Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry

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TRADITION AND INNOVATION IN HELLENISTIC POETRY

Hellenistic poets of the third and second centuries bc were concerned with the need both to mark their continuity with the classical past and to demonstrate their independence from it. In this revised and expanded translation of Muse e modelli: la poesia ellenistica da Alessandro Magno ad Augusto, Greek poetry of the third and second centuries bc and its reception and influence at Rome are explored, allowing both sides of this literary practice to be appreciated. Genres as diverse as epic and epigram are considered from a historical perspective, in the full range of their deep-level structures, shedding brilliant new light on the poetry and its influence at Rome. Some of the most famous poetry of the age such as Callimachus’ Aitia and Apollonius’ Argonautica is examined. In addition, full attention is paid to the poetry of encomium, in particular the newly published epigrams of Posidippus, and Hellenistic literary criticism, notably Philodemus. m arco fan tu z z i is Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at the University of Macerata and at the Graduate School of Greek and Latin Philology of the University of Florence. His published works include Bionis Smyrnaei Adonidis Epitaphium (Liverpool, 1985) and Ricerche su Apollonio Rodio: Diacronie della dizione epica (Rome, 1988). r i c h ard hu n ter is Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity College. He has published extensively on Hellenistic poetry and previous works include The New Comedy of Greece and Rome (Cambridge, 1985), The Argonautica of Apollonius: literary studies (Cambridge, 1993), and Theocritus, Encomium of Ptolemy Philadelphus (Berkeley, 2003).

TRADITION AND I N N OVAT I O N I N H E L L E N I S T I C P O E T RY MA R C O FA N T U Z Z I A N D R I C H A R D H U N T E R

   Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge  , UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521835114 © in the English translation Cambridge University Press 2004 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2005 - -

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Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Originally published in Italian as Muse e modelli: la poesia ellenistica da Alessandro Magno ad Augusto by Gius. Laterza & Figli Spa, Roma – Bari – 2002 and © 2002 by Gius. Laterza & Figli Spa, Roma – Bari – English language edition. First published in English by Cambridge University Press 2004 as Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry

Contents

Preface List of abbreviations

page vii ix

1 Performance and genre

1

1 Invoking the Muses, evoking models 2 Impossible models and lost performance contexts 3 Disassembling and reassembling 4 Marginal aberrations?

2 The aetiology of Callimachus’ Aitia 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Callimachus The structure of the Aitia Aetiology Hesiod and Callimachus Acontius and Cydippe The reply to the Telchines Callimachus and the Ician Poems for a princess

42 42 44 49 51 60 66 76 83

3 The Argonautica of Apollonius and epic tradition 1 2 3 4 5

1 17 26 37

Epic song An epic world Heroic anger Epic memory An epic leader

89 89 98 104 117 126

4 Theocritus and the bucolic genre Theocritus and the ‘realism’ of everyday life: in search of new worlds for poetry 2 Verisimilitude and coherence 3 Bucolic poetry after Theocritus: between imitation and stylisation 4 Bucolic and non-bucolic love

133

1

v

133 141 167 170

vi

Contents

5 Epic in a minor key 1 2 3 4 5 6

The ‘epyllion’ Callimachus’ Hecale Theocritus’ ‘Little Heracles’ ‘Heracles the Lionslayer’ The Europa of Moschus The Phainomena of Aratus

6 The style of Hellenistic epic 1 2 3 4

Introduction Callimachus Theocritus Apollonius Rhodius

7 The epigram 1 Inscription and epigram: the ‘prehistory’ of a genre 2 Funerary and dedicatory epigrams: epigraphic conventions and epigrammatic variations 3 Erotic epigrams

8 The languages of praise 1 Callimachus’ Hymns and the hymnic tradition 2 The dialect of kings 3 Posidippus and the ideology of kingship

9 Hellenistic drama 1 Menander and New Comedy 2 Hellenistic tragedy 3 Lycophron’s Alexandra

10 Roman epilogue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

A critical silence? Philodemus and Hellenistic poetics Graecia capta Verbum pro uerbo Poetry or translation? The limits of translation Catullus’ Attis

Bibliography Index of passages discussed General index

191 191 196 201 210 215 224

246 246 249 255 266

283 283 291 338

350 350 371 377

404 404 432 437

444 444 449 461 467 474 476 477

486 500 506

Preface

This book is a revised and augmented version of Muse e modelli: la poesia ellenistica da Alessandro Magno ad Augusto (Rome–Bari 2002). In the Preface of the Italian book we drew attention to the sympathy which one might expect the modern age to have for a literature which was self-consciously belated, in which meaning was created by a confrontation, both direct and oblique, with the classical works of the past. It is perhaps no great surprise that some critics have even seen in Hellenistic poetry a ludic ‘post-modern’ enterprise. ‘Modernity’, however, has its own history, particularly in the poetry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it is against that background that poets such as Callimachus and Theocritus first came to be seen as ‘modernists’ avant la lettre, practitioners of an experimental and virtuoso art for art’s sake. The catalyst for such views came, often enough, from the emphasis in Wilhelm Kroll’s seminal studies on ‘Kreuzung der Gattungen’ and effects of surprise in Hellenistic and Roman poetry. The phenomena to which Kroll pointed are real enough, and are given deserved prominence in this book, but his insights – and particularly his most famous catch-phrase – have too often been used as a substitute for serious analysis and hard thinking about the complexity of the Hellenistic engagement with the past. The principal purpose of this book is to set Hellenistic poetry within its own intellectual and cultural context, which will in fact appear very different from that which gave rise to the modernist movements to which it is most often compared. The use of and allusion to the poetry of the past was for ancient poets part of the tools of the trade, a mark of their professional techne; paying homage to their great ancestors was not (necessarily) a sign of ‘anxiety’. With some marginal exceptions, ancient poetry emphasises tradition and continuity with the past, rather than modernist rupture, even when it is at its most innovative (as, for example, in Callimachus’ Aitia). With changes of taste and conditions of performance come, of course, changes in style, in poetic canons, and in generic preferences, but the past vii

viii

Preface

was never abandoned, even rhetorically; the most audaciously ‘modern’ texts continue to use the ‘langue’ of the traditional genres, as well as the ‘parole’ of the great poetry of the past and of the institutions through which it flourished and which it itself sustained. The manner in which Hellenistic poetry and the Roman poetry which was influenced by it embrace the past without either epigonal nostalgia or classicising enthusiasm and use it in what were, in reality, quite new cultural and political contexts is perhaps their most powerful attraction; the paradigms of the past are neither rejected nor slavishly followed – this, of itself, is not the least marker of continuity with the poetic practice of the archaic and classical ages. The persistent historical and archaeological concerns of Hellenistic poets in exploring, reconstructing, and preserving the poetic past will, we hope, emerge very clearly from this book. It will be immediately obvious that this book makes no claims to comprehensiveness or to being a ‘handbook’ of Hellenistic poetry, and there is a good reason for this choice. Probably more than any other period of Greek poetry, Hellenistic poetry has suffered from lazy, (un)critical generalisations; mud sticks, even today when the number of those interested in Hellenistic poetry, and the quality of the work they are producing, is very high. Generalisations have their uses, and we have not avoided them, but one must begin with the particularity of each poet and each poetic mode; the very rich diversity of what survives of the Greek poetry of the last three centuries before Christ deserves its own celebration. Each chapter or section is essentially the work of one author, though we have both lived with the whole book (and each other) for many years: MF is responsible for Chapters 1, 4, 6, 7, 8.3, and 10.2; RH for the rest. MF’s chapters have been translated by Ron Packham and RH. We hope that it is unnecessary to state that neither of us swears that he believes every word which the other has written. We wish here to repeat the thanks to friends and colleagues expressed in the Italian version, particularly to Alessandro Laterza for his continuing support; we are now very pleased to be able to add our gratitude to Michael Sharp of CUP for his encouragement and patience, and to the Faculty of Classics of the University of Cambridge for its liberal hospitality to MF and for its generosity, which has made this book possible. MF RH

Abbreviations

Standard abbreviations for collections and editions of texts and for works of reference are used; Callimachus is cited from Pfeiffer’s edition, unless otherwise indicated. The following may also be noted: CA CEG EG EGF FGE FGrHist GESA GG GPh GVI HE IAG IEG IG IMEGR LfgrE LGPN

J. U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina (Oxford 1925) P. A. Hansen, Carmina epigraphica Graeca (Berlin–New York 1983, 1989) G. Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca (Berlin 1878) M. Davies, Epicorum Graecorum fragmenta (G¨ottingen 1988) D. L. Page, Further Greek Epigrams (Cambridge 1981) F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Berlin 1923–1930; Leiden 1940–1958 and 1994–) J. Ebert, Griechische Epigramme auf Sieger an gymnischen und hippischen Agonen (Berlin 1972). W. Peek, Griechische Grabgedichte (Berlin 1960) A. S. F. Gow–D. L. Page, The Greek Anthology. The Garland of Philip, I–II (Cambridge 1968). W. Peek, Griechische Vers-Inschriften, I (Berlin 1955) A. S. F. Gow–D. L. Page, The Greek Anthology. Hellenistic Epigrams, I–II (Cambridge 1965) L. Moretti, Iscrizioni agonistiche greche (Rome 1953) M. L. West, Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati, I–II (2nd ed., Oxford 1989–92) Inscriptiones Graecae (Berlin 1873–) ´ E. Bernand, Inscriptions m´etriques de l’Egypte gr´eco-romaine (Paris 1949) Lexikon des fr¨uhgriechischen Epos (G¨ottingen 1955–) P. M. Fraser, E. Matthews et al., A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (Oxford 1987–) ix

x LIMC LSJ PCG PEG PMG PMGF RE SGO SH SVF TGF TrGF VS

List of abbreviations Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae (Zurich–Munich 1981–1997) H. G., Liddell–R. Scott–H. Stuart Jones–R. McKenzie–P. G. W. Glare, Greek–English Lexicon, with a revised Supplement (9th ed., Oxford 1996) R. Kassel–C. Austin, Poetae comici Graeci (Berlin–New York 1983–) A. Bernab´e, Poetarum epicorum Graecorum testimonia et fragmenta I (Leipzig 1987) D. L. Page, Poetae melici Graeci (Oxford 1962) M. Davies, Poetarum melicorum Graecorum fragmenta, I (Oxford 1991) A. Pauly–G. Wissowa–W. Kroll, et al. (eds.), Real-Encyclop¨adie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart–Munich 1893–1980) R. Merkelbach–J. Stauber, Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten (Stuttgart–Leipzig 1998–) H. Lloyd-Jones–P. Parsons, Supplementum Hellenisticum (Berlin–New York 1983) H. F. A. von Arnim, Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, I–IV (Leipzig 1903–24) A. Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta (2nd ed., Leipzig 1889) B. Snell–R. Kannicht–S. Radt, Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta (G¨ottingen 1971–) H. Diels–W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (6th ed., Berlin 1951–52)

All dates are bc, unless otherwise indicated.

chap t e r 1

Performance and genre

1 in voking the muses, evoking models For the Greeks, from the age of Homer to the late imperial period, the poet received his inspiration from the Muses or from some other god (e.g. Apollo or Dionysus), to whom he attributed the responsibility for the enthousiasmos which allowed him to sing as he wished to sing; consequently, it was a widespread practice for poets to apostrophise these divine sources of inspiration at the beginning of their works, or even to claim that they had been invested as poets by them (as in the case of Hesiod). Particularly in the Hellenistic age, however, we find that another figure takes his place beside the divine inspirer, or at times substitutes for him in the rˆole of ‘guarantor’ of the origin of the work. The conventional rˆole of acting as a source of inspiration may well be left to the Muses, but now an illustrious predecessor often steps in to teach the new poet the ropes, and how to proceed to construct the work he has undertaken, or else he verifies and ratifies the correctness of the method that the new poet has followed. In practice, in their combination of these two series of figures – the Muses and the poetic masters or models – it is as if Hellenistic poets turned to their advantage the distinction between inspiration by the poetic divinities, on the one hand, and the primacy of ‘craft’, techn¯e, on the other; the two now formed a powerful unit, no longer a pair of opposed possibilities. These two competing origins of poetry go back to a familiar cultural model of the fifth century, best represented for us by, on the one hand, Democritus and, on the other, by Plato’s Ion and Phaedrus.1 Socrates’ words in the Ion are perhaps the most famous ancient assertion of the ‘inspiration view’ of poetry: 1

Although poetry was considered the fruit of inspiration by the Muses throughout the archaic and classical periods, the idea of ‘poetic ecstasy’ and the concomitant downgrading of poetic techne are very Platonic, cf. P. Murray, Plato on Poetry (Cambridge 1996) 6–12; it is, of course, far from easy always to distinguish between poetic inspiration and ecstatic possession, cf. Finkelberg (1998) 19–20.

1

2

Performance and genre

The poet is a light and winged and sacred thing, unable to create poetry unless he is first inspired by the god and out of his wits, with no reason in him any longer (                );  . . . seeing that it is not by any art that they create poetry and say many fine things about their subjects . . . but by divine destiny (  ); a poet can only succeed in the type of poetry towards which the Muse inspires him – one man in dithyrambs, another in encomia, another in hyporchemes, another in epic poems, and another in iambics – while in all the other kinds of poetry he is unsuccessful. In reality, it is not by virtue of techne that they speak, but thanks to a divine force: if techn¯e made them capable of composing fine expressions on a single subject, they would be able to do the same on all the other subjects, too (  !"   # $% &##   '$( )  ) *   +, !" # -%   # )     .## /( ). (Plato, Ion 534b–c)

In the Phaedrus, Plato does not completely deny the existence of poetry created only by virtue of techn¯e, but he establishes a clear hierarchy between this inferior level and the kind created by divine inspiration: He who arrives at the doors of poetry without the madness of the Muses (. $  0$%), thinking that he can be a good poet thanks solely to techn¯e, remains incomplete, and the poetry of the sane poet is eclipsed by that of the mad (1 % 2,    1  %  1%).2 (Plato, Phaedrus 245a)

So too in the Laws, Plato states that the poet’s techn¯e lies in the mim¯esis of the characters, and again presents this ‘craft’ as a sort of low-level, dangerous instrument, even if he admits that the inspired poet too makes use of it to express himself: When a poet takes his seat on the tripod of the Muse, he cannot control his thoughts. He’s like a fountain where the water is allowed to gush forth unchecked. His art is the art of representation (  ! 3% 4% ), and when he represents men with contrasting characters he is often obliged to contradict himself, and he doesn’t know which of the opposing speeches contains the truth. (Plato, Laws 4.719c (trans. Saunders))

Only here in fact in Plato do enthousiasmos and mimetic techn¯e coexist.3 Plato’s low valuation of mim¯esis as the techn¯e of poetry, together with the idea that the only really inspired, ‘philosophical’ poetry was the nonmimetic kind (with its extremely limited possibilities – the dithyramb, and 2

3

In the light of the subsequent comparison between inspired prophecy and simple divination by means of birds, it may be deduced that ‘the inspired poet stands to the mere technician as the inspired prophet stands to the mere augur’, cf. D. A. Russell, Criticism in Antiquity (London 1981) 76. Cf. Finkelberg (1998) 6 n. 19.

1 Invoking the Muses, evoking models

3

hymns to gods or to men), led the philosopher, both in the Laws (817b–c) and in the tenth book of the Republic, to banish poetry virtually entirely from the ideal State; there was, after all, no getting away from mim¯esis, whether by that is meant a continuous representation of characters by the author (for example, in drama), or an intermittent representation, as in the case of direct speech in epic poetry, alternating with non-mimetic episodes of narration. Aristotle started from the same presuppositions (poetry as an activity that is always predominantly mimetic, that is to say, a more or less continual representation of characters), but without Plato’s metaphysical agenda he was able to consider mim¯esis in thoroughly positive terms, as the techn¯e which allows the representation of the universal, purified from accidental empirical reality. At the climax of a process which had started with the Sophists, then, the conception of poetry as deriving from divine inspiration, based on a poetics of truth (a truth of which the poet is merely a spokesman for the divine inspirer), is largely rejected, and for it is substituted a ‘secular’ conception of poetry as deriving from techn¯e, and consequently based on a poetics of ‘fiction’, elaborated by means of the techn¯e that the poet himself possesses.4 As regards the poetry of the third century, it is obvious that the intellectual climate was closer to that of Aristotle than to that of Plato; in particular, poets now cultivated a variety of genres during their careers, and the idea, most familiar from Plato’s Ion (above pp. 1–2), that a poet could only be inspired by the god in a single literary genre must have seemed rather dated. Nevertheless, Hellenistic poets preferred not to forgo the positive advantages of the idea of divine inspiration, which guaranteed for them a sort of privileged sacrality compared with other !5 , or ‘professionals’; indeed, even those who stressed the specifically professional element of their activity, stating that they had learnt how to compose poetry from this or that previous poet, transformed this idea of learning from a text-model into various forms of ‘investiture’ by a poet-model, which conferred on them an image almost as honourable as divine inspiration. The introduction of the figure of the ‘guarantor’ of a specific techn¯e is not universal to all the poets or all the compositions of the Hellenistic age; in particular, it is not found with any form of narrative epic, such as Callimachus’ Hymns, Theocritus’ epic-mythological poems, or the Argonautica of Apollonius.5 Rather, this new authorising strategy is most common 4 5

Cf. in general, Finkelberg (1998). On the rarity of references to the Muses in tragedy, cf. D. I. Jakob, 67  8  &! +##  ' (Athens 1998) chapter 1. Cf. Albis (1996) chapters 1 and 2 on how Apollonius presents himself as a sort of ‘modern Demodocus’. See also below, pp. 96–7, 193–4.

4

Performance and genre

where the precedent of a tradition either is not immediately apparent, or does not exist, and therefore must be invented. We see a clear case of this in Theocritus’ bucolic hexameters.6 In the programmatic Idyll 7, the first-person narrator, Simichidas, a poet from the town, meets a goatherdsinger, Lycidas, in the Coan countryside one sunny afternoon. Lycidas, the model-predecessor/guarantor, was already a famous bucolic poet, though whether he is purely fictional or an allegorical version of an author who really existed, it is impossible to say; Simichidas and Lycidas then hold a competition of ‘bucolic singing’ together. As a result, by virtue of both the influence of the ‘master’, and the inspiration of the bucolic landscape (and its Nymphs), Simichidas’ song assumes a bucolic colouring and, at the end of it, he gives a sublime description of a locus amoenus, the aim of which appears to be to demonstrate that he is now fully mature in his bucolic sensibility.7 Herondas too, the author of mimes written in choliambs (‘limping iambics’), a metre typical of the archaic iambist Hipponax, dedicates an apologetic-programmatic poem, Mimiambus 8, to the defence of his poetics. Following a familiar third-century mode, the form of this poem is not directly polemical, but rather allusive and allegorical;8 that is to say, he attacks his critics and/or rival poets without mentioning them by name, as in Callimachus’ ‘Prologue’ to the Aitia (below pp. 66–76) and Iambus 13. The narrator, who is probably the poet himself, relates a dream: he was in the countryside, and he was pulling a goat (a symbol of Dionysus?) behind him in a valley,9 where there were some goatherds gathered (a symbol of rival poets: Theocritus, or Callimachus, or other mimographers?)10 . The goat escaped, and started eating the leaves of plants in a sacred place; consequently, it was slaughtered by the goatherds. At this point, a new figure appears, whose dress is described in great detail: a fawnskin, buskins, and ivy on the head all point clearly to Dionysus, and in all probability allude to the theatre. The goatherds inflate a goat skin, and start playing a game of ask¯oliasmos, in which men tried to stand on a greasy and inflated skin. 6 7 8

9

10

Cf. below, pp. 138–40. For a more detailed analysis of Id. 7 from this point of view, see below, pp. 137 and 163–4. For these recurrent aspects of Hellenistic polemics cf. in particular Treu (1963). A perceptive parallel reading of Herondas, Mim. 8 and Theocritus 7 is offered by Simon (1991) 67–82; cf. also V. Gigante Lanzara, ‘Il sogno di Eroda’ in Arrighetti–Montanari (1993) 237–8. A herdsman in a lonely place is the protagonist of scenes of divine initiation into poetry from the Hesiod of the Theogony (cf. above) to Simichidas in Theocritus 7; the Archilochus of the biographical tradition (inscription of Mnesiepes, SEG XV.517) was taking a cow into town to sell it when he met the Muses. Cf. further Rosen (1992) 208. Cf. Mastromarco (1984) 70–2.

1 Invoking the Muses, evoking models

5

This is undoubtedly a symbol of a dramatic contest11 (cf. the author’s comment ‘as we do in the choruses for Dionysus’, v. 40),12 but the others do not succeed in maintaining their balance, whereas the protagonist is twice successful. At this point, an ‘old man’ intervenes (v. 59), threatening to thrash the narrator. This figure has sometimes been identified as Callimachus or Philetas, but he is now generally held to be Hipponax, who is presented as a model that Herondas had modified; irritated by these modifications, he reacts with the harshness and truculence that he had always shown in his poetry. The fact that the old man concludes his speech with the literal quotation of a fragment of Hipponax (  9 "  :, v. 60, ∼ Hipp. fr. 8 Degani = IEG 20)13 leaves little doubt about this identification. At this point, the protagonist calls a ‘young man’ as a witness: this figure is probably a symbol of (again) Dionysus, who appears to assign the same punishment, or more probably, the same prize, to both the protagonist and the old man (v. 64).14 On awakening, the protagonist interprets his dream (vv. 66ff.): the goat that he was leading represented a ‘fine gift from Dionysus’; the fact that ‘the goatherds violently slaughtered it in the performance of their sacred rites, and feasted on its meat’ meant that ‘many men will tear apart my songs [# , with a pun on ‘limbs’], the product of my labours ( !) among the Muses’;15 his victory in the game of ask¯oliasmos, in which he alone was successful (vv. 73–4), and his ‘achievement of the same result as the churlish old man’ (v. 75) meant that his poetry would bring him glory, and consequently the chance, expressed with all the emphasis of a closing sphragis, to ‘sing, after Hipponax, the one of long ago (?) . . . limping verses to the descendants of Xouthos’, i.e. the Ionians. Here, Herondas clearly seems to wish to advertise the synthesis that he has created between the comic tradition, represented by Dionysus, and the archaic iambic tradition, represented by Hipponax, who is irritated at this ‘spoiling’ of his genre.16 11

12 13 14 15

16

There was a widespread belief that this game had given rise to comedy, cf. K. Latte, ‘;<=>?@;<0><’ Hermes 85 (1957) 385–91 = Kleine Schriften (Munich 1968) 700–7. Before Herondas, the belief may already be reflected in Eubulus, PCG 7, but cf. Hunter (1983a) 93–4. For the interpretation of Dionysiac elements as references to comedy and mime, cf. B. Veneroni, ‘Ricerche su due Mimiambi di Eroda’ RIL 105 (1971) 223–42 and Rosen (1992). For the identification cf. Degani (1984) 50–6. Cf. Degani (1984) 102 n. 139 and Rosen (1992) 213–14. Poetry as the fruit of toil is a common image in Hellenistic poetry, cf. Philetas fr. 12 Sbardella (CA 10), Asclepiades, AP 7.11 = HE 942ff., Theocritus 7.51, Callimachus, HE 1293, Meleager, AP 12.257.3 = HE 4724. Cf. C. Miralles, ‘La poetica di Eroda’ Aevum antiquum 5 (1992) 111: ‘Dionysus, who is young, takes sides, as usual, seeing that he is young, with the novelty of the poetics of Herondas, which is clearly rooted in the world of Demeter and the iambic tradition, but has incorporated the mime and archaia’.

6

Performance and genre

In the polemical and programmatic ‘Reply to the Telchines’ (below, pp. 66–76), Callimachus defines his poetics both negatively, in comparison with the rejected works of certain previous or contemporary poets (fr. 1.9– 16 Massimilla = Pfeiffer), and positively through praise of certain works by Philetas and Mimnermus, which thus rise to the level of real models, even if they are never expressly declared to be such. Callimachus then states that he is assisted and directed in these choices by Apollo and the Muses:17 indeed, his choice of poetry is introduced as an implementation of Apollo’s advice. Homer’s Phemius had been proud of being  '' , in the sense that ‘the god had inspired every kind of song in his heart’ (Od. 22.347–8); Callimachus, too, affirms that he has learnt from Apollo, but unlike Phemius, who is instructed in ‘every kind of song’, Callimachus receives from Apollo precepts which are very similar to the principles of his own poetics: he is to nurture a Muse who is #  #, ‘delicate’, not overweight, and walk where no heavy carts travel, but rather along narrow, unbeaten pathways, with the result that he will sing with the voice of the cicada and abhor the braying of asses (fr. 1.22–30). Callimachus introduces his way of composing poetry, and offers his motivation for it, as a parallel to the inspiration received from the Muses by his model, Hesiod,18 thus elaborating a sort of technical specialisation of the traditional idea of inspiration by the Muses in general (frs. 3 and 4 M.). He imagines himself transported by the Muses in a dream from Libya to Mount Helicon, where the goddesses inform him about the ‘origins’ of rituals, or uses and customs. This is an explicit assimilation, marked as such both by the localisation on Mount Helicon and also by allusion to Hesiod, WD 265 in line 5 of fr. 4, of his own experience to that of the Hesiod of the Theogony, who had previously been taught by the Muses on Helicon to sing of divine genealogy (cf. Call. fr. 4.1–4 M.). Callimachus seems, however, to have adapted Hesiod’s scenario to the requirements of his own poetics: in particular, the setting of his meeting with the Muses is not the foot of Mount Helicon (as in Hesiod, Theogony 23), but close to Hippocrene, and therefore at a higher point on the mountain;19 17

18 19

Cf. fr. 1.22–30 M. for the assistance of Apollo, 1.37–8 for the assistance of the Muses. The very fragmentary invocation of fr. 2 M. is normally understood as addressed to the Muses, but other divinities cannot be ruled out; the Libyan Nymphs were suggested by N. Krevans, ‘“Invocation” at the End of the Aetia Prologue’ ZPE 89 (1991) 19–23, or perhaps the Muses are speaking of the Charites: cf. below, pp. 52–4. The taste for variation between different inspiring divinities is most familiar from Theocritus 16, cf. below, pp. 152–3. Cf. below, pp. 51–60. Cameron (1995) 362–72 rightly pours cold water on some ‘pan-Hesiodic’ readings of the Aitia prologue, but goes too far in the other direction. Cf. Selden (1998) 357.

1 Invoking the Muses, evoking models

7

furthermore, to judge from the Latin echoes at least, it would appear that Hesiod’s initiation, as presented by Callimachus, involved drinking from Hippocrene itself, or rather from the stream Aganippe,20 and thus it included the poetological image of the stream of pure water, familiar elsewhere from Callimachus’ poetry.21 In this case, then, the model/guarantor is shaped to look very like the poet who invokes him.22 At the same time – by adopting the dream form – it is likely that Callimachus was implicitly establishing a parallel also with the experience of another theogonic poet, Epimenides (VS 3B1), who had analogously imagined receiving the contents of his work from the gods in a ‘didactic dream’ (A  ''(%#) during a sleep lasting several years.23 Finally, Callimachus returns to Hesiod, and specifically to his inspiration from the Muses, in the epilogue to the Aitia; verbatim repetition of the opening of the ‘Dream’ (fr. 4.1–4 M. ∼ fr. 112.5–6 Pf.) underlines the Hesiodic origin, the aition, of the poetry of the Aitia.24 Callimachus (AP 9.507 = HE 1297–1300) also made Hesiod the model from whom Aratus derived his refined style (#   B4% ) – in spite of the fact that the didactic-astronomical epos was, like the Aitia, substantially a new genre (below, pp. 224–7). In an analogous but probably far more explicit manner, Timon of Phlius presents his relationship with his main model: in his synthesis of polemical derision of philosophical ideas a` la Xenophanes and the parodic-gastronomic poetry which largely developed after Xenophanes, Timon clearly acknowledges his debt to the latter and quotes, perhaps at the beginning of his poem (undoubtedly in the first book), one of the leading exponents of such satire, Euboeus of Paros (fr. 2 Di Marco = SH 776). On the other hand, however, 20

21 22 23

24

Cf. A. Kambylis, Die Dichterweihe und ihre Symbolik: Untersuchungen zu Hesiodos, Kallimachos, Properz und Ennius (Heidelberg 1965) 69–123, N. B. Crowther, ‘Water and Wine as Symbols of Inspiration’ Mnemosyne 32 (1979) 1–11. Cameron (1995) 127–32 argues against this inference from Latin texts. Cf. HApoll. 108–12 and AP 12.43.3–4 = HE 1043–4; cf. F. M. Giuliano, ‘>' C &, 4 : ancora poetica della brevitas?’ MD 38 (1997) 153–73. Cf. Selden (1998) 357. At least until Fronto, Epist. ad M. Caes. 1.4.6, it was clear that the verb - %  ‘came towards’, used by Callimachus, fr. 2.2, to describe the Muses approaching Hesiod, implied that the latter was awake at the time. It was only later that allegorical interpretations imagined that Hesiod’s meeting, as well as Callimachus’, had taken place while he was asleep, cf. Massimilla (1996) 234. Cf. Selden (1998) 356. On the reasons why Callimachus chooses to set the appearance of the Muses in a dream cf. R. Pretagostini, ‘L’incontro con le Muse sull’Elicona in Esiodo e in Callimaco’, Lexis 13 (1995) 170–2: ‘a poet of the third century bc like Callimachus, who makes truth one of the bases of his poetics, [. . .] in order to make the meeting with the Muses on Mount Helicon credible, has no other means than transferring it from the rationally incredible level of reality to the rationally plausible level of a dream: the epiphany of the goddesses [. . .] for the learned Alexandrine poet, can be hypothesised only in the realm of the imaginary’.

8

Performance and genre

he also constructs his second and third books in dialogue form, as an exchange of question and answer between himself and Xenophanes (cf. Diogenes Laertius 9.111–12). Very likely, he placed this conversation during a katabasis in Hades, thus allowing him contact with the philosopher who had died some time before, as Callimachus’ sleep allowed him contact with the Muses.25 Here, then, Xenophanes seems to have acted at the same time as a guarantor of the truth of the contents and as a signal identifying the literary genre: he plays substantially the same rˆole as the Muses for Hesiod and, in particular, for the ‘Hesiodic’ Callimachus of the first two books of the Aitia.26 In the Iambi, Callimachus both evokes the model and ‘specialises’ it, i.e. he declares (or rather, he lets the model itself declare) in what terms he intends to adapt it. In the first Iambus, which is clearly programmatic in character, Callimachus does not appear to have involved the Muses, but he introduces his poems as a sort of answer to the provocation/invitation of the iambic poet par excellence: he imagines that Hipponax comes back from the dead to Alexandria, in order to hold lessons on good manners for the philologists of the Museum. In this rˆole of critic and corrector of morals, which a powerful Hellenistic-Roman tradition actually attributed to him,27 Callimachus’ Hipponax clearly maintains his customary critical and polemical spirit; thus, in addressing the philologists of the Museum, he uses expressions that verge on contempt for the abusive psogos of the archaic iambic (vv. 26–31),28 but at the same time he states that he is ‘bringing’ to his new place of performance, the Alexandria of the third century, iambics which are ‘singing not the warfare against Bupalus’ (vv. 3–4). In other words, the new iambi are purified from the biting personal aggressiveness with which, according to the biographical tradition, the archaic Hipponax drove his enemies, Bupalus and Athenis, to commit suicide (just as the other principal archaic iambic poet, Archilochus, was believed to have done to his beloved, Neobule, and/or her father). In so doing, Callimachus’ Hipponax not only reveals, with a keen sense of history, that he knows that invective poetry was closely linked to the specific context where it was produced (the culture of archaic Ionia), but he also reflects, within the scope of his new poetic programme (and that of Callimachus), a sense of the progressive elimination of personal polemic, which had marked the evolution 25 26 27 28

The most recent editor, M. Di Marco (Timone di Fliunte. Silli (Rome 1989) 22–5), substantially adopts this idea of Meineke (with some important modifications). See below, pp. 44–6. Cf. [Theocritus], AP 13.3 = HE 3430ff., Horace, Epod. 6.11–14, Degani (1984) 180–1. Cf. D. Konstan, ‘The Dynamics of Imitation: Callimachus’ First Iambic’, in Harder–Regtuit– Wakker (1998) 135.

1 Invoking the Muses, evoking models

9

of comic and satirical literature from iambic poetry to Middle and New Comedy.29 It is not only this clear statement that demonstrates that the Iambi of the resurrected Hipponax have been carefully adapted to the reality of third-century Alexandria. Hipponax’s rh¯esis, ‘discourse’, is very similar in its formal organisation to the typical discourse of an orator or philosopher of third-century Alexandria.30 His words abound with images connected with reading and writing (cf. vv. 11, 31, 88), appropriate to the everyday life of a Museum scholar,31 but obviously not to the real Hipponax (early sixth century).32 Even the movement of the Callimachean Hipponax from the Underworld to the world of the living underlines the idea that he is a model adapted to the new reality, one brought ‘up to date’; Hipponax, moreover, agrees to be resurrected to third-century Alexandria, whereas the judgement and/or the special knowledge of the great figures of the past had regularly been obtained by means of katabaseis, descents to the Underworld, in which it was the living who took the initiative and the dead whose spirits and knowledge remained unaltered, fossilised by death (cf. Aristophanes’ Frogs and Gerytades,33 and the Silloi of Timon (above p. 7–8)). The archaic Hipponax, however ‘Alexandrianised’, is still clearly recognisable in the first five poems, not only in the choliambic metre and the Ionic dialect, but also in the technique of first-person speech and assumed personality, which looks to a specific mode of archaic poetry: As regards the presentation of moral character ( , D), there are certain things which, if said about oneself, may be the cause of envy or prolixity or contradiction, or if said about another, leave us open to the charge of being abusive or rude; it is therefore advisable to have these things said by another person (E  !8 #    5), as Isocrates does in the Philip and in the Antidosis, and as Archilochus does when he expresses criticism (F C;!#! : ). Archilochus makes a father speak about his daughter in the iambic poem, ‘There is nothing 29 32

33

30 Cf. Falivene (1995) 921–5. 31 Cf. Bing (1988) 10–48. Cf. Hunter (1997) 50–1. Cf. Falivene (1995) 923 and Acosta-Hughes (2002) 24–5, 51–2. Hunter (1997) 48–9 offers an attractive reading of the story of Bathycles’ cup. Even as he preaches peace between the learned scholars, the Callimachean Hipponax, with the agonistic attitude of the Hellenistic philologist, may have supplied a different version from the one given by the original Hipponax for the same episode; it cannot be excluded that fr. 65 Degani = IEG 63 (‘Myson, who was declared by Apollo to be the wisest of all men’) refers to this story; cf., however, Degani (1984) 46–7 for a sceptical position on this kind of interpretation of the fragment. In the G   ‘The Cheirones’ of Cratinus (PCG 246–68), however, Solon returns to earth to advise the city, and in Eupolis’  ‘The Demes’ (PCG 99–146), the same function is performed by a delegation of past Athenian statesmen (Solon, Aristides, Miltiades, and Pericles). In view of the clear contextual affinities, these comedies are Callimachus’ most likely model. Cf. further L. Bergson, ‘Kallimachos, Iambos I (fr. 191 Pf.), 26–28’, Eranos 84 (1986) 15–16, Vox (1995) 276–8, Kerkhecker (1999) 15–17.

10

Performance and genre

that cannot be expected or that we can swear to be impossible’ (IEG 122.1), and he makes the carpenter Charon speak in the iambic poem that begins ‘Not for me the estate of Gyges’ (IEG 19.1); so too Sophocles presents Haemon speaking about Antigone to his father, as though quoting what others have been saying (cf. Antigone 688–700). (Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.1418b23–33)

In archaic iambic poetry, then, a speaking ‘I’, who was not the same as the author, seems to have been not infrequent, and this could give rise to misunderstandings about the identity of the persona loquens for anybody not present at the first performance of the work.34 Aristotle, as we have just seen, identifies certain cases where Archilochus places criticism in the mouth of a ‘third party’,35 and Simonides too presented a cook speaking in the first person (fr. 24) and possibly also a hetaera (fr. 16). As for Hipponax, the use of different personae is not as easy to ascertain as it is for Archilochus (thanks to Aristotle)36 , but it is likely that the adoption of the iambic ‘mask’ of the petulant miser was a common feature of his poetry;37 be that as it may, Callimachus’ use of Hipponax as his spokesman clearly adopts a familiar technique of archaic iambic. Moreover, Hipponax or his characters regularly speak of Hipponax himself in the third person,38 and this too is a mode aped by Callimachus’ Hipponax, who from the very beginning speaks of himself in the third person.39 It is in Iambi 1–5 and 13 that the clearest elements of continuity with Hipponax are seen: here is the true *9  character – aggressive, bantering, admonitory – expressed in the Ionic dialect; Iambi 1–4 are in choliambs, the metre expressly connected with Hipponax in Iambus 13,40 while in 34

35

36 37 38 39

40

Cf. K. J. Dover, ‘The Poetry of Archilochos’, in Archiloque (Entretiens sur l’antiquit´e classique 10) (Vandoeuvres–Geneva 1963) 206–8, M. G. Bonanno, ‘L’io lirico greco e la sua identit`a (anche biografica?)’ in I. Gallo and L. Nicastri (eds.), Biografia e autobiografia degli antichi e dei moderni (Naples 1995) 23–39. The views of ‘Charon’ on wealth went against contemporary conceptions, cf. e.g. Alcaeus fr. 360 Voigt, M. Noussia, Solone. I frammenti dell’opera poetica (Milan 2001) 303, and this was presumably not a unique example. For other possible examples, cf. West (1974) 29–33 and G. Nagy, ‘Iambos: Typologies of Invective and Praise’, Arethusa 9 (1976) 191–205. Cf. West (1974) 28–33, Degani (1984) chapters 2 and 3. Cf. frs. 42b1.4 Degani = IEG 32.4; 44.2 Deg. = IEG 36.2; 46 Deg. = IEG 37; 79.9 Deg. = IEG; 196.4 Deg. = IEG 117.4), The first verse of Iambus 1 has sometimes been considered to be a verse of Hipponax, used as an opening ‘motto’, cf. Degani (1984) 44–5, A. Cavarzere, Sul limitare: il ‘motto’e la poesia di Orazio (Bologna 1996) 61–64, Acosta-Hughes (2002) 37–8. On the choice of choliambs, rather than the iambic trimeters which were now indissolubly connected with drama, cf. Kerkhecker (1999) 5–8. By including poems in various different metres within a collection framed by ‘exemplary’ choliambs (Iambi 1–4 and 13), Callimachus probably recalled the original polymetry which characterised the Hellenistic editions of both Hipponax and Archilochus (cf. below, pp. 14–15, 25–6).

1 Invoking the Muses, evoking models

11

Iambus 5, the epodic pattern of iambic trimeter plus iambic dimeter, actually found in Hipponax (fr. 129 Deg. = IEG 118) and Archilochus, is modified to admit choliambs.41 In these poems, moreover, Callimachus plays some very iambic variations on the game of masking the persona loquens, thus concealing, as Aristotle thought iambic authors did, his own identity when impersonating a series of more or less embarrassing roles. Iambus 2 offers an explicit application of the lesson taught by Hipponax through the story of the cup of Bathycles in Iambus 1. The application is presented as a fable (D  5 2$ , HI  #., ‘it was the time when . . .’): the animals once spoke the same language as men, but then Zeus, in his anger at their importunate requests and claims, gave the voices of the animals to men, ‘with the result that men became chatterboxes’;42 in particular, the narrator adds, Eudemus inherited the voice of the dog, Philton that of the donkey, and the tragedians those of marine animals (vv. 10–13).43 The voice in which the fable is spoken is remarkably like that of Callimachus: the periphrastic and erudite definitions of birds as ,   , marine animals as  #(%%" and man as  #,  J4  ‘mud of Prometheus’ are particularly noteworthy.44 Nevertheless, the voice now reveals itself as that of Aesop (   'C ;K%  <', L  ‘thus spoke Aesop of Sardis’), who is thus responsible not only for the fable, but also (paradoxically) for its application to Callimachus’ contemporaries (vv. 10–13).45 By setting the poetic voice inside this series of Chinese boxes, Callimachus repeats the pattern of the resurrected Hipponax of Iambus 1, who tells an improving anecdote, as Archilochus too had often done, thus freeing himself from the responsibility for the psogos by using a fable (we do not know whether this technique had also been used by the archaic Hipponax). This allows Callimachus to move even further away from personal responsibility than the Hipponax of Iambus 1, because the subject matter of his fable is, with at least some truth, explicitly attributed to Aesop. Even if it is obvious that the individual targets of Callimachus’ psogos (Eudemus, Philton etc.) were not chosen by ‘the real’ Aesop, these targets were, however, presented as simple examples of the application of the maxim that emerges from Aesop’s experience – Aesop came to a sticky end for saying what he said (cf. vv. 16–17 ‘Aesop [. . .], the one whom the Delphians did not receive well when he sang his story’), but Callimachus 41 43

44

42 Thus the di¯eg¯esis and vv. 13–15. Cf. Degani (1984) 45–6. As Acosta-Hughes (2002) 184 comments, ‘the fable remains etiological, but it is not the origin of human language that is the poet’s concern, but the origin of his contemporaries’ babbling noises.’ 45 Cf. Kerkhecker (1999) 60. Cf. Acosta-Hughes (2002) 176–7.

12

Performance and genre

has nothing to do with this: he is only the spokesman, or at most, the candid exegete, who has merely added some examples in order to clarify. In Iambus 3, yet another personal attack of the iambic kind is ‘justified’ as the result of observations, which frame the poem, on the decline of the social value of poetry and the deterioration of ethical values.46 The opening reminds us of the beginning of Hesiod’s myth of the ages, which was a paradigm protest against the greed of the present and the death of justice: compare Callimachus, fr. 193.1 KC D) .M N##) 1C  D ‘Ah, Apollo, if only I had lived when I did not exist’, with Hesiod, WD 174–5  C   C N ##  O  %  5 | &'(% ‘I should not have been a member of the men of the fifth generation’. The identity of the gods who are apostrophised (Apollo in vv. 1 and 10, and the Muses, in all likelihood, in v. 2 and probably also in vv. 10–11) leads us to understand that Callimachus was actually expressing his regret for the present in his capacity as a poet, perhaps with an attitude analogous to that of Theocritus’ lament in Idyll 16 for the decline of the traditional appreciation for poetry and the sad lot of the poor poet. In the second half of the poem, however, moralising about the fortunes of poetry develops in a completely different manner: poverty and honesty are, in the eyes of Callimachus the poet, evils which cause his suffering at the hands of a young boy, Euthydemus; after the boy’s initial promises, supported by his mother, he had apparently passed over to a wealthier lover (the digression on this injustice appears to run at least from v. 24 to v. 33).47 Thus we see that the high moral tone of the opening was yet another mask, this time used to launch an attack against an unfaithful boy; regret for the limited prestige of poetry in the present age is the result of this disappointment in his love life, and Callimachus concludes by declaring that rather than follow the Muses, it would have been better for him to be a castrated Corybant, a singer of the great Mother, or to sing hymns to Adonis. Whatever the exact meaning of this final wish may be,48 it is clear that Callimachus concludes, somewhat paradoxically, by repudiating his dedication to the Muses, in the light of his current erotic distress. In short, 46

47

48

‘The speaker introduces his own grievances as mere illustration of general moral reflections [. . .] Iambus III starts out pretending to be a poem about & 4. It is really about an offended poet’; thus Kerkhecker (1999) 74–5. The same eroticisation of the topos of the poor poet – for which cf. e.g. G. Giangrande, in ´ L’Epigramme grecque, 135–9, G. Tarditi, ‘Le Muse povere’, in Studi in onore di A. Ardizzoni (Rome 1978) 1013–21, G. Mazzoli, Sandalion 20 (1997) 107–8, Acosta-Hughes (2002) 225–32 – is found in the Callimachean epigram AP 12.150 = HE 1047ff., for which cf. below, p. 343. On its possible nuances cf. Kerkhecker (1999) 79–80.

1 Invoking the Muses, evoking models

13

Callimachus attacks wealth simply because it has taken away his beloved,49 and the sublime moralist of the opening lines turns out at the end to be a selfish lover. The reader – both the modern reader, with his experience of the mask of the poet-miser as one of the conventions of iambic poetry, and the ancient reader, who will have perceived a certain degree of artificiality in the exaggerated laments for poverty and degradation – may then wonder whether the persona loquens of the final part is also, at least partly, a mask: the mask of the selfish and miserly iambic poet takes the place of another character familiar from archaic iambus and elegy, the high-minded moralist. The masking performed by means of fable is taken to an extreme in Iambus 4, because the fable itself appears to put on a mask, assuming functions that are different from those it had at the beginning and which it resumes at the end. The poet, who – to judge from the di¯eg¯esis – is in conflict with someone, perhaps a rival poet50 or a rival in love,51 addresses a passer-by, Simus, in a rather sharp tone, perhaps suggesting that they are not on the same social level; he tells him a fable, which, though its moral is that one should be conscious of one’s own social status, is principally an allegory of the superiority of Callimachus over his rival. The fable is about a quarrel for supremacy between the laurel and the olive, and the responsibility for it is attributed to the ‘ancient Lydians’ (vv. 7–8); the dispute is settled, however, not by the trees themselves, but by an exchange of dialogue between two birds, which is reported by the olive and which includes the confirmation of the supremacy of the olive. After the exchange of the birds’ comments and the ratification of the victory of the olive, the laurel turns violently on the bramble, which had tried to intervene in the dispute between the two more noble plants, and silences it, because it is an inferior plant, which should not even dream of being on the same level as the laurel and the olive (vv. 102ff.). The abuse directed against the bramble picks up the sharp tones in which the persona loquens had addressed Simus in the opening lines. This ending, however, poses a further problem for the reader: if the victorious olive tree stands for Callimachus-the-author,52 why is it the laurel that apparently pronounces the final moral?53 However 49 50 52

53

Cf. D. L. Clayman, Callimachus’ Iambi (Leiden 1980) 22. 51 Cf. Kerkhecker (1999) 112. So, most recently, Acosta-Hughes (2002) 191–3. This is clear from the emphatic presentation of the dialogue between the ‘chattering’ birds, which is probably a self-quotation from the well-known passage of Hecale (on which cf. below, pp. 199-200 and 252–4). Other likely cases of self-reference (cf. Acosta-Hughes (2002) 191–2) are the reference to Branchos (v. 28), who is a minor figure of myth, but the subject of one of Callimachus’ poems (fr. 229), and the reference to daphn¯ephoria, which is one of the opening aitia of Book 4 of the Aitia (frs. 87–9). Cf. Kerkhecker (1999) 113–14.

14

Performance and genre

the ending is understood, Callimachus forcibly reminds us that the persona loquens of iambic poetry is not (always) to be taken as a simple mask for the author. Iambus 5 is another example of the psogos characteristic of archaic iambic poetry. The subject of criticism here is impropriety in sexual conduct, which finds a precise parallel in Hipponax’s criticism of the incestuous relationship of Bupalus (frs. 20–24 Deg. = IEG 12–14 and 16–17). The Callimachean psogos is initially presented under the mask of benevolent advice, in a manner which finds a very close analogue in the opening of Hipponax’s fragment 129 Deg. = IEG 118, which was certainly Callimachus’ metrical model (iambic trimeter plus dimeter). Both poems begin with an apostrophe to the poem’s addressee (named by Hipponax, but generically called ‘friend’ by Callimachus), and both claim to offer advice and therefore invite the recipient to pay attention; in both cases, the reason for wishing to offer advice is immediately stated.54 There are, however, also several differences, both in the tone of the initial criticism (much sharper in Hipponax than in Callimachus) and in the position of the Callimachean persona loquens, who seems to pass in the last thirty (unfortunately very lacunose) verses from accusing his friend to speaking about himself:55 perhaps he displayed his own interest in the boys who attracted his friend, rather like the situation described in Iambus 3? In the other Iambi, by contrast, the poetic voice of Callimachus imposes itself with a higher degree of autonomy than we find in the better attested forms of archaic iambic poetry: a propemptikon to a departing friend leads to an ekphrasis of the statue of Zeus at Olympia by Phidias; there are a few aitia, an epinician, a poem celebrating the birth of a friend’s daughter, etc. We also find, starting with Iambus 5 (cf. above), a gradual move away from the metrical uniformity of the first four poems towards a series of more or less marked variations on the theme of the iambic and epodic metres developed by Hipponax and Archilochus (although in Callimachus all epodic combinations do in fact have an iambic first line),56 together with occasional Doric (Iambi 6, 9) or Doric–Aeolic dialectal colouring 54

55 56

On the relationship between the two poems cf. R. Kassel, RhM 101 (1958) 235–6, Acosta-Hughes (2002) 260–63, Kerkhecker (1999) 143–6. The use of the choliamb instead of the trimeter suggests that Callimachus is even more Hipponactean than Hipponax himself, cf. Kerkhecker (1999) 123: ‘Callimachus is outlimping the father of the limping line’. The epodic Iambus 5, which is still recognisable as quasi-Hipponactean in its metre, acts as a bridge between Iambi 1–4 and the polymetry of the following poems. Cf. D’Alessio (1996) ii.619 n. 102. Iambi 6 and 7 are epodes composed of iambic trimeters and ithyphallics; Iambus 9 is in iambic trimeters, and 11 is composed of iambic pentapodies.

1 Invoking the Muses, evoking models

15

(Iambus 7). These are both novelties in relation to the tradition of archaic iambic; the nearly, but not quite, Hipponactean versification and the nonIonic dialectal colouring might be signals at the level of form which point in the same direction as the gradual detachment from the themes and forms of mim¯esis dear to the archaic poet. The great variety of subjects and metres in Iambi 6–12 may, however, also reflect the form of a Hellenistic ‘edition’ of Hipponax, if, as seems certain, this was organised on the basis not of thematic, but of metrical criteria;57 collections of poems by Hipponax, with their varying ‘occasional’ character, typical of lyric, elegiac and iambic poetry, might well have served as a model for the variety of Callimachus’ themes. In Hipponax, the variety had been the result of the close link between a great plurality of social contexts and a way of producing poetry that was still for the most part oral and extemporising. In Callimachus, however, the variety is a literary imitation of the archaic form by a poetry with a quite different social and performative context. Thus, the Iambi were, in one sense, a ‘faithful’ reinterpretation of the Hipponactean model, even if this poetry book is very clearly a creation of the Hellenistic age in its refined structural organisation, hardly imaginable in the ‘oral’ archaic period. Iambus 13 is clearly complementary to Iambus 1. Callimachus is here presented defending himself against the polemical criticism of the quarrelsome Alexandrian scholars, to whom the censure of Hipponax in Iambus 1 had also been addressed.58 Even if this poem opens with an invocation to the Muses and Apollo and a libation in their honour, presumably by the poet,59 in reality it offers an image of poetic activity that is analogous to that of Iambus 1 – an image where little space is left for the traditional inspiration of enthousiasmos, and where the idea of poetry as a techne based upon the imitation and variation of models is dominant. At the close of the poem, which would have formed the final sphragis to the book, if indeed the thirteenth was the last Iambus,60 Callimachus defends his composition of iambics in the manner of Hipponax, ‘without mixing with the Ionians, or going to Ephesus’ (even if he admits that Ephesus is the place ‘from which anyone who intends to produce limping verses not unwisely draws the flame of his inspiration’), and also the legitimacy of adopting a language which is not uniform and of writing in ‘Ionic, Doric and a mixed language’ 57 59

60

58 Cf. Depew (1992) 320. Cf. O. Masson, Les Fragments du po`ete Hipponax (Paris 1962) 17. Both Kerkhecker (1999) 252–6 and Acosta-Hughes (2002) 70, 74 agree that the opening line 0% # .##) P  O %' ‘Beautiful Muses and Apollo, to whom I make this libation’ should most probably be attributed to the poet, and not to his critic. Cf. below, n. 115.

16

Performance and genre

(vv. 17–19). The idea that one should visit the homeland of the author whose model one intends to imitate, in order to ‘draw the flame of inspiration’ – Q % suggests enthousiasmos and external possession – appears to have been common at the time of Callimachus; the idea occurs, for example, only again to be implicitly rejected, in an (unfortunately corrupt) epigram by Nossis: R S M 5C) * Q # 5   ##! 0 $#4 T < !  . $%  ) * 5 F 0Q%% # 4I ? %%  U K% 'C V   3 W%%) K.

(AP 7.718 = HE 2831–461 )

Stranger, if you sail to Mytilene of the lovely dances to be inspired by the flower of Sappho’s graces, say that a woman of Locris bore one dear to the Muses and to her; you may know that my name is Nossis. Go.

Callimachus claims that anyone who wants to compose limping verses (only), faithfully imitating the ancient model of Hipponax of Ephesus, must immediately travel to Ephesus, for that is the wise course (cf. fr. 203.66: 8 &).62 Callimachus himself, however, does not need to do so, as he had initially presented himself, in Iambus 1, as ‘invested’ by a resurrected Hipponax, who no longer had any interest in the historical context of the real Hipponax and no bellicose intentions towards his ancient rival, Bupalus; Callimachus’ Hipponax himself was interested only in the historical and geographical horizon of Callimachus (the scholars of the Museum at Alexandria and their squabbles). Furthermore, with the metrically and linguistically varied book of Iambi behind him, Callimachus has clearly demonstrated that it was not his intention to produce only ‘limping’ verses or to recreate faithfully the social and linguistic environment of Hipponax by means of pure Ionic. Thus, after making clear through his updated Hipponax that his inspiration is not limited to the contexts of the original Hipponax, Callimachus advances yet another model in the thirteenth Iambus. In answer to the critics, who, according to the summary (di¯eg¯esis), had charged him with 61

62

The text is that proposed by Gutzwiller (1998) 85. Reitzenstein (1893) 139 suggested that the epigram was a closing sphragis to the collection of poems by Nossis; for its interpretation see esp. Gutzwiller (1998) 86. Note that Nossis describes the habit of going to seek inspiration from the great poets of the past in the centres where these great writers lived, but she presents this as something practised by others – for her own part, she stays proudly in her Locrian homeland.  & will, of course, carry a different nuance if it is the view of the critics (cf. e.g. R. Scodel, HSCPh 91 (1987) 210), than if it is said from the perspective of the ironic Callimachus (cf. Acosta-Hughes (2002) 78–9).

2 Impossible models and lost performance contexts

17

practising #$ ' , ‘writing in many different genres’,63 Callimachus seems to echo the attitude of Socrates in Plato’s Ion64 – ‘who ever said . . . “you must compose pentameters, you heroic verses, you have received from the gods the task of composing tragedies”? Nobody, I believe’ (vv. 30–33) – and thus to confute, at the same time, both his critics and the school of thought that Socrates had represented. The Platonic Socrates had argued that as a poet was inspired once and only once by a god, he could write in only one genre of literature; Callimachus denies that this is true and, as proof, cites Ion of Chios, the fifth-century ‘poet of many genres’ par excellence. Ion was most famous as a tragedian (he was known as ‘Ion the Tragedian’), but he also wrote satyr dramas, dithyrambs, elegies, lyric poems (paeans, encomia, hymns) and works in prose, and perhaps a comedy; besides this specific model, Callimachus also presents, as we know – unfortunately – only from the surviving summary (di¯eg¯esis), the more generic paradigm of the artisan, ‘who is not criticised by anybody if he makes tools of different shapes’. Here the idea of poetic activity as techn¯e is laid bare; after poetry as the imitation of or inspiration from the ‘updated’ model of Hipponax, an idea which had been sufficient to introduce the first few ‘Hipponactean’ Iambi, Callimachus now comes out into the open and admits his professionalism in order to justify the plurality of genres, metres and dialects found in the other Iambi, or perhaps in the whole series of his works. And yet here too, Callimachus avoids doing this by affirming, for example, the rights of free speech and imagination, or even the right to ‘play with the forms’, but rather he takes pains to find a historical ‘guarantor’ for his practice in the poetry of the past. 2 im possible mod els and lost per formance contexts The concept of the ‘contamination of literary genres’ has often, and rightly, been identified as one of the distinctive characteristics of the refined poetry which flourished in the Alexandria of Callimachus in the first half of the third century bc.65 Much less correctly, however, such ‘contamination’ has at times been associated with an intellectualising pursuit of novelty at all costs, with a ludic and subversive sophistication which was wholly preoccupied with books and only too ready to sacrifice the traditional literary 63

64

It is impossible to establish whether the accusation regarded the Iambi or the whole series of Callimachus’ works (including the Iambi), cf. Kerkhecker (1999) 268–70. In any case, there is no reason to believe, despite repeated modern affirmations to the contrary, that Callimachus is defending ‘contamination’ of literary genres, or that he had been accused of such a practice, cf. Treu (1963) 277. 65 The following pages re-use material from Fantuzzi (1993a). Cf. Depew (1992) 325–7.

18

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system. Arid intellectualism, experimentalism and arbitrariness are indeed the qualities most often thought to characterise Alexandrian ‘contamination’, though the modern scholarly sense of the deliberate generic arbitrariness of Hellenistic poetry in fact rather hardened over time. A. Couat in 1882,66 Ph. E. Legrand in 1898,67 R. Heinze in 1919,68 and L. Deubner in 192169 still spoke, respectively, of ‘m´elange’, of ‘confusion des genres’, of ‘Gemisch’ and of ‘Mischung’ of genres, without pointing to a deliberate authorial policy. In 1924, however, Wilhelm Kroll saw a more clearly defined authorial strategy; for him ‘contamination’ was ‘Kreuzung der Gattungen’, and the reason for it was a taste for ‘being modern at all costs and obtaining surprising effects’ or for # ‘variation’;70 where Kroll led, very many critics of Greek literature have followed.71 Intellectualism was indeed an extremely important element in the radical reform of the literary system carried out by Hellenistic poets, but it was not the only one, as we shall see. Moreover, generic ‘contamination’ was not the exclusive prerogative of the learned poetry of third-century Alexandria. Already in the Laws Plato had complained that the common people now controlled the ‘laws’ ( ) regulating ‘poetry accompanied by music’: Once upon a time, Athenian music ($%4)72 comprised various categories and forms. One type of song consisted of prayers to the gods, which were termed ‘hymns’; and there was another quite different type, which you might well have called ‘laments’. ‘Paeans’ made up a third category, and there was also a fourth, called a ‘dithyramb’ . . . there existed another kind of song too . . . ‘nomes’ ( ) ‘for the lyre’ . . . Once these categories and a number of others had been fixed, no one was allowed to pervert them by using one sort of tune in a composition belonging to another category ( Q  '8 '    .## )  M .## * .##  !% #$ L') . . . Later, as time went on, composers arose who started to set a fashion of breaking the rules and offending good taste. They did have a natural artistic talent, but they were ignorant of the correct and legitimate standards laid down by the Muse. (.!  X  &Q%$ Y        Q%  X  ) & Z  'X   , '  0Q%  ,  ). Gripped by a frenzied and excessive lust for pleasure, they jumbled together laments and hymns, mixed paeans and dithyrambs, and even imitated aulos-tunes on the lyre. The result was a total confusion of styles 66 67 68 69 70 72

La Po´esie alexandrine sous les trois premiers Ptol´em´ees (324–222 av. J. C.) (Paris 1882) 258. Legrand (1898) 413–29. ‘Ovids elegische Erz¨ahlung’ (1919), now in id., Vom Geist des R¨omertums 3rd ed. (Stuttgart 1960) 401. ‘Ein Stilprinzip hellenisticher Dichtkunst’ (1921), now in id., Kleine Schriften zur klassischen Altertumskunde (K¨onigstein/Ts. 1982) e.g. p. 250. 71 Cf. esp. Schwinge (1986) 44–7. Cf. Kroll (1924) 202–3. On the complex meaning of $%4 in Plato cf. e.g. Harvey (1955) 165 and Else (1967) 37.

2 Impossible models and lost performance contexts

19

( Q  'X 4$ [   '$(9)  #"' '8 5 "' Q )  (  * (  %$(  ). Unintentionally, in their idiotic way, they misrepresented their art, claiming that in music there are no standards of right and wrong at all, but that the most ‘correct’ criterion is the pleasure of a man who enjoyed the performance, whether he is a good man or not. (Plato, Laws 3.700a–e, trans. Saunders (adapted))

Plato’s nostalgic reflections represent a revolution in the traditional relationship in melic poetry between the forms of musical accompaniment and the themes of the poems; this revolution was probably that of the ‘new dithyramb’, which reached its peak at the end of the fifth century and at the beginning of the fourth with Timotheus of Miletus. At the heart of this ‘new music’ was a very radical search for mim¯esis of action in music, and this was itself a good reason for Plato to hate it, hostile as he was to the idea of mim¯esis as a techn¯e of poetry and of art in general; the new music made free use of the three different kinds of harmony (enharmonic, diatonic and chromatic), and thus contaminated, on the one hand, nomes ( ) and dithyrambs and, on the other, citharodic and aulodic melodies.73 Plato’s enthusiasm for the melic genres of the past was, in fact, an enthusiasm for the well and truly departed: Plato did not have the chance to listen, say, to many paeans or hymns of a Pindaric kind, for almost alone among the lyric genres only the dithyramb flourished in his day, as a result of its metamorphic capacity for adaption and variety. While, as we have seen, Plato did not hesitate to express sharp criticism of what he saw as the musical anarchy of contemporary dithyramb, elsewhere he avoided passing judgement and, with a precise eye for contemporary reality, passed over all other melic forms in silence, giving space only to the dithyramb. Thus, when in the Republic he divided the literary genres on the basis of the three types of ‘presentation’, he reserved the third category –‘simple narrative’ presentation – for the dithyramb (3.394b–c).74 Likewise, Xenophon, who never speaks of melic poetry in general, classes the dithyramb as, like tragedy or epic, a distinct genre of poetry (Memorabilia 1.4.3).75 With the disappearance by the mid-fifth century of many of the social or ritual contexts for other genres of melic poetry, which had also caused them to be distinguished from each other in rhythmic 73 74

75

Cf. Privitera (1979) 317–18 and West (1992) 361–4; see Dionysius Hal., comp. verb. 19.8. For Plato, the dithyramb is a melic genre; he thus ignores the mimetic-dialogic evolution that the dithyramb had undergone during the fifth century, cf. P. Vicaire, Platon critique litt´eraire (Paris 1960) 241, H. F¨arber, Die Lyrik in der Kunsttheorie der Antike (Munich 1936) 23–5. ‘In epic poetry, I have developed a special admiration for Homer, in dithyrambs for Melanippides, in tragedy for Sophocles, etc.’

20

Performance and genre

intonation and thus in metre,76 these melic genres had practically died out in the Athens of the late fifth and fourth centuries. It is in keeping with these developments that the most prominent lyrical sections of tragedy and comedy, the choruses, also suffered a radical limitation of their function during the fourth century: they became ‘intermezzos’ for entertainment – Aristotle defines such songs in tragedy as 9 #, Poetics 1456a29 – often totally remote from the play being performed and/or repertory pieces which were only occasionally composed by the dramatists themselves. It is perhaps for this reason that they were eliminated from the texts in the course of tradition (as in the last two extant plays of Aristophanes and in Menander). The history of the dithyramb has a particular interest for future developments in Hellenistic poetry. Since the time of Melanippides (second half of the fifth century bc), the dithyramb had adopted new structures and new forms of music,77 much more complex than those that had characterised archaic melic poetry. In all probability, these were largely due to the search for a greater mimetic expressiveness,78 and were allowed by the freedom with which the dithyrambic poet-musicians – almost all of them foreigners (except Kinesias)79 – could operate at Athens. Evidently, to Plato’s displeasure, the poets from outside Athens did not feel excessively bound to respect the local norms of Athenian music, and Timotheus did not receive the same treatment at Athens as he says he had received at Sparta, where the people criticised him K Z") V  #   [ % &  ‘with blazing reproach, because I do not render homage to the ancient Muse with my new hymns’ (PMG 791.210–12). When these complex musical novelties, mainly of foreign origin, became popular, they probably helped to hasten the demise of melic poetry, since they were difficult to execute for anybody who was not a professional musician, and they sharpened the separation between, on the one hand, the verbal element and the metre and, on the other, the vocal element and the music; 76

77

78

79

The melic genres were differentiated both by style and content; of primary importance were the performative context of each genre and the kind of vocal and instrumental performance required for each occasion, cf. Gentili (1988) 36. For the musical innovations of the ‘new dithyramb’, the fundamental text is the long fragment of Pherecrates’ Chiron (PCG 155), which refers to the innovations of Melanippides, Kinesias, Phrynis, Timotheus, and Philoxenus. Cf., most recently, G. Dobrov, ‘From Criticism to Mimesis: Comedy and the New Music’, in B. Zimmermann (ed.), Griechisch-r¨omische Kom¨odie und Trag¨odie, II (Stuttgart 1997) 49–74. Cf. P. Mureddu, ‘Il poeta drammatico da didaskalos a mimetes’ AION (filol.-lett.) 4–5 (1982–83) 75–98 and B. Zimmermann, ‘Critica e imitazione: la nuova musica nelle commedie di Aristofane’ in Gentili–Pretagostini (1988) 199–204. As noted by West (1992) 359.

2 Impossible models and lost performance contexts

21

at the end of the fourth century, the separation became so sharp that Aristoxenus no longer used the syllable or the metron as the basis of musical rhythm for his musical theories, unlike all his predecessors from Damon to Aristotle.80 Moreover, at some (uncertain) period, the dithyramb, originally a religious and ritual song for and about Dionysus, was adopted into theatrical contests, extended its scope to include myths of a nonDionysiac character, and assumed modes of presentation other than the third-person lyrical-expository form, including even mimetic dialogue.81 If we can believe Plato, the dithyramb of the end of the fifth and of the fourth centuries retained an extraordinary popularity, thanks in part to its reuse and combination of structural elements taken from dying melic genres, including, it would appear, the nome ( ), which still flourished in the late fifth century and with which the dithyramb had shared musical experimentations.82 The reconfiguration of the generic system was, therefore, not only a poetic choice for the Alexandrians, but also a historical necessity rooted in the experience of the fifth and fourth centuries, and one which finds a partial analogue in the situation of the dithyramb-writers, the ‘last lyric poets’ of the classical age.83 Generic change was, of course, less where the contexts of performance remained similar, as for epic. But epic poetry, too, was affected by the change in the cultural climate: on the one hand, at both the ‘high’ and the ‘popular’ level, relatively new forms, such as historical, historical-encomiastic and historical-geographical epic, gained ground in the changed political 80

81

82

83

The choice of intricate melodies, embellished with grace-notes (suggesting to comic poets ‘pathways’ or ‘ant-runs’) brought with it less subjection to the metrical and rhythmic structures of the verbal text, and in particular to the triadic structure typical of earlier melic poetry; Melanippides introduced the so-called &9# ‘preludes’, i.e. astrophic solos, cf. Gentili (1988) 27. On the &9#, cf. also D. Restani, ‘Il Chirone di Ferecrate e la “nuova” musica greca’ Rivista italiana di musicologia 18 (1983) 139–92; G. Comotti, ‘L’anabol´e e il ditirambo’, QUCC 60 (1989) 107–17. For the influence of the relationship between music and metre in theoretical reflections on music, see R. Pretagostini, ‘Le teorie metrico-ritmiche degli antichi’ in Cambiano–Canfora–Lanza (1993) 386–7. Cf. Privitera (1979) 311–16; D. F. Sutton, ‘Dithyramb as \T: Philoxenus of Cythera’s Cyclops or Galatea’ QUCC 42 (1983) 37–43; B. Gentili, ‘Il coro tragico nella teoria degli antichi’ Dioniso 55 (1984–85) 17–37, pp. 24–6, for whom the evolution of the dithyramb in a dialogic-mimetic direction is already visible in Bacchylides’ Theseus (see, however, G. A. Privitera, ‘Origini della tragedia e ruolo del ditirambo’ SIFC 84 (1991) 187–93). The presence of a strong Dionysiac component also in the ‘new dithyramb’ is underlined by Zimmermann (1992) 129–32. Cf. Pherecrates, PCG 155.26–8; for the ‘contamination’ of nomos and dithyramb in Timotheus, see [Plutarch], On Music 4, C. J. Ellingham ‘Timotheus’ Persae’, in Powell–Barber (1921) 63, and, more generally, B. Zimmermann, ‘Gattungsmischung, Manierismus, Archaismus: Tendenzen des griechischen Dramas und Dithyrambos am Ende des 5. Jahrhunderts v. Chr.’, Lexis 3 (1989) 25–36; see also id. (1992) 133–6. Rossi (2000) 150 draws an analogy with chess: ‘the literary system (the chess-game) gradually proceeded towards new combinations, and the genres (the pieces) gradually assumed new values’.

22

Performance and genre

circumstances;84 on the other, the age witnessed the birth of a new short form of erudite epos, the ‘epyllion’ (Philetas, Callimachus, Theocritus, cf. below, Chapter 5). So too, increasing emphasis was placed on aetiology (Callimachus, Apollonius of Rhodes85 ), while the didactic epos of Hesiodic origin was revived (Aratus, Nicander, cf. below, Section 5.6); at the same time, many of the leading writers of the third century were actively engaged in the search for a new poetic language for both hexameter and elegiac poetry, in an attempt to avoid the formulaic repetition which had continued to characterise the epic up to Antimachus.86 The archaic and classical system of lyric genres, in particular, was based on the close linkage between particular performance contexts and particular forms of poem. This linkage offered familiar conventions within which poets traditionally worked and by which their poems were interpreted and understood. Such cohesive conventions, which are basically the constructive principles of genres, had a tendency, however, to become rigid, due to a sort of inertia effect (which we might also call ‘tradition’), and thus to lose their expressive force and become less capable of responding to the expectations of the public; this trend was associated with the gradual change or disappearance of the performance ‘occasions’ with which the conventions were functionally associated. At the close of the classical age, the performance occasions for literature no longer seemed to be so widely differentiated as they had been in the age of lyric poetry and the classical polis: the great variety of such occasions and forms of expression no longer possessed any real functionality in the cultural situation of the third century. The proliferating literary forms of the archaic and classical ages had gradually became more and more specialised and more numerous, compared with the uniqueness of the ‘sociological place’ reserved for epic. Different forms of poetry were demanded by many different contexts: the traditional contexts of the courts of kings and tyrants and citharodic contests, which had been the privileged settings of poetry up to the sixth century, were joined by the symposium, the public assembly, the many pan-Hellenic festivals, the various forms of prayers to the divinities, religious ceremonies and social rituals of many types (cf. the epithalamium, the encomium, the funeral lament, etc.); in the fifth and fourth centuries, various types of theatrical representation were added to the mix. 84

85

Cameron (1995) has prompted renewed interest in the survival of traditional forms of epic. That such epic poetry did survive, at least among the authors, known to us almost exclusively from inscriptions, who composed for public celebrations and contests is hard to doubt, cf. L. Lehnus, ‘In margine a un recente libro su Callimaco’ in Ricordando R. Cantarella: Miscellanea di studi (Milan 1999) 216–25, Fantuzzi (1988b) xxxiv–xli. 86 See below Chapter 6. Cf. esp. Fusillo (1985) 136–9.

2 Impossible models and lost performance contexts

23

The Hellenistic world which Alexander had created offered a very changed picture. In the Alexandria of the third century, for example, there seems to have been a return to public performance conditions analogous to those that had characterised the age of Homeric kithar¯oidia: apart from the spread of books, which became the main form of private enjoyment of poetry, the sociological settings for the performance of poetry were largely limited to recitals held at court, for a restricted public attracted by the more refined forms of poetry,87 and more public performances, usually for a wider public, who continued to appreciate the monumental epic and the traditional forms of theatre. In any case, besides being much more limited in number, the places and modes of public performance no longer had the same institutional significance as they had had in the archaic and classical periods; in the Hellenistic age, for the first time, literary communication was first and foremost through reading, and authors displayed a clear awareness of the importance of this medium. This macroscopic change in the mode of literary communication is largely responsible for the sophistication of Hellenistic poetry and its self-reflexive character. While the comprehension of an oral ‘text’ is achieved by means of empatheia between the reciter and the listeners, in reception through reading, in which there is both spatial and (usually) temporal separation between author and recipient, the contextual situation has little influence on comprehension. A reader uses both his own general cultural knowledge and his specific knowledge about the author and the author’s context to understand the text; because a writer knows how readers operate, the writer can organise more sophisticated textual strategies, capable of guiding his reader. Texts thus become more fixed, even ‘closed’, though of course they are always open to adventurous deconstruction by single readers, or even by whole periods of taste; what is lost, however, is the possibility of radical reorientation and that ‘openness’, which, in the case of archaic and classical texts, was always available through subsequent re-performance.88 The intensive philological scholarship of the third century bc, which sought to describe and classify literary forms of the past, may have facilitated the contamination of traditional genres. It is tempting to hypothesise that this work of cataloguing and establishing conventional norms in fact fostered a ‘reverse normativity’, or, in other words, that the Alexandrians ended up by composing the laws of the genres ‘in order to violate them better’.89 This hypothesis, which reduces contradiction to explanation (the 87 88 89

Cf. most recently Weber (1993) and Barbantani (2001) 32–49. See below, pp. 35–6 on the structure of the hexameter. Cf. already Kroll (1924) 202–10 (and above, pp. 17–18), and the more cautious formulations of Rossi (1971a) 83.

24

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poet-philologists establish rules and structures qua philologists, which they then set about violating qua poets), is particularly useful as it reveals the strangeness of the phenomenon with which we are dealing. For some scholars, the chronological coincidence between the fixing of genre norms and poetic deviations from them merely confirms that Hellenistic poetry was a purely intellectual and formalistic exercise. It is, however, a fact that throughout the archaic and classical ages the rules of the various genres remained unwritten: poetry was composed according to performance context, with the modifications made necessary by specific historical or geographical circumstances and specific groups of listeners. Previous texts, as models, acted in practice as codifiers of genres,90 and previous authors offered their successors a selection of practical applications, an ‘empirical poetics’, so to speak. This was quite different from what was subsequently to happen, when the observation of common, constant characteristics led to critical reflection and normative theory: systematic analyses of genres and explicit codifications took their place beside traditional texts, and the result was a literary system based on generic awareness and reflection, and no longer just on empirical experience. During the classical age, the ‘normative’ system for models to be imitated was approximately the same for both poetry and rhetoric. In the field of rhetoric, manuals were most probably an ‘invention’ of the fourth century, whereas the !, ‘arts’, attributed by tradition to the orators of the earlier fifth century (Corax, Tisias, Theodorus, Thrasymachus, etc.) were, in reality, nothing more than collections of ‘examples’, that is more or less fictitious models to be imitated and adapted; we may compare the fictitious speeches which the Sophists later offered to their students as paradigms to be imitated (e.g. the tetralogies of Antiphon, the Encomium of Helen and the Defence of Palamedes by Gorgias).91 In the later period, however, rhetoric continued to enjoy a certain number of differentiated settings and institutional occasions of performance, which persisted, practically unchanged and uninterrupted, until the end of antiquity. Thus, collections of examples and ‘manuals’ could continue to play a prescriptive rˆole centuries after they had been composed, and rhetorical regulations could still offer a programmatic guide, because they were helpful in situations which were still real. 90

91

Even once codified, however, generic rules never substitute completely for the exemplary force of the great models. The contrast between ‘traditional’ literary practice and that informed by critical theory was never absolute; the great models of the past always stood before writers and their audiences, and – from the earliest days – both composition and reception presupposed a familiarity with written language and with a multiplicity of texts and patterns of allusion. Cf. Th. Cole, The Origins of Rhetoric in Ancient Greece (Baltimore 1991).

2 Impossible models and lost performance contexts

25

In the field of poetry, however, this did not happen. When the dominance of written reception and the requirements of the Library92 led poets and critics such as Philetas, Zenodotus and Callimachus to reflect on the literary system inherited from the past, there is no doubt that the ‘occasional’ context-bound character of much of the generic system and many of the canonical authors was very clearly felt. Thus, one of the most conspicuous imitations of an archaic model, Callimachus’ imitation of Hipponax in the Iambi, was only achieved at the expense of a large-scale ‘modernisation’, which severed the link between the poetry and some of its most important contexts (e.g. the ‘war against Bupalus’). A further witness here is the organisation of the Alexandrian editions of lyric poets. In most cases, and perhaps whenever possible (we are certain in the cases of Simonides, Pindar and Bacchylides93 ), the classification was by K', ‘forms’, defined on the basis of contents and consequently of the performance context: hymns, paeans, dithyrambs, love poems, epinicia etc. Within the last category, Callimachus appears to have made further differentiations, for Pindar on the basis of the various local festivities (Pythian Odes, Nemean Odes etc.), and for Simonides on the basis of the athletic event being celebrated. Sappho’s poems, on the other hand, were organised by metre or alphabetically by their opening,94 with the exception of the epithalamia which were gathered in her ninth book. The poetry of Anacreon and Hipponax was also classified by metre, because of the lack of any clearly distinctive functional markers of different content.95 In short, an increased understanding of the nature and contexts of archaic and classical poetry led also to the realisation that such contexts were things of the past; the classification of the genre norms of archaic and classical poetry led almost automatically to an awareness of the impossibility of writing anything else in those genres, at least if the same norms, which included metrical and melodic norms, were to be followed.96 Moreover, the new Gedichtb¨ucher of the iambic and monodic poets, who had undoubtedly 92 93

94 95 96

Cf. Krevans (1984) 183–4. The case of Alcaeus is uncertain: some scholars have argued for a distinction between the political poems (% % (), further organised on a chronological basis, and the non-political poems (hymns, love poems etc.), cf. A. Pardini, ‘La ripartizione in libri dell’opera di Alceo’ RFIC 119 (1991) 257–84, A. Porro, Vetera Alcaica (Milan 1994) 5–6 and 239–41, and (contra) G. Liberman, Alc´ee. Fragments (Paris 1999) xlviii–lx. On Hellenistic editions of lyric writers cf. Pfeiffer (1968) 181–9. Cf. Harvey (1955) 159 (by metre), Pfeiffer (1968) 129–30 (alphabetically). Cf. e.g. C. Calame, QUCC 17 (1974) 121. It is noteworthy that the earliest codification of Greek poetry which we possess, Aristotle’s Poetics, is already poised between the cultural life and values of the polis and those of the library, cf. D. Lanza, Aristotele. Poetica (Milan 1987) 83.

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never themselves thought of a Gedichtbuch of their own works, increased the impression of a poetry which was various, occasional, and impossible to fit into a codified description, since many of the performance occasions had disappeared, together with archaic culture itself. What remained was a heritage of linguistic and metrical conventions, which had often lost their functional contact with particular subjects and occasions: thus did the possibility of new combinations appear. 3 d isassembling and reassembling Many of the generic ‘contaminations’ of Theocritus and Callimachus are of a common kind, and produce similar results. In both poets, the two recitative metres par excellence, the hexameter and the elegiac couplet, dominate, even in the case of forms and subjects which were formerly peculiar to the melic or mimetic genres.97 As for lyric metres themselves, the increasing separation between music and metre, which we have already noted in connection with the dithyramb, appears to have led poets to use them in a recitative manner for which they were never designed. Plato had already recorded this as a general trend, with wider relevance than just the dithyramb: In the midst of all this confusion . . . the poets also divorce rhythm and movement from the tune by putting unaccompanied words into metre, and rob tune and rhythm of words by using stringed instruments and auloi on their own without singers. When this is done, it is extraordinarily difficult to know what the rhythm and harmony without speech are supposed to signify and what worthwhile object they imitate and represent. (Plato, Laws 2.669d–e, trans. Saunders)

So, too, in answer to his father’s exhortation to follow the custom of symposia and to sing some lyric poetry of Simonides, Aristophanes’ Pheidippides protests that playing the lyre and singing at a symposium is ‘old stuff’ and that he would rather perform a rh¯esis by Euripides than chant songs (mel¯e) of Simonides (Clouds 1353–71). This attitude finds a precise parallel in the behaviour of the ‘late learner’ described by Theophrastus (Characters 27): the ]:4 tries, albeit late in life, to learn recitative rh¯eseis from the tragedians by heart, to use them at symposia (only to forget them at the crucial moment).98 97 98

For the melic genres cf. West (1982) 138, 152–3, Hutchinson (1988) 16; for the theatrical genres cf. Schwinge (1986) 30–36. On the decline of musical competence as a goal of education, cf. Reitzenstein (1893) 34–5, Pasquali (1964) 344–51, G. Nagy, Pindar’s Homer: the Lyric Possession of an Epic Past (Baltimore 1990) 106–11 and 407–10.

3 Disassembling and reassembling

27

Competitions in accompanied singing were a rarity in the Egypt of the Ptolemies; they are indeed recorded in continental Greece and Asia Minor, but even outside Egypt it was the recital of epic which was the dominant form.99 Very few lyric texts of the third or second centuries have the strophic structure, which may be regarded as a clear sign that they were to be sung; such strophic songs as do survive are all either anonymous or by authors who are otherwise unknown, and almost all of them belong to the epigraphic tradition and were never, as far as we know, recorded in books. The context of such songs is not Ptolemaic, but they are rather for the most part linked to the conservative tradition of religious singing, which was still practised in the sanctuaries of the Greek homeland; there is, curiously, no evidence from Egypt for the performance of paeans in honour of kings or military leaders (with one exception, a paean in ithyphallics by a certain Theokles for Ptolemy Philadelphus or Philopator).100 Learned poets did sporadically make use of the lyric metres, which the archaic lyric poets had employed in strophic or epodic structures, but they mainly used them  % !, i.e. by repeating the same metrical pattern verse after verse (as in hexameter epic). These stichic reuses of lyric verses were sometimes explicitly considered to be true ‘inventions’ by their authors (cf. pp. 37–8 on Philicus), who sometimes subsequently gave their names to them.101 This revolution in the nature of how lyric metres were used hardly ever produced 99

100

101

In a ratio of about 3:1, judging by the list in A. Hardie, Statius and the Silvae: Poets, Patrons and Epideixis in the Graeco-Roman World (Liverpool 1983) 206; in general, see J. Frei, De certaminibus thymelicis (Diss. Basel 1900); M. Guarducci, ‘Poeti vaganti e conferenzieri dell’et`a ellenistica’, Memorie dell’Accademia dei Lincei (Classe di scienze morali) 2 (1927–29) 629–65; J. U. Powell, ‘Later Epic Poetry in the Greek World’ in J. U. P. and E. A. Barber (eds.), New Chapters in the History of Greek Literature, ii Ser. (Oxford 1929) 35–46; M. R. Pallone, ‘L’epica agonale in et`a ellenistica’ Orpheus 5 (1984) 156–66; Gentili (1988) 174–6; Barbantani (2001) 3–32. The epigraphic texts of a religious nature are all collected in CA; cf. J. U. Powell and G. Murray, ‘Lyric Poetry. § 1. Hieratic’, in Powell–Barber (1921) 42–54, L. K¨appel, Paian: Studien zur Geschichte einer Gattung (Berlin–New York 1992) 189–290, Parker (2001) 31–5, Cameron (1995) 292–4. Other important texts include the ‘Fragmentum Grenfellianum’ (cf. Hunter (1996b) 8–10) and the short mimetic dialogue between a hetaera and her lover on the portal of a temple at Marissa (second century bc). For the lyric mime in the late Hellenistic and imperial age cf. Athenaeus 14. 620d– 621d, even if we cannot determine their specialities with any degree of precision. According to a famous hypothesis advanced by Wilamowitz, Crusius and Leo, the polymetry of Plautus’ cantica drew on this musical mime, but cf. E. Fraenkel, Elementi plautini in Plauto (1960) 312–23. In the classical period, Sophron’s mimes were composed in prose, albeit a prose which included numerous rhythmic sequences, cf. Sophron, PCG test. 19; mimes from the Roman empire in both prose and a mixture of prose and verse are familiar. There are, however, at least three mimes of the imperial age which recall the polymetry of the Grenfell fragment: POxy. 219 (=4 Cunningham), PRyl. 15 (=9 C), PLit. Lond. 52 (=13 C). Rossi (2000) 156 points out that the Roman pantomime may be far more deeply rooted in the Greek tradition than is commonly thought. Cf. F. Leo, ‘Die plautinischen Cantica und die hellenistische Lyrik’, Abh. G¨ottingen 1.7 (1897) 61–70. The scholarly editions of lyric writers, from Aristophanes of Byzantium onwards, reveal a new attention to colometry and stanzaic division, whereas the pre-Aristophanic papyri present the

28

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serious and/or long poems, but led rather to ‘archaeological revivals’ of longdead forms and to virtuoso experimentation (such as the Aeolian poems by Theocritus,102 or the technopaegnia103 ). Here, if anywhere, it may be legitimate to speak of ‘play with the forms’. Other works introduced themes and forms of presentation, which had been typical of melic poetry, into the now dominant form of the hexameter. The most famous example is the Distaff of the poetess Erinna,104 a lament for the death of her friend Baucis, which recalls happy moments passed together in their childhood. This was a hexameter poem of some length (about three hundred verses, of which a papyrus preserves some fifty very lacunose lines105 ), but the tone, from every point of view, is threnodic. In the archaic age, lamentation had been the prerogative mainly of lyric-choral poetry, and only partly, and only later, of elegy.106 Even if we do not believe the tradition that Erinna died at the age of nineteen,107 and even if the sentimental naivety of this work has been greatly exaggerated by certain critics,108 it is extremely difficult to see experimental intellectualism, ‘playing with the forms’, in a poem which makes the intense presentation of feelings its principal literary strategy. What are the apparently heterogeneous elements which have gone into the mix of Erinna’s poem?109 If the dominant Doric dialect of the poem

102

103 104

105

106

107 108 109

lyric texts as if they were prose; exceptions such as that of the Lille papyrus of Stesichorus (PMGF 222b), which dates to the second half of the third century, however, suggest caution in judging the competence in lyric metre and music on the part of the philologists of the third century: cf. Hunter (1983a) 191; T. Fleming and E. C. Kopff, ‘The Survival of Greek Dramatic Music from the Fifth Cent. to the Roman Period’ in B. Gentili and F. Perusino (eds.) La colometria antica dei testi poetici greci (Pisa–Rome 1999) 16–29. For a radical scepticism as regards Hellenistic colometric and musical competence, cf. Parker (2001). Cf. Hunter (1996b) 167–86; M. Fassino and L. Prauscello, ‘Memoria ritmica e memoria poetica: Saffo e Alceo in Teocrito Idilli 28–30 tra &!#  metrica e innovazione alessandrina’ MD 46 (2001) 9–37. Cf. below, pp. 40–1. Erinna has been variously dated to the first or second half of the fourth century, or to the early decades of the third. She is praised by Asclepiades (AP 7.11 = HE 942ff.), and there are no serious reasons for not accepting the chronology of Eusebius, who places her floruit in the middle of the fourth century. For discussion cf. Levin (1962) 193–4, Scholz (1973) and Neri (1996) 129–38. SH 401. For the identity of this poem with the C 7#( , the ‘poem of 300 hexameters’ which the Suda ( 521 Adler) attributes to Erinna, cf. Averil and Alan Cameron, ‘Erinna’s Distaff ’ CQ 19 (1969) 285–8. Cf. H. W. Smyth, Greek Melic Poets (London 1900) cxxiv–cxxviii, Harvey (1955) 168–172. C. M. Bowra, Problems in Greek Poetry (Oxford 1953) 163 notes that ‘Erinna’s Lament for Baucis is remarkable in that it is written in hexameters. As such it differs from earlier , which were choral poems written in choral metres, and resembles Hellenistic poems, like the “Lament for Daphnis” in Theocritus’ Idyll 1 or the anonymous Lament for Bion’. Cf. Levin (1962) 197–8 and Neri (1996) 140–4. Cf. Scholz (1973) 39 and West (1977) 116–19 (West suggests that the author was in fact a refined male poet). Neri (1996) 186–94 speaks of a ‘Kreuzung without Spiel ’.

