely owes something – as must Theocritus’ twenty-sixth Idyll), Dionysus – only later tamed into the genial Roman and Renaissance

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Bacchus – was for the Greeks originally a potent spirit of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’. The sparagmos or tearing and eating of wild animals was a feature of the Dionysiac cult, the ritual and the eating of the raw flesh making the worshippers partake of the god’s power. In Theocritus’ poem just cited, as in Euripides’ tragedy, the ritual achieves its full sinister character as human sacrifice. In Herodas VIII, however, it is not clear that the primitive sparagmos is envisaged, for though the Greek words I translate ‘by force’ might suggest it, yet the animal appears to have been skinned. The defective line after 21 of the text yields ‘And I did not skin (it)’ (with emphasis on the ‘I’) – and the words meaning ‘divided up’ and ‘feasted’ (37–8 and cf. IV 83 and its Introduction) more naturally suggest a ritual sacrificial offering. 8 I have defended the reconstruction here in detail (Rist 1998). 9 The identification of the old man with Hipponax has been supported by the reference to the stick (32), as appearing to echo a known line of Hipponax – even though the echo is confined to two key words, nor do we know that Hipponax there characterizes himself as an old man, nor even that he is speaking in his own persona. The inference thus reduces itself to the proverbial man searching for his lost wallet (only) under the street-lamp! That by the aggressor Herodas intends Hipponax is further rendered problematic by the fact that at lines 44–5 (that is, immediately after another reference to ‘the aroused old man’ in line 44) Herodas treats Hipponax as his revered master in the choliamb. It is probable that the concluding lines which follow would provide the key to the enigma, but the papyrus here is too defective for much to be made of them; still I have offered elsewhere an emendation which would imply that it is more generally for an output in iambic (rather than Hipponactean choliambic) verses that the ‘old man’ bears Herodas a grudge (46–7). To those who object on technical grounds to the reading I have translated ‘verses of six iambs’, it may be pointed out that my interpretation, while it would be confirmed by this reading, does not depend upon it and will still stand if the reading ‘verses out of iambs’ is retained. Finally, it is worth interposing a note on Herodas’ declaration which I have rendered ‘I’ll perish still aloft here’ (32), taking him to mean, ‘I’ll

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remain on the skin if you kill me!’ (my ’I’ll’ being the ‘will’ of determination, not of futurity). This very literal meaning has been overlooked and explanations sought for reading ‘I’ll die for the land’ (taking ‘huper’ in its secondary sense of ‘on behalf of ’ rather than plain ‘above’). This surely in the context yields less good sense; the best we could do would be to suppose it an idiomatic saying or commonplace with reference to dying in battle or for one’s country. 10 This at very least would seem to confirm a body of non-choliambic work – nor, given the extreme paucity of either surviving work or ancient references to Herodas, is it much of an argument to protest that we have no explicit mention of his writing either ‘heroic’ verses or the ‘straight’ iambics that were the commonest of metres – and so that in which a young poet might be expected to start out. Both Hipponax and Callimachus wrote in both iambics and choliambs, even though they became best known for the one or the other, and it is a priori unlikely that Herodas confined himself to the one, any more than did they. My claim for VIII as evidence that Herodas wrote also in noncholiambic metres has been resisted – yet even apart from what in VIII itself indicates this (see Introduction to VIII) – and indeed lends point to the dream scenario – there is some early evidence for his having done so. The scholiast to Nicander (on Theriaka 377) actually tells us that Herodes (as he calls him) wrote in ‘hemiambs’ – that is ‘half iambic’ lines or, as regularly understood, iambic dimeters; he helpfully quotes some four or five lines in illustration. This at very least indicates that our poet in his youth experimented with different iambic metres. Moreover, a letter of the younger Pliny (4.3.3, and see General Introduction, p.  2) compares a friend’s poetry to ‘Callimachus or Herodes’ specifically as elegant and ‘sweet’: qualities regularly ascribed to Callimachus, but which hardly describe the Mimiambs’ forceful and scathing tones! 11 I first set out this interpretation in 1998; it has been denied but never effectively answered by the sceptics. 12 While various other explanations have been offered for the Greek adjective – In particular Crane (1986: 85–90) prefers ‘airtight’ which, however, need not contradict my interpretation – I suggest that we are