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29

was not a result of her homeland,110 it might have been the expression of a link with the tradition of the lyric threnos (particularly Pindar and Simonides), whereas the further Aeolian colouring may have pointed to the themes and tones of Sappho’s poetry (the distress of separation and the memory of a happy past are typically Sapphic themes). As regards the form of the hexameter, a stichic dactylic hexapody (generally with initial and final spondees) had been used by Sappho in at least three poems111 which, in view of their epithalamic content, might well have expressed Sappho’s distress at separation (cf. frs. 105a, 105b and 106 Voigt) and in another poem which alluded to friendship between young girls or between them and Sappho (fr. 142).112 This metre was expressly called the ‘Aeolian epos’ by the ancient metricians, who also included the ‘Sapphic’ among the varieties of ‘heroic’ verse.113 Under the name of Theocritus, we have a corpus of some thirty-one poems of very varying length; apart from four short poems in Aeolian metre and language, all others are in hexameters, but for a brief section in elegiac couplets in the almost certainly spurious Idyll 8. For Callimachus, there are only four certainly lyric fragments out of a total of more than four hundred; two of these four, frs. 226 and 227 Pfeiffer, are composed in metres, the Phalaecian hendecasyllable and the Euripidean respectively, which Callimachus may well have considered iambic-recitative in tone,114 and these poems might therefore have been included in the Iambi.115 Apart from these four lyric poems and the recitative Iambi, all other Callimachean 110 111 112 113 114

115

So West (1977) 117. Cf. M. B. Arthur. ‘The Tortoise and the Mirror: Erinna PSI 1090’ CW 74 (1980) 65. In yet another poem, fr. 104a, a ‘hexameter’ is followed by a lyric verse, which can be interpreted, e.g., as an iambus plus Pherecratean with two dactyls. Cf. Hephaest., p. 23.3–4 Consbruch and schol. ad Hephaest., p. 293.15–6 C. On this subject, see G. Liberman, ‘Les pseudo-hexam`etres hom´eriques de Sappho’ Revue de Philogie 64 (1990) 193–4. Hephaestion (p. 33.1–2 Consbruch) states that in the Phalaecian metre only the first syzygy is ‘antispastic’ (or, in other words, the first two feet are identified as an ‘antispast’), whereas the other two are iambic. When Catullus calls his Phalaecian verses iambi (36.5, 40.2, 54b.6), this may refer to their metre as well as to their aggressive content (cf. e.g. K. Quinn, Catullus: an Interpretation (London 1972) 270–1), but a purely metrical meaning has been recently argued, cf. Lennartz (2000) 244–7. The ‘Euripidean’ metre is simply an asynartete composed of an iambic dimeter plus ithyphallic (perfectly analogous to the asynartete composed of iambic trimeter and ithyphallic in which Iambi 6 and 7 are written). The four poems (frs. 226–9) which precede the Hecale in the papyrus of the diegeseis are generally considered to be a separate group of melic poems. It is difficult to see all four as belonging to the Iambi (cf. e.g. Cameron (1995) 163–73), because the archebulean verses and the choriambic pentameters in which fr. 228 and 229 are respectively composed are actually metres which have nothing in common with the iambic rhythm. The hypothesis of A. Ardizzoni, ‘La struttura del libro dei Giambi di Callimaco’ in Miscellanea di studi alessandrini in memoria di A. Rostagni (Turin 1963) 257–62, that at least fragments 226 and 227 should be included among the Iambi, has some attractions; cf. the preceding note.

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Performance and genre

poems are in hexameters or elegiac couplets. Callimachus’ epinicians are interesting from this point of view, for he here abandoned the lyric tradition of Simonides and Pindar, while reviving an archaic subject for poetry. One epinician, for a certain Polycles of Aegina, is in iambics, and was included as the eighth poem of the Iambi;116 two others are in elegiac couplets: one for a certain Sosibios, very probably a leading figure at the court of Ptolemy117 (fr. 384 Pf.), and one for the victory of Berenice II in the chariot race, which is included in the Aitia as the proem of Book 3 (SH 254, cf. below, pp. 83–5). At least since the middle of the fifth century, choral epinician poetry had become increasingly rare, and the dominant epinician form had become the elegiac epigrams of celebratory inscriptions; the choral epinician of Simonides and Pindar did, however, bequeath a common set of motifs and celebratory language to both Hellenistic epigram and Callimachean epinician elegy.118 As regards the Hymns of Callimachus, three (to Apollo, Athena, and Demeter) appear to be a sort of cross between narrative Homeric hymns and motifs and forms of presentation which had been peculiar to archaic choral hymnody (in the case of Hymns 5 and 6 to Athena and Demeter, the ‘choral’ inheritance is reinforced by a Doric dialectal colouring).119 In these two latter poems, the ritual framework is always crucial and the included myths serve the purposes of the ritual which is imagined to be taking place; the poems stage ceremonies rather than just celebrating the god. There is no reason to ascribe Callimachus’ development of this type of ‘mimicosacral’ poem, which he bequeathed to the Latin poets of the first century bc, to a simple ludic spirit of contamination. Rather, Callimachus revived the forms and motifs of the mimico-sacral hymn by using the metre and some of the formal elements of the rhapsodic hymn, as choral metres and performance were no longer ‘in fashion’. Callimachus would in fact have found a sort of precedent for the structure of these hymns in the ‘Homeric Hymn to Apollo’. In v. 146 of this archaic hymn, the diegetic and detached style of the third-person narration is interrupted to give way to a description of the celebration of Apollo at Delos, with the evident intention of establishing the shape of future such celebrations; the poet’s rˆole is therefore not very different from that of ‘master of ceremonies’ in Callimachus.120 116 117 118 119 120

It is unclear whether the metre was the stichic iambic trimeter or an epodic combination, cf. Ch. M. Dawson, YCS 11 (1950) 89–90. Cf. e.g. Meillier (1979) 229 and n. 139. Cf. Fuhrer (1992), ead. ‘Callimachus’ Epinician Poems’, in Harder–Regtuit–Wakker (1993) 90–7. Cf. e.g. Bulloch (1985) 27, and below pp. 371–7. Cf. C. J. Herington, Poetry into Drama (Berkeley 1985) 6, S. H. Lonsdale, Arion 3 (1994–95) 29–32, and below pp. 360–1.

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The poet then concentrates his attention on the Delian maidens, who sing and dance in a chorus, thus creating an atmosphere reminiscent of that of the partheneia of choral lyric poetry.121 What should be noticed in Callimachus, however, is the obsessively archaeological precision with which he refers to the actual performance, in a manner that is typical of the hieratic hymn, as a poem that accompanies a specific ceremony. Direct, deictic reference to the situational context and the interlocutors had been a constant element of archaic lyric poetry, elegy and iambics, which had developed within a system of communication that was still largely oral; the occasions, recipients, and observers of the songs were integral parts of the songs themselves, and through them many poems have a genuine flavour of the ‘here and now’.122 In particular, choral-hieratic lyric, both that of the great poets of the archaic period and that found on inscriptions dating even to the Hellenistic age, included descriptions of the religious event, even if such descriptions were limited to those situations of the ceremony that were most predictable for the poet, such as the relationship between the chorus and its leader or the rˆoles which any chorus inevitably had to fulfil. It is the great emphasis on these two elements, in comparison with their place in archaic choral poetry, which gives substance to the mimetic tone of Callimachus’ Hymns to Apollo, Athena, and Demeter, where the poet assumes the rˆole of koruphaios or ‘master of ceremonies’. By constantly apostrophising those officiating and those present, the poet acts as a guide to both leaders and audience; he portrays their movements, or the event itself, in a series of descriptive pictures, with a detail that the archaic poet had rarely permitted himself. We may speculate that, because in the archaic age the composition of the poem preceded the actual performance of the religious event which the song was to accompany, the poet could foresee with certainty only a few details of what would happen; in Callimachus, however, the rˆole of the song as an accompaniment for the celebration was, above all, a literary pretence.123 Those whom the 121 122

123

Cf. F. Dornseiff, Die archaische Mythenerz¨ahlung (Berlin 1933) 8–9, J. Strauss Clay, The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns (Princeton 1989) 48–52. ¨ Cf. W. R¨osler, Dichter und Gruppe (Munich 1980) and id. ‘Uber Deixis und einige Aspekte m¨undlichen und schriftlichen Stils in antiker Lyrik’ WJA 9 (1983) 7–28; for a different view of the nature of deixis in archaic lyric poetry cf. J. Latacz, ‘Realit¨at und Imagination: eine neue LyrikTheorie und Sapphos    -Lied’ MH 42 (1985) 67–94. Whatever the genesis of these references, they would undoubtedly have been perceived by a Hellenistic poet as essential and typical components of archaic lyric and elegiac poetry. Cf. further J. Danielewicz, ‘Deixis in Greek Choral Lyric’, QUCC 63 (1990) 7–17, D. Clay, ‘Alcman’s Partheneion’ QUCC 68 (1991) 47–67. Particularly striking are the neighing of horses and the grinding of chariot wheels in the Hymn to Athena (vv. 2 and 14). That the ‘mimetic’ hymns were performed in the course of actual celebrations, rather than as descriptions of the celebrations as they took place, remains an hypothesis favoured by

32

Performance and genre

Callimachean ‘master of ceremonies’ is really guiding are, of course, the readers, to whose imagination the ritual description and deixis is directed.124 This remains the case, even if these hymns were actually recited, perhaps in the context of a Ptolemaic policy of religious restoration;125 in this latter case, the explicit ritual detail would serve a didactic purpose for a watching audience, as well as nourishing the phantasia of readers. The elegiac metre of the Hymn to Athena is often seen simply in terms of experimentalism, and there must be some truth in this. Nevertheless, there were precedents. From the second half of the fourth century, we have the openings of two poems of hymnic tone composed by Crates of Thebes: one to the Muses (SH 359), which might, however, only be the proem of an elegy (cf. Solon fr. 1 Gentili-Prato), and one to ^ #  ‘Parsimony’ (SH 361), which two witnesses label specifically as ‘a hymn’.126 We may add the Hymn to Demeter by Aristocles (SH 206), an elegiac text of uncertain date, quoted by Aelian to illustrate the sacrifice of oxen at Hermione, a town in the Argolis (the very region where Callimachus’ Hymn to Athena is set!): perhaps, then, Callimachus had the historicising intention of reviving a popular use of this metre in the Argolis.127 In any case, the use of elegiacs in cult poetry might have been more common in Hellenised Egypt than we can now tell: the hymns of a certain Isidorus, two in hexameters and two in elegiac couplets, were engraved, perhaps in the first century bc, on the two pillars of the entrance to the sanctuary of Isis at Medinet Madi.128 As for the mimetic genres at Alexandria, Hellenistic tragedy is for us largely unknown territory,129 and only Machon among leading comic poets seems to have focused his career in the Ptolemaic capital.130 In the poems

124

125

126 127 129

130

many, cf. e.g. F. Cairns, ‘Propertius and the Battle of Actium’ in T. Woodman and D. West (eds.), Poetry and Politics in the Age of Augustus (Cambridge 1984) 149–54, Cairns (1992) 13–15, Cameron (1995) 63–7. For further discussion cf. below, pp. 370–1. We may compare the emphasis in Horace’s Odes on musical performance, in spite of the fact that, in all probability, the Odes were not actually ‘performed’ to a musical accompaniment: cf. L. E. Rossi, ‘Orazio, un lirico greco senza musica’ SemRom 1 (1998) 163–81. The scholium introducing the Hymn to Demeter connects this poem with the mystery rites introduced at Alexandria by Ptolemy Philadelphus ‘as an imitation’ of the Athenian mysteries (for which cf. Fraser (1972) i.200–1); whether or not Callimachus’ poem does have anything to do with Alexandrian rites is, however, very debatable (cf. Hopkinson (1984) 32–43). Julian, Or. ix, ii.1 p. 167. Rochefort, Clemens Alex., Paed. 3.35.3. 128 Cf. IMEGR pp. 631–52 (no. 175), below Chapter 8.1. Cf. Bulloch (1985) 36–7. Cf. Fraser (1972) i.618–21, Schwinge (1986) 30–33. The decline of ‘formal drama’ is matched by the rise of ‘popular’ minor theatrical genres, such as the hilarotragedy of Rhinthon (cf. M. Gigante, Rintone e il teatro in Grecia (Naples 1971)) and the sub-literary mime of Ptolemaic Egypt (cf. above n. 100, S. Santelia, Charition Liberata (Epoxy. 413) (Bari 1991)). For the theatre in the world of the Greek poleis, cf. G. M. Sifakis, Studies in the History of Hellenistic Drama (London 1967), and for the new fashion for lyric virtuosi cf. Gentili (1979) 63–87. Cf. Athenaeus 14.664a.

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of Herondas and Theocritus, however, there survives a radical attempt to renew traditional mime forms. Herondas’ poems might well have been recited, as well as read in books;131 his choliambic Mimiamboi, ‘Mimes in (limping) iambics’, written in a version of archaic Ionic (cf. above on Mimiambus 8), must have sounded very new to anybody familiar with the classical tradition of prose mime. Theocritus’ mimic poems, however, are always cited as the prime example of contamination of genres, because they combine the epic metre, the metre par excellence of third-person narrative presentation, with various important elements of first- and second-person mimetic or mimetic-lyric performances (as, for example, the famous song of the abandoned woman in the so-called Fragmentum Grenfellianum). Thus, Idyll 22 even combines epic narrative with stichomythic dialogue; in Idyll 10, elements from the mime tradition are translated into popular songs in hexameters; in Idylls 3 and 11, the same thing happens with love serenades, in the second part of Idyll 15 with a hieratic hymn, and in Idyll 24.7–9 with a lullaby; Idyll 1 presents a sort of mimesis of the strophic structure of ancient lyric through the pauses marked by the refrains, and something similar might be true of Idyll 3;132 Idyll 16 contaminates Bettelgedicht, mime and encomium. The Theocritean corpus is in fact a veritable Noah’s ark of mimetic-lyric forms which have been adapted to, and hence saved by, their transference to recitative metre. If it is true that ‘mimes in hexameters are an absurdity’,133 Herondas’ choliambs obviously draw upon the natural affinity between archaic iambic, on the one hand, and mime and comedy, on the other. As is well known, the iambic metres were traditionally considered the closest to spoken language; witnesses include Aristotle134 and the epilogue of Callimachus’ Aitia, which apparently leads into the ‘pedestrian’ Iambi.135 What is in any case clear is that the constantly low, and often salacious, thematic and linguistic level of the Mimiambi is much bawdier and closer to ‘low mime’ than the bucolic and urban mimes of Theocritus; so, too, Theocritus is much less concerned than Herondas with the (real or fictional) dramatisation and scenic quality of the poems. Rather, Theocritean poetry uses a particularly refined 131 133 134 135

132 Cf. Rossi (2000) 152–3. Cf. Mastromarco (1984), Hunter (1993b). Cf. Kroll (1924) 204, J. Griffin in K. J. Dover (ed.), Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford 1980) 139. Cf. Poetics 1449a22–8, Rhet. 3.1408b32. Fr. 112.9:    O 0$%  _,     ‘but I will pass on to the pedestrian pasture of the Muses’. Some scholars take this as an allusion to the prose of grammatical writings, and not to the ‘pedestrian’ metre of the Iambi, which remains however much the likeliest interpretation, cf. R. Pfeiffer, Philologus 87 (1932) 226; for the verse as a declaration of intent, cf. P. E. Knox, ‘The Epilogue to the Aetia’ GRBS 26 (1985) 59–65. Cameron’s view ((1995) 154–6) that these verses were not the end of the Aitia, but the beginning of the Iambi, seems less likely.

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Performance and genre

hexameter to exalt the traditionally humble characters of mime, which now somewhat paradoxically lays claim to the status of ‘high’ poetry.136 The overwhelming predominance of the dactylic hexameter and the elegiac couplet in Callimachus and Theocritus, and the recitative portrayal in these metres of themes and modes of presentation previously reserved for other genres, correspond to a general feature of Hellenistic poetry. Aristotle (Poetics 1459b32–36) had already observed, as regards the hexameter: ‘If narrative poetry were composed in any other verse, or in several, the result would be undignified (& ), because the hexameter is the verse which possesses the greatest solidity and elevation – for this reason, it best supports glosses and metaphors, etc.’ As for the elegiac couplet, it had since the archaic age shown close similarities of theme and occasion to iambic poetry, but from the end of the sixth century on, it had come to be used also for occasional or semi-improvised songs, as well as for dedications and epitaphs, where iambic metres had previously been more widespread.137 It was, however, differentiated from iambics by a greater elevation of form, guaranteed above all by the hexameter’s association with the epic; on the other hand, it was differentiated from epic as being more suitable for non-mythological and realistic subjects, and for expressing the personal experiences of individuals or collective groups to audiences which might be less formal and public than those of the epic rhapsode.138 The clear Hellenistic preference for these two metres was accompanied, most notably (again) in Callimachus and Theocritus, by the development of a versification governed by precise, rigorous principles, capable of distinguishing clearly between the Hellenistic hexameter or elegiac couplet and those of the archaic and classical ages. 136

137 138

The difference between the polemical harshness of the ‘old man’ (whoever he is) in Herondas 8 and the easy-going and ironical superiority of Theocritus’ Lycidas is symptomatic of the difference with which the two poets present their master-models, cf. Stanzel (1995) 76–82. Cf. West (1974) 19. Cf. B. Gentili in L’´epigramme grecque, 64–5, West (1974) 18. Compared with the epic hexameter, the elegy maintains its ‘didactic’, ‘up-to-date’ character, even when it goes outside the limited circle of the symposium, cf. E. L. Bowie, ‘Early Greek Elegy, Symposium, and Public Festivals’ JHS 106 (1986) 13–35. The original distinction between hexameter and elegiac couplet in terms of ‘seriousness’ and ‘openness’ might still have been felt in the fourth and third centuries, and may have influenced the choices, e.g., of Antimachus, Philetas, and Callimachus, just as we know that it subsequently influenced Latin poets (cf. Ovid, Amores 1.1 etc.). Antimachus used the hexameter for the solemn epos of the Thebaid, and elegiacs for the catalogues and unhappy love stories of the Lyd¯e ; Philetas wrote the epyllion Hermes in hexameters, but used elegiacs for the Paignia ‘Light poems’ and the Demetra, a work which probably focused on the wanderings of the goddess in search of Persephone, but with a strong aetiological flavour, cf. Sbardella (2000) 44–9; Callimachus used the hexameter for his highest, public poetry (the Hymns) and for the mythological epyllion of the Hecale, but he used elegiacs for the Aitia, a work proclaiming some kind of continuity with Mimnermus, who may have been perceived as an anticipator of the taste for historical and aetiological elegy, cf. Krevans (1984) 190 and 207–12.

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So, too, Lycophron and the tragedians of the Pleiad (cf. below, pp. 432– 43) seem to have imitated the structure of the iambic trimeter of archaic iambus and Aeschylean tragedy,139 which was much less ‘free’ than that of late Euripidean tragedy or comedy; they also, however, introduced certain prosodic modernisations, which might suggest a project of reform and/or regularisation, analogous to that of the ‘Callimachean’ hexameter, even if the details remain much less clear to us. Callimachus’ hexametric practice includes a series of rhythmical ‘refinements’ which affect both the relationship between dactyls and spondees and the arrangement of the various prosodic structures of single words or Wortbilder 140 in particular positions of the verse; the aim seems to be to obtain a substantially regular division into cola.141 Already in Homer, spondees tend to be found more rarely at certain points than at others and, in particular, hardly ever in the fifth foot; Callimachus and the ‘Callimacheans’ further develop this preference for the dactyl and, in particular, seek to avoid two successive spondees in a verse. One of the results of this trend is that out of the twenty-two attested arrangements of dactyls and spondees in the first five feet of the Homeric hexameter, Callimachus reproduces only seven. This tendency to reduce the number of possible arrangements of the hexameter is not shared by Theocritus in his ‘serious’ bucolic idylls (1, 3–7), where the Doric linguistic flavour must have made it extremely difficult to follow contemporary dactylic taste. Doric, like other literary and/or spoken dialects in the archaic and classical periods, had become increasingly ‘incompatible’142 with the artificial language of Homer’s poems; thus, for example, verbal contraction greatly reduced the available number of short vowels, although dactylic composition requires a ratio of 1:2 between long and short vowels, a ratio that Homer can meet, for example, by allowing hiatus between two vowels. This analysis is confirmed by the fact that Idyll 7, the most ‘Homeric’ of the Idylls with respect to diction, is also the least spondaic of the ‘serious’ bucolic poems; in all of his poems, however, Theocritus takes care to maintain a dactylic sense, at least in the second half of the verse, by the dominant use of dactyls in the fourth and fifth feet. Already in Homer the hexameter tends to divide into four rhythmic units of relatively uniform and stable length: these cola are marked off 139 140 141 142

Cf. West (1982) 85–6 and 159–60; Del Ponte (1981) 101–4. ‘Groups of words’, composed of a word plus one or more particles, or enclitics or proclitics, or semantically linked words. The following pages presuppose Fantuzzi (1995a). Cf. M. Cantilena, ‘Approccio metrico alle teorie della composizione orale’, in R. M. Danese, F. Gori, and C. Questa (eds.) Metrica classica e linguistica (Atti del Colloquio: Urbino 3–6 Ottobre 1988) (Urbino 1990) 66–72.

36

Performance and genre

by the beginning and the end of the line and by the ends of words or Wortbilder (particularly the central caesura and the ‘bucolic’ diaeresis after the fourth foot).143 In Homer, however, this rhythmical structure is still far from fixed, and there are several cases, for example, in which the first colon is particularly short, and other cases in which there is no word-end after the first long element or after the first short syllable of the third foot (i.e. there is no ‘central’ caesura, which otherwise guarantees the basic division of the hexameter into two parts). This is probably due to the fact that oral performance allowed a compensation for the most serious imbalances between the lengths of the cola by the person reciting the verse, through variations in the tempo of the recital, such as slowing down or prolonging the most seriously unbalanced short cola and accelerating the longer ones, or introducing more or less noticeable pauses, depending on the degree of imbalance between the cola.144 The poetics of the archaic hexameter may in fact have exploited the rhythmical differentiation between cola in the ‘sung recital’ of performance; we may perhaps compare the much more obvious imbalances between various lyric cola within the strophes of melic poetry, where it was again sung performance which would adequately restore the balance. The hexameters of Callimachus and Theocritus, in the ‘serious’ bucolic idylls, together with (to a lesser extent) those of Apollonius Rhodius, prefer a harmonious regularisation of the dimensions of the cola which make up the verse; it is reasonable to suppose that this is part of the same project which can be detected behind the network of those ‘prohibitions’ of wordend at various points in the Callimachean verse, which were identified by scholars (particularly) in the second half of the nineteenth century.145 The result is a verse which constantly aspires to the most perfectly harmonious balance between cola; when, at times, this is violated, it is for the purpose of emphasis and other stylistic effects. These hexameters can be read and enjoyed as a well-balanced unit, without any need for the bard to slow down 143

According to the scheme presented by Fr¨ankel (1955), the ending of a word in the first hemistich (A) has four possibilities, while two possibilities exist for the ending of words between the first and second hemistich (B), and another two in the second hemistich (C):

144

Cf. L. E. Rossi in Fantuzzi–Pretagostini (1995–6) ii.285–8, 309–10, id., ‘I poemi omerici come testimonianza di poesia orale’ in R. Bianchi Bandinelli (ed.), Storia e civilt`a dei Greci, i (Milan 1978) 105–7. It was Fr¨ankel (1955), first published in 1926, who first drew together the positive programme of Callimachean metrics lying behind the various prohibitions on word-end. For these metrical ‘laws’ cf. e.g. Hopkinson (1984) 51–5, Hollis (1990) 15–23, Fantuzzi (1995) 221–8.

145

4 Marginal aberrations?

37

or accelerate; perhaps the Hellenistic poets who performed this regularisation of the hexameter, with their awareness that they were also writing for diffusion in book form, intended the harmonious nature of their verses to be readily appreciated by everybody, even at the simplest reading (presumably out loud, as was regularly the case in the ancient world); moreover, they thus freed themselves from dependence upon virtuoso bards. It is, however, to be remembered that all this happened in a period when the progressive decline in the use of melic poetry must have turned the balancing of cola by means of variations in diction itself into a particularly difficult art.146 Theocritus is a particularly important witness to this Hellenistic metrical project, for on the one hand he pursues an almost ‘Callimachean’ rigour in the ‘serious’ bucolic idylls (1, 3–7), and, on the other, he can be radically anti-Callimachean in Idyll 11, when he clearly wishes to mark metrically the clumsiness of the Cyclops’ song, and again in Idyll 10, which is no longer ‘bucolic’ but rather agricultural and Hesiodic in content, and also in the epic-mythological poems, which return to the technique of the Homeric and Hesiodic hexameter.147 4 marginal aberrations? Hellenistic poets, then, were interested both in the history and traditional function of the inherited generic system, an interest which we might call ‘museological’ or ‘archaeological’, and in how that system might be modernised to meet a new reality; what emerged was, as we have seen, neither arbitrary nor simply ludic. On the other hand, the conditions of the third century undoubtedly fostered, more than any other previous age, the figure of the man of letters who delighted in experimentalism, including generic experimentalism;148 the importance of this element of the Hellenistic literary mix is, however, not to be exaggerated, for it largely involves a few minor figures and not the poetics of Callimachus and Theocritus. Many experimental virtuosos are little more than names for us, remembered by subsequent scholars only because they are associated with ‘inventions’, usually simple innovations in the use of lyric or iambic metres. As the literary system was now firmly grounded in hexameters and elegiacs, such experiments had very little effect on its integrity. This is the case, for example, with Philicus, one of the members of the Alexandrian Pleiad, who 146 148

Cf. Pretagostini (2000) 7. Cf. Bing (2000) 142–3.

147

Cf. Fantuzzi (1995a) 235–43.

38

Performance and genre

composed a Hymn to Demeter in choriambic hexameters149 in the first half of the third century. The surviving opening of the poem expresses his satisfaction with his abstruse invention specifically designed for a small group of ‘grammarians’150 (SH 677):  ($ %$%   `#$)  ) '  , 2T Grammarians, I bring you the gift of the innovative written composition of Philicus

Philicus’ ‘invention’ is actually limited to the stichically repeated use of the choriambic hexameter, and perhaps to the coincidence of choriambs with words or phrases. Likewise, Castorion of Soloi, an author of the beginning of the third century, wrote a Hymn to Pan in iambic trimeters, such that each metron coincides either with a single word or with a semantic unit (SH 310); he too is well aware that his ‘erudite composition’ ( 8 %4), that is to say, the apparent (though, in fact, limited) interchangeability of the metra,151 is ‘difficult to understand for anybody who is not erudite ('Q% %  8 % #Q )’. The same satisfaction is found in another virtuoso of uncertain date,152 Boiskos of Cyzicus, the proud ‘author of a new poem’, who dedicates his invention of the catalectic iambic octameter to Phoebus (SH 233): a% /, =$_)   b 4 ) , ] ($ 2O % !) `9" % ' Boiskos of Kyzikos, writer of a new poem, inventor of the eight-footed verse, dedicates it as a gift to Phoebus

Lyric metres continued to be used not uncommonly for social satire, a poetic register which was traditionally considered to be ‘semi-serious’ (%$' #). The ‘accursed’ poet, Sotades, produced lyric verses of a new kind which subsequently took their name from him, ‘sotadeans’ (catalectic Ionic tetrameters a maiore with frequent anaclasis). In this metre he composed hard-hitting and witty attacks on the court of the Ptolemies, and expressed a subversive spirit even towards the highest divinity of literary tradition by rewriting the Iliad in sotadeans.153 Another satirical moralist, 149 150 151 152 153

This verse had already been used – albeit not in a stichic series – by Simias for one of his technopaegnia (cf. below), as noted by Hephaestion, pp. 30.21–31.13 Consbruch. Cf. Bing (2000) 142. Cf. P. Bing, ‘Kastorion of Soloi’s Hymn to Pan’ AJP 106 (1985) 502–9. F. Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur in der Alexandrinerzeit (Leipzig 1892) ii 524, suggests a date in the early Alexandrian period. On Sotades cf. Pretagostini (1984) 139–47. For the Sotadean as an ‘inversion’ of the hexameter, parallel to the parodic-effeminate distortion in the contents of Sotades’ poetry, cf. Bettini (1982) 66–69, below pp. 483–4.

4 Marginal aberrations?

39

Cercidas from Megalopolis, employed not only Hipponactean choliambs (CA fr. 14) and iambic trimeters (CA fr. 16), but also invented a stichic use of iambic-lyric metres (‘meliamboi’), which were based on the dactyloepitrites of the lyric-choral tradition.154 Callimachus and Theocritus tend to restrict their metrical experimentalism to relatively short, ‘occasional’ poems, of the kind to which Callimachus seems to refer in a self-epitaph (AP 7.415 = HE 1185–6) which depicts the author as a poet c X &'8 *' ) c 'C KI  %$

#(% ‘truly expert in song, and equally in appropriate jesting [i.e. composing playful poetry?], while drinking wine’. This limit upon the use of verses different from the hexameter and the elegiac couplet shows these poets again taking a historicising view of traditional forms. Thus, Callimachus limits these experiments to the ‘light’ poetry of certain epigrams,155 to the 154

155

Cf. most recently Lennartz (2000) 241–2. Hellenistic %$' # made widespread use of other metres as well, such as the iambic, the hexameter, and the elegiac couplet (cf. e.g. G. A. Gerhard, Phoinix von Kolophon: Texte und Untersuchungen (Leipzig–Berlin 1909) 238–69). Some of the epodic combinations used in the epigrams of Callimachus may, of course, have had archaic precedents. Cf. Callimachus, AP 13.25 = HE 1137ff.: two cat. iambic dimeters plus asynartete made up of a dactylic tetrapody and an ithyphallic (cf. Theocritus], HE 3434ff.: the same asynartete was known to the ancients as ‘Archilochean’, and had been used in an epodic combination with the cat. iambic trimeter by Archilochus, cf. IEG 188–92); Callimachus AP 13.24 = HE 1143ff.: cat. iambic dimeter plus Phalaecian hendecasyllable (cf. Alcman, PMGF 38, at least according to the interpretation of B. Gentili, Metrica greca arcaica (Messina–Florence 1950) 72, and Theocritus], HE 3440ff.); Callimachus, AP 7.728 = HE 1255ff.: ‘Archilochean’ asynartete + Phalaecian hendecasyllable (the ‘opposite’ of the epodic structure of Theocritus], HE 3422ff.). The epigrams attributed to Theocritus by the Palatine Anthology are usually considered not to be authentic, but they reveal the same taste for epodic metres. Cf. [Theocritus], AP 7.663 = HE 3422ff.: Phalaecian hendecasyllables plus ‘Archilochean’ asynartetes; Theocritus], AP 7.664 = HE 3434ff.: a microstrophe made up of an ‘Archilochean’ asynartete plus acat. iambic trimeter plus cat. iambic trimeter (Archilochus, for whom this epigram is a fictitious epitaph, had often used an epode made up of the same asynartete plus cat. iambic trimeter); Theocritus], AP 9.599 = HE 3440ff.: iambic trimeter plus Phalaecian hendecasyllable (see above); Theocritus], AP 9.600 = HE 3454ff.: vv. 1, 5, 9 cat. trochaic tetrameters, vv. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 Reiziana, vv. 3, 7 iambic trimeters (cf. perhaps Sappho fr. 132 Voigt, G. Perrotta, SIFC 14 (1937) 301–10, D. L. Page, Sappho and Alcaeus, Oxford 1955, 131–2 n. 4). There are a few other isolated examples of epodes in the work of other poets: Phaedimus, AP 13.22 = HE 2911ff.: iambic trimeter plus Alcaic decasyllable; Asclepiades, AP 13.23 = HE 962ff.: cat. iambic tetrameter plus cat. iambic trimeter; Theodoridas, AP 13.21 = HE 3562ff.: iambic trimeter plus ithyphallic; Hegesippus, AP 6.266 = HE 1905ff. and 13.12 = 1917ff., Nicaenetos, AP 13.26 = HE 2711ff., Arcesilaus, SH 122: dactylic hexameter plus iambic trimeter (cf. GVI 553 and 1501–2). The stichic use of ‘unusual’ metres is relatively more frequent in Callimachus (cf. AP 13.7 = HE 1129ff.: cat. iambic dimeters; AP 13.9 = HE 1341f.: cat. trochaic pentameters; AP 13.10 = HE 1343f.: greater Asclepiadeans; HE 1345ff.: Pherecrateans) than in other epigramwriters. For stichic iambics in later epigrams cf. GPh, i, p. xxxviii. Trimeters occur in Phaedimus, AP 13.2 = HE 2907ff.; Leonidas, AP 6.211 = HE 1959ff., APlan. 182 = HE 2098ff., AP 7.455 = HE 2385ff., HE 2465ff., APlan. 307 = HE 2514ff.; adesp. APlan. 182 = HE 3916f.; Phalaecus, AP 13.5 = HE 2939ff. (cat.); choliambs in Aeschrion, AP 7.345 = HE 1ff. and [Theocritus], AP 13.3 = HE 3430ff. (an epitaph for Hipponax!); Phalaecian hendecasyllables in Phalaecus, AP 13.6 = HE 2946ff. and [Theocritus], AP 9.598 = HE 3446ff.; ‘Archilochean’ asynartetes in Theodoridas, AP 13.8 = HE 3530f.

40

Performance and genre

four 0#, which are in two cases clearly occasional (Poem 1 = fr. 226 is paederastic in theme, and Poem 2 = fr. 227 is defined in the diegesis as  (‘a symposium song’))156 and to the Iambi (above pp. 14–15); in Idylls 28–31 Theocritus takes up the traditions of Sappho and Alcaeus, in length, theme, language and metre.157 Lastly, the marginal position of lyric-iambic metres is demonstrated by their use for ludic ‘figurative’ poems, ! , in which the succession of verses of different lengths gave the layout of the poem itself the shape of a particular object; such poems tend to be replete with arcane glosses and may even be presented as riddles ( 5).158 In practice, this was a re-invention of the archaic epigraphic text: originally, the width and height of the written lines were dictated by the shape of the object bearing the inscription, whereas in the figurative poem it was the writing and metre itself that aimed to ‘create’ the object on which the text was supposed to be engraved.159 The use of lyric lengths in this kind of poem owed nothing to the practices of archaic lyric poetry, any more than did the Hellenistic use of lyric lengths in stichic series; metre in these poems was imposed by pictographic necessity, without any regard for the traditional strophic organisation of lyric cola. Three of the figurative poems of Simias of Rhodes (late fourth to early third century160 ), Axe, Egg and Wings, are extant. After he had shown the way, two further poets of uncertain date, Dosiadas and Besantinos, who both appear to have composed a figurative Altar, took up the mantle.161 Tradition also attributes a figurative poem to Theocritus, the Pan-pipes (< M), though scholars disagree about its authenticity. Of all the figurative poems, this is the only one which does not use lyric or iambic verses for its trapezoidal outline, but only dactylic. Whether the author was Theocritus, or a clever imitator,162 we may speculate that the poet of the 156

157

158 159 160 161

162

Both of these may have belonged to the Iambi, cf. above n. 115. The hieratic content of the last two 0# (3 = fr. 228 and 4 = fr. 229) might have brought with it the lyric verses in which they are written, cf. above p. 27 and n. 100. Cf. Hunter (1996b) 171–86, M. Fassino and L. Prauscello, ‘memoria ritmica e memoria poetica: suffo e Alceo in Teocrito Idilli 28–30 tra &!#  metrica e innovazione alessandrina’ MD 46 (2001) 9–37. This is the case with the Syrinx and the Altar of Dosiadas. Cf. Krevans (1984) 186, Bing (1988) 17–18. Cf. H. Fr¨ankel, De Simia Rhodio (Leipzig 1915) 11. The only certain chronological information for Dosiadas is that he is later than the Alexandra of Lycophron, to which the Altar alludes, and prior to Lucian, who quotes it (see, however, Pfeiffer (1968) 90 n. 3). Besantinos is generally placed in the age of Hadrian. R. Dupont-Roc and J. Lallot, ‘La Syrinx’ Po´etique 18 (1974) 176–93 have shown that this poem is the work of a highly accomplished author.

4 Marginal aberrations?

41

Syrinx rejected Simias’ polymetric patterns and enclosed his technopaignion in recitative dactyls to mark how the bucolic Theocritus used only dactylic hexameters; thus, even the most virtuoso of technitai (or perhaps Theocritus himself in a moment of experimentalism) could pay respectful homage to the metrical ‘system’ chosen by Theocritus.163 163

So too, the poet who composed the lyric epigrams known to us under the name of Theocritus (cf. above n. 155) was aware of the ‘archaeological’ rediscovery of the lyric tradition by Theocritus in Idylls 28–31.

chap t e r 2

The aetiology of Callimachus’ Aitia

1 callimachus The figure of Callimachus dominates the poetry and intellectual life of the third century bc. Callimachus was a native of Cyrene, the flourishing city whose Greek royal house was famously celebrated in Pindar’s fourth and fifth Pythians. Relations between Cyrene and the Ptolemaic court at Alexandria varied in the course of the century, from the friendly to the openly hostile, but natives of Cyrene seem to have been a major influence on the cultural and intellectual life of the Ptolemaic court from the early days; Cyrene was finally brought within the Ptolemaic orbit with the marriage of the princess Berenice to Euergetes in 246 bc, a period which also saw the headship of the Library pass to the Cyrenean Eratosthenes.1 What we know of Callimachus’ life2 and work associates him with the courts of Philadelphus and Euergetes. Most of his extant poetry cannot be dated with any confidence, although much may belong to the 270s, and his influence on other poets seems to have established itself early. He wrote an epithalamian for Arsinoe (fr. 392), whose marriage to her brother probably belongs to the first half of the decade, and substantial fragments of his poem on her death (270 or 268 bc) and apotheosis survive (fr. 228). From a quarter of a century later survive major poems for Berenice II, the bride of Euergetes, which frame Books 3 and 4 of the Aitia;3 Callimachus’ career may indeed have lasted into the 230s.4 Although Callimachus appears never to have held the post of Librarian at Alexandria, his scholarly work placed him at the very heart of the Museum. Our direct evidence for this work lies in the scattered observations of later grammarians, but some at least of his extraordinarily varied poetry, which 1

2 4

For Callimachus’ celebration of this marriage cf. below pp. 85–8. For Callimachus and Cyrene see, for example, L. Lehnus, ‘Antichit`a cirenaiche in Callimaco’ Eikasmos 5 (1994) 189–207, and Cameron (1995) 9–11. 3 Cf. below pp. 83–8. Cf. Fraser (1972) II 1004–5; Cameron (1995) 3–11. Cf. L. Lehnus, ‘Riflessioni cronologiche sull’ultimo Callimaco’ ZPE 105 (1995) 6–12.

42

1 Callimachus

43

ranks among the most distinctively individual achievements of Greek literature and whose importance for the Latin poetry of the late Republic and early empire outweighs that of any other Alexandrian poet,5 has survived the ravages of time. Until relatively recently, our knowledge of this poetry was largely confined to the six Hymns and the Epigrams, both of which are preserved in a manuscript tradition, and to a large number of isolated poetic quotations in later writers; Callimachus, and in particular the Aitia, with which this chapter will be concerned, has, however, been one of the major beneficiaries of the papyrological revolution of the last century, and we are now substantially better informed about his poetry than were our predecessors a century ago, even if we still possess only a small fraction of his output. Callimachus’ scholarly work in the Ptolemaic Library was crucial in the organisation and cataloguing, and hence preservation, of classical literature.6 Among his lost prose works, pride of place goes to the Pinakes (frs. 429–53), a kind of descriptive catalogue, arranged broadly by ‘genre’, of the Library’s holdings, and hence of virtually all of Greek literature. This vast work – in 120 books, if the text of the Suda is to be believed – dealt not merely with the titles of works, but also with problems of nomenclature, of ascription and of writers’ lives.7 It soon established itself as an authoritative source to which others could appeal; much of our knowledge of lost Greek literature may ultimately derive from it. It is in fact Callimachus who most clearly exemplifies the Alexandrian fusion of scholar and poet. It is not merely that his scholarly research and vast knowledge of prose literature provided much of the material of his poetry, or that his vocabulary often reflects contemporary scholarly discussion (particularly of Homer),8 but his whole style reveals, and demands of his readers, an extraordinarily easy familiarity with the Greek literary heritage and with the various levels of literary and non-literary Greek. Callimachus’ choice of words, and the order in which he places them, is constantly surprising; it is this, more than anything else, which distinguishes his poetry from that of all other surviving Greek poets.9 Words of high literary parentage or of the greatest rarity occur alongside others drawn from the contemporary world of mundane 5

6 8 9

Cf. e.g. Wimmel (1960); W. Clausen, ‘Callimachus and Latin Poetry’ GRBS 5 (1964) 181–96; Thomas (1993). For the Aitia in particular cf. J. F. Miller, ‘Callimachus and the Augustan Aetiological Elegy’ ANRW II 30.1 (1982) 371–417. 7 Cf. Pfeiffer on fr. 453; id. (1968) 126–34; Blum (1991). Cf. Pfeiffer (1968)123–51; Blum (1991). Cf. Pfeiffer (1968) 138–40; A. Rengakos, ‘Homerische W¨orter bei Kallimachos’ ZPE 94 (1992) 21–47. Cf. F. Lapp, De Callimachi Cyrenaei tropis et figuris (Dissertation Bonn 1965), R. Schmitt, Die Nominalbildung in den Dichtungen des Kallimachos von Kyrene (Wiesbaden 1970).

44

The aetiology of Callimachus’ Aitia

activities,10 but there is also a remarkable lack of obvious verbal adornment in a poetry which, on closer inspection, reveals itself as some of the most intellectually mannered poetry ever written. The apparent spareness of the Callimachean style is one that transcends the boundaries of the various genres in which he wrote, though in other respects Callimachus’ style shows clear generic differentiation. The sense of control, of the elimination of excess and its replacement by a severe poetic discretion, also emerges from a consideration of Callimachus’ metrical technique.11 Although the poem that we will consider in this chapter is in elegiac couplets, it is in his treatment of the stichic hexameter that Callimachean severity is most sharply seen. Whereas some twenty-two patterns for the hexameter are common in Homer, the figure for Callimachus is only seven; so, too, a series of refinements and prohibitions governing word-breaks and possible combinations means that the Callimachean hexameter is a very strict instrument, which imposes a marked intellectual formalism on all his poetry in this metre. In this, he was building upon tendencies already visible in the previous century, but the strictness of his practice is genuinely novel, and consonant with the professed e´litism of his poetic persona. 2 the structure of the a i t i a The Aitia, in perhaps some six thousand verses and four books, is the poem for which Callimachus was best known in later antiquity and in Rome, and by which his reputation as a – or perhaps the – principal Greek elegist was established. The subject-matter of the poem was the origins of local customs and cults drawn from all over the Greek world; Callimachus drew upon local histories and chronicles to put into verse stories which had never before been the subject of high poetry. Although the four books as a whole are bound together by the Hesiodic dream of frs. 3–4 M., which recurs in the ‘Epilogue’ (fr. 112), the internal organisation of the poem has been the source of considerable controversy and much must remain unknowable, until new texts come to our aid.12 In Books 1 and 2, many, if not all,13 of the individual aitia were responses by the Muses to questions put by the poet, who represented himself as 10 11 12 13

Nice examples in Parsons (1993) 17–18. Cf. West (1982) 152–7, Hopkinson (1984) 51–5, Hollis (1990) 15–23. The huge bibliography can best be traced through Parsons (1977), Cameron (1995), Massimilla (1996). The account offered here is necessarily brief and simplified. For doubts about the usual view cf. J. E. G. Zetzel, ‘On the Opening of Callimachus, Aetia II’ ZPE 42 (1981) 31–3; Harder (1988).

2 The structure of the Aitia

45

dreaming that he was a young man transported from North Africa to Mt Helicon, where the Muses instructed him, as once they had instructed Hesiod; the form of the instruction, however, was entirely different – the Muses now answered the poet’s often very obscure questions, rather than withdrawing to ‘the background’ after inspiring the poet with the gift of song. There is a little evidence to support the hypothesis, very likely on general grounds, that the poet awoke at the end of the second book.14 The order of aitia in the early part of Book 1 is known from the Florentine scholia,15 though the detailed way in which transitions from one questionand-answer to another were handled within the overarching structure of the dream-conversation is obscure; almost nothing is certain about the order of Book 2.16 At one point early in Book 1, the poet asks the Muses a double question: ‘He enquires why people accompany sacrifice to Apollo in Anaphe with mutual mockery and sacrifice to Heracles at Lindos with curses’ (Schol. Flor. on fr.9.19–25, p. 79 M.). The cataloguing instincts of the young pedant’s mind have already grouped similar cult practices together before confronting the divine sources of knowledge, but the answers to the related questions would seem to have had nothing to do with each other; the enquiry about Anaphe leads to a relatively lengthy treatment of the return of the Argonauts, whereas the Lindian rite is traced to the hungry Heracles’ killing of a peasant’s ox. Despite the fragmentary nature of the texts, it is tempting to think that the double question about apparently similar rites is one of a series of strategies within the early part of the poem which ironise the whole intellectual structure of aetiology.17 Be that as it may, the Lindian story looks both forwards and backwards, for it is followed by a similar18 story of how Heracles killed an ox belonging to Theiodamas, king of the Dryopes, an action which led to a war, with catastrophic consequences for the Dryopes. Here, at least, a thematic coherence may be traced through the ordering of individual episodes.19 Books 3 and 4 were framed by major pieces (the so-called ‘Victoria Berenices’ and the ‘Lock of Berenice’)20 in honour of Berenice II, the Cyrenean princess who married Ptolemy Euergetes in 246. In these books, Callimachus seems no longer to have used the organising device of a conversation with the Muses; rather, individual aitia (of very various length) 14 16 18 19

20

15 For the opening aition cf. below, pp. 52–4. Cf. Cameron (1995) 137–40. 17 Cf. further below, p. 50–1. For some speculations cf. below, p. 80. Cf. ‘Schol. Flor.’ p. 97 Massimilla. For other relevant considerations cf. Harder (1993). For another probable ‘pairing’ cf. L. Lehnus, ‘Ancora su Callimaco in P.Mich.Inv. 6235’ ZPE 91 (1992) 20 and cf. also A. S. Hollis, ‘Teuthis and Callimachus, Aetia Book 1’ CQ 32 (1982) 117–20. Cf. below, pp. 83–8.

46

The aetiology of Callimachus’ Aitia

followed each other without transitional passages, and the constant presence of the Muses gave way to the poet himself and a variety of rather unusual narrators (a long-dead poet, fr. 64, a lock of hair, fr. 110, perhaps a speaking wall, fr. 97). Some individual aitia now assumed the look of individual ‘poems’ marked by clear opening and closural devices;21 it is consonant with this change that there is evidence that some, at least, circulated as individual poems before as well as after their inclusion within the Aitia, and the aetiological direction of several narratives seems very weak by comparison with the narratives of Books 1 and 2. So, too, the narrative of what might be called ‘historical’ events (frs. 93, 102) and of rites which were explicitly no longer current (frs. 91, 98), and an apparently increased interest in material remains (statues, fountains, buildings) suggest a broadening of range and focus in Books 3 and 4; it is likely enough that Callimachus created suggestive similarities and oppositions between the pairs of books, but the state of our evidence allows only guesses. There are reasons, in addition to the changes in structure, for believing that Books 3 and 4, together with the ‘Reply to the Telchines’ and the ‘Epilogue’ (fr. 112) were added by Callimachus many years after the publication of an original two-book Aitia; if correct, this may account for some of the changes in direction, but we must wait for new texts before we can proceed further. A suggestive case can, however, be made for certain structures which bind the four books together: thus, the concluding ‘Lock of Berenice’ picks up some of the themes of removal and displacement of the poet’s opening dream,22 and the penultimate aition is an Argonautic story, as was the second episode of Book 1. The order of episodes within most of Book 3 and Book 4 is known from the Milan Di¯eg¯eseis, and certain thematic patternings emerge.23 Thus, killing and sacrifice seem to have played a major rˆole in Book 4 (cf. Melicertes, Theudotos, Leimonis, Oesydres, and perhaps the ‘Syrma Antigones’),24 and Athenian narratives were also prominent (Leimonis, the Pelasgian Walls, Androgeos).25 Just as poems in honour of Berenice frame Books 3 and 4, so Book 3 itself is framed by poems linked to 21 22 23

24 25

Gutzwiller (1998) 186 suggests the influence of Hellenistic epigram books. Cf. Selden (1998) 358–9. For new evidence about Book 3 cf. C. Gallazzi and L. Lehnus, ‘Due nuovi frammenti delle Diegeseis. Approssimazioni al III libro degli Aitia di Callimaco’ ZPE 137 (2001) 7–18. Confidence in our certainty about such matters is waning, cf. the discussion at Callimaque 30–1. Cf. A. Henrichs in R. Buxton (ed.), From Myth to Reason? (Oxford 1999) 233–4. This is suggestive for Propertius 4, a collection of aitia of the other great city of the ancient world, Rome. Athens was not, of course, absent from the earlier books (cf. frs. 51, 178 (below, pp. 76–83)).

2 The structure of the Aitia

47

two different Panhellenic athletic festivals in honour of Zeus (Berenice – Nemea, Euthycles – Olympia). Both episodes are also linked to another aition of Book 3, the Elean marriage rite (frs. 76–7), which commemorates an action of Heracles and the subsequent foundation of the Olympic Games; the figure of Heracles was, of course, central to the foundation of the Nemean Games in the opening ‘Victoria Berenices’. The closing story of Euthycles and the outrage to the tomb of Simonides (fr. 64) both involve the desecration of memorials to great figures of the past. So, too, marriage and childbirth obviously played a major rˆole. The theme is introduced by the opening verses of the book: d  W I  !% E' ] #) Q) % 4  e , P   . . . (SH 254.1–2)26 To Zeus and Nemea I owe a gift (lit. ‘wedding-gift’), O bride, sacred blood of the brother-sister gods . . .

The aitia of the exclusion of unmarried girls from the Athenian Thesmophoria (fr. 63), of the ritual uses of the Argive fountains (frs. 65–6), and of Artemis’ rˆole in childbirth (fr. 79), together with the narratives of the loves of Acontius and Cydippe27 and of Phrygius and Pieria (frs. 80–83), all play with these themes in different ways. So, too, the juxtaposition of ‘Diana Lucina’ to the story of Phrygius and Pieria emphasises the rˆole of Artemis in the latter story, as it was at her festival that the two lovers met. Artemis in fact seems to have been a very significant figure in Book 3 (cf. ‘Phalaecus’, ‘Acontius and Cydippe’, ‘Phrygius and Pieria’, and ‘Diana Lucina’) and she will have played an important rˆole in the shifting tension between unity and disparateness with which Callimachus plays. Many centuries later, Aristaenetus wrote prose versions of both ‘Acontius and Cydippe’ and ‘Phrygius and Pieria’ in the first book of his Epistles, and Callimachus clearly designed the two narratives as a pair, though (typically) he did not actually juxtapose them within Book 3; both pairs of young people are united under the eye of Artemis, and as ‘Acontius and Cydippe’ begins with the names of the lovers (fr. 67.1–2), so ‘Phrygius and Pieria’ seems to close with them (fr. 83.3). Whereas, however, ‘Acontius and Cydippe’ focuses upon the time before the marriage, the narrative centre of ‘Phrygius and Pieria’ lies in what happened after the happy 26 27

It is tempting to read Q[ at fr. 110.91, which would reinforce the ring around Books 3 and 4, cf. Hunter (1998) 116 n. 9. Cf. below, pp. 60–6.

48

The aetiology of Callimachus’ Aitia

couple were united.28 Clearly, then, Callimachus invites us to ‘make meaning’ as we read by constructing significance in the patterns we find.29 Callimachus rings the changes in how poetic voice links or divides one aition from another. The ‘Fountains of Argos’ concludes with a formal farewell to the springs:  C C;$Z  `$%('  f# g @ C ; (  ) #   ! $ *  # B 5 J #% ('  Lady Amymone and dear Physadeia and Hippe and Automate, hail, most ancient dwellings of the nymphs and, Pelasgian maidens, flow brilliantly! (Callimachus fr. 66.7–10)

The closural  #% ('  (i.e. Argive) seals the aition by identifying its setting. The next hexameter, separated in our principal witness by a coronis,30 introduces a new narrative, but the voice of the poet carries over:  , h^ ''M  C;  )  # i   =$'" 5   ) !)  #. Love himself taught Akontios, when the boy burned for the lovely maiden Kydippe, the art . . . (Callimachus fr. 67. 1–3)

A similar seal (note the final j (%) is placed upon the aition of the Athenian Thesmophoria by a kind of closing QED: 3]   3  %   C A% [P]% *'[%]  ]5  A  k % $ ] % #   Q #  #%%  ]X   $ !4  C; U% For this reason it is in no way permitted for the virgins of Attica to behold with their eyes the rites of Demeter Thesmophoros before they have come with a husband to the marriage bed (Callimachus fr. 63. 9–12)

The immediately following episode, however, is spoken – as we eventually learn – by the long-dead Simonides.31 With a shock, we come to see that we have intruded upon the great man’s train of thought: 'C .]  =( % ,  % &[]'  ]  %$ Q9  (%U  ]     %)  #. 28 29 30

Annette Harder points out that Pieria obviously played an important speaking rˆole in her poem, whereas Cydippe remains silent (cf. below, p. 66). Fr. 114 (= 64 Massimilla) might be an example of juxtaposed Apolline aitia, but too much is uncertain about this fragment for confidence. 31 On this episode cf. Bing (1988) 67–70. Cf. POxy 2211 fr. 1 r.

3 Aetiology

49

Not even the moving of Kamarina32 would threaten so great an evil as the moving of a pious man’s tomb. For once my tomb (suffered this fate) . . . (Callimachus fr. 64.1–3)

Here, it is tempting to think, is a very clear example of poetry which is  ' , ‘not continuous’.33 3 aetiology Aetiology, the explanation of the reasons for names, customs and cults, had a long history in Greek poetry before the Hellenistic age,34 but becomes a very prominent feature of Hellenistic and Roman poetry. The reasons for this are, as is well known, complex – and have been placed in the context of a general Callimachean poetics of displacement by Daniel Selden –35 but if we ask after the aetiology of the Aitia itself, more than one answer presents itself. The aetiological project of poets such as Callimachus and Apollonius takes its place within both the totalising Ptolemaic culture of the Alexandrian centre and the world of the Hellenistic cities, with their own local traditions, cults, and politics. If Callimachus’ work is in one sense a contribution to canon formation, a revision of the inherited Hesiodic canon of myth and explanatory story, we must ask about the relationship between this revised canon and the inherited conglomerates of local tradition. Why were some stories chosen and others not? To what extent does this Callimachean act of krisis, of inclusion and exclusion, replay (and how deliberately?) the processes by which some local narratives had acquired pan-Hellenic status and others had either disappeared or were destined to remain in the realm of the quaint? To what extent, then, is this poetic return to the local and the particular not pure antiquarianism, ‘the Librarian at play’, but rather a politically and culturally charged act of repetition? The mythic origins of cities, and the links between them which mythic narratives created, remained real and vital forces in inter-state diplomacy; if 32 33 34

35

The citizens of Sicilian Kamarina had been warned: ‘Don’t move Kamarina’, but they drained nearby lake Kamarina with disastrous results. Cf. below, p. 69. Cf. G. Codrignani, ‘L’ “aition” nella poesia greca prima di Callimaco’ Convivium 26 (1958) 527– 45; F. Graf, Greek Mythology (Baltimore–London 1993) 110–18; Veyne (1988) 24–6; M. Fantuzzi, ‘Aitiologie in der griechischen Dichtung’ in Der neue Pauly I (Stuttgart 1996) 369–71. For the large modern literature on the ‘theory of aetiology’ see the survey in Loehr (1996) 1–38; valuable also in this connection are the opening chapter of K. S. Myers, Ovid’s Causes (Michigan 1994) and F. Graf, ‘R¨omische Kultaitia und die Konstruktion religi¨oser Vergangenheit’ in M. Flashar, H.-J. Gehrke, E. Heinrich (eds.), Retrospektive (Munich 1996) 125–35. Selden (1998); cf. also Y. L. Too, The Idea of Ancient Literary Criticism (Oxford 1998) chapter 4.

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much about Callimachean aetiology seems obviously ironic or playful, we must not imagine that all Hellenistic aetiology shared these characteristics. More specifically, the collection, and hence preservation, of the past must have something to do with that consciousness of belatedness which is everywhere present in the poetry and scholarship of the age. No doubt, also, Ptolemaic interest in the wider Greek world gave a leading court poet ample excuse to research and write about local antiquities. So, too, the dominance in e´lite poetry of the aetiological mode must take its place within the slow development which saw ‘mythology’ join ‘myth’; the collection, writing down and comparison of mythical material was part of the great systematisation of knowledge which so characterises the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Myths, like customs, constitutions and courtesans, were sorted by various methods of ordering and recorded for posterity. The Alexandrian version of this activity almost always involved not merely collection, but also the exercise of judgement, krisis, whether the matter was the authenticity of a work of literature, the explanation of a Homeric hapax or the origin of a curious custom. Aetiology, as we find it in Callimachus and Apollonius is, at one level, the manifestation in the world of myth and custom of an all-pervasive habit of mind in Alexandrian scholarship. This is, of course, not to say that it is a mode unique to Alexandrian scholarship; far from it – there is much, for example, that recalls the critical methods of Herodotus –36 but it is crucial to the appreciation of Callimachus’ practice to recognise that it is a very self-conscious transference to poetry of a manner redolent of other modes of discourse. The aetiological mode of explanation suits the boundless curiosity of the scholar and the child – Callimachus’ two most prominent modes of selfpresentation – but it also offers a world which is ‘invented’ and then remains without change. The idea that customs and rites have a single explanation and then remain without evolution of form or meaning might seem to us a very naive – indeed, ‘childlike’ – one, and one which we might be loath to ascribe to Callimachus, however widespread this pattern of thought was in antiquity (cf. the idea of ‘the first inventor’). At one level, of course, such a simplified explanatory model is rather easier to turn into poetry than anything more subtle would be, but Callimachus himself leaves us in no doubt that the model is not to be invested with too great an authority. The quotation of variant versions and variant sources, the poet’s parodically confident parade of knowledge, and the way in which aitia constantly spill over and get in each other’s way, make the playful quality of the poetic 36

Cf. O. Murray, ‘Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture’ CQ 22 (1972) 200–13.

4 Hesiod and Callimachus

51

material very clear; we can hardly doubt that the Aitia are intended for an audience well-versed in the manner of ritual reconstruction, as practised by both scholarly curiosity and patriotic fantasy. The very variety of Callimachus’ sources and the localities on which he draws, certainly at one level, construct a readership of (paradoxically) common purpose – every Greek of every origin has his story to tell –37 but we should be wary of seeking grand explanations for the aetiological mode in terms of a desire to compensate for an alleged sense of deracination felt by Alexandrian Greeks, through the forging of close links between the past and an observable present.38 The fact that in what survives of the poetry (as opposed to the Di¯eg¯eseis), the poet, like a modern social anthropologist, always uses the present tense – ‘Why is it that X does Y?’ – is to be connected with his self-presentation, particularly in Books 1 and 2, as a man and scholar who literally ‘lives in’ the past, whose intellectual horizons are determined by what he has read; for the narrator (as opposed to the poet) of the Aitia, these customs really do still exist, because they are recorded and one can point to authorities for them. The dream of rejuvenation with which he introduces the poem is symbolic at several levels, one of which is a rejection of the present – his ‘real life’ is in the past. It is, however, important to remember that different, often apparently incompatible, ways of looking at the world coexist in the minds of men of all ages.39 Callimachus is not to be turned into a modern rationalist or sociologist; he may well have more ‘personal belief ’ invested in the aetiological mode of explanation than we would be happy with, but every discourse he touches – erotic, religious, political – becomes in his hands a vehicle for a distinctively ironic way of viewing the world, and aetiology is no different. 4 hesiod and callimachus The aetiology of Books 1 and 2, at least, of Callimachus’ poem also has its own specific aition. The opening sequence presented Callimachus as a ‘new Hesiod’, meeting the Muses on Mt Helicon and receiving information 37 38

39

Cf. M. Asper, ‘Gruppen und Dichter: zu Programmatik und Adressatenbezug bei Kallimachos’ A&A 47 (2001) 84–116. Cf. the otherwise helpful accounts of Zanker (1983) 132–3 and (1987) 122–3. Such a motivation is not far from the ‘patriotic piety’ which Veyne (1988) 45 ascribes to Callimachus; this hardly does justice to the complex tone of the Aitia. Veyne is closer to the mark when he describes mythology (as opposed to ‘myths’) as acquiring ‘the prestige of the elite knowledge that marks its possessor as belonging to a certain class’. The matter has been very much discussed; the work of Geoffrey Lloyd is fundamental. See also Veyne (1988), Feeney (1998) chapter 1.

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from them; that the style and metre are entirely un-Hesiodic is only what we would have expected from Callimachus. During the third century, the shrine of the Muses below Helicon and the games which took place there, the Mouseia, were reorganised, if not actually invented,40 and Hesiod enjoyed something like hero-status in association with the Muses, whose fame he had promulgated.41 The cult found some notable patrons during the century, most famously Ptolemy IV Philopator and his wife Arsinoe III, but perhaps also Philadelphus and his sister-wife. Unfortunately, the identity of the Arsinoe ‘who married her brother’ (Pausanias 9.31.1), whose statue, seated on an ostrich, Pausanias saw on Helicon, is disputed, but the wife of Philadelphus is not impossible.42 Be that as it may, there is solid evidence for political connections between Ptolemaic Alexandria and Boeotia at various stages of the century,43 and Callimachus’ revival of the Boeotian poet is very likely to have had contemporary significance. The poem proper presumably began with the first aetiological interchange with the Muses, in which Klio explains to the poet why the Graces are worshipped on Paros without pipe music and the wearing of garlands; Minos was sacrificing to the Graces when word came of the death of his son, and rather than disturb the ritual he merely stopped the music and took off his garland. In another sense, however, that aition seems itself to have been proemial to the main body of the poem.44 It concludes with an invocation to the Graces: ## ) # % 'C :4%% #Z% ! 5 5) l  $#b %  . Come now and wipe your hands, rich with oil, upon my elegies, so that they may last for many a year. (Callimachus fr. 9.13–14 M.)

It seems easier to imagine this programmatic wish spoken by ‘the poet’ outside the framework of the dream rather than by the young dreamer, but there can be no certainty. Nevertheless, an important similarity with 40

41 42 43 44

Cf. R. Lamberton, ‘Plutarch, Hesiod, and the Mouseia of Thespiai’ ICS 13 (1988) 491–504. The standard collection of evidence is A. Schachter, Cults of Boeotia 2. Herakles to Poseidon (BICS Suppl. 38.2, London 1986) 147–79. Cf. the essays of Calame, Hurst and Veneri in A. Hurst and A. Schachter (eds.), La montagne des Muses (Geneva 1996). Cf. Cameron (1995) 142. Cf. S. Barbantani, ‘Competizioni poetiche tespiesi e mecenatismo tolemaico’ Lexis 18 (2000) 127–72. For ‘the Graces’ as part of the opening sequence cf. Massimilla (1996) 253–4, Harder (1998) 106–7. The presence of the Graces, alongside the Muses, in the ‘Epilogue’ (fr. 112) and the apparent echoes of fr. 7 at the end of the Argonautica and in Catullus 1 are particularly suggestive. Serious problems, of course, remain about what followed vv. 13–14. For further echoes of this passage in subsequent literature, cf. G. Massimilla, ‘L’invocazione di Callimaco alle Cariti nel primo libro degli Aitia (fr. 7, 9–14 Pf.)’ in Proceedings of the XXth International Congress of Papyrology (Copenhagen 1994) 322–5.

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53

the opening of Hesiod’s Theogony is observable. In that poem, an opening invocation and description of the Muses (1–21) is followed by the account of their epiphany and instructions to the poet (22–35); the poet then obeys their instruction (34) by singing first of the Muses themselves and their gifts to men (36–103), before invoking them afresh: !   ) ' 'C e  %% &'4U #  ' C &(  e , m *X   )  #. Hail, children of Zeus, grant lovely song! Sing of the holy race of the ever-living deathless ones . . . (Hesiod, Theogony 104–5)

The prayer for e  %% &'4 corresponds to Callimachus’ wish for elegies over which the Graces have wiped their hands.45 Hesiod then asks the Muses to sing of ‘the holy race of the ever-living deathless ones’, i.e. the subject of the Theogony proper (105–15); the beginning, marked as such by Z % , follows immediately: i  X Z %  G(  CU      n5 C Q% )  #. First of all was Chaos, but then broad-breasted Earth . . . (Hesiod, Theogony 116–17)

In a poet such as Callimachus, we will not look for simple replication, and the texts are far too broken to allow confidence, but the similarity of the patterns should be apparent.46 That Callimachus recognised v. 116 as ‘the beginning’ of the Theogony is suggested by what survives of his account of Hesiod’s meeting with the Muses:  #   C K! ]M l$ 67% ' 0$% +%, V C - %  ] e G(   %[ . . . when the group of Muses met the shepherd Hesiod as he was grazing his flocks by the footprint of the swift horse . . . the creation of Chaos . . . (Callimachus fr. 4.1–3 M.)

Here the Theogony is evoked, as ancient poems standardly were, by its ‘opening’.47 Moreover, just as Hesiod performs as a theogonic poet before the start of the Theogony proper, so Callimachus’ Muses explain the Graces 45

46 47

Lynn (1995) 151–2 well observes the importance of the opening structure of the Theogony, but links vv. 104–15 with the ‘Musenanruf ’, which linked Prologue to Dream rather than with the appeal to the Graces, cf. further below. The Hesiodic pattern lends further colour to Lobel’s ]  C at the head of fr. 7.15. For Chaos as ‘the beginning’ of the Theogony cf. also Virg. Georg. 4.347, Ovid, Met. 1.7, Barchiesi (1997b) 232–3. If v. 5 (cf. WD 265) similarly stands for the whole of the Works and Days (cf. Pfeiffer and Massimilla ad loc.), then the choice of verse may be connected with the recurrent theme of malignity, cf. Cameron (1995) 129–30.

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to the poet before the start of the poem ‘proper’. It is a fair guess that the subject of the Graces did not just leap into the poet’s mind, but arose from something the Muses themselves said to him; it is the Graces who accompany the Muses, not only throughout Greek literature,48 but specifically in the Theogony prologue (v. 64), and it may be thought a very ‘Hellenistic’ procedure to choose to elaborate upon what is but a brief mention in the archaic model.49 Moreover, it is the Hesiodic model which also serves to explain the poet’s choice of subject.50 The Theogony tells of the ancestry of the Olympians, their coming to power, and the functions assigned to each; to some extent, it also covers the birth of the heroes and ‘demi-gods’. Although the Theogony, like the Works and Days, has a strong aetiological direction, what it does not do, with one major exception, is to tell the aitia of the various cults and rites by which men honour the gods and heroes;51 Callimachus’ Aitia is thus a kind of sequel to the Theogony, which takes the story to the next stage – in this progression, the existence of gods precedes the existence of cult and ‘religion’, rather than (as some Greek thinkers held) being a product of it. The major exception in the Theogony is, of course, the account of how Prometheus tried to trick Zeus and, along with all mankind, was punished for it (535–616); Prometheus’ trick of making Zeus choose the bones rather than the flesh of a sacrificed animal is clearly in essence an aition for the nature of Greek sacrifice. This, however, remains merely implicit, and the episode itself – clearly marked off by  ( at the beginning (535) and a closing ‘moral’ (613–16) – explicitly tells of why Prometheus was punished, and of the origin from Pandora of ‘the race of women’, not of why men sacrifice as they do. Nevertheless, here at the heart of the Theogony, Callimachus found the seed from which his own poem grew. As the Theogony shows a world-order coming into being, so the Aitia presents a series of second-order refinements and local variations within the Hesiodic structure, most notably within the Pan-Hellenic sacrificial order established by Prometheus. Aetiology takes the place of genealogy as the predominant explanatory mode, but the similarities between the two are as important as the differences. Genealogy, at least as practised in Greece, is an even more strongly teleological narrative form than aetiology, 48 49

50 51

Cf. e.g. E. Schwarzenberg, Die Grazien (Bonn 1966) 44–5. The scholiast on Theogony 64 claims that there was a shrine of the Graces on Helikon; this would cetainly be an obvious way for them to enter the poem, but there is no other evidence for this cult. They are, of course, very much at home elsewhere in Boeotia (Orchomenos etc.). Cf. e.g. Harder (1988) 5. It is noteworthy that K  and its cognates do not occur in our remains of Hesiod.

4 Hesiod and Callimachus

55

and particularly Callimachean aetiology, with its frequently disconcerting randomness.52 Genealogy constructs the past out of the present for particular contextualised purposes. Both genealogy and aetiology leap from the crucial beginning, whether legendary founder or one-time ritual event, to the present, with a tendency to elide all time in between. Moreover, the Hesiodic concern with sequence and order, the telling M &!, ‘from the beginning’ (Theog. 45), is replaced in the Aitia by a sequencing dependent (as far as we can tell) upon the interests of the poet-enquirer. The immanent teleology of the Theogony has been replaced by a purely human, poetic ordering. The Theogony brings its story down to Zeus’ matings with women of the generation before the Trojan War, or even later, depending on where the end of the poem is placed. Nevertheless, unlike the Works and Days, the main body of the poem remains very firmly in what it is fair to think of as mythic time. The first aition of Callimachus’ poem, however, is set in the time of Minos, the great Aegean king who lived long before the Trojan War, but to whom Thucydides (1.4.1) gives special prominence as ‘the earliest man of whom we know by report (&4) to have established a fleet’ and whose rule marked a turning-point in Aegean history (1.8.2). Did Callimachus use Minos as a further marker that his poem was to become the standard account of periods covered by oral and written tradition, as Hesiod provided the authority for earlier events? The fact that the story of Minos is followed by narratives of the Argonauts and of Heracles, and that the whole four-book poem finishes with Callimachus’ own patrons, Euergetes and Berenice, lends colour to the idea that the Aitia is to be seen as a complete ‘human’ history to match the ‘divine’ history of the Theogony.53 Ovid’s Metamorphoses subsequently combines both by moving from chaos to Augustus. The Hesiodic model, then, provides one aition for Callimachean aetiology. Any full account must wait until we know more of how the narrative of the dream and the aition of the Graces was actually conducted. It is clear, however, that Callimachus made much of the ‘naive enthusiasm’ of the young scholar, whose questioning of the Muses gave ample opportunity for the epideixis of his own knowledge.54 Thus, he tells the Muses that he 52 53

54

Cf. Selden (1998) 321–4. It must be stressed that this chronological frame is just that, a frame. Within the frame no such progression can be traced; thus the Argonauts reappear immediately before the ‘Coma Berenices’. There is a useful survey of the chronological scope of the Aitia in A. Harder, ‘The Invention of Past, Present and Future in Callimachus’ Aetia’ Hermes 131 (2003) 290–306. Cf. e.g. Lynn (1995) 169–71.

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knows of three competing genealogies for the Graces, in which, however, the father (Zeus) was always the same; the ‘authoritative’ answer given by Klio (Dionysos and the Naxian nymph Koronis) was entirely different.55 Why did Callimachus place this form of exchange near the head of the poem? One obvious answer lies in the characterisation of the narrator (see below), but another lies in the nature of Callimachean aetiology itself. Having to choose between mythological (particularly genealogical) variants was not an experience unique to Hellenistic poets, and it is a process to which Callimachus constantly recurs in the Hymns, but placed at the head of the Aitia this procedure threatens to destabilise the undertaking before it has really got off the ground. The open acknowledgement of competing authorities both sets the poem in a context of agonistic scholarship and ironises, as we shall see Callimachus doing again, the very pursuit of ‘truth’. ‘Truth’ is the subject of perhaps the three most famous verses of the Theogony:   . $#) (C # ! ) %   L) K'  : Q'  ## #   Q% 5) K'  ' C) c C # ) &# Q%%. Shepherds of the field, wretched disgraces, mere bellies – we know how to speak many lies which are like true things, and we know, when we wish, to speak the truth. (Hesiod, Theogony 26–8)

It may be thought unlikely that the opening sequence of the Aitia failed to make some allusion to this celebrated address by the Muses. One exploitation at least lies in the competing genealogies of the Graces. Genealogy itself, however, is the prime structuring mode of the Theogony, whereas it plays a much smaller rˆole in Callimachus’ poem; its prominence in the first aition of the poem should, therefore, be seen as a further Hesiodic marker, a trace of the ancestor. Moreover, the parentage of the Graces which Klio reveals is amusingly different from the Hesiodic answer to the same question (Theog. 907–9).56 Hesiod may provide the literary frame, but he is no guide to ‘truth’; when Klio and her sisters told Hesiod of the parentage of the Graces, they were lying, as they had precisely warned the poet that they could (Theog. 27).57 Hesiod almost certainly was not identified by name 55

56 57

Schol. Flor. 29–35 (Pfeiffer I p. 13, Massimilla (1996) 76). Massimilla (1996) 247 notes that Klio’s answer may have a Ptolemaic connection; this would certainly strengthen its links with the ‘Epilogue’. The exact relation between the enquiry concerning the Parian rite and that concerning the parentage of the Graces remains unclear: were there two separate questions, or merely one question and one answer? The discussion of this passage by Loehr (1996) 196–8 is unsatisfactory. For Ovid’s reuse of this passage cf. e.g. A. Barchiesi, PCPS 37 (1991) 8. Cf. Reinsch-Werner (1976) 390. Callimachus in fact uses the Hesiodic genealogy elsewhere (cf. fr. 384.45). On the importance of possible ‘Hesiodic’ untruthfulness within the subsequent didactic tradition, cf. Barchiesi (1997b) 183–6.

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in the Callimachean text – he is concealed behind the innocent-looking e 'C . . . L ‘some others have claimed’ of fr.6 (= 8 M.) –58 but the point would hardly be lost on any reader. Who is to say that Klio and her sisters are not ‘lying’ again? The genealogy of the Graces, no more than the genealogy of Eros, is a subject upon which no one ‘authoritative’ opinion can be given; Greek society had always known this, but scholarly habits and constant recourse to written records reinforced this truth. As for the genealogy which Klio offers, a Naxian parentage (and a Naxian source?) may make sense in the context of an aition concerned with the famous cult of the Graces on the nearby island of Paros, but the narrowly local specificity of the explanation59 – contrast the rival ‘pan-Hellenic’ explanations, in which the mother is either Hera, or a daughter of Ocean or of Ouranos – sits in slightly uneasy juxtaposition with the pan-Hellenic worship of the Graces. It is almost as though Callimachus here reflects upon the relation between local cult and Olympian figure; the form of the aition presupposes the oddity of the Parian worship in the context of the universal cult of the Graces (cf. fr. 7.9–11 = 9.9–11 M.), but these Graces have a very local parentage. It is particularly unfortunate that we are even less well informed about the other clear case where competing aetiologies were explicitly listed. In Book 3, Callimachus dealt with the question of why women experiencing difficulty in childbirth call for assistance upon the virgin Artemis; the surviving summary indicates that he offered three explanations: ‘either because [Artemis herself ] was born [painlessly], or because on Zeus’ instructions Eileithyia bestowed this special function upon her, or because she freed her own mother from labour pains when she was giving birth to Apollo’ (Di¯eg¯eseis i 27–36). The wording of the summary suggests that the poet himself did not choose between these explanations, each of which is of itself perfectly sensible. This passage has been interpreted as offering a complex ‘three-part’ aetiology covering Artemis’ own birth, prerogatives, and paradigmatic intervention, but it would at least be surprising to find Callimachus concerned to provide a complete and internally consistent account.60 Less surprising would be a set of competing aetiologies which both over-explain the ritual phenomenon and leave it entirely unexplained. 58 59

60

The placing of this book fragment here is conjectural, but impossible to resist. Massimilla suggests a Ptolemaic motive in view of the importance of Dionysus for the royal house; both Naxos and Paros were within the orbit of Ptolemaic influence in the Aegean. At Diod. Sic. 5.52.2–3 Koronis is one of three Naxian nymphs who nursed the infant Dionysus, and as a result of this the inhabitants had the god’s gratitude (!( ): is this a ‘rationalising’ origin for the story of the Charites? At Arg. 4.424–5 the Graces are said to have woven a cloak for Dionysus on Dia (i.e. Naxos), but it is unclear whether we are to imagine him as their nursling or their lover. As suggested by Loehr (1996) 195–6.

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Be that as it may, what binds this example to that of the genealogy of the Graces is not only the excess of aetiological material available, but also the excess of the poet’s knowledge. The aetiological impulse here grows not from ignorance, but from knowledge; or, we might rather say that it is knowledge which brings the painful awareness of ignorance. Even here, we may sense a Hesiodic dimension. In Works and Days, Hesiod juxtaposes two explanations of why life is hard: the Pandora myth and the account of the Five Ages. Modern scholars have debated at great length whether those explanations are competing or complementary,61 but from the perspective of a later age, it must have been clear enough that they were different explanatory models – one strictly aetiological, together with the discontinuities of time entailed in such a model, and the other a diachronic process. Hesiod never explicitly chooses between them, perhaps because ‘truth’ encompasses both; scholar-poets, however, claim to need single right answers. It has often been remarked that, whereas in Homer and Hesiod (particularly the Theogony) it is the Muses, rather than the poet, who have the knowledge, in Callimachus there is a much more even distribution. Whereas Homer allotted ‘all knowledge’ to the Muses (Iliad 2.486), the young Callimachus immediately tells the Muses what he knows, i.e. that there are at least three competing genealogies for the Graces. Most memorably, he prefaces a request for information about Zankle with a parade of his knowledge of the foundation legends of virtually all other Sicilian cities (fr. 43 = 50 M.); ‘I shall tell you . . . I know . . . I know . . . I can explain’ articulate the parade. At one level, this catalogue lays bare once again the process of selection which is always on view in the Aitia – the poet may know these things, but we are none the wiser –62 but, at another level, the whole project of ‘completeness’ is exposed for what it is: as we shall see also with the summary of Xenomedes’ Cean history in fr. 75,63 catalogue style in fact advertises, rather than conceals, silences. The poet may indeed find any gap in his knowledge intolerable, but the undertaking is as doomed as the wish to make decisions between competing aitia. This poet is, however, nothing if not indefatigable: cf. fr. 31b (= 35 M.), ‘So she spoke, and at once my thumos questioned them again’. No sooner has Klio finished explaining about the nameless founder of Zankle than the poet has another question for her: 61 62 63

For some guidelines and bibliography cf. T. Rosenmeyer, ‘Hesiod and Historiography’ Hermes 85 (1957) 257–85, C. Rowe, JHS 103 (1983) 132–3. Cf. below, p. 64; for a rather different perspective cf. Harder (1998) 102. Cf. below, pp. 64–5.

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o[] 1 X # )  O 'C   [ , $]% i] # – D (  (9 2 [ ] – =]%%Q%  C [' k '% =[%% +] 4 1]  # 1 =('$  6;#  . [  So she stopped speaking, and I wanted to know this too – for my amazement was nourished: ‘Why does Haliartus, Cadmus’ city, celebrate the Theodaisia, a Cretan festival, by the waters of the Kissousa . . .?’ (Callimachus fr. 43.84–7 (= 50.84–7 M.))

What is the nature of this (9) ‘wonder’? Not, I think, merely ‘wonder . . . at hearing the answer to so obscure a question’,64 for we are now well into the second book, nor merely a just wonder at the rich variety of cultic practices to be found, or at the range of Klio’s wisdom. This ‘wonder’ causes the poet to ask about a Boeotian practice with no obvious link to the Sicilian episode which has preceded. The apparent randomness, emphasised by the parenthetic structure of vv. 84–5, is important. At one level, this is mimetic of the jerkiness and brief attention span, as well as the ‘curiosity’, of the child (cf. fr. 1.5–6), but at another, Callimachus exploits an aetiology of philosophy (‘desire for knowledge’) which we find in both Plato (Theaetetus 155d) and a famous passage of Aristotle: It is owing to their wonder ( , $(_ ) that men both now begin and at first began to philosophise; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and the stars, and about the genesis of the universe. And a man who is puzzled and wonders (&  $(_) thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders); therefore since they philosophised in order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end. And this is confirmed by the facts; for it was when almost all the necessities of life and the things that make for comfort and recreation had been secured, that such knowledge began to be sought. Evidently then we do not seek it for the sake of any other advantage; but as the man is free, we say, who exists for his own sake and not for another’s, so we pursue this as the only free science, for it alone exists for its own sake. (Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.982b 12–27, trans. W. D. Ross)

Philosophical enquiry has its origins in ‘wonder’, and Callimachus’ enquiries are no different. This famous passage of the Metaphysics, however, throws into relief two particularly significant aspects of those enquiries. 64

Hutchinson (1988) 44. This in fact is the only occurrence of (9 in Callimachus, and  and its cognates are not found; elsewhere, (9 often connotes a kind of terror, but here it seems little more than ‘wonder’.

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Aristotle traces a progression from wondering enquiries about small matters to the ‘larger’ subjects of astronomy. Into which category would Callimachus’ enquiry about the conduct of the Cretan Theodaisia at Haliartos in Boeotia fall? Moreover, Aristotle clearly connects the growth of philosophy with ‘wonder’ about observable astronomical phenomena – the sun, the stars etc.; the ancients at least seem to have linked $(_  with the  - root, ‘seeing’.65 The objects of Callimachus’ wonder are, more often than not, things that he has never seen, sometimes explicitly so (cf. fr. 178.27–30 = 89. 27–30 M.).66 In many cases, it may be doubted whether any one of Callimachus’ generation had seen these practices. Thus, it is the gulf between the inherited intellectual structure and the use to which it is put that most clearly imperils the whole procedure. Secondly, Aristotle stresses that philosophy is pursued for its own sake; it is thus like the free man who does not exist for the sake of someone else, and (we may infer) it is also an activity appropriate only to the free man. There is more at stake for Callimachus here than merely another battle in the endless war over whether poetry serves any useful purpose or not. Elsewhere, he uses the rhetoric of ‘freedom v. slavery’ to characterise his intellectual enquiries,67 and so here the ‘wonder’ which prompts him to question the Muses is part of the complex presentation of an intellectualism which has become a crucial diagnostic sign for the ‘free’ man. 5 acontius and cydippe The longest continuous passage to have survived from the Aitia is the story of Acontius and Cydippe in Book 3. This narrative was very influential in Roman poetry (Virgil, Eclogue 2 and 10; Propertius 1.18; Ovid, Heroides 20–21), and a surviving prose version from late antiquity (Aristainetos 1.10) is clearly derived ultimately from Callimachus. The story is as follows: Acontius of Ceos fell in love with Cydippe of Naxos when he saw her at the festival of Apollo on Delos. He inscribed on an apple an oath by Artemis to marry Acontius, threw the apple towards Cydippe and her nurse, and Cydippe trapped herself by reading out the oath in the holy precinct of the goddess. When, back on Naxos, Cydippe’s father tried to marry his daughter off to another suitor, she repeatedly fell ill, until her father consulted Apollo and learned the truth; the god told him to fulfil Cydippe’s oath, and so 65 66 67

Cf. Et. Mag. 443.37–48 Gaisford. This passage may in fact have stood close to the appeal to ‘wonder’ near the head of Book 2, cf. below, p. 80. Fr. 178.19, cf. below, p. 78.

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the couple were married. The account of Acontius’ lovesickness, which caused him to seek the solitude of the countryside, where he poured out his woes and carved Cydippe’s name on trees, was particularly important for later poets, but only a few verses of this survive. What does survive is an extended account of Cydippe’s father’s unsuccessful attempts to arrange his daughter’s wedding (fr. 75. 1–49).68 The first surviving verses take us straight to the self-conscious practice of aetiology: i'  Q  (% )  F # $ Q [ *% .%  8 T# ' %b &# 5. g 7 (   % – Q) Q) K%! ) #' $) %Q C & %"  (   ! %U N ( C E C 3    K'  e   ) M      i$  e% . D #$'  !# ,  ) V%  & 5

#Z%%U F  , 5 V' # ! . . . . and already the maiden was in bed with the boy, as the rite prescribed that a bride should sleep her pre-wedding sleep with a boy whose parents were both alive. For they say that once upon a time – dog, dog, my shameless soul, you would sing even of what is not lawful. It is very lucky for you that you have not seen the mysteries of the dread goddess, since you would have vomited out their story too. Much learning is in truth a terrible curse, when someone cannot control their tongue. This child really does have a knife.69 (Callimachus fr. 75. 1–9)

Although the opening context is broken, it is not unreasonable to believe that v. 1 teases us with the possibility that Cydippe is already enjoying a ‘wedding night’ with someone other than Acontius; in fact, however, she is merely taking part in an obscure Naxian rite by which a bride spent the night before her marriage with a pre-pubertal boy. In accordance with the raison d’ˆetre of the Aitia, the poet starts to tell the origin of the custom – an imitation of the youthful lovemaking of Zeus and Hera (Iliad 14.295–6) – but breaks off when he realises, with archly proper piety, that to tell such a story would be blasphemous. The idea of the poet as a child is recurrent in the Aitia, but his shifting of the blame to his thumos and his lament about the ‘difficult’ burden of ‘much knowledge’ – in a poem expressly devised to display that knowledge! – are not merely witty, but again call attention 68

69

Recent discussions include Cairns (1979) 117–20, Hopkinson (1988) 102–10, Harder (1990) and (2002) 195–9, 202–4, Lynn (1995) 192–262, Cameron (1995) 256–61, 351–2, Nikitinski (1996) 128–35, P. Rosenmeyer, ‘Love Letters in Callimachus, Ovid and Aristaenetus or the Sad Fate of a Mailorder Bride’ MD 36 (1996) 9–31. A reference to the proverb: ‘Don’t give a child a knife.’

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to the process of selection which must lie at the heart of any such poem.70 Moreover, the poet’s lament for his ‘much knowledge’ follows immediately upon the statement that he does not know about the rites of Demeter; the poetic voice constantly undercuts itself with brilliant and bewildering speed. Some aitia, however, are omitted for lack of space, others for lack of courage. ‘For they say that once upon a time Hera . . .’ (v. 4) finds a close parallel in an anonymous Sotadean verse preserved in Hephaestion: g 7   %  , $ They say that once upon a time Zeus who delights in thunder . . . Hera (Sotades fr. 16 Powell)

It is an attractive speculation71 that Sotades himself was the author of this verse and that it comes from – perhaps indeed was the first verse of – a poem which laughed at Philadelphus’ marriage to his sister Arsinoe (cf. Sotades fr. 1 Powell); if so, Callimachus’ allusion to it would evoke the fate of Sotades, and thus emphasise the real dangers to which the poet’s ‘much knowledge’ was exposing him. After one false start, the poet begins his narrative all over again, but this time from the apparently pious subject of sacrifice. The image of the sudden anguish of the sacrificial cattle as they catch a reflected glimpse of the blade which is to end their lives (vv. 10–11) is a startling intrusion of the ‘pathetic fallacy’ after the witty self-mockery of the previous verse. This empathy with the cattle undercuts the immediately preceding claim to strict piety, a claim already made problematic by the paradoxical self-makarismos of someone who has not been initiated at Eleusis; contrast the confident assertion of the archaic Hymn to Demeter: A#9 p (' C A  ! &ZU p ' C & #8 e ) V C .) 3  C  L% !       2, _  Z  . Blessed the mortal man who has seen these things. He who has not been initiated in the holy things, who has no share of them, never partakes of like things when he is dead amidst the dank gloom. (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 480–2)

The archaic hymn’s aetiological tale would have fitted perfectly into the Aitia, but some things are best covered in silence . . . The ‘Hippocratic’ dismissal in v. 14 of the divine origins of epilepsy is moreover a further 70 71

It is tempting to believe that #Z%% ‘tongue’ also suggests ‘gloss’ and thus looks forward to the rare # which follows; here is someone who really cannot control his use of glˆossai. Cf. Pretagostini (1984) 144, Lynn (1995) 204–15.

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reason to doubt the conventional piety of the poet.72 Such a dismissal, which gestures towards the writing of a further, medical ‘aetiology’73 , is also of course a display of the poet’s ‘much knowledge’; in this case, it really is ‘a difficult burden’, because the poet has got it wrong – Cydippe’s illness does in fact have a divine cause, namely the oath to Artemis.74 These verses, therefore, display a brilliant control of poetic voice, exploiting the claims to omniscience by a poet who sets himself up to narrate ‘origins’, but is defeated by the multiple ramifications of the material he chooses. The Apolline voice of the poet, who recounts Cydippe’s history with an interest in symptoms and duration which would suit a ‘real’ doctor, then gives way to Apollo, the divine doctor himself, but it is an Apollo who speaks very like Callimachus. The listing of Artemis’ haunts, the concern with Cean ritual, and the implicit etymology of ‘Etesian’ from * 5%75 point clearly to the distinctive voice of the Aitia; the elaborate paraphrase for the Etesian winds, ‘by which many quail are entangled in the linen clouds (i.e. nets)’, adapts the obscure language of an oracle to Callimachus’ extraordinary eye for everyday detail. The poet’s special relationship with Apollo, a familiar feature of Callimachean poetics, here provides a speech whose unity of tone and voice stands in sharp contrast to what has preceded. All the problems of aetiology disappear when you let Apollo do the talking: medicine offers an alternative aetiological structure which also seeks to explain the present from the past, but it is doomed to failure unless it carries Apollo’s personal guarantee. If the earlier verses dramatised the problem of selection which poetry of this kind imposes, so too does the summary in the final twenty-eight verses of the prose chronicle of the Cean historian Xenomedes, named by Callimachus as his source for the story of Acontius and Cydippe.76 When confronted with such expanse of time, the poet can dawdle or hurry at will. As we have seen, the problem with aetiology is not merely that one custom may have different explanations, but that almost everything could 72

73 74 75

76

The relevant text is On the Sacred Disease 1–5. It is noteworthy that when the Hippocratic author exemplifies other diseases which seem to him just as ‘divine’ as epilepsy he cites quotidian, tertian and quartan (  5) fevers (chapter 1). It is tempting to believe that this lies behind Cydippe’s second illness. For a collection of medical passages which use * #  or its cognates cf. Loehr (1996) 32. Cf. Nikitinski (1996) 135. Cf. Hyginus, De astr. 2.6 (p. 27 Vir´e), < Arg. 2.498–527b. It is not the least of the interesting problems concerning the relation between Callimachus and Apollonius in the matter of the etesian winds that the latter does not make his etymology (‘annual’) explicit; in paraphrasing Apollonius’ account, < Arg. 2.498–527a felt compelled to add the explanation which Apollonius has ‘omitted’. Cf. G. Huxley, ‘Xenomedes of Keos’ GRBS 6 (1965) 235–45, R. L. Fowler, Early Greek Mythography (Oxford 2000) 370–4.

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require an aition; the poet must therefore select and control. Unlike the archaic catalogue poet, Callimachus professes no need or desire to tell everything, because the poet is now no longer the repository of the community’s knowledge; now there are prose sources which claim comprehensiveness (vv. 54–5 ‘the whole island’) and accuracy,77 although neither claim will in fact stand up to examination (note $#

, v. 55, and the pointed juxtaposition of vv. 76–7):  'X ($    C 3 ##  %U '8   C 2  # C; (' $#Q      C@$#'  ($%) = 5 ) , 'C 1 5 l  #Q  '  C &!$ q 4' ) V  T% %  4" (   $#

) .!  F Q"%   =$"%)  &, J%% #5 'M  ) 6 r'%%    4%)  #. From that marriage a great name was destined to arise, for your tribe, the Akontiadai, still dwell in great numbers and great honour at Ioulis, Cean. Of your desire we heard from ancient Xenomedes, who set down the whole island in a mythological history, beginning with how it was inhabited by Corycian nymphs, whom a great lion chased away from Parnassus; for that reason they called it Hydroussa . . . (Callimachus fr. 75.50–8)

.!  F is the Callimachean equivalent of the Homeric   +#O F, ‘taking up the story from when . . .’, and should indicate the point within a larger story, from where the poet begins his own narrative (cf. fr. 7.25 = 9.25 M., h.3.4);78 instead, however, of being a marker of selectivity, it here reinforces T% to show that Xenomedes really did begin at the beginning, with the first settlement on Ceos of nymphs chased away from Parnassos by a lion, as no narrative poet of Callimachean sensibilities ever would. The summary of Xenomedes’ chronicle in fact seeks to reproduce (parodically) the catalogue style appropriate to a work structured by strict chronology and the comprehensiveness which that chronology imposes: [Xenomedes told] ‘how (56) . . . and how (58) . . . and how (60) . . . and how (70)’.79 On the other hand, only someone with access to Xenomedes’ book will be able to say how comprehensive it, or Callimachus’ report of it, was. The list of names and successive generations merely advertises how many potential ‘Acontii’ are passed over in silence, by Callimachus and perhaps also by 77 78 79

It is tempting to believe that   $"   # ‘whose concern was truth’ (v. 76) echoes or evokes some claim in Xenomedes himself; such a historiographical topos is very familiar. Cf. Lynn (1995) 162. Cf. Orpheus’ cosmogonical song at Arg. 1.496–511, and the song of Silenus at Virg. Ecl. 6.31–73.

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Xenomedes. The fact that one of the most prominent figures of Cean mythic history, Aristaios, appears in the speech of Apollo, but not apparently80 in the summary of Xenomedes’ history, makes manifest how the summary itself is an exercise in selection. If the poetry of ‘origins’ will always face an embarrassment of material, so too will the prose chronicle. Moreover, Callimachus does not limit his aetiological focus to the earlier section: vv. 56–8 explain the name ‘Hydroussa’, appropriate once ‘the nymphs’ had arrived; vv. 60–2 suggest, but offer no answer to, the enquiry: ‘Why does Zeus receive offerings from the Carians to the sound of war-trumpets?’, and v. 63 all but gives us the origin of the name Ceos. Any attempt to distinguish between Xenomedes’ ‘own words’ and the summary of the aetiologically–obsessed poet would be folly; the two voices have become as one.81 If we ask what does ‘Acontius and Cydippe’ explain, then the most obvious answer is ‘the origin of the Cean Akontiadai’.82 The projection forwards to the present at vv. 50–2 (cited above), marked by the aetiological  , together with the fact that the poem opens with a foreshadowing of Acontius’ success in capturing and marrying the beloved Cydippe (fr. 67.1– 4), suggests that this is the telos to which the poem has been moving. When the poet advertises the process of selecting his material, it is Acontius’ ‘sharp love’83 which is singled out, in a reprise of the opening verses: L ') = 5 ) M$  C  5 ]Mb   %  %9$   $"   #)    []'    1  ' =## . The old man who cares for truthfulness told, Cean, of your fierce love, mixed up with all these. From this source, the boy’s story travelled down to my Calliope. (Callimachus fr. 74–7)

This love was lying ‘mixed up’ with all the other potential stories until Callimachus ‘rescued’ it;84 L . . .   %  leaves quite ambiguous just how extensive Xenomedes’ treatment was. As we have seen, however, the poem is littered with other aitia, hinted at or passed by,85 80 81 82 83 84 85

Efforts are still made to accommodate him in vv. 58–9, cf. A. S. Hollis, ZPE 86 (1991) 11–13. Good remarks in Lynn (1995) 237. This is rejected by, e.g. Fraser (1972) I 727 (with II 1017 n. 77) on the grounds that there is no other example of such a genealogical ‘quasi-aition’. Surely another (cf. fr. 70) allusion to an etymology of Acontius as ‘the javelin’. M$  C  5 [sc. 5  # %] is certainly odd, but Maas’ & is unconvincing. Cf. e.g. Eichgr¨un (1961) 121, Lynn (1995) 204. Lynn sees the ‘(omitted) explanation of the origins of the Naxian prenuptial rite’ as the principal aition of the poem. Some colour would be given to this view by the fact that the immediately following aition is the ‘nuptial rite at Elea’ (frs. 76–7a), but this does not seem to account for the general direction of the poem.

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and – particularly in the context of Books 3 and 4 of the Aitia – we should perhaps not worry too much about pinning down ‘the principal aition’. One other aition cannot, however, be passed by in silence. Although the poem is almost universally referred to as ‘Acontius and Cydippe’, it is really only Acontius’ story – the ',  of vv. 76–7 – and it is a Cean, not a Naxian, story. As Acontius’ marriage has ramifications in the present day, so Callimachus gives us the aition of how he has come in the present to write this story of the past. Aetiology works in two parallel lines, one descending from the institution of rites and practices to their continuation to a future age, often the present, and the other from Callimachus’ sources to the Aitia. The poem begins with ‘Acontius and Cydippe’ and ends with ‘Acontius and Calliope’ to mark this double process; ‘Kydippe’ must become ‘Kalliope’, the recording Muse, before she can enter the world of poetry. The emphasis upon Xenomedes’ age and antiquity (vv. 54, 66, 76) may, of course, pick up something from his own work – he wrote the chronicle in old age –86 as well as stressing the time gap between chronicler and poet; rather similar is Callimachus’ reference to a source in fr. 92 as ‘the old (#) researches of Leandros’.87 Nevertheless, it also serves to emphasise the unbroken line of tradition upon which Callimachus ‘the child’, like the present-day Akontiadai themselves, draws. Aetiology in Callimachus is always, at least in part, a reflection upon the practice of writing. 6 the reply to the telchines If ‘Acontius and Cydippe’ presents the aetiology of the subject-matter of Callimachus’ poetry, the ‘Reply to the Telchines’ (fr. 1) offers the aetiology of both subject and style. The parallel rˆole played by Apollo in both passages – it is his instruction which leads to the marriage (frs. 75.21–43) and his instruction which produces the Aitia (fr. 1.21–9) – confirms the double-headed nature of Callimachus’ aetiology. The ‘Reply to the Telchines’ (fr. 1)88 is a programmatic and polemical preface to (some, at least, of ) the Aitia. It is a matter of great dispute whether this passage was written as a preface to an edition, dating perhaps from the 270s, of Books 1 and 2, or was added much later, perhaps when 86 87 88

So, e.g. Huxley (n. 76 above) 244 n. 62. Cf. Ovid, Fasti 1.7 sacra recognosces annalibus eruta priscis. For Callimachus’ presentation of the past see Nikitinski (1996) passim; on #  pp. 187–9. On the history of interpretation see G. Benedetto, Il sogno e l’invettiva (Florence 1993), Cameron (1995). The fullest discussion of the ‘Reply’ is now Asper (1997).

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Callimachus put together Books 3 and 4, in which the ‘dialogue with the Muses’ framework was abandoned. Callimachus certainly presents himself as a (very) old man, indeed as a Tithonus who lived for ever but did not retain his youth (vv. 6, 33–40),89 but this image works on more than one level, and need not be interpreted merely literally. The ‘Reply’ itself poses extraordinary problems of interpretation, beyond the historical one of its place and relative dating within the overall structure of the Aitia, and nothing like a complete account will be attempted here.90 ##(]  s #!5   Q_$% &') 4'  t 0Q%     #) l   ! u . % ' X v 9%#[ . . . . . .]  ##5 i$% !#(% v. . . . .].$ w)  ' C  $ , +#[%% 5 x )  ' C   1 '    ]# . . . . . . .].[.] s [#]!5%  O ' U yy# [ . . . . . . .] 4[ ] z % ( ) . . . . . .]. .   []#] % !U &## #  . . . .#b 8 8 A k % [U 5 'X] '$5 0  V  #$Q) e  #   . . . . . .] 1  (# ' C  ''M $4. . . . . .]  k4{ &C ;* Q  [   l ] J$  1' [ ][) 0%%    , ]{% Q   C .' 0']U &['' ] 'C H'  #![ ] . ## a% ]#, U c 'X !"  ) ]8 %! J %' 8 %U 'C & C   'T   :$% &'4  %U 9 T   ) &## \ .C C   V Z %  5  '#  

Q%) CA ## L  V  QU 6 6. . . . . . .] . . .&') , X Q V  (!%  :) 8] 0% ' C | X #  #U , ' % ]  'C . ) 8  $% xM % 9 ) +  K! 8 C ( ' #]T 'C P & # Q) &##  # Q$ &  ]$) *  %   #(% .C C   ]U  5  & '  t # b D!   ) ] $9 ' C  #% A.  X      # ] 4%  .##])  O ' C K 2#[]!Q)    ) 89 90

Cf. G. Crane, ‘Tithonus and the Prologue to Callimachus’ Aetia’ ZPE 66 (1986) 269–78, C. Brillante, Studi sulla rappresentazione del sogno nella Grecia antica (Palermo 1991) 112–43. Some of this section reuses material from Hunter (2001b).

68

The aetiology of Callimachus’ Aitia } ( ) l  l ' % ~ X & ' Z  ' - L' ') c , 'C 'Q)  9( V%%  %   #Z! ]# %  C C^  #('. . . . . . . .0%  V%$ K' A  5' 8 #M) #b  &   #$.

The Telchines often mumble against my poetry – ignorant and not born friends of the Muse – because I did not accomplish one continuous poem in many thousands of verses on kings or . . . heroes, but like a child I [unroll] my poem little by little, though the decades of my years are not few. . . . To the Telchines I say: ‘ . . . race . . . who know how to rot your liver [i.e. with envy/malice], . . . of few lines but the fertile Thesmophoros far outweighs the long . . . of the two poems the small-scale, not the large woman, taught that Mimnermus is sweet. . . . May the crane, which delights in the blood of Pygmies, [fly] from Egypt to the Thracians, and may the Massagetai shoot from afar at the [Median] soldier. [Nightingales] are sweeter like this. Off with you, wretched race of Malice! In future [judge] fine poetry by art, not by the Persian schoinos. Do not look to me for the birth of a loud-resounding poem: thundering is not my job, but Zeus’.’ When I first placed the writing-tablet on my knees, Apollo, the Lycian one, said to me: ‘ . . . poet, [feed] the sacrificial victim to be as fat as possible, but, my good friend, nourish a slender Muse. [Moreover], this too I bid you: proceed on paths not trodden by wagons, do not [drive your chariot] in the common tracks of others nor on the broad highway, but on [unworn] roads, even if you will drive a narrower path. We sing among those who love the pure sound of [cicadas], not the raucous noise of donkeys.’ Let [another] bray like the long-eared beast, but may I be the light one, the winged one; ah yes, that I may sing feeding upon the dew from the divine air, and old age, may I shed it – it weighs upon me like the three-cornered island [i.e. Sicily] upon terrible Enceladus. . . . All those upon whom the Muses have looked with straight eye as children, they do not expel them from their friendship when they are grey. (Callimachus fr. 1.1–38)

Just as, for example, Aristophanes and Terence present their aesthetic creeds as replies to criticism or lack of success, so Callimachus couches his poetic declaration as a reply to the criticism of ‘the Telchines’, legendary spirits who were attached particularly to Rhodes (cf. fr. 75.64–5) and associated with spiteful malice and the power to cast the evil eye. The Telchines are no friends of the Muses (i.e. they are ignorant about poetry),91 but Callimachus belongs to those ‘friends’ who will be cherished by the protecting eyes of the Muses (37–8). There is no good reason to doubt that Callimachus’ style of poetry had in fact attracted unfavourable comment, but the very familiarity of the ‘reply to criticism’ device, to which Callimachus also has 91

This is the clear implication of v. 2, although the syntax of that verse remains disputed, cf. E. Magnelli, ‘Quelle bestie dei Telchini’ ZPE 127 (1999) 52–8, Acosta-Hughes–Stephens (2002).

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recourse in Iambus 13, should warn us against wholescale reconstruction of literary ‘feuds’; one ancient list of these Telchines does in fact survive,92 containing, among others, the names of the epigrammatists Asclepiades and Posidippus and the peripatetic Praxiphanes of Mytilene, against whose views Callimachus is known to have written a prose treatise (fr. 460). It is very difficult to judge how much guesswork and how much hard knowledge lies behind this list. The substance of the Telchines’ complaint, expressed by Callimachus in indirect speech and thus marked as mediated to us by the poet, seems to be that Callimachus has not written ‘one continuous poem in many thousands of verses on the subject of kings or heroes’; rather, he rolls out his verses ‘little by little’, behaving like a child, though he has in fact left childhood far behind.93 This has often been understood as, and was certainly appropriated by Roman poets as, a reference to long epic poems of a traditional kind, which Callimachus certainly did not write, but Alan Cameron has argued that the reference is rather to repetitive ‘catalogue elegy’, of the kind most familiar to us from the fragments of Hermesianax and Phanocles, but clearest for Callimachus’ generation in the Lyd¯e of Antimachus; Callimachus would thus be differentiating the style and the manner of the Aitia from other long elegiac poems, and it is certainly the case that the manner and voice of the Aitia seem entirely different from anything that had been written before. However these verses are interpreted in detail, the reference must primarily be to style, both verbal style and arrangement, rather than to ‘genre’, as this term is commonly understood.94 Callimachus proceeds not, as he is often understood, to reject ‘long’ poems tout court, but rather to reject length as a valid aesthetic criterion. What matters is techn¯e, ‘poetic craft’, however long the poem. The proof of this lies in the fact that the shorter poems of Mimnermus and Philetas are ‘better’ than their long poems (although the interpretation of these broken verses is particularly problematic).95 That said, however, it is the case that for Callimachus himself, though not necessarily for every poet, the ‘short’ poem, or at least the poem which can easily be broken into ‘short’ units, is the preferred mode of composition. ‘Long’ poems are like loud thunder (i.e. at the level of style, mere inflated bombast), and here there 92 93

94 95

In the Florentine scholia (Pfeiffer I p. 3, Massimilla (1996) 62), cf. Cameron (1995) 185–232. On the image of the child cf. Asper (1997) 149–50. B. Acosta-Hughes and S. Stephens, ‘Aetia fr. 1.5: I told my story like a child’ ZPE 136 (2001) 214–16, propose #[ M rather than +#%% at the end of v. 5. So rightly already H. Herter, Gnomon 12 (1936) 452. For a speculative interpretation of the phrase in terms of Aristotelian ideas cf. Hunter (1993a) 190–5. Among recent contributions are W. Luppe, ZPE 115 (1997) 50–4, K. Spanoudakis, ZPE 121 (1998) 59–61, and C. W. M¨uller, ZPE 122 (1998) 36–40.

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does seem to be an unmistakeable linkage between length and style; the transitional sleight of hand is effected through   in v. 19, which picks up the language and ideas of length (note especially  (# in v. 12), but in an adverbial phrase with :$% in fact shifts the emphasis towards quality and style. This is reinforced by what seem like clear echoes of the debate between ‘the thunderer’ Aeschylus and Euripides in Aristophanes’ Frogs.96 The two tragedians debate the quality and nature of the language of poetry, and Euripides accuses the older poet of filling his poems with a meaningless bombast, which he was then forced to remove by placing tragedy on a thinning diet (Frogs 939–44). So, too, Callimachus presents Apollo as having told him that sacrifices should be ‘full of fat’, but the Muse should be kept #  #, which carries implications of both ‘slenderness’ and ‘fineness’. Being a god, Apollo wants a decent meal, but being the god of medicine, he also knows the dangers of too much fat;97 he gets the best of both worlds by asking for the former for himself, but generously spares the Muse, who is after all only his attendant, an unhealthy diet. Callimachus elsewhere seems to use !Q as a term of literary disapprobation,98 and this will reinforce the pointed contrast. Both the Aristophanic Euripides and Callimachus wish to pare poetry down to what is strictly necessary, to an intellectual poetry where nothing is wasted and every word counts. Moreover, this is a poetry where innovation is important. The Callimachean Apollo echoes, very appropriately, the (cruelly fragmentary) words of a Pindaric paean in honour of Apollo to urge the new poet not to go where everyone else goes, but to seek a more individual road:99  #'4%C [$) 6>4$ [ ] ,  C &M  *  ) &[ &#]#  &C l Make your hymns resound, going [not?] on the worn wagon-track of Homer . . . [nor on?] the horses of another . . . (Pindar, Paean 7b.10–12)

Callimachus’ appropriation of the Pindaric voice has been foreshadowed in the earlier rejection of 9%, the ‘jealous malice’ of the Telchines, for 96 97 99

Cf. e.g. Wimmel (1960) 115, Pfeiffer (1968) 137–8, Cairns (1979) 8–10, N. O’Sullivan, Alcidamas, Aristophanes and the Beginnings of Greek Stylistic Theory (Stuttgart 1992), Lynn (1995) 120–31. 98 Fr. 398, cf. Krevans (1993). Cf. Asper (1997) 156–75. Varying interpretations in V. Di Benedetto, ‘Pindaro, Pae. 7b, 11–14’ RFIC 119 (1991) 164–76; id., ‘Da Pindaro a Callimaco: peana 7b, vv. 11–14’ Prometheus 29 (2003) 269–82; G. B. D’Alessio, ‘Pindaro, Peana VIIb (fr. 52h Sn.-M)’ in Proceedings of the XIXth International Congress of Papyrology (Cairo 1992) I 353–73; Asper (1997) 64–70, who, however, doubts a direct imitation of Pindar; Rutherford (2001) 247–9; Furley–Bremer (2001) i 155–6, ii 104–5.

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this is one of the most common Pindaric themes, particularly familiar from the end of the Hymn to Apollo. The importance in the third century of the Pindaric voice, which stresses exclusivity and rejects the banal, is generally familiar, but the fact that the Pindaric verses refer explicitly to Homer offers some guidance as to the direction in which Callimachus is moving. Rather than seeing here any (of itself entirely improbable) indictment of Homer, it is the very existence of Homer which itself compels the good poet to seek ‘the narrow path’; only asses, traditionally a very un-Apolline animal,100 would continue their ugly braying along the highway which Homer has built. Here again, it is principally style, rather than ‘genre’, which is at stake;101 what is rejected are poems ‘that pushed unsophisticated imitation of either Homer or Hesiod too far’.102 In the fifth book of his On Poems,103 Philodemus reports and criticises a set of views on literature, probably to be associated with Heraclides Ponticus (fourth century), which seems irresistibly to bring to mind Callimachus’ ‘Reply’. The scheme in question apparently categorised poems (at least partly) by size, or at least matched size to style and thought: thus, at vii.25– 32 Mangoni we learn that, according to this critic, ‘the solider and greater kind of poetry’ ( %  Z     _  ( )104 requires, in addition to the standard poetic virtues, such as clarity and conciseness (%$ ), both richness (#$ # ), or perhaps ‘fullness’,105 and ‘weight’ (9 ). How the one or more other categories were described remains unclear, though we do hear (viii.16–19 Mangoni) of ‘middling’ (%) poems, and various references to ‘lightness’ ( , # ) have led 100 101

102 103

104 105

Cf. A. Amb¨uhl, ‘Callimachus and the Arcadian asses: the Aitia prologue and a lemma in the London scholion’ ZPE 105 (1995) 209–13. Critics note how ] 4%  in v. 31 suggests stylistic A ; as the only spondeiazon in what survives of the Reply, the rhythm is imitative of stylistic roughness, as the sound of the verse also seems to echo with the ass’ bray (E. Livrea, ‘Callimaco e gli asini’ SIFC 89 (1996) 56–8). For further discussion of Callimachus’ use of the figure of the ass cf. Andrews (1998) 7–8, A.-T. Cozzoli, QUCC 54 (1996) 20–3. Cameron (1992) 310. Cf. Mangoni (1993) 201–5. For the possible relationship between the critics attacked in Philodemus’ work and trends in Hellenistic poetry cf. below pp. 449–61. R. Janko, ‘Philodemus’ On Poems and Aristotle’s On Poets’ CErc 21 (1991) 5–64 argues that the object of attack in On Poems 4 was Aristotle’s lost On Poets, a work likely to have been very influential at Alexandria. The flourishing of Hellenistic didactic poetry, however, probably has little to do with Philodemus’ advocacy of hexameter epic over tragedy (pace Janko 27–8). So, too, Philodemus’ preference for ‘perfectly made poems’ (.  ) over the appeal of emotional reversals (xxxvi Mangoni) may perhaps ‘overturn Aristotle’s whole ranking of the genres of poetry’ (Asmis (1992) 413), but we must be very cautious about associating this with the Callimachean demand for ‘craftsmanship’. The translation is that of D. Armstrong in Obbink (1995). This seems very unlikely to refer to ‘Hellenistic poikilia’, as it has sometimes been taken (cf. Mangoni (1993) 205).

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some critics to see here a tripartite division, which may or may not have corresponded to a ‘generic’ one.106 As often with Philodemus, there are uncertainties concerning which terms are his and which derive from the object of his criticism and/or whether he uses his opponent’s terms in the sense in which his opponent did. However, what such references to, for example, weighty and even ‘tumid’ (] Z') poems (cf. Call. fr. 1.31 ] 4% )107 show is not that Callimachus was picking up the language of any particular critical scheme, but (as the comparison with Aristophanes’ Frogs also makes clear) that the ‘Reply’ plays provocatively with familiar terms of literary discussion, drawn in fact from many areas and ‘genres’,108 as part of the production of a paradigmatically ‘light’ poem. In place of the heavy braying of the ass, Callimachus chooses for himself the model of the cicada, beloved of the Muses because its only concern is song (Plato, Phaedrus 259b–d). Against the heavy weight of ‘ass poetry’ is set, in words which echo the Platonic Socrates’ famous description of the poet in the Ion,109 the fragile lightness of the winged cicada with its pure sound. An Aristotelian treatise on sounds classifies the song of the cicada as # $  (‘clear’, ‘high’) and #   (‘thin’, On things heard 804a 22–4).110 The cicada is, however, also a vulnerable creature resembling an old man,111 and one which can so easily be crushed by those who do not appreciate its special beauty. In one respect, however, Callimachus must confess to a likeness to the ass, the quintessential beast of burden. However ‘light’ his song, the poet bears a heavy burden (9(),112 that of old age, which cannot be sloughed off. It crushes him as Sicily crushes the giant who rebelled against Zeus, and his only consolation – although no small one – is that the Muses do not abandon their favourites, unlike the dawn-goddess Eos, who abandoned Tithonus (Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 218–38). Still, 106 107

108 109 110 111 112

Cf. e.g. F. Sbordone, ‘La poetica oraziana alla luce degli studi pi`u recenti’ ANRW II 31.3 (Berlin–New York 1981) 1866–1920, p. 1883. Alongside ‘tumid’ poems Philodemus places ‘those without vigour’ (8 3 ); the precise reference is unclear, but it is difficult not to recall Hor. AP 26–7 sectantem leuia nerui |deficiunt animique; professus grandia turget (where see Brink’s notes). Cf. Harder (2002) 206–11, Acosta-Hughes–Stephens (2002). Cf. Hunter (1989b), Depew (1992) 326–7. Acosta-Hughes–Stephens (2002) 251–2 helpfully adduce the Trojan elders of Iliad 3, who are compared to singing cicadas. Good discussion of such descriptions of sound in Asper (1997) 177–98. Cf. Iliad 3.148–53, Wimmel (1960) 111–12. The opposition which is evoked here is sharpened by the fact that 9Q is the standard term for ‘deep’ sounds, the opposite of ]MQ, cf. [Arist.], On things heard 803a 8, LSJ s.v. 9Q III 1. The loud ‘thundering’ (cf. Asper (1997) 196–8) which Callimachus rejects (v. 20) prepares for this opposition. Callimachus here may not merely be playing with a conventional piety (together with the familiar assimilation of Homer to ‘Zeus’), but he may also have an eye on Aristophanes’ Clouds, where not only does Pheidippides dismiss Aeschylus as : $ #, ‘full of bombast’ (1366–7), but thunder is explicitly denied to Zeus by the impious Socrates and the buffoonish Strepsiades (374ff.); by implication, the Telchines are aligned with such tasteless creatures.

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in old age the poet is able to write as he would wish: vv. 37–8 rework famous verses from the prologue of Hesiod’s Theogony (Theog. 81–4), both to demonstrate the continued poetic power which is the blessing of the Muses113 and, on any reconstruction of the relationship between ‘Reply’ and ‘Dream’, to prepare for the Hesiodic scene which is to follow. The poet’s wish for rejuvenation seems to have been granted, in that he recalls how he fell asleep (while studying the Theogony?), and dreamed that he really was young again114 and was transported to meet the Muses on Helicon. Callimachus here replays Hesiodic experience in two related ways. Although in the proem to the Theogony, Hesiod himself gives no indication of how old he was when confronted on the mountainside by the Muses, it is a reasonable guess that the Hellenistic age constructed Hesiod’s encounter with the Muses as an experience of his youth – the boy sent out ‘once upon a time’ (Theogony 22) to look after the lambs –115 as also were the corresponding encounter between the Muses and the young Archilochus116 and the young Aeschylus’ dream of Dionysus.117 The Hesiodic text itself encourages such a construction by representing the meeting with the Muses as something which happened in the past, ‘once upon a time’ (Theogony 22); Hesiod recalls what the Muses then said to him, as Callimachus recalls the youthful instructions he received from Apollo. Secondly, Callimachus seems to evoke a tradition, attested explicitly only in later antiquity, that Hesiod was in fact rejuvenated and thus lived twice, a tradition that may, as Ruth Scodel demonstrated,118 also be important for the choral song on old age in Euripides’ Heracles (637–700), to which Callimachus makes explicit allusion (vv. 35–6 ∼ Her. 638–40), and which is important for this whole section of Callimachus’ prologue.119 As the Euripidean chorus asserts that it will never cease to ‘mingle the Graces with the Muses’ (Her. 673–5), so 113

114 115

116 117 118 119

Note the elaborate uariatio: \,   (# − 0%)    − 5'; Callimachus’ A  . . . 8 # MI perhaps picks up Hesiod’s (    , % '  %  | * "% '"%, ‘all look at [the good king] as he distributes ordinances with straight justice’. Cf. Lynn (1995) 147–8, Andrews (1998) 14–17; Massimilla (1996) 237 prefers to see a memory of a dream the poet had as a young man. Ascraeo . . . seni at Virg. Ecl. 6.70 does not, I think, argue against this hypothesis. Note the virtuoso combination of Homer, Hesiod and Callimachus at Quintus Smyrnaeus 12.308–10 2 5  T%(    % 4 C &'4) |    C &    %'% K$#) | <Q  ''%  #$ #  )  #., ‘you placed all the song in my heart, before my cheek grew dark with the first beard, when I grazed my glorious flocks in the fields of Smyrna . . .’. SEG xv.517, inscribed about the middle of the third century in the ‘Archilocheion’ at Paros, cf. A. Kambylis, ‘Zur “Dichterweihe” des Archilochos’ Hermes 91 (1963) 129–50, below, p. 74. When he was a boy, Aeschylus fell asleep while guarding grapes in the countryside, and Dionysus appeared to him and told him to write tragedy (Pausanias 1.21.2 = Aesch.TrGF Test. 111). R. Scodel, ‘Hesiod redivivus’ GRBS 21 (1980) 301–20. Cf. G. Basta Donzelli, ‘La seconda giovinezza di Callimaco (fr. 1, 32ss. Pf.)’ in Studi di filologia classica in onore di Giusto Monaco (Palermo 1991) I 387–94; E. Livrea, ‘Callimachus senex, Cercidas senex ed i loro critici’ ZPE 119 (1997) 37–42.

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at the very head of his poem Callimachus does just this, for the Muses are introduced in ‘the Dream’ and are central to the whole structure of Books 1 and 2, whereas the first aition of Book 1 is the Parian ritual in honour of the Graces (frs. 5–9 M.).120 If Callimachus’ rejuvenation takes the form of a dream experience, in which he reaches into the distant past to relive the experience of Hesiod, this may prompt us to ask about the nature of the ‘old age’ which oppresses him. When interpreting this literally, we must always allow for humorous exaggeration. The Telchines have accused him of behaving like a child, though he is a grown man, and so he exaggerates just how old he is as part of the demonstration of the absurdity of their criticisms.121 Whatever view is taken of how old Callimachus actually was when he composed the ‘Reply’, it seems clear that there is more at stake here than just encroaching senility. The approach or arrival of the weakness of old age seems to have been a familiar poetic topos (cf. Alcman, PMG 26 (= 90 Calame), Eur. Her. loc.cit.), which suggests that it may not be correct to read it at a simple, literal level; it is rather a recognisable poetic code, even when the poet is in fact (and is known to be) old. For Callimachus, the best contemporary witness to the code is the so-called ‘Seal’ of Posidippus (SH 705 = Posidippus 118 AB), in which the poet from Pella invokes the Muses in the context of ‘hateful old age’122 and, perhaps under the influence of the (?) newly founded Archilocheion on Paros, wishes to become a second Archilochos, as Callimachus was a ‘second Hesiod’, with honours and a cult decreed by Apollo.123 While his poetry will find immortal kleos, he himself will find his own kind of eternity: '  c ! Q '($.    Z

4 $% , L  6 '($ e '4  #    , Z) &%  %%  ] 8 & C V#  #   '  A#9  . Let no one shed a tear, but in old age may I travel the mystic path to Rhadamanthys, missed by the citizens and all the people, needing no staff to walk and speaking clearly to the multitude, leaving house and prosperity to my children. (Posidippus 118.21–5 AB) 120 121 122 123

Cf. above, pp. 52–4. Cf. e.g. Lynn (1995) 180 n. 17. On the charge of being a ‘child’ cf. Asper (1997) 149–50. Austin-Bastianini adopt Friedrich’s %$  for the transmitted %$ %' in v. 5, rather than Diels’ %$ % ; this text makes the parallel with Callimachus even closer. I follow H. Lloyd-Jones, JHS 83 (1963) 88; the Delphic decree which Lloyd-Jones discusses was also a very striking example of divine favour to a poet, and must have struck a particular chord with an initiate, if that indeed is what Posidippus was.

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What in Callimachus is a wish for rejuvenation is in Posidippus a wish for good health up until death in old age,124 followed by a journey ‘on the mystic path to Rhadamanthys’. Whether we interpret this as meaning that Posidippus was merely initiated into the ‘mysteries of the Muses’ or that he was actually an initiate of a Dionysiac or ‘Orphic’ cult,125 Posidippus prays to remain ] 4, ‘speaking properly’, to the end of his life; the prayer for bodily health to the last, being &%  %%, finds many parallels throughout Greek literature, but it looks here like a reworking of Hesiod’s description of men of the Golden Age, ‘when there was no terrible old age, but ever undiminished in feet and hands they took pleasure in feasts, free of all ills’ (WD 113–15). Whereas, therefore, Callimachus uses Hesiod to console himself with the Muses’ protection of their favourites and his own piety, Posidippus prays for public honours from his own people126 and continued good health until old age, followed by the certain reward of the just initiate. Not for Posidippus the impossible wish of becoming young again (cf. v. 25); his ‘immortality’ will be more certain and more long-lasting. As for Callimachus, the wish to rid himself of the burden of old age, like the cicada, arises from Apollo’s poetic programme: cicada-poetics is the poetics of the 0% #  # and the narrow path. The sequence of thought suggests that the old age which crushes the poet is at one level what we have learned to call ‘the burden of the past’, that consciousness of tradition, of Hesiod, Pindar, Euripides, Aristophanes and the other great figures of the past whose voices well up through Callimachus’ verses, a consciousness which hems our every move with qualification, deferral and doubt, and which, like old age, restricts the freedom of action we associate with ‘the light one, the winged one’. In Plato’s myth cicadas were the first poets, free to sing and honour the Muses as they liked, with no constraining tradition of song behind them. It is Callimachus who, for us, makes the decisive move in understanding ‘rejuvenation’ in terms of the literary tradition, thus completing the triangle of related ideas – the weight of years, the weight of tradition, and the hope for immortality. Tradition is figured in terms of human aging. Callimachus is old and weary, crushed by the immobilising sense of the years which have preceded. When the Telchines tell Callimachus ‘to grow up’, what they mean is that he should adopt a 124 125

126

For the poetic heritage of such a wish cf. Mimnermus fr. 6 West (2nd ed.). Cf. Laura Rossi, ZPE (1996) 65, W. Burkert in W. Burkert et al. (eds.), Fragmentsammlungen philosophischer Texte der Antike. Le raccolte dei frammenti di filosofi antichi (G¨ottingen 1998) 394–5. For the former view see Asper (1997) 86, with bibliography. The model here is not merely Archilochus, but possibly also Philetas of Cos, cf. A. S. Hollis, ‘Heroic honours for Philetas?’ ZPE 110 (1996) 56–62, A. Hardie, ‘Philitas and the plane tree’ ZPE 119 (1997) 21–36. For the tradition behind Posidippus’ expression cf. Pind. Nem. 8.35–9.

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poetics sanctioned by time and archaic practice (cf. Iambus 13), together with the moral seriousness that attends it. Callimachus rejects both the poetics and the gravitas in his extraordinary wish to start all over again. 7 callimachus and t he ician A further passage which sheds light on Callimachus’ self-positioning as an aetiological poet is the story of ‘the Ician’ in fr. 178 (= 89 M.).127 This tells how the Athenian Pollis – the name is known only from a citation in Athenaeus – continued to celebrate Attic festivals in the Alexandria of the poet’s own day. At Pollis’ party to commemorate the Attic festival in honour of Erigone, the *Z, the poet met Theogenes, a visitor from the Aegean island of Ikos (modern Alonnisos): -O 'X   #(  'C V 'Q# D C >%  # $, . $% ! U C @$  ', .    / % Q) C; % * % ) %, () C 7 )  '  (# %%  )  ' $ 5% M 5 V ;* Q " , & %    9#O K'    !U D 'X # h @) H M$8 L!  O #%   (M) &##C L 6> ) *X 5 F  )  : $'4)  , 5 . .    k X &% $ !', .$%  _ 5)128 ]#  ' C w'  %%$9.  X  O (' C # M  % !  &# %$ ,  ) c C '( 3   4U 6 6 mD (# C  ' C &#) V C    ['  L%) &## C    #%! L !  # . 8 1 5 −    &$% 4 %%  5  '  * &  5 ]Q *!  * 4%    V C # Q  &  %  − 9(##  !#  (    ) k Q  U V%% ' C  5 %  ( $, &% *! ) ('  #M & U 0$'  +%% [ (  3] %9 % J#)  h @ M$[ k %%#]()  'C E   4  '[. .]$ [. . . .]  !$% w  '$ [5 127 128

5

10

15

20

25

The following is a revised and (in part) abbreviated version of Hunter (1996c). In addition to the standard commentaries cf. Fabian (1992), Harder (2002) 212–17. On this reading cf. Massimilla (1996) 408.

7 Callimachus and the Ician *'  F $[%   ~   %8 [ 3C +   U [ 3  $ 5% 9$# &!.C C  C   #M [ 6 6 %() D Q A#9  %%  ) $ # *  !  9U &##C , *Z Q% *$ T## %% .C C

77

30

. . . nor did the day of the Jar Opening pass him by, nor when the Choes of Orestes bring a white day for slaves. And when he kept the yearly ceremony for Icarius’ child – your day, Erigone, who are most pitied by women of Attica – he invited to a banquet his friends, and among them a stranger who had not been in Egypt for long, having come on some private business. He was an Ician by birth, and I shared a couch with him – not by design, but the saying of Homer is not false that god ever brings like to like. For he too loathed draining goblets of neat wine, like the Thracians, but took pleasure in a small cup. To him I said, as the beaker was going round for the third time, when I had learned his name and descent: ‘This indeed is a true saying, that wine would have not only its portion of water, but also of conversation. Therefore – for we do not pass conversation around in ladles, nor will you ask for it by gazing at the haughty brows of the cup-bearers, when the free man fawns upon the slave – let us, Theogenes, throw the drug of conversation into the tedious drink; do tell me in answer to my question all that my heart yearns to hear from you: Why is it the tradition of your country to worship Peleus, king of the Myrmidons? What has Thessaly to do with Ikos? For what purpose does [a girl] holding an onion . . . the procession of the hero . . . according to the account of those who know . . . holding ears ready for those who are willing to tell their story.’ When I had spoken thus . . . ‘Truly, you are thrice blessed, happy as few are, if you lead a life which is ignorant of sea-faring. But my life has been spent more among the waves than is that of the gull’. (Callimachus fr. 178, trans. Trypanis, adapted)

Verses 9–10 allude to Melantheus’ abuse of Eumaeus and the disguised Odysseus in Odyssey 17:  X '8 (# ( !$ , , 1 #(_ ) F *  , 5 .   , F , 5.  '8 m' #9, . ) &  %$9 )  !, & ) '  &#$ ; p ## #%  %  #:  N$) * _ & #$)  . 'X #9 U  C K  ' %  B$  % %  C   ##  C % )    ],   (#  $'  5 . &## C   c '8   ( C  )   #4%    ! %) &##  Z%%  ' 9Q#  * _ 9 %  ~ % C .# .

220

225

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The aetiology of Callimachus’ Aitia

‘Now indeed do the worthless lead the worthless and, as always, god brings like to like. Miserable swineherd, where are you taking this filthy creature, this loathsome beggar, this scavenger of banquets? He will be a lounger at many men’s doors, rubbing his back against the posts, seeking for scraps, not swords or cauldrons. If you gave him to me to guard the farmstead, sweep out the pens and take green fodder to the young goats, then he might drink whey and round out his thighs. But no – he has learned bad ways and will never keep at any work; instead, he means to go cringing and begging about the country to fill his never-sated belly’. (Homer, Odyssey 17. 217–28, trans. Shewring, adapted)

By moving after three rounds129 to the pleasures of conversation, Theogenes and the poet will certainly not be '  &#$  , ‘scourges of the feast’.130 Those who do not follow their lead, on the other hand, are little better than beggars, who add nothing to the pleasures of the feast; * 4%  (v. 19) picks up * _ (Od. 17.222, 228) to point this implication. The really ‘free’ man (v. 19) will have freed himself from the tyranny of ‘Dionysus the liberator’, the ‘Looser’ who, paradoxically, ‘binds’ mind and body in the toils of confusion and sleep, thus reducing the free man to the status of a shackled slave.131 C^# $  Q was a title of Dionysus at Athens and Attic Eleutherai; the cult statue of Dionysus Eleuthereus was associated with the theatre of the god at Athens (Pausanias 1.20.3). That Callimachus should allude to this manifestation of the god fits perfectly with the fact that his host was an Athenian interested in the festivals and cults of his home city. Moreover, his insistence on a fastidious independence is marked, as often in Callimachus, by a rare gloss: & 4, ‘servant’, is the kind of language which ‘free’ men use.132 Pollis’ party thus joins a long tradition of intellectual symposia, of which Plato’s Symposium, which also begins with a rejection of heavy drinking (176a–e), is the most famous. The tradition was very much alive in Alexandria and Alexandrian literature;133 we may compare the famous ‘Letter of Aristeas’, a (?) late second-century account of how Philadelphus posed moral questions at a series of symposia he held with the Jewish sages who were engaged in translating the Hebrew holy books into Greek.134 Callimachus has moreover appropriated a long tradition of 129 130 131 132 134

For the fourth round as marking the descent into immodest drinking cf. Eubulus, PCG 93 (= 94 Hunter) with the notes of Kassel-Austin and Hunter. On the meaning of &#$ 4 cf. Russo on Od. 17.220; it is not clear how Callimachus would have interpreted the word. Cf. Hesiod fr. 239 M–W. For the paradox cf. Propertius 3.5.21 mentem uincire Lyaeo (with Fedeli’s note). 133 Cf. Cameron (1995) chapter 4. Cf. Pfeiffer on fr. 507. Cf. M. Hadas, Aristeas to Philocrates (Letter of Aristeas) (New York 1951), S. Honigman, The Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (London 2003).

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sympotic poetry on the subject of correct and moderate behaviour135 and a more recent prose tradition, particularly associated with the peripatetics, of #  %$ .136 A standard motif of such moralising was an alleged distinction between the moderate drinking and intellectual pleasures of the ‘Greek’ symposium and the drunken excesses of barbarian ‘others’, in this case Thracians, who were alleged to drink unmixed wine in great quantities.137 Callimachus’ use of this theme was probably reinforced by the poet’s apparent innocence of seafaring (vv. 27–34), for the imaging of the symposium (particularly one where wine flowed freely) as a sea voyage was very common.138 Two sympotic models give shape to Callimachus’ rejection of heavy drinking. One is the ritual frame provided by the introductory verses. The aiora, ‘Swinging Festival’, commemorated Erigone, who hung herself from the tree under which her father, Ikarios, was buried after he had been killed by shepherds crazed by Dionysus’ gift of (unmixed) wine,139 and the first two festival days named in the surviving verses, the Pithoigia (‘Jar Opening’) and the Choes (‘Pitchers’), clearly evoke the pleasures and dangers of drinking. The drinking contests which characterised the Athenian Choes presumably encouraged the drinking of neat or only lightly diluted wine,140 and the Choes pattern of solitary, silent drinking (in memory of the hospitality offered in Athens to the matricide Orestes) is one which Theogenes and the poet explicitly reject. The licence granted to slaves (vv. 1–2) becomes, in the Callimachean view of the symposium, a distasteful subservience (v. 19). Neat wine and solitary drinking are also the hallmarks of the other rejected sympotic model which hovers over Pollis’ party. The Ician’s rejection of excessive drinking is described in the language of pleasure and loathing: 135 136 137

138 139 140

Cf. e.g. Bielohlawek (1940), W. J. Slater, ‘Sympotic Ethics in the Odyssey’ in O. Murray (ed.), Sympotica (Oxford 1990) 213–20. Thus, for example, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Hieronymus, and Chamaileon all wrote treatises ‘On Drunkenness’) and cf. Plato, Laws 1.637a–642b; cf. further below, p. 112. Cf. C. Corbato, Scritti di letteratura greca (Trieste 1991) 314. Alexis, PCG 9.8–12 contrasts ‘Greek drinking’, characterised by moderately sized cups and pleasant conversation, with ‘the other sort’, which is ‘a bath, not a symposium’. W. J. Slater, ‘Symposium at Sea’ HSCP 80 (1976) 161–70, remains the seminal discussion. For Callimachus’ use of the ritual background cf. R. Scodel, ‘Wine, Water and the Anthesteria in Callimachus fr. 178 Pf.’ ZPE 39 (1980) 37–40. Cf. Ar. Ach. 1229. Whether or not the wine drunk during the Choes-contest was mixed with water has been the subject of much recent discussion; the most reasonable solution might be that each drinker was given a jug of neat wine and when he poured it into his cup could mix it or not as he chose (cf. N. Robertson, HSCP 95 (1993) 223–4, and contrast A. M. Bowie, Aristophanes. Myth, Ritual and Comedy (Cambridge 1993) 38) – to drink it neat presumably increased one’s chances of finishing first. Callimachus’ point is not affected by the precise detail here.

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The aetiology of Callimachus’ Aitia    k X &% $ !', .$%  _ 5) ]#  ' C w'  %%$9.

For he too loathed draining goblets of neat wine, like the Thracians, but took pleasure in a small cup. (vv. 11–12)

Callimachus’ pointed oxymoron ‘a small kissubion’ evokes the large kissubion in which Odysseus served the powerful wine to the Cyclops in Odyssey 9 (cf. v. 346), an allusion confirmed by the ‘pleasure’ which both drinkers find in their respective cups (w'  v. 12, w%  Od. 9.353). Whereas, however, three of these capacious draughts befuddled the Cyclops sufficiently for Odysseus’ purposes (9.361), the third round is the sign for Callimachus and Theogenes to move on to the pleasures of intellectual conversation. Hard drinking at a symposium places you on the same level as the Cyclops, whose story – like that of Ikarios and Erigone – is a classic example of the dangers of wine. Callimachus has fused the drinking contests of the Choes with the fate of the Cyclops to produce a powerful negative image of rejected sympotic behaviour. Fr. 178 Pf. cannot be placed with certainty within the overall structure of the Aitia, but there is now something of a scholarly consensus in favour of a suggestion made by Anna Swiderek in 1951.141 Swiderek suggested that fr. 178 belonged to the opening of Book 2 and that it preceded fr. 43 Pf. (= 50 M.), the ‘De Siciliae urbibus’, which is known to come from Book 2.142 Theogenes replies to the poet’s ‘tell me all that my heart craves to hear from you’143 with an Odyssean lament (cf. Od. 5.306–7) for a life spent at sea; the poet, on the other hand, both by his own admission (vv. 27–30) and by Theogenes’ pointed echo in v. 33 of Hesiod’s own profession of ignorance about ships and the sea (WD 649),144 is marked as a ‘Hesiod’ who acquires information (whether from the Muses or a human informant) and transmits it to others. Here then, we may see a renewal, in the opening of Book 2, of the ‘Hesiodic’ persona established in the opening sequence of Book 1. Of particular interest in this context are vv. 12–17 of fr. 50 M.: 141

142 143

144

J.Jur.Pap. 5 (1951) 234 n. 18; for subsequent discussion, cf. J. E. G. Zetzel, ‘On the Opening of Callimachus, Aetia II’ ZPE 42 (1981) 31–3, Fabian (1992) 137–40, 315–18 (who remains more cautious), Cameron (1995) 133–40, Massimilla (1996) 145, 320, 400. If correct, the passage will form a ring with the allusion to Athens which apparently closed the book, cf. fr. 51 ( = 60 Massimilla), Hunter (1996c) 22. This grand wish (cf. Hutchinson (1988) 27–8) reads almost like a reworking of Sappho’s prayer to Aphrodite at fr. 1.26–7, but it may in fact owe more to Odysseus’ words at Od. 9.12–13. *!  is another typical example of Callimachus’ use of a rare word with contextual significance: the learned gloss points both to the scholastic nature of the poet’s interests and, just as importantly, to his ironic self-awareness of the seeming ‘triviality’ of those interests. Cf. Reinsch-Werner (1976) 383–4.

7 Callimachus and the Ician    O X V%% 4   ' M %b  ' /9 # % () . ( C     !) V%% C ]'   '  ( C * &!(%  '$)   'X     3U V%% 'C &$5 *% )     ( %  (' .

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15

. . . for certainly all the soft amber ointments and the fragrant garlands I then put on my head swiftly breathed no more, and of all that passed my teeth and plunged into the ungrateful belly nothing remained till the morrow; but the only things which I still keep are those that I laid in my ears. (Callimachus fr. 50.12–17 M., trans. Trypanis)

These verses are followed in the papyrus by a paragraphos, which may mark the end of an episode or of a particular aetiological subject (e.g. a change from Ikos to Sicily); the poet appears to speak continuously until v. 55, where he is immediately answered by Klio. It is an attractive speculation – but no more – that frs. 178 + 43.1–55 Pf. form a single narrative by the poet to the Muses (in the course of the dream which seems to have occupied all of Books 1 and 2): in his dream, unless this was interrupted at the head of Book 2, the poet tells the Muses of Pollis’ party and of all he learned at it, before asking them to fill in the gaps in his Sicilian knowledge.145 Despite the Hesiodic sequence with which the Aitia opens, the Odyssey, with its many included tales and four books devoted solely to Odysseus’ account of his diverse adventures, was a crucial model against which the Aitia was written. It was the much-travelled hero who ‘saw the cities of many men and came to know their minds’ (or, with Zenodotus, ‘customs’) whose physical journeys Callimachus recreates in the mind, leaving Alexandria only in dreams; the gatherer of information may now remain stationary in one spot, whether it be a library or a symposium, rather than travelling the world like an Odysseus or a Herodotus.146 *%  (v. 17) evokes this intellectual journey, as the verb is properly used of loading a ship (LSJ s.v.2), whereas the despised details of the menu ‘sink to the depths of the belly’, just as the endless food consumed by Erysichthon flowed like rivers ‘into the depths of the sea’ (h. 6.88–90). Not for Callimachus the dangers of shipwreck among the tables; whereas the Muses had charged Hesiod and his companions with being ‘mere bellies’, here the poet tells the Muses that he has no interest in the culture of food.147 In fr. 43.12–17 we see the poet placed halfway between the Phaeacians and their mysterious 145 146 147

This was the suggestion of Zetzel (n. 141), although he himself did not accept it. Cf. further Hunter (1996c) 24 on Polybius and Timaeus. The possible relevance of Hesiod, Theog. 26 was suggested by Fabian (1992) 149.

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guest. As an avid listener, the poet is like the Phaeacians,148 but as someone who recognises the curse of the belly, he resembles Odysseus himself (cf. Od. 7.215–21);149 the model to be rejected here is not just the professed hedonist, but precisely the Cyclops, whose devotion to his stomach had been turned by Euripides into a blasphemous worship (Cycl. 334–8). The professed lack of interest in garlands and food is not merely the declaration of an e´litist, which takes its place within a long tradition of debate about the relative value of physical and intellectual experience,150 but also acts as an introductory recusatio to the following aition, the elaborate account of the origins of the cities of Sicily: this is to be no ‘didactic’ poem on the courses of a dinner (contrast, e.g. Matron’s parodic C; , ' 5, SH 534),151 but rather a voyage, like Odysseus’, around the cities of Sicily (cf. Od. 1.3). Contrary to all accepted wisdom – ‘I hate’, says the proverb,152 ‘a drinkingcompanion with a memory’ – Callimachus proves to have a prodigious memory for what his fellow-symposiasts say. Callimachus’ ‘aural memory’ includes, of course, what he has read in books,153 and fr. 178.27, *'  F $% ‘as those with knowledge assert’ may be a typically Callimachean allusion to his written sources (? the Ikiaka of Phanodemus).154 Memory is important also in fr. 178. When the poet suggests to Theogenes that they throw the drug of conversation into the cup from which they are drinking (v. 20), there is an obvious allusion to the (Egyptian!) drug which Helen placed in the wine of Menelaos and Telemachos to make them forget grief (Od. 4.219–26).155 In the Odyssey pleasure comes from forgetfulness, in the Aitia from memory. Another Homeric pharmakon is also important here. This is the ( %#  ‘beneficent drug’ which Hermes gives to Odysseus to protect him against Circe’s evil pharmaka; Circe turns men 148

149

150 151

152 154 155

On the Odyssean heritage of the Aitia and on Callimachus’ self-presentation as a listener cf. D. Meyer, ‘ “Nichts Unbezeugtes singe ich”: Die fiktive Darstellung der Wissenstradierung bei Kallimachos’ in W. Kullmann and J. Althoff (eds.), Vermittlung und Tradierung von Wissen in der griechischen Kultur (T¨ubingen 1993) 317–36. &!(%  varies .#  at Od. 17.228, 18.364. The adjective does not merely make a topical point about the ingratitude of the stomach (cf. Massimilla (1996) 323), but marks the symposium where the pleasures of the stomach dominate as lacking in that charis which is the dominant virtue of the well-ordered symposium, as Odysseus himself knew (Od. 9.5), cf. W. J. Slater, ‘Peace, the symposium and the poet’ ICS 6 (1981) 205–14. Cf. A. Barigazzi, Prometheus 1 (1975) 9–11. Callimachus may allude in particular to the famous ‘epitaph’ of Sardanapallos, SH 335. Cf. S. D. Olson and A. Sens, Matro of Pitane and the Tradition of Epic Parody in the Fourth Century BCE (Atlanta 1999). It is relevant also that later antiquity knew a substantial literature on garlands (RE 11.1604), some of which was almost certainly available also to Callimachus. 153 Cf. Fabian (1992) 151, Meyer art. cit. (n. 148). Cf. PMG 1002, with Page’s parallels. Cf. Fabian (1992) 322–3, Fraser (1972) I 732. Pfeiffer, however, interprets the phrase as a reference to sailors who have actually visited Ikos. Cf. further Massimilla (1996) 412.

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into pigs, just as does the excessive drinking against which Callimachus sets his face. By protecting himself against this with the drug of conversation, Callimachus seems to foreshadow (or reflect) ‘allegorical’ interpretations of Hermes in Odyssey 10 as the rational logos which prevents the wise man from yielding to base pleasures.156 This passage thus has an important place in the history of e´lite self-fashioning in the Hellenistic period. Finally, it is important that in an Athenian context, and one which specifically evokes the licence of a festival with close links to Athenian comic drama,157 the poetic voice of the Aitia turns away towards the arcane traditions of a small island off the Magnesian coast. The ‘Athenian’ tradition, which was already on the way to being constructed as the ‘classical’ tradition, is thus both the necessary background to Callimachean poetry, but also part of what must be set aside as the poet marks out his own poetic space. Pollis’ act of cultural displacement, the recreation in Alexandria of Athenian festivals, is both like and unlike Callimachus’ recreation of the Greek poetic heritage. Pollis is non-selective in his mimesis – he never misses a festival – and, like Xenomedes of Ceos (above p. 64), he serves as an alternative and rejected model which throws Callimachus’ aetiological practice into high relief. Callimachus’ poetry is no mere nostalgic copying, but rather an extraordinarily inventive use of the inherited tradition. The real programmatic weight of the passage, wherever it originally stood in the Aitia, lies not so much in the typically Callimachean stress upon smallness and purity, but rather in its demonstration of Callimachus’ selfconsciousness about his poetic position and the remarkable virtuosity with which the tradition is re-employed. As such, the passage is indeed a worthy partner for the ‘Reply to the Telchines’. 8 poems f or a princess The great occasion piece which opened Book 3, the so-called ‘Victoria Berenices’ (SH 254–69), again highlights the central problem of aetiology – that different aitia spill over to infect each other, forcing impossible choices upon the hardworking poet. This poem, which was perhaps as long as 200 verses, celebrated in epinician (and, specifically, Pindaric) style a victory at the Nemean Games of a chariot team entered by Queen Berenice, 156 157

Cf. E. Kaiser, MH 21 (1964) 208–10. The poet of [Theocr.] 9.35–6 seems to echo Hesiod and Callimachus in making the Muses a source of protection against Circe. For drama at the Anthesteria cf. A. Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (2nd ed., Oxford 1968) 15–17. In the Acharnians Aristophanes ‘equates’ victory at a Choes drinking contest with the victory of his own play in the dramatic competition.

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The aetiology of Callimachus’ Aitia

the Cyrenean wife of Euergetes.158 The principal aition seems to have been the origin of the sacrifices and wreathes of wild celery associated with the Nemean Games, and perhaps also the origin of the Nemean Games themselves. The Pindaric heritage of the poem is seen clearly in its encomiastic purpose, the aetiological thrust of the myth, and the choice of that myth: Heracles was regarded as an ancestor of the Ptolemaic house, and so Berenice’s victory replays in the world of the present a triumph of the authorising past; such a pattern is very familiar from the epinicians of Pindar. In particular, Callimachus seems to have evoked Pythian 4, by far the longest of the epinicians, which celebrated the chariot victory of an earlier ruler of Cyrene, Arcesilas. The central part of the Victoria tells the story (for which we depend largely on a narrative of ‘Probus’, SH 266) of how Heracles, on his way to fight the Nemean lion, is entertained at Kleonai by Molorkos, a humble peasant.159 Molorkos tells the hero of the damage to the countryside which the lion has inflicted; the land lies squalid and unworked, and Molorkos is unable to go outside, and thus can only provide Heracles with the humblest of cold meals. He offers to sacrifice his only ram in order to provide better entertainment, but Heracles tells him to postpone the sacrifice until the lion has been killed, when Molorkos will once again have abundant meat. The ram thus functions as a vow against Heracles’ safe return, as the lock of hair was vowed against Euergetes’ return in the companion Coma.160 Heracles sets off again and kills the lion, probably with the help of Athena; the heroic feat was narrated very briefly, if at all. On his return, Heracles relates to Molorkos a prophecy of Athena regarding the crowning of future victors in the Nemean and Isthmian Games, and when he has returned to Argos he sends Molorkos a gift of a mule. This extraordinary poem offered ample opportunity for aitia: we learn not merely of the Nemean Games, but also of the crowns at the Isthmian Games (SH 265.5–9), of Heracles’ lionskin (SH 268B–C), and of a ritual (/ % ) connected with the Games (SH 265.21); it is an attractive suggestion of Peter Parsons that the catasterism of the Nemean lion figured somewhere in the poem, thus increasing the parallelism with the Coma, in which the constellation Leo all but certainly figured.161 The most striking feature of the poem, however, is the manner in which Heracles’ heroic feat is displaced from the centre of interest by the description of Molorkos’ rustic life. Here, the ultimate model is Eumaeus’ entertainment of Odysseus, 158 159 160 161

The fullest discussion and bibliography is Fuhrer (1992); see also P. A. Rosenmeyer, ‘A cold reception in Callimachus’ Victoria Berenices (S. H. 257–265)’ CQ 43 (1993) 206–14. For the spelling of the name cf. J. D. Morgan, ‘The origin of Molorc[h]us’ CQ 42 (1992) 533–8. Cf. below pp. 85–8. Parsons (1977) 43. Cf. Catullus 66.65 and the scholia to the Greek poem (Pfeiffer I p. 118).

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and there are obvious similarities with Hecale’s entertainment of Theseus in the Hecale.162 It was probably during the first evening with Heracles that Molorkos is troubled by mice and must set traps for them (SH 259 = fr. 177 Pf.), an episode which perhaps formed an aition for particular types of mousetrap.163 Molorkos’ battle with the mice, rather than Heracles’ fight with the lion, was in fact probably the central ‘heroic feat’ of the poem. The struggle is depicted in suitably epic terms: an elaborate ‘epic’ time-periphrasis (vv. 5–8),164 similes (vv. 10–11, 21), and humorously grand language – % , ‘ravagers’, is used of the mice, where Homer used it (appropriately) of wild beasts, including lions; Molorkos’ weary complaint in v. 14 that ‘god moulded (#% ) [mice] as a bane to hosts/guests’ both evokes a cosmological aition for the little creatures and parallels Hera’s creation of the Nemean lion to be a ‘difficult challenge for the son of Zeus’ (SH 267). If the mice resemble the suitors on Ithaca who eat everything in sight,165 Molorkos’ cunning is an amusing echo of Odysseus or the guile of the divine craftsman Hephaestus.166 Moreover, as Enrico Livrea pointed out,167 Molorkos’ battle with the mice replays a foundation legend, according to which Kleonai was settled by Chalcidians escaping from a mouse plague; at every turn, then, aitia present themselves, and the presence of aitia for the most ordinary of situations threatens to undermine the very category which the poet has established: aetiology was never designed for purposes as homely as this. Framing Books 3 and 4 with the ‘Victoria’ is the famous poem spoken by a lock of Queen Berenice’s hair. When Ptolemy III Euergetes went off to the Syrian War in 246bc, his recently married bride, the Cyrenean princess (and Euergetes’ second cousin) Berenice, vowed that she would dedicate a lock of her hair to the gods if her husband returned safe. When he did so, Berenice duly fulfilled her vow, almost certainly in the temple of her deified ‘mother’, Aphrodite-Arsinoe at Cape Zephyrium.168 When the lock disappeared, the learned astronomer Konon announced that he had identified it, now catasterised as a constellation, in a previously unnamed group of stars near Leo and Virgo. Callimachus celebrated this splendid event in a first-person elegiac poem, in which the lock expresses its regret that it is no longer on the queen’s head (fr. 110). In form, the poem may be seen as an extended version of the epigrammatic form in which an object 162 164 165 168

163 For the language used cf. Parsons (1993) 17. Cf. below pp. 196–200. For this epic feature cf. Fantuzzi (1988a) 121–54. Particularly relevant is Ap. Rhod. Arg. 4.1629–30. 166 Cf. Pfeiffer on fr. 177.16f. 167 Maia 32 (1980) 252–3. Cf. Hutchinson (1988) 46 n. 42. This is not certain, but is the most likely interpretation, cf. Gutzwiller (1992) 363 n. 16. For this temple cf. below p. 382.

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The aetiology of Callimachus’ Aitia

which has been dedicated in a temple explains itself and how it came to be there.169 The mode of the poem is, however, as far removed from that of a simple dedicatory epigram as is its length. The lock speaks to the world at large, referring to the queen in the third person (vv. 7–8, 75–8), but also occasionally turns aside to address its complaint directly to Berenice (vv. 40, 45);170 its mastery of the rhetorical techniques of emotional pathos is brilliantly funny. In addition to a few verses preserved in the indirect tradition and some brief prose paraphrases, two papyri (PSI 1092, POxy 2258c) preserve over thirty verses of this poem, and we also have Catullus’ Latin translation, apparently of the whole poem (Catullus 66).171 POxy 2258 seems to be a codex anthology of Callimachean texts, in which the ‘Coma Berenices’ is immediately followed by the ‘Victory of Sosibios’ (fr. 384), another courtly elegy; the Di¯eg¯esis, however, identifies the ‘Coma Berenices’ as the last piece in the fourth book of the Aitia. (Unfortunately, the text is missing at the corresponding point of POxy 1011, which preserves the ‘epilogue’ of the Aitia (fr. 112)).172 This, together with the fact that Catullus 66 contains at least one passage to which nothing in the Greek text corresponds (vv. 79– 88)173 and also does not seem to translate the final two verses of the Greek text, has prompted the now widely held view that Callimachus originally wrote the ‘Coma Berenices’ as a separate ‘court’ poem, but then included a lightly revised version of it as the final poem of the Aitia, matching it with the ‘Victoria Berenices’ which opened Book 3. That Catullus knew the poem within the Aitia seems, however, probable from the fact that Poem 65, the elegiac epistle which introduces the Latin ‘Coma Berenices’, exploits the narrative of Acontius and Cydippe from Aitia 3,174 thus making a very appropriate introduction to a translation from Aitia 4. Ludwig Koenen and Daniel Selden have recently produced powerful readings of Callimachus’ poem in terms of the royal ideology and GraecoEgyptian symbolism of the Ptolemaic-Pharaonic court; Berenice’s ritual act replays Isis’ mourning for Osiris, as well as finding many parallels in the 169 170 171

172 173 174

Cf. e.g. M. Burzachechi, ‘Oggetti parlanti nelle epigrafi greche’ Epigraphica 24 (1962) 3–54; further bibliography in Kerkhecker (1999) 183 n. 3. Cf. Harder (1998) 99. For the caution needed in reconstructing Callimachus from Catullus cf. P. Bing, ‘Reconstructing Berenike’s Lock’ in G. W. Most (ed.), Collecting Fragments. Fragmente sammeln (G¨ottingen 1997) 78–94. Cf. above p. 46. I have left POxy 1793 (fr. 387 Pfeiffer) out of account because of the uncertainty of the ascription to the Coma. For recent discussion and full bibliography cf. Marinone (1997) 41–54, Laura Rossi, ‘La Chioma di Berenice: Catullo 66, 79–88, Callimaco e la propaganda di corte’ RFIC 128 (2000) 299–312. Cf. Hunter (1993c), below, pp. 474–5.

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traditions of Greek cult and literature. From these major studies, the poem emerges as a primary witness to the creative fusion of Greek and Egyptian motifs within Ptolemaic court-poetry.175 Here, there is space merely to note how this poem forms a very suitable closure to the remarkable games with poetic voice, which are perhaps the most striking feature of the Aitia. Although the lock is grammatically masculine (# ) 9 % $!), much of its rhetoric resembles that of a woman carried away to ‘marriage’ or abandoned by a lover; the pathos recalls that of Sapphic poems of separation.176 In emphasising the femaleness of the lock, Catullus exploited not merely the gender of the Latin ‘Coma Berenices’,177 but also genuine features of his Greek original. The lock’s complaint at vv. 75–8 well illustrates its dilemma:  ('  %%4'   !( V%[%]   &]%!(## $   M  [) z .) []  X V C D  ) ##  # () $  ' C  &#$% Q. These things do not bring me as much pleasure as the pain of no longer touching that head, from which, when she was still a virgin, I drank many simple oils, but never enjoyed the perfumes of married women. (Callimachus fr. 110.75–8)

The lock’s memory exploits the traditional comic theme of the bibulousness of women, but also highlights how the lock sees itself as both an extension of the queen but also now ‘cut off’ from the new pleasures which the queen enjoys. The lock seeks solace in the thought that it is missed: .         % &' [#  (v. 51) My sister locks longed for me who had just been cut

However, the despairing hope with which the poem ends (sidera corruerint utinam . . .)178 shows just how self-deceiving such consolation is. The cutting of the lock stands in fact for more than one separation; it is a multivalent symbol for many partings, some reparable and some eternal. Loss of virginity both is and is figured as the cutting-off of a lock of hair.179 175 176

177 178 179

Cf. Koenen (1993) 89–113, Selden (1998) 326–54. Cf. O. Vox, ‘Sul genere grammaticale della Chioma di Berenice’ MD 44 (2000) 175–81. If Callimachus’ lock lies behind Medea’s plea to Queen Arete at Ap. Rhod. Arg. 4.1021–2 (cf. Hunter (1995a) 24–5), it will be hard to believe that it spoke with an unambiguously male voice. Cf. A. Barchiesi, MD 39 (1997) 212–17. The most powerful case for a female voice in the Greek poem has been put by Gutzwiller (1992); cf. further Harder (2002) 204–6. The text is very uncertain, cf. Marinone (1997) 221–4, but the tone of lamentation in the final Catullan distich is hard to miss. Cf. esp. Ap. Rhod. Arg. 4.27–9: Medea leaves behind a lock of her hair as a ‘memorial of her maidenhood’.

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   ‘newly cut’ seems to evoke  ' , ‘newly wedded’ (Eur. Medea 623) or ‘newly killed’ (Eur. Rhesus 887), as   suggests  . The lock’s sisters ‘miss’ her, not only as Berenice longed for her absent husband, but also as young girls miss a friend who has been taken away to the ‘death of marriage’ (cf. Theocritus 18.42).  5 ‘to long for’ is applicable to the longing felt both for those who are dead and for an absent friend or lover; in accordance with his own poetic concerns, Catullus’ lugebant changes the balance of the phrase. That the lock was carried from the temple into ‘the bosom of Aphrodite’ by Zephyros, the west wind, reinforces this erotic sense, as the tendency of winds (especially Boreas and Zephyros) to carry away young women is a familiar fact of the Greek mythic imagination.180 As Aphrodite ‘snatched up’ Berenice I and gave her a share in her own temples (Theocritus 17.46–50), and the Dioscuri snatched away Arsinoe herself, Berenice II’s ‘mother’ (Callimachus fr. 228), so the carrying off of the lock both foretells its own divinisation as a constellation and foreshadows the certain fate which awaits Berenice II when she ‘dies’. In its patent insecurity, the voluble lock, by turns proudly arrogant and transparently self-pitying, functions as a humorous analogy to the voice of the encomiastic poet, always overrating his own importance while being only too painfully aware of just how dispensable he is. The ‘helpless’ feminised voice captures this (constructed) powerlessness in a witty game which the young Berenice may well have been sophisticated enough to appreciate. The poem that began with the insufferably know-all young scholar, relentlessly questioning the Muses, ends with the pathetically ineffectual complaints of a small constellation, visible only to the cunning eye of the court astronomer, which wants to reverse the whole aetiological moment and thus deprive the poet of his subject. As there was no end to the scholar’s questions, so the lock will never stop its complaints – it will babble until the destruction of the universe – but the real poet has one power at least: he can, quite literally, cut the lock off. 180

Cf. Gutzwiller (1992) 380–1; E. Vermeule, Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry (Berkeley 1979) 168–9.

chap t e r 3

The Argonautica of Apollonius and epic tradition

1 epic song Like Callimachus, Apollonius is a figure from the very heart of Alexandrian scholarship. Our sources are almost unanimous that he came from Alexandria itself; if this is correct, the designation ‘Rhodian’ must go back to some close connection with the island, perhaps through his family or because he spent time there.1 Be that as it may, Apollonius served as Librarian in the royal Library at Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus and thus occupied perhaps the most important position of patronage within the institutionalisation of culture established by the first two Ptolemies, and what we know of his scholarly prose works clearly reflects the literary concerns of the Museum. Thus, in one treatise he tackled Homeric problems, including textual problems, in a manner which apparently took issue, in what might be thought a typically Greek agonistic spirit, with his great forerunner as Librarian, Zenodotus;2 in other works he discussed issues in the interpretation of Hesiod and Archilochus. Apollonius’ career thus illustrates how textual immersion in the poetry of the past may become the basis for the production of new poetry. However, unlike both his famous predecessor and his successor, Zenodotus and Eratosthenes, it is as a poet, rather than as a scholar, that Apollonius was best known both in antiquity and today, although – with the exception of the Argonautica – only the scantiest fragments of his poetic output survive. Of particular interest are the titles and exiguous fragments of poems on the foundations of cities, Ktiseis;3 we hear of such poems concerning Kaunos, Rhodes, Knidos, Naucratis and Alexandria 1

2 3

The ancient Lives have him withdrawing to Rhodes after the initial failure of the Argonautica in Alexandria. For our sources on Apollonius and more detailed discussion cf. Hunter (1989a) 1–9. Cf. Pfeiffer (1968) 146–8. On these cf. Hunter (1989a) 10–12, N. Krevans, ‘On the Margins of Epic: the Foundation-poems of Apollonius’ in Harder–Regtuit–Wakker (2000) 69–84.

89

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itself. This poetic exploration of a mythic past, the ramifications of which are visible in the existing cultures of the present, both finds contemporary parallels in the work of Callimachus (who wrote a prose work on ‘Foundations of Islands and Cities and Changes of Name’ and who treated the foundation of the cities of Sicily in Book 2 of the Aitia) and foreshadows the great mythico-historical enterprise of Virgil in the Aeneid. The Argonautica,4 an extended multi-book epic poem on a ‘mythical’ subject, stands out as something of a ‘one-off’ amidst the remains of Hellenistic poetry. To what extent it would in fact have seemed unusual in the third century is a subject about which debate continues to rage,5 but two preliminary points are worth making. The story of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece is cited by Circe in the Odyssey in a way which suggests that it is partially analogous to Odysseus’ journey (Od. 12.69–72), and the similiarities and possible inter-dependence of the two stories was well known to Hellenistic scholarship. Apollonius, therefore, has chosen a story which Homer has ‘avoided’, as Odysseus is to avoid the Wandering Rocks, but one which is given, already in Homer, an oblique and suggestive relationship to the Homeric narrative. The Homeric treatment of Jason’s story is thus made emblematic of Apollonius’ own oblique relationship to Homer. Secondly, it is clear that, if indeed large-scale imitation is a form of homage, subsequent Greek and Roman poetry was in no doubt as to the importance of the Argonautica and its place at the centre of Alexandrian poetry.6 By accident or design, the only surviving Greek epic between Homer and the later Roman Empire was to be extraordinarily influential in the future directions which epic poetry was to take. For antiquity, the Argonautica was an ‘epic’ () , epos), just as the Homeric poems were; post-Renaissance distinctions between ‘epic’ and ‘romance’ or between ‘oral’ and ‘literary’ epic were never more than foreshadowed in antiquity.7 Apollonius himself marks his generic status in the opening verse through the phrase which designates the subject of his song, #  #  . In the Odyssey, Demodocus is inspired by the Muse to sing # &' (Od. 8.73), Achilles sings of # &' 4 5 6 7

The best guide to recent trends in scholarship on the Argonautica are the collections of Harder– Regtuit–Wakker (2000) and Papanghelis–Rengakos (2001). The two poles of the debate are now symbolised, rightly or wrongly, by Ziegler (1966) and Cameron (1995). Cf. below, pp. 465, 477–85 for the Nachleben of the Argonautica in Roman poetry. For ‘epic’ and ‘romance’ cf. especially Quint (1993). The comparison by ‘Longinus’ of the Iliad and the Odyssey (De subl. 9.13) is of particular interest in this regard.

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when withdrawn from the fighting itself (Il. 9.189),8 and Phoenix tells Achilles that there have been ‘epic’ parallels to his own situation:9 [     %   $   # &' 1Z) A  C _( # ! # lU '  #  (  C  %%. Thus we have heard too of the great deeds of heroic men of former times, when terrible anger came upon them: they could be won over by gifts and persuaded by words. (Homer, Iliad 9.524–6)

The opening verse of the Argonautica therefore announces the genre of the poem, and 1.2–4 describe its subject.10 Such an ordering foregrounds the consciousness of the poet rather than the rˆole of tradition, which had been given prominence in the opening Homeric invocations to the Muse. There is however, as we shall see, no straightforward distinction between Hellenistic and archaic practice. The adjective which Apollonius applies to the Argonauts, #  5 ‘of old, born a long time ago’, marks a crucial fact about the Hellenistic epic. Phoenix evoked the deeds of ‘heroic men before us’ in order to encourage Achilles to emulation; the story which he proceeds to relate still lives in his memory, though it is ‘long ago, not at all recent’ (Il. 9.527). So too in the Odyssey, Demodocus sings of men and events of his own generation – Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus, the fall of Troy. Most striking of all, in Book 1 of the Odyssey Phemios sings of the nostos of the Greeks from Troy (Od. 1.326–7), events which are of very recent happening and are indeed, at least for Odysseus, still going on. Here the poet fashions for us a glimpse of the beginnings of a particular song tradition. The poet of the Iliad himself, as opposed to his characters, draws a famous distinction between the heroic prowess of his characters and ‘men as they are now’,11 so that the epic itself 8

9 10

11

For Virgil’s ‘translation’ of # &' in the opening verse of the Aeneid cf. Conte (1986) 70–3. Horace’s designation of epic poetry as res gestae regumque ducumque et tristia bella (AP 73, cf. Epist. 2.1.250–1) gives a distinctively public and Roman tinge to the idea. For some reservations about the use of the phrase in Homer cf. Ford (1992) 57–67. Cf. below, p. 107. To what extent Phoenix is ‘improvising’ to suit the rhetorical task in hand is not relevant here, cf. L. Edmunds, ‘Myth in Homer’ in Morris–Powell (1997) 415–41, pp. 425–32. The question of whether 1.1–4 introduces the whole poem or merely Books 1–2 (cf. e.g. K¨ohnken (2000)) may be left out of account here. It is sometimes asserted (e.g. Carspecken (1952) 111) that the substitution of   for the Homeric &' in this phrase marks the difference between ‘heroes’ and ‘ordinary mortals’, including women. Too much should not, however, be made of this, particularly if the phrase bears some relationship to Hom.Hymn 32.18–19, cf. Hunter (1993a) 129 n. 110, O. Vox, ‘Noterelle di epica ellenistica’ Rudiae 11 (1999) 163–72, pp. 163–5; the phrase may have been much more widespread in hymnic poetry than we can now establish. Cf. Il. 5.302–4, 12.380–3, 447–50, 20.285–7.

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tells of heroes (cf. Il. 1.4) ‘born long ago’, though those heroes themselves listen to ‘contemporary’ stories and songs. This difference between the subject of Homer’s song and the subjects of which his bards sing may be seen as a fundamental part of Homer’s creation of a distant, heroic world. Nevertheless, despite the gap between ‘then’ and ‘now’, and however ‘walled off absolutely from all subsequent times’12 the epic past in Homer may be, Homer does not in fact emphatically foreground the temporal distance between himself and the subjects of his song, as Apollonius does in the very opening verse; even the slighting references to ‘men as they are now’, which establish Homer’s implied audience ‘as a nameless collectivity, a weaker and more ignorant generation of mortals living long after the heroes’,13 are rhetorically not much stronger than Nestor’s unfavourable contrast between his own youth and ‘the present lot’ (Il. 1.271–2, 7.123–60).14 Apollonius, however, in both the proem and the closing envoi stresses his own temporal distance from the Argonauts, and indeed from all figures of the heroic age, the divinely-born   .'  of 3.919–21; moreover, in the only scene of ‘epic performance’ in the Argonautica, the Argonauts listen to Orpheus’ cosmological song (1.497–511), which tells of events truly ‘long ago’, thus reproducing within the epic the relationship between audience and song implied by the framing poem. Apollonius’ apparent distance from his characters is merely one manifestation of a self-conscious generic placement, which is a central feature of all surviving Greek and Latin epic after Homer, but whose seeds lie already in Homer’s own nuanced attitude to the tradition in which he worked. Apollonius’ stance towards characters ‘born long ago’ thus develops from one already found in the Homeric poems: it is not a matter of a radical break with the past through the creation of a new poetics, but rather of a rearrangement of emphasis giving new meaning to particular elements within a pre-existing repertoire. Whereas, however, this generic placement emphasises distance between ‘then’ and ‘now’, the powerful aetiological drive of the Argonautica works to break down that distance and to problematise the nature of epic time.15 This is merely one of several strategies by 12

13 14

15

M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (ed. M. Holquist (Austin 1981) 15). Bakhtin’s very influential account of ‘the epic past’ (ibid. 15–18) is really applicable only to the Iliad of classical epics, and even there important reservations are necessary. A. Ford, ‘Epic as genre’ in Morris–Powell (1997) 396–414, p. 410. This is not, of course, to deny the importance of such passages as the opening of Iliad 12 on the destruction of the Achaean wall (cf. Hunter (1993a) 103–4, I. J. F. De Jong, Narrators and Focalizers: the Presentation of the Story in the Iliad (Amsterdam 1987) 44–5), but it is the explicitness of the Hellenistic poet which is at issue. For aetiology in Arg. cf. Fusillo (1985) 116–58, Goldhill (1991) 321–33, M. Valverde S´anchez, El aition en las Argon´auticas de Apolonio de Rodos (Murcia 1989).

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which Apollonius collapses the hierarchy of time which he inherited with the epic tradition.16 If, however, much has changed, the fundamental purpose of epic, the perpetuation of men’s fame, kleos, remains. The act of ‘remembering’ (4Y %, 1.2) is central to the whole generic project,17 for without epic song the great deeds of the past will be forgotten. Gods may know of # &' without the aid of the bard (Od. 10.330, 457–9 (Circe)), but men are dependent upon the poet; this is the commemorative rˆole which Herodotus took up in his famous opening, declaring the purpose of his history to be that ‘the great and marvellous feats of the Greeks and barbarians should not lack kleos’. Great deeds can indeed travel almost miraculously. Thus, whereas Phemios’ ability to sing of the nostos of the Achaeans does not really stretch credulity (Od. 1.326–7), whatever part we assign to the Muses, we ought perhaps to be surprised that Demodocus is able to sing of events at Troy: what is the source of his information?18 The Phaeacians are ‘like gods’ in many ways, and Demodocus is exceptional among bards (Od. 8.44–5), but Odysseus’ extravagant praise precisely thematises this marvel:  'C) M! '4 % 9  *_ C /( U v % 0% C ''M ) \, ({) v % C C; ##U #    % C;! L  & ' ) V%% C EM C    V%%C 

% C;!) €  $ v  ,  O v .##$ &Q%. Demodocus, I admire you beyond all other men: either the Muse, child of Zeus, taught you, or it was Apollo. With absolute rightness you sing the fate of the Achaeans – all that the Achaeans did and suffered and toiled – as if somehow you yourself were there or had heard from another! (Homer, Odyssey 8.487–91)

In fact, the poet had noted that the kleos of the song of the quarrel of Odysseus and Achilles ‘at that time reached broad heaven’ (8.74), suggesting that Demodocus sings a ‘popular favourite’, though that is not really a full explanation for his knowledge. As with Odysseus, however, so Aeneas’ fame reaches Carthage before any Trojan does: the decoration on the temple of scenes from the battle for Troy (Aen. 1.453–93) picks up the idea of Odysseus’ kleos among the Phaeacians, and both the poet (uidet Iliacas ex ordine 16

17 18

Cf. below, pp. 100–2. This account naturally simplifies: by the Hellenistic period the ‘time hierarchy’ was no longer a simple, univocal model. Choerilus of Samos had written an epic on the Persian Wars (SH 413–23) and, whatever one’s view of the existence of ‘Hellenistic epic’, an epic manner of describing contemporary events was certainly familiar. Nevertheless, despite the very fragmentary nature of our evidence, it does seem clear that it is against the archaic pattern which Apollonius seeks to be measured. On memory in Arg. cf. below, pp. 117–26. The formulation of Scodel (1998) 179 requires modification here.

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pugnas | bellaque iam fama totum uulgata per orbem, 1.456–7)19 and Dido herself (quis genus Aeneadum, quis Troia nesciat urbem etc., 1.565) explain away this improbability. The Argonautic quest was of a rather different kind, but even so the absence of such internal ‘advertisement’ within the poem is noteworthy. Like Circe or the Sirens, whose words they echo (Od. 12.189–90), the Libyan ‘heroines’ know of the epic quest (4.1319–21), but their intervention reverses the Sirens’ purpose by preventing a total abnegation of the purpose of epic:  Q     (  &, _ #%  Z$  .  !% ' 1Z e .%  &Q% "  C &#"U There and then they would have all departed from life, the best of heroes with their task uncompleted, leaving no name or trace by which mortal men might know them. (Argonautica 4.1305–7)

In this poetics, the failure to ‘leave a trace’ is as good as never having existed.20 Apollonius has replaced this extraordinary power of impersonal tradition or divine inspiration in Homer by an allusive mode which works in two directions. The fame of Jason and Medea does indeed go before them, but it is a fame, associated above all with Euripides, which looks to the future rather than the past.21 Here again, however, Apollonius works within Homeric patterns, for the futures of both Achilles and Odysseus are, in different ways, inscribed within their respective epics. Secondly, the rich literary texture, the constant reworkings of and allusions to Homeric and post-Homeric scenes (above all, from the Odyssey) and language, mean that there is another sense in which the kleos of the Argonauts goes before them, because we as readers have been here, or somewhere similar, before. As they retrace the wanderings of Odysseus in Book 4, or as Jason and Medea play out a different version of the meeting of Odysseus and Nausicaa in Book 3, we realise that in a literate and allusive poetics, kleos, like memory itself, is a highly complex virtue. As the Odyssey acknowledges the Argonautic story as prior in time (12.69–72), so the Argonautica exploits the Odyssey’s literary priority. Apollonius’ mim¯esis of Homer’s foundational texts is quite different in kind from that of Virgil. For Apollonius, Homer is, in the terminology 19 20 21

uulgata per orbem perhaps suggests the rˆole of the epic cycle in spreading the Trojan story, cf. Barchiesi (1997a) 273. For the Libyan scenes cf. Hunter (1993a) 126, (2001a) 101–4. As such, it has obvious links with the phenomena discussed by Barchiesi (1993).