128

13

14 15 16

17

18

The Mimiambs of Herodas

intended to look further back to the fragmentary line 37 (in Cunningham’s text) which yields the names of Odysseus and another skin bag, ‘the gift of Aiōlos’ – hence to the Odyssey’s account of Aiōlos, god of the winds, presenting the hero with three of the four winds confined in such a bag as an assurance of fair sailing (Odyssey 10.19). On this reading, whereas Odysseus’ bag is full of wind(s) – which ultimately are loosed from it – Herodas’ wineskin is ‘windless’: that might mean (as I suggested in 1998) that its breath content is still. It now however seems to me more probable that it is simply filled with wine, itself the suitable prize for a game in honour of the wine-god. This reading my offering for the defective line 45 (Cunningham: my 26–7) makes clear. They seem to have originated among the Dorians as non-dramatic, lyric poems, and the word, retaining its original sense to the Greek ear, persisted as indicating any serious poem; thus, we have Homer quite naturally called a writer of ‘tragedy’ in Plato’s Republic (605c11, 607a3) and in Aristotle’s Poetics (1449a). See ‘Iambics’ in the General Introduction. Cunningham 1971: 16. Callimachus’ divergences from Hipponax in the composition of the choliamb might explain Herodas’ emphasis on the latter as his master in that metre. Invective was certainly regarded as serious verse and the fragments of Archilochus, including some long ones of which the recently recovered Cologne papyrus – a scathing attack on a woman – is the most famous, amply support its and his character as received. Dionysus is further a god of poetic inspiration, conceived as coming from nature in the wild. It is inevitable to compare with Mimiamb VIII the Seventh Idyll of Theocritus, evoking the occasion of his acceptance among the number of ‘rustic’ poets, also mediated by the mysterious figure of the poet who ‘looked like a goatherd’. (See Rist 1978, Introduction to Idyll VII .) In his Seventh Idyll, Theocritus symbolizes his poetic inspiration by the staff of wild olive-wood with which the goatherd-poet endows him, symbolizing his inspiration as pertaining to Athene, to whom the olive was sacred. Since both deities were worshipped at Athens, both are therefore associated with the dramatic rituals which culminate in ‘tragedy’

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in its more modern sense – born from the rituals of the worship of Dionysus. Accordingly, we may see these rituals as did their Greek audiences: the cruder, more rustic aspects as owed to Dionysus, the more ‘civilized’ to the Goddess of the City, Athene. 19 The goatherd is by tradition the lowliest of herdsmen, a figure closebound to nature: hence a literary mask for a ‘rustic’ poet in Theocritus’ Seventh Idyll. We may take it that these critics, as perhaps also the other ‘rustic’ contenders in the wineskin-game, are contemporary poets – among whom well known to us are both Callimachus and Theocritus; certainly ‘goatherds’ might seem to suggest the bucolic poets, Theocritus and his school. And if these are intended, it need not tell against the supposition of some that the phrase ‘among the Muses’ (40) refers to the Museum (‘Institute of the Muses’) of Alexandria (cf. I 27); for although this was primarily the home of Callimachus and the poetic establishment he gathered about him, it appears that Theocritus spent some time in Alexandria and may well have left imitators there. I thus identify the ‘many’ who – as the goatherds of his dream – ‘pluck the mele’ (the limbs: we should say ‘body’) of Herodas’ oeuvre (40). The Greek word melos (plural mele) means both ‘song’ and ‘limb’, an ambiguity Herodas deliberately exploits and which I have attempted to convey in my translation. It is hardly a word applicable to ‘low’ verses like the swingeing choliambs, but could be used of a ‘body’ of work, which, even if it includes these, has ‘higher’ iambic claims.