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of Gian Biagio Conte and Alessandro Barchiesi, far more a ‘modelloesemplare’ than a ‘modello-genere’.22 Apollonius rewrites, evokes, analogises and gestures towards Homeric language, specific scenes, themes and techniques; meaning is regularly created by the interplay of similarity to and difference from the Homeric text.23 What Apollonius does not do is ‘scrivere come Omero’, i.e. not merely to rework Homeric language and scenes as a storehouse of epic ‘set pieces’ from which to draw, but to create a mimesis of ‘stili, convenzioni, norme, generi’, which requires the Homeric text to act as a ‘matrice generativa’ from which something quite new may be derived.24 Apollonius’ innovations can indeed look quite ‘unepic’, and the resultant whole differs radically from the massive consistency and (apparent) transparency of the Homeric text. The most important single difference between the inner design of the Homeric poems and that of the Argonautica is that no character is as central to the latter as Achilles and Odysseus are to the poems in which they appear, or as Aeneas is to the Aeneid.25 Achilles, Odysseus and Aeneas all appear by name or periphrasis in the opening verse of their epic (as indeed does Hecale), whereas Jason does not enter the Argonautica until the explanatory narrative of 1.5–17. The prominent announcement (1.20–2) and position of the Catalogue reinforces the statement of the opening verse that the subject of the poem will be #  #  , ‘the glorious deeds of men of old’. So too, it is the whole collective of Argonauts to whom the poet bids farewell at the end of the poem, as the singer of the Homeric Hymns bids farewell to the god who has been the subject of his song.26 We may wish to see the group of Argonauts taking the place of ‘the central hero’,27 or prefer to see the poem as the story of an action, the bringing of the Golden Fleece to Greece, but the plurality of Argonauts imposes its own shape upon the generic pattern. We must, of course, be wary of overinterpreting the difference between Apollonius and Homer in this matter, but other epic models were also available and may seem structurally rather closer than Homer to Apollonius. 22 23 24 25

26 27

Cf. Barchiesi (1984) 91–122. The standard synthetic account is now Knight (1995). On Apollonius’ recreation of a Homeric verbal style see esp. Fantuzzi (1988a), (2001a), and below, pp. 266–82. Barchiesi (1984) 95. Conte’s discussion of the ‘epic code’ ((1986) 141–51) is also relevant here. For Apollonius’ attitude to repetition cf. below, p. 123. For the history of ‘the hero’ in critical approaches to the epic cf. D. C. Feeney, ‘Epic Hero and Epic Fable’ Comp. Lit. 38 (1986) 137–58. The following paragraphs are a revised version of Hunter (2001a) 122–5. On the ‘hymnic’ frame of the Argonautica cf. now O. Vox, ‘Dionigi Alessandrino e Apollonio Rodio: cornici innodiche’ Lexis 20 (2002) 153–70. So Carspecken (1952).

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The Epigonoi (‘Descendants’ [of those who fought at Thebes]) began  cC #  &' &!Z  0%, ‘Now again, Muses, let us begin to sing of younger men’ (fr. 1 Davies), which might be thought to have had some influence upon Apollonius’ opening #  . . .  . Although ‘younger men’ may be seen as virtually equivalent to ‘descendants’ and so this verse is not parallel to Apollonius’ generically programmatic opening,28 nevertheless such a poem, like the ‘cyclic’ Nostoi, is parallel to the Argonautica in having a plurality of heroes built into its very structure. So, too, the Thebais clearly had a rich cast of warriors,29 and its opening verse, h;  . '  #$':   . , ‘Sing, goddess, of thirsty Argos from which the lords . . .’ (EGF 1), points to this multiplicity. How precisely the term $#  is to be glossed and to which poems it applies are matters of very considerable debate,30 but the central specimens of the type were clearly poems such as the Cypria, the Aithiopis, the Little Iliad and the Nostoi which (at least when viewed from a third-century perspective) ‘completed’ Homer by telling the stories of what happened before, between and after the Iliad and the Odyssey;31 some (if not all) of these poems were, like the Argonautica, considerably shorter than the Homeric poems. The Argonautica is not on a Trojan theme, but deals with what, together with the Theban story, is the most prominent mythic complex set before the Trojan War and one to which Homer’s Circe herself famously refers (Od. 12.69–72); the link between the two stories is plainest in the figure of the Argonaut Peleus, Achilles’ father. Argonautic material played a prominent rˆole in the Corinthiaca of Eumelus (? c. 700 bc) and the anonymous Naupactia, both of which Apollonius seems to have used;32 it would not, therefore, be difficult to see the Argonautic story as (in some senses) a ‘cyclic’ one. Moreover, much of what happens in Apollonius’ poem has closer affinities to what modern scholars regard as typically ‘cyclic’ than to Homeric themes.33 As far as we can judge, superhuman abilities, such as the vision of a Lynceus34 or the (virtual) invulnerability of a Kaineus (1.57–64) or a Talos, 28 30 31

32 33 34

29 Helpful survey in Davies (1989) 23–9. Cf. above, pp. 90–1. Cf. Pfeiffer (1968) 230, Cameron (1995) 394–9, Davies (1989) 1–8. Such a way of viewing the Cycle may, of course, misrepresent the original relation between these poems and Homer, cf. e.g. J. S. Burgess, ‘The Non-Homeric Cypria’ TAPA 126 (1996) 77–99, J. M. Foley, ‘Epic Cycles and Epic Traditions’ in Kazazis–Rengakos (1999) 99–108. Cf. Hunter (1989a) 15–16 with bibliography. On the Corinthiaca cf. now M. L. West, ‘“Eumelos”: a Corinthian epic cycle?’ JHS 122 (2002) 109–33, pp. 118–26. The most helpful modern discussion is J. Griffin, ‘The Epic Cycle and the Uniqueness of Homer’ JHS 97 (1977) 39–53; cf. more briefly Davies (1989) 9–10. Cf. Cypria, EGF 13.

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were familiar ‘cyclic’ motifs.35 Such characteristics are, of course, almost normal among the Argonauts. So, too, the magical and the supernatural seem to have been far more prominent in the cyclic poems than in (most of ) Homer; Medea’s lulling of the dragon or Circe’s purificatory magic would be perfectly at home in such a poetic context, and for some of the fantastical tales which are recorded in the Argonautica a cyclic version and/or origin is known.36 So, too, the treacherous killing of Apsyrtus and the maschalismos performed by Jason on the young man’s corpse more easily find cyclic than Homeric counterparts; at a different aesthetic level, the apparent prominence of erotic romance in what we know of the Cycle has often been remarked, and the whole business of Zeus’ desire for Thetis, which plays such a prominent rˆole at 4.790–816, almost certainly owes an extensive debt to the Cypria.37 It was the same poem which was the principal epic source for the character of the blasphemous Idas,38 who appears from time to time in the Argonautica to express his displeasure, rather like a frustrated reader who finds himself in a poem different from the one he expected. More important perhaps than cataloguing the cyclic forerunners of individual stories and motifs is the overall impression of a poem which revels in much that has no real Homeric analogue, even where verbal echo of the Homeric poems predominates. It is perhaps not misleading to view Apollonius’ epic as, in subject, a cyclic poem done in the ‘modern’, noncyclic style.39 Finally, we may note the narrative pattern which informs epic song. Orpheus’ cosmological song at 1.496–511 gestures towards the alternation of philia and neikos, a theme which has a special place in the epic tradition. In the Iliad the theme is most fully worked out in the relations of Achilles and Agamemnon, which are set against the behaviour of Zeus and Hera in Book 1, where an angry neikos (cf. 1.521, 579) between the divine pair gives way to laughter and conjugal sleep (philia as lovemaking); so, too, the duel between Menelaus and Paris, which was supposed to impose philot¯es upon the neikos between Greeks and Trojans (Il. 3.73, 94), ends rather with renewed strife, but ‘lovemaking’ for Paris and Helen (Il. 3.441, 453). 35 36 37 38 39

For the invulnerability motif as it relates to the ‘cyclic’ Achilles and Ajax cf. Davies (1989) 58–61. For Zeus’ mating with Philyra in the shape of a horse (2.1231–41) cf. Titanomachia fr. 9 Davies. Cf. Cypria EGF 2, Vian III 175–6. From the point of view of the Argonautica (and Catullus 64), the loss of Nestor’s account of Theseus and Ariadne in the Cypria (EGF p. 31.38–9) is keenly felt. Cf. EGF p. 31.28–31, fr. 14. This is not, of course, to say that the Argonautica is necessarily the object of Callimachus’ distaste in Epigram 28Pf.; what Callimachus actually thought (or would have thought) of Apollonius’ epic, we have no idea. For the Argonautica and cyclic epic cf. now A. Rengakos, ‘Die Argonautica und das “kyklische Gedicht” ’ in A. Bierl et al. (eds.), Antike Literatur in never Deutung (Leipzig 2004) 277–304.

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The epic itself closes in the truce which Achilles and Priam arrange for the burial of Hector (24.660–70), though the resumption of neikos is not far away. So, too, the Odyssey comes to a conclusion because Zeus wishes to impose peace and philia (24.485–6) and Athena commands the neikos to stop (24.543). In the Aeneid, Juno apparently abandons her opposition to the Trojan settlement of Italy and accedes to conubia felicia, leges and foedera, i.e. # in its fully political sense (Aen. 12.821–2).40 For the Argonautica, however, beyond the immediate context of the quarrel between Idmon and Idas,41 the theme resonates most strongly in our knowledge of the future relations of Jason and Medea;42 the ‘cyclic’ story of the Argonautic voyage itself moves to a different rhythm. 2 an epic world Whatever other models and narrative patterns have left their impress upon the Argonautica, it is Homer who is the determinant influence, and if the Argonautica is in part an exploration of the Homeric poems, it must also confront their significance, as Virgil’s ‘Augustan epic’ too recreates (with differences) the moral and social protreptic at the heart of Greek culture’s reception of Homer. Long before the third century, the Homeric poems had been invested with huge moral and political authority. Some of this derived from the rˆole of the warriors as founding heroes of cities all over the Greek world,43 and as the Argonauts circumnavigate the known and unknown world, the poem’s pervasive aetiology explicitly recreates this reception of the Homeric poems into cultural history. Moreover, Homer’s characters had long since been received into Greek culture and educational practice as models for emulation.44 It is not so much, despite Plato’s fears, that every Athenian schoolboy was taught to try to be ‘an Achilles’ or ‘an Odysseus’ as that the poems offered paradigmatic social and moral patterns whose didactic potential was not limited to any particular socio-cultural context. So, too, we are encouraged to read Virgil’s Aeneas as a paradigmatic model – to be imitated and yet inimitable – by the fact that he partially foreshadows the living Roman who embodies all that is worth imitating, namely Augustus. 40 41 43 44

This picture of course over-simplifies, cf. D. C. Feeney, ‘The reconciliations of Juno’ CQ 34 (1984) 179–94. 42 For the future  5 cf. Eur. Med. 904, 1140. Cf. below, pp. 112–14. Cf. e.g. I. Malkin, The Returns of Odysseus (Berkeley 1998). Cf. e.g. Plato, Prt. 325e–6a; Plato’s Protagoras has, of course, his own agenda, but there seems little reason to doubt the general truth of his characterisation of education. The Aristophanic Aeschylus is devoted to a comic version of the same didactic model, and the same attitude is also writ large centuries later in Plutarch’s How to Study Poetry.

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The situation with the Argonautica is, however, much more ambiguous, as there is little in the poem which seems obviously designed to encourage such _#. The Argonautica parades a quite different relationship with its cultural context than that which Greek society had constructed for the Homeric poems. One measure of this is expressed through the myth itself. Although the Argonauts are the greatest heroes of the generation before the Trojan War, a continuity particularly marked by the presence of Achilles’ father, Peleus, Jason himself is a young man without children, and the children he was destined to have by Medea were to die young in an antiparadigm of parental (lack of ) care. The passing-on of wisdom and ‘heroic’ values from father to son within the epic, most famously staged in the relations of Odysseus and Telemachus in the Odyssey, acts as a figure for the values which the epic itself transmits to successive generations and the cultural significance which it bears; so, too, Achilles’ distance from and lack of contact with his father mark his peculiar tragedy. In the Argonautica, family relations are principally sources of grief (Jason and his parents, Cyzicus and his young bride) or hostility (Medea and her parents). Viewed from this perspective, Jason has no future, and his epic remarkably scripts its own marginality. Style and significance here go hand in hand. In his work on sublimity, [:, lit. ‘height’, ‘Longinus’ denies the higher regions of sublimity to Apollonius by calling him .  , ‘unfalling, not putting a foot wrong’ (De subl. 33.4),45 thus casting him into much the same category as Horace, who, with self-deprecating humour, puts himself in Odes 4.2: whereas Horace is content to imitate the low-flying bee which takes no risks in the production of operosa carmina, any poet who seeks to imitate Pindar, the soaring Theban swan, is bound to fall like Icarus. Crucial here is the link, fundamental in almost all ancient literary criticism, between subject and style (cf. already Ar. Frogs 1058–60): Pindar’s words, which break free of all restraint, sing of ‘gods, kings, Centaurs, the Chimaera, athletes raised to the heaven’ and have the power to lift those whom he praises ‘to the stars’, but ‘small poets’ treat ‘small subjects’. Epic and tragedy are the ‘biggest, highest’ genres of them all. Philip Hardie has explored how the grand theme of Virgil’s Aeneid is reflected both in motifs drawn from cosmological and theogonic poetry, such as the battles of Hesiod’s Olympians against the Giants and Typhoeus and the work of Empedocles, and in a persistent pattern of hyperbolic expression suggestive of the ‘cosmic’ significance of the poem.46 In the former matter, part of Virgil’s impulse derives from 45

Cf. below, p. 446.

46

Hardie (1986).

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encyclopaedic readings of Homer, such as that of Demodocus’ song of Ares and Aphrodite as a cosmological allegory, or of the shield of Achilles as a symbol of the entire universe. Where does Apollonius position his poem on this vertical axis? Orpheus’ cosmological song at 1.496–511 is a ‘cosmic overture’,47 suggestive of the grandeur of the theme of the narrative, and two sets of scenes in the Argonautica seem indeed to foreshadow the cosmology of the Aeneid. One is the passage through the Symplegades in Book 2, where echoes of the Hesiodic Titanomachy mark the Argonauts’ achievement as the imposition of order – the rocks are fixed for ever – upon the previously unknown and ungovernable.48 The second is the extended series of episodes in Book 4 – Circe with her ‘Empedoclean’ animals, Talos from the Hesiodic Bronze Age, the empty and terrifying chaos from which they are saved by Apollo – which mark the return to Greece as a voyage through cosmogonical, as well as literary, time and space.49 In following in the footsteps of a nameless traveller from the dawn of time (4.259–81), the Argonauts are pushed back through a world not yet governed by the regulations of time. It is, however, clear that the cosmic resonances of the Argonautica are far less pervasive than those of the Aeneid, or even of Homer, when read from the perspective of much post-Homeric criticism, and a Hellenistic aesthetic of tonal poikilia is not the sole reason for this. A suggestive passage is the description of the storm which wrecks the ship of the sons of Phrixos (2.1097–1121); the Odyssey had bequeathed ‘storm and shipwreck scenes’ to subsequent tradition as one of the quintessential hallmarks of epic, and echoes of the Odyssey storms, as also of Iliad 15.623–9 and perhaps also Aratus,50 litter this Apollonian text.51 If by the standards of subsequent epic this Apollonian storm is rather low-key, this will in part be the result of the fact that it is not the Argonauts who are the storm’s victims, but rather a minor set of characters, whose all too human experience is to be measured against the ‘heroic’ passage of the Argonauts through the Symplegades. Nevertheless, 47 48 49 50

51

For this phrase cf. Hardie (1986) 84. On this song cf. Hunter (1993a) 148–50, 162–3, Nelis (1992). Cf. Hunter (1995a) 17. With 2.566–7 cf. Hes. Theog. 678–80. Cf. Hunter (1991), (1993a) 164–8, J. J. Clauss, ‘Cosmos without imperium: the Argonautic journey through time’ in Harder–Regtuit–Wakker (2000) 11–32. The ‘mighty plank’ (2.1111) which saves the sons of Phrixos might be not merely a memory of the improvised raft on which Odysseus saves himself after his shipwreck (Od. 12.420–5), but also a witty reversal of Aratus, Phain. 299 where ]#  . . . MQ# refers to the whole ship in a description of the terrors of sailing; note also Phain. 425 2 9$! $ ##  ∼ Arg. 2.1106–7 $'# . . .  C 2, Q%. Cf. Vian on 2.1117, Knight (1995) 73–6; see also M. Williams (1991) 220–6.

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the brevity of the description,52 which matches the brevity of the storm,53 and the fact that the victims are only four people, none of whom – thanks to Zeus’s plan – lose their life, minimises the potentially ‘epic’, hyperbolic quality of the storm. The terrible rainstorm (A9 &% ) of 2.1115– 17 affects ‘the sea and the Island [of Ares] and all the mainland opposite where the insolent Mossynoikoi lived’; the geographical specificity here works against, rather than with, any cosmic universalisation of the threat. One particular way in which the hyperbolic potential of this storm is controlled is in the very passage which might seem to convey the most miraculous feature of it:  ' C 2 C  %"%   %$      'Q  |M   #$) P( ##( B% %  '%    %$  . With the help of the gods the four of them clung to one of those mighty planks which had been held together by sharp bolts, but which came loose as the ship broke up. (Argonautica 2.1110–12)

The plank which saved the sons of Phrixos was merely one of many, as happens in any shipwreck.54 This is not merely a technique for literary enargeia. Epic universalising in the Argonautica is seen as much in the assimilation of what happens to a construction of universal and ordinary experience as in grand hyperbole; we may indeed think of this as a lowering of tonal level, a kind of epic version of the boast of the Aristophanic Euripides to have brought tragedy within the realm of ordinary experience. Apollonius invests his poem with some of the cultural and social value of Homer by making it reflect general experience. So it is that when the priestess Iphias fails to speak to Jason because of the press of the crowd, she is left behind ‘as the old are by the young’ (1.315–16). In the famous simile of 2.541–8 the speed of the cloudborne Athena as she travels to the area of the Clashing Rocks is compared to the speed of the thoughts of a homesick traveller, ‘as indeed we wretched men often do wander . . .’ The reworking of an Iliadic simile (Il. 15.80–3) turns every reader into an Odysseus, p (# ## #( !,55 thus 52 53 54 55

This brevity has caused suspicion of the transmission, cf. Fr¨ankel (1968) 287–90, F. Vian, REA 75 (1973) 99–100. #M  x C - #" at the head of 2.1121 comes as something of a surprise. Cf. Fr¨ankel (1968) 286. Cf. B. Marzullo, ‘Hom. O 80–4 (Nascita di un pattern: esistenziale, storico, letterario’. MCr 30/1 (1995/6) 7–18. It is tempting also to associate this simile with the very processes of mental ‘envisioning’ necessary to read an epic description such as that of Athena on her cloud, cf. Reitz (1996) 54–5, D. Meyer, ‘Zur Funktion geographischer Darstellungen bei Apollonios Rhodios und in der “Perihegese an Nikomedes” (Ps.-Skymnos)’ in Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption 8 (Trier 1998) 61–81, pp. 67–8.

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inscribing within the epic itself the generic and didactic significance asociated with Homeric poetry. The sympathy between ourselves and the characters of epic is now explicitly marked by the shared patterns which govern both their lives and ours (4.1165–9 is particularly noteworthy here). In very broad and simplifying terms, what might be called the ‘particularity’ of the archaic epic is replaced by a mode, which we might perhaps call ‘exemplary’, in which actions and scenes are overtly loaded with a cultural significance beyond the narrative which governs them; in the earlier period, the closest analogues for this mode are to be found in lyric and elegiac poetry, not in hexameter narrative. Immediately after the Catalogue we read:     'Z %%   ( C   $  V%%    Q  4  '  ) c C  . I ! .' 2  x# $ ## %) '8  C K%   'C .% )  #. When the servants had made ready everything with which oared ships are equipped when men are forced to voyage over the sea, then the heroes went through the city towards their ship . . . (Argonautica 1.234–7)

Are we to say that the heroic expedition is here reduced to just another trading mission,56 or is Apollonius’ concern rather with generic ‘exemplarity’? After all, even if his Argo was not the first ship, it is the ship par excellence. The men to whom the poet refers in 1.236 are not specified further with regard to the age in which they live, but they are most naturally taken to be sailors of Apollonius’ own day.57 Rather similar is a slightly later scene. The Argonauts feast on the beach on the evening prior to their departure:     'C &9' &##4#% $ C P( ##   '   K"  +:  ) A C .  [9 & . They swapped stories of the kind young men always do when taking their pleasure over a meal and wine, and all excess which is never satisfied has been banished. (Argonautica 1.457–9)

Once again, the generic significance of the scene is made explicit, and again ‘the young men’ are most naturally understood as not bound to a particular time.58 56

57

58

There may here also be a glance towards a ‘rationalising’ version in which the Argonauts are merchants who carried off a local girl (cf. Hdt. 1.2.2–3). Cf. in general D. Braund, Georgia in Antiquity (Oxford 1994) chapter 1. Apollonius’ accounts of sailing and ship-building seem to mix the archaising with the ‘realistic’. The account in J. Rostropowicz, ‘The “Argonautica” by Apollonius of Rhodes as a nautical epic’ Eos 78 (1990) 107–17 does not squarely confront the issues. On this scene cf. below, pp. 112–14.

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In Homer, particularly in the Iliad, some of this generalising power of epic poetry is carried by those similes which analogise heroic action to events from a non-heroic and often suggestively contemporary world. Their force draws the audience into the poem (they create ‘empathy’) and compels it to admiration of the remote wonder of heroic events. In a broad generalisation, we may say that Homeric similes often render heroic action intelligible. In the Argonautica, however, the picture is perhaps more varied.59 Some similes do indeed ‘generalise’: the fantasy of Athena’s movement, for example, is compared to something all men may experience (cf. above). The complex literariness of other similes, however, and the fact that the simile is a recognisable generic marker, and hence always in a special sense programmatic, acts to distance such ‘intelligibility’; Apollonius seems to have explored the simile as a site of distance from, rather than closeness to, the events of the framing narrative. Thus, whereas the first extended simile of the Iliad compares the gathering of the Greek army to the swarming of bees (Il. 2.87–93), the first extended simile of the Argonautica compares the weeping Alcimede to a young girl who seeks solace in her nurse from the torments of a stepmother: 4  ' C F  C  ! Q  4! ') o !  #$%C &'Z ) -Q Q *   &%% #8 , & %% Q ) z 3 *%  C .## '  ) &## C 2,  $ 9  9b 1 #(_ U  +  # %% ] ' % % $#M )  ' C ]'$" ''   '  . ") ' C !  #QM %%  V%% ] ! 5U o &', # %  +, 5'C &   !$% j#')  #.

270

275

Just as his mother had at the very first thrown her arms around her son, so now she clung to him weeping bitterly. As a lonely young girl falls with relief upon her grey-haired nurse and cries – she has no longer anyone else to care for her, but drags out a wearisome life at the beck and call of a stepmother. Just now she has been battered by the lady’s many reproaches, and as she grieves her heart within her is held fast in the bonds of its misery, and she has not the strength to sob forth all the sorrow that throbs within – just so did Alkimede weep bitterly as she held her son in her arms. (Argonautica 1.268–77)

There is here a thick Homeric texture: the primary models are the narrator’s simile describing Odysseus weeping at Demodocus’ song of the fall of 59

On Apollonius’ similes, which will not be considered here in any detail, cf. Hunter (1993a) 129– 38, Effe (1996), id. ‘The similes of Apollonius Rhodius. Intertextuality and epic innovation’ in Papanghelis–Rengakos (2001) 147–69, Reitz (1996), Fantuzzi, below, pp. 275–82, all with further bibliography.

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Troy (Od. 8.523–31) and Achilles’ simile describing the weeping Patroclus (Il. 16.7–11); we remember also the suffering which Andromache fears awaits the orphan Astyanax at Il. 22.496–501 (note % Q #M , v. 273). This last pattern of echo continues the extended evocation of the death of Hector which hangs over Jason’s departure from his parents’ home, as he enacts the timeless ritual of the young man leaving for a war from which he may well not return. Alkimede weeps like a young girl whose only solace is an old nurse; she is about to lose her only consolation (Jason), and the simile explores with great insight the complementary vulnerability of the old and the young. Nevertheless, the simile is emotionally distancing: the young girl has not a mother (as in Iliad 16), but a stepmother, which both activates a set of ‘literary’ stereotypes,60 and makes the situation particular, because narrowly defined, rather than general and universal, as with the tears of the young girl in Achilles’ simile.61 The simile itself evokes a concealed narrative (note 271, 273) to which we are refused access; in the corresponding simile of Odyssey 8, however, the suggested narrative is precisely that of the death of Hector and the fall of Troy, i.e. that of the framing context (the song of Demodocus). In short, this very broad distinction between Homer and Apollonius may be seen as a rearrangement in the later poet of the balance between the particularity of epic narrative and the ‘timelessness’ of the inherited world of the simile. 3 heroic anger Homeric tradition had established that at the heart of an epic praxis stood the behaviour and fates of individuals, and Jason has an obviously privileged rˆole within the poem, and one which can only be interpreted against the pattern of the principal Homeric heroes. Thus, for example, the meeting of Jason and Medea at the temple of Hecate rewrites the fatal duel between Achilles and Hector in Iliad 22;62 Hector was thus mistaken in his belief that he and Achilles could not speak together ‘as a young man and a girl’ (Il. 22.126–28). The reworking foreshadows the ultimately disastrous consequences of this meeting. It is obviously significant for the concerns of the epic that one of Jason’s two aristeia in the poem is a rhetorical ‘victory’ over an already lovesick girl; here, Jason is abetted by Hera (cf. 3.919–26), as he will be by Medea’s magical advice in his second aristeia. The critical 60 61 62

Cf. P. Watson, Ancient Stepmothers: myth, misogyny, and reality (Leiden 1994). Cf. the comment of the bT-scholia, #9O  #X T   #    C    ,  , ‘the poet takes an ordinary event and enlarges it with grandeur and envisionment’. Cf. Hunter on 3.956–61, id. (1993a) 48–9.

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inferences to be drawn from these facts are, however, the subject of fierce debate. Too much modern criticism has been concerned with assessing whether or not Jason measures up to Homeric standards, as though those standards were self-evidently worth simple replication. More productive would be to see the Apollonian text as (in part) an exploration of the Homeric text, concerned to tease out what is important and what is elided in the archaic text’s creation of a (? flawed) heroic world. A scene such as Jason’s ‘testing’ of the crew after the Clashing Rocks have been safely passed is a clear example of how Apollonius puts Homer under the critical spotlight.63 The primary technique for this exploration of Homer is the transference of Homeric scenes and patterns to new contexts. Thus, for example, the impenetrable darkness which descends upon the Argonauts as they are sailing home through the Aegean (4.1694–1718) has its Homeric counterpart in the dark fog which Zeus pours around the combatants in Iliad 17 and from which Ajax asks Zeus to save them:64 “d  (  &## %b B% 2 C - $P j!) % ' C K) ', 'C ]#5% *'%U  'X (   A# %%)   Q  3'  [ .” o ( ) , 'X  8 ]#Q  '($ ! U   ' C - X %'%   &%  ]!#) -# ' C #: ) (! ' C  T% (U ‘Father Zeus, save the sons of the Achaeans from this darkness, make the air clear, and allow us to see. Destroy us in daylight, if this is your wish.’ So he spoke, and the Father pitied him as he wept; straightaway he scattered the darkness and dispersed the fog, the sun shone out, and the whole battle was clear to see. (Homer, Iliad 17.645–50)

Ajax’s words are much admired in the critical tradition. ‘Longinus’ praises them as an example of how Homer ‘enters into heroic greatness’ (De subl. 9.10), and the scholia on vv. 645–7 express admiration for the fact that Ajax asks for daylight, not so that he can be saved, but so that he can continue to perform heroic deeds; this is the true mark of the  # . At first reading, Jason’s behaviour might seem the very opposite of ‘heroic’, by the standards of the interpretative tradition: . . .  C@4% ! 5 &%!    (#" ] `59 &Q ) BQ%% #)  'C   &%!#   '($U ## 'X J$5 2%! ) ## 'C jQ#) 63

Cf. Hunter (1988) 445–7.

64

For other aspects of the Apollonian scene cf. Hunter (1993a) 167.

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The Argonautica of Apollonius and epic tradition ## 'C  C> $  &  % ' %% . ? ') Q 'X  C  K    B 0 # $ &4) l C    " z U

Jason, however, raised up his hands and in a loud voice called upon Phoibos, summoning him to save them. In his despair tears flowed down; countless were the offerings he promised to provide, many at Pytho, many at Amyklai, many to Ortygia. Son of Leto, you heard his prayer and swiftly descended from heaven to the two Melantian rocks which lie in the open sea. (Argonautica 4.1701–8)

Jason’s position is, however, entirely different from that of Ajax: the Argonauts do not even know where they are, in an extreme version of the uncertainty as to the supernatural forces at work which characterises the whole journey,65 whereas Ajax’s control of the world around him is marked by his certainty that ‘not even a complete fool’ would fail to recognise that Zeus was aiding the Trojans (Il. 17.629–30). Jason’s urgent prayers (1704–5), which are to prove successful, mark the desperateness of the Argonauts’ plight, but they also echo the prayer to Apollo with which the voyage began (1.416–19), thus reminding the god of his promises with regard to their nostos (1.360–2), a theme reintroduced at 4.1700–1. Whatever view, then, is taken of the Apollonian scene, it is clear that any simple distinction between ‘heroic’ and ‘non-heroic’ behaviour misrepresents the complexity of both texts. The Homeric scholia in fact express their surprise at Ajax’s tears, noting that this unique show of emotion on his part marks the great pathos of the situation. Tears are more common from Jason, and the addition of &%!#   (4.1703, cf. 1718) even interprets those tears for us, but here again the starting-point is already found in the Homeric pattern.66 Alongside epic ‘heroism’ goes, in the traditional account, epic emotion, and here too the portrayal of Jason has seemed to many critics remarkably deficient. Here too, however, Apollonius’ epic must be set within its literary and contemporary context. The primary narrative motor of the Iliad is Achilles’ wrath, first the unforgetting  which determines the suffering of the Greeks (1.1–5) and then the explosive mixture of anger and guilt which leads him to resume fighting and to mistreat the body of Hector. The wider semantic field of anger is, however, not the prerogative of Achilles alone:67 the first divine emotion of the poem is the anger of Apollo, introduced 65 66

67

Cf. e.g. Hunter (1993a) 78–9. Pietsch (1999) now provides a useful bibliographical survey of work on ‘character’ in the Argonautica. There is, of course, much more involved in the Apollonian text than merely the difference from Homeric patterns. Jason’s prayer seems also to rework a passage from Book 1 of Callimachus’ Aitia (fr. 20 Massimilla). For useful surveys of anger in the Iliad cf. Galinsky (1988) 340–6, Manakidou (1998) 242–4, N. J. Austin, ‘Anger and disease in Homer’s Iliad’ in Kazazis–Rengakos (1999) 11–49.

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as early as the ninth verse,   9%# !#  (cf. 1.44, 46, 75 etc.); Agamemnon’s first speech (1.26–32) seems angry as well as threatening,68 and the king’s anger becomes an explicit theme soon enough (1.78, 81–2, 102ff. etc.).69 In a famous passage after the death of Patroclus, Achilles reflects upon the pleasures and dangers of anger: F      C &Z & #   ! #) A C  #Q(   !# ) V #b #$ #   # 9 &'  % 4 %% &M  -‚  U F X  ! #%  .M &' C; . &## X  Q! (%  &!Q   ) $,  % 4 %% # '(%  &( ". Would that strife should vanish from the world of gods and men, and anger too, which enrages even a man of great sense. Anger is far sweeter than trickling honey and grows big in the hearts of men like smoke. This is how the ruler of men, Agamemnon, has brought me to anger. But let us, despite our distress, forget the past and forcibly suppress the passion in our hearts. (Homer, Iliad 18.107–13)

In wishing for the disappearance of  and ! #, Achilles wishes away not merely the terrible narrative in which he finds himself trapped, but the whole world of martial epic constructed out of ‘strife and anger’. It is this heroic anger which Ajax still nurses, even in the Underworld (Od. 11.544, 553–62). So too, Phoenix’s attempt in Book 9 to win Achilles over conjures up a whole world of real or potential epics (# &') fuelled by wrath (Il. 9.524–5). The association of Achilles with anger lives on in the Argonautica through the wrath (! #) of his mother Thetis against her husband Peleus (4.810–17, 864–5, 879). In the Odyssey, it is the anger of Poseidon, introduced as early as 1.20 (cf. 1.69, 78 etc.), which determines much of the suffering of Odysseus, though it is the anger of Helios at the killing of his cattle (12.376) which brings final destruction upon the rest of the crew. Anger is felt by many characters, divine and human, through the Odyssey,70 but it is only very rarely ascribed explicitly to Odysseus himself.71 Alcinous acknowledges that 68 69 70 71

Cf. the observation of the bT-scholia on 1.29, ##     !   #

) , $, . Cf. Hor. Epist. 1.2.13 ira quidem communiter urit utrumque (sc. Achilles and Agamemnon); the prominence Horace gives to ira in this poem is a clear sign of its generic significance. J. S. Clay, The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey (Princeton 1983) studies the theme of divine anger. The possible significance of his name as ‘Man of Wrath’ may be left out of account here. It is telling that at 17.14 Telemachus, who now knows the identity of the stranger, raises the possibility that he will feel m¯enis, but in a speech designed to mislead Eumaeus. So, too, the potential for anger is ascribed to Odysseus by others at 22.59, 369.

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Odysseus was angered (!  ) by Euryalos’ tactless remarks (8.238), though Odysseus had merely declared himself ‘roused’ ( $ '  *Z) by the ‘thumos-biting speech’ (8.185). So, too, the disguised hero tells Iros not to anger him (18.20), but here he is, at the very least, playing a rˆole. Less ambiguous perhaps is the poet’s statement that Odysseus ‘felt anger’ (&  %) at the evil deeds of the maidservants (20.16), and the phrase 2 ' *'Z, frequently used of Odysseus’ harsh stare (e.g. to Iros (18.14), Melantho (19.70), and Eurymachos (22.60)) was certainly interpreted by later grammarians as a mark of anger.72 Nevertheless, this meagre harvest is one manifestation of the presentation of Odysseus as a man who weighs up the options offered by any situation and prefers strategy to immediate, potentially reckless, action (cf. e.g. 9.299–305, 17.235–8, 20.6–21); Achilles observed that even the #Q man may be driven to anger (Il. 18.108) and hence – by implication – to actions which he comes to regret, but Odysseus, the most #Q of all Greek heroes, is the extreme example of self-control. The differences between Achilles and Odysseus, like the more familiar contest between Ajax (in one way an ersatz Achilles) and Odysseus over the arms of Achilles, were always available to be used to construct an opposition between the two, and some texts clearly exploit this potential. The ‘man of action’ versus ‘the fluent speaker’ is a powerful, if simple, idea. In commenting upon the opening of Achilles’ great speech to Odysseus in Iliad 9, which expresses the hero’s distaste for less than truthful speech, the scholia connect the wish for such straightforward speech with the anger which Achilles feels. Here, then, Odysseus’ two principal characteristics – apparent emotional control and rhetorical skill – are opposed to one heroic pattern; the importance of such linkage for the Argonautica should be clear. Of particular interest is Aristophanes’ Frogs, in which it is the ‘loudthundering’ (814) Aeschylus who is characterised by violent anger (cf. 804, 814, 844, 856), whereas Euripides confidently relies upon powers of critical argument. Aeschylus is, of course, fashioned as a traditionalist, an Achilles (992) to Euripides’ Odysseus, who is a schemer devoted to long speeches and intellectual games. Anger is part of this ‘epic’ portrayal of the older playwright; the grand emotion has been appropriated as a mark of the past. The Aristophanic Aeschylus’ anger is also to be connected with the grandeur – for comedy, unintelligible, bombastic grandeur – of his style. His language swells no less than his emotions, whereas the rhetorical #  #  of Euripides is constructed as unworthy of the emotional 72

It is worth noting that Apollonius does not use this epic formula, or any variation of it (cf. Call., Hecale fr. 72 Hollis), in Arg.; this may be one small measure of his distance from Homer.

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power of tragedy, however clever it may be. Anger and the style which attends it thus carry a distinct generic resonance. When Horace discusses the relation between subject and style he notes that comedy can take on tragic tones: interdum tamen et uocem comoedia tollit iratusque Chremes tumido delitigat ore Sometimes, however, comedy too raises its voice and the angry Chremes rages with swollen mouth . . . (Horace, Ars Poetica 93–4)

Both Chremes’ anger and his ‘swollen’ style are out of place generically: they belong to the higher realms of tragedy. Although, as we shall see, there is plenty of anger in the Argonautica, the relation of the central male character to this emotion may be important in assessing the stance adopted by an epic poet to the generic tradition. In the matter of anger, Apollonius’ Jason stands far closer to Homer’s Odysseus than to Achilles, though still some distance away.73 In the Argonautica, anger is, above all, the emotion of Zeus,74 of Aietes,75 and, of the Argonauts, Idas (1.492, 3.566, 1170, 1252).76 The only other mortal characters who are central to the narrative and who are explicitly stated to feel anger are Heracles (1.1263), Telamon (1.1289, 3.383), Minos (3.1000, where he acts as a parallel to Aietes), Medea (4.391, 1671–2) and, once, the collective of Argonauts as a whole (2.20). The only passage, in fact, in which the poet himself associates Jason with anger is the simile describing his ‘rest period’ between sowing the field and doing battle with the warriors who spring up: . . .  ' C   5 B(   &$%%(  $" %9%  ['  ':U

(: 'X Q C #()   'C #4%  $  &#) Z %$ƒ K #) A B( C ]'   4   $ %   C &'(%) & 'X ##  &, &, %   !(' B !. With his helmet he then drew water from the flowing river to quench his thirst; he flexed his knees to keep them supple and filled his great heart with martial spirit. He was eager for the fray, like a wild boar which sharpens its tusks against men who hunt it and streams of foam flow to the ground from its angry mouth. (Argonautica 3.1348–53) 73

74 76

Cf. Manakidou (1998), and on the whole subject of anger in Arg. cf. also P. Dr¨ager, Die Argonautika des Apollonios Rhodios. Das zweite Zorn-Epos der griechischen Literatur (Munich–Leipzig 2001), esp. pp. 62–76. 75 3.367–8, 449, 493, 607, 614, 632; 4.9, 235, 512, 740, 1083, 1205. Cf. 4.458. The language in which Idmon describes the effect of wine on Idas (1.477–8) derives from Phoenix’s account of Meleager’s anger (Il. 9.553–4).

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The boar is the classic example of the angry creature,77 and the simile marks Jason’s present fitness for the task ahead. Even here, however, anger is not explicitly ascribed to Jason and, like the foaming mouth, is not as appropriate to him as to the hunted boar; here too, then, there is no straightforward presentation of an ‘angry Jason’.78 As Achilles is the $ '4, ‘the passionate man’, par excellence, so it is noteworthy that $ , in all its related senses, is associated with Jason in a strikingly small number of cases.79 At 3.511–14 Peleus’ confident words to Jason use the term pointedly: * 'C 3  (# $, +  ( !$   -") 4 C  ,    4 C .## ' C &' (  4 U     %!4% C)   (  , Q   %%  .# . If however, your heart does not have very full confidence in its manly courage, then neither stir yourself to it nor sit here seeking some other man from among us: I shall not hold back since the worst grief that can befall is death. (Argonautica 3.511–14)

The response of the other heroes is clear enough: €  C ;*'U s # 'X $, ]) % !   ' C & $% U  'X   h@' „    )  ' C $e s$'U %b 'X  >* ')  *_5% &'(% '   V%%    *Q#$ & ##U " e &   ( { $ . So did the son of Aiakos speak. Telamon’s heart was stirred and he leapt up in eagerness for the task; so too did proud Idas, and also the two sons of Tyndareos. With them also was the son of Oineus, placing himself among men in their prime, though there was not yet any sign at all of his first soft beard; so great was the strength bursting in his spirit. (Argonautica 3.515–20)

Of Jason’s thumos there is no further word. Ancient ethical discussions standardly represent anger as a reaction to real or perceived wrong, often involving a desire for revenge.80 This is obviously relevant to the cases both of Achilles, in relation to first Agamemnon and then Hector, and of Odysseus, in relation to the suitors and their hangerson. ‘Heroic’ anger is intimately tied to perceptions of self-worth, a theme which is all but entirely elided in the Argonautica. In Jason’s case, the most 77 79 80

78 Cf. further Effe (1996) 308–9. Cf. Ovid, Met. 7.545–6 etc. Cf. 3.787, 1084, 4.1748; for 1.1289 cf. below, pp. 115–16. I leave out of account the instances of ‘the thumos of all the Argonauts’. Cf. Arist. Rhet. 2.1378a 31–3, Lactantius, De ira dei 17.13, citing various Hellenistic definitions. There is much of value on the whole subject in D. S. Allen, The World of Prometheus (Princeton 2000), see Index s.v. ‘anger’, W. V. Harris, Restraining Rage (Cambridge, Mass. 2001).

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obvious object for anger would be Pelias, who, in the traditional story as we find it evoked in Pythian 4, usurped the throne which belonged rightly to Jason but offered to step aside if the young man would recover the Fleece. This, however, is a theme to which Apollonius gives very little prominence;81 it appears explicitly only at 3.333–4 in the course of Argos’ speech to Aietes, where, however, it is only Jason’s ancestral property, not any claim to the throne of Iolcus, which is at stake. At 1.902–3 Jason tells Hypsipyle that it will be enough for him ‘to be allowed by Pelias to live in [his] homeland’ and to be delivered by the gods from his present trials; no word here of rule in Iolcus. However opaque the situation evoked, it is clear that Pelias has committed some wrong against the young hero, but it is a wrong which calls forth no anger or thirst for revenge; it is stressed more than once that Pelias will be punished not by Jason, but by Medea, who is acting as Hera’s instrument of revenge for quite other wrongs done to her (cf. 3.1133–6, 4.242–3). Pelias devises the voyage to rid himself of Jason, whom, on the basis of the oracle he has received, he perceives as the potential source of his own downfall, but Jason’s rˆole will in fact be limited to bringing back with him the real destroyer; like many oracles, this one misleads. Thus, a narrative technique which is usually seen as merely an elliptical variation upon archaic ‘fullness’ is in fact closely tied to Apollonius’ rewriting of central epic concerns. In his account of anger, the De ira, Seneca makes much of the fact that anger cannot be concealed – it shows itself with every flicker on the face of an angry man (De ira 1.1.5–7). Jason’s inwardness, his apparent passivity in the face of events, is one of the most frequently remarked features of Apollonius’ central character,82 and the apparent absence of anger is an important part of this presentation. For Aristotle, an absence or deficiency of anger (& %) was opposed to an excess (] # ) and to the commendable mean, which he calls   (EN 2.1108a 4–9, 4.1125b26– 26b10); he notes, however, that names for these conditions are not really in common usage. The man who is deficient in anger comes in for some harsh words: Those who are not angry at the things they should be angry at are thought to be fools (-#), and so are those who are not angry in the right way, at the right time, or with the right persons; for such a man is thought not to feel things nor to be pained by them, and, since he does not get angry, he is thought unlikely to defend himself; and to endure being insulted and put up with insult to one’s friends is slavish. (Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea 5.1126a4–8) 81 82

Cf. Pietsch (1999) 32–41. On possible connections between such inwardness and literacy cf. P. Toohey, ‘Epic and rhetoric’ in I. Worthington (ed.), Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action (London 1994) 153–75.

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Apollonius’ Jason is not, of course, &    in any absolute sense, any more than he is a passionless Stoic sage; he presumably shares the anger which all the Argonauts feel at Amycus’ challenge at 2.19–20. Nevertheless, this Aristotelian criticism can suggest just how provocative and puzzling a figure Jason is, when viewed within the epic tradition. No scene dramatises these issues more powerfully than the party on the evening before the Argonauts set sail. This scene of feasting carries the didactic force of a long tradition of poetry and prose dealing with the correct conduct of the symposium;83 Idas’ drunken boasting is a clear, negative paradigm, for this was an occasion without hybris, and Idmon’s speech urging ‘other words’ with which to encourage and console (1.476– 84), accompanied by a mythological exemplum fitting the present situation, evokes the strongly gnomic element of earlier sympotic lyric and elegy. The crucial Homeric passages in this tradition are firstly Odysseus’ famous praise of the pleasures of the well-ordered feast (Od. 9.2–11), which stands in counterpoint both to the brutality of the Cyclops, whose ‘descendant’ Idas is, and to the lawless feasting of the suitors, and secondly the feast of the gods which concludes Iliad 1. In this latter passage, Hephaestus intervenes to stop Zeus and Hera quarrelling ('  '  | %# %%  D')   !   T, ‘there will be no pleasure in the splendid feast, when worse behaviour gets the upper hand’1.575–6), and then the sight of him ‘bustling about’ moves all the divine diners to laughter. In both Homeric passages, the performance of song is crucial to the pleasure of the properly ordered feast (cf. the performance of Apollo and the Muses at Il. 1.603–4), and that rˆole is fulfilled in the Argonautica by Orpheus. While most of the Argonauts swap stories (1.457–9, above p. 102), a preoccupied Jason has nothing to say: C c C ;*%' X &4! * +5   Q %  E% )     ZU , ' C . C 2%   (#" ]   %  h@'U “;*%')  4'   %   +#%% ; 3'  %%% ,  . D % 'T" (9 #  ) C &(#' .' & Q_ ; K%   ' $ ) A "  Z% .## '   #% & ) '  C ]##  d b % %%(     , ' $) 4 Q   #  %% % ' C &(  . # 83

Cf. Bielohlawek (1940), Hunter (1983a) 186. Of particular interest is the normative account at Xen. Cyr. 2.2.1–14. It is interesting that Philodemus dealt with correct sympotic behaviour in On the Good King According to Homer (below, p. 127), cf. frs. xvii–xviii, xx Dorandi.

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h @'  +%)  *  , &  " U 5  C C;4  &%%  _ .” There, however, the son of Aison pondered upon everything helpless and absorbed, like a man in despair. Idas observed him with scorn and abused him in a loud voice: “Son of Aison, what is this plan which you are turning over in your mind? Tell us all what you are thinking! Has fear come over you and crushed you with its weight? It is this which panics men who are cowards. Be witness now my rushing spear, with which above all other men I achieve glory in wars – for Zeus is not the source of so much strength as is my spear – that no grief shall destroy us nor shall our challenge be left unachieved while Idas travels with you – no, not even should a god confront us, so powerful a helper am I whom you have brought from Arene.” (Argonautica 1.460–71)

Idas demands that Jason speak openly,  %%, rather than plotting in silence (  +#%% ), if it is not in fact fear which has taken over. Silence during a symposium may be a mark of disagreeable standoffishness84 or of the wise self-control of the philosopher,85 but the two opposed models of behaviour which Idas’ words set up may both be seen as extreme readings of epic patterns of behaviour. On the one hand, Idas sets himself as an Achilles, ‘the best of the Greeks’, and one who famously proclaimed the necessity to speak openly without concealment (Il. 9.308–13); so, too, in his account of  #:$!, which may be seen in part as the ethicised version of traditional virtue, Aristotle observes that such a man must be ‘open in his hatred and his affections, for to act with concealment, to care more for what people think than for the truth, is a sign of fearfulness, and he must speak and act openly, for he always speaks freely (%% 4) and truthfully, except when speaking ironically to the many’ (EN 4.1124b 26– 31). So too, the  # :$! considers himself worthy of great deeds and honours, whereas someone who does not consider themselves so deserving may be %Z but could not be ‘great’ (EN 4.1123b 1–11).86 Whether or not Aristotle’s account can shed light upon the actual presentation of Jason,87 Idas’ boastfulness must be seen within a number of intersecting contexts – epic tradition, ethical theorising, traditional moral values. At best, his self-presentation is a mildly parodic misrepresentation of Achillean characteristics – Achilles did indeed fight with gods, but the blasphemous Idas was to be blasted for so doing – as is made clear when the action of Jason 84 85 86 87

Cf. Plut. Mor. 456e, ‘at a drinking-party, the man who remains silent is disagreeable and irksome to the company (!8 5 %$%    )’. Cf. Plut. Mor. 503d–4a. %Z and related words do not appear in the Argonautica; Homer has %  once each in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and %%Q twice in the Odyssey. Cf. e.g. DeForest (1994) 9–17.

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and the rest of the crew to restrain the quarrel (1.492–5) is described in verses which rework Achilles’ own action to check a quarrel between Idomeneus and the angry Ajax (Il. 23.488–98); Achilles is a far more complex character than the shallow and stereotyped set of responses displayed by Idas.88 As for Jason, Idas presents him as a kind of Odysseus, particularly the Odysseus of the second half of the Odyssey, who plots in silence against the suitors. We may think particularly of Od. 20.1–30, in which the disguised hero restrains his desire to exact instant punishment from the wicked maidservants, and as he plots and tosses and turns (+#%% ) on his bed, he is compared to a man constantly turning over a roasting blood-pudding. One of the principal Homeric forerunners of this scene is indeed Demodocus’ song of the neikos between Odysseus and Achilles at a ‘feast of the gods’ (Od. 8.75–82);89 the scholia explain that the two heroes quarrelled over the best way to take Troy, i.e. to complete the task in hand, whether by intelligence (%Q %) or by bravery (&' ): the scholium on 8.77 expresses this as a contrast between :$!( and % (. The Apollonian scene offers a more nuanced (and ironic) version of the scholiastic dichotomy. Moreover, part of Apollonius’ dramatisation of the Homeric narrative also dramatises a central difference of technique. In the Odyssey, Odysseus weeps as he listens to the bard’s song in which he himself is a character, covering his face for shame (Od. 8.83–95); the meaning of the gesture is clear enough to Alcinous, the only Phaeacian to observe it. In the Argonautica, however, Jason’s demeanour remains ambiguous to both readers and the other characters (1.460–1), while his rˆole in the quarrel itself passes to Idmon, whose very name suggests ‘knowledge/understanding’, the %Q % of the account in the scholia.90 It is in general true that Apollonius tells us much less than does Homer about the motives and drives of all his principal characters, with the partial exception of Medea; our uncertainties as readers mirror the mist of partial knowledge in which they themselves move. Nevertheless, this poetic technique has a particular importance for the portrayal of Jason. Restraint, the thinking through of a strategy (cf. Arg. 1.461), may indeed be ‘misread’; the outwardness of irrational anger cannot be misunderstood. The apparent absence of the emotion of anger from the presentation of Jason is again thematised in the scene which follows the abandonment of Heracles ( .% , 1.1285) in Mysia. Jason’s silent distress is now contrasted with the overt anger of Telamon, Achilles’ uncle: 88 89 90

It is tempting to see Idas’ unmannerly drinking (1.472–4) as a memory of Phoenix’s account of how the infant Achilles used to make him wet with wine (Il. 9.490–1). Cf. e.g. Nelis (1992) 169, Clauss (1993) 80–3; above, p. 93. For the etymology of Idmon’s name cf. 2.821–2.

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. . .  ' C &!"% & $!  '  5   Z  '  5 ;*%') &## C z%  9 "     . " $, '. s # ' C E#  ! #) H' C   U “i% C 3  3#)   Q  .  D  67# # 5U % 'C     A ) A ,  $ ' &C 6^##(' 4 % #Q:") K    'Z% 2  K'  % . &##  Q D';     % +  L  t ' ' # %$  4 .” The son of Aison was so struck by helplessness that he could not speak in favour of any proposal, but sat gnawing at his heart because of the grim disaster which had occurred. Telamon, however, was gripped by anger and spoke out: ‘Sit there at your ease, since it was you who arranged to abandon Herakles. This was your plan. You did not want his glory to overshadow yours throughout Greece, if the gods ever allow us to return safe. But why waste time on words? I shall go after him, even without these friends of yours who helped you plan this treachery!’ (Argonautica 1.1286–95)

Here too a version of Odysseus is opposed to a version of Achilles. The language of Telamon’s speech ( ,  % , ' #) clearly paints Jason as an Odysseus, a perspective reinforced by the narrator’s introduction, which reworks Circe’s words to Odysseus at Odyssey 10.378–9: C [ )C>'$% )  C . C E_  L% &Q'") $, ')  #. Why, Odysseus, do you sit thus like a speechless man, eating your spirit . . .? (Homer, Odyssey 10.378–9)

So, too, Telamon’s rejection of ‘words’ in 1294 echoes Achilles at Il.18.80, as he too reflect on the loss of his dearest comrade:91   4) X .  C>#Q M # %% U &##    D'   # N#  C + 5 J( #) ,  O   (  5 +  L%   #; Mother, these things are the work of the Olympian. But what pleasure is there for me in them, seeing that my comrade, Patroclus, has perished, he whom I honoured above all comrades, equal to my own life? (Homer, Iliad 18.79–82)

His eyes blaze, in imitation of those of Achilles (Il. 19.365–6). The sequel continues, but alters, these rewritings. When the epiphany and speech of 91

Cf. Clauss (1993) 200–1.

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Glaucus has caused Telamon to regret his anger (! #, 1.1289), he asks Jason not to feel anger (! #) against him (1.1332); Jason replies that he will not ‘nurse bitter rage, despite the hurt’ ( 4  &' $  &M) |    & ) because of the proper motives of Telamon’s anger. Jason’s behaviour now gestures towards and away from that of Achilles (cf. Il. 19.67–8);92 the poet has created a fusion of the quarrel of Iliad 1 with the synkrisis of Achilles and Odysseus in a powerful exploration of the dynamic tensions within a group. This is also an excellent example of how Apollonius’ characters are textured rewritings of earlier literary figures; such a debt to the past, and particularly to Homer, was an enduring feature of the ancient epic tradition. Just as Glaucus confirms the folly of Telamon’s initial response, so at 3.382–5 Jason restrains ‘the son of Aiakos’ from a swift and angry response to (the angry) Aietes, which would have been destructive (]# ); here, too, Jason is distanced from heroic wrath,93 and from the thumos which motivates both Telamon and Aietes (3.383, 396). This scene sets Jason’s ‘soothing words’ and submissive manner against not only Telamon’s impulsiveness but also against the ‘epic’ response of Aietes, whose subsequent decision to test the Argonauts is phrased in a close reworking of formulaic Homeric decision-making. Jason’s distance from traditional patterns is here as clear as anywhere.94 So, too, Idas’ anger (3.557, 566) at the suggestion that the crew seek Medea’s help rather than mounting a frontal assault is plainly futile; Idas’ preferred option would lead to certain destruction. It is not just Jason who is distanced from the emotion of anger, but the whole value structure of the poem. The repeated pattern by which Jason is distanced from the central figure of the Iliad is, of course, of crucial significance for any reading of this aspect of the poem: that a beautifully embroidered cloak worn for a meeting with a princess takes the place of Achilles’ divinely-wrought shield has obvious significance, though its meanings remain fiercely debated.95 What is less often appreciated is the complexity of the poetic context within which this pattern is set and which actively works against any simplistic interpretation of Jason as an ‘inadequate’ hero. If it is both tempting and dangerous to seek to draw broad conclusions of socio-cultural history from the negative representation of anger in the Hellenistic epic, there was at least one fairly recent paradigm which could 92 93 94

95

Cf. Beye (1982) 87, Hunter (1988) 444–5. Cf. Campbell ad loc., attractively suggesting a memory of Athena’s restraint of Achilles in Iliad 1. Jason’s subsequent silence, &!   , has a model in the reaction of the Greeks to Hector’s challenge at Il. 7.92–3, but that is, at the very least, a two-edged model, given Menelaos’ reproaches, C;!' ,  C C;! (7.96). Cf. Hunter (1993a) 52–9 (with bibliography).

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hardly not be remembered. The surviving accounts of Alexander, some of which draw extensively on the memoirs of Ptolemy Soter, stress both his habitual courtesy and restraint, but also his proneness to extreme anger, stories of which run like a leitmotif through the histories;96 ‘no one’ asserts Seneca baldly ‘was as prone to anger as Alexander’ (De ira 2.23.3). This characteristic is, of course, connected to his self-fashioning as an Achilles,97 but the extant histories draw a close link between Alexander’s irascibility and his (occasional) over-indulgence in drink; Plutarch has a scientific explanation for the fact that Alexander was  ,  $ '4 (Alexander 4.4), and notes that when he lingered too long over his cups he would become ‘unpleasantly boastful . . . too much the soldier’ (23.4). The combination of Achilles, drinking, boastfulness, and the threat of violence offers a curious parallel for the Apollonian Idas. Though there are many stories of sympotic brawls told of Alexander, the famous occasion in Samarkand on which he killed Kleitos, who objected to the ‘blasphemous’ boasting of his flatterers (cf. Idas’ boasts), holds a special place;98 it entered the rhetorical and philosophic traditions as a stock example of the evil of anger.99 According to most accounts, both men give way to drunken boasting, but Alexander’s passionate anger had fatal consequences. It is not that Idas or Jason or Idmon ‘stand for’ any historical character in this scene; the motifs are arranged in quite different sequences. Rather, after Alexander, sympotic behaviour and the place of anger in social relationships will have held a special place in reflections upon leadership.100 Here, epic tradition, recent history, and contemporary ethical reflection overlap in very productive ways. 4 epic memory If anger is intimately connected to a perception of harm suffered or threatened, it will obviously be closely tied to memory, and this is given particular emphasis in the presentation of Juno’s anger in the Aeneid, and its mortal counterpart, the unforgetting anger of Dido (4.532), which surpasses even that of Juno in trying to control the whole of future history, not just the immediate fate of Aeneas (4.607–29).101 Aeneas’ sufferings are saeuae 96 97 98 99 101

Cf. Arrian, Anab. 4.8.9, 7.29.1, Quintus Curtius 3.12.19, 8.1.43–52, Plut. Alex. 9.4, 13.2, 50.1. Cf. Arrian, Anab. 1.12.1, 4.9.5, 7.14.4, 7.14.8–10, 7.16.8, Plut. Alex. 15.5. Arrian, Anab. 4.8, QC 8.1, Plut. Alex. 50–1, R. Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (London 1973) 309–14, N. G. L. Hammond, Sources for Alexander the Great (Cambridge 1993) 89–94. 100 Cf. further below, pp. 126–7. Cf. Cic. TD 4.79, Sen. De ira 3.17.1. This is not the place for a discussion of anger in the Aeneid; for some starting-points and bibliography cf. Galinsky (1988), M. C. J. Putnam, ‘Anger, Blindness and Insight in Virgil’s Aeneid’ in M. C. Nussbaum (ed.), The Poetics of Therapy (Apeiron 23.4, 1990) 7–40, D. P. Fowler, ‘Epicurean Anger’ in S. M. Braund and C. Gill (eds.), The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature (Cambridge 1997) 16–35, pp. 30–5, Hardie (1997) 142–51.

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memorem Iunonis ob iram, and the combination of the goddess’ knowledge of the threat posed to her beloved Carthage and the burning memory of past affront (1.12–32, 36 aeternum seruans sub pectore uulnus) are the motive forces which dictate her actions. Virgil’s principal models here are, first, Poseidon’s anger in the Odyssey and, secondly, Hera’s desire for revenge on Pelias and the dark anger of Zeus against the Aiolidai (2.1195, 3.336–9), apparently intensified after the death of Apsyrtus (cf. 4.558), in the Argonautica.102 Virgil overturns the divine structure of the Argonautica, in which Hera (for her own motives) protected Jason on his travels. By comparison with Virgil, however, Apollonius’ use of the motif of unforgetting divine anger is, like much in the Hellenistic epic, understated. The brief narrative in the proem of how Pelias paid due honour to ‘his father Poseidon and the other gods, but neglected Pelasgian Hera’ (1.13–14) evokes and inverts Homeric patterns: Pelias is cast in the rˆole of the Cyclops, another son of Poseidon, whereas the probable results of neglecting Hera will not need to be spelled out to anyone familiar with the resentful Iliadic goddess. The Iliad in fact offers a close parallel to Hera’s anger in Phoenix’s account of how Artemis sent the Calydonian boar because Oineus forgot to make offerings to her alone of all the gods, v #( C v   % U &(%  'X   $I ‘either he forgot or it did not occur to him; his mind made a terrible mistake’ (Il. 9.533–40). The narrative pattern is in fact made explicit in the Argonautica in the included story of Aphrodite’s wrath against the Lemnians for failing to pay her due honour (1.614–15, 802–3);103 this is part of a wider technique in which events on Lemnos reflect and illuminate the patterns of the narrative which frames them.104 So too, the story of Paraibios (2.468–89) is one of the punishment of impiety and of gratitude for benefactions, a theme which one day will acquire ominous importance for Jason who listens to the tale. The importance of memory for epic narrative is far wider than merely its link with anger, itself a primary narrative force;105 in the Odyssey, the danger posed by the Lotus-eaters is of ‘forgetting one’s nostos’ (Od. 9.97), which would, of course, put an end to the epic of nostos, and the conclusion of that epic will require an act of forgetting so that conflict may cease (Od. 24.484– 5). Even in relatively small details, such as the death of Elpenor, ‘forgetting’ 102 103

104 105

On these latter themes cf. Feeney (1991) 62–9, Hunter (1993a) 79–80, Campbell (1994) on 3.336–9. Cf. Feeney (1991) 59. Hypsipyle’s substitution of Aphrodite’s # . . .  for the ! # *  ascribed to her by the narrator is part of the rhetorical partiality of the princess’ account, cf. Hunter (1993a) 111–12. Cf. Hunter (1993a) 47–52. Cf. J. A. Notopoulos, ‘Mnemosyne in oral literature’ TAPA 69 (1938) 465–93, though his account of the effects of the introduction of literacy to an oral culture is now outdated; R. P. Martin, The Language of Heroes. Speech and Performance in the Iliad (Ithaca 1989) 77–89.

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is inimical to the continuation of epic (Od. 10.557, 11.62); Polyphemos and the Phaeacians remain for ever as symbols of those who suffered because they remembered too late (Od .9.507, 172–83),106 and the Trojans repeat the fatal pattern as they bring the Wooden Horse within the city, instamus tamen immemores caecique furore | et monstrum infelix sacrata sistimus arce (Aen. 2.244–5). If it is Juno’s memory which activates the action of the Aeneid, it is rather the memory of the Muses which is made responsible for narrative (cf. Il. 2.492, Aen. 1.8, 7.41, 645). Apollonius, however, stresses his personal control of poetic memory and narrative (1.1–2, 18–22, 23), as part of his now familiar distance from the impersonal Homeric voice.107 ‘Memory’, however, also functions in epic in at least three other important, and related, ways. First, epic narration itself is always an act of memory, implying a past narrative worth telling: thus, Aeneas sees his narrative task as infandum . . . renouare dolorem (2.3), and the ‘epic’ of Meleager is one which Phoenix saw for himself and ‘remembers’ (Il. 9.527). One aspect of this valuation of memory is the privileged place epic gives to included narratives, both of direct relevance to ‘the principal story’ (e.g. Achilles to Thetis in Iliad 1) and of more oblique significance (e.g. the stories of Nestor and Phoenix in the Iliad, or of Menelaus in the Odyssey).108 In this feature also, discretion within generic parameters, sometimes amounting to an apparent preference for silence, is the Apollonian hallmark. In part, this is because of the new prominence of the narrator, who himself is able to expand ‘tangential’ stories at length (e.g. the story of Aristaios, 2.498–528), and, as the Aristaios narration suggests, there is a sense in which aetiology, which binds the present to the past, has taken the place of epic stories, which rather accentuate the divide between the two. This distinction between Homer and Apollonius is not, of course, absolute. Phineus’ account of his companion Paraibios (2.468–89) evokes, as we have seen, familiar epic themes; Lycus’ narrative of Heracles at 2.774–810 suggests the various Heracles epics known to antiquity,109 and athletic competitions at funeral games (2.780–5) is another well-known setting for epic poetry. Nevertheless, brevity and ellipse are striking hallmarks of Apollonius’ epic. Jason himself summarises ‘the poem so far’ for Lycus at 2.762–72, in a catalogue which makes Odysseus’ account of his adventures to Penelope 106 107 108 109

The abandonment of Heracles in Mysia seems also related to this theme, though Apollonius does not explicitly attribute that to forgetfulness (&' "%, 1.1283). This remains true, whatever nuance is given to 0% ' C 24   L  &' in 1.22. Cf. Hardie (1993) 99, ‘epic heroes themselves feel a strong pressure to narrate, by telling stories of past heroic events’. Cf. Hunter (1998), and below p. 214.

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(Od. 23.310–43) seem positively verbose. A similar impression is left by a comparison of Argos’ brief plea to the Argonauts for help (2.1123–33) with Odysseus’ speech to Nausicaa when in a not dissimilar predicament (Od. 6.149–85). A particularly interesting example is the encounter between the Argonauts and the sons of Phrixos in Book 2. In response to Jason’s question as to the identity of the shipwrecked foursome, Argos provides an Apollonian version of the familiar genealogical self-presentation of the Homeric hero: ;*#' `M C & C 6^##(' ;L e% &   ' $ &Q  (  ) `M V   #  &4#$  ;*4   9 9Z)  B !Q%    6^ U  'X  *%     K'%   (  #%%  '$, &   %%U , X   C  M  + 2%Q"% `$M"  (  ='" \U   '   ;*4   (") Q  e 

$(#M  G#  &( ' $%Q"%  U  M &  *X ) &## C  X i'

, ( `M  ;*4  ' %U 1 5 'C)    ,  ( &#  )  Q C  C>! ,   C;(  E . * 'X  3 '  Q  ' '%) '  =$ %% #  3) '  `  )  'X 0#) X 'C  , #     h; .

1145 1145a

1150

1155

That a descendant of Aiolos called Phrixos trevelled to Aia from Hellas I have no doubt you yourselves are already aware. Phrixos reached the city of Aietes mounted on a ram, which Hermes made golden, and even to this day you can see its fleece spread out on the thickly leaved branches of an oak. Then on its own instructions, Phrixos sacrificed the ram to the son of Kronos, Zeus Phyxios – this chosen from all his titles – and Aietes received him in the palace and, as a gesture of his kindly intentions, gave him in marriage his daughter Chalkiope and asked no bride-price for her. These two are our parents. Phrixos died an old man in Aietes’ house and, in accordance with our father’s instructions, we are travelling to Orchomenos to recover Athamas’ possessions. If, as is natural, you wish to learn our names, this man’s name is Kytissoros, this is Phrontis, and this Melas. Myself you may call Argos. (Argonautica 2.1141–56)

The most famous such speech in Homer is Glaucus’ response to Diomedes at Il.6.145–210 (‘as are the generations of leaves, so are those of men . . .’), containing the lengthy narrative about Bellerophon, and that scene does indeed seem to have been in Apollonius’ mind. In both epics, the speech of self-presentation leads to a recognition of relationship (Il. 6.215 ∼ Arg.

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2.1160), but two specific features in the use of this motif mark the later epic. Bellerophon’s grandfather was the Aeolid Sisyphus, a brother of Kretheus, Jason’s grandfather, and of Athamas, the grandfather of the sons of Phrixos. Family relationship is therefore doubly figured in the dependence of the Apollonian speech upon the Homeric; genealogy becomes a metaphor of literary affiliation or, to put it in the terms of the Odyssey, recognition is now of textual as well as personal identity. Secondly, there is the difference in technique between the speeches. Having first rejected the importance of

 4 in the face of human change, Glaucus then expatiates at length, noting – with a typically heroic concern for kleos – that ‘many men know of my family already’ (Il. 6.151).110 Argos, however, dispenses with preamble: ‘That a descendant of Aiolos called Phrixos travelled to Aia from Hellas I have no doubt you yourselves are already aware’. We recognise a typical reworking of an archaic motif – the assumed fame of one’s family history – but the form of the reworking forces us to ask: why should these complete strangers (cf. 2.1123–4) know this? Perhaps Argos is so self-absorbed that he cannot conceive of a human being ignorant of the story of the Golden Fleece, but perhaps rather the literate poet, always concerned to put ironising distance between himself and the discursive, repetitive style of archaic epic, not only cuts the storytelling short but, in doing so, lays bare the assumptions of epic form.111 Such ‘commentary’ on inherited poetic techniques and themes is a central feature of the Hellenistic epic. It is this poetic voice again which we hear shortly after through Jason’s words: &## X  %  :  &##4#%)  ' C E%%% ( . But we will talk of these things at a later time; now first put on clothes. (Argonautica 2.1165–6)

Homeric characters always had time to talk. ‘Memory’ is thematised in the Argonautica through Jason’s relations with Hypsipyle and Medea.112 Both ask Jason to remember them (1.896– 8, 3.1069–71), as Nausicaa had asked of Odysseus (Od. 8.461–2); Jason promises never to ‘forget’ Medea (3.1079–80), as Odysseus had promised to honour Nausicaa ‘eternally for all days’ (Od. 8.468). Whereas, however, 110 111

112

For other relevant considerations here cf. Scodel (1998) 175–6. The claim that the genealogy is already famous is a familiar strategy of Iliadic heroes, cf. Il. 20.203–5, Ford (1992) 63–7. It is instructive of the difference between Apollonius and Virgil in their approach to epic form that the latter avoids such a difficulty in the comparable scene of Achaemenides’ meeting with Aeneas and his crew (cf. R. Heinze, Virgil’s Epic Technique Eng. trans (London 1993)) by having Achaemenides recognise them as Trojans from clothes and weapons (3.596–7). Cf. Hunter on 3.1069, id. (1993a) 51–2.

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Nausicaa is never mentioned again in the Odyssey after she and Odysseus have said their farewells113 – though some readers have found significance in her absence from Odysseus’ summary of his adventures to Penelope at 23.310–41 – we know that Jason will ‘forget’ Medea soon enough, and already in the fourth book she is driven to accuse Jason of ‘forgetfulness’ now that he has got what he wanted (4.356). The recurrent analogy of Theseus and Ariadne (3.997–1004, 4.424–34)114 casts this theme into relief, for Theseus’ abandonment of Ariadne is an act which subverts the epic privileging of ‘memory’ – which is indeed one of the reasons it is given pride of place within Catullus’ ‘un-epic’ epic, Poem 64.115 An epic with a ‘forgetful’ central character is generically unsettling: just as we never hear Jason himself give anything like a full account of his past, so he also apparently cannot share in the genre’s memorialising function. ‘Memory’ also functions within epic texts through repetition, of language or scene, both within individual texts and intertextually.116 Paradigm cases of the various types are, on the one hand, Homeric ‘formula’ language and, on the other, the constant reworking and evocation of Homeric scenes in the Aeneid.117 The language of ‘memory’ as a marker of intertextual allusiveness has recently been much studied with regard to Latin poetry, particularly Ovid,118 but it is the epic tradition that most fully exploits the various layers of meaning in ideas of memory. Virgil, for example, sites his poem against Homer through Juno’s memory, which here functions also as the poet’s memory of epic tradition: ueterisque memor Saturnia belli, prima quod ad Troiam pro caris gesserat Argis necdum etiam causae irarum saeuique dolores exciderant animo; manet alta mente repostum iudicium Paridis spretaeque iniuria formae et genus inuisum et rapti Ganymedis honores . . . The daughter of Saturn, remembering the old war which she had once waged at Troy on behalf of her dear Argos – neither the causes of her anger nor the savage grief were forgotten: deep in her mind lie stored the judgement of Paris, the wrong done to her slighted beauty, her hatred for the race, and the honours paid to Ganymede, snatched away . . . (Virgil, Aeneid 1.23–8) 113 114 116 117 118

A non-Homeric tradition, perhaps going back to the epic cycle, had Nausicaa marry Telemachus and bear him a son called Perseptolis (Hellanicus, FGrHist 4 F156, Arist. fr. 512 Gigon). 115 Cf. Catullus 64.58, 135, 231–2, 248. Cf. Hunter on 3.997–1004. Good remarks in J. Nishimura-Jensen, ‘The poetics of Aethalides: silence and poikilia in Apollonius’ Argonautica’ CQ 48 (1998) 456–69. For the details cf. G. N. Knauer, Die Aeneis und Homer (G¨ottingen 1964); for the implications Quint (1993), esp. chapter 2. Cf. Conte (1986) 57–62; J. F. Miller, ‘Ovidian Allusion and the Vocabulary of Memory’ MD 30 (1993) 153–64; Hinds (1998) 3–4; below, p. 470.

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Apollonius largely avoids repetition of the most familiar Homeric kind, that of ‘formulaic’ language and of scene-type; variation, rather than sameness, is the principal determinant.119 It has often been thought that the move away from repetition reflects (or perhaps influenced) contemporary scholarly disapproval of excessive verbatim repetition in Homer, but the matter is far from certain; the nature and scope of Zenodotus’ critical work on the Homeric text, for example, remains unclear in many areas,120 as does the relation of Apollonius’ text to Zenodotean readings in Homer.121 It seems safe to say that third-century scholarship took an interest in Homeric repetition, but nothing suggests a full-scale effort to eliminate it from the text; indeed, such an undertaking seems barely imaginable, except as a scholarly joke. Whatever the connection between the two, the language, dialect and style of the Argonautica are recognisably ‘epic’,122 though they mark out a new, Alexandrian space within that tradition. In other ways also, the Argonautica exploits some of the areas of epic memory which we have been considering. The return voyage of the Argonauts offers an elaborate series of ‘returns’ to scenes from the outward voyage.123 Thus, for example, the paired deaths of the seer Idmon, son of Abas, and the steersman Tiphys on the way out (2.815–56) are repeated in the deaths of Kanthos, grandson of (? the same) Abas, and the seer Mopsos on the return voyage (4.1485–1536). The deaths of the two seers foreground similarity and difference, almost as if to advertise the gulf between ‘Alexandrian’ and traditional epic (cf. 2.815–20∼4.1502–6). Both are killed by the vicious teeth of animals trying to keep cool, but one in a watery place, the other in the burning desert. On the other hand, the passage through the Wandering Rocks replays in a quite different key the voyage through the Symplegades in Book 2; now there is no need for heroic effort at all – everything is accomplished by the playful Nereids. The successful passing of the Sirens, on the other hand, could hardly be more different from its Homeric model;124 from the perspective of Book 4, the previous three books, no less than the Homeric 119

120

121 122 123 124

Cf. Hunter (1989a) 39–40; below, pp. 262–82. Here, too, Virgil’s practice is different and more ‘Homeric’, cf. Conte (1986) 64–6. F. Cairns, ‘Orality, Writing and Reoralisation: Some Departures and Arrivals in Homer and Apollonius Rhodius’ in H. L. C. Tristram (ed.), New Methods in the Research of Epic. Neue Methoden der Epenforschung (T¨ubingen 1998) 63–84 seeks to gloss the conventional view by noting ‘reoralisation’ of certain recurrent rhetorical ‘genres’ in Arg. This would amount to the stylistic equivalent of the familiar practice of verbal analogising. Cf. K. Nickau, Untersuchungen zur textkritischen Methode des Zenodotos von Ephesos (Berlin–New York 1977) 62–123, M. L. West, Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad (Munich–Leipzig 2001) 33–45, and A. Rengakos’ review of West in BMCR 2002 (December). Cf. Rengakos (1993) 53–78, id. ‘Apollonius Rhodius as a Homeric scholar’ in Papanghelis–Rengakos (2001) 193–216. Cf. esp. Fantuzzi (1988a), (2001a), and below, pp. 262–82. Cf. Hutchinson (1988) 121–41, M. Williams (1991) 273–94. Cf. Goldhill (1991) 298–300, Knight (1995) 200–7.

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texts, belong to ‘epic tradition’. It is tempting to wonder whether it is here that we should look for Apollonius’ contribution to epic’s persistent concern, bequeathed to the tradition by the Odyssey,125 with ‘fictionality’. To what extent the Homeric poems were ‘true’ was an issue which was in the air: Eratosthenes famously dismissed the whole of Odysseus’ wanderings as pure invention,126 and any recreation of ‘the epic of wandering’ could hardly avoid the whole matter. The poet’s gradual disappearance behind his Muse through the successive invocations to Books 1, 3 and 4, no less than the contrasting modes of Phineus and Argos (cf. below), is perhaps a self-conscious acknowledgement of the range of responses possible to epic narrative. The Muse, daughter of Memory and hence preserver of ‘truth’ (i.e. that which is handed down), is also the creative force behind poetic invention.127 Repetition, which always foregrounds similarity and difference, is a vehicle for fictions which are, as Hesiod’s Muses put it, ‘like truth’. The fantastical landscapes of Book 4 in fact extend the horizons of epic in both time and space: the difference but clearly pointed relationship (cf. 4.258, 259∼2.421) between the allusive obscurity of Argos’ speech of direction128 and the dry and detailed ethnography of the prophet Phineus is a paradigm case of difference within epic sameness. In drawing upon oral tradition of a time before the world as the Argonauts knew it (%, 4.272)129 to explain the origin of the inscribed Q9  preserved in Colchis, Argos thematises the functioning of ‘memory’ over almost inconceivable stretches of time; the inclusion of such material within epic authorises epic’s own claims to memorialise (cf. 4.1774 *   M  ). So, too, the pattern seen in Book 2 of detailed prediction followed by a close working-out of the prediction confirms generic power in more than one way. Phineus plays a rˆole partly modelled on that of Circe and Tiresias in the Odyssey and, as we have seen, such repetition is a distinct feature of epic. Moreover, the confirmation of prediction within the epic is one way in which the predictive power of the poem itself is confirmed. The famous sequence 125

126 127 128 129

The bibliography on the Odyssey’s concern with fictionality is very large; some of it may be traced through Goldhill (1991) 36–68, L. H. Pratt, Lying and Poetry from Homer to Pindar (Michigan 1993), and E. L. Bowie, ‘Lies, Fiction and Slander in Early Greek Poetry’ in C. Gill and T. P. Wiseman (eds.), Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (Exeter 1993) 1–37. Cf. Pfeiffer (1968) 166–8. On how Apollonius constructs his relationship to the Muses and traditional narrative modes cf. Albis (1996), Hunter (2001a) 94–103. On this speech cf. Hunter (1991) 94–9. ‘They say’ and related forms are, of course, often a nod to the use by the poet (and often his characters) of written sources (cf. e.g. Hinds (1998) 1–2); this can, however, function alongside a more ‘literal’ significance in which orality is actually important.

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of subsequently confirmed ‘deathbed predictions’ in the Iliad (Sarpedon, Patroclus, Hector) leaves no doubt of Achilles’ fate beyond the poem, and Hector’s death and the lamentation it produces prefigures, as the hero himself was aware (Il. 6.447–65), the sack of the city itself. The certainty of Tiresias’ mysterious predictions for Odysseus beyond the narrative of the Odyssey is established by the dramatisation of true prediction within the poem. In the Aeneid, Virgil adopts a rather similar technique, although predicted events beyond the narrative of the poem (e.g. Jupiter’s promise to Venus at 1.261–96) are partly confirmed within it through such devices as the parade of future heroes in Book 6 and the Shield of Aeneas in Book 8. Important here is not merely the ‘Homeric’ nature of Virgil’s mim¯esis, but also the rˆole of prophecy and prediction in Roman society.130 Explicit prediction of the future outside the poem plays a smaller rˆole in the Argonautica. The poet assures us that Hera’s revenge on Pelias will become a reality,131 Glaucus foretells the futures of Heracles, Polyphemus and Hylas (1.1315–25), and Hera tells Thetis that Achilles is destined to marry Medea in the Elysian Fields (4.811–14), as indeed he did in some (fairly arcane) traditions. Three factors (at least) may be relevant to Apollonius’ distinctive use (or failure to use) this technique. One is the prominent foreshadowing of the future grim history of Jason and Medea which runs through Books 3 and 4, signalled in ways other than explicit prediction. Such a technique may be associated with the familiar Hellenistic and Roman device of poeticising the ‘prequels’ of famous stories, as for example in Theocritus’ depiction of the youth of the Cyclops.132 Secondly, Apollonius’ decision to write the story of the Argonautic voyage, and not, for example, an epic about Jason, and to do so in a linear fashion, beginning at the beginning and finishing the moment the voyage ends, offers (in one sense) a closed structure and one not disposed explicitly to look beyond itself. Here, Apollonius works both with and against epic tradition. Both Homeric epics (as also the Aeneid) conclude with an episode not explicitly foreshadowed in the proem – the burial of Hector, the battle between Odysseus and the suitors’ families – and the actual end of both poems was in fact disputed in ancient transmission. An alternative ‘ending’ (or, rather, beginning of a new direction) for the Iliad survives, o K C &  ( g ^ , D# 'C j_Z | … $ (   #4  &' , ‘so they conducted the burial of Hector. An Amazon, the daughter of great-hearted, man-slaying Ares arrived . . .’, a phenomenon indicative of ‘the expectation 130 131

On the whole subject cf. J. J. O’Hara, Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil’s Aeneid (Princeton 1990). 132 Cf. e.g. Barchiesi (1993). Cf. above, p. 111.

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in an oral tradition that an epic narrative will be continued’.133 The conclusion to the Argonautica formally substitutes the hope of ritual repetition (4.1774–5) for the expectation of continuation, as though the telos really had been reached; all readers, however, know better than this. The ‘end’ of the Odyssey was placed at 23.296, &%(% #  #  %, K , ‘gladly, they renewed their former partnership in bed’, by Aristophanes of Byzantium and later Aristarchus, and it is tempting to see an allusion to such a critical theory in the final verse of the Argonautica, however important Od. 23.242, &%(% 'C 9 )    $  , ‘gladly, they stepped onto land, having escaped disaster’, is as well.134 An end which is no true end is indeed what the Argonautica offers. Finally, we may note the status of prophecy within the epic itself.135 As harsh experience has taught Phineus not to exceed certain limits in foretelling the future, so the deaths of Idmon and Mopsus both illustrate the power of ‘necessity’, ! Z) L% (2.817, 4.1503), a power which is not (always) to be foreseen by men. The obscurity of the gods’ purposes in the Argonautica is thus matched by a relative unwillingness to commit to a knowable future. 5 an epic lead er It was not Virgil who first linked epic indissolubly to issues of government and power, for Greek culture had long since given the Homeric poems a central place in the articulation of social and political structures; the regular recitation of the Iliad and Odyssey at the Athenian Panathenaia is merely the most visible manifestation of their paradigmatic power. Within the poems, Homer depicts a wide variety of ‘political’ structures and the potential conflicts which they generate. In the Iliad, the most relevant structures are those of the Greek army (Agamemnon and the council of leading heroes, with the different challenges posed by Achilles and Thersites), of Troy, and of Olympus. At the centre of the Odyssey is the corruption of power on Ithaca as the result of Odysseus’ prolonged absence, but the story of Odysseus’ wanderings offers a further range of models from the idealised Phaeacian society of Alcinous and Arete, through the incestuous fantasy of Aeolus’ island to the solitary autarkeia of the Cyclops. Post-Homeric 133 134 135

Hardie (1997) 139. The verses are often associated with the Aithiopis, but cf. M. Davies, Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (G¨ottingen 1988) 48 and id. (1989) 61. For discussion and bibliography cf. Hunter (1993a) 119–20, E.-M. Theodorakopoulos, ‘Epic closure and its discontents in Apollonius’ Argonautica’ in Harder–Regtuit–Wakker (1998) 187–204. Cf. S. Said, ‘Divination et devins dans les Argonautiques’ in Accorinti–Chuvin (2003) 255–75.

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tradition found in these various models a wealth of ‘political’ advice, and Homer became a central text in the copious ‘kingship literature’ of the Hellenistic age. The fragments of Philodemus’ On the Good King According to Homer are the best known representatives of an important prose genre.136 Like the Homeric poems, the Argonautica displays a wide variety of political and social structures, many characterised by typically Apollonian irony. Thus, the feminine republic of Lemnos has a ‘ruling’ princess, Hypsipyle, the daughter of the former king, but she puts important decisions to a ‘democratic’ assembly, in which anyone can speak and unanimity is an important ideal (cf. 1.655, 700, 705, 714). Among males, such a sociopolitical structure must have had many close analogues in the Hellenistic world, and it foreshadows a standard scenario of the Greek novel; hovering over the Lemnian assembly, however, is Apollonius’ ironised depiction of ‘rational decision-making’ in the service of the universal desire for lovemaking and reproduction. As so often, what is unspoken at a public meeting is at least as significant as what is said openly. The unspoken is also central to the representation of Alcinous and Arete, the rulers of Drepane, and characters very familiar from the Odyssey. Whether or not we are to see in this royal couple a partial reflection of the ruling Ptolemy and his sister-wife,137 it is clear that Alcinous is presented as an incarnation of the Hesiodic ‘good king’ who ‘administers ordinances with straight justice’ (Theog. 84–6, cf. Arg. 4.1100, 1176–9). By revealing his decision about Medea to his wife in bed before he reveals it publicly and then falling asleep at once,138 he allows us to understand that he is giving his wife, whose wishes in the matter he knows only too well, time to make sure that the relevant conditions have been fulfilled before the decision is announced. This is ‘straight justice’, but of a very particular kind. The Hesiodic ‘good king’ puts an end to great quarrels %  (Theog. 87): so Alcinous very skilfully uses his knowledge to put an end to a  5 (cf. 4.1010, 1103). Alcinous is not the only ‘good king’ in the Argonautica. The whole idea is the source for broad humour in the description of the king of the Mossynoikoi, who sits in his high hut and administers ‘straight judgements to the large population’ (2.1026–7), but if he makes a mistake, the people lock him up and keep him hungry for a day. Whatever anthropological observation lies behind this claim, there is a humorous reversal – appropriate for the topsy-turvy customs of the Mossynoikoi – of the Hesiodic pattern by which ‘straight justice’ banishes hunger from a city (WD 230). 136 137

Cf. T. Dorandi, Il buon re secondo Omero (Naples 1982), O. Murray, ‘Philodemus On the Good King According to Homer’ JRS 55 (1965) 161–82, Cairns (1989) 1–84. 138 Cf. Hunter (1993a) 71. Cf. Hunter (1993a) 161–2, (1995a) 22–5.

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The two most important political structures of the Argonautica are the tyranny of Aietes and the decision-making processes of the Argonauts themselves. The former, as displayed in Books 3 and 4, is characterised by secrecy and the exploitation of fear, the latter by openness and a sense of community. The scene in which Heracles imposes the leadership of the expedition upon Jason has been very variously interpreted by modern critics,139 but there can be little doubt that at its centre lie very real issues about the nature and qualifications of leadership: &## #) M$,   6^##('  %  ]%%) M$ 'C . #   ;*4  # $) Q   , .%  & '4%  E# % A! 2 ) H   E%  # )    %$ %  M % 9#%. But, my friends, common is our hope for return to Hellas in the future, and common our paths to Aietes’ palace – therefore now without other thoughts choose the very best man as your leader – the man who will be concerned with every detail in conducting both our quarrels and our agreements with men of foreign lands. (Argonautica 1.336–40)

Jason is not, of course,  .%  in a Homeric sense, but he may be ‘the best leader’ in the circumstances of the expedition and in the context of such a ‘quest poem’, as indeed Heracles (not usually regarded as a literary critic) seems to recognise. Nor is it enough to argue: ‘We accept Jason’s leadership through our intellectual grasp of narrative rather than from emotional commitment to him as a character’.140 Heracles himself is not the figure to lead a ‘communal’ exercise, as his loss to the expedition in Mysia demonstrates: there, he is driven by his own personal passions,141 as at Lemnos he seems driven by the desire for kleos. A leader, however, must be concerned with E% , ‘all the details’, and with the safety of everyone (1.339, 461, 2.631–7).142 Behind a leader, however, can stand a ‘king-maker’, and Heracles uses the physical threat he represents to impose his choice of leader; the situation finds many analogues in the military states which followed in Alexander’s wake.143 Whether or not the choice of Jason as leader was a good one has preoccupied much of modern Apollonian scholarship, but it must always be 139 141 142 143

140 DeForest (1994) 54. For what follows cf. Hunter (1988) 442–3. Note esp. the simile of 1.1265–7. Cf. Philodemus, On the Good King fr. viii Dorandi, the ‘most kingly thing’ is , ( ) K  K '$ ) [T] (suppl. Murray). Cf. A. Mori, Mutiny, Marriage, and Murder: Political Authority in Apollonius’ Argonautica (Dissertation, Chicago 1999).

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remembered how many images of how many leaders are partially reflected in the epic. Most obviously, the relationship between Jason and the other Argonauts both gestures towards and is utterly different from that between Odysseus and his crew.144 No third century reader could, however, also fail to see in the Argonautic expedition a fore-echo of Alexander’s eastern campaign, particularly as the expedition of Sesostris, which Argos evokes as a forerunner of the Argonauts’ return to Greece (4.256–93), had already been shaped by literary tradition as the ‘model’ for Alexander.145 This is not, of course, to say that Jason is Alexander, and indeed we have already seen one important particular, proneness to anger, in which they could hardly be more different; the most cursory reading of the extant Alexander-histories will confirm extreme difference rather than similarity. Nevertheless, perceptions of Alexander are one of the ‘texts’ against which the epic poem can be read, with whatever consequences for that reading. Moreover, there were by the third century a number of other literary models for such an expedition and the problems of leadership it posed. One possible such model has been identified in Xenophon’s Anabasis.146 A comparison of Xenophon and Alexander occurs more than once in Arrian (Anab. 1.12.3–4, 2.7.8–9 (in Alexander’s own mouth)); however much this owes to Arrian’s own persistent imitation of Xenophon (here observable in the very title ‘Anabasis of Alexander’ after Xenophon’s ‘Anabasis of Cyrus’), the comparison may have been familiar from a relatively early date. In Xenophon’s Anabasis, as in the Argonautica, Greeks achieve a perilous return journey by a circuitous route through dangerous, barbarian territory. Common to both journeys are the territory and rivers (cf. Anab. 5.6.9) from the Hellespont to the south-eastern shore of the Black Sea, which the Argonauts traverse eastwards and Xenophon and his companions westwards; landmarks such as the Acherousian route to the Underworld (2.734–45, Anab. 6.2.2) and the curious customs of the Mossynoikoi are also common to both texts (2.1015–29, Anab. 5.4.32–4), and a potential Argonautic blueprint is in fact written into Xenophon’s journey.147 At 5.6–7, as the Greeks find themselves on the Black Sea coast between Sinope and Trebizond, Xenophon must persuade the troops of the falsity of a rumour that he intends to lead them back eastwards to Colchis, where the king was ‘a grandson of Aietes’ (5.6.37). The return to the Aegean is thus figured as a rejection of the Argonautic pattern. 144 145 146 147

Cf. Hunter (1988) 441–2. Hecataeus of Abdera is a key figure here, cf. Fusillo (1985) 52–4, Stephens (2003a) 176–8. Cf. Beye (1982) 75–6. As was perhaps realised by the author of the ‘Argonautic’ interpolation at 6.2.1.

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It is perhaps unsurprising that certain narrative motifs are shared by the two journey descriptions. Both Jason and Xenophon, for example, receive the sanction of Apollo for their undertaking (1.359–62, Anab. 3.1.6–7), and the rˆole of prophecy and mantik¯e in the Anabasis is very prominent. At various crucial points in Xenophon’s account, we may be reminded of scenes from Apollonius’ epic: Clearchus’ refusal to command an initial breakaway (1.3.15) begins not unlike Heracles’ refusal of command (1.345– 7), but the two brief speeches could in fact hardly be more unlike in tone. There is also a striking similarity between one of Xenophon’s rhetorical strategies and Jason’s invitation to his crew in the Colchian marshes:148 ‘But now is the time for action, for the enemy may be here very soon. Those who think that these proposals [of mine] are good should vote to approve them at once so that they may be put into action. But if someone has any improvement on these plans to offer, he should feel free to put it forward, even if he is a private soldier, for we all share the need for common safety.’ (Xenophon, Anabasis 3.2.32) “„ #) i   O X V  '(    M )  'C 3 #   . M$8  ! Z) M$ '  % T% U  'X %5    9$#4 C & Q K%    % $ ' % # L &Q.” ‘Friends, I shall tell you the plan I myself favour, but it is for you to give it your assent. Common is our need, and common to all alike the right to speak. The man who holds back his view and opinion in silence should know that he alone deprives our expedition of its chance for safe return.’ (Argonautica 3.171–5)

The ‘democratic’ rhetoric is shared, as it is also by Hypsipyle in the Lemnian assembly (1.664–6), but the differences between Xenophon and Jason are palpable. The far fuller picture which Xenophon presents of himself suggests a much more confident, resourceful and commanding figure than Jason: ‘If you choose to set out on this course, I am prepared to follow you, but if you place me in the position of leadership, I make no excuses on the grounds of my youth, but I think that I am in the prime of my powers to ward off disasters from myself.’ (Xenophon, Anabasis 3.1.25)

Xenophon really is a leader who takes care of E% , a man on the model of Odysseus, whose strategic sense and wisdom far outweigh the qualities of those he leads (cf. 5.1.4); here again it is the nature of the Argonautic crew which determines so much about the presentation of Jason. 148

Jason’s words have been variously interpreted, but there are certainly no grounds for seeing an ‘abnegation of leadership’, cf. Campbell on 3.171–95.

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We know all there is to know about ‘Xenophon’ as a textual figure – this apparent transparency is not the least effective of Xenophon’s literary techniques – whereas the refusal to ‘explain’ his characters is, as has often been pointed out, a very striking feature of Apollonius’ technique. When, for example, immediately after the speech quoted above, there is only one dissenter (Apollonides, apparently a Boeotian) from Xenophon’s proposal, Xenophon rounds on him roughly, „ $%Z  . ) %Q 'X   Z%  'X &Q %  #., ‘you amazing fellow, you see and yet you do not understand, you hear and do not remember . . .’, and concludes that he brings disgrace upon his ‘homeland and all of Greece’ (Anab. 3.1.27–30); Xenophon’s sarcasm is immediately justified by the discovery that Apollonides is no Boeotian, but a barbarian with pierced ears. In Argonautica 3, Idas alone expresses disgust at the idea of relying on Medea and Aphrodite, the good sense of which proposal seems already to have been confirmed by an omen. Jason, however, seems entirely to ignore Idas’ intervention, but rather than simply passing by in silence, the poet makes him call attention to the omission: ‘Argos should set out from the ship, since everyone agrees to this plan’ (3.568–9); the awkwardness is strengthened if we remember Hypsipyle’s very similar speech in a situation where everyone did agree (1.700). Whether this is thought to be brilliant leadership or awkward gaucherie, the sequence is much more opaque than in the Anabasis; we are offered no privileged, authorial access to a ‘reality’ behind the surface of the text. Moreover, there is in the Anabasis, particularly in Xenophon’s speeches, a clear didactic and moralising direction (and not just in matters of military tactics) which is quite absent from the Argonautica. To some extent, the Anabasis is an excellent example of the usurpation by prose texts of some of the traditional functions of poetry, a fact merely emphasised by Xenophon’s own occasional assimilation of his adventures to the Homeric texts (cf. the games at 4.8.25–8, the encouragement to the troops at 6.5.24 etc.). In short, the Anabasis is more important as an illustration of a mode of writing which offers one possible literary code for the Argonautica than as a ‘model’ text from which Apollonius has drawn. Whatever models and codes are reflected in the pattern of the Argonautic expedition, there can be little doubt that the ‘pursuit of power’ does not stand at its centre. Whereas the Odyssey stages a return which re-founds secure and legitimate authority, and the Aeneid is in part the story of a journey which is to lead to the foundation of a great imperial power (Aen. 1.5, 33), the Argonautica merely gestures towards certain traditional topics associated with kingship.

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The almost total suppression of the motif of Pelias’ usurpation149 may be seen as part of this rejection of the discourse of power. So, too, Jason’s polite refusal of Hypsipyle’s offer of the Lemnian kingship (1.839–40) is, of course, required by the plot, but Virgil’s elaboration of this hint into Aeneas’ near assumption of kingly authority in Carthage shows the road which Apollonius chose not to take. 149

Cf. above, p. 111.

chap t e r 4

Theocritus and the bucolic genre

1 theocritus and the ‘realism ’ of everyday life: in search of new world s for poetry Within the panorama of Hellenistic literature, Theocritus of Syracuse reflects, as much or more than any other author of his period, the taste for polyeideia ‘writing in many literary genres’. Like his contemporary, Callimachus of Cyrene, he is a courtly encomiastic poet (Idylls 15, 16 and 17) and also a poet of ‘epyllia’ (Idylls 13, 22, 24);1 there is also a group of short poems in the Aeolic metre and dialect (Idylls 28–31), the last three of which are paederastic in character and clearly imitate Aeolic lyric of the archaic period, rather as Callimachus composed both Iambi, which partly recall the spirit, metre and dialect of the poetry of Hipponax, and also other poems in lyric metres, which probably reflected models drawn from archaic lyric poetry.2 Furthermore, Theocritus also wrote a significant number of poems with ‘realistic’ urban (Idylls 2, 14, 15) or rural (Idylls 1, 3–7, 10–11) settings, which describe scenes of daily life, for the most part in dialogue form. It is very likely that the roots of Theocritus’ description of and opposition between urban and rural environments3 lie in the Sicilian mime, to which, as the scholia inform us, Theocritus was indebted for two urban mimes, Idylls 2 and 15.4 Through the representation of typical humble characters and their daily occupations, rather than strikingly defined individuals, the Sicilian mime gave the countryside and those who lived in it a literary prominence which they had not enjoyed before. Epicharmus wrote a comedy entitled 1 2 3 4

Cf. above, Chapter 2. On the question whether Callimachus’s 0# were included in the book of Iambi, cf. above, p. 29 n. 115. Cf. Th. Reinhardt, Die Darstellung der Bereiche Stadt und Land bei Theokrit (Bonn 1988). Two introductory scholia on Idyll 2, which are probably the remains of an ancient hypothesis, state that ‘Theocritus derived the character of Thestylis crudely (& (#, cf. Wendel (1920) 70) from the Mimes by Sophron’ and that ‘(the author) derives the plot (2  %) of the spell from the Mimes by Sophron’ (cf. pp. 269–70 Wendel); the first scholium on Idyll 15 states: ‘(the author) has formed the poem by analogy with Sophron’s Women Attending the Isthmian Games’ (p. 305 Wendel).

133

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Theocritus and the bucolic genre

Land and Sea (PCG 20–9, see also frs. 158 and 162), where he probably imagined a competition for supremacy between the two elements, in which each boasted of the different products for which they were responsible. This contrast between different types of environment was probably no less significant in Sophron’s mime entitled The fisherman to the farmer (PCG 42–44, see also fr. 96).5 An analogous interest in the humble members of the town population was shown in roughly the same period as Theocritus by Herondas, and the taste for the description of the countryside and its characters also finds parallels in other poetry of the period, particularly the epigrams of Leonidas and Anyte.6 However, what most sets the bucolic poems of Theocritus apart is the detail and consistency of the new world for ‘high’ poetry in hexameters which he creates; this new world is principally based in an emphasis on bucolic music and song, which, on the contrary, remain a wholly marginal element in, for example, the ‘bucolic’ epigram.7 The relative prominence of bucolic poems within the extant Theocritean corpus does not say much, in itself, in favour of a specific preference by Theocritus for this type of poetry; this prominence may have been the result, at least partly, of the popularity that pastoral poetry subsequently enjoyed and which saw what for Theocritus may have been still only one of the possibilities of mimic poetry transformed into a separate literary genre. It is rather the image that Theocritus chooses to give in Idyll 7 of his own personality as a poet that tells us something more certain about his own bucolic poetics. Idyll 7 is a first-person narration by ‘Simichidas’. Even if this is not the name of the author (Theocritus), and even if, at times, especially in the early stages of their encounter, the other protagonist of the poem, Lycidas, seems to regard Simichidas with a certain superior detachment and humour (cf. esp. vv. 21–6),8 it is clear that Simichidas represents, in many respects, 5

6

7 8

It cannot be a coincidence that this type of Sicilian mime plot reappears in Moschus and Bion. Moschus fr. 1 concerns the relative merits of sea and land (cf. the comedy of Epicharmus), and Bion fr. 2 the relative value of the seasons. The accepted chronology of both Leonidas and Anyte has recently been questioned by Bernsdorff (2001) 104–26. Anyte’s bucolic epigrams are, in any case, not many (two dedications to Pan, APlan. 231 = HE 738ff. and 291 = HE 672ff., and two invitations to take refuge from the heat under a tree, AP 9.313 = HE 726ff., APlan. 228 = HE 734ff.); as for Leonidas, there are a dozen epigrams which have shepherds or farmers as their protagonists, or contain descriptions of the countryside, but these should be considered alongside the large group of epigrams whose subjects are other humble workers (fishermen, carpenters, musicians, spinning-women, hunters, woodcutters, etc.), which are at least as numerous. Cf. Bernsdorff (2001) 139–54. The irony applied at times to the figure of Simichidas (cf. Hunter (2003a)) is, however, not such as to suggest that the author does not identify with him at all, as has been claimed by B. Effe, ‘Das poetologische Programm des Simichidas: Theokrit. Id. 7, 37–41’ WJA 14 (1988) 87–91; see also Simon (1991) 77–82.

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the author himself. Simichidas presents himself as a ‘town poet’ (cf. vv. 2, 24), who appears to be invested as a bucolic poet by the expert, perhaps semidivine, poet Lycidas; he undoubtedly demonstrates that he has thoroughly mastered the magic of the countryside when he enthusiastically describes the locus amoenus at the end of the poem.9 The implicit self-reference in the first-person narration led many ancient scholars into fanciful biography – some went so far as to imagine that Theocritus was a native of Cos, the island where the Idyll is set,10 in spite of the fact that elsewhere he makes two distinct references to his Syracusan origins.11 Be that as it may, if the ‘I’ of Idyll 7 is interpreted as an ‘ideal image’ of the poet (and one which at least evokes Theocritus himself ), we discover that Simichidas/Theocritus chooses to present himself (vv. 39–41) as one who was previously a ‘town poet’, and as such owed a poetic debt to, or was at least full of admiration for, Asclepiades of Samos, who is most famous for erotic epigrams, and the scholar-poet Philetas of Cos; the setting of the idyll on Cos is probably an act of homage to Philetas’ native island, and it is important that Philetas too wrote love poetry. Furthermore, the example of song that Lycidas offers to Simichidas appropriates for the bucolic world the motifs of sympotic love poetry: %%  C; (  #, #   0 $#4) !N  C +%  C^   2  'Z" Q ) !| V C C |   ' K%! ) K  , ?$' ] Q  M C;'  BQ% U  ,        . !&#$   %  %   Q  ( (#%%     C c) p %!  $  5) /#$  ) #$5 W%  (#%  ]! # ) V%    M /#, . . C; (  #  '_"  0 $#4 N (   )  3# V l . - O   C } &4  v B'   v  # $ %      $#(%% , J #  , L &,   &$M   $  #) Q '   $ $M 5. !& % 9  %% 5   $% % C  T!$ Q_ C &%'#" #$ ( " % #".   #   C; (   5  $# %%   Q  ! 5#  '. 9 10 11

55

60

65

70

Cf. further below. Cf. Suda  166 (II p. 687.18–9 Adler) <$Q%, e ' % =I ‘from Syracuse; but some say from Cos’. In Idyll 28 Theocritus uses the term ‘compatriot’ for the Syracusan wife of his friend Nicias (cf. vv. 16–18), and he jokingly calls Polyphemus ‘the Cyclops from our area’ (11.7).

136

Theocritus and the bucolic genre #%   '  'Q  ) P X C;! Q) P 'X ?$ U  'X s $ 

Q  &% 5 €  T q  -(%%  \(  9Q ) !| A &  5   F 'Q   , 4 $)  #.

Ageanax will have a good sea-crossing to Mytilene, even if the south wind drives the moist waves, while the Kids are in the west, and if Orion places his feet on the Ocean – if he frees Lycidas, burnt by the fire of Aphrodite, for I am consumed by a hot love for him. The halcyons will calm the waves and the sea, and the south and south-east wind, which ruffles even the deepest sea weeds, the halcyons, favourites of the sea-green Nereids and of all who catch their food in the sea. May every moment be propitious for Ageanax in his navigation to Mytilene, and may he arrive at the port after a good voyage. On that day, I will wear a garland of anise and roses and white stocks around my head, and lying beside the fire, I will draw some wine of Ptelea from the bowl, while someone toasts the broadbeans over the fire. I will have a bed padded with fleabane and asphodel and curly celery, one cubit high, and with the memory of Ageanax, I will drink the wine longingly to the dregs, pressing my lips to the cups. Two shepherds will pipe for me, one from Acharnae and the other from Lycope, and close by, Tityrus will sing of the time when the cowherd Daphnis fell in love with Xenea, and the mountain suffered for him, and the oak-trees lamented him, etc. (Theocritus 7.52–74)

Lycidas’ song begins with what appears to be a propemptikon to his beloved Ageanax, but already in the fourth line we discover that this propemptikon is subject to a rather unusual condition: Ageanax is to arrive safe and sound at Mytilene only if he ‘frees’ (BQ% ) Lycidas from Aphrodite (vv. 55–6). The meaning of this condition has been much discussed: does Ageanax have to free Lycidas from his passion by gratifying him, or by leaving him for ever (perhaps the likeliest alternative),12 or at least for a long enough period for his love to die down? Even if, however, BQ%  is taken to mean ‘satisfies’, it is a fact that the song that Lycidas looks forward to is no longer dedicated to Ageanax: once the latter has gone, Lycidas will be able to devote himself to the serene joy of a symposium in the countryside, where the sweet memory of his beloved will undoubtedly remain in his cups (vv. 69–70), but the beloved, or Lycidas’ passion for him (whether still burning or now finished), will no longer be the theme of the song. To the accompaniment of two shepherds’ pipes, Tityrus will sing of Daphnis and Comatas, semimythical heroes who were the founders of bucolic poetry; he will sing a song somewhat similar to the one that Thyrsis sings in Idyll 1 about the fate of Daphnis, and then he will evoke the happy lot of Comatas, a mythical 12

So Y. Furusawa, Eros und Seelenruhe in den Thalysien Theokrits (W¨urzburg 1980) 36–40; in this case, the chronological details of vv. 53–4 would communicate the idea that Ageanax should leave as soon as possible. Contra, with equal vigour, Stanzel (1995) 270–75, for whom vv. 53–4 offer Ageanax the possibility of delaying his departure as long as possible, without any consequent problems.

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shepherd who had been saved from death by poetry, because the Muses had arranged for him to be nourished with honey by bees when his cruel master had closed him inside a chest to die of hunger. The stories of Daphnis and Comatas take the place of the amorous discourse on the beloved which the first section of Lycidas’ poem had led the reader to expect. Thus, after starting as a love poem – a propemptikon for his beloved, rich in allusions to the atmosphere of archaic poetry13 – Lycidas’ song puts aside the theme of love as a subjective experience,14 even if it subsequently resumes the traditional sympotic framework of archaic love poetry and describes it with a skill and a wealth of detail worthy of Xenophanes’ descriptions of the symposium.15 Simichidas’ song, which is characterised by a looser structure and the use of ‘lower’ iambic models than the poetry to which Lycidas alluded,16 moves in the same direction: the opening proclaims his happy and contented love for Myrto, and contrasts it with that of his friend Aratus, to whose unhappy love the rest of his song appears to be dedicated. Simichidas, however, does not appear to be very interested in the question of love itself: he does not even know who the object of Aratus’ desire is: ‘whether it is the delicate Philinus or someone else’, v. 105. What Simichidas wants, right from the beginning, is to release Aratus from his situation of erotic distress: consequently, instead of the love poem that we might have expected, we find a ‘magic prayer’ to the god Pan, in an attempt to obtain the love of Philinus for Aratus.17 After trying to eliminate Aratus’ sufferings by using magic, the simple mention of Philinus (vv. 118–121) leads Simichidas to solve his friend’s suffering in a different, more radical way. The traditional appeal to the beloved to yield, because youth is not eternal (vv. 120–1) becomes in Simichidas’ song the starting-point for the final refusal of eros and the poetry associated with it: Philinus is passing his prime, it is no longer worthwhile courting him, and it is time to stop freezing in the cold in order to offer him paraklausithyra; instead we should only seek /%$! ‘tranquillity’ (vv. 122–27).18 At the end of the poem, Simichidas describes, in terms of an idealised locus amoenus, the natural riches of the symposium organised by Phrasidamus, which seem to exemplify this same need for ‘serenity’, materialised in a rustic form, and to be the first real performance of the new bucolic poet.19 13 14 15 16 18 19

Halcyons are a favourite theme of archaic erotic poetry, cf. Krevans (1983) 215. As Stanzel (1995) 275 also admits (for his interpretation see above n. 12). See vv. 63–70; cf. e.g. Xenophanes fr. 13 Gent.–Prato. 17 On this point, see below, pp. 158–60. Cf. Hunter (2003a) 225–9. The pastoral element in Lycidas’ song is seriously underestimated by Halperin (1983) 120–25. Both Lycidas and (more superficially) Simichidas appropriate erotic motifs for their ‘bucolic’ poetry. Cf. below, pp. 145–8.

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Theocritus and the bucolic genre

The poetic choices of Simichidas/Theocritus and his bucolic ‘master’ Lycidas enact some of the choices by which Theocritus constructs his bucolic poetics in other idylls. Thus, the whole of Idyll 3, for example, is made up of a parodic adaptation of a paraklausithyron,20 while the song of the Cyclops in Idyll 11 and the song of Bucaeus in Idyll 10 (vv. 24–37) are parodies of serenades; a more serious dramatisation of love – in the manner of the ‘subjective’ love poetry of archaic lyric and elegiac poetry – is to be found in the urban poems 2 and 14.21 Moreover, the celebration of a semi-mythical singer who is the example and prototype of the bucolic poet, analogous to the song of Lycidas, is the theme of Idyll 1, and the ideal of hasychia and rural beauty as prerequisites for bucolic poetry are among the most basic and pervasive themes of Theocritus’ bucolic works.22 This is not, of course, to say that when Theocritus elaborated the possibility of hexameter bucolic mime, taking off from the pre-existing literary mime, he realised that he was ‘inventing’ a ‘new’ literary genre; nevertheless, he was bound to be aware that few, if any, precedents existed for his combination of rustic contents and epic metre, and thus some of his poems do indeed inaugurate the pastoral genre.23 In the second chapter of the Poetics, Aristotle distinguishes three possible levels at which the objects of artistic imitation are situated, in terms of moral worth, with respect to our daily experience: such objects are ‘better, or worse, or exactly the same’. Hexameter poetry offered him both subjects which are more serious than daily life (the heroic epics of Homer) and subjects ‘worse’ than daily life, such as the parodies of Hegemon and the \ #( of a certain Nicochares. The little that we know of Nicochares depicts him as a comic poet; almost nothing is known of the \ #( (the ‘Viliad’?), but 20

21 22 23

Both ancient and some modern scholars have wished to link the %  protagonist of Idyll 3 to Simichidas in Idyll 7; cf. e.g. C. Meillier, ‘Th´eocrite, Idylle VII et autour de l’Idylle VII’, in Arrighetti– Montanari (1993) 108–10. The characters of Idyll 14 are plainly townspeople, even if their party is held ‘in the country’, cf. Stanzel (1995) 19–21. Cf. below, pp. 145–7. Ancient scholarship identified pre-Theocritean bucolic in the popular song which characterised rustic rituals for country divinities (above all, Artemis, cf. schol. Theocritus, Proleg., pp. 2 and 7–9 Wendel); mythical bucolic poets were also found: Daphnis (cf. Diodorus Siculus 4.84, who may have been influenced by Timaeus, FGrHist 566F83; Hermesianax, CA fr. 2; Diomedes, Gramm. Lat. 1, 487.8–10 Keil); Diomus (cf. Athen. 14.619a–b), a character already mentioned by Epicharmus (PCG 4 and 104), and Menalcas, for whom Eriphanis, a lyric poetess who was in love with him, is supposed to have written poems (Athen. 14.619c–d). Aelian (Var. hist. 10.18) suggests that the initiator of bucolic  # was the Sicilian poet Stesichorus, to whom Crates of Mallos had already ascribed a short poem about Daphnis: PMGF 279–80. Whether or not this attribution is reliable (cf. L. Lehnus, SCO 24 (1975) 191–6, O. Vox, Belfagor 41 (1986) 311–17), the very fragility of this tradition shows how widespread the reputation of Theocritus was as the initiator of the genre.

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the title itself, with its pun on C@#(, suggests a parodic contrast between grand Homeric language and low subject-matter: we may perhaps compare the gastronomic poetry of Matron of Athens. As an example of poetic works which represent objects ‘exactly the same as us’, Aristotle is only able to a name a single author, Cleophon, a tragedian who inappropriately lowered the level of his works by using words and/or characters that were too humble and common, thus obtaining an effect bordering on comedy (Poetics 1458a18–20, Rhetoric 3.1408a10–15). The representation of daily life is thus reduced, in the Aristotelian system of literary genres, to little more than a faux pas of tragedy, consisting in the use of the wrong lexical register by a single author. Any suspicion that this Cleophon might have gone considerably beyond the well-known ‘bourgeoisification’ of language and of certain tragic situations, initiated by Euripides, is quashed by a consideration of the titles that are listed in the Suda, which are almost all of a mythological nature (TrGF 77T1). Aristotle himself does not seem to pay much attention to this apparent one-off: at the end of the second chapter of the Poetics, when he moves from theoretical discussion to the subject of drama, which is of course his principal preoccupation, he completely ignores the middle term of his trichotomy and limits himself to speaking about tragedy (with subjects that are ‘higher’ than everyday life) and comedy (with subjects that are ‘lower’ than everyday life).24 Poetry in hexameters, on the other hand, even in the time of Aristotle, had never witnessed ‘accidents’ of this kind: there was epic poetry, which represented characters and situations of the utmost seriousness, the glorious deeds (#) of heroes or the acts ( ) of heroes and gods (cf. Iliad 9.189 and Odyssey 1.337–8, 8.73),25 and there was parody which used heroic language for non-serious subjects, such as the gastronomic poetry of Matron and the pseudo-Homeric Margites, with its buffoonish anti-hero. Poetic contents could be related to the real world in a variety of ways (  ), and some Hellenistic thinking on the matter is probably available in a scholium to Iliad 14.342–51. According to this text, one possibility is that poetic subject-matter ‘imitates reality’ (  ,  &#) another 24

25

It is a great pity that we cannot be sure of the origin of the definition of mime as an ‘imitation of life which includes both lawful and unlawful things’ (schol. Aristophanes, Proleg. xxiv.3.16–7 Koster). If it really goes back to Theophrastus, as is often claimed, this would have important consequences for the scholastic background to Theocritus’ mimes. One of the specific aims of epic poetry, according to scholars, was #M ‘astonishment’, and the relations between gods and men were crucial to this effect; cf. scholia on Homer, Il. 15.695, 16.459, 20.61–2, and Feeney (1991) 42–56. On the hexameter as a particularly suitable verse-form for mythical-heroic, or at least sublime, material, cf. Aristotle, Poet. 1449a26–7, 1459b34–37, Rhet. 1404a34–5, Demetrius, Eloc. 5 and 42.

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is that subject-matter derives ‘from imagination based on reality’ (  %  &# ), and a third one is achieved ‘by going beyond reality and by imagination’ (C 2 % &#    %); this last is exemplified in the scholium by means of characters like the Cyclopes or the Laestrygones and ‘facts about the gods’ (    ). shere are undoubtedly traces of all three categories in Homer (as the scholium to Iliad 2.478–9 reminds us), but the extraordinary world of heroes and gods remains by far the most dominant in epic poetry, and this separates it radically both from the imitation of daily life which we find, for example, in New Comedy, and from fiction, in the sense of  % based on the real world. Epic remained the vehicle for the transmission of the stable, structural truths to be found in the mythical deeds of gods and heroes, truths which transcended the precarious, non-permanent truths of everyday life.26 The everyday world of humble people, very largely excluded from epic, had found expression almost exclusively in the mime and in Sicilian comedy. Moreover, the mimes of Sophron, who, as we have seen,27 supplied Theocritus with models for two of his urban mimes, were composed in a kind of rhythmic prose which was so marginal in the system of literary genres that it did not even deserve a name to distinguish it from prose.28 If Theocritus did not specialise in any particular genre, his poetry as a whole in some ways challenged the traditional system of genres, in which the hexameter had regularly been combined with ‘high’ subjects and heroicdivine protagonists (or, for parodic purposes, with their exact opposite). It has, for example, long been noted that Theocritus’ mythological ‘epyllia’ tend to humanise or ‘normalise’ the mythical heroes who are their protagonists.29 Moreover, the two poems dedicated to encomium (Idylls 16 and 17) both begin with forceful proems, in which the traditional gesture of mythological recusatio in the face of the limitations of human knowledge (cf. Ibycus, PMGF S151.10–31, Simonides, IEG 11.15–22) is reshaped with a new pride in the dignity of hexameter poetry about human subjects. Idyll 16.1–4 is particularly striking:30 *    \, Q # ) *X &'5) 2 5 &( $) 2 5 &  # &'. 05% X    )  b   & ' U .  'X 9  l' ) 9 b 9  & ' . 26 27 29 30

For the kind of ‘truth’ to be sought in myth cf. Diodorus Siculus 4.8. Aristophanes, Wasps 1174–80 is enlightening here. 28 Cf. Aristotle, Poet. 1447a28–b13. Cf. above, n. 4. Cf. e.g. Horstmann (1976) 57–79, Effe (1978) 64–76. Cf. also below, pp. 201–10, 255–66. Cf. Fantuzzi (2000b) and (2001b).

2 Verisimilitude and coherence

141

It is always dear to the heart of the daughters of Zeus and always to poets to celebrate the immortal ones, to celebrate the deeds of valiant men – but the Muses are goddesses, and goddesses sing of gods; we who are here are mortals, and as such let us mortals sing of mortals!

This proud confidence in a ‘division of domains’ between the Muses and the poets who are inspired by them, on the one hand, and the class of poets in which Theocritus includes himself, on the other, is in perfect, and perhaps programmatic, harmony with the spirit of his bucolic and urban poems, which take the hexameter in quite new directions. In creating a new kind of hexameter poetry as an alternative or complement to ‘high epos’,31 Theocritus succeeded in creating an organic, coherent structure, a ‘possible world’, for the characters and the settings of his poetry, which stand halfway between the ‘imitation of the real’ and ‘imagination based on the real world’ (cf. above), and are therefore inevitably more precarious and unstable than those of the mythical world, which were traditionally seen as offering paradigmatic models for the understanding of the real world.32 This new and coherent world which his poetry creates, a world which, for all its differences, is no less coherent than the heroic-mythological world of epic, is Theocritean bucolic’s most noticeable difference both from the mime, which was based, in all probability, on the more or less direct mirroring (and of course distortion) of the real world, and from the simple ‘imagination based on the real world’ of comedy, with its paradoxical internal logic which changed from play to play. 2 verisimilitud e and coherence The search for internal coherence is most obvious in the bucolic poems, perhaps because the urban mimes already had well-developed models in the long para-literary tradition of the Sicilian and other contemporary mimes (cf. above pp. 133–4). Theocritus’ bucolic poetry is based on the unrealistic presupposition that the ‘professional’ requirements of a shepherd’s life, connected with the activity of looking after the flock, are but a minor distraction from the principal pastimes of music and singing, particularly song contests.33 This same selective stylisation34 is enshrined in the use of the verb 9$#(%', which never means ‘I am a cowherd (or a shepherd)’,35 but always and only ‘I sing bucolic songs’, mainly in the 31 32 33 35

Cf. Halperin (1983) 217–48. On this difference between the world of mythology and the possible worlds of fiction cf. Th. G. Pavel, Fictional Worlds (Cambridge, MA 1986) 39–42. 34 Cf. Stanzel (1995) 115–18. Cf. e.g. Griffin (1992) 198–9. Properly speaking, the term 9$ # designated the cowherd, but the broader meaning is already presupposed in Homer (Il. 20.221).

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context of an agonistic or friendly exchange of songs (5.44 and 60, 7.36);36 so too, the adjective 9$#  is found in Theocritus only as an attribute of the words &'( ‘song’ and 05% ‘Muse’.37 This stylisation has its roots in a traditional vision of the shepherd and of rustic life, familiar in literature as early as the archaic age;38 besides the shepherds on Achilles’ shield, who already delight in playing the syrinx (cf. below), in the Philoctetes of Sophocles, the Chorus says of someone who has been heard making a noise, but whose identity they do not know: ‘He does not have the melody (#4) of a syrinx, like the shepherd wandering through the fields’ (ll. 213–14). The modern suggestion that 9$#%  was a term going back before Theocritus, and one which specifically indicated a form of popular singing said to have been invented by a certain Diomus, a Sicilian shepherd already referred to by Epicharmus (see above, n. 2339 ), is therefore not unreasonable. This same transference is seen in the description of the boy guarding the vine in the ekphrasis of the cup in Idyll 1 (ll. 45–54). The boy is regularly seen as an image of the bucolic poet:40 he is so taken up with ‘weaving’ reed-cages (or traps) for grasshoppers that he neglects both the vine and his own lunch, in an ideal opposition to the psychological and physical suffering of the protagonists of the other two scenes depicted on the cup (the lovesick men and the toiling fisherman):41 $ , 'C V%% .  /# Q     5% % $#5% #, 99  &#()  ]#    C e%5% $#(%%  w U & '  'Q C &#Z  ) † X & C A!   %  ZM) † 'C  4 (  ' # Q!% , '   &% 5 36 37 38 39 40

41

Even the song of Thyrsis in Idyll 1 is presented as a re-performance of a song already sung by Thyrsis himself in a competition with Chromis of Libya (vv. 23–4). Cf. 1.20, 7.49, and the refrains of Thyrsis’ song. For the status of the shepherd in Greek culture before Theocritus, cf. Griffin (1992) 194–5 and Gutzwiller (1991) 23–79. Cf. Nauta (1990) 126–29 (for a different view cf. Halperin (1983) 78–84). As Hunter (1999) 82 notes, the boy is the image of the bucolic poet because, just like the latter, he ‘constructs something beautiful from “natural materials”’. It should not come as a surprise that the boy is a guardian of a vineyard, and not a shepherd: ‘the cup is not a simple representation of the bucolic world – there are, e.g., no flocks – because the ecphrastic relation here constructed between a described object and the poem in which it occurs is not that of “original” and “copy”’ (Hunter (1999) 77). This image is taken up by Longus in Daphnis and Chloe, where, on the contrary, its pastoral value is made explicit: ‘Chloe was gathering some branches of asphodel and was weaving some cages, and as she was wholly taken up by this work, she lost sight of her lambs’ (1.10.2). The three scenes on the cup are presented in such a way as to form a priamel that brings out the superiority of the life of the pastoral poet, as a life concentrated on a  , which is at the same time the greatest delight; cf. F. Cairns, ‘Theocritus’ First Idyll: the Literary Programme’ WS 18 (1984) 103–5.

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   † v &( %   M5% M"† .42   V C & % #  #  &'4 (v.l. &'4) %!"  %'U #  ' e 3  4 3 $  %% V%   #    5. A little further on from the old man worn by the sea, there is a vineyard laden with dark bunches of grapes, guarded by a boy sitting on a little wall; beside him there are two foxes, one of which is prowling between the rows of vines to steal the ripe grapes, while the other is plotting all kinds of attacks against the boy’s lunch-bag, thinking that he will not leave the boy without (?) stealing his lunch from him (?). But the boy is weaving a pretty trap (var. lect. cage) for crickets, using asphodels combined with reeds, and he has less care for the lunch-bag or the vines, than the joy he takes in his weaving. (Theocritus 1.45–54)

Like the bucolic poet who weaves a web of words and sounds,43 the boy is totally dedicated to his task, capable even of disregarding the most basic need for food. Theocritus may here have been borrowing from a famous passage in Plato’s Phaedrus, the dialogue which foreshadows so many bucolic motifs;44 the passage in question is the aetiology for the love for singing and the peculiar diet (i.e. dew) of cicadas, whose chirping characterises the natural music of the countryside, in the Phaedrus no less than in Theocritus and the poetic tradition.45 At a certain point of their conversation beside the Ilissos, Socrates and Phaedrus start discussing how people write well, or otherwise, both in poetry and in prose (cf. 258d), and Socrates finds it particularly suitable that they are dealing with this difficult subject under the auspices, and also the protection, of the cicadas. The cicadas would mock them if they let themselves fall asleep in the afternoon heat, like sheep or slaves seduced (#$$) by the insects’ song; on the contrary, if the cicadas saw that they were wide awake and ready (like them) for a discussion, they would ‘be pleased to give them what it is their prerogative to give to men’ (258e–259b), in other words the inspiration of the Muses (259b–c):46 42 43

44 45 46

The text of this verse is quite uncertain, but the sense seems to be that the fox will not stop its attacks until it has eaten the boy’s food. As Hunter (1999) 77 has already noted, ‘that the art of poetry is expressed through an image (“a boy weaving a cage”) is itself a manifestation of how poetry works’. On the metaphor of weaving for poetic creation cf. e.g. J. M. Snyder, ‘The Web of Song: Weaving Imagery in Homer and the Lyric Poets’ CJ 76 (1981) 193–96 and chapter 5 of J. Scheid and J. Svenbro, The Craft of Zeus: Myths of Weaving and Fabric (Cambridge, MA–London 1996). Cf. C. Murley, ‘Plato’s Phaedrus and Theocritean Pastoral’ TAPhA 71 (1940) 281–95, Hunter (1999) 145. Cf. Davies–Kathirithamby (1986) 116–19. For understanding Theocritus’ use of Plato, the attitude of the Platonic Socrates to the cicadas is of secondary interest; for different views, cf. G. R. F. Ferrari, Listening to the Cicadas: a Study of Plato’s Phaedrus (Cambridge 1987) 25–30 and A. Capra, ‘Il mito delle cicale e il motivo della bellezza sensibile nel Fedro’ Maia 52 (2000) 225–47, pp. 227–9.

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It is narrated that the cicadas were once men, in a period when the Muses had not yet been born; when the Muses were born, and singing was invented, some men of that time were so overwhelmed by the pleasure that derived from it, that they started to sing, disregarding food and drink, and thus without realising it, brought about their own death. The race of the cicadas was thus born from them, and they received this gift from the Muses: from their birth, they do not need to feed themselves, but immediately start singing, without eating or drinking until they die; afterwards, they go and tell the Muses which of the men down here venerate each of them.

In Theocritus too, &'  ‘crickets/grasshoppers’, which are traditionally connected with music no less than were cicadas,47 and    ‘cicadas’ are the habitual accompaniment of the shepherds’ song, and also the standard term of comparison both for the song itself and, in general, for the sounds of the world of nature.48 If the boy guarding the vine is an image of the bucolic poet, then there might be a particular significance also in the imminent loss of his lunch, due to his lack of attention for the material necessities of life, compared with the pleasure (  5, v. 54) that he derives from weaving cages; we might compare, on one hand, the little attention for the external world shown by the shepherds depicted on Achilles’ shield in Homer, Iliad 18.525–6 (‘. . . they were followed by two shepherds who were taking their delight in the syrinx, without suspecting an attack’) and, on the other, the shepherds accused by Hesiod’s Muses (Theogony 26) of being %   L ‘pure stomachs’, that is to say, oblivious to anything apart from their simple need for food. Theocritus’ boy is an example of the total dedication to singing which Plato had used as an aetiological explanation for the frugal diet of the cicada,49 a diet known to the poetic tradition at least since the pseudo-Hesiodic Shield (vv. 393–95) and one which appears to have been extended at times also to crickets (&' ).50 The Platonic link between the cicadas’ love for singing and their special diet has another importance for Theocritus’ image. The habit of catching crickets and keeping them in a cage in order to listen to their singing is well attested in Hellenistic epigram,51 but in light of the fact that it was not rare 47

48

49 50 51

Cf. e.g. Anyte, AP 7.190.1 = HE 742, Leonidas, AP 7.198.3–4 = HE 2086–7, Meleager, AP 7.195.1–2 = HE 4058–9. [Aristotle], audib. 804a had already linked &'  with cicadas and nightingales as animals that were endowed with a # $  ‘resonant’ voice. Cf. 1.148, 5.28–9, 7.41, 7.138. In this last passage, Theocritus speaks of the cicada’s song as a   ‘toil’, a word resonant in Theocritean and Hellenistic poetics, cf. above, p. 5 n. 15, Berger (1984) 18–20. Cf. Aristotle, Hist. anim. 532b11–14, Theocritus 4.15–16 etc. As the unfortunately corrupt text of Meleager, AP 7.195.7–8 = HE 4064–5 suggests, cf. E. K. Borthwick, ‘A Grasshopper’s Diet’ CQ 16 (1966) 105–6. Cf. Davies–Kathirithamby (1986) 137–8.

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for the origins of poetry to be traced to the imitation of bird song,52 and in particular in the light of Plato’s comment that the cicadas had received from the Muses the prerogative of mediating between men and the Muses themselves, it is tempting to imagine that this complete absorption in catching crickets is a sort of metaphor for the birth of bucolic poetry itself. The myth of the Phaedrus and the Iliad ’s shepherds, who pay no attention to their surroundings but concentrate on their musical activity,53 lead us into this image and help us to interpret it. Equally idealised is the Theocritean countryside. It is never a really wild countryside, a place of dangers and hardships, one quite inhospitable to humans; on the contrary, the Theocritean countryside is always peacefully under human control.54 Furthermore, there is, for the most part, sympathetic harmony between the countryside and the shepherds. The beauty of the countryside reflects and guarantees the sweetness of the music of the syrinx55 and of the context in which the shepherds listen.56 The opening of the first Idyll has a particular importance, /'Q  , :Q%  /  $) * # ) 4) /   5  5%  #%' ) /'b 'X  Q %$%' )  #. O goatherd, sweet is the murmuring created by that pine-tree over there, near the springs, and sweetly do you play the pipe . . .

Note also the rival places for singing suggested by Lacon and Comatas in Idyll 5, vv. 31–4 and 45–9 (respectively): x' &"% 5'C 2,     .#%    M. :$!, [' $   # 9 U H'  Q  ) !& % 9  x' )  &'  H' ##   ... ! +:  . $  'Q ) H' Q ) H' #, 99     %( %% #%%) C ['  :$! T 'Q)  'C  ''  A!  ##  )  / % 'X  T  U 9(##  'X  /  $ 2:  Z)  #. You will sing more sweetly here, sitting under the oleaster and these trees: here the water gushes cool, here the grass grows, and there is this place to lie down, and here 52 53 54

55

Cf. e.g. Alcman, PMGF 39, Democritus, VS 68B154; Gentili (1988) chapter 4. For the history of this cultural paradigm cf. Gutzwiller (1991) 23–79. Cf. A. Perutelli, ‘Natura selvatica e genere bucolico’ ASNP 5 (1976) 763–75. A dangerously wild countryside would obviously not be conducive to bucolic /%$! ‘tranquillity’ (cf. 7.126); cf. further Segal (1981) 215–27, H. Edquist, ‘Aspects of Theocritean otium’ Ramus 4 (1975) 101–14. 56 Cf. Schmidt (1987) 29–36. Traditionally 1'Q: cf. e.g. Euripides, El. 703.

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the crickets are chirruping [. . .] I will not come there. Here there are oak-trees, here there is galingale, here the bees buzz sweetly round the hives, here there are two springs of fresh water, the birds are twittering on the tree, and the shade is totally different from what you have got around you; the pine-tree sheds its cones from on high, as well . . .

Theocritus will certainly have found more than one parallel in previous literary tradition for the sympathetic sweetness of the countryside as a premise for song, and he undoubtedly found at least one in another passage from Plato’s Phaedrus (230b–c): A lovely place for us to stop! This plane-tree is very leafy and tall; the height and the shade of the agnus are ideal, and fully blossomed as it is, it fills the place with fragrant scents. And then under the plane-tree flows a beautiful spring, with very cool water, as you can feel with your foot. From the images and the statues, it looks like a place sacred to certain Nymphs and to Achelous. And, if you like, feel how pleasant and gentle the breeze is in this place. A summer murmur answers the chorus of the cicadas. But the sweetest thing of all is this grass, which slopes gently down, and is made for one to lie down on, resting the head very comfortably.

In Theocritus, however, descriptions of the pleasures of the countryside normally remain within the bounds of the plausible. In only one case do we find an extensive description of a locus amoenus which culminates in a radically idealised, and therefore unrealistic, representation of the sympathetic participation of the world of nature; the passage comes at the end of Idyll 7: ## 'C . [    , '  K   # U , 'C 

Q  e , [' W$T M .   9    #($_ .  'X   %5 ]'% *#     ##   !  U / 'C ]##$ Z #    $5% 9(  Q_ %  &(U . '  $'  &' ) %  $ Z)    M$   ' & #%%. ( C „%'    (# ) „%' 'C ]Z. A! X   %%)  # $5% 'X T# ':# /5 $#' )  'C !$  A  99#%  9  _ .

135

140

145

Many poplars and elm-trees were swaying over our heads, and nearby, there was the babble of the sacred stream, which flows down from the grotto of the Nymphs. On the shady branches, the smoky-coloured cicadas toiled at their chirping; the tree-frog could be heard in the distance among the close-packed briar thorns; larks and finches were singing, the turtle-dove was moaning, and the bees were buzzing around the springs. Everything smelled of a rich harvest and ripe fruits: pears at

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our feet, apples rolled plenteously alongside us, and boughs laden with sloes hung down to the ground. (Theocritus 7.135–46)

In this single case, a primitivistic idealisation suggestive of the Golden Age, in which the fruit automatically dropped off the trees for the men, is achieved in the ritualised atmosphere of a rural harvest festival. The idealising imagination grows from rural reality – there is indeed a superabundance of fruit in the season of the harvest – and from the logic of religious thought. Phrasidamus and Antigenes were descendants of the noble family of Merops, the legendary king of Cos, who were said to have given hospitality to Demeter, while she was wandering in search of her lost daughter; the story is reported by one scholiast on vv. 5–9, and had probably already featured before Theocritus in Philetas’ Demeter.57 The exceptional nature of this setting is emphasised by the narrating Simichidas, who in all probability wants to present the setting created by Phrasidamus for the Thalysiae as equal to the one where Phrasidamus’ forefather, Chalcon, had performed the natural miracle of opening up the Bourina spring with a kick (ll. 4–7), in a sort of parallel to Hesiod’s Hippocrene.58 Theocritus’ intention, then, would be to contrast a modern ‘miracle’ of the bucolic world, of which Simichidas has just been appointed the singer, with a true miracle of the mythological past; the countryside, which Phrasidamus has organised into an idealised locus amoenus, then enters into competition with the mythical deeds of his forefathers.59 Moreover, the enthusiastic interpretation that the ‘town poet’ Simichidas gives of the closing locus amoenus is a demonstration of the positive influences exerted on Simichidas, both by his meeting with Lycidas and, more generally, by the landscape and the presence of the Nymphs:60 the place celebrated by Simichidas appears to be consecrated to the Nymphs, and Simichidas had acknowledged their inspiration (vv. 91–93), in offering himself as a new Hesiod, but one taught by Nymphs, not Muses (see below, p. 154). In the Phaedrus, too, the spot on the banks of the Ilissos, where the dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus took place, was sacred to the 57 58

59

60

Cf. Sbardella (2000) 176–8. Cf. Krevans (1983) 209–12. The Bourina spring may be identical with the spring of the Nymphs at the end of the poem, cf. Puelma (1960) 162 n. 58, Sbardella (2000) Appendix I. Nevertheless, there is no clear indication of this, and the different symbolic values connected with the two springs (mythological characters versus living figures; Hesiodic influences versus bucolic poetry; Muses versus Nymphs) suggest rather that they embody an opposition between two different atmospheres. Cf. Berger (1984) 28–9 and Hunter (1999) 192, for whom ‘the technique is similar to that whereby Pindar suggests that the achievements of his victor-patrons recall and replay the achievements of their ancestors [. . .] the legendary past is not merely replayed in the near past of Simichidas’ memory, but that near past is already itself mythic’. Cf. Pearce (1988) 209–304.

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Nymphs (230b), as was the spring overlooking that locus amoenus; Socrates himself stated several times that he was inspired by the Nymphs (cf. below, pp. 151–2). Moreover, Phaedrus put down the naivety of Socrates’ description of the locus amoenus to the sense of initial ‘discovery’ of the countryside by the town-dwelling philosopher (230c–d): ‘O most excellent Socrates, you seem to me to be a truly odd man. As you say, you are like a stranger led by a guide, and not like a native of this place. It seems to me that you never go beyond the limits of the town, or even outside the walls.’

The Phaedrus allows us to understand that Simichidas’ unrealistic idealisation of the locus amoenus is motivated by the enthousiasmos generated by the Nymph-controlled environment on the first performance of this new bucolic poet, or, in more prosaic terms, by the enthusiasm of the ‘town poet’ on first discovering the countryside as a theme of poetry. Selective, rather than complete, idealisation, is then Theocritus’ preferred mode, even in the locus amoenus of Idyll 7. Not uncommonly, however, this is combined with more realistic elements drawn from the bucolic world of the shepherds, often indeed to make the artifice of selection and partiality, the ‘fictional’ character of his bucolic world, less evident. Thus, for example, there are exchanges between pairs of shepherds, in which the one who is about to sing or play is careful to ask the other one to look after his flock in the meantime, or sometimes the companion who declares his readiness to do so in advance, or again, before singing, both shepherds take care to leave their animals in a safe place, so as to have more freedom for their song.61 So too, when the song is over, the shepherds may remember their flocks and their individual duties, and sometimes they start to speak again in crude, concrete language.62 It is this selective mixture of idealisation and reality that distinguishes Theocritean ‘realism’ from the idealised and/or imprecise description63 of the countryside and pastoral life that we find in the poems of his Greek imitators and in Virgil’s Eclogues: for them, the world of shepherds is merely an apparatus of objects, images and forms of expression, codified, for the Greek poets, in a now recognisable literary genre, and, for Virgil, as a sentimental alternative to town life. 61 62

63

Cf. 1.12–14, 3.1–5. On the contrary, the Cyclops, a parody of the shepherd, entirely forgot his flock while he serenaded Galatea (11.12–13). Cf. e.g. 1.151–2, recalling the crude naturalness of animal sex, immediately after the conclusion of the drama of Daphnis, 4.44–49, and 5.141–50, where the allusion to the Homeric Melanthius reminds us that these shepherds are Theocritus’ shepherds, who know their Homer; for such mixed effects in Theocritus, cf. W. G. Arnott, ‘Lycidas and Double Perspectives’ Ecl´as 26 (1984) 333–46. On imprecision and scarce attention to realism in the spurious works of the corpus, cf. Rossi (1971b), and in general W. Elliger, Die Darstellung der Landschaft in der griechischen Dichtung (Berlin–New York 1975) 319–64.

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Just as there is at least one case in which Theocritus describes an idealised locus amoenus – for the ritualised, mythologised atmosphere of the Thalysiae – so there are some exceptional cases in which he suspends the selective ‘realism’ with which he habitually presents his characters, and allows the world of nature and the world of human activity and suffering to flow into each other. The exceptions are Daphnis (7.72–7 and 1.64–145) and the ‘divine’ Comatas of 7.78–85,64 both of whom are figures belonging to the mythical past of bucolic poetry, and are in a certain sense its herofounders. They therefore have a special claim to the highly mythologised atmosphere which Theocritus creates for them. Nature is humanised by the ‘pathetic fallacy’ which attributes to it a sentimental participation and interaction with human affairs: the bees feed Comatas, who is closed inside a chest; all nature mourns for Daphnis,65 both tame animals and wild ones, including a highly improbable Sicilian lion, in a scene which breaks down the otherwise habitual separation between wild nature and domesticated herding (cf. 1.71–5 and 115–17). Moreover, as in heroic epic, in the story of Daphnis a direct participation in human affairs is imagined for the gods, both Olympian (Hermes, Aphrodite) and other (Pan, Priapus). The gods seem to have been part of the legend of Daphnis before Theocritus (according to Diodorus Siculus 4.84.3–4, Daphnis was a member of the musical entourage of Artemis), but otherwise they have no interaction with his herdsmen, who are imagined as Theocritus’ living contemporaries. The coherence of Theocritus’ bucolic world can also be seen in the different characterisation of the ‘contemporary’ Daphnis of Idyll 6 and the mythical Daphnis of Idylls 1 and 7. The relationship between the Daphnis of Idyll 6 and the mythical figure has been much debated, but whether or not he is a different character, called ‘Daphnis’ as a tribute to his poetic ability,66 the Daphnis of Idyll 6 is undoubtedly presented in a ‘realistic’ environment, in which the everyday needs of pastoral life make themselves felt.67 He engages in a singing competition (%' , v. 5) with a shepherd friend of his, in terms that are perhaps more amicable, but otherwise not very different from those of the ‘realistic’ shepherds of Idyll 5.68 In both 64 65 66 67

68

It is not clear whether these verses all refer to the goatherd Comatas, or first to a goatherd who suffered the same fate as Comatas and then to Comatas himself; cf. Hunter (1999) 175–6. Diodorus Siculus 4.84.1 describes the region of Sicily where Daphnis lived (the Heraean mountains) as a lush locus amoenus, in terms which may themselves be influenced by the myth of Daphnis. Cf. Legrand (1898) 151. Verses 1–2 ‘they gathered the herd together in a single place’ allude to the harmony of the two shepherds (cf. Bernsdorff (1994) 41), but also has an obvious effect of realism for two shepherds about to engage in a song contest; cf. 1.13, where Thyrsis asks the goatherd to play his syrinx, assuring him that he will pasture his goats in the meantime. On the parallelism between the boukoliasmoi of Idylls 5 and 6, cf. Serrao (1977) 189–94.

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poems, there is ‘sally and riposte’, though these are multiple in Idyll 5, whereas there is only a single exchange of lengthier songs in Idyll 6; in this latter poem, Daphnis imagines that he is the friend and advisor of the Cyclops, and Damoitas, Daphnis’s companion, assumes the rˆole of the Cyclops to answer Daphnis. Much of the irony of Idyll 6 derives from the fact that this living Daphnis69 warns Polyphemus not to be too difficult with Galatea by ignoring her, because in that way he would be destined to be unhappy in love ('Q% 70 ); in other words, Daphnis warns him about the very unhappiness of which Priapus accused the mythical Daphnis in 1.82–8871 . However, the Cyclops, as interpreted by Damoitas, seems to adopt the stubbornness of the mythical Daphnis, although he interprets this in his own way: he pretends to ignore her, so he claims, as part of a strategy to win Galatea as his wife (cf. vv. 32–3). Idyll 6 is thus an interpretation in a facetious key of the tragic story of the Daphnis of Idyll 1, and at the same time an interpretation in a more or less serious key of the comic clumsiness of the Cyclops of Idyll 11; it is as if the representation of the stories by two living, contemporary shepherds, and the assimilation of those stories to their own rustic scheme of logic, could moderate the tragic or parodic dimensions implicit in the two ‘heroes’ of the bucolic world par excellence, Daphnis and Polyphemus. How far Theocritus (and his Damoitas) took the Cyclops’ marriage strategy seriously, or whether the whole of the Cyclops’ song in Idyll 6 is a cruel manifestation of the selfdeception suggested at the end of Idyll 11 (ll. 76–9), depends, in part, on the question of whether Theocritus knew and expected his audience to know the version of the myth which included the birth of a son to the Cyclops and Galatea, and thus the consummation of the Cyclops’ dream of love.72 Be that as it may, the bucolic mask of the lovesick Cyclops in Idyll 6 has none of the parodic features which characterise the versification of Idyll 11; the hexameters of the Cyclops’s love song in Idyll 11 are as clumsy as the song itself, but the hexameters of Idyll 6 are fully in keeping with the 69 70

71

72

As the introductory scholium b to Idyll 1 already calls him, to distinguish him from the mythical character. In 1.85 and 6.7 this term, whose precise meaning is controversial, probably implies an inability to love the persons who could actually reciprocate the love, cf. R. M. Ogilvie, JHS 82 (1962) 106–10 and F. W. Williams, JHS 89 (1969) 122–3. For a different view, i.e. ‘deeply affected by the bitterness of love’, cf. Schmidt (1987) 57–66. Alternatively, the Daphnis of Idyll 1 falls into the error of which the Daphnis of Idyll 6 invites him to beware, cf. Bernsdorff (1994) 45. On the Cyclops of Idyll 6 as ‘another Daphnis’, cf. Stanzel (1995) 186–90. The version was known already to Timaeus (FGrHist 566F69). For later references cf. Propertius 3.2.9–10 and Nonnus 39.257–64, 40.553–57.

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principles of harmony to which Theocritus’ other bucolic poems, like the hexameters of Callimachus, aspire.73 Analogously, the Daphnis of Idyll 6, the pragmatic advisor in questions of love, whose advice is not to play hard to get but rather to seize the opportunity and who lives in perfect (perhaps even erotic74 ) harmony with his shepherd friend Damoitas in a natural ‘realistic’ setting, is to be seen as an exemplary contrast to the Daphnis of Idyll 1, who was the victim of his tragically 'Q%  character and who was in contact with the gods in an unreal, mythologised setting. Theocritus’ bucolic world not only has its specific natural setting and its specific heroes, but it also has its specific gods. One of the important ways in which Theocritus gives coherence and credibility to the setting and to the bucolic characters is through the specialisation of their pantheon. For the Greeks, there was of course a real division in the areas of responsibility and competence among the various gods, and this was true of rustic deities, no less than any others. In his Cynegeticus (chap. 35), Arrian explicitly notes that different activities require the attention of different gods: those who sail the seas commence from the gods whose concern is human safety, and when they are rescued, they offer thanksgiving sacrifices to the sea gods, Poseidon, Amphitrite and the Nereids; those who till the land offer sacrifices to Demeter and her daughter and to Dionysus; those who practise crafts, to Athena and Hephaestus . . . so also keen hunters must be sure not to neglect Artemis the Hunter, and Apollo, and Pan, and the Nymphs, and Hermes, god of journeys, and Hermes the Guide, and all the other divinities of the mountains.

Long before Arrian, and before Theocritus, this specialisation of the rustic pantheon is clearly seen not only in the two writers of epigrams who pay the greatest attention to the rustic world of humble people, Leonidas and Anyte,75 but also in Plato’s Phaedrus and Menander’s Dyskolos, in which the rural setting plays a prominent role. In the Phaedrus, Socrates explains his choice to hold the discussion in the first real locus amoenus of Greek literature (230b–c, cf. above) by pointing out that the place is sacred to the Nymphs and to Achelous (230b8–9) and that Pan and the Nymphs, the daughters of Achelous, are the divinities who will inspire the discussion76 73 74 75

76

Cf. Fantuzzi (1995b), and above, pp. 34–7. Cf. E. L. Bowie, ‘Frame and Framed in Theocritus Poems 6 and 7’ in Harder–Regtuit–Wakker (1996) 91–100. For Leonidas, the recipients of the veneration of farmers, shepherds, etc. are Pan, the Nymphs and Hermes. Cf. AP 6.334 = HE 1966ff., Nymphs, Hermes, Pan; 6.188 = HE 1972ff., Pan; 9.326 = HE 1979ff., Nymphs; 9.329 = HE 1984ff., Nymphs; 6.13 = HE 2249ff. and 6.35 = HE 2255ff., Pan; POxy. 662 = HE 2277ff., Pan and Nymphs. For Anyte cf. APlan. 291 = HE 672ff. (dedication of a shepherd to Pan and the Nymphs), and APlan. 231 = HE 738ff. (Pan presented as a shepherd). Cf. Gutzwiller (1991) 76–7.

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(cf. 238d, 241e, 263d). At the end of the dialogue, Socrates addresses his salutation and final prayer to Pan and the other ‘gods of the place’ (279b). A few decades later, in the Dyskolos, a comedy by Menander which is, most unusually, not set in town but in the countryside, the god who presents the prologue is Pan and the chorus might be composed of ‘followers of Pan’.77 At the centre of the stage, moreover, there is the door of the temple of Pan and the Nymphs;78 the action will come to a head during a sacrifice at this temple, and Pan plays a very important rˆole throughout the whole drama. It is Pan who causes Sostratus to fall in love with the daughter of Cnemon while she is paying honour to the Nymphs (vv. 39–52), and he also causes the mother of Sostratus to have a dream, in which he reveals indirectly to her what he had already told the spectators in the prologue (vv. 407–18). Theocritus’ bucolic mimes carry the specialised narrowing of the rustic pantheon even further, but in other poems too he pays particular attention to the specialisation of the divinities that inspire poetry. The Muses had been the most common divine inspirers of poetry in all literary genres, but for the archaic hexameter epos of Homer and Hesiod they have a particular importance; as divinities, they can function as particularly trustworthy ‘witnesses’ of stories about the deeds of gods or heroes in a remote past (cf. e.g. Iliad 2.484–86 and Odyssey 8.487–91) and as guarantors of the ethical and theological truths presented by Hesiod.79 In his two encomiastic poems, Theocritus too appears to make a distinction between the Muses and other divinities who inspire song, based on the status of the protagonist of the song. In the case of the semi-divine laudandus of Idyll 17, Ptolemy II Philadelphus – a 9  ‘mortal’ (v. 4), who is also a contemporary &8 &  , namely a contemporary ‘hero’80 – Theocritus contrasts his personal choice of this theme with the habitual thematic choice of the Muses (the gods) and the habitual choice of the ancient bards inspired by the Muses (the heroes); he thus adopts as a term of comparison – both for similarity and difference – archaic hymnody and epic. In the course of the poem he explicitly presents encomiastic poetry for Ptolemy as a new possibility for inspiration by the Muses: ‘the spokesmen (2 ) of the Muses celebrate Ptolemy for his benefactions’ (vv. 115–16). In Idyll 16, however, which is a promise of an encomium for a laudandus whose 77 78 79 80

If we accept the emendation of % (, which is metrically difficult, to % (, v. 230. The combined worship of Pan and the Nymphs was widespread, cf. above n. 75, Ch. M. Edwards, Greek Votive Reliefs to Pan and the Nymphs (Diss. New York 1985) 20–7. Cf. e.g. Finkelberg (1998) 71–3. Cf. O. Vox, ‘& , #: poeta e committente nelle Cariti’ Kleos 7 (2002) 193–209, pp. 196–8.

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virtues fall entirely within the field of human characteristics and capacities (Hieron II of Syracuse), Theocritus at times evokes the Muses (vv. 1–3, (for the polemical tone here, see above, p. 140–1), 29, 58, 69, 107), and at times the Graces (vv. 6–12, 108–9); in this way, he continues a tradition typical of epinician poetry, which saw the Muses and the Graces united as guarantors of the beauty which enhances the deeds of the laudandus and attracts the favour of the public for the song, thus ensuring a lasting continuity for the latter and glory for the laudandus himself.81 In Idylls 1 and 3–7 by Theocritus, which we may call the ‘serious’ bucolic idylls (in opposition to the agricultural Idyll 10 and the bucolic-parodic Idyll 11),82 we find that the Muses play an utterly marginal rˆole. Rather, it is the Nymphs who, as the inspirers of pastoral poetry, very often occupy the place which in poetic tradition had always been occupied exclusively by the Muses; it is as if the Muses can no longer be up-to-date and effective ‘witnesses’ for the new bucolic world, which is, if anything, now the realm of the Nymphs. Thus, for example, the Muses are almost completely absent from the perspective of the two herdsmen of Idyll 5, the most ‘realistic’ of Theocritus’ song competitions; on the contrary, they believe that they owe their inspiration to the Nymphs, to whom they gratefully offer sacrifice at the end of their songs (cf. vv. 140, 149). The opposition between the Muses and the Nymphs is also very clear in Idyll 7. At the beginning of the poem, the protagonist, Simichidas, presents himself as a town-dweller (v. 2) and as an &'  whom public opinion considers to be a ‘resonant mouth of the Muses’ (v. 37); unlike Simichidas, Theocritus’ shepherds never call themselves &', though Komatas in Idyll 5 applies the term to the mythical Daphnis (5.80–1, cf. below, p. 154–6), nor do they ever describe their singing as & ' , a verb perhaps a little too closely associated with heroic epic, the poetry of the Muses par excellence. In his first speech, Lycidas speaks of Simichidas as a person tied to the urban world and its habits (vv. 24–5: ‘are you hurrying off to a dinner without being invited, or are you racing to some townsman’s winepress?’), though Simichidas explains that he considers himself currently to be ‘on loan’ to the pastoral world, on the occasion of the journey which he is making to take part in the rural celebration of the Thalysiae for Demeter (vv. 31–36); this authorises him to think that he can vie with Lycidas in singing (v. 30) and, specifically, in pastoral song (vv. 35–6). Later, however, in the spirit of 81

82

For the combination of the Muses and Graces in a poetic context cf. e.g. Pindar, Nem. 9.53–5; Bacchylides 5.3–14, 9.1–5; Euripides, HF 673–86; B. MacLachlan, The Age of Grace (Princeton 1993) 87–123. Further evidence for considering Idylls 1 and 3–7 as a ‘group’ is metrical, cf. Fantuzzi (1995a).

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the rustic song that Lycidas had introduced in vv. 50–1 (‘see, my friend, if you like this little song that I composed recently on the mountainside’), it is to the Nymphs that Simichidas makes reference as his teachers (vv. 91–3) in an obvious rewriting of Hesiod’s inspiration (Theogony 22–3) by the Muses: . . . ?$' # ) ## X .## WQ -X ''M & C N  9$#  %#()  #. My dear Lycidas, the Nymphs have also taught me many other good songs, while I was herding on the mountains . . .

The turn to Hesiod perhaps suggests the tradition in which Simichidas places not only his own poetry, but bucolic poetry as a whole.83 Finally, when at the culmination of the description of the locus amoenus, which sets the seal on the idealisation of the pastoral world, he seeks inspiration in order to magnify by means of mythological paradigms the excellence of Phrasidamus’s wine, Simichidas does not invoke the Muses, even on a mythological subject; rather, he invokes the Nymphs – ‘Nymphs of Castalia, you who inhabit the cliffs of Parnassus’ (v. 148) – where it is not by chance that he chooses to name, as the home of the Nymphs, a mountain and a spring which were already (or were in the process of becoming) closely connected with the Muses. Moreover, he also chooses to imitate the Iliadic epithet with which Homer had regularly invoked the Muses, C>#Q 'Z C !$% ‘whose habitation is on Mount Olympus’, whenever he had to ask for their help at points of particular difficulty.84 The Muses resume the full exercise of their function as ‘witnesses’ of a remote past, unattainable for men of the present, and as goddesses with the task of singing of the gods (cf. Idyll 16.3), when the scene does not present shepherd-singers imagined as living, contemporary figures, but rather when the singer or the theme of the song is one of the semi-mythical hero-founders of bucolic poetry, or at least one of its leading exponents, who is therefore in a certain sense mythologised (like Lycidas). For this reason, both the ‘divine’ Comatas, whose feats as a bucolic hero are sung by Lycidas in Idyll 7 (cf. v. 82: ‘the Muse poured sweet nectar on to his lips’), and Daphnis, who appears to have been celebrated as a hero-founder of bucolic poetry at least 83 84

Cf. Hunter (1999) 178–9. Cf. Il. 2.484, 11.218, 14.508, 16.112. The first certain reference to a connection between the Muses and Parnassus is in a fragment of one of the epigraphic Hymns from Delphi (p. 71 Crusius); cf. further J. Schmidt, RE 18.1654–8.

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as early as Stesichorus85 and thus already had a place in literary tradition and mythology before Theocritus, are connected with the Muses. This is consistent with the fact that, unlike Theocritus’ ‘ordinary’ herdsmen, these two ‘heroes’ of bucolic poetry are placed in a fable-like setting outside time, characterised by the ‘pathetic fallacy’ (cf. above, p. 149) and by the participation of the gods in human affairs. The Daphnis of Idyll 6, however, remains untouched by the inspiration of the Muses, and his world has not the slightest trace of the mythologised or the unreal; so too, the Comatas of Idyll 5 is not the mythical hero of bucolic poetry, but rather is presented in a low, ‘hyper-realistic’ manner, and it is only momentary hyperbole that leads him to claim that ‘the Muses love me much more than Daphnis, the singer’ (vv. 80–1), for he too has the Nymphs and Pan as leading figures in his pantheon (vv. 17, 58, 70, 149). By way of contrast, the Muses are at the heart of Thyrsis’ song about the mythical Daphnis in Idyll 1: the goatherd states in his opening encomium of Thyrsis that Thyrsis’ song will be second only to that of the Muses (v. 9), though on the contrary Thyrsis himself compares the goatherd to Pan, in view of his ability at playing the syrinx (v. 3); so too, the refrains that punctuate Thyrsis’ song are addressed to the Muses, as are the envoi and promise of libations which close the song (vv. 144–5).86 As for Lycidas, he is a semi-divine singer, who has the authority to invest Simichidas as a pastoral poet, or perhaps even a god in disguise: Pan, a satyr, and Apollo Lykios have all been suggested.87 Simichidas introduces his song by calling Lycidas ‘dear to the Muses’ (v. 95), and subsequently he says that the stick given to him by Lycidas was a ‘gift of friendship from the Muses’ (v. 129), just as the encounter with Lycidas was, as he tells us, ‘with the Muses’ (v. 12); these details are recognitions of the higher nature of Lycidas himself and reinforce the idea that we are witnessing a poetic investiture of a Hesiodic kind.88 This counterpoint between the Nymphs and the Muses finds expression also in the description of Daphnis in Idyll 1.141 as ‘the man dear to the Muses, and not hateful to the Nymphs’: the semi-divine Lycidas is ‘dear to the Muses’ (7.95), 85 86

87

88

Cf. above n. 23. Myrinus, AP 7.703 = GPh 2574ff. has Thyrsis asleep and besieged by Eros; the epigram attributes to the Nymphs, not to the Muses, the task of taking care of Thyrsis’ safety, presumably as a result of the importance of the Nymphs in Theocritus’ bucolic poems, cf. Bernsdorff (2001) pp. 152–3. For the divine characteristics of the ‘epiphany’ of Lycidas cf. Puelma (1960), Archibald Cameron, ‘The Form of the Thalysia’ in Miscellanea di studi alessandrini in memoria di A. Rostagni (Turin 1963) 291–307, Hunter (1999) 147 with further bibliography. Among the very few voices who dissent from this interpretative koine are B. M. Palumbo Stracca, ‘L’ironia di Teocrito nella polemica letteraria delle Talisie’ Boll. Class. Lincei 27 (1979) 69–78 and Horstmann (1976) 159–60; for the position of Effe, see also above, n. 8. Cf. Pearce (1988) 290–1.

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but Daphnis is a mythical hero-poet of the past (and, as such, a follower of the Muses), but also one in whose story the Nymphs played a major rˆole.89 The internal coherence of the Theocritean system is not only revealed in his choice of the divinities that haunt the landscape and inspire pastoral poems, but there is also a more general specialisation of the bucolic pantheon. Apart from the omnipresent Nymphs, the pastoral idylls feature almost exclusively Pan90 , Apollo Paean91 , and Priapus92 , and this ‘specialisation’ is in fact dramatised by Theocritus in Idyll 1. Whatever might have been Daphnis’ behaviour towards Aphrodite, about which Theocritus is notoriously elusive, the opposition between the two is an essential element in the heroic stature given to Daphnis in this poem that celebrates him; nevertheless, Thyrsis creates a sharp contrast between the, at least initially, hostile Aphrodite and the series of rustic gods – Pan, Hermes, Priapus – who come to offer advice and mourn for Daphnis. Hermes even echoes the famous words of Aphrodite (!) to Sappho in a scene (fr. 1 Voigt) of epiphany and consolation: Aphrodite had appeared to Sappho with her usual divine smile,  '%C &( " %Z" ‘with a smile on her immortal face’ (l. 14), whereas she comes to Daphnis /' 5 . . . #(%) | #( X #(%) 9b 'C & $, !% ‘rejoicing sweetly, rejoicing internally, but displaying grief’ (ll. 95–6).93 Sappho’s Aphrodite (vv. 18– 20) had asked  'c   | .: % C .   %  #  ‡  %C „ | ˆ(C &'4 ; ‘who shall I persuade to lead you back to her love? Who is wronging you, O Sappho?’ In Theocritus, on the contrary, it is Hermes who proves to be a %Q! of Daphnis (cf. Sappho vv. 27–8), and asks him, in the reverse order, \() |  $   Q! ‡ ) | ) %% %; ‘Who is tormenting you, Daphnis? With whom are you so in love?’ (vv. 77–8). Thus, Theocritus inverts the rˆole of Aphrodite, and Hermes plays for Daphnis the rˆole that the benevolent Aphrodite had played for Sappho. Theocritus’ shepherds are equally coherent in swearing only by Pan94 , the Nymphs95 , or Apollo Paean96 ; there is hardly a place for the traditional guarantors of oaths in Greek literature, such as Zeus and Heracles. 89 90 91 93

94

According to the best-known version of the legend, both Daphnis’ mother and lover were Nymphs; Diodorus Siculus 4.84 has him also brought up by the Nymphs. 1.3, 1.16, 4.63, 5.58, 7.103, 7.106. 92 1.21, 1.81. 5.79, 6.27. For this passage, whose meaning is much disputed (cf. G. Tarditi, ‘Il sorriso di Afrodite’ in Filologia e forme letterarie: studi offerti a F. Della Corte (Urbino 1987) I.347–53), I follow the interpretation offered by G. Zuntz, ‘Theocritus I, 95f.’, CQ 10 (1960) 37–40. 95 1.12, 4.29, 5.17 and 70. 96 Cf. above, n. 91. 4.47, 5.14 and 141, 6.21.

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The few exceptions are placed in the mouth of rather dubious characters. In Idyll 4.50, the character who utters an oath by Zeus is Battus, who throughout that poem is repeatedly ridiculed for his pathetic excesses, and who is also characterised linguistically by exaggerated, para-tragic forms of expression:97 his interlocutor Corydon, the example of the good shepherd who possesses a clear sense of reality, swears by the Nymphs (v. 29) and Pan (v. 47). When Lacon swears by Zeus at 5.74, this must be read against Comatas’ immediately preceding oath by the Nymphs (v. 70) and immediately following exclamation: ‘O Paean!’ (v. 79); Comatas will win the song contest, and it is easy to understand whose form of oath is the more ‘correct’. So, too, the parodic Cyclops swears by Zeus (11.29), but by Pan and Paean in 6.21 and 6.27, in a scene in which he is being represented by the shepherd Damoitas and thus now conforms to bucolic norms (cf. above, pp. 150–1). A certain specialisation, aimed in this case at an effect of realism, can be observed also in the way in which religious celebrations are presented. The great traditional celebrations for Demeter and Adonis which dominate respectively the final parts of the bucolic Idyll 7 and the urban Idyll 15 become central to and emblematic of the poetic contexts in which they are presented. Thus, the Thalysiae of Idyll 7 become the opportunity for a mise en abˆıme of the broader, idealised locus amoenus of Theocritus’ bucolic poetry, and the Adonia raises to its highest peak of magnificence the urban setting which had been presented at the beginning of the poem in the parodic tones of mime. Prayer is another area in which traditional practice involving the Olympian gods gives way to expressions invoking good luck and forms of popular superstition – like the apotropaic spitting of 6.39 and 7.126–798 or the ‘sieve-divining’ of the %   Agroio in 3.31–2.99 It is magic, not – with few exceptions, such as the Thalysiae – the traditional Olympian religion, which now dominates, whether it be the song of Simaitha in the urban Idyll 2, or that of Simichidas in the bucolic Idyll 7. Magical practice had, of course, featured occasionally in high literature before – the [ '% ‘binding song’ of Aeschylus’ Erinyes (Eumenides 307–96)100 is an obvious example – but it is in Sicilian mime and Menander that we should look for Theocritus’ immediate forebears. Sophron is claimed by the ancient scholiasts as the model both for the magical rite of Idyll 2 and, specifically, 97 98 99 100

Cf. Segal (1981) 95–106. Cf. D. E. Gershenson, ‘Averting 9% in Theocritus: a Compliment’ CSCA 2 (1969) 145–55. Cf. W. G. Arnott, ‘Coscinomancy in Theocritus and Kazantzakis’ Mnemosyne 31 (1978) 27–32. On which cf. Ch. A. Faraone, ‘Aeschylus’ [ '% (Eum. 306) and Attic Judicial Curse Tablets’ JHS 105 (1985) 150–4.

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for the character of Thestylis (cf. above, n. 4); the reference may be to the mime The women who say that they are driving out the goddess (s

$5  t      M #T, PCG frs. 3–∗ 9),101 and this same rite also occurred in the k (#, Thessalian Witch, of Menander (PCG 170– 5). Sophron and Menander show how magic was represented as an integral part of daily life, as indeed it was: the large corpus of ‘curse tablets’, tabellae defixionis, suggests that the prominence of magic was in fact increasing, and this importance finds clear expression in Theocritus. Idyll 2 is a magical &  4, a spell to ‘draw’ the beloved one into one’s arms.102 So, too, though of a rather different kind, is the request to help Aratus which Simichidas addresses to Pan in Idyll 7:  ) J() 6> #  , ' V% ## !) .#  4 #  ! 5  % K C % C } `#5  #, K  .##.  * X  C ') „ J  # ) 4  $ 5'  C;' %##% 2, # $(  N  % _ ) V  $   U * 'C .##  Q%  X !  ( C ]Q! %% '   (%   '%  Q') K 'C C7' X  N % !   %%")  #.

105

110

O Pan, you who have received by lot the lovely plain of Homole, press him [the beloved], without the need for any invitation, into the loving arms of that man [his friend Aratus] – whether it is really the delicate Philinus or another. If you do this, dear Pan, may the boys of Arcadia never scourge you with squills on your sides and your shoulders, when there is insufficient meat. But if you do not give your consent, may you scratch the bites all over your body with your nails, and sleep among stinging nettles and stay out on the mountains of the Edonians in mid-winter . . . (Theocritus 7.103–11)

The combination of prayer and threats is typical of the prayers found in magical texts;103 particularly close to Simichidas’ poem is the following magical text, in which the practitioner threatens to throw the demons that he invokes into the flames, if they do not bring his beloved into his arms: ‘If you bring Euphemia to me [. . .] I will give you Osiris Nophriˆot 101

102 103

For this magical practice: Hipp., Morb. Sacr. 4, Plato, Gorg. 513a, Ar. Clouds 749–50, Lucian, Dial. Mer. 1 and Philops. 14, PGM 34 Preisendanz. For discussion cf. C. Pr´eaux, La lune dans la pens´ee grecque (Brussels 1970) 121–2, R. van Compernolle, ‘Faire descendre la lune’ in Grec et latin ´ 1982: Etudes et documents d´edi´es a` la m´emoire de G. Cambier, (Brussels 1982) 53–7, and the note of P. Fedeli on Prop. 1.1.19, p. 79. Cf. Ch. A. Faraone, ‘The “Performative Future” in Three Hellenistic Incantations and Theocritus’ Second Idyll ’ CPh 90 (1995) 1–15. Cf. R. W. Daniel–F. Maltomini, Supplementum magicum, I (Opladen 1990) 169 on 45.14, and Fantuzzi–Maltomini (1996).

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[. . .] and he will revive your spirits. But if you do not do what I am asking you, Eˆonebyˆoth will burn you. I swear it to you, demons that are here present’ (Suppl. mag. I, 45.11–15 Daniel–Maltomini). It is obvious that Egyptian traditions had an important influence on the practice and spread of magical prayers, but there was, in all probability, already an example of a threatening prayer in an erotic situation in Greek literary tradition. In a fragment of Anacreon (PMG 445), the poet apostrophises the naughty Erotes (‘insolent and irresponsible, you who do not know who you will strike with your arrows’), and Himerius (Or. 48.4) introduces his quotation of this fragment as follows: Now I would have needed the songs from Teos [Anacreon’s birthplace], now I would have needed the lyre of Anacreon, which he knew how to use even against the Erotes themselves, when he was spurned by pretty boys . . . Perhaps I, too, would have pronounced the threat (- #% 8 & #4) that Anacreon uttered against the Erotes: once when he had fallen in love with a beautiful youth and saw that the youth was not interested in him, he tuned his lyre and threatened (- # ) the Erotes that if they did not strike the youth at once, he would never again sing a song in their praise (  # 3 *  b &Q%%).

Himerius might, of course, have exaggerated a merely playful gesture by Anacreon, under the influence of the magical practice of the Hellenistic and late antique worlds.104 Nevertheless, in Poem 11 of the Anacreontea, which expands or varies Anacreon’s themes and language, the poet has bought a wax statue of Eros from a boy in the street and therefore imagines that he has the god under his control (‘Now light the fire of love for me immediately! If you do not obey, you will melt amid the flames’); it is therefore reasonable to suppose that the song from which Himerius quotes, or some other song by Anacreon, really was a magical prayer, or at least could be interpreted as such, and not only by Himerius. One echo of Anacreon may be heard in Simichidas’ request to the Erotes to strike (9(## ) the boy that Aratus loves (vv. 117–19): this invitation might recall the exhortation to the Erotes to  Z%  ‘wound’ the unwilling youth with love, which Himerius leads us to suppose was present in Anacreon. If so, the literary operation is of a particularly sophisticated kind. Theocritus writes for Simichidas a ‘realistic’ prayer-threat, but ‘bucolicises’ it by having him apostrophise one of the most important gods of the bucolic ‘pantheon’, Pan, and by describing him as a shepherd (cf. v. 113: ‘and in spring may you pasture your flocks among the Aethiopes’) who sleeps in 104

On possible affinities between the fragment of Anacreon and the magical prayer, cf. G. Azzarello, =;@ <=>s>< ^<s;@: la minaccia nella preghiera magica (Diss. University of Pisa 1996).

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the open air (v. 110). Pan is also the homosexual god par excellence, and he is therefore the ideal recipient for this homosexual prayer;105 the two aspects of the god, the bucolic and the sexual, are thus seen as mutually complementary, just as Callimachus (fr. 689) united the two specialisations of the god by calling Pan Maleietes Q *#  ‘goatherd screwer’.106 By referring to the Erotes immediately afterwards, Theocritus may cap the magical prayer with an allusion to one of the very few literary precedents for such a prayer; moreover, as this precedent comes from the world of sympotic lyric, it appropriately matches Lycidas’ song and his ‘bucolicisation’ of the symposium.107 Mythology, too, plays its part in Theocritus’ creation of a coherent bucolic world. Mythological exempla, the stories of gods and heroes, were the vehicle of positive and negative paradigms for human behaviour in archaic and classical literature of all levels, and Theocritus wrote against the background of the popularity in the fourth and third centuries of mythological ‘catalogue’ poetry. In such poems, episodes from the stories of gods or heroes were presented as exemplary portraits with an application to the real world and the situation of the poet; we know of such poems on love, both heterosexual (Lyd¯e by Antimachus, Leontion by Hermesianax, and perhaps Apollo by Alexander Aetolus) and homosexual (Erotes or the Beautiful Ones by Phanocles), for which the principal (real or claimed) archaic models were Mimnermus’ Nanno and the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, and also ‘curse poems’, catalogues of exemplary sufferings and terrible fates, to be used as paradigms with which to curse one’s enemies (the Arai ‘Curses’ by Moiro, the ‘tattoo poem’ (cf. Huys 1991), the Ibis by Callimachus, and the ‘Thracian’, the ‘Cup stealer’ and the ‘Chiliads’ by Euphorion).108 For the characters of Theocritus, however, paradigms of comprehensibility and truth are to be found rather in everyday, rustic proverbs. In Idyll 5 alone, where the effect of pastoral realism is perhaps strongest, we find five proverbs which are identified as such by the scholia;109 at least three also occur in the opening dialogue of Idyll 10 (‘The harvesters’), which is the other poem where realistic effects are most strongly felt.110 In this second case, all the proverbs are in the mouth of Milon, the hard-working labourer whose ‘Hesiodic’ perspective leaves little space for erotic fantasy; the lovesick Bucaeus, poet of a very clumsy serenade 105 106 107 109

As the schol. on v. 103a already noted. It is possible that the ritual mentioned by Theocritus was connected with hunting, as some ancient scholars thought, cf. schol. on vv. 106–8a. 108 Cf. Fantuzzi (1995b) 29, 35 and Cameron (1995) 380–6. Cf. above, pp. 135–7. 110 Cf. scholia on vv. 11, 13, 17; also vv. 54–5. Cf. scholia on vv. 23, 26–7, 31, 38, 65.

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(cf. Milon’s ironic comment, vv. 38–40), can no more utter rustic proverbs than he can concentrate upon his work: his proverbial truth, one which he himself should heed, is rather about the unpredictability and injustice of Eros: ‘Wealth is not the only blind god, blind also is reckless Eros’ (vv. 19–20).111 The use of proverbs is mimetic of the illiterate simplicity typical of the logic and language of bucolic characters,112 and is thus a technique of rustic realism. Aristotle, perhaps the first thinker to give serious attention to proverbs, considered them as ‘residues of ancient philosophy which had been lost in the great catastrophes of humanity, saved thanks to their brevity and acuteness’ (fr. 463 Gigon),113 – a very noble origin, and one analogous to the one offered for the traditional belief of ancient thinkers in the divine character of nature (cf. Metaph. 12.1074b1–14).114 Aristotle designated farmers as the social group most inclined to use proverbs (they are  Q: Rhet. 2.1395a6–7); so too, the use of proverbs was suitable for the old, but not for the young or those lacking in experience, for whom proverbial speech revealed a lack of culture (&' $ ).115 It is thus significant that proverbs are wholly naturalised in the language of the characters of the bucolic or rustic idylls, without ever being signalled by the context, whereas they are often introduced by expressions which mark them as proverbs (‘as the saying goes’ etc.) in the urban mimes, Idylls 14 and 15.116 Theocritus’ humble characters, whether bucolic or urban, employ mythological paradigms only sparingly. The only mythological passage of any extent – the exempla in the song of the goatherd of Idyll 3 (vv. 40–51) – is marked by ‘errors’, which betray both the limited familiarity of this character with the world of mythology, and a certain lack of faith on the part of the 111 112 113 114

115

116

Cf. V. Buchheit ‘Amor Caecus’ C&M 25 (1964) 130–1. Cf. the use of proverbs by the characters of Herondas, discussed by W. G. Arnott, G&R 18 (1971) 130–1. Aristotle’s attention to proverbs was an attitude which aroused perplexities in some quarters (cf. Aristotle fr. 464 Gigon) – which may perhaps suggest its novelty. ‘One must regard this as an inspired utterance, and reflect that, while probably each art and science has often been developed as far as possible and has again perished, these opinions, with others, have been preserved until the present like relics of the ancient treasure’ (Metaph. 12.1074b 9–13, trans. Ross). On proverbs as an element of popular ('  ) knowledge, cf. also Demetrius, Eloc. 232. There was a lively interest in paroemiography in the fourth and third centuries, in the wake of Aristotle’s collection J (frs. 463–4 Gigon), on the part of both the peripatetic school (Theophrastus, Dicaearchus, Clearchus) and Chrysippus (SVF III p. 202). The scholia show that the identification of proverbial expressions was one of the subjects that received most attention from the ancient commentators of Theocritus, cf. Wendel (1920) 142–7. Cf. 14.43, 14.51, 15.77. In Idylls 11, 13, and 29 an opening proverbial maxim is presented as an opinion shared by the author, which motivates the following narration.