MIMIAMB EIGHT

The Dream

Herodas in propria persona (Silent: Psylla, Megallis, Annas) Get up, Psylla, my slave! Till when will you lie snoring while thirst rends the sow? Waiting for the sun to creep in and warm your fanny? How do you not wear out your ribs with slumbering your nine-year nights, you tireless sleeper! Get up, I say, and be so good as light up the lamp and send packing that noisome sow to her pasture! Mutter on and scratch until I come over And soften that pate with my cromach! Megallis, you too, wretch, in Latmian slumbers? It surely can’t be wool-work wears you out, for here am I in urgent need of a wreath for a ritual and not a scrap of fleece can we find in this house! You wretch! Get up! And you be pleased, Annas, to listen to my dream! Those wits you warm are wise ones!

10

Methought I was dragging a goat, well-horned and well-bearded, through a long cleft, when [suddenly] . . . out of that defile even as dawn was breaking came goatherds and I get beaten, though nowise was I robbing them . . . . The following twelve lines are fragmentary, the first four so as to be unintelligible, though the dream’s interpretation will make it appear that the goat is seized, torn apart and eaten by goatherds. There follows what is recognizably a description of the god Dionysos. He was clothed in a saffron shift that lightly clung round him with a mantle about his shoulders of dappled fawnskin over the tunic. His head was wreathed around with ivy clusters. Buskins he wore . . . [fastened] with a lace . . .

20

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From the following six lines, also fragmentary, can be gleaned reference to the askoliasmos (See Introduction and my note to 45). And so we perform the rites of Dionysos, some like divers hitting the ground with force, head first into the dust, and others turning head over heels – all one confusion, Annas, of laughter and pain – when from that rout I alone was seen to leap upon the prize twice over, and the folk halloo’ed as they saw me [trample the] bounding winebag. . The following ten lines are all but non-existent. By the end of them a hostile old man has appeared and challenges Herodas’ possession of the skin. Breathing wrath, spurning with his heel . . . . he began to utter threats, as underfoot I trod it: ‘Begone – out of my sight, lest, old though I be, I bring you off that skin with a straightdown blow of my stout cromach!’ And I returned answer: ‘Take note, all you present: Though the old man [attack me], I’ll perish still aloft here! And I call to witness this youth who said we both have claim to the skin!’ And even as I beheld this, the dream faded! Pass me my cloak . . . Thus perchance [the dream goes: for as] I dragged the goat from out the gully, even such my gift from fair Dionysos! [And as] the goatherds divided it by force and accomplished the rites and fed off its carcase, even so will many rivals pluck at my verse’s limbs – my labours among the Muses [just as I dreamed it!]. Yet I alone was seen to hold the prize, though many trod the windless wine-bag; and even though I shared it with the angry ancient, yet have my lays of six iambics brought me to renown – and, by the Muse my teacher, so also has my second [skill]: to sing lame verses following in the limping tracks of old Hipponax to the future progeny of Xouthos, my Ionians!

30

40

The Fragments

Introduction Mimiamb IX has survived in the papyrus as 13 lines, most of them so damaged as to consist only of odd words or parts of words. The title assigned to the piece is ‘The Women at Breakfast’ (Menander has similar titles). Children are referred to in it and perhaps discussed, but too little remains to provide for coherent translation. Four further fragments have come down to us in quotations, three in the works of the fifth-century bishop John of Stobi (Stobaeus) and one in the collection of Table Talk of the second-century Athenaeus. This last is given the title ‘Women Working Together’ and consists of a single line with perhaps erotic reference. Of the passages in Stobaeus, one has the probable title ‘The Song’ and is addressed to a man on approaching the age of 60. It proposes he avoid the decline of old age by – presumably – suicide. The opening image of the revolving years has indeed a lyric power and the double repetition of the subject’s name, Gryllos (also the name of the aspirant to Metriche’s favours in I) injects a note of tenderness, as if to a beloved grandfather. We are reminded that Herodas appears to have lived to consider himself an old man (cf VIII 26). Of the others, Mimiamb XII might seem by its topic to belong with III. As there, a boy is presented as indulging in games to the detriment of the speaker – presumably another exasperated mother like Metrotime of III. The ‘old man’ here is a reference to her distaff; these were commonly decorated with an old man’s face. The syntax, with its