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author in the security of meaning of mythological paradigms (cf. below). In Idyll 7 Simichidas, a character with whom Theocritus at least partly identifies, cites a couple of mythological paradigms when he magnifies the sublime nature of the locus amoenus at the end of the poem (vv. 148–55). The song of the lovesick Cyclops in Idyll 11 is presented as a exemplum for the truth that ‘singing brings healing from love’ (vv. 1–2), and the alleged love of Galatea for the Cyclops is said by the cowherd Daphnis in Idyll 6 to illustrate the truth that ‘love often considers beautiful that which is not so’ (vv. 18–19). In all of these paradigms, there is a kind of ‘breakdown of exemplarity’: the stories offer an excess of meanings, some of which are far from exemplary, and which therefore subvert the univocal paradigmatic value for which the story itself is quoted. This phenomenon was, of course, already known to fifth-century tragedy, which made a serious, genuinely paradigmatic use of mythological exempla,117 but in Theocritus this ‘breakdown’ represents the form in which mythological paradigms are regularly presented: mythological–heroic material is radically foreign to the literary world created by bucolic poetry, even when it is apparently functioning as exempla. In the course of the paraklausithyron of Idyll 3, the goatherd believes at a certain point, on the basis of a rustic omen, that Amaryllis is about to yield to him; he thus tries to facilitate her surrender to love by listing a series of mythical stories in which a period of courting finally led to marriage. However, in virtually every case the ‘happy end’ was followed by wretched fates for one or both partners (Atalanta and Hippomenes, Adonis and Aphrodite, Endymion and Selene, Jason and Demeter), and in the case of Bias-Melampus-Pero (vv. 43–7), the love relationship was sealed, not in favour of the one who had carried out the courting (Melampus), but rather a third party (Bias) who enjoyed the fruits of the sacrifices that the courting had involved.118 The validity of these exempla therefore depends on whether we share the limited perspective of the goatherd and are prepared to forget a large part of the meaning that the exempla would have had as complete stories, or not to consider alternative versions which did not have a happy ending. Neither ancient nor modern readers will, however, ignore the gap between the story as a whole and the specific narrative segment (or the specific version) which the goatherd chooses; this gap might underline the clumsiness of the goatherd in his inability to master the polysemy of 117

118

Cf. S. Goldhill, ‘The Failure of Exemplarity’ in I. J. F. de Jong and J. P. Sullivan (eds.), Modern Critical Theory and Classical Literature (Leiden 1994) 51–73, G. Nagy, ‘Mythological Exemplum in Homer’ in R. Hexter and D. Selden (eds.), Innovations of Antiquity (New York 1992) 326. Cf. Fantuzzi (1995b).

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mythical stories,119 or it might suggest an (unconscious) pessimism about his hopes of success, for his exempla are overshadowed by an aura of death.120 We may also wish to fall back on the explanation of authorial irony at the expense of the characters;121 but it may rather be that mythological paradigms and the secure interpretations which classical poetry had offered for them are simply foreign to the new world of bucolic poetry. A similar conclusion may be drawn for Idyll 7, not as a result of the rustic clumsiness of any character, but rather from the astute rhetorical questions of Simichidas himself, which explicitly raise the issue of the relevance of mythological paradigms. The locus amoenus of vv. 135–46, which, as we have seen (cf. above pp. 137–8), represents the idealisation of bucolic /%$! and, partly by means of the extreme refinement of the figures of speech used in it, emblematises how the poetics of Theocritus superimposes itself on the real world of shepherds and the countryside to create a new poetic world,122 leads to a sublime finale of almost Pindaric grandeur: (   'X  & #Q   , .# . WQ =% #'  J(% L !%) }(    ' ` #  #( .   C 67#  % (%  G‡ }(    ,  ,  C C;(") ,  , J#Q) p N % T 9## ) 5    %  C 3# %% ! %) P '8   ' (% ) WQ) 9   \(  /#'‡

150

He took the four-year-old seal off the top of the wine-jars. O Nymphs of Castalia, who inhabit the peak of Parnassus, did ever old Chiron offer Heracles such a cup in the rocky cave of Pholus? Was ever that shepherd who lived close to the Anapus, the mighty Polyphemus who flung mountains at ships, persuaded to dance in his sheepfolds by a nectar like the drink that you mixed for us, O Nymphs, beside the altar of Demeter of the Threshing-Floor? (Theocritus 7.147–55)

Simichidas apparently calls on the testimony of goddesses who inspire and preserve the memory of mythic material, as if exhuming the traditional 119 120

121 122

Cf. e.g. G. Lawall, Theocritus’ Coan Pastorals (Cambridge, MA 1967) 40–1 and Dover (1971) 118. For detailed analyses cf. R. Whitaker, Myth and Personal Experience in Roman Love-Elegy (G¨ottingen 1983) 49–52, Stanzel (1995) 131–7, M. P. Pattoni, ‘Il III Idillio di Teocrito’ AevAnt 10 (1997) 187–99, though all appear to take too positive a view of the goatherd’s first pair of exempla. Against a pan-ironic interpretation of Theocritean poetry cf. Stanzel (1995) 104–44, who, however, goes too far in the other direction. Cf. Hunter (1999) 193: ‘the overt artifice of the passage matches the artifice of the locus which Phrasidamus and his family have created; both pleasures are man-made [. . .] this passage thus establishes the dialectic of art and nature which was to dominate all subsequent “pastoral” literature, which claims to describe the “natural”, but does so in overtly artificial ways’.

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gesture of calling the Muses to one’s aid at the beginning of a particularly taxing mythological telling (cf. Iliad 2.484–6, Ibycus, PMGF S151, Apollonius Rhodius, Arg. 1.20–2 etc.). Here, however, we have not the Muses, but the pastoral Nymphs, and the myths that follow have settings and characters that are clearly pastoral; the Nymphs, therefore, here offer a guarantee of reliability equal to that which the Muses traditionally offered. Elated by the excellent wine served during the rustic symposium, Simichidas-Theocritus seeks, in the finest Pindaric manner, a parallel in myth for this wine, and so he asks the Nymphs if the wine mixed with the water that poured from their spring (v. 154; cf. also v. 137) was the same as the wine of two famous episodes of the mythical past. This passage raises this rustic symposium to the sublime level of myth.123 Every ancient and modern reader, however, also knows what it meant for Polyphemus to drink the extraordinary wine124 that Odysseus offered him, and the reference to the Cyclops who ‘flung mountains at ships’ (v. 152) skilfully evokes the whole Homeric episode, including the monster’s blinding. Chiron too got no joy from offering the marvellous wine of the Centaurs to Heracles:125 in this story, the Centaurs swarmed towards the bouquet; in the following skirmish, poor Chiron was wounded (accidentally) by Heracles’ poisoned arrows and died a horrible death. Thus, whereas the traditional use of mythological paradigms would have suggested an affirmative answer to Simichidas’ questions, knowledge of the whole story of the Cyclops and of Heracles and Chiron suggests a quite different answer: ‘Let’s hope not, for the sake of Phrasidamus’ guests . . .’ The contrast between the bloody consequences of these two mythical symposia and the peaceful atmosphere of Phrasidamus’ celebration emphasises once again the ideal of bucolic /%$!. As for Idylls 6 and 11, the very existence of the two poems undermines any alleged univocality of meaning in the story of the Cyclops’ love. Parallel to the inversion of Daphnis in this poem (cf. above p. 149), Idyll 6 presents a sort of overturning of the tragicomic Cyclops of Idyll 11 with his delirious, passionate love. Leaving aside questions of the relative chronology of the two poems, it is clear that each casts humorous light on the paradigmatic nature of the other. In Idyll 11 the song of Polyphemus is supposed to 123

124 125

Cf. G. B. Miles, Ramus 6 (1977) 158: ‘[the rhetorical questions of vv. 148–55] express the narrator’s heady exaltation, his feeling on this occasion of being something more than his normal self – a feeling which is in keeping with the Golden Age setting’. Cf. Odyssey 9.357–9 . The story was familiar in Sicilian literature before Theocritus, in the Geryoneis of Stesichorus (PMGF S19), a comedy of Epicharmus (Heracles, PCG 67), and another Sicilian comedy of uncertain authorship, the Chiron ([Epich.] PCG 289–∗ 95); Aristophanes dramatised the myth in Dramata or the Centaur, PCG 278–88.

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illustrate the maxim that singing is the medicine for love (vv. 1–3), but was it really in the Cyclops’ best interests to cure himself? Might it not have been better for him to wait for a while, particularly if we remember the version of the myth already described by Timaeus,126 according to which Polyphemus succeeded in making Galatea fall in love with and marry him? Was he, in any case, really cured (cf. vv. 75–79)? As for Idyll 6, are we really to believe that Polyphemus is an example of the fact that even the ugliest person may appear desirable to someone in love (vv. 18–19)? Did Galatea really consider the Cyclops handsome? Is this statement not rather in tune with the Cyclops’ self-deception (vv. 34–8, cf. 11.75–9)?127 The Cyclops is used as a paradigm in so many different ways that any attempt to impose univocality of meaning is doomed to failure. Moreover, the whole of Idyll 11 is coloured by an irony arising from the ambiguous definition of the Cyclops’s song as a ( for his love (v. 1); the apparent ‘therapeutic’ effect of the song, visible when the Cyclops realises that he had better take up his work again (vv. 72–4),128 is immediately dimmed by the final selfdeception in which he claims himself the centre of the attentions of many girls (vv. 76–8). The song was in fact a kind of ‘poison’ or ‘love philtre’ working on the Cyclops’ psychology, rather than a real ‘medicine’ against love itself;129 ( notoriously had both meanings. Moreover, ( also meant ‘spell’ (cf. e.g. Pindar, Ol. 13.85), and Callimachus explicitly calls the Cyclops’ therapeutic song an "'4 ‘magical charm’ (AP 12.150 = HE 1047ff., below pp. 343–4), probably with reference to the Cyclops of Theocritus rather than that of Philoxenus (PMG 822).130 Thus, this song-spell of the Cyclops may truly have dispelled love, but it may also have propelled him towards the far more terrible drama of his blinding, which is clearly evoked by vv. 30–3, 50–3, and 60–2:

Z%) ! %%  )  [   Q U [ (  #% X ]b     Z" M | ,      Z  „  () P 'C ]#, [ % ) # 5 'X B  ! #  126 127 128 129

130

See above, p. 150 and n. 72. The schol. on 11.78 already commented that ‘perhaps the girls laugh at him’. Cf. Stanzel (1995) 162–9. On the ambiguity of   in v. 80 cf. e.g. Goldhill (1991) 254–5. The suggestion that the performance of the Cyclops is a serious demonstration of the idea that love poetry is a do-ityourself catharsis of love (cf. A.-T. Cozzoli, ‘Dalla catarsi mimetica aristotelica all’autocatarsi dei poeti ellenistici’ QUCC 48 (1994) 95–110) finds little support in the ambiguities of the last part of the poem: cf. Hunter (1999) 220–1. Cf. G. Pasquali, ‘Epigrammi callimachei’ (1919) = id., Scritti filologici, I (Florence 1986) 314–16, HE II 157. On the motif of magic in Philoxenus and Theocritus 11 cf. M. Fantuzzi, ‘Philodemus AP 5.107 (GPh 3188ff.; 23 Sider)’ HSCP 102 (2004).

166

Theocritus and the bucolic genre * '   ,  O ' #%Z  D )   '$, MQ#   2, %' &(  U    'C 2,    :$!  & !  , E C ]# )   #$ Z  '  () „  )     5  ) K (  %b ƒ # M H'C & ) F *'  !C /'b   5 , 9$, 3.

Fair maiden, I know why you flee from me: because along my forehead there is one long shaggy eyebrow, which stretches from one ear to the other, and beneath this there is only one eye, and the nose above my lip is broad [. . .] If you think that I am too hairy, I have got oak logs and ever-burning fire under the ashes: I would put up with being burnt by you, even in my soul, even in my single eye, which is the most precious thing I have . . . But now straightaway, my girl, I want to learn how to swim, if some stranger arrives here with his ship, so that I can understand what pleasure you take in living in the depths of the sea.

No reader will be unaware that the Cyclops’ desire for the arrival of seafaring M was indeed satisfied (cf. Odyssey 9.252–5, 273), as was his claim that he could endure having his eyebrow thinned by ‘undying fire beneath the ashes’, for it was indeed in his own fire in the cave that Odysseus hardened the stake to put out the Cyclops’ eye (cf. Odyssey 9.375–6 and 389–90). Polyphemus’ song was thus not only a dubious protection against love, but also a disturbing anticipation of, and thus in magical terms, a dangerous invitation to, the far more dramatic mishaps described in the Odyssey. The use of Homeric expressions as formulas for spells is in fact well attested in the Roman imperial period: for example, to combat gout, Iliad 2.95 4!  'C & 4) 2, 'X % !_  5 (sc. # e_  ) ‘the assembly was astir and the earth resounded beneath them (as the people sat down)’131 had to be written on a tablet made of gold; as a $( ! ‘spell against anger’, Empedocles is said to have recited, to the accompaniment of a relaxing piece of music, Odyssey 4.221: ( * L 9(# ()   C .!#  )  # /(  ‘(he served the wine, a medicine) which puts pain and anger to flight, and causes all troubles to be forgotten’,132 and so forth. The danger for the Cyclops in even mentioning his eye was understood by those who praised the Cyclops of Philoxenus for the skill with which, in singing of the beauty of Galatea, he had praised various parts of her (a pretty head, golden locks, a graceful voice), but had avoided mentioning her eyes: speaking of the eyes of the loved one, 131 132

Cf. Alexander of Tralles, II p. 581 Puschmann. Cf. Iamblichus, Vita Pythag. 25 (113). For other examples, cf. Fantuzzi (1995b).

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comments a character in Athenaeus (13.564e–f = PMG 821), is normal, but for the Cyclops this would have meant ‘a premonition of his blinding’. 3 bucolic poetry af ter theocritus: bet ween imitation and st ylisation The distinction between the ‘real’ contemporary herdsmen called Daphnis and Comatas of Idylls 5 and 6 and the mythical Daphnis and Comatas of Idylls 1 and 7 is, as we have seen, central to the nature of Theocritus’ bucolic poetry. It seems, however, that this distinction was not always fully appreciated, and we can see in the post-Theocritean Idyll 8133 a move towards a more radically sentimental idealisation of the bucolic countryside.134 The clearest sign of this is the long elegiac ‘pathetic fallacy’ of vv. 33–52: (0^) .     )  5 ) K  0 (# 4!C  %$  %#X }% #) 9 % C  :$!T  &('U v ' C " \( ! '(#) 'X #%% !. (\;) T  9 () #$ , $ ) K  5 $%%'  \( 5% &'%)   , 9$ #  U i  0 (# 5'C & ( ") ! . (  . (0^) C A) C L  ''$ )  #%% %4  #%)  'Q  2: ) C  #, 0# 9  %U * 'C  &") !| 8 M,   !* 9 (. (\;)  T )  T 'X )  T 'X (#  3  '%)   ( )  # Wƒ %% U * 'C  &") !|  9 9 % !* 9   . (0^) „ ( ) T # $T *  . ) H 9( [# $ – e % '  C C ['  –  4"  U KC) „  # )  # ) “0#)  J b Z   , ‰   ”. (Menalcas) Valleys and rivers, O divine race, if ever the syrinx-player Menalcas played a melody that you appreciated, give sustenance graciously to his lambs; and should Daphnis come here with his heifers, may he find no worse a welcome. (Daphnis) Springs and pastures, sweet plants, if Daphnis is equal to the nightingales 133

134

Against the poem’s authenticity cf. esp. G. Perrotta, ‘Teocrito e il poeta dell’Idillio VIII’ (1925) = Perrotta (1978) 9–32 and Rossi (1971b); the only recent dissenting voice is F. Scheidweiler, ‘Theokrits achtes Idyll und die zeitliche Folge seiner Gedichte’ AIPhO 11 (1951) 341–60. Metrical arguments may be added to those of Perrotta and Rossi, cf. Fantuzzi (1995a) 229–32. Cf. Schmidt (1987) 112–23.

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in music, fatten this herd; and if Menalcas should drive a flock of animals here, may he pasture them joyfully in all plentifulness. (Me.) There do sheep, there do goats bear twins, there are bees that fill their hives and the oak-trees are tallest there where the handsome Milo passes. But if he goes away, both the shepherd and his flock are parched. (Da.) It is spring everywhere, there are pastures everywhere, the udders are bursting with milk and the young animals grow fat, where the beautiful Nais moves; but if she goes away, both the cowherd and his cows are wasted. (Me.) Billy-goat, husband of the white goats, go where the forest is thickest – here, flatnosed kids, to the water – for he’s in there: go in, broken horns, and say: ‘Milon, Proteus, who was also a god, pastured seals!’

It is difficult to say whether the author of the poem is aware that he is altering the balance of ‘realism’ implied in the distinction that Theocritus maintains between his two Daphnises, or whether he (wrongly) felt authorised by the identity of name to synthesise the countryside and the animals that take part in the mourning for Daphnis in Idyll 1 with those that surround the contemporary herdsman Daphnis in Idyll 6.135 Certainly, the extensive pathos of the participation of nature in the mourning and love life of the two shepherd-singers sounds a new, non-Theocritean note, even if the passage could indeed be considered little more than a light-hearted and positive version of the participation of nature in the tragic mourning for Daphnis in Idyll 1 (cf. esp. vv. 71–5, 115–18), perhaps filtered through a sentimental reading of the end of Idyll 6 (vv. 44–5): 3#  \ ) %Q%' 'X \(  9Q ) |!  C  #T        . Damoitas played the aulos, Daphnis the oxherd played the syrinx, and immediately the heifers jumped on the soft grass.

Athenaeus explicitly observed (1.21a) that ‘the word ]! 5% was used for any kind of movement, whether physical or of the mind’,136 and Theocritus’ |!   may simply have meant ‘jumped’, in a sense not very different from % T in 1.152 ( 8 % % ‘stop jumping around’);137 the heifers jump around happily while Damoitas and Daphnis play, not necessarily because they are playing. Nevertheless, taking his cue from   ‘at once’, the author of Idyll 8 may have read the end of Idyll 6 as meaning that 135

136 137

The present chapter borrows various points from Fantuzzi (1998). The poet of Idyll 8 also misunderstands, or bends, the ‘rules of the game’ of Theocritean song contests, with important consequences for Virgil, Eclogue 7, cf. Serrao (1977) 195–6. As confirmation, Athenaeus quotes a passage from the tragedian Ion (TrGF 19F50), where the verb refers to movements of the heart. The two verbs are found together to describe dancing movements in Aristophanes, Pl. 761: ]! 5%  % T  ! Q ‘dance, jump and form choruses’.

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the heifers literally ‘danced’ to the sound of the music, just as Longus in Daphnis and Chloe imagines that Daphnis’ goats %  %%   ‘danced around snorting’ when they joyfully celebrated their owner’s safe return (1.32.3); for Longus as well, these animals are, after all, $% (4.14.3). Thus the requests to nature which Menalcas and Daphnis make in Idyll 8 may be based on a ‘sentimental’ reading of the end of Idyll 6 as showing how readily nature responds with joy to the sound of music; the precedent of Theocritus would be made to offer a textual guarantee for the plausibility of this appeal to nature to share human emotion. The poet of Idyll 8 would have found a further legitimisation for the sympathy of nature with man in Idyll 4. In this poem, the departure of Aegon to follow the famous athlete Milon is seen as the cause of the demoralisation and decline of Aegon’s herd: ‘these heifers that are bellowing here miss him [. . .] poor things, and they don’t want to eat any more’ (vv. 12–14). That Idyll 4 was well known to the author of Idyll 8 is clear from the use that he makes of the character of Milon, which is the name he gives to Menalcas’ lover in Idyll 8. The choice of name opposes Menalcas, a paradigm of a good herdsman, to the Aegon of Idyll 4, presented as the wicked, wretched herdsman ( (#, v. 26), who abandons his animals and his syrinx in order to follow Milon to the athletic games; Menalcas’ Milon, on the contrary, seems in the past to have come to him, rather than vice versa, and now Menalcas tries to repeat Milon’s entry into the bucolic world through the agency of the billy-goat (vv. 47–52). The historical figure of the athlete Milon also connects Idylls 4 and 8 in another way. The scholiast on Idyll 4.6 had already identified the Milon of that poem as the famous athlete from Croton (a town within the setting of the idyll), who had been victorious some thirty times in the Panhellenic games of the sixth century. In fact, it would be more precise to speak of a historical allusion to, rather than an identification with, the athlete, because Idyll 4 is set in the Hellenistic present, as witness the mention of Glauce, a female aulos-player loved by Ptolemy II (v. 31). Nevertheless, after a series of observations about the shameless malice with which Milon has convinced Aegon that he possessed athletic talent, Battus sarcastically comments (v. 11):  5%  (Ahrens:  codd.) 0#  O #Q   #$%% ‘Milo would even convince wolves to go rabid in a moment’. The verse and its relevance to the context have been very variously explained,138 but we should probably see here a sarcastic allusion to a detail in the life of the 138

As (respectively) by Ameis, Ahrens, Gow and Dover: ‘this is the moment when Milo should unleash rabid wolves on the herd (because now there is no-one to protect it)’; ‘now Milo would cause the wolves to become rabid (for hunger, because the herd is reduced to nothing)’; ‘Aegon’s athletic

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historical Milon, recorded as early as Aristotle: Milon is said to have been savaged to death by dogs or wolves in a wood when, in a demonstration of his strength, he used his hand as a wedge in a split tree-trunk and was trapped fast.139 Battus is thus wishing that as a punishment for the harm he has done to Aegon’s herd ‘his’ Milon as well may end up savaged by rabid wolves   ‘there and then’. As for Idyll 8, in vv. 49–51 Menalcas asks the billy-goat to carry his message of love for Milon H 9( [# $ ‘where the forest is thickest’ [. . .],  4"   ‘for he’s in there’. The verses are puzzling,140 but perhaps the poet of Idyll 8 understood Battus’ allusion to the fate of the historical Milon, and was not to be outdone. All the sources for Milon’s death place it in the woods, and one source (Strabo 6.1.12) notes explicitly that the idea for his fatal act of bravado came to him while he was walking 'C [# 9  ‘through the thick of the wood’. With a kind of intertextual foresight, therefore, Menalcas is anxious to attract his Milon to the peaceful world of shepherds, which is not to be disdained (cf. vv. 51–2), and away from the heart of the forest, which Milon loves, but which carries terrible dangers for a person with his name . . . 4 bucolic and non-bucolic love For the writers of bucolic who came after him, the text of Theocritus offered a philological ‘pretext’, that is to say, a repository of ideas which could be codified into substantially new patterns. Of particular interest is the development of the Theocritean pattern141 of bucolic song in its function as mythological paradigm in the erotic poetry of Moschus and Bion. The mythological songs of Idylls 6, 11, and 13, the last two both addressed to Nicias, are introduced by brief frames, which both provide the poems with the fiction of a ‘real’ performative context and introduce the songs as illustrations of maxims exchanged between friends; this pattern places

139 140 141

ambitions are madness, and have incidentally inflicted as much damage on his father’s flocks (namely the loss of twenty sheep) as if the wolves in the neighbourhood had been seized with rabies and run among them’; ‘if Aigon has been persuaded by Milon to go off in pursuit of a useless ambition, taking twenty sheep, Milon might persuade wolves as well. . . .’ Cf. Aristotle, fr. 523.1 Gigon, Strabo 6.1.12, Pausanias 6.14.8, Aulus Gellius 15.16.3–4, Valerius Maximus 9. 12.9, schol. on Ovid, Ibis 609, Suda  1066 Adler. Gow on 51–2, for instance, sceptically commented: ‘Milon . . . is not a goatherd; what he is doing in the wood we are left to conjecture’. For a recent but unconvincing explanation cf. White (1981). As Zanker (1987) 14 noted, ‘the basic rationale of some of the Alexandrian poets in their deployment of love seems to have been that love is the emotion which everybody can experience – and wants to – and that the judicious use of it will interest people and help them to relate to the world of poetry from their own experience of life’.

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Theocritus in the tradition of archaic lyric, iambic and elegiac poetry, which then continues in Hellenistic epigram.142 As we have seen, the clumsy love song of the Cyclops illustrated the maxim that poetry heals the sufferings of love; Heracles’ loss of Hylas, on the other hand, illustrated the idea that it is not only mortals who are struck by love for the beautiful. In both cases, the initial statement of the maxim in v. 1 (repeated at the end of Idyll 11) and the apostrophe to the friend in v. 2 suggest an informal setting, which emphasises the occasional nature of the composition. This pretence of an occasional character could not be created by the statement of the maxim itself, and so it is the apostrophe, not the maxim, which was the basic element of Theocritus’ compositional structure. This is confirmed by Idyll 6, where a variation of this strategy isolates the apostrophe by itself in the narrative frame at the beginning of the poem (v. 2), which is addressed to one Aratus, possibly the same person mentioned by Simichidas in Idyll 7 (v. 102). It is then not the author in the frame, but rather one of the shepherd-singers, Daphnis, who at the end of his song pronounces what is, in effect, the maxim–theme of the poem: ‘O Polyphemus, love often considers the not beautiful beautiful’ (vv. 18–19). The extant fragments of Moschus and Bion develop this Theocritean pattern in non-Theocritean directions. Gone is the critical-ironic approach to the very use of a mythological paradigm, replaced now by a straightforward emphasis on the positive correspondence between opening maxim and mythological illustration, as in Idyll 13, a poem which certainly has bucolic touches, but which does not adopt the attitude of distance from myth which we have seen to be central to Theocritus’ bucolic poems.143 Neither Moschus nor Bion use Theocritean apostrophe, and thus they do not present their poems as stories told ‘by chance’ to a friend. Furthermore, while Moschus does make use of two short mythological stories as illustrations of aspects of love, and Bion too does something similar at least once, both of them promote Eros (generally in company with Aphrodite) to the protagonist of short ‘epyllia’ about the nature of love. Theocritus shows nothing comparable, and the new form is to be connected with erotic epigram (cf. below, pp. 173–4). Moreover, Bion reflects an approach to love and love poetry, which is at least partly in opposition to bucolic poetry and is substantially different from what we find in both Theocritus and third-century epigram. 142

143

For a different interpretation of Idylls 11 and 13, as contaminations between the poetic epistle and, respectively, the bucolic genre and the epyllion, cf. L. E. Rossi, ‘L’Ila di Teocrito: epistola poetica ed epillio’ in Studi classici in onore di Q. Cataudella (Catania 1972) II 279–93. Cf. Hunter (1999) 262.

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Moschus fr. 2 lists a series of unrequited and painful loves between mythical-bucolic figures (Pan loved Echo, Echo loved a satyr, the satyr loved Lyde) and then concludes: ‘This is the lesson that I expound to all those who are resistant to love: love those who love you, so that, when you fall in love, your love will be requited.’ Fragment 3 tells how, for love of Arethusa, the river Alphaeus opened up a pathway through the sea to bring his gifts to his beloved spring; the poet’s final comment is ‘that rascal of a boy, the wicked teacher of terrible actions, Eros, even used his charms to teach a river how to swim’. Bion fr. 12 is analogous to Moschus fr. 2, though its ambitions are much greater. The maxim A#9 e #  8 K% & ( , ‘Fortunate are those who love, when their love is returned in the same measure’, introduces exempla of three reciprocated homosexual loves, in which the mythical lovers were ‘fortunate’, even in the most painful situations: Theseus was ‘fortunate’ because Pirithous ‘stood beside him’, even when he descended into Hades; Orestes was ‘fortunate’, even among the savage Taurians, because Pylades ‘had chosen to share his journey with him’; Achilles was ‘fortunate’ because he died shortly after Patroclus, as he desired. Bion’s maxim appears to overturn the exclamation %! # e # , ‘wretched are those who love’, with which the poet’s voice had sententiously intervened during the description of the sad wanderings of Heracles in search of the lost Hylas (Theocritus 13.66). With a more idealised and romantic conception of love, Bion not only overturns Theocritus’ specific exclamation at the beginning of the fragment, but at its end he overturns Theocritus’ exemplum (Heracles) by three (probably already topical)144 mythological exempla appropriate to this more positive view. What Bion stresses, the perfect mutuality and inseparability of lovers,145 had also been applied by Theocritus to the original happiness of Heracles and Hylas (13.10–15). In actual fact, however, Bion corrects Theocritus radically, for his point is that anyone who is requited in his love is happy in any situation, because not even death can destroy the ‘good fortune’ of a pair of lovers who are really united: Achilles, who had been ( ‘happy’ when Patroclus was alive (v. 6), continued to be ‘fortunate’, even after his friend’s death, because he was able to satisfy the desire for death that he had famously expressed in the Iliad. Indeed v. 7 A#9 D (% V e    *, .$  ‘he was fortunate to die, because he had not averted 144 145

The same triad was already present in Xenophon, Symp. 8.31. Bion’s exempla are found several times in Ovid – once the same three as in Bion (in Pont. 2.3.41–6), more often with the Latinising addition of the further couple, Euryalus and Nisus (Tr. 1.5.19– 24, 1.9.27–34), and always with a certain emphasis on the element of inseparability. See also the simplified versions of Tr. 5.4.23–6 and Pont. 2.6.25–6.

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173

the sad fate from him’146 is to be interpreted in the light of Iliad 18.98–9:   )    .C  ## + " |  "  ‘may I die immediately, because I was not destined to defend my companion when he was killed’. It is, of course, possible that, in the complete poem from which this fragment comes, this romantic position was sarcastically overturned by an interlocutor who reverted to the traditional unhappiness of lovers, as expressed in Idyll 13.66. Nevertheless, we will see that fr. 12 is in harmony with idealising attitudes that Bion also expresses elsewhere, whereas nowhere does Bion seem to express ironic or negative comments about love. One important novelty of Moschus and Bion are ‘micro-epyllia’ about Eros, which seem to combine the Theocritean custom of talking about love by means of exempla with the ever more common technique of dramatising the unforeseeable and irresistible quality of love through its personifications, Eros and the Erotes; these powerful, but capricious little boys both confirm the power of love, and also partly exorcise it by miniaturising and reducing it to small fragments.147 This practice of speaking about love by speaking of Eros and the Erotes had been widespread ever since the lyric poets, and in particular Anacreon, though it is above all in Hellenistic epigram and the Anacreontea where these figures triumph. The pseudo-Theocritean Idyll 19 and Moschus 1 fit comfortably into this tradition. Idyll 19, ‘The honeycomb thief ’, describes the reactions of Eros to being stung by a bee while stealing honey; he protests to his mother that even if it is a tiny insect, the bee still produces painful stings, whereupon Aphrodite answers that he himself is tiny, but he provokes terrible sufferings. This poem of only eight verses finds a fairly precise parallel in Anacreontea 35,148 but the topos of the arrows and wounds of Eros occurs throughout Greek epigram. In Poem 1 by Moschus, ‘Eros the fugitive’, Aphrodite announces a reward on the head on Eros, who continues to be naughty and disobedient; she now cannot find him, and so she must give a detailed identikit of the boy’s physical appearance and character. The poem can be considered a compilation of the best-known cahiers de dol´eances of 146

147 148

Meineke’s correction of V  e   to V e    is unavoidable, despite the rather clumsy sound and prosody which result. Reed (1997) 179 defends the transmitted text by interpreting .$  as ‘avenged’, but when .$  is constructed with the accusative and dative, it means idiomatically ‘to avert something from someone’, whereas in the meaning of ‘to avenge’/‘to punish’ (for which the middle voice is almost always used), the verb takes the accusative of the person and the genitive (with or without preposition) of the thing. Cf. Rosenmeyer (1992) 184. Cf. Rosenmeyer (1992) 173–7. The comparison of Eros and his arrows to the bee and its sting might go back to archaic lyric poetry, as suggested by B. MacLachlan, Phoenix 43 (1989) 95–9 .

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Aphrodite about Eros,149 and in particular it is perhaps to be understood as presenting the facts preceding the scene of ‘Eros in chains’, a well-known epigrammatic (cf. APlan. 195–99), Anacreontic, and iconographic topos (cf. LIMC iii.1, 88f.).150 Another work which is close to the tradition of poems in which the description of the behaviour of Eros leads to reflections about the peculiar nature of love is Bion’s ‘micro-epyllion’ fr. 13. As he is wandering through the wood, a young fowler finds Eros perching on the branch of a tree and sets to work with his birdlime, thinking that his prey is a large bird; as he does not succeed, he runs to the old ploughman (&  b %9$) who had taught him the techne of bird-catching to ask for help; the old man tells him to stop hunting the bird and not to chase after it any more, but rather to keep at a distance from it: ‘You will be lucky, as long as you do not catch it; but if you arrive at adulthood (v 'C &    #"), this same bird that now flees and hops away will come to you of his own initiative, and will settle on your head.’ The emphasis is clearly on love as a fact of life, but a term like !, with all its metaliterary significance, or the figure of the old master-ploughman may suggest that the opposition between the different occupations of the two periods of the boy’s life may also be interpreted as a statement of poetics: love poetry belongs to maturity, and it follows a phase of bucolic poetry which is alien to the theme of love. Be that as it may, both in this fragment and in the apostrophe to ‘kind Aphrodite’ in fr. 14, another passage in which Bion inveighs against the reprobate, dangerous child Eros, Bion’s main emphasis is on the idea of the inevitability of Eros, and this is the idea, as we shall see, which is the keystone of reflections about love poetry in his poetry. More original and ambitious is the metaliterary ‘micro-epyllion’ of Bion fr. 10: /  (#  =Q C 2Z  %  ! , h ^  #T  ! , . %  !   $% (_ ) % '  % U “#  ) # 9 ) #9O , h ^  ''% ”. o # U ! X &# )  O 'C V% 9$#%') 4 F #   5) , h ^  ''%) 149 150

5

Cf. Apollonius Rhodius, Arg. 3.91–99, Meleager, AP 5.177–8 = HE 4190ff. Cf. F. Lasserre, La Figure d’Eros dans la po´esie grecque (Lausanne 1946) 192–4, Rosenmeyer (1992) 184–5, W. Fauth, ‘Cupido cruciatur’ GB 2 (1974) 39–60. It is impossible to establish whether the idea of Aphrodite’s proclamation or the scene of the imprisonment took shape first; one of the epigrams that present Eros in chains is attributed by the Planudean Anthology (196) to Alcaeus of Messene (second century bc), but Cameron (1993) 42 n. 37 points out that the epigrams APlan. 195–97 all begin with the same letter ( ), and may thus correspond to the alphabetical criterion of anthologisation followed in Philip’s Garland; he therefore emends the attribution ‘of Alcaeus’ to ‘of Alphaeus’ (Alphaeus of Mytilene, first century ad; however, cf. HE ii 7).

4 Bucolic and non-bucolic love F Š  # $#  J() F #, C;() F !#$ 6^()  F /'b C; ##.  (  M ''%U p ' C  (_  Q) &##(   , . '   Q#)   ''%   &(        . - O #  X V% , h ^  ''%) V%% 'C h ^  ''M   Q# (  ''(!.

175

10

The great Cypris came close to me while I was still sleeping, leading with her beautiful hand the little child Eros, whose head was hanging down, and said to me: ‘Take my Eros, dear herdsman, and teach him to sing.’ Thus she spoke. She went away and I taught all my bucolic songs to Eros, foolish as I was, thinking that he wanted to learn them: how Pan invented the flute, Athena the aulos, Hermes the lyre, and sweet Apollo the cithara. These things I taught him, but he paid no attention to what I said, but he was the one who sang love songs to me, and taught me the passions of mortals and immortals and the deeds of his mother. So I forgot what I was teaching Eros, and learnt all the poems of love that Eros taught me.

This fragment belongs to the Hesiodic tradition of divine initiation into poetry, and may be compared to the dreams of Callimachus at the head of the Aitia (frs. 3–4 Massimilla, cf. above pp. 6–7) and of Ennius at the head of the Annales (frs. 2–10 Skutsch, cf. below, pp. 462–3). Aphrodite, leading the child Eros by the hand, appeared to the narrator ‘while he was still sleeping’, and she asked him to teach Eros how to sing. Eros is described as ! ‘a little child’ or ‘an infant’ (v. 2), whereas it was in fact the narrator, as he himself admits in v. 6, who was 4 ‘naive’, the same epithet which Hesiod had repeatedly applied to Perses, the addressee of the oldest and best-known Greek didactic poem, Hesiod’s Works and Days. The narrator tries to teach Eros how to compose the bucolic songs that he himself usually composed, starting ab ovo from aetiological stories about the relevant musical instruments, as Hesiod had started from myths about the origin of pain, good and evil, and so forth in order to teach Perses about proper behaviour and social morality. Eros does not, however, pay the slightest attention, but rather himself starts to instruct his supposed teacher all about love, with the result that the narrator forgets what he had tried to teach Eros, i.e. bucolic poetry, and allows himself to be instructed in  Q# ‘love poems’. We cannot, of course, assume that this fragment is to be interpreted autobiographically, as marking Bion’s passage from bucolic to erotic (or, rather, erotic-pastoral)151 ; nor can it be established with certainty to what kind 151

As I argued in ‘Bion , fr. 10 Gow’ MusCrit 15–7 (1980–2) 159–60; also cf. e.g. E. A. Schmidt, Poetische Reflexion: Vergils Bukolik (Munich 1972) 87–9 and Nauta (1990) 134.

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of erotic poetry Bion refers, whether perhaps bucolic-erotic poetry with pastoral protagonists (as in Bion frs. 9 and 11 and the pseudo-Theocritean Idylls 20 and 27), or erotic-mythological epyllia with an extremely limited pastoral frame, like the Epithalamion of Achilles and Deidamia (= [Bion] 2).152 What is clear, however, is the opposition between poetry concerning ‘bucolic’ inventions (cf. fr. 5) and poetry with an erotic-bucolic content (cf. fr. 9); for the ‘short poem with erotic content’, for which no previous generic definition is attested, Bion uses the term  Q#, and his witness to the overwhelming, irresistible nature of love poetry also finds very few parallels in Greek literary tradition; we may, however, compare Anacreontea 1, which opens with a visit of Anacreon and Eros to the poet in a dream, and terminates with a declaration of faithfulness to love and to love poetry ( '  .!      $ ‘and truly until now I have never abandoned love’). Love is one of the themes that Theocritus’ shepherds discuss most frequently,153 and the contrasting opposition between unhappy, tormented love (and love poetry) on the one hand and bucolic life (and poetry) on the other could be read as already present in his poetry. Thus, the ekphrasis of the cup in Idyll 1 had contrasted the restless distraction of a woman’s two lovers with the peacefulness of rustic life,154 and in Idyll 7, the invitation of Simichidas to Aratus to abandon for ever his desperate passion and opt for /%$! (vv. 122–27) is immediately followed by Simichidas’ description of the locus amoenus (above pp. 137–8), with the implicit effect of contrasting the song of unhappy love with the bucolic serenity which involves the abandonment of love. Moreover, Bucaeus’ clumsily parodic song of love in Idyll 10 (vv. 24–37) is contrasted with Milon’s work song, and the opposition between love and rustic life is made explicit in the concluding verses155 (vv. 56–8):   !8 !    /#" .' & ' ) , 'X ) a$5 )   #,   $%'  T    C   ] $%. Men who toil in the sun should sing songs like this. As regards your starveling love, Bucaeus, you should tell it to your mother when she gets up at dawn. 152

153 154 155

The Epithalamion takes off from Idyll 11: the shepherd Myrson exhorts Lycidas to sing a ‘sweet, melodious love song’ (# [. . .] e   #$Q$   ), like the one the Cyclops Polyphemus sang on the beach to Galatea, but then Lycidas sings of the attempt by Achilles to seduce Deiadamia – a story with mythological characters and an urban setting. For the Epithalamion and Idyll 11 cf. E. Sistakou, 7 (% $ $ (Athens 2004) chap. n4. Stanzel (1995) offers an innovatory analysis of the idea of sexuality and love in Theocritus’ pastoral poetry. See above. The ancients were uncertain about the attribution of the last three verses: cf. schol. on vv. 56–8.

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177

The opposition between the ‘pastoral’ life and the life of love was explicitly thematised in a fragment of the (? fourth-century) lyric poet Lycophronides (PMG 844), where a shepherd dedicates his work tools to a god because his mind is now utterly given over to love; it can also be found in various later epigrams which either contrast love with the rudely elementary nature of the world of shepherds and their flocks156 (familiar, of course, from Theocritus)157 or assert, as Theocritus had never clearly done, a separation between pastoral life and love. In AP 7.196 (= HE 4066ff.), Meleager revives the old topos of poetry and music as a medicine for love, but specifies bucolic music in this rˆole: &!4   M) '% 5 %   %%  $%  &   #  % #(#U . 'C  _    (# Z' % Z# * #(_  !  #% #Q. &##() #) 

$   ' 'Z' % WQ  ) & "', J  #') A $ O , h ^   %9, [ &  Q% ('C 2, %   # # (". O chirping cicada, you who get intoxicated by the dewdrops, you sing the rustic Muse of those who dwell in solitary places, and sitting high amidst the leaves with your rough-edged legs you produce from your sun-baked body a music like that of the lyre. But now, my dear, sing a new song for the Nymphs of the trees, playing a music which will act as a counterpoint to that of Pan so that, having escaped from Eros, I may come and seek my rest at midday, lying here under a shady plane-tree.

Relevant also is the matching epigram AP 7.195 = HE 4058 ff.: &)  &(   ) Q [$) &) &$ 0% # $ $ )  $X  #Q)     ,  Q$% # %% #(#$  $ ) €    BQ%  Q  ) &)  % 

  #(  #. O cricket, you who beguile my passions and lead me to sleep; O cricket, rustic Muse with your resonant wings, a natural imitation of the lyre, sing me a song of desire, striking your chattering wings with your legs, so as to drive away from me the anxiety of sleepless nights, O cricket, creating a tune that will turn love away . . .

In these poems, there is a clear opposition between the song of the cicada and the cricket (&   % #(#, a clear metaphor for 156 157

Cf. e.g. Mnasalcas, AP 9.324 = HE 2663ff. and Myrinus, AP 7.703 = GPh 2568ff. Cf. e.g. 1.151–2, 4.62–3, 5.41–43, 116–17, Bernsdorff (2001) 155–71.

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pastoral poetry) and the love that this music allows the poet to escape ($ O , h ^ ), and between the rest that this same music allows for those who ‘escape from’ Love and the tormented vigils ( Q  ) which were traditionally, and often in Meleager himself, the lot of those in love.158 These passages of Bion and Meleager, who were probably contemporaries and lived not long before Virgil wrote the Eclogues,159 demonstrate the poetic currency in the first century bc of an opposition between the bucolic and the erotic, and it may be that we should also interpret in the light of Greek precedents the recurrent concern with the relationship between love (poetry) and bucolic poetry and life, which runs through Latin poetry of this period. Virgil attributed considerable importance to the precedent of Meleager, AP 7.196 (cited above), for he echoes this epigram twice in the opening verses of Eclogue 1, patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi <2, %   # # (" . . . siluestrem tenui musam meditaris auena <&   #  %.160 The contrast in Bion and Meleager between bucolic poetry and love also helps us understand why in Eclogue 10 Virgil imagines that his friend, the elegiac poet Gallus, sees the possibility of pastoral life (and poetry) as the only alternative to his love for Lycoris, as well as to his previous mythological or erotic poetry. The wreck of his love (cf. vv. 22f.) leads Gallus to regret that he had not joined the shepherds previously, to find in their world the love of some Phyllis or Amyntas who would have yielded without the dramatic rejections and unfaithfulness of elegiac loves, or that he had not enjoyed the love of Lycoris herself in those pleasant rustic places (vv. 35–43). Gallus seems to be going to decide to change his life and his poetry, or rather to rework in Theocritean style his previous poetry (written in the ‘verse of Chalcis’, vv. 50–1),161 and to reformulate the idea of love and love poetry in a bucolic manner (teneris [. . .] meos incidere amores arboribus – crescent illae, crescetis, amores ‘to carve my loves on the tender trees: the trees will grow, and you loves will grow’, vv. 53–4).162 In the meantime, Gallus dreams of distracting himself by hunting in the mountains and thus finding the medicina for his furor 158 159

160 161

162

Cf. e.g. Plato, Phaedrus 251e; Theocritus 10.10, 30.6; Crinagoras, AP 5.119 = GPh 1773ff. etc. Although the relative chronology remains uncertain, it appears probable that Virgil alluded explicitly, at least once, to a ‘bucolic’ epigram: see Ecl. 7.4 and Erycius, AP 6.96.2 = GPh 2201, on which cf., most recently, Bernsdorff (2001) 93f., with references. Cf. Gutzwiller (1998) 320–1. It cannot be established whether Chalcidico . . . uersu evoked Gallus’ love elegy (from Theokles of Naxos or Eretria, a town close to Chalcis, who was credited with the invention of elegy) or his mythological-erudite poetry in the manner of Euphorion of Chalcis; cf. Citroni (1995) 267. See also o mihi tum quam molliter ossa quiescant, | vestra meos olim si fistula dicat amores ‘Oh, how sweetly my bones could rest, if one day your pipes sang of my loves’, vv. 33–4; amores indicates

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(vv. 55–61).163 Subsequently, however, the dream collapses: the new idea of a pastoral life (and love) gives way in the face of the inescapable labores of ‘elegiac’ love (and elegiac poetry), to which in the end Gallus is forced to surrender (‘Love triumphs over everything: we, too, must surrender to Love’),164 as Propertius was later to yield to the servitium amoris.165 It is not that ‘bucolic love’ is weaker than ‘elegiac love’, but that Gallus fails to understand the rhetoric of pastoral erotic discourse;166 so, too, in Eclogue 2, Corydon tries to transform the beloved in accordance with the vision of the bucolic world, but the radical separation between love and pastoral life makes this impossible.167 For the motif of bucolic love in Latin elegiac poetry, Ovid, Heroides 5 is particularly important. In this poem the Nymph Oenone remembers the tender moments of love spent in the countryside with Paris before his departure for Greece and Helen;168 she contrasts Paris’s new and dangerous love for the adulterous Helen with the alternative possibility of a ‘love without risks (tutus amor)’ (v. 89) with her, who had only ever belonged to him. The connection of Eclogue 10 with Heroides 5 is clear, though both also look back to the lovesick Acontius’ rustic roamings in Callimachus’ ‘Acontius and Cydippe’ (above pp. 60–6)169 and both reflect also the idealising and escapist longings for rural /%$! and tranquil reciprocated love which are a prominent feature of late Hellenistic thought. Oenone unsuccessfully begs the ex-shepherd Paris to go back to doing what the Virgilian Gallus had briefly dreamed of doing, but Ovid appears to suggest that the erotic and bucolic worlds are reconcilable only in a past that is now forever gone, or in the unachievable Utopia of Oenone’s imagination, and so he attributes to his female character a despair not very different from the final situation of Gallus. For the possibility of a satisfied bucolic love in which erotic pathos is regulated and controlled, we must look rather to Tibullus, though even here this optimism concerns the future, not the present (see in particular 1.1 passim and 1.5.19–36). The relative optimism of the Roman poets that a happy pastoral love was possible may have had precedents in post-Theocritean bucolic. Greek 163 164 165 167 169

primarily Gallus’ love elegies rather than his experiences of love, cf. F. Skutsch, Aus Vergils Fr¨uhzeit (Leipzig 1901) 23–4 and Ross (1975) 89. Phaedra in Euripides’ Hippolytus (vv. 215–22) is here an important model, cf. G. B. Conte, Virgilio: il genere e i suoi confini (2nd ed., Milan 1984) 32–3. For the contrast between Theocritus’ Daphnis and Virgil’s Gallus, cf. Citroni (1995) 237. 166 Cf. Papanghelis (1999) 59. Cf. Ross (1975) 102–3. 168 Cf. esp. vv. 13–24. Cf. esp. Papanghelis (1999). Cf. fr. 73 Pfeiffer; in Propertius 1.18 the poet identifies with both Callimachus’ Acontius and the Gallus of Eclogue 10. Tree-carving also occurs at the close of Idyll 18, but the context is there not erotic.

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erotic poetry is regularly about love that is unhappy because not (yet) reciprocated, but the pseudo-Theocritean Idyll 27 represents an exception, in that it seems to marry the sentimental approach to the countryside typical of post-Theocritean bucolic with the long poetic tradition of the rustic locus amoenus as the ideal setting for scenes of seduction and sexual satisfaction.170 The poem takes the form of an amoebean exchange, in which Daphnis seeks to seduce a country girl, who does eventually consent to their mutual pleasure; it is in fact a literary version of a form of popular literature which was later to lead to the Provenc¸al pastourelles and the Italian villanelle.171 Features of language and versification, however, lead the majority of scholars to consider the poem a very late work, quite possibly from the imperial period, and so we must suspend judgement about the possibility that it was known to Augustan poets. More promising signs, however, may perhaps be found in Bion’s poetry. There seems to be, for example, an obvious joyfulness in the way in which Bion speaks about his composition of love poetry for Lycidas in fr. 9, and the name of the beloved leaves no doubts that this must have been bucolic-erotic poetry. This fragment includes an explicit generic choice in favour of love poetry, but there were at least two contemporary traditions of love poetry familiar to Bion – erotic epigram and the Anacreontea – which had taken very different positions on the possibility of a peaceful relationship between the Muses and Eros. Bion appears to distance himself clearly from the former of these two positions, and to be rather in agreement with the optimism of the Anacreontea. Hellenistic erotic epigram shared with many contemporary philosophers an intellectualising condemnation of the passion of love (cf. below, pp. 341– 9); poets composed erotic poetry, in which they also declared that love was a sort of illness, a fall into the irrational. In particular, Posidippus and Callimachus explored, with a new intensity and frequency, the paradoxical fact that intellectuals, such as themselves and their friends, could fall prey to the irrational passion of love, thus suggesting that they shared the view that the intellectual could or should be less exposed than others to the risks of love. They were thus forced to confront the contradiction that they were both poet-intellectuals and love poets who were in love, and to seek ways around this double bind. Among the most obvious was the plea that poetry cures love, most familiar from Theocritus’s Idyll 11 (above pp. 164–7) and Callimachus, AP 12.150 = HE 1047ff.: 170

171

‘Seduction’ in such scenes usually, of course, means what we would call ‘rape’, cf. A. Motte, Prairies et jardins de la Gr`ece antique (Brussels 1973) 208–11, and J. M. Bremer, ‘The Meadow of Love and Two Passages in Euripides’ Hippolytus’ Mnemosyne 28 (1975) 268–80. Cf. W. Theiler, Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur (Berlin 1970) 442–6.

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F &   J#Q & Q   '( |"U  nT)  &8  =Q#:. e 05% ,    %! ) `# U D X (  ( / %)  #. What a fine charm Polyphemus found for people in love: yes, by the Earth, the Cyclops was not stupid. The Muses, O Philippus, reduce love to size: poetry is a medicine which cures all evils . . .

This ideology of love as something to be cured (and which is cured by talking about it) continues to dominate the erotic epigram of the first century bc, and so it may be this from which Bion wishes to distance himself, by an allusion at the head of fr. 9 to the ‘manifesto’ in v. 3 of this epigram of Callimachus:172  05% , h ^  , .   9 )  $ 'X #     ',   E . v X . :$!(  ! &%  & '")  2  Q     #  ''(% U v 'X    h ^  ' Q  /'b  #%'")   (# T%      . ( $  O V   V'C #  T% &#4U v X  9 , .## v &(   #) 99   #%%  F (  C & ' U v 'C c C  , h ^    ?$'   #%')    !% ' %   B  '(. The Muses are not afraid of the wild Eros, but love him with all their heart and follow him closely. And if someone sings with a soul that knows not love, they flee away, and refuse to act as teachers for him. If, on the contrary, someone sings sweet songs with his mind set awhirl by Eros, lo, they all hurry towards him in great haste. I am a witness of the fact that this affirmation is true for everybody: if I sing of another mortal or one of the immortal gods, my tongue stutters and does not sing like before; but if I sing a song for Eros or for Lycidas, then my voice runs joyously through my mouth. (Bion fr. 9)

By this same opening, Bion may also have taken a position against another text, Moschus’ Eros the Fugitive (above pp. 173–4) which began / =Q , h ^ , and which offered a compendium of topical motifs of invective against Eros; however that may be, another defence of Eros, Anacreontea 19 (below p. 183), certainly begins with another variation on this formula. The Muses ‘weaken’ love, Callimachus had said, and both he and Theocritus had followed Philoxenus in presenting poetry as a ( 172

Reed (1997) 159 recognises the parallel with Callimachus, but denies that it carries programmatic force in the debate about the relation between poetry and love.

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‘medicine’ against love. The relationship between the Muses and Eros as presented by Bion is different: if we accept, as all modern editors do, the emendation of v 9  to  9  in v. 1, Bion would be claiming that the Muses ‘are not afraid’ of Eros, not because they are like a drug that weakens love (as Callimachus had said) or because the soul of a person who has endured the labours of the Muses is better prepared to face Eros courageously (as Posidippus had said, cf. below, pp. 342–3), but because, on the contrary, they love Eros and always accompany him everywhere. If, however, we keep the transmitted text,173 the Muses would always be close to Eros, either because they have a reverential fear of him, or because they love him. The remainder of the poem stresses the positive influence of love on poetry, and does so by revisiting two of the most famous passages in Greek poetry which had placed the emphasis, rather, on the disturbing power of love. In v. 5   . . . h ^  ' Q  ‘his mind set awhirl by Eros’ recalls, though with a positive connotation, Sappho’s destructive Eros: h ^ 'c  C ] #$%# '   ‘Eros who relaxes the limbs sets me whirling again’ (fr. 130.1 Voigt). On the other hand, 99  

#%%  F (  C & '  ‘my tongue stutters and does not sing like before’ (v. 9) attributes to the absence of erotic inspiration that inability to speak which Sappho (fr. 31.7–9) had described as the effect rather of the presence of the beloved, |  <> %C K' 9 ! C) N  Z- | %C 'X  C K ) | &## † † X #Z%% † † ‘as soon as I look at you for a moment, I can no longer speak, but my tongue is broken (?)’. Bion’s positive evaluation of love is also strengthened by an echo of Theognis: ( $  O V   V'C #  T% &#4 ‘I am a witness that this story is true for everybody’ (v. 7) derives from Theognis 1225–6, ') =QC) &  #$ Z  %  $ . | ( $  Z) %b 'C 

$ &#%Q ‘there is nothing sweeter than a good woman: I am a witness, and you acknowledge this truth’. Bion’s poem concludes with a recusatio of any poetry in praise of any man or god except the beloved Lycidas or Eros himself, because it is only in these cases that  !% ' %   B  '( ‘my voice runs joyfully through my mouth’. In the Theogony Hesiod had stated that in the case of those who were loved by the Muses, #$ 4 e &, %   B  '4 ‘his voice runs sweetly from his mouth’ (v. 97), and Hesiod’s Muses inspired their prot´eg´es to sing of # 5   &Z [ . . .] ((  Q ‘the glorious deeds of the men of the past . . . and the blessed gods’ (vv. 100–1), that is to say, roughly the themes that the Bion of 173

Cf. Reed (1997) 159.

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fr. 9 rejects.174 Bion’s affirmation of the impossibility of composing poetry which is not erotic becomes, as is well known, a very common motif in Latin elegiac poetry of the first century bc,175 but it is not at all widespread in Greek poetry. Perhaps the only real parallel is Anacreontea 23: # #  C;  ') # 'X =(' .' )  9(9  'X !'5    -! 5. i :   Z  8 #Q x%U & O X D'  .#$ 67#$) #Q '   & Z . ! #, 15) w U 1 #Q (  $   .' . I want to sing of the Atreidai, I want to sing of Cadmus, but the barbitos with its strings only plays love for me. Yesterday I changed the strings, and even the whole lyre, and I started to sing of the deeds of Heracles, but as answer the lyre gave back love. So, farewell, heroes. My lyre sings only of love.

Relative chronology cannot be established, as very few of the Anacreontea are datable, but we may surmise that the Anacreontea poets recognised a kindred spirit in Bion. Bion’s programmatic opening to fr. 9,  05% , h ^ , reappears as the introduction to Anacreontea 19, another text which defends the compatibility of Eros and the Muses: the Muses have chained Eros and handed him over to the custody of Beauty, and even when Aphrodite goes to free him with a ransom, Eros does not want to leave, because he has learnt how to become a slave ('$# Q  ' '' ) of the Muses themselves and of Beauty. For the poet of this poem, the Callimachean (and Bionean?) tag was already a crucial programmatic marker, which has been decisive on the very shape of the poem. Rhythmically, the phrase, which occupies the opening of a hexameter up to the feminine caesura, is very rare in the hemiambics or anaclastic Ionic dimeters of the Anacreontea, but here it conditions the versification of the whole poem, which is entirely composed of such stichic lengths and therefore in clear contrast with the polymorphous metrics of most of the Anacreontea.176 174 175

176

Cf. Fantuzzi (1980b). It is sufficient to refer to the opening lines of 1.1 or to 2.18.1–18 of Ovid’s Amores. For a recent discussion cf. J. P. Sullivan, ‘Form Opposed: Elegy, Epigram, Satire’, in A. J. Boyle (ed.), Roman Epic (London–New York 1993) 145–61. Cf. Fantuzzi (1994).

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Theocritus and the bucolic genre

Another passage of Bion also seems to look forward to Latin elegy. Fr. 16 picks up the Theocritean theme of the love of the Cyclops for Galatea, but it presents a new kind of behaviour and a new psychology. Here, the Cyclops declares:    O 9%    ',  , (      :(   &  :$%') #%%   n#(  &U  'X #$  #' 2%   ! 4  &# :. But I will go along my way towards the slope down there to the sandy beach, murmuring a song and pleading with cruel Galatea: I will not abandon my sweet hopes until extreme old age. (Bion fr. 16)

This short fragment presents incurable passion in an innovatory way: the Cyclops proposes to go down to the seashore and to whisper his love song for Galatea to the sea; here, the lover never abandons hope, and love poetry nourishes, rather than extinguishes, that hope.177 What followed this fragment we do not, of course, know – another Cyclopean serenade and more self-deception perhaps –178 but, in itself, this declaration of eternal faithfulness to hope and to the courting of only one woman finds very few parallels in Greek poetry. Of irony there is no obvious sign,179 and this Cyclops appears very different from the grotesquely parodic monster of Theocritus; if anything, Bion’s Cyclops seems closer to the earnest Corydon of Eclogue 2, whose principal model is, of course, the Cyclops of Idyll 11. Indeed, Bion’s Cyclops, at least in this fragment, is even more earnest than Corydon, because Corydon, far from expressing undying faithfulness, echoes the Theocritean model with an attitude that is anything but elegiac: inuenies alium, si te hic fastidit, Alexin ‘you will find another Alexis, if this one does not accept you’ (v. 73). The attitude towards love of fr. 16 finds a parallel at the level of poetics in fr. 3, which has sometimes been thought to belong to the song of the Cyclops and Galatea:180 0% h ^ #) 05% , h ^   U #   05%  &    ''5 )  #$   #() T ( x' '. 177

178 179 180

Reed (1997) 190–1 detects a connection between the last line of our fragment and Theocritus 2.164  O 'C *% , ,   €%  2%  ‘but I will endure my passion, just as it has come upon me’. If Bion did have this passage in mind, then he has substituted the positive idea of eternal hope for the ‘endurance’ of a burdensome passion. Cf. Reed (1997) 191. W. Arland, Nachtheokritische Bukolik bis an die Schwelle der lateinischen Bukolik (Leipzig 1937) 46–7 already insisted on the greater ‘seriousness’ of Bion’s Cyclops. Cf. G. R. Holland, ‘De Polyphemo et Galatea’, Leipziger Studien zur klass. Philologie 7 (1884) 250.

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Let Eros call the Muses, and may the Muses bring Eros. May the Muses give me – to me, always in love181 – the sweet song, than which there is no more pleasant medicine. (Bion fr. 3)

Here, Bion combines two traditional topoi, Eros the teacher of poetry (cf. Euripides, fr. 663 etc.) and poetry as a cure for love (Philoxenus, PMG 822, Theocritus, Idyll 11 etc). The two motifs had probably already been combined by Nicias in the verses (SH 566) which, according to the Theocritean scholia, he wrote ‘as an answer to’ the Cyclops of Theocritus: D .C &#X  ) k  U e  h ^    ##b ''M b  &Q%$. This then was true, Theocritus: the Erotes have taught many to be poets, who knew not the Muses before.

Bion’s declaration is not only more resolutely serious than Nicias’, but also more explicit in its opposition to the motif of poetry as a ( against love: Bion wants both love poetry and love – both the ‘medicine’ and the ‘illness’ – and thus he establishes the causal (and reversible) nexus between poetry and love which is at the basis of Latin elegiac poetry, but which is quite new in Greek tradition.182 One significant parallel to the attitudes of Bion’s love poetry in foreshadowing Latin elegy may come from a pseudo-Theocritean poem, Idyll 23 ‘The Lover’, which is generally considered to be the work of an author belonging to the ‘school of Bion’.183 In the face of the beloved’s cruel refusal, a lover kills himself at the beloved’s door, but before committing suicide he asks his lover to write on his tomb the epitaph:      U '  ) 8 ' Q%") &## %  ' #MU “& L!  + 5”. Eros killed this man. Traveller, do not pass-by, but stop and say: ‘He had a cruel friend’. ([Theocritus] 23.47–8)

This passage, which is related to, though different from, the epigrammatic motif of the inscription left on the door of the beloved at the end of the paraklausithyron (e.g. Meleager, AP 5.191.7f. = HE 4384f., 181 182

183

This seems the most likely meaning of &    (cf. Theocr. 12.2); some understand ‘always desiring (to receive the song)’. Given the absence of context, other interpretations can, of course, be imagined: Reed (1997) 146, notes sceptically the possibility that   might mean ‘to bring (love) to my beloved’, and not to the poet. U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Die Textgeschichte der griechischen Bukoliker (Berlin 1906) 81–2; P. Radici Colace, ‘La tecnica compositiva dell’ C ^% 4 pseudoteocriteo’ GIF 23 (1971) 325–46, R. Hunter, ‘The Sense of an Author: Theocritus and [Theocritus]’ in R. K. Gibson and C. S. Kraus, The Classical Commentary (Leiden 2002) 89–108.

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Theocritus and the bucolic genre

AP 12.23.3f. = HE 4526ff.),184 is a very rare Greek example (however, cf. Meleager, AP 5.215.5f. = HE 4276ff.) of the elegiac motif of the lover who asks for his tomb to have a tombstone immortalising his commitment to love (e.g., Ovid, Trist. 3.3.71–6, [Tibullus] 3.2.27–30, Propertius 2.13.31–6). With the hoped-for epitaph we may also compare Propertius 2.1, another dream of death, where Propertius imagines that Maecenas, as he passes the poet’s tomb, plays the traditional epigrammatic rˆole of the wayfarer who comments on the dead man’s fate (v. 78): huic misero fatum dura puella fuit.

It is, of course, difficult to say to what extent Bion’s poetry – for example, the love poems for Lycidas – and that of his ‘school’ were really forerunners of, or parallels to, Latin elegy. Bion and the poets of the Anacreontea do share a conception of love quite different from the tormenting illness which the intellectualism of Theocritus and the epigrammatists had seen in passion and the poetry devoted to it, and from which not even Meleager could free himself completely. This liberation comes from defining themselves in terms which are not in fact very different from those subsequently used by the Latin elegists: love poetry is an ‘inevitable’ choice which excludes all other kinds of poetry, and there is a clear and inevitable connection between this choice and the actual experience of love in one’s own life. Furthermore, as we have seen, Bion’s Cyclops appears to dedicate his life to courting his beloved with song, and he declares that he will never abandon hope: both ideas are very common in Latin elegy. Nevertheless, we must be very cautious here. Stobaeus, the anthologist to whom we are indebted for almost all the fragments of Bion, is mainly interested in collecting gnomic maxims, and thus most of the passages by Bion that we have are programmatic verses about love or love poetry; apart from frs. 11 and 16, we have very little that can be considered to put those programmes into practice. The protagonists who use ‘I’ in frs. 11 and 16 are not the poet, but, respectively, a shepherd and the Cyclops, and the majority of the speculations about love that we find in Bion’s fragments may be supposed to have a bucolic setting and to have been spoken by pastoral ‘masks’ (just as all the authors of the Anacreontea were masked as Anacreons at a symposium). It would thus appear that the subjectivity – whether real or literary – which had been at the basis of lyric poetry, of some archaic elegy, and of the erotic epigram, and which was to become the basic perspective of Latin elegiac poetry,185 remained foreign to Bion’s poetry, just as it did to Hellenistic erotic-mythological elegy. 184 185

Cf. F. O. Copley, TAPhA 71 (1940) 61. For this distinction, cf. the first chapter of A. A. Day, The Origins of Latin Love Elegy (Oxford 1938), and the last chapter of Cairns (1979).

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An important demonstration of both this difference and of the importance of Bion as a model for the elegiac poets is offered by Propertius 2.13, which in the past was regularly considered a conflation of two distinct poems, though its unity has been asserted by most modern critics.186 The poet presents himself as a man who has been wounded several times by love and is dedicated to the love poetry which will please his beloved Cynthia; his hope is that she may come to love him until (and even after) death and weep for him in a funeral ceremony, which the poet wishes to be without any pomp, but marked by Cynthia’s most sincere grief and followed by a constant veneration of his tomb (vv. 17–42); the poet has suffered greatly, and it would have been better for him to have died at birth, above all because Cynthia will not be able to call him back to life, even if she invokes him after death (vv. 43–58). The description of the poet’s funeral and the mourning for him have an important debt to Bion’s Epitaph for Adonis,187 a poem which describes the mourning of Aphrodite for her beloved Adonis, who has just been killed by a wild boar. It is Propertius himself who announces the relationship with this mythological and textual paradigm at the close of the poem (vv. 51–8): tu tamen amisso non numquam flebis amico: fas est praeteritos semper amare uiros. testis, cui niueum quondam percussit Adonem uenantem Idalio uertice durus aper; illis formosus iacuisse paludibus, illic diceris effusa te, Venus isse coma. sed frustra mutos reuocabis, Cynthia, manis: nam mea qui poterunt ossa minuta loqui? But you will weep many a time for your lost friend: it is right always to love men who have died. She is a witness of this, who suffered when the snow-white Adonis was killed by a cruel boar, while he was hunting on Mount Idalium: they say that the handsome youth lay in those marshes, and that you, O Venus, arrived there with your hair trailing. But you, O Cynthia, will call back in vain my mute spirit: how will my bones, reduced to dust, be able to speak?

The description of Adonis as niueus ‘snow-white’ points specifically to Bion’s telling of the myth. This is a rare poetical term, and here it seems to pick up !  , which itself is very rarely used in Greek to describe the colour of the skin, but which is used twice in this way in Bion’s Epitaphios: !  %  ‘through his snow-white skin’ (v. 10) and _ | !   ‘snow-white breasts’ (vv. 26–7). The detail of Venus wandering with 186 187

Cf. Papanghelis (1987) 50–79, L. P. Wilkinson, ‘The Continuity of Propertius 2.13’ CR 16 (1966) 141–44, W. A. Camps, Propertius. Elegies, Book II (Cambridge 1967) 115. Cf. Papanghelis (1987) 64–70.

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her hair unbound (v. 56), a typical gesture of grief, perhaps recalls specifically vv. 19–20. of Bion’s poem, / 'C ; C '  | #$% #5' & '$O &#(#  ‘and Aphrodite wanders through the woods with her hair unbound’188 ; diceris ‘they say that you’ (v. 56), with which the detail is introduced, is a very familiar kind of ‘Alexandrian footnote’ denoting the existence of poetic sources.189 So, too, some of the details of the funeral rites and Cynthia’s imagined mourning (vv. 21–2, 27–30) find striking parallels in Aphrodite’s mourning for Adonis (vv. 24,190 77, 11–14191 ). Relevant also is Propertius 2.19. Here, as in 2.13, there is a kind of dream, this time about a possible stay of Cynthia in the countryside; the poet too will dedicate himself to the worship of Diana, putting aside that of Venus (me sacra Dianae / suscipere et Veneris ponere uota iuvat), and he will hunt, directing the dogs himself (audaces ipse monere canis), but with all due caution: non tamen ut uastos ausim temptare leones aut celer agrestis comminus ire sues. haec igitur mihi sit lepores audacia mollis excipere et structo figere auem calamo. Not, however, to the point of having the courage to challenge powerful lions, or, with a rapid movement to close with wild boars. May this, then, be my courage, to catch timid hares with a net, and to hit birds with arrows. (Propertius 2.19.21–4)

Here, we may be reminded of the rebuke that Aphrodite pronounces over the corpse of Adonis in vv. 60–1 of the Epitaphios,  () #) $( ‡ | #, O  %  4  # ; ‘but why do you recklessly give orders to the dogs? You who are handsome, why did you long to fight against a wild beast?’ Perhaps, too, there is also an anticipation of the more detailed warning which Ovid, in the wake of both Bion and Propertius, attributes to the goddess when, in Metamorphoses 10.533–52 at 188

189 190

191

´ Cf. Papanghelis (1987) 66, following J. Andr´e, Etude sur les termes de couleur dans la langue latine (Paris 1949) 375. The word reuocabis may also recall the Greek &# $% (v. 94); Adonis wishes to reply to the mourners (    # , v. 96), but Kore does not let him go, and the tone of the rhetorical question in v. 58 in Propertius may suggest an analogous impossible desire to answer Cynthia. On the use of this kind of ‘allusive footnote’ cf., most recently, Hinds (1998) 1–5. The adverbial neuter ##( is an emendation of Hermann, for the transmitted 5' or  '. If we accept the variant 5', the meaning will be ‘shouting in the Oriental manner, and calling her husband and her son’, cf. Reed (1997) 208. The last kiss is repeated also in vv. 45–9, acted out in Aphrodite’s appeal to Adonis, rather than narrated: she believes that he is still alive and can therefore transmit his last breath to her. As such, this second passage of Bion appears less close to the perspective of Propertius’ v. 29: osculaque in gelidis pones suprema labellis, where the coldness of the lover’s lips is a fact that is perceived without any illusions, as in Ad. ep. 13–14.

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the height of her love for Adonis, she, like Propertius, submits to hunting as a kind of seruitium amoris; she dresses like Diana and gives orders to the dogs, but she hunts only animals that can be hunted without danger, such as hares (also mentioned by Propertius), and a fortibus abstinet apris | raptoresque lupos armatosque unguibus ursos | uitat [. . .] te quoque, ut hos timeas [. . .], Adoni, monet ‘fortis’que ‘fugacibus esto’ | inquit, ‘in audaces non est audacia tuta.| parce meo, iuuenis, temerarius esse periclo, | neue feras, quibus arma dedit natura, lacesse . . .’ ‘she refrains from facing up to sturdy boars, rapacious wolves, bears with their dangerous claws [. . .] and she exhorts you, too, Adonis, to be prudent with them [. . .], and she says: “Demonstrate your strength against those animals which easily run away, but with those that are aggressive, courage is dangerous! Avoid being reckless (cf. Bion’s #), and running a risk that is mine, and do not provoke beasts which nature has supplied with arms”, etc.’.192 Ovid thus correctly reads Propertius as having presented himself as a prudent Adonis, who does not commit the sin of recklessness, of which Bion’s Aphrodite had accused her beloved. Certain of Bion’s images, like that of the last kiss for the beloved who is already dead, or that of Adonis who is to be placed, even if disfigured by death, on the bed where he had spent his nights of love with Aphrodite (cf. vv. 72–3), are extremely rare in Greek erotic poetry and mythology, but are in tune with the dominant atmosphere of Latin elegiac poetry. Such an extreme manifestation of the ideal of eternal faithfulness is certainly not far from a poem like Propertius 2.13, where the motif of eternal commitment to a single love is intertwined with the thought of death and, in particular, with the changes that death imposes upon eternal love.193 Propertius may have seen in Bion not just a precedent for a particular kind of romantic Stimmung which combined love and death in highly sensual terms,194 but also a precedent for his ideal of an eternal singer of a single love and his utopian dream of a pastoral love. Be that as it may, Bion’s mythological material is subsumed by Propertius into a serious first-person reflection on life and death,195 with a transformation of the ‘objective’ mythological 192

193 194

195

Theocritus’ Daphnis too taunted Aphrodite with Adonis’ rashness (1.109–10): cf. Fantuzzi (1995b). What unites the texts of Bion, Propertius and Ovid is their emphasis on the distinction between animals that are not dangerous and those animals to be avoided. This poem is not an isolated episode in elegiac poetry: cf. Propertius 1.17.19–24, 3.16.21–30, Tibullus 1.1.61–8, 1.3, Ovid, Am. 3.9. Cf. Papanghelis (1987) 65–70. Another demonstration of the influence of Bion’s Epitaph for Adonis and the pseudo-Moschean Epitaph for Bion (which imitates the former) in Latin elegiac reflections on death can be seen in the fact that Ovid, Amores 3.9 alludes to these two poems: cf. J. D. Reed, ‘Ovid’s Elegy on Tibullus and its Models’ CPh 92 (1997) 260–69. Cf. Papanghelis (1987) 78.

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into the ‘subjective’, which is analogous to, though perhaps more radical than, the transformations of, say, Propertius 1.18196 and Catullus 68.197 The extant poetry of Bion thus suggests that the gap between the ideology of love found in Latin elegiac poetry and that found commonly in Hellenistic Greek poetry, particularly the epigram, was considerably reduced in the second and first centuries bc. The combination of Bion’s erotic values and the coincidence between persona loquens and author, which had existed in archaic lyric poetry and in epigram, would render more credible and immediate the exclusive, eternal faithfulness to the beloved and to love poetry which is claimed by Latin elegists. 196 197

Cf. F. Cairns, ‘Propertius 1.18 and Callimachus, Acontius and Cydippe’ CR 20 (1969) 131–4. Cf. C. W. Macleod, ‘A Use of Myth in Ancient Poetry’ CQ 24 (1974) 82–8.

chap t e r 5

Epic in a minor key

1 the ‘epyllion’ Small-scale hexameter narratives on mythic subjects have always been regarded as a special feature of Hellenistic poetry. Even if the term ‘epyllion’ has no ancient authority,1 there has seemed to be a phenomenon which cannot be ignored. Modern discussion has, however, been bedevilled by the grouping together of poems so diverse as to render that grouping almost meaningless, however many individual points of contact they may share.2 Two very broad groups may in fact be identified. On one side are ambitious poems of considerable length, such as Callimachus’ Hecale and the lost Hermes of Eratosthenes (cf. SH 397) which ran to well over a thousand verses; on the other are shorter narratives of, roughly speaking, between one hundred and three hundred verses, best exemplified for us by Moschus’ Europa.3 Although the term ‘epyllion’ is sometimes used to refer to both groups, it is in fact the second, shorter group which proved to be of greater subsequent significance for the more familiar tradition of Latin ‘epyllion’. In seeking to draw formal distinctions between poems, three possible criteria may be singled out for special notice. A first criterion is scale. Theocritus’ narrative of Heracles’ loss of Hylas (13.25–75) has many points of technique in common with the poems that will be considered in this chapter, but its fifty-one verses offer a significantly more compressed narrative than, say, the account of Polydeuces and Amykos (22.27–134), which otherwise seems closely related to it, at least in structural terms. Where are boundaries to be drawn, and is there any point in drawing them? 1

2 3

Cf. W. Allen, ‘The epyllion: a chapter in the history of literary criticism’ TAPA 71 (1940) 1–26. Further bibliography in G. Most, Philologus 125 (1981) 111–12, 126 (1982) 153–6, C. U. Merriam, The Development of the Epyllion Genre through the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (Lewiston NY 2001). Cf. Cameron (1995) 447–52, to which the following discussion owes much. The length of Eratosthenes’ famous Erigone cannot be accurately established, cf. A. Rosokoski, Die Erigone des Eratosthenes (Heidelberg 1995) 26.

191

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Epic in a minor key

A second criterion is poetic form. The common ‘once upon a time’ ( ) opening for Hellenistic narratives4 – including the elegiac narrative of Callimachus, Hymn 5 (vv. 57, 70) –5 establishes a narrative starting-point from which the story is told, almost always in linear chronological sequence, until its appointed end. Such a style differs both from Callimachus’ ‘Acontius and Cydippe’, which begins with one of the lessons to be drawn from the narrative, ‘Eros taught Acontius when he was in love with Cydippe . . .’ (fr. 67.1–2), before returning to their fateful meeting,6 and from the temporal inversions and boxed narratives of the neoteric Latin tradition. We may also consider here the presentation of the narrative. [Theocritus], Idyll 25 and Moschus’ Europa are presented as unframed narratives told ‘for their own sake’, whereas the Hylas narrative of Theocritus, Idyll 13 is preceded by a structurally complex introduction (vv. 1–24) to a named addressee and is explicitly told to exemplify a truth about eros.7 The narratives of Idyll 22 appear within an explicit hymnic frame, whereas the hymnic character8 of Idyll 26, clear in the final envoi (vv. 33–8), emerges with almost shocking suddenness only after a marked narrative closure (through word-play and allusion to the opening  A ‘to the mountain’):  k49 ' C &   $ l  T%) M A     J  %.  &# U ' C .## & ! \Q%"  _)  #. [The women] returned to Thebes, all smeared with blood, bringing from the mountain a grief, not Pentheus.9 I do not care. Let no one else concern themeselves with one hateful to Dionysus . . . (Theocritus 26.25–8)

A broken papyrus suggests that the much lengthier narrative of Idyll 24 was also followed by a hymnic conclusion.10 Distinctions between poems set within a layered context and those which are ‘free-standing’ are thus possible, but their utility is open to considerable doubt. Certain episodes within Apollonius’ Argonautica may be thought very close to ‘epyllia’, and this epic illustrates these same trends in narrative on a large scale; the fateful story of Cyzicus and Kleite, for example, moves from a scene-setting of recognisable epic type, ‘Inside the Propontis there is a steep 4

5

6 9

For hexameters cf. e.g. Theocr. 18.1, 24.1; Callimachus fr. 230 (Hecale v. 1); Moschus, Europa 1; notice how the form is carried over into indirect speech at Theocr. 7.73, 78. On the origins of the form cf. W. H. Race, YCS 29 (1992) 14 and below p. 194. Notice, however, that the address to the 5'  at the head of v. 57 sharply distinguishes the tone from the corresponding hexameter narratives. At fr. 75.4 Callimachus apes the style, as he pretends to be going to tell the story of Zeus and Hera making love as children. 7 Cf. Hunter (1999) 262. 8 Cf. Cairns (1992). Cf. above, p. 60. 10 Cf. below, p. 201. There is an untranslatable pun on penthˆema and Penthˆea.

1 The ‘epyllion’

193

island . . .’ (1.936), to a closural aetiology which links the distant past to the present of the reader (1.1075–7). Such an apparently self-contained narrative is, however, set within a wider context upon which the interpretation of the narrative partly depends, and this tension between closure and openendedness is exploited too in certain shorter poems which end with a kind of narrative QED, bringing a final closure to the narrative, and thus provocatively blocking, while actually inviting, our desire to ‘read further’, to carry the narrative beyond its textual boundary. The apparently firm closures of Moschus’ Europa and Theocritus’ Idyll 13 well illustrate – in different ways – this exploration of the nature of narrative limits.11 A third criterion is metre. The Hellenistic age knew elegiac, as well as hexameter, narratives on mythical subjects,12 but, if we discount the narratives of Callimachus’ Aetia, no elegiac poem which is purely narrative has in fact survived. The narrative section of Callimachus’ Hymn to Athena (vv. 56–136) does not, however, differ radically from the linear sequence of the hexameter narratives, though it is framed by addresses to the audience of celebrating women (5'  57, # !  134). Whether it is significant that the narrative section of the hexameter Hymn to Demeter (vv. 24–117) does not include such addresses to the celebrants may be debated; in both poems, the central narrative is formally introduced as such (h. 5.55–6, h. 6.22–3),13 and the close of both narratives is again strongly marked: in the Hymn to Athena by an assertion of the divine order, as demonstrated by the preceding narrative, and in the Hymn to Demeter by the sudden intrusion of a first-person address to the god (vv. 116–17). We may suspect that, on the whole, shorter hexameter poems, unlike Apollonius’ Argonautica,14 more strictly preserved an epic discretion in severely limiting ‘authorial intrusion’ into the narrative, but not enough survives to confirm these suspicions. Two narrative modes were of primary importance in the genesis of the Hellenistic tradition of narrative.15 The first is the epic tradition itself, not so much the Iliad and the Odyssey as a whole, but the shorter narrative units of the rhapsodic tradition or the shorter poems of the Hesiodic corpus. The introduction to Demodocus’ song of the Wooden Horse resembles the way some Hellenistic narratives begin: 5 ' C &'4)   +#O F e X $%%#   9(  &# )   #%"% 9#  ) C; 5)  'C i' & #$ , & C C>'$%)  #. 11 12 13 15

Cf. below, pp. 215–24; Griffiths (1996) 114–15. Cf. E. Magnelli, Alexandri Aetoli testimonia et fragmenta (Florence 1999) 15–17. 14 Cf. Hunter (1993a) 101–19. The text is unfortunately broken in the latter passage. Some of what follows reuses material from Hunter (1998).

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[The bard] began his utterance of the lay, taking it up where the Argives had set their huts aflame, had boarded their ships and were under sail already, while the few left behind with great Odysseus . . . (Homer, Odyssey 8.499–502, trans. Shewring)

If we transfer this into the direct speech of Demodocus’ imagined song, he will have begun ‘The Greeks had sailed away, after firing the huts, but Odysseus’ men [who will be the subject of the narration] . . .’; this offers a very brief contextualisation, followed by the subject of the narrative proper, in a way which is reminiscent of how some Hellenistic narratives begin (cf. e.g. Theocr. 22.27–9).16 No less interesting is the progress of Demodocus’ song. Trojan deliberations as to what to do with the Wooden Horse are handled at some length (8.504–13), whereas once the Greeks ‘pour forth from the horse’, the potentially much richer (from a narrative point of view) sack of the city hurries to completion (8.514–20). Such a narrative structuring seems to look forward to, say, the expansive treatment of Europa’s abduction, followed by the swift conclusion once Zeus reveals himself.17 Odysseus has precisely asked for the ‘song of the Wooden Horse’ (8.492–3), and that is what he gets. The concentration upon a single dramatic moment within a larger mythic pattern (in this case the Trojan War) was to become standard in later ‘epyllia’. The second important tradition is that of lyric narrative,18 for, as with the rhapsodic tradition, lyric narrative had long focused upon one moment selected from an extended story. An example such as Bacchylides 5.56–175, which tells of Heracles’ fateful meeting with Meleager in the Underworld, begins in the familiar ‘once upon a time’ manner, claims traditional authority as its source – # $% ‘they say’ (cf. Catullus 64.1–2) –, is told to illustrate a gnome (vv. 53–5, cf. Theocritus 13), proceeds in a chronologically linear fashion, and makes an extensive use of direct speech. Such a narrative could very easily be transposed to the hexameter mode of later epyllia. So, too, abrupt beginnings and endings are common to both archaic lyric and Hellenistic narrative.19 Archaic lyric poetry knows, of course, more complex narratives: the enfolded tales of Proitos and his daughters at Bacchylides 11.40–112 illustrate one kind of complexity, as the selectivity, ellipse, swift transition, and temporal dislocation (Medea’s prophecy) of Pindar, Pythian 4, illustrate another. Such complexities emphasise the poet’s control of narrative time and theme, and as such find their true heirs in Callimachean narratives, such as the Hecale and the ‘Victoria Berenices’, 16

17

Some Homeric book-openings themselves are suggestive in this context; Iliad 22 is a good example: ‘So the Trojans in terror . . . but the Greeks . . .’. Cf. the remarks of Wilamowitz, Timotheos. Die Perser (Leipzig 1903) 102–3. 18 Cf. esp. Perrotta (1978) 34–53. 19 Cf. Bacchylides 15, 17, 19.15. Cf. below, pp. 215–24.

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and later in the elaborate patterns of Catullus 64, rather than in the shorter Hellenistic ‘epyllia’. In the use of direct speech, also, there is innovation as well as continuity: the boundaries of mim¯esis and di¯eg¯esis are breaking down.20 Theocritus even includes a passage of stichomythia in Idyll 22. This is a particularly complex effect, as conversation should be a naturalistic mode which serves to break down the formality of hexameter poetry; in Idyll 22, however, the paraded artificiality of hexameter stichomythia reinforces the special and separate nature of poetic discourse, no less than do the mannered ekphrases of a locus amoenus and of Amycus (vv. 37–52) which immediately precede. The breaking down of boundaries between mim¯esis and di¯eg¯esis is thus often accompanied by a self-conscious experimentation which depends upon the familiarity of those boundaries.21 Some distinctions between poems may in fact be drawn largely on the basis of how extensive is the use of direct speech. Direct speech is almost (cf. v. 52) totally avoided in Theocritus’ Hylas poem, perhaps in part as a contrast with the Cyclops’ song in Idyll 11, a poem which otherwise has much in common with it.22 On the other hand, the anonymous Megara23 consists almost entirely of a hexameter conversation between Heracles’ wife and mother; the two speeches of roughly equal length are separated by a mere six verses in the voice of the narrator. Drama was clearly a determinative influence on the form of this poem. The combination of an opening in medias res with an enquiry about what is distressing Alcmena (cf. Eur. IA 34ff., Men. Heros 1ff., Plaut. Pseud. 1ff.) and a conclusion with a disturbing dream which forebodes ill suggests the suspenseful opening of a drama (cf. perhaps Eur. IT ). Like the poet of Idyll 25,24 the Megara poet plays with the identity of the characters in a manner which evokes the mimesis of drama, rather than the di¯eg¯esis of narrative.25 If the character of Megara seems to owe a debt to Sophocles’ Deianeira,26 it is rather the Sophoclean models which all but certainly lie behind the very

20 21 22 23 24 25

26

Cf. below, pp. 208–9 on Theocritus 24. Cf. Rossi (1971a) on the broader, but related, question of genre. Observe also that the opening frame is recalled at the end in Idyll 11, but not in Idyll 13. Cf. T. Breitenstein, Recherches sur le po`eme M´egara (Copenhagen 1966), J. W. Vaughn, The Megara (Moschus IV) (Bern–Stuttgart 1976) . Cf. below, pp. 210–15. Cf. Perrotta (1978) 37–40. Note v. 1 (‘mother’, but she is really ‘mother-in-law’); v. 4 (‘your glorious son endures countless griefs’); v. 5 (‘like a lion . . .’, cf. Theocr. 13.62 of Heracles); v. 11 (‘no one is more cursed by fate’); v. 13 (‘the bow . . .’); vv. 15–16, the killing of the children. Verses 17–20 (‘With my own eyes I saw . . .’) may also allude to dramatic presentations of the myth. Cf. esp. vv. 41–5 with S. Tr. 31–5 (from the prologue).

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similar interview of Medea and Chalciope in Argonautica 3.673–741 that may have been decisive in shaping this intriguing poem. The ‘dramatisation’ of narrative looks in two ways, which might at first seem contradictory. On the one hand, there is the Hellenistic practice of ‘anthologising’, i.e. copying and/or performing bits of plays or long narratives, rather than whole texts.27 In one sense, this is merely extending to dramatic performance the rhapsodic treatment of epic poetry, but an increasingly shared ‘performance mode’ brought some forms of narrative and drama closer together. On the other hand, there is the increased circulation of written texts and an ever-growing reception through reading. Some – certainly not all – poets reflect these tendencies by exaggerating those features of the text which plainly evoke ‘dramatic’ presentation. We may see here one more facet of the large-scale exploration of the creative tension between modes of reception; in this respect, some epyllia have much in common with, on the one hand, Theocritus’ bucolic and urban mimes and, on the other, Callimachus’ ‘mimetic’ hymns to Athena and Demeter. 2 callimachus’ h e c a l e The Hecale, a hexameter poem of uncertain length (? c.1200 verses),28 told the story of how Theseus, on his way to fight the bull of Marathon, was entertained in the Attic countryside by a woman called Hecale, when he took shelter in her hut from a storm; on returning after his triumph over the bull, the hero found that Hecale had died, and so he gave her name to the local deme and founded a shrine of Zeus Hekaleios. Callimachus clearly used Attic chronicles for many of the details of the story, and the poem seems to have been replete with allusions to Attic antiquities and customs, and was marked by a vocabulary with a subtly archaic Attic flavour;29 a third-century interest in Attic antiquities is visible also in the Erigone of Eratosthenes and the Mopsopia (‘Attica’) of Euphorion. The aetiological focus of the Hecale is reminiscent of the Aitia, and, as with the ‘Victoria Berenices’, which opened the third book of that poem,30 a great heroic feat is here used as a frame to foreground material of a much more humble kind: the description of Hecale’s rustic life and the traditional peasant fare she set before Theseus was for later antiquity the most famous part of Callimachus’ 27 29

30

28 Cf. Hollis (1990) Appendix II. Cf. Gentili (1979); below, pp. 439–40 on the Alexandra. Cf. Cameron (1995) 443–4. For the possibility that Callimachus was personally acquainted with Attica cf. also G. J. Oliver, ‘Callimachus the Poet and Benefactor of the Athenians’ ZPE 140 (2002) 6–8. Cf. above, pp. 83–5.