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repeated exclamatory disjunctive is also in the style of Metrotime (cf III 31,33,37,40 in Cunningham’s text). However, this boy is younger than Kottalos of III, who does not remain with his mother but roams the seashore, climbs the tenement roof and gambles among more adult ‘scum’. Nor would there be any obvious place to ‘restore’ the fragment to the text of III, which is virtually complete in itself. What we can say is that this fragment complements III in giving us a sketch of enduring boyhood propensities, testifying again to Herodas’ observation and psychological realism. ‘Blind Fly’ (similar to Blind Man’s Buff, and apparently named from the similarity of a Greek verb meaning ‘to close the eyes’ to the word for ‘a fly’) and ‘Pipkin’ are games known to us from other sources. The final fragment (XIII), like X, gives expression to fairly typically Greek melancholic sentiments and is not reminiscent of any of the extant Mimiamboi.

The Fragments

Nine Women Breakfasting Sit all down! Where’s the child? Help yourselves

Ten Song When you round the sixtieth sun, o Gryllos, Gryllos, die and be made into ash: so blind is the ensuing lap of living; already dulled is life’s light-ray!

Eleven Women working together Clinging like some sea-creature to a reef, man-fashion . . .

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Twelve Either he plays, forsooth, at Blind Fly or at Pipkin or he’s set on tying halters on cockchafers making them from flax, plundering my old man . . .

Thirteen Just as household is not readily found dwelling without evils, but rather he that hath less, that man seems to fare by so much better than fares that other . . .

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Fountoulakis, A., “Herondas 8.66–79: Generic Self-consciousness and Artistic Claims in Herondas’ Mimiambs” Mnemosyne 55 (2002) 301–319. Fountoulakis, A., “Bitinna and the Tyrant: Some Remarks on Herondas 5.74–77”, Philologus 151 (2007) 230–243. Giangrande, G., “Interpretation of Herodas”, Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 15 (1973) 82–98. Gelzer, Th., “Mimus und Kunsttheorie bei Herondas, Mimiambus 4” in C. Schaublin (ed.), Catalepton: Festschrift für Bernhard Wyss zum 80. Geburtstag (Basel 1985) 96–116. Gerber, D.E., “Herodas 5.1”, HSCP 82 (1978) 161–165. Goldhill, S., “The Naive and Knowing Eye: Ecphrasis and the Culture of Viewing in the Hellenistic World”, in S. Goldhill and R. Osborne (eds), Art and Text in Ancient Greek Culture (Cambridge 1994) 197–223. Henderson, J., The Maculate Muse (New Haven/London 1975). Hopkinson, N., A Hellenistic Anthology (Cambridge 1988). Hunter, R.L., “The Presentation of Herodas’ Mimiamboi”, Antichthon 27 (1993) 31–44. On Coming After: Part 1: Hellenistic Poetry and its Reception (Berlin 2008). Kenyon, F.G., Classical Texts from Papyri in the British Museum (London 1891). “Some New Fragments of Herodas”, Archiv für Papyrus-Forschung 1 (1901). Knox, A.D., “The Dream of Herodas”, CR 31 (1925) 13–15. Konstan, D., “The Tyrant Goddess: Herodas’ Fifth Mime”, Classical Antiquity 8 (1989) 267–282. Lawall, G., “Herodas 6 and 7 Reconsidered”, CP 71 (1976) 165–169. Levin, D.N., “An Herondean Diptych”, Ziva Antika 26 (1976) 345–355. Lindsay, J., The Mimiambs of Herondas (London, Fanfrolico Press 1929). Mastromarco, G., The Public of Herondas (Amsterdam 1984). Puchner, W., “Zur Raumkonzeption in den Mimiamben des Herodas”, Wiener Studien 106 (1993) 9–34. Rankin, H.D., Archilochos of Paros (Park Ridge, New Jersey 1977).