2 Callimachus’ Hecale

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poem, and Ovid’s tale of Baucis and Philemon (Met. 8.626ff.) is only the best known of many later reworkings. The chief epic model for Hecale was the Odyssey’s Eumaeus, a character with a rich Nachleben in Hellenistic narrative. Whereas, however, Eumaeus was an important, but not central, character in Homer, it is Hecale who clearly held centre-stage in her poem (as did Molorkos in the strikingly similar narrative of the ‘Victoria’).31 The length of the Hecale, roughly that of one book of Apollonius’ Argonautica, was, as we have seen, not unparalleled in the third century, but we know very little about its nearest literary relatives.32 If we set the Hecale against Aristotelian ‘prescriptions’ for epic poetry, it will be seen that it both avoided the linear narrative of the rejected cyclic epics (among which Aristotle specifically names ‘Theseids’), and presented a single praxis of some kind; moreover, the devices of flashback, foreshadowing and ‘stories within stories’, which are so prominent in Callimachus’ poem, all have abundant Homeric precedent. If much about the Hecale recalls other areas of Callimachus’ oeuvre, the ‘generic’ resonance is clearly that of epic.33 This is suggested by the metre, the use of epic similes (which are otherwise very rare in what survives of Callimachus’ poetry), the extensive use of direct speech, with its consequent implications for the ethical presentation of the characters, the rarity, if not in fact total absence, of the intrusive authorial voice so familiar in the Aitia and the Hymns,34 and a verbal style which is closer to Homer than is the style of the Hymns.35 The following fragment, describing Theseus’ victorious return, is perhaps as close to ‘unelaborated’ narrative as anything that survives from Callimachus’ pen: *  U E   &#% Q. F K') F[] x (  2  %) '   # .'      #Z .  *'%) %C V '8 k% Q  &  , .‹% U ‘ %4  ) I '  ;* {    Q  V C N%   .% $ &

#Z  H' C  – #   &:QM   U “k% b ! +  Š ) & C Q'$ 0 31

32 33 34

35

For an instructive comparison of the Hecale and the ‘Victoria Berenices’ cf. A. Amb¨uhl, ‘Entertaining Theseus and Heracles: the Hecale and the Victoria Berenices as a diptych’ in Harder–Regtuit–Wakker (2004) 23–47. On the implications of the length of the Hecale cf. esp. Lynn (1995) 90–117. Cf. in general Cameron (1995) 437–47. Cf. Cameron (1992) 311–12; Hunter (1993a) 115–16; Lynn (1995) 71–2. The state of preservation of the text obviously enjoins caution, but enough survives to allow some confidence in this argument. Hollis and D’Alessio note frs. 15, 65 and 149 as probable or possible examples of authorial apostrophe to a character; this type of ‘intervention’ had, of course, good Homeric precedent. Cf. Hollis (1990) 12.

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Epic in a minor key _, .  , ”.  X ( )  ' C &  (  e8  &# ) c 'X . !   %% !Q%  ! Q  Q##)  9 'C  , V C #  $##!   ) V%% C & %    C & k%{ 9(##) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .] . . . % '´o) e 'X $5  ]% "% &% 

. . . with one horn, for the club had crushed the other one. As soon as they saw, they all shrank back, and no one dared to look straight at the great man and the monstrous beast, until Theseus called out loud to them from afar: ‘Have courage and stay, and let the swiftest among you carry this message to my father Aigeus in the city and thus lift many cares from him: “Here is Theseus, not far away, bringing the bull alive from well-watered Marathon.”’ So he spoke, and when they heard they all raised the cry of ‘Hie Paieon’ and stayed where they were. The south wind does not pour down such a torrent of leaves, nor the north wind – not even in the month when leaves fall – as the countryfolk threw all over Theseus . . . surrounding him, and the women . . . crowned him with their girdles. (Callimachus, Hecale fr. 69 Hollis)

This passage poses difficulties for the reconstruction of subsequent events,36 and the speed with which events are narrated is perhaps more reminiscent of Pindaric than Homeric narrative, but as a whole the text seems to avoid the stylistic games and allusive (and elusive) ironies so familiar elsewhere in Callimachus’ poetry. On the other hand, analysis reveals a passage full of half-quotations from and allusions to Homer, which creates a striking effect of similarity and complete difference;37 the human terror we associate with martial conflict and the weapons of war is evoked by a man dragging a huge38 bull (which has lost a horn), and the phyllobolia of the peasants, itself an implicit aition for a later custom, outdoes all the forces of nature. The poem began, in the familiar   style, with the structural simplicity of a fable (cf. also fr. 2 Hollis), but with a learned vocabulary and word order that marks it as anything but simple: C;     C^ !   $ Once upon a time an Attic woman lived in the hill country of Erechtheus (Callimachus, Hecale fr. 1 Hollis39 )

The programmatically creative tension in the verse between matter and manner40 appears indeed to have been the most prominent stylistic 36 38

39

37 To Hollis’ commentary add Lynn (1995) 36–40. Cf. Hollis (1990) 355–7. The tone of .'      #Z is hard to catch exactly; the phrase is not without a certain light humour, but the second noun and adjective both mark a move away from the civilised to the wild and uncouth. 40 Cf. Lynn (1995) 7–10. For a possible continuation of fr. 1 cf. A. Hollis, ZPE 115 (1997) 55–6.

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hallmark of the Hecale. The elegantly modern word order plays off against the (learnedly) local colour of ‘a woman of Akte [believed to be an archaic name for Attica]’ and the name of the legendary king Erechtheus to suggest a new telling of an old tale. The second half of the verse alludes to Odyssey 11.323, where Theseus is said to have tried to bring Ariadne 

$, C;( e (, ‘to the hilly area (?) of holy Athens’;41 this is Theseus’ only appearance in Homer, and thus Callimachus can both acknowledge his affiliation with the epic poet par excellence and also assert that his will be a very different kind of poem, on a subject which Homer ‘ignored’. In a familiar device of epic, Theseus questioned Hecale about her life (fr. 40 Hollis) and she replied at some length. We learn that she was once rich (fr. 41 Hollis),42 had a handsome husband and two sons, ‘who shot up like aspens beside a winter torrent’ (fr. 48 Hollis), words which pathetically recall Thetis’ anxious description of Achilles, who would die young (Iliad 18.56, 437). One, or possibly both, of Hecale’s sons were killed by the monstrous Kerkyon, and she expresses her hatred in words which inevitably call Hecabe to mind: $ [ ] _Z  &'% 4M %Z#$ ]#5% ) * ) | % May I myself stick thorns into his shameless eyes while he still lives and, if it is permitted, eat them raw . . . (Callimachus, Hecale fr. 49.14–15 Hollis)

The apparent gulf between the epic and tragic queen, whose life is brought to ruin by the death of so many sons and who put out an enemy’s eyes in Euripides’ Hecabe, and the nearly synonymous Hecale, an obscure bitplayer in a minor corner of the mythical pageant, is thus collapsed for a powerful emotional effect.43 A major episode44 in the poem was an account by a crow to another bird of the legend of Erichthonios and a prophecy that one day the raven would be changed from white to black because it brought bad news to Apollo. It has been very plausibly suggested that the purpose of this speech was to 41 42 43

44

Erechtheus was particularly associated with the area around Marathon, but his name is also evocative of Athens and her countryside more generally. Hollis suggests joining this fragment with fr. 158 (= 682 Pf.),  '($ Š'   ‡ whereas Livrea (1993) 133–4 prefers to place fr. 694 Pf., &  ' C !   %, before fr. 41H. There is a good discussion of the use of the figure of Hecabe in Hutchinson (1988) 57–9. For Hecale’s epic kleos cf. C. McNelis, ‘Mourning Glory: Callimachus’ Hecale and Heroic Honors’ MD 50 (2003) 155–61. The length of this episode is indicated not merely by the reconstruction of the surviving fragments, but also by the echo in vv. 22–3 of Od. 15.493–5, which follow the lengthy conversation of Odysseus and Eumaeus. On this episode, see, in addition to Hollis’ commentary, Livrea (1993) 141–3 and below, pp. 252–5.

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attempt to dissuade the other bird from carrying the news of Hecale’s death to Theseus, but how precisely the transitions from the central narrative to the chattering birds and back again were handled remains unclear. No appreciation of Callimachean poetry could, however, pass over the magical verses which follow immediately after the crow’s speech: ''  ' C  ##,  ! []) L:  D#  % 94  . !$) V C   ! 5    # U i'  + #Q!   ) & '   Q  &8 2'  , e5)     C !   #  * .M  O 2 C .M) &(_$% 'X $ . . .  !#  $   . . . They fell asleep, but not for long, for soon came the frosty early dawn, when thieves’ hands no longer seek booty. Already the lamps of morning were shining, a man drawing water was singing ‘the well song’, the axle creaking under the wagon woke the man whose house lay beside the track, many feel annoyance . . . blacksmiths seeking fire . . . (Callimachus, Hecale fr. 74.22–8 Hollis)

Here the avian world of very specific gossip and Schadenfreude – the crow’s pleasure at the prospect of the raven’s discomfiture is pointed by an almost parodic reworking of Achilles’ prophecy of his own death, delivered to the hapless Lykaon just before the latter’s death (Il. 21.111–13) – gives way to a universalised picture of men stirring as dawn comes. As we would expect, it is a universal picture made Callimachus’ own by his inimitable verbal style: if the business of early morning is the same the world over, only in the poetic world of Callimachus is that early morning called % 94  . !$.45 The impression is not, however, of arcane obscurity, but of the poet’s absolute control over what at first glance claims to be a ‘natural’ picture which writes itself. It may be that the poetic focus was not upon the paradoxical fact that birds are woken by human activity – it is birdsong that we most expect to hear at this hour –46 but upon a contrast between the very ordinariness of the actions described and the unique grief which lay in store for Theseus when he learned of Hecale’s death. It is indeed the aetiological perspective which sees the particular and the significant against the background of the everyday.

45 46

Cf. Hollis ad loc. The Homeric ‘model’ (Od. 15.495) has -O . . . Q, cf. below, p. 255. H. Lloyd-Jones and J. Rea, HSCP 72 (1967) 145, observe that there is no necessary connection between the site of the birds’ conversation and the description of noises which occur everywhere. This is true, but the poetic juxtaposition clearly gestures towards such an interpretation.

3 Theocritus’ ‘Little Heracles’

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3 theocritus’ ‘lit tle heracles ’ Theocritus’ Idyll 24 tells the story of how Heracles strangled the snakes which Hera sent to destroy him as he slept in his cradle, how Tiresias prophesied to Alcmena the future divinity of her son, and of how the young hero was educated in all the arts of ‘civilisation’ by a series of tutors. The final section of the poem is preserved only in the scantiest fragments in the great Antinoopolis papyrus of Theocritus, but it would appear to have ended, in a manner familiar also from archaic hymns,47 with a prayer to Heracles to grant the poet ‘victory’; if this is interpreted strictly, Idyll 24 was performed in a poetic competition, although we may of course rather be dealing with a literary imitation of a traditional, performative mode. Tiresias’ advice to Alcmena (and hence the first part of the poem) concludes with an instruction to sacrifice to Zeus and to pray that she and her family should be ‘ever superior to their enemies’, just as the poem as a whole ends with the poet’s prayer for victory. Heracles, the very epitome of struggle and ultimate triumph, is to reward the poet who has struggled on his behalf. Heracles and the poet are, however, significantly different. Whereas it would seem that the final prayer stressed the poet’s mortality,48 Heracles’ ultimate divinity plays over the whole poem and makes particularly pointed the apparent ordinariness of his education.49 The repeated insistence, which to some extent structures the sections of the poem (cf. below), on youth and old age (vv. 1–2, 102–3, 133) foreshadows Heracles’ triumph over the natural process of ageing.50 In another reuse of traditional ideas, the poet may have asked for the immortality of his songs as compensation for the mortality of his life. Another earthly manifestation of Heracles is also relevant. It is now generally accepted that the young Heracles evokes the young Philadelphus,51 who, like all the Ptolemies, was to be (officially, at least) ‘superior to his enemies’.52 As the divine ancestor of the Macedonian royal house and a paradigm particularly dear to Alexander, Heracles was a very significant figure for the Ptolemies (cf. e.g. Theocr. 17.13–33); the fact that he sleeps 47 48 49 50 51

52

Cf. Hom. Hymn 6 (Aphrodite) 19–20, ‘grant me victory in this contest, and guide my song’. Cf. v. 171 ] , with the marginal explanation,  O   ,  4 . . . Cf. J. Stern, AJP 95 (1974) 360, and (more generally) M. Sanchez-Wildberger, TheokritInterpretationen (Zurich 1955) 18–21. Cf. the similar use of the motif at 17.24–5, which may help to confirm the ‘Ptolemaic’ reading offered below. Cf. Koenen (1977) 79–86; F. Griffiths (1979) 91–8; Zanker (1987) 179–81; Weber (1993) 241–2; Stephens (2003a) 123–46. For criticism of some of the detail of Koenen’s argument cf. Zanker (1989) 98–9. Cf. Koenen (1977) 83.

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in a shield has often been connected with a story found in late sources53 that the infant Ptolemy Soter was exposed by Lagus in a bronze shield and was protected and fed by an eagle. The date and origin of the story is unknown, but it is not improbable that the story circulated already in Soter’s lifetime.54 The lullaby which Alcmena sings (vv. 6–9) reworks the famous song of the Simonidean Danae, in which she addresses the sleeping Perseus, another son of Zeus, as they drift on the open sea (PMG 543).55 By recalling Perseus, who was Heracles’ great-grandfather, in the context of Heracles’ own childhood, Theocritus thus emphasises dynastic continuity and the repetition of virtue from generation to generation, themes which were particularly dear to Ptolemaic ideology (cf. esp. Theocr. 17.56–7). So, too, the catalogue of Heracles’ tutors has plausibly been connected not just with a subject of traditional interest (cf. Apollodorus 2.4.9), but also with the education of the young Philadephus (or indeed of any royal child).56 The prominence of Alcmena in the narrative of Idyll 24 does not merely reflect Amphitryon’s ambiguous status with regard to Heracles, but is also on a par with the often remarked prominence of royal women in the poetry of the Ptolemaic court. It is Alcmena who wakes first on the fateful night (v. 34), and who later takes the lead in summoning Tiresias while her husband is apparently asleep again; this latter act is given particular emphasis by the fact that, in the Pindaric text which is Theocritus’ main model (cf. below), it is Amphitryon who summons the prophet (Nemean 1.60).57 Whereas Alcmena both initiates action and comforts the frightened Iphicles, her husband is ineffectual (beyond rousing the slaves), because there is nothing for him to do in the presence of his extraordinary son. The sense of delay which surrounds Amphitryon’s response to Alcmena’s alarm (vv. 35–45) is created both by the absence of any equivalent for Pindar’s !Q ‘quickly’ to describe the arrival of the Theban leaders (Nemean 1.51),58 and by Theocritus’ own textual detail. First, there are Alcmena’s words to her husband: .% C) C; QU X  ' K%!  ] U .% ) 'X  ' %% 5 2, %('#  )  #Œ Get up, Amphitryon! I’m very afraid! Get up! Don’t put shoes on your feet . . . (Theocritus 24.35–6) 53 55 56 57 58

54 Cf. RE 23.1603–4. Aelian (fr. 285 Hercher) from the Suda. Cf. Hunter (1996b) 26–7 and below, pp. 260–1. Cf. F. Griffiths (1979) 92, Weber (1993) 241–2, Thomas (1996) 231, Hunter (1996b) 17; for the education of the Ptolemies in general cf. Eichgr¨un (1961) 183–93. Alcmena’s leading rˆole is made clear through a sequence of verbs denoting the various shouts heard in the house that night (34–5, 47, 50). Theocritus may in fact deliberately ‘misread’ Nem. 1.51–3 as suggesting a slower response on the part of Amphitryon than of Alcmena.

3 Theocritus’ ‘Little Heracles’

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The repetition of ‘get up’ (like the endearment #C &' ‘dear husband’ with which Alcmena concludes) suggests, without labouring the point, that it took a little effort to rouse a reluctant husband. As for the injunction not to put his slippers on, Gutzwiller ((1981) 17) well observes: ‘Alcmene knows the customary dressing procedure of Homeric heroes and fears that her husband will waste too much time following this routine’. We have to do, however, not with a full-blown ‘arming scene’, but with a version of ‘how epic characters get up’. Menelaos’ rising in Sparta may serve as an illustrative example:59 D ' C -   ( B''( $# C7Z) N$ C . C M  98 & , 0 # l  +%%( )   'X M ]Mb  C N") %% 'C 2, #5% '4%  # '#) 9 'C K   #(   #  . )  #. When rosy-fingered dawn appeared, then did Menelaos, hero of the war-cry, put on his clothes and rise from bed; around his shoulder he slung a sharp sword, under his glistening feet he bound fair sandals, and went out of his room, like a god to behold . . . (Homer, Odyssey 4.306–11)

Whereas Menelaos ‘hurried’ from his bed (and the Pindaric Alcmena herself rushes from her bed on the fateful night, Nem.1.50), Amphitryon ‘got out of bed, in obedience to his wife’. Secondly, as this Homeric example shows, delay is evoked by the manner in which Theocritus describes his reaching for the sword: ''(#  'C €%  M) V e [   #   '$   %%(#" *X . . i  V C | T   #Z% $ #) $_ +  # )   #Z   )  #. He reached for his intricately decorated sword, which always hung from a peg above his cedarwood bed. Then he grabbed his newly woven belt and, with his other hand, picked up the scabbard, a great lotuswood work . . . (Theocritus 24.42–5)

The sword is a traditional element of this scene in both art and literature,60 but the remarkably ekphrastic concentration upon a ‘realistic’ detail usually passed over in such scenes (just how do you take a sword down from a wall?), creates a brief narrative delay of a kind very familiar in Hellenistic poetry, but one which serves a specific purpose in this particular narrative. Moreover – to anticipate a later argument –61 the sense of delay is heightened 59 60

Gutzwiller (1981) 17 notes that, in Homer, such scenes take place at dawn, and in Theocritus Amphitryon gets up at a ‘false dawn’ (cf. v. 39). 61 Cf. below, p. 209. Cf. Pind. Nem. 1.52, and below, pp. 258–9.

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by the expectation, shaped by our knowledge of previous texts and aroused by the description of the sword as ''(#  ‘intricately decorated’, that the poet will describe this sword, its sheath or its belt in a fuller ekphrasis; we may think of the description of the belt ( #Z) of Heracles’ quiver in the Underworld (Od. 11.609–14). It may therefore be that ‘it is Theocritus, not Amphitryon, who moves slowly’,62 but it is our experience as listeners and readers which constructs and interprets the passage of time within the narrative. It thus comes as no great surprise that the supernatural light is extinguished (46) the moment Amphitryon is ready for action. The amused tone of the treatment of Alcmena and Amphitryon, indeed of the whole poem,63 has something in common with the handling of Alcinous and his young wife Arete as they appear, in another bedroom scene, in the fourth book of the Argonautica. Just as the Apollonian characters may well have evoked the Ptolemaic ruling family,64 so Amphitryon’s household offers one image of the ‘domestic’ side of the rulers. Whether or not we accept Ludwig Koenen’s suggestion that the poem was performed at the celebration (both Basileia and Genethlia) in 285/4 when Philadelphos became co-regent with his father,65 the cumulative case for placing Idyll 24 in a Ptolemaic context seems very strong. As Frederick Griffiths puts it, ‘double parentage and gradually emergent divinity are . . . themes of immediate interest to the Ptolemies’.66 The structure of Idyll 24 shows little of the complexity associated with later Latin ‘epyllia’. The events of the miraculous night (vv. 1–63) are framed by the movements ‘towards bed’ of the babies and, at the end, of Amphitryon, and the Tiresias section begins with an announcement by the cocks of a new day and the arrival of the prophet, and it concludes with his departure. The principal break in the poem, which also articulates, as in Idyll 22, a distinction in the manner of writing, comes in fact after v. 102, where Tiresias, ‘weighed down with many years’, gives place to Heracles, ‘like a young plant in an orchard’. Verse 103, like the opening verse of the whole poem, begins with Heracles’ name and juxtaposes the hero to his mother; this second part of the poem, like the first, falls into two well-defined sections, with a transition effected through v. 134, H' X 67# # ' Q%  ( , ‘thus did his dear mother educate 62 63 64 65 66

G. Perrotta, A&R 4 (1923) 244–5. I have not dealt with this at length, as it has been discussed many times, cf. e.g. Horstman (1976) 57–71. Cf. above, p. 127. Cf. Koenen (1977) 79–86, Weber (1993) 165, Stephens (2003a) 125–7. For the political significance of the time indication at 11–12 cf. also Gow ad loc. F. Griffiths (1979) 95.

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Heracles’, which rounds off the description of Heracles’ education begun in v. 103.67 Idyll 24 offers an excellent opportunity to observe a Hellenistic poet’s creative exploitation of the literary heritage.68 Despite our ignorance of the epics on Heracles by Peisander of Rhodian Kameiros (seventh to sixth centuries), who is celebrated in an epigram of Theocritus (22 Gow) and is said to have written a Herakleia in two books, and by Panyassis of Halicarnassus (early fifth century) who wrote a Herakleia in some nine thousand verses and fourteen books,69 it seems safe to regard Theocritus’ version of the strangling of the snakes and the prophecy of Tiresias as a specific reworking of Pindar.70 Pindar told the story at least twice, in Nemean 1 and Paean 20 (= POxy. 1792, 2442. fr. 32), and the correspondences between the two poets are many and detailed,71 as also are clear cases of Theocritean uariatio. Theocritus’ narrative follows the Pindaric order, but (unsurprisingly) Pindar has nothing to match the use of a shield as a cradle, Alcmena’s lullaby, the detailed indication of time (with its appeal to Alexandrian astronomical interest), the use of Iphicles as a foil to his greater brother,72 or the lengthy bedroom scene with Alcmena and Amphitryon. Though Pindar also exploits the fear of the household at large (Nem. 1.48–9, Paean 20.16ff.), there is nothing in the lyric poet to match the domestic detail of vv. 47– 53. Theocritus’ stylistic mim¯esis is particularly visible in the details of the narrative. Thus, for example, whereas the Pindaric Alcmena leaps from her bed . # ‘without her robe’ (Nem. 1.50, Paean 20.14), in Theocritus she tells her husband not to bother getting his sandals on; in Theocritus, it is the snakes whose eyes blaze (vv. 18–19); in Pindar, it is the baby Heracles’ eyes (Paean 20.13). Whereas the Pindaric Heracles throws off his covers and ‘reveals his nature’ (Paean 20.11–12), in Theocritus, Iphicles ‘kicked off his woolly blanket in his desire to flee’ (vv. 25–6), thereby also (we are to understand) ‘revealing his nature’. Theocritus’ reworking thus ‘contaminates’ Nemean 1 both with material of his own and with details drawn from Paean 20; such a manner of working finds parallels not only in other poetry 67 68 70

71 72

For a radical solution to dissatisfaction with the final section of the poem cf. A. Griffiths (1996) 113–15 who argues that the poem originally finished with v. 104. 69 Cf. below, p. 214. Cf. also below, pp. 255–66. We must, of course, always bear in mind the possibility that Theocritus will have included details from what he regarded as Pindar’s source, by the familiar technique of ‘double allusion’ or ‘window reference’; Pindar himself appears to allude to a ‘source’ at Nem. 1.34 &!5 ] Q #

 (cf. Braswell ad loc.). Cf. G. Perrotta, A&R 4 (1923) 248–52, Gow’s notes passim, Dover (1971) 251–2, Rutherford (2001) 400–1. The delay in naming Iphicles in 25, two verses after the verb ‘cried out’, is a noteworthy narrative effect.

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of the third century, but also in how Roman poets were to handle their Greek models. As in Nemean 1, the extraordinary night is followed by the summoning of Tiresias, who prophesies Heracles’ future greatness. Whereas, however, it is the Pindaric Amphitryon who summons ‘his neighbour, the excellent prophet of Zeus on high, Tiresias the straight seer (]  )’ (Nem. 1.60–1), in Theocritus, it is Alcmena. In Nemean 1, there is no indication of the time relation between the strangling of the snakes and the summoning of Tiresias, but we are perhaps to imagine that one followed immediately upon the other. In Theocritus, Amphitryon puts Heracles back to bed and then retires himself, while Alcmena comforts the terrified Iphicles (vv. 60–3); in 64 we learn that the cocks were announcing dawn when Alcmena summoned the prophet. We can, if we like, imagine that Alcmena herself has gone back to bed but, in her worry, has called for the prophet at the earliest opportunity;73 more probably, however, it has taken Alcmena a long time to calm her younger son down since the events of midnight (v. 11) – she herself never went back to bed. The concern with the passage of time is thus a device which marks the ‘realistic’ mode of Theocritus’ narration against his lyric model, but also ironises that very ‘realism’. If realism of this kind demands that we apply standards of probability to poetic narrative, then both narratives are equally ‘improbable’, and differ only in mode. So, too, the fact that Heracles performs his miraculous feat when ten months old, rather than almost immediately after being born, as in Pindar, may go back to archaic sources other than Pindar,74 but is often ascribed to Theocritus’ concern with ‘realism’, whatever it might also have to do with Ptolemaic chronology and the rapid development of divine babies; it is, however, a curious kind of ‘verisimilitude’ which considers the strangling of snakes appropriate to a ten-month-old baby, but not to a neonate. The very imposition of ‘probability-structures’ upon mythic material does not in fact ironise the myth itself,75 but rather dramatises the inappropriateness of such strategies of reinterpretation. This is the equivalent at the level of theme of the stylistic and verbal contrasts with which the poem is filled: Alcmena’s ‘lullaby’ is concluded by the Homeric o , ‘thus she spoke’, and the servant’s  , &$ 5, ‘master’s calling’, mixes a colloquial pronoun with a verb of high poetry and is followed by the Homeric 73 74 75

So, apparently, H. White ad loc. Cf. Pherecydes, FGrHist 3 F69b (‘one year’), Apollodoros 2.4.8 (‘eight months’), Braswell on Pind. Nem. 1.33–72. As argued in Effe (1978); for Id. 24 cf. pp. 53–9.

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D B ‘she spoke’.76 Such phenomena both gesture towards and openly reject ‘realism’ as a dominant mode of reading. In Pindar, the summoning of Tiresias and his prophecy are public matters of concern to all the leading men of the state (Nem. 1.61); in Theocritus, however, Tiresias’ words are heard by Alcmena alone, and there is no indication that either he or she ever repeats them to Amphitryon, who thus remains in (blissful) ignorance throughout Heracles’ upbringing.77 In Nemean 1, Tiresias’ speech is given in indirect speech and suggests, as befits the encomiastic context, that the prophet gave a full, catalogue-like, account of Heracles’ future labours (61–9); he finishes with Heracles’ final ‘peace’ and ultimate marriage on Olympus to Hebe. Idyll 24 may have contained an allusion to these final happy events in its lost conclusion, but the speech of the Theocritean prophet moves in a quite different direction. Hellenistic ‘epyllion’ seems to have favoured direct speech even more than did Homer, and it is no surprise that in Theocritus we hear Tiresias himself: it is direct speech which reveals ¯ethos, and this is a persistent interest of Hellenistic literature. Tiresias now foreshadows Heracles’ future in general terms, with unexplained allusions to Trachis (v. 83) and a clear refusal to reveal his knowledge of the god responsible for the snakes (vv. 84–5) as gestures towards the traditionally obscure manner of seers. This is not unlike Pindar, whose ‘straight seer’ lives up to his epithet not only by the accuracy of his prediction, but also (apparently) by the clear manner in which it is spoken. When, however, Tiresias comes to give instructions for the purification ritual which Alcmena is to follow (24.88–100), his ‘technical’ knowledge of magic replaces, and to some extent offers an ironised rationalisation of, the traditional riddling language of prophecy. Tiresias thus becomes an epicised version of the experts familiar from the corpus of magical papyri; Alcmena’s consultation is thus assimilated to the real practice of magic, but the fact that that practice operates in the realm of the imagination and exploits a self-conscious difference from the everyday suggests just how complex a phenomenon Theocritean realism is. The literary texture of Idyll 24 is by no means exhausted with Pindar. The terrifying events in the Theban palace owe an important debt to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, an archaic text which is echoed time and again in third-century poetry.78 Like Heracles, the young Demophoon 76 77

78

Cf. Zanker (1987) 177. The pointed C; $  # C ; Q, ‘called the son of Argive Amphitryon’ (104), immediately after the prophecy seems to confirm this narrative irony; Gow’s note misses the point entirely, cf. S. Radt, Mnemosyne 24 (1971) 258–9. Cf. White’s commentary p. 40, Gutzwiller (1981) 16, Hunter (1996b) 12 n. 45.

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is a ‘late-born’ (]: ) child (h. Dem. 165) and the events in Keleus’ house are marked by the eery light of divine epiphany and a mother’s terror (h. Dem. 246–9). So, too, the events in Odysseus’ palace of Odyssey 19 and, in particular, the early part of Book 20 are an important model: Odysseus asks Zeus to send both a 4 and a  (20.92–101); Zeus replies with thunder and the 4 of an old mill-woman, a verse explicitly recalled by Theocritus in v. 51; the servants ‘gather’ (&   ) to light fires (20.122–3), although in a variant version they ‘wake up’ (   ) to do so, which would bring them close to the sleeping servants of Amphitryon’s household; Telemachus too gets up and puts on his clothes (and his shoes!), and then asks Eurycleia about the reception which ‘the stranger’ received; Eurycleia also issues instructions to the other servants about cleaning and preparing the house (20.148–58, cf. Tiresias in Theocritus).79 In both the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and these books of the Odyssey, disorder and confusion are eventually revealed as part of a plan sanctioned by Zeus for the establishment of a new moral order. In Theocritus 24, therefore, intertextual allusion confirms the coherence to be found in the narrative itself. Two further matters of technique have broader implications for Hellenistic narrative. The first is the use of various patterns of interplay between speech and diegetic narrative, as when Alcmena’s worried distress when she hears Iphicles crying out is marked by the ellipse of a verb to introduce her words: C;#4 'C .$% 9T     ( U .% C) C; QU X  ' K%!  ] U .% )  #. Alcmena heard the cry and was the first to wake; ‘Get up, Amphitryon! I’m very afraid! ‘Get up! . . .’ (Theocritus 24.34–5)

Her words break into the expected ‘addressing her husband, she spoke as follows’. So, too, at v. 68 we have both an unusual mode of speech introduction, almost an unmediated move from the indirect to the direct, and an urgent speech which does not begin at the start of a hexameter: C;#4 #%% !  # M  ! )   2 % V # %  ##  -Z U “' C K       ) *'     Q )  #.” 79

Interesting points of detail include: Od. 20.132, the hapax #4 ' with the variant #4 ' (cf. Id. 24.56, though Pind. Nem. 1.47–8 may also be relevant); Od. 20.138 &## C V '8    [$ 4%  (cf. Id. 24.63); Od. 20.154 K% T%% *% (cf. Id. 24.48).

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Alcmena summoned [Tiresias] and told him of the strange event and urged him to interpret how it would end: ‘Do not, if the gods have some trouble in mind, conceal it from me out of respect . . .’ (Theocritus 24.66–9)

Even more striking than this mimetic technique for conveying Alcmena’s worry is the sequence at vv. 47–51: ' '8 C .$%  [ 9b $% U “K%  V  T%% & C %!  +#  ) '  ) % 9b 'X $T & : C ]!.” “.%  ) '  #% U  , &$ 5”) D B $ `%% Q#  5  !$%. Then he called to the slaves who were breathing out deep sleep: “Bring fire from the hearth with all speed, my slaves, release the stout bolts from the doors!” “Get up, long-suffering slaves! Master’s calling!”; thus spoke the Phoenician woman who had her bed by the mill. (Theocritus 24.47–51)

Amphitryon’s words are given a verse of introduction (v. 47), but the cry of the servant woman follows immediately, and  , &$ 5, ‘master’s calling’, at the end of v. 50 comes as no less of a surprise (somewhat concealed if the text is read silently, rather than heard) than when Amycus answers Polydeuces without narrative introduction at Idyll 22.55. Whether we ultimately decide to give .%  ) '  #% , ‘get up, longsuffering servants’ to Amphitryon, as a continuation of his speech, or to the servant-woman,80 the passage is both itself dramatic and dramatises the fluid relation between oral and written reception. Alexandrian scholars, themselves reflecting this transition, paid particular attention to apparently aberrant phenomena in the Homeric text, such as abrupt changes from indirect to direct speech, or speeches which were not introduced in one of the standard, formulaic ways;81 the latter phenomenon seems, in fact, to have led at times to the interpolation of normalising verses.82 The Hellenistic fondness for experimenting with such devices is not to be dismissed as merely a way of varying Homeric practice. It is also part of a gradual and far-reaching exploration of the broad division of poetic representation into mim¯esis and di¯eg¯esis which these poets inherited from Plato and Aristotle. A 80

81 82

Cf. Legrand (1898) 414. If spoken by Amphitryon, #% would be an amusingly epicised version of (# used as an abusive address; if spoken by the servant, it would express the shared solidarity of the downtrodden. With either speaker, pause after v. 49 suggests that Amphitryon’s words of vv. 48–9 have had no effect on the ‘deeply sleeping’ (v. 47) slaves. Cf. Fantuzzi (1988a) 51–64, Hunter (1993a) 138–43. For Callimachus cf. McLennan (1977) 144–9. Cf. G. M. Bolling, CP 17 (1922) 213–21, M. J. Apthorp, The Manuscript Evidence for Interpolation in Homer (Heidelberg 1980) 150–2. Although most of the material is post-Aristarchan, we can hardly doubt a third-century interest in these matters.

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later text, such as Bion’s Lament for Adonis, shows where such exploration was to lead. The description of Heracles’ strangling of the snakes (vv. 26–33) starts from a fairly close reworking of at least one Pindaric model (Nem. 1.44–7), but moves beyond this to a vivid, ekphrastic narration of the snakes trying to escape from the powerful infant. There is a rich tradition of Heracles and the snakes in Greek art:83 fifth-century red-figure vases, roughly contemporary with Pindar’s poetic treatments, show the full cast of characters – Heracles and the snakes, Iphicles,84 Alcmena, Amphitryon with his drawn sword – and Pliny reports that Zeuxis (late fourth century) painted ‘the baby Heracles strangling [? two]85 snakes while his terrified mother Alcmena and Amphitryon look on’ (NH 35.63). The originals of extant statues of the grinning baby holding the writhing snakes were presumably of Hellenistic date. Pindar and Theocritus need have no specific works of art in mind, but the audience’s experience of such art serves to confirm the narrative of this wondrous, ‘non-real’ event; this is a device of enargeia, of allowing the audience to envision what is taking place. A related, but quite different, effect is the refusal to describe, as happens with Amphitryon’s sword of vv. 42–586 and the shield in which Heracles and his brother sleep (v. 5).87 The denial of ekphrasis marks Theocritus’ narrative as one of exclusion and discrimination, in contrast to the all-embracing archaic narratives. 4 ‘heracles the lionsl ayer ’ Idyll 25 (? late third century), which is very probably not by Theocritus, falls easily into three sections.88 In the first (vv. 1–84), an old ploughman tells Heracles (who is not named) about the extensive estates of King Augeias, and then leads him to the stalls to find the king himself; in vv. 85–152, Augeias’ vast herds return to their stalls and Heracles overpowers a large bull which attacks the lionskin he is wearing; in vv. 153–281, Heracles tells Augeias’ son, Phyleus, the story of his conquest of the Nemean lion, as the two of them are journeying together from the countryside into the town. In the printed edition of Callierges (Rome 1516), a note following 24.140 asserts that both the end of Idyll 24 and the beginning of the following poem (Idyll 25), here given the name 67# #   , are missing. 83 84 85 88

¨ Cf. LIMC I .1, p. 554 s.v. Alkmene, iv.1., pp. 828–32 s.v. Herakles; C. Watzinger, JOAIW 16 (1913) 166–75; J.-M. Moret’s appendix to Braswell’s commentary on Nemean 1. The vases show Iphicles precisely as Theocritus describes him, ‘kicking off his woolly blankets in his desire to flee’ (24.25–6). 86 Cf. above, p. 203. 87 Cf. below, pp. 258–60. The text is uncertain. This section is an abbreviated (and somewhat revised) version of Hunter (1998).

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The discovery of the Antinoopolis papyrus, which showed that verses have indeed been lost from the end of Idyll 24, may seem to have confirmed the first half of this statement, which will – all but certainly – have been based on a literary judgement, not on manuscript evidence. The three sections of the traditional division all revolve around Heracles’ cleansing of Augeias’ stables, a labour which is never mentioned in the course of the poem, but which must shape our reaction to the whole.89 Why, for example, would ‘stout-hearted’ Heracles marvel at the vast herds (v. 114)? Is it because he is going to have to clean up all that dung? The three sections can be fitted, easily enough, into the outlines of the story familiar from our main sources (Apollodorus 2.5.5, Pausanias 5.1.9–10), but whether or not that is the reading strategy which the poem actually invites is a more difficult and interesting question. The three sections are defined by familiar opening and closural markers,90 in such a way as to suggest that Idyll 25 presents an exploration of narrative continuity and disjunction, which is quite different in effect from the articulation and structure of the different ‘scenes’ of Idyll 24. There are, of course, considerable uncertainties: what survives may be merely a set of three extracts from a larger whole, and we cannot tell how much, if anything, has been lost before v. 1.91 Nevertheless, there is no real parallel, in either archaic or Hellenistic poetry, for a linear narrative in which narrative time seems always to progress, but we are merely given excerpts from ‘the full story’; this is quite different from a concentration on the apparently peripheral at the expense of the traditionally central, such as we find in Callimachus’ ‘Victoria Berenices’ and the Hecale. We can assume (if we wish) that the fact that Heracles accompanies Augeias on his inspection (vv. 110–11) implies that ‘in the meantime’ (that is, presumably ‘between’ v. 84 and v. 85) he has explained who he is and why he has come. So, also, at vv. 162ff. Phyleus addresses Heracles first as M 5 and then as w (v. 178), while asking him whether he is the person who killed the great Nemean lion, for Phyleus had heard an account of this deed from someone who was unable accurately to identify the hero in question. Phyleus thinks he remembers that the informant identified the hero as a descendant of Perseus (Alcmena’s grandfather). Heracles admits that he indeed was the slayer of 89 90 91

Cf. I. M. Linforth, ‘Theocritus XXV’ TAPA 78 (1947) 77–87, Zanker (1996). For a detailed analysis cf. Hunter (1998) 118–19. The ' in v. 1 of Id. 25 should not be given excessive weight in considering whether or not the text is lacunose; it is imposed by the ‘epic form’ of the verse, and indeed the poet could hardly have chosen a better way of marking the relation between his poem and the inherited epic tradition. For initial ' in other texts cf. D. A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry (London 1967) 140–1, H. Jacobson, The Exagog¯e of Exekiel (Cambridge 1983) 70, Kerkhecker (1999) 102 n. 91.

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the lion, for ‘this was the first task laid on me by Eurystheus’ (vv. 204–5). There is nothing here which makes the inference that Phyleus does not know Heracles’ name inevitable, and the reference to Eurystheus can easily be fitted into the traditional story, in which Heracles only revealed the king’s rˆole after he had cleaned the stables.92 Nevertheless, such features of poetic technique must be understood within a consideration of the nature of the poem as a whole. Ignorance, identity, recognition and epic kleos are central to the concerns of this poem. Whereas Odysseus comes to the court of Alcinous, to the hut of Eumaeus, and to his own palace in disguise, that is in clothes which are not his own, and is not recognised, in Idyll 25 Heracles is outfitted in the manner which proclaims his identity at all periods (‘lionskin and massive club’, v. 63), and yet he too is not recognised. What price then kleos or, rather, when does kleos begin? Idyll 25 confronts us with a world in which no one has ever heard of Heracles, and in which Heracles himself seems unclear of certain familiar ‘facts’ of his life (cf. vv. 197–200). The rustic’s observation that Heracles’ arrival is due to ‘the planning of some god’ (v. 52) says, of course, more to us than it does to the characters. The poet has thus chosen to present the story of the labours in a way which is related to a familiar technique of Hellenistic poetry: we are pushed back ‘before kleos’, here not to witness the youth of a famous literary character,93 but rather to observe Heracles before poetic storytelling has gone to work on him and when the meaning of the labours on which he is engaged is quite obscure. In such circumstances, it might be unwise to enquire whether we are supposed to imagine that the killing of his children has already taken place. The elaborate play in the poem with Heracles’ identity and whether and at what stage it is revealed may be seen as reinforcing this concern to create a world ‘before kleos’. The poet teases us with our expectation that, at some stage, Heracles will utter the equivalent of ‘I am Odysseus, son of Laertes, known to all men for my guile, and my kleos reaches heaven’ (Od. 9.19–20), but Heracles himself does not yet know, or at least understand, his own identity (v. 50 is again important here); for all the characters in the poem he remains ‘utterly nameless’, as the Homeric Alcinous asserted that no man could be (Od. 8.552). It is not merely in the links between the three sections that the poet’s concern with variety and contrast is visible, but also in the nature and subject of the ‘scenes’. In the first, Heracles asks questions and receives a long and full answer; in the second, there is no direct speech, and the third 92

Cf. Gow on vv. 162, 173, Zanker (1996) 419.

93

Cf. Barchiesi (1993).

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is largely a narrative by Heracles himself, who takes over the rˆole of epic poet, similes and all. Each of the three scenes ends with a confrontation between Heracles and animals – first, there are dogs, who might have come off second best in a confrontation with ‘Heracles, son of Amphitryon’ (v. 71), whereas their Homeric relatives would have done dreadful things to Odysseus (Od. 14.32), then a marvellous bull, and finally a truly epic lion. The obvious crescendo of the sequence is another sign of the poet’s concern with similarity and difference.94 In the opening section it is Odyssey 14, Odysseus’ meeting with Eumaeus, which is particularly important; structural similarities to Books 6–8, however, also prepare for Heracles’ narration, just as Odyssey 6–8 prepare for Odysseus’ narration. In the second section, although the subject is ‘cattle of Helios’, it is the Iliadic manner which predominates. Whoever bestowed the title C^Z#% on this section realised the importance of Iliad 4,95 and beyond Agamemnon’s ‘review’ of his troops, it is the similes of that book which are of particular importance. At 4.274–9 the mass of armed men around the two Ajaxes is compared to dark storm clouds, driven over the sea by the Zephyr,96 which cause a goatherd to bring his flocks under cover. In Idyll 25 it is the # of cattle, which come numerous as rainclouds;97 as these cattle are to be, in one sense, Heracles’ ‘opponents’, the martial resonance of the Iliadic simile is appropriate. So too, at Il. 4.422–6 (which immediately follows the conclusion of the Z#% proper), the movement of the Greek army into battle is compared to a vast wave crashing on the seashore.98 Whereas, however, Homer draws a contrast between the roaring breaker and the silence of the Greek advance (4.429–31), the poet of the Idyll suggests a contrast between the soundless sweep of clouds and the noise ($ ) of the cattle. Here, we may feel the influence of Il. 4.433–5, where the noise of the Trojans is compared to the ‘bleating of countless ewes in the yard of a very rich man, as they wait to be milked’. The Homeric simile, which moves beyond the world of war to that of peaceful pastoralism in order to characterise (presumably unfavourably) the Trojans 94 95 96 97

98

Cf. the appreciation by H. Herter, Kleine Schriften (Munich 1975) 461–2. For this cf. A. Kurz, Le Corpus Theocriteum et Hom`ere. Un probl`eme d’authenticit´e (Idylle 25) (Bern– Frankfurt 1982) 35–6. Given the appearance of the Zephyr here and at 4.423, it may be significant that v. 91 lists only the south and north winds: deliberate avoidance? #$   in v. 90 is perhaps a word more appropriate to flocks (cf. 16.36), which has here ‘trespassed’ into the simile. For the notion of ‘trespass’ in general cf. R. O. A. M. Lyne, Words and the Poet (Oxford 1989), esp. 92–9. Q%%  is shared by the Iliad (4.424) and the Idyll (v. 94), but it is common enough to make inferences difficult. So too, it might be tempting to associate vv. 115–17 with Il. 4.429–30, but little seems to hang upon this.

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as they await the Greek onslaught, is here expanded into a full ‘genre scene’ of bucolic activity (vv. 96–107). The life of Heracles was an obvious subject for epic narration (cf. Aristotle, Poetics 1451a16ff.),99 and both Peisander of Rhodian Kameiros (seventh to sixth centuries)100 and Panyassis of Halicarnassus (early fifth century) wrote long poems on this subject. The story of the labours lent itself readily to ‘cyclic’ treatment, and we can hardly doubt that there was a rich tradition of such poems, now largely lost to us; in the later third century Rhianus of Crete wrote a fourteen-book Herakleia, but we know next to nothing of how he treated the subject. Aristotle singles out the poets of epics about Heracles or Th´eseus, and such poems’ for unfavourable comparison with Homer because ‘they think that because Heracles was a single individual ( P) the mythos [concerning him] ought also to be unitary ( P)’ (Poetics 1451a 20–2). For Aristotle, ‘oneness’ in a tragic, and probably also an epic, mythos implied the mim¯esis of a single praxis in which the individual events followed each other by a close causal nexus of necessity or probability.101 Idyll 25 gestures towards a praxis – the cleaning of the Augean stables – but offers us none. A labour (the Nemean lion) is indeed narrated, but within the context of another story. The cyclic ab ouo mode is thereby both suggested and rejected. As the opening verse assumes prior narration, the relation of the ‘unity’ of the text to the ‘unity’ of the mythos it tells becomes a central issue of interpretation; in the light of similar phenomena seen in other texts of the Hellenistic period, we may be more inclined to see here the concerns of a poet than the accidents of textual transmission. Idyll 25 certainly offers a ‘oneness’ of some kind. Heracles occurs in all three scenes; Augeias is named in two and appears in one; Phyleus is named in one and appears in two; the poem apparently begins with Heracles’ arrival at Augeias’ estate and ends with his departure; the crescendo of animal challenges clearly invites a unified reading. Nevertheless, this poem has no real praxis; its silences are deafening. The structure of Idyll 25 is often understood through the model of rhapsodic recitation. As Homer’s Demodocus sings a particular extract from a larger narrative continuum, so Idyll 25 would, on this view, offer three samplers from a large whole. It is plain also that the ‘scenic’ structure of Idyll 25 must be seen together with the general tendency of the age towards the ‘dramatisation’ of narrative. Nevertheless, the particular shape of this narrative experiment is determined by the themes of the poem as a whole. 99 100 101

Cf. the testimonia gathered in EGF pp. 142–3; Bond on Eur. HF 359ff. Cf. EGF pp. 129–35; G. L. Huxley, Greek Poetry from Eumelos to Panyassis (London 1969) 99–112. Cf. Hunter (1993a) 192.

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Idyll 25 suggests not merely the breakup of literary ‘epic’ into constituent parts on the rhapsodic (or ‘anthologising’) model, but also ‘pre-epic’, a form in which the silences wait for   4 to fill them. Its generic consciousness is as ‘historical’ as that of Theocritus’ bucolic poetry or the Alexandra of Lycophron.102 As with the play with Heracles’ identity, we are offered a world before kleos or, rather, before # &'. The Hellenistic fondness for childhood and beginnings has now been extended to generic form. 5 the e u r o pa of moschus Roughly a century separates Theocritus from his fellow Syracusan Moschus, whose Europa has often been used as the base from which generalisations about Hellenistic narrative are made.103 In fact, there are significant differences between the manner of this poem and the third-century narratives of both Theocritus and Callimachus. The Europa tells how Zeus, in the shape of a bull, carried Europa from Phoenicia to Crete where, as Zeus tells her, she is to conceive his ‘glorious sons, who will all hold the sceptre of power among men’ (vv. 160–1). Nevertheless, the double aetiological focus of the narrative – the founding of the Cretan royal house and Europa giving her name to ‘Europe’ – is given little prominence in the poem. The second theme plays over the narrative of a dream, in which Europa saw herself being fought over by two women, who were in fact continents (the ‘mainland’ opposite Asia is still nameless, v. 9), but the relative unimportance of the theme is clear from a glance at the contrasting prominence of the motif in Horace’s lyric version of the story (c.3.27). The non-teleological nature of the narrative is of a piece with the central character of the story which Moschus tells. Zeus’ desire for Europa is not part of a ‘grand plan’, but (apparently) merely one of Aphrodite’s games (vv. 1, 76);104 we are perhaps to see the Europa story as one example, among many possible ones, of how Aphrodite ‘deceives the subtle mind of 102

103

104

Cf. below, pp. 437–43. It is very tempting to associate the form of Idyll 25 with the belief that, after Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey were preserved by rhapsodes in ‘scattered’ or ‘broken’ form, until put back together again at the behest of Peisistratus; for the evidence cf. R. Merkelbach, ‘Die pisistratische Redaktion der homerischen Gedichte’ RhM 95 (1952) 23–47, pp. 43–7. Merkelbach would date this theory as early as the fourth century, though few have been inclined to follow him. For the Europa cf. esp. B¨uhler (1960), Campbell (1991), Hopkinson (1988) 200–15; on the sources for the myth in both literature and art cf. W. B¨uhler, Europa (Munich 1968), and for the reception of the myth in Western art cf. Il mito di Europa da fanciulla rapita a continente (Florence 2002). Whether there is any significance in Moschus, whose name means ‘bull–calf ’, writing the story of Europa carried off by a bull, I do not know. Horace made this same motivation much more explicit (cf. c.3.27.66–73).

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Zeus whenever she likes, and easily mates him with mortal women, without Hera knowing’ (h. Aphr. 38–40, cf. Europa 77–8); the Europa is, as it were, a single episode from the Hesiodic Catalogue treated in the modern manner, and it is indeed the Catalogue’s version of the story of Europa which seems to have been a principal influence upon Moschus (cf. Hesiod frs. 140–5 M.-W.).105 Nevertheless, Aphrodite’s rˆole is also given no particular prominence: does Aphrodite know that Zeus will be on hand to see Europa on the beach on this particular day? The question is, of course, a silly one, but it points to the very deliberate ‘planlessness’ which Moschus has imposed on the first part of his poem. The dream – unlike those of Nausicaa and Medea – does not lead to some action or resolve which furthers the narrative (except in so far as it is seen to make Europa receptive in erotically charged situations);106 Europa indeed seems to dismiss her ‘fear’ rather nonchalantly (27) and then go about her everyday pastimes. Aetiology, teleology and narrative consequence are thus replaced by the portrait of a (paradoxically) universal experience. What dominates the poem is Europa’s own awakened sexuality and her naive innocence. The ‘didactic’ detail (v. 5) with which the dream is introduced – dreams just before dawn are true – is no mere ‘learned footnote’. Europa’s dream is sent by Kypris, but we may be surprised to find that Kypris is bound by the patterns of natural science. In fact, the dream is also clearly a function of the kind of sleep she is enjoying – a sweet sleep described in erotic language – and the hour of the night; a further explanation for the dream is suggested by the description of her as ‘still a virgin’ (v. 7) – this is the kind of dream that young unmarried women must have. Such double motivation, divine agency working alongside the ‘realism’ of natural science, is a familiar feature of epic narrative, but in the present case it has a special purpose. The Europa narrative is full of the supernatural; at the level of plot, the story is only possible with a god in the rˆole of abducting male. By giving such prominence to parallel causation at the head of the poem, Moschus forces us to read the ‘mythical’ story as that of a universal pattern; the ‘once upon a time’ of the opening verse gives way to the timeless repetitions and truths of vv. 2–5. The principal techniques for the universalisation of Europa’s experience are the ‘confirmatory’ use of models from previous epic – particularly Homer’s Nausicaa and Apollonius’ Medea – and a constant interplay 105 106

For Moschus’ debt to the Catalogue narrative cf. Campbell (1991) 1–3, Hunter (forthcoming); for the Eur¯opia of ‘Eumelos’ cf. M. L. West, JHS 122 (2002) 126–8. For dreams prompting the dreamer to action cf. (outside high poetry) Arist. On Prophecy in Sleep 463a 27–32.

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between the language applicable to animals and that applicable to men. As with Medea, sexual awakening is presented as a choice: in Apollonius’ Argonautica the choice is between parents and ‘lover’, but also between Colchis and Greece; for Europa also there is a choice between continents (vv. 8–15), and in both poems the choice will result in a westward movement towards Greek culture. Europa dreams that two continents struggle for possession of her, and in her dream she has a clear preference (v. 14) to go away with the nameless one dressed in foreign garb, thus abandoning the one who ‘had given her birth and nourished her’ (v. 12). It is not merely that leaving home and parents is the experience of any Greek girl getting married, but the language used to describe the actions of the ‘nameless woman’ clearly evokes rape by a male: 1 ' C +   %  9 #("% K$   &$%)  #. The other lady, using the strength of her powerful arms, was trying to drag [Europa] off not against her will . . . (Moschus, Europa 13–14)

In the almost paradoxical tension between the need for force and Europa being ‘not unwilling’ (contrast Persephone at h. Dem.19) lies precisely a familiar feature of the male view of female sexuality.107 So, too, Europa’s subsequent account to herself of her dream seems rather at odds with the narrator’s account of the dream: “  'C D 1 M  8 K%' 2Z$%‡ €  C #9 '    ) €    4 &%% 2'    F %  K' 5'U” ‘Who was the foreign woman whom I saw in my dream? How desire for her seized my heart! How gladly she welcomed me and looked upon me as her own child!’ (Moschus, Europa 24–6)

This ‘misrepresentation’ may be read as a marker of her feelings of arousal,108 but like the apparent paradox of vv. 13–14, it exploits a doubleness in the Greek male view of female sexuality, both in the context of marriage and rape or abduction. In the former case, the girl passes ‘willingly’ into a new family, which welcomes her and treats her as its own ‘child’; in the latter, the sense of disgrace occurred by the female obscures nice questions of 107

108

Cf. B¨uhler (1960) 59; Toohey (1992) 106; Campbell (1991) 6, ‘The single most striking feature of Moschus’ treatment is the subtle and oblique way in which the question of [Europa’s] consent is made to dominate the poem’; for the matter in general cf. e.g. C. Sourvinou-Inwood, ‘Reading’ Greek Culture (Oxford 1991) 68–70 (with the bibliography cited there). Cf. Campbell (1991) 7; ibid. 24 ‘she blatantly twists the facts’.

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responsibility, so that, whatever the circumstances, the woman is made to feel and comes to feel herself ‘guilty’. Social codes are constructed such that no woman is raped or abducted ‘unwillingly’.109 Both descriptions of the behaviour of ‘the nameless woman’ are focalised by Europa to make this doubleness clear; despite the fact that the first description is thirdperson narrative, it carries no authorial seal of truth,110 except in so far as both descriptions are true. This is not so much an exploration of the shifting relationship between dream experience and dream recollection,111 but a presentation of the crucial doubleness which runs through the whole poem. Europa’s ‘willingness’ and desire ( ) is stated explicitly in the dream and her recollection of it, for it is in dreams (both real and literary) that the unsayable can be spoken. So, too, it is in a dream that Medea makes a positive choice for Jason over her parents (Arg. 3.628–31), whereas in the narrative proper it requires Hera’s intervention to make the terrified girl abandon Colchis (4.11–23). Behind both dreams lies Nausicaa’s dream (Od. 6.25–40), in which the disguised Athena explicitly foretells her imminent marriage and urges Nausicaa to make preparations. Nausicaa’s eagerness is displayed in the subsequent narrative (she goes straight off to her father), rather than expressed directly by Homer, but later poets saw the matter clearly enough. Moschus’ central concern with the passage from girlhood to womanhood is confirmed by the fact that it ends with Europa becoming a mother (of sons), for it is precisely in the bearing of a son that a woman’s transition is completed.112 The force which holds both Nausicaa and Medea within the realms of propriety is *'Z, the sense of ‘proper limits’. Nausicaa is restrained by aido¯ s from mentioning ‘fertile marriage’ to her father (Od. 6.66–7), and it is aido¯ s which restrains Medea from action which will bring her closer to Jason (Arg. 3.649–53, 681–2); for both characters aido¯ s acts as a check upon speech. In this matter, Moschus’ heroine is quite different. Not only is she forward in responding to the bull’s attentions (vv. 95–109), but it is silence which is used to characterise her ambivalent attitude towards what is happening to her. As the bull carries her off she calls to her friends and 109 110 111 112

It is these social codes which make Men. Epitr. 914 – Charisios comes to realise that his wife’s rape was ‘a misfortune to which she did not consent’ – so interesting a text. A partial exception must be made for vv. 8–9: only the narrator can know that these women are ‘really’ continents. For a related phenomenon cf. Arist. On Dreams 458b 16–26. The last verse is a notorious textual and interpretative problem, but I do not think the point made here is affected.

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stretches out her arms to them (vv. 111–12), but there seems no distress.113 During the first part of the sea-voyage, which is also her (and every woman’s) wedding procession,114 Europa says nothing, and her billowing dress even functions like a sail to speed them on their way (vv. 129–30). When she does finally speak, it is not to express any sense of shame for the position in which she finds herself, but rather surprise at the apparent adunaton of an aquatic bull; what self-pity there is (vv. 146–8) does not conceal her responsibility for what has happened, even though this is hardly fair on herself, and evokes the pattern, applicable both to marriage and ‘elopement’, of ‘abandoning the father’s house and following a man [or, in this case, bull]’;115 the speech ends with a brief prayer for Poseidon’s protection, ‘for it is not without the gods that I am making this watery journey’.116 In presenting herself as having chosen to leave her home with the bull, she may be acknowledging her less than reluctant rˆole in the foreplay on the beach,117 and/or striking a rhetorical pose which will ‘provoke a positive response from her divine abductor’,118 but she also certainly articulates the familiar double standard of Greek views of sexual behaviour; she represents what has happened as it will be represented: no woman is carried off ‘unwillingly’. As for the second technique of ‘universalisation’, Greek poetry standardly denotes young girls as heifers or fillies, and their first sexual experiences as a ‘taming’ or ‘breaking in’ by a man;119 the Europa turns such language into a mythic system by giving it tangible form. The man is now a bull,120 who can be caressed and kissed and who can caress back (vv. 93–6), precisely because he is an animal, rather than a human male, and as such not bound in the decencies and proprieties of high literature (to say nothing of ‘real life’).121 The sensual language of such descriptions requires us to assimilate these physical acts to human sexual behaviour; what cannot be described in the decent language of epic narrative is (paradoxically) made possible 113 114 115 116

117 119 120

121

Note the pointed contrast again with Persephone (h. Dem. 20–1). Cf. B¨uhler (1960) 163; K. Gutzwiller, CA 11 (1992) 200. Strengthened by echoes of the Apollonian Medea, cf. Arg. 4.360–9 (a much more bitter complaint), B¨uhler (1960) 185–7. We know that Poseidon will indeed be propitious (cf. v. 120), but not perhaps in the way Europa expects. Poseidon himself was to make Europa’s future daughter-in-law, Pasiphae, fall in love with a bull; Bacchylides’ dithyrambic narrative of that   (fr. 26 Maehler) may have had some influence upon Moschus. 118 Campbell (1991) 114. Cf. B¨uhler (1960) 187. So already Europa is \, ' 5% ' #% in Hesiod (fr. 141.2 M.-W.). Cf. the rare & Q  of Aesch. Ag. 245 (Iphigeneia) and Ar. Lys. 216–17. Apollonius’ Medea ‘struggled with bulls’ in a dream which evokes both her assistance to Jason and her nascent sexual desire (and coming loss of virginity), Arg. 3.623–4 (with Hunter’s note on 616–32). Cf. English ‘petting’ from ‘pet’.

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by the strategy of presenting a woman in love with a bull, something normally reserved for pornographic fantasy.122 Even if some features of the description of the bull are as appropriate to a handsome human hero as to a bull,123 Europa’s dealings with the ‘finely horned bull’124 are indeed, at one level, a salacious treat for Moschus’ readers, but the very salaciousness, not unlike the ‘realism’ of Theocritus Idyll 24,125 is a technique which outlaws all literalist reading strategies; the poem dramatises how myth ‘means’. So, too, the importance of apparent paradox points in the same direction: from the erotic sleep which both releases and binds (v. 4) to the bull which runs on water, the poem takes place in a kind of topsy-turvy wonderland which focuses our attention (and ‘belief’) on the underlying narrative pattern, rather than on the mythical details per se. As such, the Europa is a significant text for the history of Hellenistic literary myth. The structure of the Europa126 is clear and linear – Europa’s dream (vv. 1– 27), expedition to the beach and description of Europa’s basket (vv. 28–62), picking flowers (vv. 63–71), Zeus’ desire and appearance on the beach in bull-form (vv. 72–107), Europa’s abduction (vv. 108–30), Europa’s monologue (vv. 131–52), Zeus’ reply (vv. 153–61), arrival in Crete and ‘marriage’ (vv. 162–6) – though various patterns of theme and imagery may be traced across the individual sections.127 There is a pervasive verbal debt to Homer128 and Apollonius (sometimes both together), covering both vocabulary and specific, contextualised echoes,129 and the authorial voice remains largely in the background, not insistently present as in (say) Callimachus’ Hymns and elegiac narratives and in the Argonautica of Apollonius.130 The one striking exception131 – but an exception sanctioned by Homeric practice (e.g. Il. 10.336–7) – is the transition from the flower-picking to the appearance of the bull-Zeus: 122 123

124 125 127

128 129 130 131

Cf. Campbell on v. 95. Note the bull’s ‘fair’ hair (84), the erotic gleam in its eyes (86) etc. Euripides’ Pasiphae argued that her passion for a bull must have been a god-sent madness, because she would hardly have ‘fallen in love with’ a bull: ‘[Did I fancy] the gleam of its flaming hair and eyes?’ (fr. 82 Austin). For the double entendre in  (both ‘horn’ and ‘penis’) cf. R. Pretagostini, ‘=^;<. Nascita e storia di una metafora’ in Lirica Greca da Archiloco a Elitis (Padua 1984) 51–60. 126 Cf. B¨ Cf. above, p. 206. uhler (1960) 44–5. R. Schmiel, ‘Moschus’ Europa’ CP 76 (1981) 261–72, Hopkinson (1988) 202, C. Cusset, ‘Le jeu po´etique dans l’Europ´e de Moschos’ Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Bud´e (2001). 62– 82, M. Paschalis, ‘Etymology and enargeia: re-reading Moschus’ Europa (vis-`a-vis Hor. C. 3.27)’ in C. Nifadopoulos (ed.), Etymologia. Studies in Ancient Etymology (M¨unster 2003) 153–63. Cf. L. M. Raminella, ‘Mosco imitatore di Omero’ Maia 4 (1951) 262–79. For Homer, the most striking is perhaps 79 ∼ Od. 11.235 (the wave ‘hiding’ Poseidon and Tyro as they made love). Cf. Campbell (1991) 8, Hunter (1993a) 114–15. Less striking exceptions include the opening   (cf. above, p. 192), ‘you would say . . .’ (97–8).

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 X ',  ##  C . % $, * ) ' C .     .!  $%. D  '8 =' €  (% C o  #  $, &% % 2'  9 # %% =Q') ~ Q 'Q   d '(%%. Not for long was she to delight her heart with flowers, nor keep her virgin’s girdle long unravaged. For the moment the son of Kronos saw her, his heart was tortured as he yielded to the unexpected arrows of Kypris, who alone can subdue even Zeus. (Moschus, Europa 72–6)

This seems to be an echo and variation (note the quite different rˆoles played by Hera!) of a similar foreshadowing at Argonautica 3.1132–6:132 %! #U  X ', &4% %  ##  6^##('  ( U H 

4'  g 7) A , J #" e 8  C@#, l  ;* 04'  #%C .  ' 5. Poor girl! Not for long would she refuse to live in Hellas! So was Hera planning, that Medea of Aia should abandon her native land and reach holy Iolkos to bring disaster upon Pelias. (Apollonius, Argonautica 3.1133–6)

Whereas Medea’s flight to Greece will bring misery on a large scale and enormous suffering to Medea herself (%! #), Europa’s fate seems an altogether more minor matter, one in which, as we have seen, Europa herself is constructed by the narrative as at least complaisant; the immediately preceding simile – in which she is compared to Aphrodite, rather than Artemis, as in the Homeric and Apollonian models – confirms this picture. Whereas, in both Homer and Apollonius, the ‘x was not destined . . .’ type of foreshadowing is predominantly used for negative happenings, Europa’s attitude to what is to happen to her has already been seen to be at least ambivalent. The poet signals his foreknowledge and (unusually) emphasises narrative consequence at this point because the entrance of male desire into the poem is the hinge around which the whole narrative swings; Zeus’ desire (even when Aphrodite has mastery over him) is narrative coherence, (cf. v. 162. ‘Thus he spoke, and it was accomplished in just the way he had spoken.’) The description – clearly set off by ring composition (vv. 37, 61) – of the marvellous golden basket which Europa carries to the beach is a most important text for the history of ekphrasis technique.133 It is in ekphrasis, the 132 133

For the technique in general cf. Hunter ad loc. Cf. esp. A. Perutelli, ‘L’inversione speculare: per una retorica dell’ekphrasis’ MD 1 (1978) 87–98. Moschus’ Io ‘fashioned of gold’ (v. 44) goes back to the cattle depicted on the Shield of Achilles (Il. 18.574), but it is at least curious that Bacchylides too refers to her as !$% 9 (19.16); Campbell (on Europa 44) believes that Bacchylides too was influenced by an ‘artistic representation’.

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description of works of art (which may or may not have some relation to real artefacts in the contemporary world), that poets could explore the limits of narrative freedom and interpretation, for a work of art seemed to present a fixed catalogue of presences which could be directly ‘told’. Hellenistic poets (like their Roman successors) never tired of exploring the inadequacies of such a view; what was crucial was, in fact, the series of selections imposed by the controlling poet. As such, ekphrasis is to some extent analogous to the way in which poets dealt with the inherited body of myth, an analogy actually activated when, as here, the described work of art depicts a story from myth. For the description of the basket, Moschus may well have had specific works of art in mind,134 but his ekphrastic technique must be understood against the inherited traditions of the form. Whereas the Homeric Shield, the cloak of Jason in the Argonautica, and the cup of Theocritus, Idyll 1, all present discrete scenes, whose interconnections and relations to each other and the framing narrative are implicit and shifting, Europa’s basket is decorated with three scenes which depict moments from the myth of Io – Io metamorphosed into a cow (vv. 44–9), Zeus’ touch impregnating Io in Egypt (vv. 50–4), Hermes and Argos (v. 55 ∼ vv. 61–2). The ekphrasis itself has now become a narrative, and a narrative quite different from that of the framing poem, which is focused on one specific incident (the abduction of Europa); the scenes on the basket offer an alternative poetics from that of the ‘epyllion’.135 Moreover, there is a clear, but shifting set of verbal analogies and parallels between the basket description and the framing narrative. In the first scene, Io is introduced as ‘daughter of Inachos, still a heifer’ (v.45), as Europa was first introduced as ‘daughter of Phoenix, Europa, still a virgin’ (v. 7). Europa is to be abducted by Zeus in bull form, whereas Io was changed into a cow (also  9, v. 52 ∼ v. 153) in order that Zeus could satisfy his lust, and Zeus’ impregnation of Io by touching (50) returns as Europa’s caressing of the bull (v. 95). The amazement at a ‘seafaring bull’ of the men depicted on the basket (vv. 48–9) foreshadows Europa’s own wonderment (vv. 135–45).136 Whether or not the rising of the peacock from the blood (4   &C l ) of Argos evokes Europa’s own father ‘Phoenix’, who shared his name with a famously mythic bird, has divided 134 135 136

For the myth of Io in art cf. N. Yalouris, LIMC V s.v. Io I. Cf. Barchiesi (1997a) 274–7 on the Shield of Aeneas as an alternative structure to that of the Aeneid, in which it occurs. Cf. Campbell (1991) 54–5. More uncertainly, vv. 48–9 may echo Il. 13.12–13 (of Poseidon), immediately before the ‘marine procession’ which is the primary model for Europa 115–30; if so, ekphrasis and subsequent narrative will be linked by allusion to the same Homeric passage.

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critics of the poem; at the very least, the killing of ‘the watcher’ suggests the removal of parental guardianship, which must be associated with every abduction story. Be that as it may, at one level the lesson is an obvious one: ‘Europa’s basket belonged to her grandmother Libye, who was raped by a god and gave her name to Libya; and it depicted the rape by a god of her grandmother Io, eponym of Ionia. Europa inherits not only the basket, but also the experiences depicted on it’ (Hopkinson (1988) 206).137 The paraded avoidance, however, of any neat or exact parallelism once again forces us to turn from the details of any particular telling to the ‘meaning’ which unites the stories; as such, the technique of the Europa has important features in common with other Hellenistic mythic narratives. The ekphrastic description itself now functions as a rhetorical figure, a kind of simile writ large; a better analogy, perhaps, might be from tragic choruses (or some odes of Pindar), which often delve into ‘the sea of myth’ to sing narratives which are, often obliquely, parallel to the framing events. Meaning emerges from patterns, not from the correspondence of individual details. This technique, which was to have such significance in Latin poetry, was the result both of developments in mythic thought in the Hellenistic period and of specific reflection by poets and scholars on the inherited form of the ekphrasis; as Hopkinson ((1988) 201) well notes, ‘the stress on lineage and pedigree [of the basket] provides an interesting parallel with the self-conscious literary ancestry of the ekphrasis itself’. ‘Europa and the bull’ was a very common theme of pictorial art,138 and vv. 115–30 (the marine ‘procession’) may be directly indebted to artistic representations; by juxtaposing the ‘narratives’ of Io and Europa, the one portrayed in art and then reinscribed into literature, the other a literary description which evokes known works of art, Moschus directs our attention not merely to the relationship between the myths, but also to major questions concerning the interpretation of art and narrative. The scenes of Io as a cow and of Zeus’ impregnation are described in the chronological sequence of the myth, and therefore imply or create a narrative. The placing of the killing of Argos in a separate ‘field’ and the fact that it is described last, although in virtually all accounts of the myth it preceded Io’s crazed journey, is not to be ascribed merely to the fact that Moschus was following archaic practice in describing the outer boundary last,139 but 137

138

The history of the basket here perhaps stands in for the golden necklace which, in other versions, Zeus received from Hephaistos and gave to Europa, who gave it to Cadmus who gave it to his wife Harmonia (Hes. fr. 141 M.-W., Apollod. 3.4.2)). The necklace would have commemorated the lovemaking of Zeus and Europa, just as the basket foreshadows it. 139 Cf. Il. 18.607–8, B¨ Cf. M, Robertson, LIMC IV s.v. Europe I. uhler (1960) 104.

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rather draws attention to the fact that art requires an authorised viewer for its interpretation; the rˆole of the poet in the organisation of material is here foregrounded in a novel way which leads directly to the experiments of the Latin neoteric poets. 6 the p h a i n o m e n a o f arat us 6.1 Aratus and didactic poetry Through the Latin translations of (inter alios) Cicero and Germanicus, and because of Virgil’s extensive use of the poem in the Georgics, Aratus’ Phainomena forms a genuine bridge between Greek and Latin poetic traditions.140 It is not, however, merely its extraordinary Nachleben which makes the Phainomena one of the more remarkable products of third-century poetry. In its striking combination of science and wit, creative engagement with tradition, and innovative experimentation with poetic voice, Aratus’ poem is a primary witness to the responses of the period to the need to find new modes for poetic expression. The Phainomena was probably composed in the period c. 280–260 bc, perhaps at the court at Pella of Antigonos Gonatas, whose patronage Aratus is known to have enjoyed. The 1154 hexameters fall broadly into two sections,141 an astronomical account of the poles and constellations (vv. 19–757) and a guide to weather signs in nature (758–1141); the latter has often been considered, by both ancient and modern scholars, as a separate poem (the ‘Dios¯emeiai’), but the two sections clearly belong together – Aratus was not the first to bring astronomy and weather lore together –142 and the structure of the whole, in which the repetition of ideas and words, rather than neatly signposted transitions, acts as a unifying force, is part of Aratus’ 140

141

142

For Ovid’s partial translation see frs. 1–2 Courtney. On the ancient reception of the Phainomena see E. Maass, Aratea (Berlin 1892), J. Martin, Histoire du texte des Ph´enom`enes d’Aratos (Paris 1956), Kidd (1997) 36–68, M. Fantuzzi in Der neue Pauly s.v. Aratos, E. Gee, ‘Cicero’s astronomy’ CQ 51 (2001) 520–36. Some of the present chapter offers a revised and abbreviated version of Hunter (1995c). The structure of the poem has been much discussed; a major break after v. 732 was diagnosed very early in its reception, (a papyrus text of the first century ad places a coronis before v. 733). For surveys of this problem and the evidence cf. Erren (1967) 227–33; Ludwig (1963) 429–39; id., Gnomon 43 (1971) 353; id., RE Suppl. 10. 30–1; J. Martin, ‘Les Ph´enom`enes d’Aratos. Etude sur la composition du po`eme’ in L’astronomie dans l’antiquit´e classique (Paris 1979) 91–104; Kidd (1997) on 733–57. Cf. C. Wessely, ‘Bruchst¨ucke einer antiken Schrift u¨ ber Wetterzeichen’ SWAW 142, 1 (1900), cf. ¨ ¨ O. Neugebauer, ‘Uber griechische Wetterzeichen und Schattentafeln’ SOAW 240, 2 (1962). The relation of the text published by Wessely to Aratus’ poem remains, however, disputed, cf. Martin (1998) cxv–cxxi.

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mim¯esis of the archaic manner of Hesiod’s Works and Days.143 The whole is preceded, again like the Works and Days, by a proemial ‘Hymn to Zeus’ (vv. 1–18),144 and vv. 758–77 form a ‘second proem’ and transition to the weather signs, both echoing the ‘Hymn to Zeus’ and looking forward to the final conclusion of the whole (vv. 1142–54). So, too, the broad shift from the grandeur of astronomical patterns to the ‘lower’ and ‘smaller’ signs in nature (mice are the last weather sign, vv. 1132–41) evokes the passage from the moralising and ‘mythical’ first part of the Works and Days to the more everyday material of the farming and calendar sections. The Phainomena closes with a programmatic assertion of the poem’s usefulness:  .$' (  % ) * $  ' %! '   C * 4. If you have watched for these signs all together for the year, you will never make an uninformed judgement on the evidence of the sky. (Aratus, Phainomena 1153–4, trans. Kidd)

Aratus here picks up the close of the Works and Days, which he reads creatively as a makarismos of the man who has heeded Hesiod’s advice (i.e. read the Works and Days with attention):145 ( '  A#9 p (' (  *'O  (_  &  &( %) A   2 9% &# . Happy and blessed is that man who knows all these things and works blameless in the eyes of the gods, judging the flight of birds and avoiding transgression. (Hesiod, WD 826–8)

Both poets, of course, lay great store on ‘reading bird signs and avoiding transgression’. Hesiod’s poem ends with an affirmation of the power of knowledge to overcome uncertainty, an uncertainty that is a central principle of men’s lives (WD 483–4); that knowledge, and the power to offer it to others, is precisely what the poet claims for himself.146 Aratus’ poem carries this claim further by eliminating uncertainty not only from the poem, but also from the world itself. 143 144 145 146

Kidd (1997) on 1153 notes an echo there of the proem (v. 11). Fakas (2001) offers an excellent account of Aratus’ large-scale mimesis of Hesiod. Cf. below, p. 231. Whether or not WD originally closed with these verses is not material here. Who better fits the prescription of the final three verses of WD than the poet himself? Notice the echo of these Hesiodic verses in Archestratus’ ‘didactic’ culinary poem (SH 169.4–5 = fr. 39.4–5 Olson–Sens).

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Although Hesiod is the principal didactic model in the Phainomena, the material of the poem is largely drawn from prose sources. For the constellations, Aratus was principally indebted to the Phainomena of the pioneering astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus, written perhaps as much as a century earlier; the debt was identified by the second-century bc astronomer, Hipparchus, whose commentary (M4 %) on the works of Eudoxus and Aratus survives.147 Although Hipparchus alleges that Aratus’ debt to Eudoxus was generally doubted before his own work,148 there is no reason to believe that Aratus intended to conceal his debt to technical sources or to doubt that Aratus’ first readers understood the nature of what they were reading. Moreover, Hipparchus’ severe criticism of Aratus’ astronomical errors did nothing to affect his fame as a poet. The second section of the poem, on weather signs, is in parts very close to a surviving epitome, probably in fact later in date than Aratus, of a peripatetic treatise of the fourth century, perhaps by Theophrastus (= Theophrastus fr. vi Wimmer); this is certainly the milieu in which Aratus’ ultimate source for the section on weather signs is to be sought.149 The heavy dependence upon, and partial versifying of, written prose sources has standardly been taken to show that the Phainomena, and Hellenistic didactic poetry in general, is in essence a virtuoso literary exercise with no real ‘didactic’ purpose.150 The only other view of the Phainomena which is at all common is to see the astronomy not as an end in itself, but rather as the vehicle through which Aratus promulgates a Stoicising view of the cosmos and of divine beneficence.151 The ancient biographies indeed 147

148

149

150

151

The standard edition is the Teubner of C. Manitius (Leipzig 1894). Martin (1998) xxxvi–cii offers a radical reappraisal of this literary history: the text which Hipparchus claims was Aratus’ model, far from being a work of Eudoxus (so already B¨oker and Erren), was itself incompetently derived from Aratus, and pre-Hipparchan discussion must have concerned the relation between Aratus and other, perhaps genuinely Eudoxan, texts. On this theory, Hipparchus’ motives remain (at best) unclear. 1.2.1 ' , '% (_ %    5 ##5. These ‘many’ presumably include the ‘many others’ who, according to Hipparchus (1.1.3), wrote commentaries on Aratus’ poem before him. The story in the Lives that Antigonos Gonatas ‘told’ Aratus to versify Eudoxus’ work is probably a post-Hipparchan fiction, although the king’s bon mot 'M   5 , ^3'M might just be a contemporary joke. Cf. Cameron (1995) 194–202 and, for the narratives of patronage presented in these Lives, Hunter (2003b) 41–2. For a discussion of the problems cf. O. Regenbogen, RE Suppl. 7. 1412–15, Kidd (1997) 21–3, Martin (1998) ciii–cviii. D. Sider and W. Br¨unschon are to argue that Aratus’ source was in fact an abbreviation by Eudoxus of Aristotle’s work on weather signs, cf. D. Sider, ‘Pindar Olympian 11 and Greek weather lore’ in Accorinti–Chuvin (2003) 167–72, p. 167 n. 2. If correct, this would have important implications for the structure and nature of the Phainomena. This is the underlying position of Fakas (2001). There is a helpful survey of ancient and modern views of classical didactic poetry in K. Volk, The Poetics of Latin Didactic (Oxford 2002) chapter 2. So, e.g., Effe (1977) 40–56.

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associate Aratus (and Antigonos) with well-known Stoics; later Stoics are known to have taken a particular interest in the Phainomena, and a ‘Stoic reading’ of the Phainomena as a poem about a unified kosmos reflecting divine ordering (kosmos) has proved fruitful.152 The sequential progress of the poem mirrors the sequential certainty of the fixed stars and constellations (cf. vv. 451–3), put there by god’s benevolence, which also allows us to read them and to act upon our reading. How exclusively Stoic is Aratus’ conception of an ordered and divinely governed universe, in which every part is in some kind of ‘sympathy’ with every other part, may however be debated, and the alleged Stoicism of the poem, and even of the proemial hymn in which some allusion to Stoic ideas (as part of a captatio beneuolentiae to Antigonus?) is hard to deny, has indeed been overstated in modern criticism.153 What is clear, however, is that throughout the poem Aratus ‘reads’ Hesiod through the lens of later cultural and literary developments, thereby constructing Hesiod as the forerunner of those developments: the ‘Stoic’ Zeus becomes one of these ‘natural’ developments from Hesiodic thought. Aratus’ use of written sources raises a fundamental question about the nature of didactic poetry. The fourth-century explosion in scientific and philosophical prose meant that ‘information’ was now stored in books, as well as handed down through more traditional channels, including poetry. Recourse to those books was not only ‘natural’, but inevitable for one writing a poem on a technical subject. The social function and prominence of poetry had certainly changed, but the versification of prose treatises is not inevitably (just) a ‘literary exercise’, because those treatises were now themselves part of ‘tradition’. The use of expertly written sources was in fact the only way in which the poet could claim respectable authority for his work. Like Callimachus, Aratus can still appeal to the Muses (vv. 16–18), but the Muses now embraced written texts and ‘professional’ knowledge.154 Hesiod too, no doubt, drew upon a very long tradition of ‘wisdom poetry’ in composing the Works and Days,155 but his use of this heritage tells us little about the purpose, as opposed to the origins, of his poem. If, moreover, the way a text is used can shed any light upon the original nature of that text, the rapid adoption of the Phainomena as a school text suggests that

152 153 154

Cf. Hunter (1995c), E. Gee, Ovid, Aratus and Augustus: Astronomy in the Fasti of Ovid (Cambridge 2000) chapter 3. So, rightly, Fakas (2001) 5–38, who instructively compares the very different hymns to Zeus of Cleanthes and Callimachus. 155 Cf. M. L. West, Hesiod, Works and Days (Oxford 1978) 3–30. Cf. Bing (1988).

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ancient pedagogues were not so wary of the poem’s didactic status as some of their modern counterparts have been. Aratus was not, nor pretended to be, an expert astronomer; he was an expert, professional poet (a sophos), and part of his expertise lay in acquiring knowledge, from whatever sources, and the exploitation of that knowledge in poetic modes. Moreover, it is far from Aratus’ purpose to claim special, privileged ‘scientific’ knowledge; that indeed would run counter to a central theme of the poem. The grouping of stars into figural constellations was, in his account, devised long ago by an unnamed man of high intellect, as a way of overcoming the impossibility of naming and recognising each individual star (vv. 373–82). Behind this account lies the same structure of wonder and curiosity as the origins of ‘philosophy’, to which Callimachus makes more ironic appeal in the Aitia;156 we no longer need to greet the rising of a new star with thauma (v. 382), because the thauma of the unnamed namer has provided a structure of knowledge for us. This unnamed deviser does not merely take his place within the familiar Greek habit of assigning everything to a ‘first inventor’, but seems also to evoke a specifically didactic tradition of praise for a great forerunner. Empedocles’ praise of Pythagoras, who is not explicitly named in the passage, and Lucretius’ praise of Epicurus, which reworks the Empedoclean text,157 are the most familiar examples: D '   % &8  Z% *'Z   (#%  % < C> 4  U p '8 4%  '  4%  # )   (%"% ]M  ' %%) B 5C V  A  (  # Q%% %  E%   'C &Z  C K% *Z %%. And there was among them a man of surpassing knowledge, master especially of all kinds of wise works, who had acquired the utmost wealth of understanding: for whenever he reached out with all his understanding, easily he saw each of all the things that are, in ten and even twenty generations of men. (Empedocles fr. 129 D–K, trans. Kirk–Raven–Schofield) humana ante oculos foede cum uita iaceret in terris oppressa graui sub religione, quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans, primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra; quem neque fama deum nec fulmina nec minitanti 156 157

Cf. above, pp. 59–60. Cf. D. Sedley, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom (Cambridge 1998) 29–30.

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murmure compressit caelum, sed eo magis acrem inritat animi uirtutem, effringere ut arta naturae primus portarum claustra cupiret. When the life of man lay foul to see and grovelling upon the earth, crushed by the weight of religion, which showed her face from the realms of heaven, lowering upon mortals with dreadful mien, it was a man of Greece who dared first to stand forth to meet her: him neither the stories of the gods nor thunderbolts checked, nor the sky with its revengeful roar, but all the more spurred the eager daring of his mind to yearn to be the first to break through the close-set bolts upon the doors of nature. (Lucretius, DRN 1.62–71, trans. Bailey)

Thanks to the achievements of the namer of the constellations, in whose wake Aratus follows, like Empedocles after Pythagoras and Lucretius after Epicurus, everyone can have relatively easy access to the signs which Zeus displays.158 The Phainomena is itself one more witness to this openness. Aratus indeed inscribes the process of decipherment within his poem, as most famously in the acrostic passage discovered by J.-M. Jacques:159 ?  8 X 4     D % ^3' C K) #  8 'X  c (# C  $4 J $ U ! 'X  &9# "%   s     (    & , !$% C7X  $ &9#Q C v ['  

b   . If the moon is thin and her light pure on the third day, there will be fine weather; if thin and her light very red, there will be wind; if, however, she is on the large side and her horns are dull and her light weak on the third and fourth nights, she is being dulled by the approach of the South Wind or of rain. (Aratus, Phainomena 783–7)

The acrostic follows very closely upon a passage which seems to invite us to look for such things: (   3  \, . Z% ) &## C   ##( $ )  K  #"  %$  'Z%  d QU   c  8 &' &', ]##  (   *'  ) (  'C V %4  . 158

159

Fakas (2001) 178–80 stresses the (unHesiodic) absence of Zeus from this passage, an absence which Fakas sees as part of Aratus’ preference for ‘aesthetics’ over ‘religiosity’. The protreptic force of the passage, however, lies precisely in its encouragement to us to imitate the ‘first’ person to make proper use of the god’s beneficence (vv. 10–11). ‘Sur un acrostiche d’Aratos (Ph´en., 783–7)’ REA 62 (1960) 48–61. For further possible acrostic games in this area of the poem cf. W. Levitan, ‘Plexed Artistry: Aratean Acrostics’ Glyph 5 (1979) 55–68, and M. Haslam, ‘Hidden Signs: Aratus Diosemeiai 46ff., Vergil Georgics 1. 424ff.’ HSCP 94 (1992) 199–204. C. Fakas, Philologus 143 (1999) 356–9, detects a telestichon at vv. 234–6.