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Rist, A.T., The Poems of Theocritus (Chapel Hill 1978). “That Herodean Diptych Again”, Classical Quarterly 43 (1993) 440–444. “A Fresh Look at Herodas’ Bucolic Masquerade” Phoenix 51(1998) 354–363. Sherwin-White, S.M., Ancient Cos: An Historical Study from the Dorian Settlement to the Imperial Period (Hypomnemeta 51) (Göttingen 1978). Simon, H.-J., Ta kulla aeidein: Interpretationen zu den Mimiamben des Herodas, Studien zur klassischen Philologie 57 (Frankfurt, Bern, New York 1991). Skinner, M.B., “Ladies’ Day at the Art Institute: Theocritus, Herodas and the Gendered Gaze” in A. Lardinois and L. McClure (eds), Making Silence Speak (Princeton/Oxford 2001) 201–222. Stern, J., “Herodas’ Mimiamb VI ”, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 20 (1979) 247–254. Ussher, R.G., “The Mimiamboi of Herodas”, Hermathena 129 (1980) 65–76 “The Mimic Tradition of ‘Character’ in Herodas”, Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 21 (1985) 45–68. Veneroni, B., “Ricerche su due mimiambi di Heroda”, Rivista di Filologia e Istruzione Classica 3 (1925) 71–78. West, M.L., Greek Metre (Oxford 1982). Williams, G., “Dogs and Leather”, CR 9 (1959) 97–100. Zanker, G., Realism in Alexandrian Poetry: A Literature and its Audience (London 1987). “Poetry and Art in Herodas, Mimiamb 4”, in M.A. Harder, R.F. Regnat and G.C. Walker (eds), Beyond the Canon (Hellenistica Groningana 11, Groningen 2006).

Index actors, number of, 13, 24 Aeschrion of Samos, 40 Alexander of Macedon, 3 Alexandria, 4, 5, 6, 9, 16, 26, 75, 129 Apelles, 26, 70, 71 Aphrodite, 40, 48, 71, 105 Apollonius, 3, 4, 5, 29 archaism, 18 Archilochus, 2, 16, 29, 31, 123–4 Aristophanes, 30, 51, 74, 86 Aristotle, 9, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 86, 128 Arnott, W.G. 31 art, 12, 25–6, 67–75 Asklepios, and temple of, 4, 26, 67, 69, 70 Aspasia, 14 Athenaeus, 29, 133 autoeroticism (female) 91–8, 103–14 baubons, 91–8, 103–14 Baukis, 92, 95, 105 Callimachus, 3, 5, 6, 16, 41, 123, 127, 128, 129 Cameron, A., 30 Catullus, 5 children’s games, 61, 133 choliambs, 2, 8, 16–17, 27, 121–3, 126, 129 Cleon, 16 Cleopatra, 3, 20 Comedy, 9, 48, 51, 81, 86, 94, 105 Crane, G., 127 Cunningham, I.C., 5, 9, 22, 28, 29, 30, 31, 41, 71, 72, 73, 75, 94, 95, 96, 104, 110, 111, 112, 119, 123, 133 Delos, 59, 61 Di Gregorio, L., 31, 33, 85, 111

Dionysus, 121–3 dreaming, 119–29 Egypt, 36, 40, 43 Erinna, 96 Esposito, E., 33 Euripides, 21, 42, 125, 126 excess, 79–83, 113–14 Fanfrolico Press, 7 Finnigan, R.J., 31 flogging, 57–61, 80 games, 39 Gerenia, 85 gossip, 36, 84–5, 91, 97 Headlam, W., 40, 60, 104 Hegel, G.W.F., 13, 31 Hermes, 106, 108 Hesychios, 68 hetairai, 11, 14, 22, 37, 41–2, 79, 96 (see also ‘prostitutes’) Hipponax, 2, 6, 18, 31, 121, 123–4, 126, 127, 128 Homer, 8, 18, 71, 128 homosexuality, 14, 49 Hopkins, G.M., 23 Hopkinson, N., 42 Horace, 60, 111 Hunter, R.L., 32 Hypereides, 51 iambics, 15–17, 121–3, 126, 128 immigrants, 47 Josephus, 17 Kenyon, F.G., 2 Knox, A.D., 32

142 koine Greek, 17 Kos, 4, 5, 30, 48–9, 51, 71, 93, 124 Lamb, Charles, 32 Lawall, G., 24, 30, 32, 110 law-courts, 47–8, 51, 119 Leonidas of Tarentum, 26 lesbians, 15, 92, 95, 97, 105 literary feuds, 3 Lucian, 38, 112 Lucilius, 30 Lucretius, 18 Marxism, 7 Mastromarco, G., 30, 31, 32, 72, 110 Menander, 10, 16, 43, 51, 83, 85 metre, 1, 5, 8, 15, 27–8, 31 Mill, J.S., 31 mimes, 8–11, 22–3 Mimiambs: as a collection 23–5; date of, 2–3, 70; diction and recondite language of, 8, 19, 20–1, 25; dramatic location of, 4, 6, 9, 23, 49, 83, 93; performance of, 21–3; assigning of parts in, 72; titles of, 93, 113; audience of, 5, 7, 9, 12, 20–1, 25, 27, 50, 67, 68, 71, 74, 92, 94–6, 98, 103, 105, 108, 113 Mise, 36, 40 Monty Python, 16 Mouseion, 3, 18, 129 Museums in Rome, 75 Nicanor, 31 Nossis, 92, 95, 105 obscenity, 7, 9, 10, 15, 30, 68, 97, 112, 125 Ovid, 5 Parmenides, 18 Philaenis, 36, 40 Philip of Macedon, 9 Philo, 17

Index Phrygians, 49, 80 pimps, 13, 47–51 Plato, 10, 14, 114, 128 Plautus, 83 Pliny the Younger, 2, 30, 127 poverty, 47, 60, 109 Praxiteles, 70, 71 prostitutes, 13, 36, 48, 50–1 Ptolemy II , 2, 24, 42 realism, 7, 20, 26, 31, 97 ring-composition, 23, 60, 74 Rist, A.T., 29, 31, 126, 128 sacrifices, 67, 69 Sappho, 21, 92, 105, 112 schoolmasters, 57–59 Shakespeare, William, 15, 18–19, 27, 32 Sherwin-White, S.M., 71. Skinner, M.B., 74 Simon, H.-J., 31 slaves, 11, 12–15, 60, 68–9, 73, 80–3, 85, 86, 109, 114, 120 Socrates, 16 Solon, 18 Sophron, 10, 11 Stern, J., 95 Stobaeus (John of Stobi) 133 tattooing, 80–1 Terence, 83, 85 Theocritus, 1, 3, 4, 8, 10, 11, 14, 18, 20, 25, 26, 28, 29, 32, 41, 43, 51, 73, 74, 75, 85, 96, 106, 124, 125, 128, 129 Theodora (Empress), 14 torture (of slave-witnesses), 11, 50 Ussher, R.G., 4, 110 Vergil, 121 virginity, 36, 92, 106 West, M.L., 32

Index Williams, G., 111 women, 11, 12–15, 82, 85, 96, 98; oaths of, 40

Xenophon, 14 Zanker, G., 31, 32, 33, 97, 104, 111

143