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For not yet does Zeus allow us to know all things, but much remains hidden; if he wishes, Zeus will grant us this too presently, for he openly brings aid to the race of mortals, appearing on every side, and everywhere revealing his signs. (Aratus, Phainomena 768–72)

The successful searching out of acrostic patterns by the reader recreates the activity of the anonymous discoverer of the constellations, who perceived the usefulness of joining together those stars which would make meaningful figures, when distinguished from a surrounding cloud of other stars, or in this case letters of the alphabet (vv. 373–82). Just as the discoverer revealed patterns which had always been there, and were put there by an all-creating god, so a reader discovers meaningful ‘signs’ placed by the poi¯et¯es (‘maker’) in the apparent randomness of the first letters of a succession of hexameters. The pattern of Zeus’ universe is reflected in the pattern of Aratus’ poem. Here, there is an obvious and pointed contrast between the theology of the Phainomena and that of the Works and Days. Hesiod’s poem presents us with an all-powerful and all-seeing Zeus (cf. e.g. vv. 267–9), who is concerned with justice, but whose mind ( ) is changeable and hard-toknow (vv. 483–4), and who has hidden from men the means of a life free from toil (v. 42 Q:   !$%   9 &Z%).160 The themes of concealment and hiddenness are, of course, most prominent in the myths of Pandora and the Five Ages. The Zeus of the Phainomena, however, while also being all-seeing and concerned with justice, openly assists mankind through the omnipresence of ‘signs’:  ,  ( %4 C   % 4M  .%  ') %:  'C * $  &%  l  (#%  $  %  &'(% F() AC  ' (  Q . Zeus himself set signs in heaven, marking out the constellations, and for the whole year he thought out which stars should most of all give men signs of the seasons, so that all things should grow without fail. (Aratus, Phainomena 10–13)

Much remains hidden, and further ‘progress’ depends upon Zeus’ benevolence (vv. 768–71), but the situation is much more promising than that which Hesiod offered:   c  8 &' &', ]##  (   *'  ) (  'C V %4  . For Zeus openly brings aid to the race of mortals, appearing on every side, and everywhere revealing his signs. (Aratus, Phainomena 771–2) 160

The classic discussions of the theme of ‘hiding’ in Works and Days are those of J.-P. Vernant; cf. e.g. R. L. Gordon (ed.), Myth, Religion and Society (Cambridge 1981) 43–79.

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The open visibility of the sky above us carries its own persuasive force. In a sense, no argument is needed to support Aratus’ exposition: we must merely look around. Zeus, moreover, now actually ‘speaks’ (# ) to men.161 One such ‘speech act’, and thus a sign of Zeus’ benevolence, is the Phainomena itself; the poem comes as a 4 (‘evidentiary sign’) from the Muses (v. 18), whereas the Works and Days presents itself as the necessary product of hard times. Hesiod’s authority in the Works and Days stems from the authority invested in a traditional poetic form and voice, from the autobiographical mode employed through the figures of his father (vv. 633–40) and idle brother, Perses,162 and from the Muses. Aratus does not emulate the Hesiodic use of autobiography as an authorising mode, perhaps in part because of his Stoicising stress on the fixed order of nature, in which every individual is offered similar opportunities. A colourless second-person addressee, whom every reader will interpret personally, conveys the universality of Aratus’ message.163 The apparent exception to this universality may also be traced to the Hesiodic heritage. Aratus sometimes speaks directly to farmers or sailors, or speaks as though he is one of them; although everyone needs to pay attention to Zeus’s signs (cf. 4 (  'X \,  !4  ( ), that is, to read the Phainomena with attention, farmers and sailors are of course particularly interested in the information to be derived from stars and weather signs. More is at stake here, however, than merely practical considerations. The reception of the Works and Days within Greek culture had established farming and sailing as paradigmatic for all human activity, and all readers of Hesiodic didactic poetry, however remote their daily lives might be from farming and seafaring, are aligned with these occupations by the very act of sympathetic reading: Virgil’s Georgics represent the most complete exploitation of this idea. The three elements of Hesiodic authority come together in an unexpected way when the archaic poet turns to instructions about sailing: c C  C  : & % $  9Q# ! $ 5  #, & ) ' M '4    #$#%9 #(%%) 3  $ # % %% 3  .  ( Z   C #    ) * 8  ^39 M ;#') z  C C;! 161 162 163

Cf. vv. 7–8 (in programmatic position), 732; weather signs, as part of Zeus’ system, also ‘speak’ (vv. 1048, 1071). Cf. esp. M. Griffith, ‘Personality in Hesiod’ CA 2 (1983) 37–65; G. Most, ‘Hesiod and the Textualization of Personal Temporality’ in Arrighetti-Montanari (1993) 73–92. Cf. Bing (1993), Fakas (2001) 94–100; below, p. 233.

232

Epic in a minor key    !  #b %b #, .  6^##(' M e  s  ## Q.  ' C  O  C . # ' C;'(  G#' C *% %U 'X  ' ##( . # C  % 5'   #4  U    [" 4%    'C | Z  . , X  O 0Q%"% C 6^#(' %%C &   ,   # $ 9% &'. %%      #$ U &##  o  d,   *  !U 0% (  C ''M &%  [ & ' .

When you want to escape debt and joyless hunger by turning your blight-witted heart to trade, I will show you the measure of the resounding sea – quite without instruction as I am in seafaring or in ships; for as to ships, I have never yet sailed the broad sea, except to Euboea from Aulis, the way the Achaeans once came when they waited through the winter and gathered a great army from holy Greece against Troy of the fair women. There to the funeral games for warlike Amphidamas and to Chalcis I crossed, and many were the prizes announced and displayed by the sons of that valiant; where I may say that I was victorious in poetry and won a tripod with ring handles. That I dedicated to the Muses of Helicon, in the original place where they set me on the path of fine singing. That is all my experience of dowelled ships, but even so I will tell the design of Zeus the aegis-bearer, since the Muses have taught me to make song without limit. (Hesiod, WD 646–62, trans. M. L. West)

Here is an explicit claim for the didactic rˆole of the poet in areas where the poet has no personal expertise.164 Hesiod has been taught by the Muses and authorised by them to act as a medium of instruction; these are the only references to the Muses in the Works and Days, other than in the opening verse, and their significance seems clearly to reinforce the poet’s authority in an area where it could reasonably be challenged: Hesiod, as if anticipating the attack of the Platonic Socrates in the Ion, is indeed competent to instruct us in sailing qua poet. Moreover, in the nautical instructions which follow (vv. 663–94), the predominant mode is that of the imperatival infinitive, an ‘impersonal’ mode which does indeed fashion the poet as merely a channel of instruction. In the farming section of the poem, by contrast, Hesiod does not make a special effort to establish his authority; the close links between it and the opening ‘moral’ sections of the poem, which assume an audience engaged in agriculture, are sufficient. 164

For a different interpretation cf. R. M. Rosen, ‘Poetry and Sailing in Hesiod’s Works and Days’ CA 9 (1990) 99–113. The passage has been much discussed; for some interesting speculations about its possible links with the Boeotian cult of Hesiod cf. R. Lamberton, ICS 13 (1988) 498–504.

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Even in the instructions on sailing, however, Hesiod can speak in the first person, as though from his own experience. Here are his thoughts on sailing in springtime:165 3    K C)    $  !% % U / U !#   Q   U &##( $  ( . B_$% &' "%  U !4   :$!8 #  ' #5% 9 5%. I do not praise this, for my heart does not like it. It is a snatched sailing, and you will do well to avoid disaster. But in their ignorance men do this, for wealth is where wretched men’s soul is. (Hesiod, WD 682–6)

The lament for human greed ties the passage to the earlier, moralising sections, bestowing upon it a similar authority. Here again, Aratus followed suit, this time in describing the season of the hot etesian winds:    #('   % {   " &   $%)  'X #    Z €U  5  &%   ) * .  ' ' $9    ! . This is the time when the whistling etesian winds sweep strongly across the broad sea, and it is no longer seasonable for ships to be under oars. Then let broadbeamed ships be my pleasure, and let helmsmen hold their steering-oars into the wind. (Aratus, Phainomena 152–5, trans. Kidd)

Whether the use of the first person is interpreted as a genuine claim to experience, or as a conventional voicing of authority, it is clear that, as early as Hesiod, the question of the poet’s knowledge of the subjects with which he dealt had no simple or single answer; the implications for the subsequent didactic tradition were, of course, immense, as the questions of what the poet knows and how he knows it go to the very heart of the nature of didactic poetry.166 What didactic poetry is and what claims it makes for itself are, however, areas in which misconceptions persist. On the one hand, within the tonal range of ancient ‘factual’ poetry, stylistic poikilia, wit, variability of voice, irony and so forth are often alleged to show that the poet is not ‘serious’ about his material and expects us to be similarly playful. In a particular case this may be so, but as a generalisation it is unhelpful, because such 165 166

West may (or may not) be right that ‘here, if anywhere, Hesiod parrots his father’, but what is at issue here is how the subsequent didactic tradition read Hesiod. Good remarks in A. Schiesaro, ‘The boundaries of knowledge in Virgil’s Georgics’ in T. Habinek and A. Schiesaro (eds.), The Roman Cultural Revolution (Cambridge 1997) 63–89.

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phenomena are ordinary features of the poetic mode, and poetry, no less than science, has its own conventions. Secondly, lack of completeness, for example, has always presented a problem for any simple understanding of poetic didaxis. Thus, for example, Malcolm Heath167 has adduced the ‘astonishingly lacunose’ information in the Works and Days as an argument against seeing it as seriously ‘intended to instruct’. Now, if a poet tells us how to make a plough, it would of course be foolish to believe that we can extrapolate from this to the detailed carpentry necessary for a wagon. Nevertheless, the plough, the work involved in making it, and the moral conditions which make it necessary, can stand, pars pro toto, as exemplary of the total working conditions of the farmer.168 ‘Didactic poetry’ does not have to be comprehensive to be ‘didactic’. It gives us examples, exemplary signs, to guide us as we move beyond the confines of the poem. If we do want full and complete information, there are plenty of treatises and handbooks to which we can have recourse.169 Thus, for example, the fourth-century Rhetoric to Alexander begins by sub-dividing the topic to be discussed, in order to convey a sense of the completeness of the knowledge being offered; the author then undertakes to discuss the sub-divisions oneby-one (C u E% ). In On Horse-riding, Xenophon notes that he will cover much the same ground as an existing treatise by one Simon, but he will also fill in all the gaps (‘I shall attempt to illuminate all that he has omitted’, 1.1), and in On Hunting, he undertakes to give a full account of each piece of equipment needed (2.2). This ‘rhetoric of completeness’ in the handbooks may be compared with Thucydides’ claim (5.26.1) to give a fully detailed account of the Peloponnesian war, F E%    , a claim which is clearly of a piece with the presentation of his work as ‘serious history’, in comparison with the entertaining display pieces of others (1.22), and Hipparchus uses precisely the same ‘rhetoric of completeness’ in the introduction to his account of the failings of Eudoxus and Aratus (1.1.9–11). In one sense, in fact, it is the task of didactic poetry to draw out the general truths (  #$) which underlie collections of individual ‘facts’ ( E% ). Aratus himself makes this clear with a form of praeteritio to explain the lack of comprehensiveness in his account of weather signs: 167 168

169

‘Hesiod’s didactic poetry’ CQ 35 (1985) 245–63. For a related account (independent of Hunter (1995c)) cf. S. Nelson, ‘The Drama of Hesiod’s Farm’ CP 91 (1996) 45–53; Nelson sees Hesiod’s description of farming as ‘intended to capture not how farming looks, but how it feels’ (48). For a more detailed comparison of the Phainomena with fourth-century technai cf. Hunter (1995c).

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  #  V%% #  %4 C  C &Z$‡ Why should I tell of all the signs available to men? (Aratus, Phainomena 1036–7)

On one hand, there are so many signs in nature that it would be impossible to tell them all, and in any case Aratus wants us to observe for ourselves and to find our own ‘signs’; on the other hand, there is no point in trying to be exhaustive, both because the general truth – the availability of signs – has already been more than adequately established and because this is not the way in which Aratus conceives of the reception of his poem. Whereas systematic philosophy and the technical handbook seek to close down options, didactic poetry can offer multiple readings which draw on diverse traditions and emphasise the rˆole of the reader, rather than that of the omniscient teacher. Here again, Aratus points the way very clearly towards Virgil’s Georgics. It is, in fact, of the greatest importance that Aratus is not a Eudoxus (or a Hipparchus), and therefore is (in principle, at least) available to all who are able to read him.170 The poem thus continues in a new mode the age-old position of the poet as communal repository of wisdom. One passage which stresses our universal need is vv. 1094–1103: 'X X ] & # -    &4)  4% V ## #4%%% &Q !$  ) ! U  ' ' 'C * & ) 4 e   ,  &!Q #" ! & . !  ' $ * # &4  5 ] %%) 8    K%) #       #$ #  $ . [        .##  .## _Z  .U 'X   % (  + 5 %4 C       4%%. The mainland farmer does not like flocks of birds, when from the islands in large numbers they invade his cornlands at the coming of summer: he is terribly alarmed for his harvest, in case it turns out empty ears and chaff, distressed by drought. But the goatherd is rather pleased with the same birds, when they come in moderate numbers, because he expects thereafter a year of plentiful milk. So it is that we suffering mortals make a living in different ways; but all are only too ready to recognise signs that are right beside us, and to adopt them for the moment. (Aratus, Phainomena 1094–1103, trans. Kidd) 170

Cf. above, p. 231, on the second-person addressee. I hope that it is not necessary to stress that we are here dealing with the poem’s rhetoric, not its real reception by a literate e´lite.

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The constellations move in many different directions through the sky, but their changing movement is eternally regular and predictable, year after year (vv. 19–20 .##$' .##    . . . ( C i  %$ !X * ); we, however, ‘roam in our wretchedness as we eke out our living in different ways’ (vv. 1101–2),171 and our only hope of ‘stability’ is to give intelligent heed to the obvious signs which Zeus in his kindness has provided, by using, as do the farmer and the goatherd, experience of the past to be better prepared in the future.172 The point is marked by the quasi-pun on   and 'X   %. Though elsewhere the poet recognises that foolish men are often caught unawares because they have not looked for available signs (cf. vv. 422–30), it is the readiness to do just this which binds humankind together in need, and offers a kind of conditional optimism. The motif of ‘types of life’, which in Hesiod illustrated the competitiveness inherent in the society he depicts (WD 17–26), becomes in Aratus a cohesive, rather than a fracturing, force.173 That not many of Aratus’ original audience will have been farmers or goatherds is, of course, not without a gentle humour, but in fact this strengthens, rather than undercuts, that cohesive force. The chosen examples in vv. 1094–103 resemble the similes of the Iliad which illustrate a narrative of heroic warfare by analogies drawn from the more peaceful life of humbler folk; so also, here, our social distance from the Aratean characters paradoxically forces us to recognise our basic similarity to them.174 It is striking that the ‘Hymn to Zeus’ of the Stoic Cleanthes also uses the ‘types of life’ motif in a passage about the universal logos, which similarly goes back to Hesiod on eris: H'  * u (  %$4 %# 5%) €% C E   % (  #

 *X   ) p  Q   % V%    *%) 'Q%) l C &  X &   %   3 C %%   ,   3 #Q$%) H       %b  9 %#, ! U   'C cC % . , .## C .##) 171

172

173 174

The full meaning of   should not be diluted, as already in the scholiast (cf. ‘restless’ Kidd, ‘instables’ Martin, ‘unst¨aten’ Erren etc.); the image is prepared by the figure of the goatherd, who is indeed a ‘roamer’, cf. further Ap. Rhod. Arg. 2.541–2, 4.1165–7. Despite the clear Homeric flavour of these verses (cf. Kidd (1997) and Martin (1998) ad loc., Fakas (2001) 144–5), there is probably an echo of Solon’s ‘types of life’ passage: % Q'  ' C .##  .##U  X     &#T   #. (fr. 1.43 West). Aratus has thus generalised Solon’s sailor into the roaming of all mankind. So I would gloss vv. 1102–3, cf. the scholiast’s paraphrase and Martin ad loc. I cannot agree with Kidd that there is a satirical edge to these verses, i.e. men are ‘all too ready’ to look for (and put an interpretative twist upon) weather signs. On this motif in general cf. Nisbet and Hubbard’s Introduction to Hor. c. 1.1. Cf. above, p. 231.

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t X 2X ' M %$'8 '$%%  ! ) t 'C   '%Q  '   %") .## ' C * . %  %Z  1'   . . .  C .## ' C .##  ) % Q'  (# (   ' %. For you have so welded into one all things good and bad thay they all share in a single everlasting reason. It is shunned and neglected by the bad among mortal men, the wretched, who ever yearn for the possession of goods yet neither see nor hear god’s universal law, by obeying which they could lead a good life in partnership with intelligence. Instead, devoid of intelligence, they rush into this evil or that, some in their belligerent quest for fame, others with an unbridled bent for acquisition, others for leisure and the pleasurable acts of the body . . . <But all that they achieve is evils,> despite travelling hither and thither in burning quest of the opposite. (Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus 20–31, trans. Long and Sedley)

Cleanthes proceeds to pray that Zeus will save men from their own folly; (Stoic) philosophers, such as Cleanthes, are clearly excluded from this prayer, as they have already seen the light.175 Aratus’ rhetoric, however, is rather one of shared weakness and need. That weakness is nowhere more evident than in the passage describing shipwreck: ##(      "  %  Q%  WbM  4)  5% !_ Q "%. e 'C *     % %Q%") L: 'X ( (   .  4% )  C #  #   U * '   2:   #4M" ' 8 & Q ## [  &  ) 'X #  (  (M") .## X  ( 2 9$! $ ## ) .## ' C) K  \, %% Q!% !  ) 9 'X ( C &% (:" &) ## (#C ] #4%  V (# %:  &##4#$  .   'C  %4  Q " ' ') ! 9 &% (:  K'. For Night herself frequently contrives this sign also for a southerly, showing favour to sailors in distress. And if they give heed to her timely signal, and promptly make everything ready and shipshape, in due course their trouble is easier; but if a terrible squall of wind falls upon the ship from on high quite unexpectedly, and disorders all of the canvas, sometimes they sail on entirely submerged, sometimes, if they find Zeus coming to help them as they pray, and there is lightning in the north, in spite of their many travails they do look again upon each other on board ship. 175

Cf. Lucr. 2.7–13 on the pleasures of beholding the vain wandering (errare) and rivalry of men from a position of philosophic security.

238

Epic in a minor key

With this sign fear a southerly, until you see Boreas flashing lightning. (Aratus, Phainomena 418–30, trans. Kidd)

The introduction to this passage generalises human misery to include all mankind, not just those who sail the sea, cf. &Z . . .   (v. 409) and #$$ &Z$ (v. 412). The help that Night offers does not differ in kind from that which is elsewhere ascribed to Zeus himself, but Aratus’ stress on Night’s tearful pity (409) perhaps exploits her feminine gender; it is not an adequate account to see Night as merely ‘synonymous with Zeus’,176 for Aratus suggests a plenitude of powers who wish to aid mankind. From a philosophical, or indeed specifically Stoic, perspective, all such powers may be merely different ways of describing a single cosmic ‘system’, as indeed ‘Zeus coming to their aid’ (v. 426) suggests, but that is not the only perspective of the poet. That the rhetoric of poetry is thus different from that of philosophy is confirmed by the ‘pathetic fallacy’ of Night’s weeping, a fallacy enacted in language which describes heavenly phenomena in terms applicable to the struggling sailors themselves ($      % v. 416, #9 C v. 417); here, nature moulds herself to man’s plight. Night, the ‘kindly’ time,  , acts in accordance with her name. 6.2 The justice of the stars The Works and Days is a protreptic to ‘just’ dealings with one’s fellow man (dik¯e ), because only thus do all men have a chance to enjoy the agricultural prosperity which Zeus otherwise keeps hidden (WD 225–37). The moralising dimension of the Phainomena is less explicit, but nonetheless important. Zeus’s justice is reflected in the eternal order and pattern (kosmos) of the heavens; as for men, whereas the Works and Days emphasises both vertical (ordinary people v. basileis) and horizontal (competitiveness for resources) divisions within society, the Phainomena presents a consistent picture of universal need in the face of the same problems and opportunities. This shared fate carries an implicit message preaching mutual help and the pointlessness of seeking unfair advantage: we are all covered by – and can all see – the same stars. Nevertheless, in one famous passage Dik¯e does make an explicit appearance in Aratus’ poem, and here it is indeed in a reworking of Hesiod’s ‘Myth of Ages’.177 Hesiod’s strongest argument for the practice of justice is the impossibility of escaping Zeus’s eye: 176 177

Kidd on 408, Martin (1998) 318. For other aspects of this passage cf. Fakas (2001) 109–12. Cf. Fakas (2001) 149–75 with further bibliography.

6 The Phainomena of Aratus

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„ 9%#) 2 5 'X  (_ %    4' 'U 

b   &Z%    &(  (_  V% %#%  '"% &##4#$ 9$%   A  &#  .   Q *%  ! $#$9 " &(  d, Q#    &Z) l B $#(%%$% '  %! #   - +%%( ) (      C L. 1 '  %  \) \,  $5) $'4 C *'  5 t h>#$ !$%)  BC  C .   9#( " %# ] (_)     \    _ =

Q C &Z &'  ) A C & %" ' & %# 9%# t #$     .##" #% ' %#  . You too, my lords, attend to this justice-doing of yours. For close at hand among men there are immortals taking note of all those who afflict each other with crooked judgements, heedless of the gods’ punishment. Thrice countless are they on the rich-pastured earth, Zeus’ immortal watchers (Q# ) of mortal men, who watch over judgements and wickedness, clothed in darkness, travelling about the land on every road. And there is that maiden Right (Dik¯e), daughter of Zeus, esteemed and respected by the gods in Olympus; and whenever someone does her down with crooked abuse, at once she sits by Zeus her father, Kronos’ son, and reports the men’s unrighteous mind, so that the people may pay for the crimes of their lords who balefully divert justice from its course by pronouncing it crooked. (Hesiod, WD 248–62, trans. M. L. West)

Hesiod’s Myth of Ages presents a five-stage progression (or regression) towards the present misery, which will result in the abandonment of men to their fate by Aidos and Nemesis. The ages are structured by a reciprocal alternation between dik¯e and hybris, and the similarities between life in the Golden Age and the blessedness of the city in which men practise justice (vv. 112–19 ∼ 225–37) make the message of this whole section very clear. Aratus writes the maiden Dik¯e into his own ‘Myth of Ages’, in which it is she who left the earth long ago (Phain. 96–136). Between Hesiod and Aratus lie many different reconstructions of human history. The positing of a time when gods and men mixed freely (cf. Hesiod fr. 1.6–7) is a common feature of such accounts, and some of these will have influenced the later poet: his myth cannot be interpreted solely as a confrontation with Hesiod.178 Nevertheless, it is Hesiod to whom we are primarily directed. The 178

The scholiast on Phainomena 104 identifies the proem of the Hesiodic Catalogue as the origin of the idea of the free mixing of gods and men. Of particular importance will have been Empedocles’ account of the ‘Golden Age’ (cf. fr. 128 D–K). Cf. further Dicaearchus fr. 49 Wehrli, Feeney (1998) 104–5 on Catullus 64.

240

Epic in a minor key

Maiden carries an ear of corn, marking a traditional association between this constellation and Demeter and her daughter, Kore (‘the Maiden’).179 As in Hesiod the ‘Just City’ is blessed with a fruitful earth, whereas ‘famine and pestilence’ (#,   # ) are the punishment of the unjust (WD 225–47), so in Aratus Dik¯e was responsible in the Golden Age, along with – or working through – agriculture, for the self-sufficiency of the land; here, Dik¯e fulfils a function very like Demeter ‘Thesmophoros’.180 An echo of the prologue in v. 106 (cf. vv. 2–3) does not allow us to forget that everything is part of Zeus’ system. So, too, the Prologue’s emphasis on agriculture (7–9) is now seen not merely to mark the most obvious sphere in which Zeus’ ‘signs’ may be exploited and to evoke the Works and Days as primary model (cf. WD 22), but also to privilege agriculture as a model for the right ordering of the world: honest toil is rewarded with the earth’s plenty. Despite his striking departure from Hesiod here, such a reciprocal model has very deep roots in traditional Greek ideas: Aratus placed agricultural labour in the Golden Age not just in deference to Stoic doctrine,181 but because agriculture is itself a manifestation of divine ordering and justice. When the men of the Bronze Age kill and eat ‘the ploughing oxen’ (v. 132), much more is destroyed than just animal life. Aratus restricted himself to the first three of Hesiod’s five ages, thus setting his myth of Dik¯e before ‘recorded history’: the present world order was thus already established immemorially long ago, and a message of progressive decay would in fact hardly suit the rest of the poem. Nevertheless, all three of Aratus’ ages are, in contrast to those of Hesiod, recognisably ‘like us’: this is particularly marked by the fact that, in contrast to Hesiod, Aratus gives us no information about the fate after death of the men of each age. Whereas the people of Hesiod’s Golden Age became after death ‘holy spirits . . . watchers over mortal men’ (WD 122–3), Dik¯e’s catasterism is the only post-terrestrial event of which we hear in Aratus. Moreover, whereas Hesiod’s Golden Age knew no ‘wretched old age’, figured as a time of disabling weakness (WD 113–14), in Aratus, Dik¯e summons a council of ‘the old men’ to make judgements; here, old age is, by contrast, figured as a time of political and social wisdom.182 In keeping with this ‘human’ 179 180

181 182

Cf. Erren (1967) 38. 'Z  ' in v. 113 does not just look back to Dik¯e’s quasi-judicial rˆole in v. 107 (so Kidd); rather, the play between Dik¯e as a personification and Dik¯e as an immortal figure means that 113 refers primarily to the just dealings of men and women with each other which, as in Hesiod, lead to agricultural plenty, cf. Martin (1998) ad loc. Cf. Kidd on v. 112; other relevant considerations in Schiesaro (1996) 13–14. For this theme cf. above, p. 74. Behind this passage seems to lie Iliad 18. 496–508, the ‘legal’ scene presided over by ‘the old men’ in the ‘city at peace’ depicted on the Shield of Achilles. There, too,

6 The Phainomena of Aratus

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code in the myth, Dik¯e successively suggests, first in the Golden Age, the ‘Just King’ of the Theogony (vv. 81–93), and then in the Silver Age, an itinerant poet or preacher – such as were very common in the Hellenistic Age – who lives at the margins of society (‘the mountains’) and acts as a chastiser and moral reformer; her voice as she warns the Silver Age of the trouble ahead resembles indeed that of Hesiod himself, speaking to the men of his own day. In this myth, therefore, Aratus explores the relationship between kingship and poetry which is so fundamental to the Theogony; by these techniques, the resonance in the present of this story of the distant past is clear, long before we discover that Dik¯e is now in the heavens as a permanent reminder of what happened in the past, and as a protreptic to ‘justice’.183 If Dik¯e is indeed a star, then perhaps Aratus ‘read’ Hesiod’s ‘countless immortal watchers clad in air’ (WD 252–5) as the countless stars of heaven.184 If this suggestion is correct, it would not mean that this is what Hesiod actually meant, or that Aratus necessarily understood Hesiod in this way; rather, as often happens, an older text is read as foreshadowing a later. In the Works and Days, the men of the Golden Age – with whom Aratus’ Dik¯e is so closely associated – after death become '  /  !  . . . %#) &# M) Q#    &Z | #$ ' , ‘divine and revered spirits on the earth, good spirits, protectors from evil, watchers (phulakes) over mortal men, givers of wealth’ (WD 122–3, 126). They become daimones who ‘guard, keep their eye on’ mortal men; there is no reason to believe, as Wilamowitz did,185 that Hesiod identified these daimones with the ‘countless immortal watchers/guardians’ of WD 252–5, but the similarity of wording might suggest this easily enough, and indeed WD 254–5 seem to have been interpolated back into the passage on the daimones. Just as, therefore, Aratus may have constructed Hesiod’s ‘countless guardians’ as the stars, so the Dik¯e myth perhaps shows us Aratus reading Hesiod’s Golden Age as the origin of the stars. Hellenistic didaxis is at base the interpretation of prior texts; as such, it is merely a special instance of the most prominent feature of the poetry of this period as a whole. The

183 184

185

dik¯e is to prevail, but the fact of a  5 concerned with murder marks the scene as far from that of Aratus (contrast Phain. 108 3 # $ #$    -%  ). The relation of the Shield to various ‘Ages’ narratives would repay further attention: note the killing of cattle with bronze weapons (18.527ff.). On the ‘political’ potential of Aratus’ myth cf. Schiesaro (1996) 17–24. Relevant also may be Theogony 901–3 where the Horai, Eunomia, Dik¯e and Eirene,  C | Q$%   5% 9 5%. The verb is something of a mystery, but the ancients glossed it as $#( Y  (cf. West ad loc.), and this might aid the idea of Dik¯e as a ‘guardian’ or ‘watcher’. Hesiodos Erga (Berlin 1928) 70, 140.

242

Epic in a minor key

purpose of a poet’s ‘interpretation’ of a predecessor is only rarely to establish what that predecessor ‘meant’. What would a Stoic have made of Aratus’ myth? We are told that Chrysippus held that ‘men are changed into gods’ and that the stars are gods,186 but at least one recent analysis has noted that Aratus’ myth hardly seems a model of Stoic pronoia and has labelled it ‘a foreign body in the otherwise optimistic Phainomena’.187 What such an analysis misses is the kind of optimism which Aratus promulgates. It is an optimism based on the benevolence of the guiding cosmic principle, which hymnal style calls Zeus. This is a benevolence evidenced by the signs which the god offers to man as a help, not by a particularly ‘optimistic’ view of man’s current situation or of human morality. We should all do the best we can and use what the god offers us, but without particular expectation (cf. Phainomena 1101–3). We live in corrupt times, Hesiod’s Fifth Age, but nature works towards what is good, and we must seek to discover that and to live in accordance with it. Knowing about the stars and weather signs can only help us; neither stars, nor weather signs, nor the myth of Dik¯e, however, offer any kind of guarantee. If for the Stoic, then, ‘all human beings are, and inevitably remain, bad and unhappy’,188 when allowances have been made for the different meaning of moral terms, Hesiod and the Stoics to some extent come together, or – and this is crucial for Aratus – can be read as coming together. 6.3 Didactic myth Aratus’ night sky is never dull.189 Within the overall fixedness of eternal patterns there is constant motion and change in a very overcrowded sky: g@ ' C 6'!  %   ## %%   # & #%% U &  ' C g @$ M  = $ #  &%  QM. &## C 3 e 'Q   #8 'C  N$   %b Z !' 5) &## C K 6' !   (  %   (   . 186 187 188 189

Cf. SVF II 810–11, 813–15, 1076–7. E. P¨ohlmann, ‘Charakteristika des r¨omischen Lehrgedichts’ ANRW I.3 (Berlin–New York 1973) 813–901, at p. 883. F. H. Sandbach, The Stoics (London 1975) 44. The best appreciation of Aratean ‘drama’ is Hutchinson (1988) 214–36. On aspects of Aratus’ style see also V. Citti, ‘Lettura di Arato’ Vichiana 2 (1965) 146–70, Ludwig (1963) 442–5, van Groningen (1953) 79–80, M. L. B. Pendergraft, ‘Euphony and etymology: Aratus’ Phaenomena’ Syllecta Classica 6 (1995) 43–67, the commentaries of Kidd (1997) and Martin (1998) passim.

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When the waist of the Water-pourer rises, the Horse with feet and head comes coursing up. Opposite the Horse starry night draws the Centaur down tail first, but cannot yet find room for his head and broad shoulders together with the actual breastplate; but she does bring down the fiery Hydra’s neck coil and all its head stars. (Aratus, Phainomena 693–8, trans. Kidd)

Paradox indeed is central to Aratus’ construction of the nightly drama of the heavens, and nowhere more forcefully than in the section (vv. 559–732) devoted to the simultaneous risings and settings of the constellations: this is a world in which rivers rise out of the sea (vv. 728–9), rather than flow down into it, and the ‘endlessly pursued’ hare survives to go down ‘with all its limbs intact’ ((  v. 678). There are, on the other hand, strange dismemberments:  X  %)     *  & ## ) X  (  M!  .##)

$5(  _Z  % 4  (   „ ' M  %b ! U ( ' C +   !   M" &!   sM " & ## . As for the figure on his knees, since he always rises upside down, the other parts then emerge from the horizon, the legs, the belt, all the breast, and the shoulder with the right hand; but the head with the other hand comes up at the rising of the bow and the Archer. (Aratus, Phainomena 669–73, trans. Kidd)

Such detailed description proves yet one more exploitation of notions of poetic enargeia.190 The challenge to visualisation (! (; v. 733) is perhaps the central poetic tension within the Phainomena: Zeus’ signs are, it is repeatedly claimed, openly visible to all, but a failure to visualise patterns which are often complicated and/or composed from stars which are only faintly visible to the naked eye confronts readers with their own weakness in the face of divine grace. One aspect of this tension is that between the ‘evidence’ of our eyes, to which Aratus makes constant appeal, and the ‘evidence’ of inherited myth. This tension is thematised in the account of the Pleiades:  ' C  (# ##, /(% ! ! )  'C   %:% &$. + ( '8   C &Z$ 2' ) uM L   %  : ]#5%.    & ##  & $8  \, &% 4) M Š     &Q ) &## (#C [  K U + 'C  5 4' #  190

Cf. below, p. 443, on Lycophron’s Alexandra, Fakas (2001) 99–100.

244

Epic in a minor key C;#$  0   = #Z C C7#   <    s$      05.

It is not a very large space which holds all of them, and they themselves are faint to observe. Men tell of the seven Pleiades, though only six are visible to our eyes. No star has disappeared from Zeus’ sky without a trace in all the time of which we know, but the story is told. By name those seven stars are Alcyone, Merope, Celaeno, Electra, Sterope, Taygete and revered Maia. (Aratus, Phainomena 255–263)

Aratus explicitly denies191 the truth of the story of the loss of the seventh Pleiad – a story which the scholia tell us he himself treated in a now lost poem –192 by asserting again the fixed pattern of the kosmos established by Zeus himself;  \  does not just mean ‘from the sky’. Myth (), of course, is a primary technique, not just of explanation, but also of visualisation: it is a powerful tool with which to organise (or construct) the evidence of the skies into recognisable patterns. Throughout the poem, the movements and appearance of the constellations are described in terms which appeal to their myths, which thus aid visualisation: the sea monster ‘rushes’ towards Andromeda (v. 354), the hare is hunted (v. 384), the limbs of Andromeda are ‘weary’ (v. 704), and so forth. Nevertheless, myth is a system partly in competition with other explanations, notably that of a ‘first inventor’ of the constellations (vv. 373–85).193 Unlike that aetiology for the figural constellations, mythical explanations (including catasterism) claim to tell the origin of the stars themselves, not just their organisation into shapes, and as such always threaten to destabilise the central project of the Phainomena. Aratus, however, has various techniques which allow him both to make use of such quintessentially ‘poetic’ material and to refuse it clear authority. One of these is to draw attention to its ‘mistakes’, its failures to offer a clear account, as in the Pleiades passage. The real utility of myth, on the other hand, lies not in its ‘truth’, but in its moral or symbolic value (as in the story of Dik¯e): in this attitude, Aratus clearly reveals himself as heir to a long tradition of poetic exegesis. ‘Mythical’ material is in fact marked as such in various ways. Thus, the group of Cepheus, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Pegasus and Perseus is introduced as the ‘long-suffering family of Cepheus, of the race of Io’, =  ,  C @%' (v. 179). Not only the affective adjective but also the stress on descent and the family group, with its suggestions of Attic tragedy, point to material of a mythic (and specifically dramatic) 191 192 193

The meaning of the passage is in fact disputed (cf. Hunter (1995c) 21, Martin (1998) ad loc.), but the interpretation adopted here seems very likely. This was a consolatory poem ‘To Theopropos’ (SH 103), cf. E. Maass, Aratea (Berlin 1892) 233–4. Cf. above, p. 230.

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kind.194 Within this grouping, further attention is called to the ‘mythic’ status of the account when, after a description of how to identify Cassiopeia, the poet adds ‘you would say that she was mourning her child’ (v. 196).195 The evocation of ‘the myth’ and the explicit refusal to countenance it is a further product of the tension we have been exploring. One final passage which might be thought to confirm, rather than weaken, the explanatory power of myth is the story of the (now reduced) Horse: 'C V ( % U &C ]#  .$  %%   1 #8   ##  e , g @.  5 '8  %  C 2:# 6^# #, [' &  5 #' 6 @$4.  (  6^#O .  # 9   5U &## C g @   $: U , 'C &     [' M!$  #   $ ' U e 'X      5  , ' 4% 6 @$4. &## , X   &# 9 ) '  

k % &' +  A: U   V C g @  \, e# 5 )   ( 4%%. But it is no quadruped; at its navel edge the sacred Horse is halved in the middle as it goes round. This was the Horse, they say, that from the heights of Helicon produced the good water of fertilising Hippocrene. The summit of Helicon was not then flowing with streams, but the Horse struck it, and from that very spot a flood of water gushed out at the stroke of its forefoot; the shepherds were the first to call that draught the Horse’s spring. So the water wells out of a rock, and you can see it never far from the men of Thespiae; but the Horse revolves in the realm of Zeus and you may view it there. (Aratus, Phainomena 214–24, trans. Kidd)

The visibility of the spring in Boeotia and the Horse in the Heavens seem mutually reinforcing. On the other hand, the truth of the account is called into question not merely by the usual % (216),196 but by the ascription of the name’s invention to (illiterate) shepherds. The parallel visibility of ‘Horse’ and spring in fact lays bare the very mechanics of mythical explanation, by revealing how primitive aetiology works. 194 195 196

Cf. C. Fakas, ‘Arat und Aristoteles’ Kritik am Lehrgedicht’ Hermes 129 (2001) 479–83. For other related uses of    in Hellenistic poetry cf. Hunter (1993a) 132–3. Cf. vv. 98, 100, 163, 216, 637, 645.

chap t e r 6

The style of Hellenistic epic

1 introduction One of the protagonists of the Phoenicides of Straton, a Middle Comedy poet of the second half of the fourth century, had a terrible experience one day with a cook whom he had hired (Straton, PCG 1). The cook did not speak like normal people, but expressed himself in Homeric language, with the result that when he asked his employer how many people he had invited to dinner, he did not use the everyday Greek words for ‘men’, such as . or .' , but the rare epic-archaic (and occasionally also tragic) term  , whose etymology was as obscure for the ancients as it is for us; for the ‘guests’, he used the rare word ' $   ‘those who receive/bring their portion’. His confused employer could only interpret these as proper names. So too, when he asked the cook about dinner, the cook reeled off another list of rare glosses or Homeric words (# for ‘sheep’, #!Q  for ‘barley, etc.), together with a few (to us) new forms, perhaps borrowed from some post-Homeric epic. Thus, an ox became BM! . . . $  ‘wide-browed [. . .] soil-breaker’ (vv. 20–1), in which the second epithet is Homeric, whereas the first, though analogous in structure to the second, appears here for the first time, perhaps as a virtuoso novelty of the erudite cook. All these  B4  ‘new words’ (v. 3) and  # ‘artificial terms’ (v. 35), which were in contrast to the /# ‘clear’ communication of everyday life, understandably seemed to the poor host to belong to the language of an & #  ‘madman’ (v. 35), when used one after another by a cook speaking about food. Nevertheless, the sense of , M   ‘strangeness’ that they create was in fact an integral part of the poetics of hexameter epic, the solemn, ‘high’ poetry par excellence. Aristotle, a contemporary of Straton, noted the links between the hexameter and rare words (‘glosses’) and between rare words and solemnity (Poet. 1459a9–11 and 1458a22–4); he also noted, however, that one must avoid an excessive use of such forms, in order not to fall into 99%  246

1 Introduction

247

(1458a30–1), ‘a non-Greek way of speaking’, which is exactly what Straton’s cook does. One of the most striking phenomena of Greek literary history is that the heroic epic, and hexameter and elegiac poetry in general, continued to make use of the artificially hybrid Homeric ‘language’, with its rare words, alternative forms, dialectal variety and almost infinite metricalprosodic richness, for more than a thousand years from (at least) the seventh century bc through to Nonnus and his successors. The ‘aesthetics of regularity’, which the Homeric texts could be seen to proclaim through their obvious formularity, was imitated and amplified by any poet who wrote in a dactylic metre. As early as the fifth century, there is evidence that the formulaic repetition of the Homeric poems was perceived as a peculiar characteristic of epic poetry, and might be sufficiently irritating to arouse the humour of comic poets. Cratinus at any rate (PCG 355) made fun of Homer for his excessive use of the formula , 'C & 9 Y   % ‘answering him, he said’, which recurs at least a hundred times in the Iliad and the Odyssey. We cannot, of course, know to what extent Cratinus, who seems to have specialised in Homeric parody, here reflects a popular attitude to Homeric formularity, but, for what it is worth, , 'C & 9   (%) is in fact very rare in postarchaic epic.1 One of the exceptions occurs in fact in Antimachus of Colophon, who in certain other respects anticipated erudite Alexandrian poetry; nevertheless, the longest extant fragment of Antimachus’ elegiac Lyd¯e, the critical evaluation of which was a matter of (brief ) dispute between Hellenistic poets (Asclepiades, Hermesianax, and Posidippus were ‘for’,2 Callimachus ‘against’3 ), has rightly been called ‘practically a patchwork of Homeric expressions’.4 We have very little of Antimachus’ epic Thebaid, but it is extremely difficult to imagine that this revealed a greater taste for linguistic innovation. 1

2

3

4

Only in Antimachus fr. 90 Matthews and [Theocr.] 25.42; note also the phrase’s appearance as an acrostic in a late poetic exercise (cf. G. Agosti, ‘P.Oxy. 3537R: etopea acrostica su Esiodo’ ZPE 119 (1997) 1–5). Martial 1.45 (cf. Citroni ad. loc.) and Straton, AP 12.4 both cite the phrase as a typical example of epic repetition. Cf. respectively AP 9.63 = HE 958ff.; CA 7.41–46; AP 12.168 = HE 3086ff. In later periods, Antipater praised Antimachus’ Thebaid (AP 7.409 = HE 638ff.), and the grammarian Crates of Mallos preferred it to Choerilus’ poem (AP 11.218 = HE 1371ff.); Aristophanes of Byzantium awarded Antimachus second place in the canon of epic writers, after Homer. On the Nachleben of Antimachus and Callimacheanism at Rome cf. Citroni (1995) 57–59 and 100–1. Cf. fr. 398 Pfeiffer: ‘Lyde is a heavy, unclear work (!b (    )’. For different views of the meaning of this judgement cf. D. Del Corno, Acme 16 (1962) 67, G. Serrao QUCC 32 (1979) 91–98, Krevans (1993). Wilamowitz (1924) I 101.

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At the heart of the new poetic language of the Hellenistic age lies the removal of the solemn heaviness of Homer’s formulaic expressions, so as to achieve the commonly shared ideal of #  ,5 and embellishment through a controlled use of rare words, Homeric and otherwise. This is true for each of Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius and Theocritus, for all the differences of their poetry and poetics. They confront and explore Homeric formularity; for them, formularity is not an unfortunate necessity inherent in hexametric poetry, but rather a new allusive opportunity in comparison with other, non-formulaic, genres. The novelty of their approach should not be underestimated, nor itself considered an inevitable product of an increasingly book-based culture, for contemporary with them we find other poetry which continued to follow the old ways of formularity: texts such as SH 946 or 947, perhaps by Rhianus, show us what we might otherwise miss.6 Centuries after Callimachus, the Callimachean style was still the paradigm directly opposed to hexametric versification based on formulaic repetition. Pollianus, an obscure epigram-writer of the first or second century ad, suggested an equivalence between the formulaic reuse of Homer and literary ‘theft’ (AP 11.130): ‘I hate these cyclic poets7 who use      [‘but then afterwards’, an expression which recurs about fifty times in Homer alone], thieves of other people’s words. For this reason, I rather dedicate myself to elegiacs; in this way, I do not have the possibility of stealing from Parthenius or Callimachus. I would become “similar to the long-eared beast [ X   , i.e. the donkey, cf. Callimachus fr. 1.31 Massimilla]” if I were ever to write “yellow celandines from the rivers” [   !# ! #' , Parthenius 32 Lightfoot = SH 644]. But these people continue to steal so unashamedly from Homer, that they still write “O goddess, sing of the wrath”’. The words of Callimachus were thus perceived as ‘not stolen’ from Homer, and at the same time, ‘not stealable’ by subsequent poets, unless they wanted to run the risk of being accused of the most ‘shameless’ plagiarism; less tendentiously, the point is that the phrases of Callimachus and Parthenius could not easily be transformed into repeatable, quasi-formulaic expressions.8 5

6 8

Both Leonidas and Callimachus give his #   as the reason for their appreciation of the work of Aratus (cf. Leon., AP 9.25 = HE 2573ff.; Callim., AP 9.507 = HE 1297ff.), and Ptolemy Philadelphus appears to have called Aratus #  #

 (SH 712.4). In the ‘Prologue’ to the Aitia (above pp. 66– 76), Apollo advises the poet that the Muse should be #  #, whereas !Q  is a positive quality for a sacrificial victim (fr. 1.23f. Massimilla = Pfeiffer). 7 Cf. Callimachus, AP 12.43 = HE 1041ff. Cf. Bing (1988) 50–6. Lightfoot (1999) 187 gives a different interpretation: Pollianus was equally critical of Callimachus and Parthenius, and preferred them simply ‘because they have nothing worth stealing’.

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Callimachus, Theocritus and Apollonius Rhodius can both activate and disguise the sense of formularity which Homeric expressions (and their contexts) triggered in any learned reader of the Hellenistic world; they thus set up the dialectic between ‘formularity’, allusion, and innovation which characterises their work and distinguishes them from the more unimaginative imitators of Homer. As has been said, their way of following Homer was to be ‘as non-Homeric as possible’.9 2 callimachus The regrettably few well-preserved fragments of Callimachus’ Hecale (above pp. 196–200) present a relatively high concentration of Homeric imitations, the highest in fact in the extant works of Callimachus.10 The numerous, though brief, fragments preserved by the indirect tradition which concern the hospitality offered by Hecale to Theseus reveal, for example, various highly amusing echoes of the Odyssey,11 but the absence of context makes it impossible to evaluate them from a stylistic viewpoint, in relation to the nature of the character speaking and the poetic situation. Nevertheless, certain fragments, particularly those preserved on a famous wooden tablet in Vienna (frs. 69–74 Hollis),12 are extensive enough to allow us to appreciate Callimachus’ allusive art in this poem.13 Fr. 69 (above pp. 197–8) contains the last part of the description of the struggle between Theseus and the bull, and the reactions of amazement that this aroused. This description was probably fairly brief,14 and the disproportion between the space dedicated to this feat and both the extensive description of the hospitality offered to Theseus by Hecale and a mythological conversation between two birds in frs. 70–74 (see below) is an indication of the fact that Callimachus focuses on the marginal, less important moments of the myth, rather than the heroic and more traditional subjects of poetic attention. This same fragment shows, however, that the brief narration of Theseus’ heroic feat certainly used allusion to archaic epic poetry, appropriate for the epic-sublime level of the feat itself, in spite of the wholly untraditional nature of a struggle with a bull. Thus, for example, to describe the action of Theseus’ club, a weapon obviously foreign to conventional epic warfare, in crushing one of the bull’s horns, Callimachus chooses a Homeric hapax, &#%  9 11 13 14

10 Cf. Hollis (1990) 170. Cf. H. Herter, Kleine Schriften (Munich 1975) 371. 12 Cf. above, pp. 197–8. Fully catalogued in Hollis (1990). Cf. esp. Lloyd-Jones (1990) 131–52, Hollis (1990). Most of the Homeric echoes discussed here have been identified already by these scholars, though often without full analysis. Cf. Hollis (1990) 215.

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The style of Hellenistic epic

(v. 1), which had appeared in a scene in which one warrior kills another by ‘crushing’ his bones with a rock (Iliad 4.521–2: &  'X   ]%  #T &'4 | .! &#%  ‘the cruel rock completely crushed both tendons and bones’). Reminiscence of archaic epic continues in the following verses (2–3): F K') F[] x (  2  %) '   # .'      #Z .  *'% . . . On seeing this, they immediately drew back in fear, and no-one had the courage to fix his eyes on the great man and the monstrous beast.

These verses are indebted to Homer, Il. 19.14–17 0$'  'C . (  E#  ) '   # | .  *%' ) &##C   %.   C;!## b | F L'C) €  T## '$ ! #)  #. ‘All the Myrmidons were overtaken by trembling, no one dared to look directly at them [Achilles’ weapons], and they drew back. But as Achilles saw, so anger entered him more deeply etc.’ Both passages emphasise the isolated greatness of the heroes and the amazement of those around them.   . . .   % ‘trembling [. . .] they started quivering’ suggested the 2  % ‘they drew back all trembling’ of Callimachus (in turn, however, supported by another more precise formal model, Iliad 15.636: e ' T% 2  % ‘and they all drew back trembling’), and '   # | .  *%'  ‘no one dared to look across at them’ suggested the Callimachean '   #| . . . .  *'%. An ancient reader would very naturally have connected this passage of the Iliad with the situation described by Callimachus, for in both passages F L' €)  #. ‘as soon as I/they saw it, I/they immediately etc.’, introduces an expression of the strength and the determination of a hero compared to the amazement of those around them; other instances of this phrase (Iliad 14.294, 20.424) have no comparable contextual link with this passage of the Hecale.15 Verse 4 of this passage opens with the rare conjunction %C V , which is attested before Callimachus only as a variant in two passages of the Odyssey (19.223 = 24.310), where, instead of looking forwards (as in Callimachus and regularly in all the uses of simple %), the reference is to a past fact, and the expression is equivalent to M Š, which is in fact the best attested variant in the manuscripts in these two passages of the Odyssey.16 If he found %C V in Homer, as is probable,17 Callimachus may have 15 16 17

Cf. Matro fr. 1 Olson–Sens = SH 534, v. 89, with Olson–Sens (1999) 124–5. M. van der Valk, Textual Criticism of the Odyssey (Leiden 1949) 50 argues unconvincingly that % C V in Homer has a colloquial colouring, cf. Rengakos (1993) 150–1. Cf. Rengakos (1993) 151.

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imitated the form – here, in Hecale fr. 70.5 and in HArt. 195 – while using it with a different meaning from the one which it must have if it is accepted in the two Homeric passages. This technique implies a rejection of these variants in Homer, where the Callimachean meaning, and hence the form itself, would have been impossible. The same verse closes with an equally Homeric verse-ending, , .$% ‘gave a loud shout’. , &Q% ‘having given a loud shout’ occurs some fifteen times at verse-end in the Iliad (with , .$% also found five times before the trochaic caesura); this phrase was not only used for the battle-cry, but it was specialised for the appeals of commanders to their soldiers,18 and thus it is perfectly at home in a context like that of Callimachus. So, too, the speech in which Theseus asks someone to take a message to reassure his father – a message which does not contain anything particularly heroic, but rather reflects the somewhat bourgeois concern of a solicitous son who does not want his father to be worried – contains at least one markedly Homeric expression, |% b ! +  Š 19 ‘this Theseus is not far away’ (v. 8). This solemn announcement of his victory sounds exactly like a sentence of Telemachus in Od. 2.40–1, | „  ! +  Š  &4[. . .]| p #, i  ‘Old man, the person [. . .] who convened the assembly is not far away’. Telemachus employs deixis to refer to himself, even though he is speaking about himself in the third person; Theseus’ Š  could not be self-deictic, however, because the expression is presented as it will be pronounced by a messenger. This difference could be perceived by the reader as a sort of inversion of the procedure according to which the speeches of messengers in Homer are often all but literal quotations of the message they have been given;20 what is clear, however, is that it acts as a marker of poetic difference and autonomy. From the end of v. 10 the style of the narration rises to a clearly Homeric level. At the end of the line c 'X  ‘and they stopped there’ recalls the four Homeric verse-ends c  – – –   . Then, in preparation for the long simile that follows, Callimachus creates a suitably epic atmosphere by citing the archaic epic, both in the second hemistich of v. 11 – where !Q%  ! Q  Q##| ‘poured a pile of leaves’ harks back to Homer’s !Q% 'C  ! Q  Q##| ‘pulled a pile of leaves over himself’ (Od. 5.487) – and in the final phrase of v. 12, where $##!    ‘leaf-shedding month’ is an explicit quotation of Hesiod 18 19 20

Cf. M. Schmidt, LfgrE s.v. 3. Henceforth an upright divider before or after a Greek quotation indicates the beginning or the end of the verse. Cf. Fantuzzi (2001a) 176–7.

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The style of Hellenistic epic

(fr. 333); so, too, the multiple negative comparison, ‘X does not possess so much . . . nor does Y possess so much . . . as Z’, brings to mind a typically Homeric construction (e.g. Il. 14.394–401, 17.20–3).21 The following fragments appear to come from a long discussion between a raven and another bird, about the danger of being a (

# ‘bearer of bad news’. The first proof of this danger is the story of the ravens who were banned from the Acropolis because they told Athena that the monstrous nature of Erichthonius had been revealed. Erichthonius was the child born when Hephaestus’ sperm came into contact with the earth, after he had unsuccessfully tried to rape Athena; the goddess had done her best to keep the secret by entrusting Erichthonius to the daughters of Cecrops (frs. 70–3). The second illustration was the story of the crow that became black rather than white, because it informed Apollo of the unfaithfulness of Coronis (fr. 74). Even if it is not clear at what point in fr. 70 the first exemplum was introduced, it is certain that in v. 8 the birth of Erichthonius has already been mentioned, and the adverb at the beginning of v. 9 $ ( 'C 1 )  #. ‘in that period, she etc.’ marks the beginning of an important narrative section. The raven’s mythological narrative clearly aims for stylistic heights. The birth of Erichthonius, for example, F '  2C 67% "  n5 ‘how then truly Earth bore to Hephaestus’, is presented with a strongly Homeric ring (cf. Iliad 2.714, 2C C;'4 "  '5 $| ‘the divine woman bore to Admetus’; 2.820, 2C C; !%"  '5C C;' | ‘the divine Aphrodite bore to Anchises’). Nevertheless, the detachment of the author, both from the contents of the myth and from the lofty Homeric tone, is signalled by the relative inappropriateness of that solemn formula for the union from which Erichthonius had been born; 2 in such phrases probably indicates the physical ‘possession’ of the woman by the man, whereas in the case of Earth and Hephaestus the conditions had been highly anomalous. Moreover, '  ‘truly’ is an affirmative adverb commonly used with an ironic connotation;22 though apparently confirming the truth of the raven’s tale, it actually arouses suspicion of it. In the following verse, the aim of Athena’s journey outside Athens, to obtain a ‘protection for her land’, uses an expression, $ ! , which is probably an analogical variant of the epic $ ! ,‘protection for the skin’, used in the same verse-position by Homer (Iliad 4.137) and Hesiod (WD 536); as for the solemn specification that the city of Athens had recently become the possession of the goddess as a result of the vote ‘of Zeus and of the twelve other immortal gods’, the formulaic coupling ‘Zeus . . . and the 21 22

Cf. Hollis (1990) 223. Cf. J. D. Denniston, The Greek Particles (2nd ed., Oxford 1954) 265 and Hollis (1990) 235.

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other immortal gods’ (which occurs a dozen times in Homer) is expanded by the specification (never supplied by Homer)23 of ‘twelve’, thus wittily emphasising the pedantic character of the raven’s erudition. From here until fr. 74.12 we have, together with a series of very fragmentary verses, some ten well-preserved hexameters in which there is only one certain Homerism (a single word)24 ; at the end, therefore, the bird puts aside all lofty epic embellishments, and relates its own ‘raven’s existence’ in its own words, before turning to the story of Apollo and the crow. Together with the emphatic tone of the prophecy which begins in v. 10, the style rises again:    –    ( C i  –   , B  %  )    , ''  Š      i' B$   .M $(M  -# '$% K%  ' (  !$%) '  # &##C v bM v ' v % C -Z c  M) p    Q% _  (# !8  Q  ." &Z ") $(  8 %%   , #, EM ) &

# ! ) ( l  `59 ](%% )    `# Q =' & $    h @%!${ #M" %    Q . Yes, by – for not yet have all the days – yes, by my shrivelled skin, yes by this tree though it is dry, not yet have all the suns disappeared in the West with a broken pole and axle. But it shall be evening or night, or noon, or dawn, when the raven, which now might vie in colour even with swans, or with milk, or with the finest cream of the wave, shall put on a sad plumage, black as pitch, the reward that Phoebus will one day give him for his message, when he learns terrible tidings of Coronis, daughter of Phlegyas, that she has gone with Ischys, the driver of horses. (Callimachus, Hecale fr. 74.10–20 H, trans. Trypanis (adapted))

The oath sworn by the ‘withered tree’ in v. 11 evokes the sceptre over which the harsh warning-oath about the future of the Greeks in the Trojan war had been pronounced by Achilles at Iliad 1.234–5; .M $(M  ‘having broken the axle’ (v. 12) recalls Hesiod, WD 693, .M $(M ‘(if ) you break the axle’. Most memorably, v. 14, '  # &##C v bM v ' v % C -O | c )  #. ‘but an evening, or a night, or an afternoon, or a dawn will come, when etc.’, is a very powerful allusion to the famous prophecy of Achilles about his own death at Iliad 21.111–12, %%  v -O v ' # v % D| )  #. ‘a dawn will come, or an evening, or a 23 24

Cf., however, Ovid, Met. 6.72–3. #Z  ‘oily’, used in fr. 71.3 to describe a gymnasion, suggests that Callimachus favoured  #  ‘I am not shiny’ at Homer, Od. 19.72 (where the majority of manuscripts have '8 B$  ‘I am truly dirty’), cf. Rengakos (1993) 150.

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The style of Hellenistic epic

noontide, when someone etc’. In another gesture of superior pedantry, the raven improves on Homer’s list by adding a fourth period (‘night’), thus making the list of parts of the day more complete. If the Homeric allusion links the ill-fated destiny of crows to that of Achilles, the actual contents of the prophecy are expressed in a language that is not significantly indebted to Homer, and the one Homerism is in fact another piece of philological polemics. In the expression $(  8 %% ‘like dark pitch’ (v. 17), Callimachus uses 4 with the meaning of F, as authorised by Zenodotus in two passages of Homer, Iliad 2.144 and 14.499, and adopted by Antimachus (fr. 156 Matthews); he also alludes to  #(  -Q %% ‘blacker than pitch/blacker like pitch’ (Iliad 4.277), but by substituting -Q by 4 he shows that, besides using 4 in the same way as Zenodotus, he also interprets the Homeric -Q in the sense of ‘in the same way as’, and not as a conjunction introducing the second term of a comparison, as it was explained by some scholars at Iliad 4.277.25 This is a further sign of the raven’s pedantry, but it is also an ironic wink by the learned poet-scholar who shows that his birds share his tastes. The raven’s narration occupied at least eighty verses. The poet’s voice then takes up the tale again and this shift is marked by a stylistic device of great literary complexity: one of the most conspicuous and extensive imitations of Homer found in Callimachus is immediately followed by two rare words which are not only unparalleled in Homer, but remain extremely rare in Greek poetry of any period (vv. 22–4): ''  ' C  ##,  ! []) L:  D#  % 94  . !$) V C   ! 5    # U But they did not sleep for long. Quickly came the frosty dawn-hour, when thieves’ hands no longer go hunting . . .

Verse 22 is a slight modification of the two Homeric verses which conclude the conversation between Odysseus and Eumaeus in Odyssey 15: ''  ' C  ##,  ! ) &## $U L:  C7O D#  ‚)  #. They did not sleep for long, but only for a short time, and suddenly Dawn, with her beautiful throne, arrived . . . (Odyssey 15.494–5) 25

As suggested by Aristarchus’ defence of the usual sense (cf. scholia ad loc.). Apollonius takes a position on the meaning of the conjunction at Arg. 1.269, &'Z  -Q Q, commonly understood as a simile, ‘(weeping) more loudly, like a girl’ etc., but possibly a comparison, ‘more loudly than a girl’ etc.; cf. Homer, Od. 16.216, &'Z  i C *, var. lect. -Q C * ‘more loudly than the birds’, Rengakos (1993) 80–1 and (1994) 96–7.

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Like the raven’s, Eumaeus’ story had lasted late into the night (and for nearly a hundred verses). Callimachus avoids repeating &## $ ‘but only for a short time’, which might have appeared to his taste pleonastic after  ##,  ! , and he brings forward the beginning of the periphrastic indication of time; in this way, he obtains a different structure for the verses, but one which sounds equally Homeric, cf. Odyssey 12.407–8, 1 'C    (# ##,  ! U L:  D# /  # O _$)  #. ‘and she (the ship) did not speed ahead for long: for suddenly the west wind came howling etc.’ If v. 22 varies easily recognisable Homeric patterns, the following verse is radically innovative. For the Homeric formula ‘Dawn with her beautiful throne’ (six times in Homer), Callimachus substitutes % 94  . !$ ‘frosty hour close to dawn’; % 94  ‘frosty’ is a neologism and a Callimachean hapax, based on % 9 ‘frost’, which is a Homeric dis legomenon referring specifically to the cold that precedes the dawn. As for . !$, this is not only very rare (Cypriot, according to Hesychius  922 Latte), but also grammatically ambiguous, because it could be taken as an adjective (cf. Apoll. Rh. Arg. 4.110–11, Q  | . !$), even if Callimachus uses it here as a noun. Long periphrastic indications of time have their roots in Homeric formulas for the time of day or the seasons, but they are, on the whole, as foreign to archaic epic as they are dear to Hellenistic poets.26 Callimachus perhaps acknowledges this when he juxtaposes the very Homeric v. 22 to the marked linguistic innovation (in enjambement) of v. 23, a striking shift which is matched by the sudden intrusion of a typically Hellenistic description of the time of day, drawn from the daily life of humble people, which places en abˆıme the dominant taste of the Hecale as a whole. 3 theocritus The opening section of Idyll 24 (vv.1–63), in which the baby Heracles strangles the serpents sent by Hera to kill him, is well suited to an investigation of Theocritus’ epic style, because of the survival of two previous Pindaric treatments of the same theme, which Theocritus undoubtedly knew (Nem. 1.33–59 and Paean 20, fr. 52u Maehler = S1 Rutherford), and because it is likely that the very amount of previous poetry about Heracles (there were at least three pre-Theocritean hexameter Heracleids)27 threw down a challenge to any Hellenistic poet; Pindar already displays an awareness of a long pre-existing tradition, defining the myth as &!5 #

, ‘ancient 26

Cf. Fantuzzi (1988a) chapter 4.

27

Cf. above, p. 205.

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The style of Hellenistic epic

history’ (Nem. 1.34).28 Moreover, the prominence of the myth in Pindar testifies to its heroic-sublime significance, and this too represented a poetic challenge for a poet of ‘the humble’, like Theocritus. The briefest comparison with both Pindaric versions will reveal the innovative emphasis in Theocritus on the description of the agitated awakening of Alcmene and the rather more sluggish awakening of Amphitryon (vv. 34–53). Moreover, Theocritus is totally silent about the only martial detail of any significance in Nemean 1, namely the attempted armed counter-attack against the serpents by the Theban nobles, who rush to the palace to help the royal family, and by Amphitryon, who bursts, sword in hand, into the room of his two little sons, vv. 51–53: !b 'X ='  &  !# %b V# ' & )  !  ' C C; Q # 

$, (%% <(% > l C) ]M  &% $ . Quickly there came at a run the leaders of the Kadmeians in a body with bronze weapons, and Amphitryon, brandishing in his hand a sword bare of its scabbard, arrived smitten with keen anguish. (Pindar, Nemean 1.51–53, trans. Braswell)

In place of this decidedly epic clash, in Theocritus it is anxious servants who burst into the boys’ room with lamps in their hands (vv. 52–3)29 , while Amphitryon concerns himself with getting the doors open in the dark and never actually brandishes the sword with which he has just equipped himself in a scene which owes more to scenes of epic ‘awakening’30 than to traditional arming scenes. No human weapons could, in any case, have prevailed against Hera’s serpents, only the divine strength of Heracles. In Nemean 1 the moment of greatest interest was the strangling of the serpents by Heracles: . . .  ' C ] – , X .   ()  T  'X   (!) '%%5% 'b ! (: &Q  ! % +5 A. & ! 'X !  :$!  & $%   # &( . 28

29 30

On the meaning of the verb in Pindar’s &!5 ] Q #

, (Nem. 1.34), cf. G. A. Loscalzo, QUCC 58 (1988) 72, B. K. Braswell, A Commentary on Pindar, Nemean One (Fribourg 1992) 57. The phrase used in v. 52 to indicate the movements of these servants (e ' C L:   ) reworks a Homeric description of the clumsy, irregular movements of a herd of oxen (Il. 18.525). Cf. above, p. 203.

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But he lifted his head up straight and for the first time made trial of battle seizing the two snakes by the neck with both his inescapable hands. As they were being throttled time caused them to breathe out their life from their monstrous bodies. (Pindar, Nemean 1.43–7, trans. Braswell)

Theocritus, however, deals rapidly with the strangling (vv. 26–9), and almost rationalises Heracles’ success, rather than emphasising his heroism, by the quasi-didactic specification of vv. 28–9, 'M(  ($ )  ( #$   $  | # ] %% ‘taking them by the throat, where the deadly venom of poisonous snakes is situated’. This reworks the detailed descriptions of the Iliad of the point on the body where a warrior is struck, but it also suggests that the success of Heracles was at least partly due to a particular grip which neutralised the venomous bite of the serpents:31 it was not just a question of strength – who knows how things would have gone if the child had taken hold of the serpents at some other point . . .? At the thematic level, then, Theocritus both blurs the superhuman elements of this tale of extraordinary, precocious heroism and exaggerates the all too human reactions of the characters; as far as possible, this heroic tale becomes a story of everyday domestic reality.32 Theocritus’ allusions to archaic epic reinforce this narrative strategy, for these are used to suggest, with subtle irony, the differences between the archaic heroic world and the less heroic attitudes and situations of Theocritus’ characters, other than Heracles and his extraordinary feat. Thus, for example, weapons and armour had been at the heart of traditional epic, but in Idyll 24 the only serious ‘arms’ are Heracles’ hands, whereas traditional arms, and the motifs connected with them, figure in entirely nontraditional ways; there is an almost programmatic instance at the start of the poem.33 The shield taken from Pterelaus by Amphitryon is relegated to the rˆole of a cradle where Alcmene lays Heracles and Iphicles down to sleep: !#      &%')  J  #($ C; Q #, V# & %Q# $%  %   She laid them down in the bronze shield, the fine piece of armour that Amphitryon had taken from Pterelaus when he fell. (Theocritus 24.4–5) 31 32 33

For the analogous case of the reasons for Europa’s dream in Moschus cf. above, p. 218. Cf. above, pp. 206–7. For Ovid’s exploitation of the idea of ‘improper’ arms cf. M. Labate: ‘Un altro Omero: scene di battaglia nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio’ in Metamorfosi (Proceedings of the Conv. Internaz. di Studi, Sulmona 1997) 142–65 and ‘Tra Omero e Virgilio: strategie epiche ovidiane’ in Posthomerica II (Genoa 2000) 19–39.

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That Heracles and Iphicles sleep in a shield was not attested by Pindar, and might be Theocritus’ own idea. The shield may well have Ptolemaic significance34 and is certainly related to Heracles’ remarkable character, but it is also a ‘relic of the heroic sphere’,35 here downgraded to a rather homely function. Moreover, Theocritus will also be alluding to the beginning of another famous poem about Heracles, the pseudo-Hesiodic Aspis, most of which is a description of the dread decoration on the shield used by Heracles against Cycnus. Many aspects of this late archaic poem – its length, its taste for the elaborately decorative and the marvellous, a final aition – were such as to arouse great interest among Hellenistic writers, and Theocritus may have seen his poem as somehow complementary to it. The Aspis had begun, like Idyll 24, with the success of Amphitryon against the Taphians/Teleboans led by Pterelaus (vv. 14–27), but then moved to events presupposed, but completely omitted, in Theocritus’ poem – the passion of Zeus for Alcmena, their night of lovemaking, the return of Amphitryon, and the conception of two brothers with different fathers (vv. 27–56); moreover, the Aspis concerned a thoroughly traditional duel of Heracles and was largely dedicated to the description of his armour, with the ekphrasis of the shield occupying almost half the poem. The Aspis thus functions as an ‘avoided model’, underlining the fact that Theocritus was overturning, through a kind of aposiopesis of ekphrasis, the ekphrastic grandeur of Pseudo-Hesiod. The description of the shield-cradle as a #, V# ‘fine piece of armour’ both evokes and, through its very concision, denies the possibility of ekphrasis.36 Epic arms usually have a special history or reputation, which is often related by the poet when the arms are first mentioned, and such descriptions sometimes begin halfway through the verse, as with Theocritus’ shield; we may think of Nestor’s shield in Iliad 8.192–3, the breastplate that Cinyras had given to Agamemnon in Iliad 11.19–28, the sword that Euryalus gives to Odysseus in Odyssey 8.403–5, or – in a structure very like Theocritus’ – the breastplate that Achilles gives to Eumelos in Iliad 23.560–2, 'Z% e Z) , C;% 5 &Q | !(# )  #. ‘I will give him the bronze breastplate that I took from Asteropaeus, etc.’ The numerous dedications in temples of panoplies demonstrate that their status as trophies plundered on the battlefield gave such arms a unique prestige and 34 36

35 As Effe (1978) 55 calls it. Cf. above, pp. 201–2. Cf. above, pp. 203–4, for other ‘ekphrastic possibilities’ in this poem. In Plautus’ Amphitruo, considerable importance is attached to the fact that Amphitryon obtained, as booty from Pterelaus, a gold cup (vv. 260–1, 41819, 760–97), cf. Athen. 11.498c, and at Thebes there was a tripod, dedicated in a temple, which was said to be part of the spoils that Amphitryon took from the Teleboans (cf. Herodotus 5.59). It is thus possible that both Theocritus and Plautus reflect a lost work which contained an ekphrasis of one or more of the objects taken by Amphitryon from Pterelaus.

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importance.37 Pride of place among the arms dedicated to celebrate a victory was most frequently given to the shield, perhaps because its possession demonstrated the final defeat of the enemy. A hoplite was loath to give up his shield, as is confirmed by the shame that fell upon the B:% ‘shield-abandoner’, often mentioned in ancient comedy and oratory,38 and by the fact that the poetic topos of the abandonment of the shield has often to be justified by the statement that only thus could the poet save his life;39 the two handles inside the hoplite’s shield guaranteed indeed that the soldier whose shield was taken was either dead or captured.40 Thus, after ‘the shield which . . .’ (v. 4) we expect a glorious story like, for example, that of the shield given to Eumelos by Achilles; moreover,  %   ‘having fallen’ has, of course, many Iliadic parallels (e.g. 3.289, 8.476, 11.250, 15.427–8∼16.499–500),41 the last two of which explicitly connect death in battle with the plundering of arms. Besides reports of Amphitryon’s expedition against the Taphians which do not appear to indicate that his victory was obtained in an unconventional manner,42 there also existed a different version,43 perhaps referred to in Callimachus’ ‘Victoria Berenices’ (above pp. 83–5),44 according to which the body of Pterelaus, the son of Poseidon, was invulnerable, but for one golden lock of hair, on which his life depended; he could therefore not be defeated in a duel, but the lock was snipped off by his daughter Comaetho, who had fallen in love with Amphitryon or one of his men, a certain Cephalus, and thus was Pterelaus’ fate sealed.45 In this version, 37 38 39

40 41 42

43

44

45

Cf. A. H. Jackson, ‘Hoplites and the Gods: the Dedication of Captured Arms and Armour’, in V. D. Hanson (ed.), Hoplites: the Classical Greek Battle Experience (London–New York 1991) 230. Cf. Th. Schwertfeger, ‘Der Schild des Archilochos’, Chiron 12 (1982) 254–80. Cf. e.g. Archilochus, IEG 5 and perhaps also 139 (cf. A. Kerkhecker, ZPE 111 (1996) 26); Alcaeus fr. 428 Voigt; Anacreon, PMG 381; Aristophanes, Wasps 592 and Peace 1186; Hor., Carm. 2.7.9–10. On this topos cf. F. De Martino, ‘Scudi a rendere’, AION (filol.-lett.) 12 (1990) 45–64. Cf. R. Lonis, Guerre et religion en Gr`ece a` l’´epoque classique (Paris 1979) 158–60. Cf. Gutzwiller (1981) 12. Cf. [Hes.], Aspis 15–27; Pherecydes, FGrHist 3F13; Pindar, Nem. 10.14–15; Hdt. 5.59.; Eur., HF 1078– 80; Strabo 10.2.24; Pausanias 1.37.6. There is no sign in these texts that Amphitryon’s victory over Pterelaus was in any way unusual; they are, however, extremely brief reports. Cf. Lycophron, Alex. 933–4, Euphorion, SH 415.ii.15–17, [Apollodorus] 2.4.7, and SH 964.11–12. This last passage is usually considered to belong to the late Hellenistic-Roman period (thus e.g. Lloyd-Jones and Parsons), but it might have been a part of the Leontion of Hermesianax, cf. J. L. Butrica, ‘Hellenistic Erotic Elegy: The Evidence of the Papyri’, PLLS 9 (1996) 297–322, pp. 304–5 and 318 n. 24. SH 257.8 undoubtedly refers to the victory of Amphitryon over the Taphians, and E. Livrea, Gnomon 57 (1985) 593 has pointed out that the feminine participle   5% in this verse might refer to Comaetho, who was changed into a bird after causing her father’s death. The only source that quotes this myth at length, [Apollodorus], Bibl. 2.4.7, makes clear that the death of Pterelaus was caused by Comaetho, and that it was only after this that Amphitryon took possession of the islands (J  #($ # $ 4%  ! Z%   4%$ ‘after the death of Pterelaus, Amphitryon subjugated the islands’, cf. Theocr. 24.4–5).

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Pterelaus certainly ‘fell’, but not in a duel with Amphitryon, who will have simply plundered his body once he was dead or weakened by the action of Comaetho. We do not know how early this alternative version was, but Lycophron alludes briefly to ‘towers of Comaetho’, and it is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that the version with Comaetho was familiar before Lycophron. If Theocritus knew, and expected his readers to know, this alternative version, then & %Q# $% ‘plundered’ (v. 5) is ironically ambiguous: was the shield taken in battle, or merely stripped from a dying or dead man by Amphitryon, taking advantage of Comaetho’s infatuation for him? With this reading, Theocritus’ refusal to be explicit about the different paternity of the two boys (vv. 1–2) would fit the same ironic strategy. Just as & %Q# $% in v. 5 may, but need not, refer to spoils taken after a heroic duel, so also $   Z  used to describe Iphicles in v. 2 reminds us, not just of the boys’ different birthdays, but also of the fact that Alcmena slept with Zeus and Amphitryon on consecutive nights (cf. [Apollodorus] 2.4.8); Heracles and Iphicles would both appear from the text to be sons of Amphitryon, but all readers knew that this was not the case, and Theocritus finds subtle ways to remind them. The opening of the poem thus establishes alternative stories, in which the ‘natural’ meaning of the text is destabilised by a more subversive version: we may believe that the shield was booty taken by Amphitryon in a heroic duel and that the two babies are his sons, but we are tempted by the thought that the shield was not taken in normal fighting and only one of the babies is Amphitryon’s son.46 The lullaby of vv. 7–9 also combines the everyday and ‘realistic’ – the rhythmical repetition and the cumulative synonyms may be presumed typical of such songs – with Homeric memories which raise the tonal level, or rather establish a witty alternation of tones: it is, after all, a lullaby sung by Alcmena, and in ‘heroic’ hexameters . . . Stroking the babies’ heads while singing a lullaby was no doubt the behaviour of any ‘real’ mother, but it is unlikely that an ancient reader, faced with the sequence /  'X

$  #T $4%  'U [' C)  #. ‘touching her children’s heads, the woman said: “Sleep,” etc.’, would not recall the typical Homeric dream-scene, as at Iliad 2.59–60 %  'C .C 2X  #   ,    U| “ [' )  #.”’ ‘He [the god Oneiros] stood over my head 46

At Plautus, Amph. 252 Sosia states ipsusque Amphitruo regem Pterelam sua obtruncavit manu ‘and Amphitryon personally killed King Pterelaus, with his own hands’, thus turning Amphitryon into a Roman general deserving of the spolia opima. It is at least tempting to believe that Plautus knew of the alternative version, which would then colour Sosia’s parodically exaggerated account. Sosia’s description of the Teleboan troops nimis pulcris armis praeditae (v. 218) may perhaps be indebted to Theocritus (cf. v. 5 #, V#): ‘beautiful’ is not a common epithet for arms, either in Greek or in Latin poetry. For a different interpretation cf. G. Pascucci, Scritti scelti (Florence 1983) 554–5 n. 1, who sees a topos of moralistic historiography – excessive riches hide cowardice.

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and addressed me: “You are sleeping . . .” ’ (cf. Iliad 23.68–9). Of particular interest is the variation at Odyssey 23.4–5: %  'C .C 2X  #   ,    U | “  ) J #  ) # )  #.” ‘[Eurycleia] stood over her head and said to her: “Wake up, Penelope, dear daughter, etc.”’47 , where the speaker is a human being trying to wake a sleeper up; Eurycleia’s jussive ‘wake up’ is analogous to, and reversed by, Alcmena’s ‘Sleep . . .’ So, too, the end of Alcmena’s lullaby is again decidedly Homeric: & l% ‘may you arrive at the dawn’ shows a striking use of the simple accusative for a figurative movement to a place, the only parallels for which are two passages of the Odyssey, both of which have something in common with Alcmena’s wish. In Odyssey 19.319, the subjunctive - l  ‘may he arrive at dawn’ expresses, exactly as in Theocritus, the temporal limit of the long, sweet sleep that the maids must allow the disguised Odysseus; Odyssey 17.497,  .  Q  Q - l  ‘none of these would arrive at dawn with her beautiful throne’, also has the character of a wish, though a negative one, for it expresses the curse of the pantrymaid in Odysseus’ house, who hopes that the life of the suitors will be short. Moreover, Alcmena’s  % [ ‘sleep from which one awakes’ carefully exorcises the potentially disastrous implications of the Homeric dis legomenon 4   ‘without waking up’, which is applied to ‘sleep’ in Odyssey 13.80 (cf. also 13.74, and HHom. Aphr. 178).48 The tone remains strongly Homeric also immediately after the lullaby: F  picks up a very frequent Homeric formula, used above all for female characters;49 %(   ‘large shield’ recurs five times in Homer, always at this same point in the line, and in three of these cases the reference is to the Shield of Achilles, the subject of the most famous example of that ekphrasis which Theocritus denies to Amphitryon’s shield;50 finally, b 'C E#  [PAnt.: #9C codd.] [ might recall [ E# in Iliad 22.502,51 describing the very moment when the infant son of Hector, Astyanax, fell asleep in the arms of his nurse.52 47 48 49 50 51 52

Other examples: Od. 4.803–4, 20.32–3, Il. 24.682–3. Much less likely is an echo (cf. Gow ad loc.) of HHom. 5.27, where Aphrodite swears /:  #   . The use of 4   for the sleep of death is not attested before the beginning of the first century bc ([Moschus], Bion. Ep. 104). o  six times; o (  once (Il.) and o (  once (Od.). Apollonius too uses the phrase only once, again in the female gender and at the beginning of the line (2.291). Cf. Il. 18.478, 609, 19.373; at 16.136 the phrase is used of Achilles’ earlier shield, the one which Patroclus lost, and at 3.335 of the shield of Paris. This is uncertain, given the existence of other examples of this and related phrases, cf. Od. 9.372–3, 15.7 19.511, 20.52, Il. 10.192–3, 24.4–5. #9 C would make this allusive suggestion much less probable, but it is likely to be a trivialisation created by the very common use of [ with #9( ; for a (not very convincing) defence of the text of the manuscripts, cf. H. White ad loc.

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The opening of the lullaby itself, however, contrasts with the epicisms surrounding it. 9 is not a common word in epic poetry, and on its only appearance in archaic epic (Iliad 23.266) the meaning was not ‘child’ but ‘embryo’ (of a horse), a difference from later ordinary usage which was already noted by the scholia. As ‘child’, 9 was by the time of Theocritus widely used in common language,53 and its colloquial character made it appropriate for the domestic nature of the scene. Nevertheless, in this sense it first appears in three lyric texts of the early fifth century, which might have attracted Theocritus both because lyric was the most natural form for a lullaby54 and because two of the passages in question are contextually relevant. The earliest attestation is in the famous poem by Simonides about Danae adrift with Perseus on the waves (PMG 543); the mother concludes her apostrophe to her baby with # 'C) Š' 9 ‘I beg you: sleep on, child’ (v. 21),55 which is then followed by 2'  'X   ) 2'  'C .    ‘let the sea sleep, let the boundless suffering sleep’, with the same verbal anaphora as in vv. 7–8 of Idyll 24. There are also parallels of content: the lullaby in Simonides, like that in Theocritus, introduces a night which looks as though it will bring the baby’s death, but of course it does not;56 Perseus, like Heracles, is destined to have a glorious future as a killer of monsters; neither Danae nor Alcmena knew that Zeus was the father of her child; both Perseus and Heracles have close links to the dynasty of the Ptolemies.57 After Simonides, 9 reappears in two passages of Pindar, and one of these is Paean 20 concerning Heracles and the snakes, where Heracles is 9 $   ‘the child of heavenly Zeus’ (v. 9). When the story of the snakes begins, we seem to be entering an ‘epic’ episode, though this too is to prove tonally more complicated than at first appears. The structure } ' . . . T ‘when . . . then’ (vv. 11–13) suggests epic, and the image of the Bear that [ . . .] %   CS  C   ‘rotates opposite Orion’ (vv. 12–13) recalls Iliad 18.487–8, …  C, [. . .] w C   %    C CS ' Q  ‘the Bear that rotates at the same point, and keeps its eye on Orion’ (= Odyssey 5.273–4). 53 54 56

57

Cf. Aristophanes of Byzantium fr. 37 Slater. 55 Cf. Gutzwiller (1981) 11. Cf. I Waern, ‘Greek Lullabies’, Eranos 58 (1960) 1–2. According to O. Vox, ‘Lo scudo di Eraclino’, Aion (filol.-lett.) 12 (1990) 6–7, as Alcmena puts her children in a shield-cradle to sleep, it almost seems as if she is not putting them to bed, but placing them in a tomb, repeating the gesture of the mothers of Sparta, who gave a shield to their sons leaving for the war, telling them to come back ‘either with it, or on it’; in so doing, it almost seems that Alcmena intends to expose them, and thus ‘she repeats, albeit at a symbolic level, that exposure that their forefather Perseus had suffered in the ark, together with his mother’. Cf. Hunter (1996b) 26–7 and above, p. 202.

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This Homeric passage comes of course from the ekphrasis of Achilles’ shield, and the constellations of that ekphrasis became so memorable as to be emblematic of the whole, as in Anacreontea 4 ‘work your silver, Hephaestus, but for me, you must make not a panoply, but rather a cup as deep as possible. And do not put the stars, or the Bear, or sad Orion on it: what do I care about the Pleiades, or Bootes? Put some vines and bunches of grapes on it’. Theocritus specifies that the Bear can be seen  'Q% ‘towards sunset’ (v. 11), whereas the Homeric passage (v. 489) defined the Bear as ‘the only one that never takes part in the Ocean’s washing’, that is to say, that never goes below the horizon; Theocritus thus invites the reader to understand that it was not a question of a real setting ('Q%) – because, as Homer says with truth, the Great Bear never disappears over the Mediterranean sea – but that the Bear was simply in a particularly low position above the horizon.58 The allusion to the Iliad further evokes the possibility of that ekphrasis which Theocritus refuses, because in his poem the stars are closely connected with the main narrative and not simply part of a ‘digressive’ ekphrasis; Theocritus’ precise details are intended to indicate a very specific time and period of the year during which the serpents’ attack takes place.59 Theocritus in fact transforms Homer’s ekphrastic image into a descriptive indication of the time of day, of a kind which was quite foreign to Homer; such descriptions, familiar also in Apollonius, offer a narrative pause which arouses the reader’s attention, warning him that something particularly important is about to happen.60 A further glance at epic ekphrasis may be seen in $(  (v. 14). Before Theocritus, both prose and poetry seem to have used this adjective almost exclusively for ‘ekphrastic’ serpents,61 that is to say for those made of Q (a sort of blueish glaze); such creatures are found on the breastplate of Agamemnon in Iliad 11.26, on the strap of his shield in Iliad 11.39, and on the shield of Heracles in [Hesiod] Aspis 166–7. In all three cases, as in Theocritus, $(  appears in an emphatic position at the beginning of the verse, and the ‘serpents’ 58

59

60 61

The Homeric scholia show that it was well understood that the Great Bear never disappears from the sky at the latitude of the Mediterranean. A greater puzzle was what Homer meant by saying that the Bear was the ‘only’ such constellation, for there were other 8 'Q , cf. Massimilla (1996) on Callim. fr. 19.10. Precise only for the ancients, as modern reckonings vary between February (Gow) and October (White); contrast Anacreontea 33: ‘at the midnight hour, when the Bear already rotates beside the hand of Bootes, etc.’, which does not specify the position of Orion. For some hypotheses about why Theocritus may have wanted to be so precise about the period of the year when the serpents attacked the infant Heracles, cf. Gow ad loc. and above, p. 204. Cf. above, p. 255. Cf., however, Posidippus 57.3 AB for the $(  #' ‘coat of bluish scales’ of a (real) cobra; for post-Theocritean instances cf. Anacreontea 17.11 and Nicander, Th. 438, 729.

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are always designated by the term '( . Here, too, then, Theocritus reminds us that his '(  $(  had precedents in archaic ekphrasis, but he has integrated them into the body of his narration. Echoes of archaic epic texts litter the narrative of the serpents’ attack, establishing a series of high analogies or, more commonly, ironic differences between Homeric heroes and the protagonists of Theocritus. The analogies, however, concern the snakes, not Heracles; this is not a generic pursuit of irony, or a ‘destruction of the myth’, but part of a set of textual strategies which contribute to the effect of a ‘realistic’ description of an utterly ‘unrealistic’ myth.62 Both the menacing threat of the serpents and their character as agents sent by a divinity are suggested by „%   # b '  ‘pushed towards the high threshold’ (v. 15, the subject is Hera, the object the serpents), which is based on two Homeric models. „%   (with anastrophic tmesis) is used once in the Iliad and once in the Odyssey for the divine action of ‘raising up’ something against men; at Iliad 9.539 it is the angry Artemis who unleashes a boar on the fields of Oeneus, and at Odyssey 12.313 Zeus triggers a terrible storm at sea. In modifying these models, Theocritus may have been influenced by the pattern of Odyssey 22.2, }#  'C    '  ‘he [Odysseus] jumped on to the wide threshold’, at the very beginning of the most famous ‘domestic slaughter’ in Greek poetry, the killing of the suitors; the parallel between Odysseus’ revenge and the attempted revenge of Hera is marked by the ‘Odyssean’ epithet #$4! (v. 13) applied to the goddess, but otherwise very rare for divinities. The gleaming eyes of the serpents, &C ]# 'X ,  | ! #( % ‘a sinister fire flashed from their eyes as they advanced’ (vv. 18–19), perhaps recalls the eyes of the terrible boar to which Idomeneus is compared at Iliad 13.474, ]#O 'C . e $ #(  ‘truly his eyes flashed with fire’. Unlike Homer’s fearful boars, or Odysseus about to slaughter the suitors, Hera’s serpents are to be nonchalantly exterminated by a child, and so the Homeric allusions are coloured by gentle humour. In Pindar, it was the heroic child himself whose eyes flashed (Paean 20.13, ]](  . %# '%  ‘a gleam rotated out from his eyes’). The reactions of the terrified Iphicles also make humorous use of heroic allusion. Thus, for example, the warrior who protects himself with his shield usually looks at his enemy from over the edge of the shield itself, in order to frighten him with his fierce gaze (cf. e.g. [Hes.] Aspis 24) or to take 62

On the poetics underlying the ‘realistic’ presentation of highly unrealistic contents, cf. above, p. 206–7.

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aim (cf. e.g. Euripides, Phoenissae 1384–5). In the same way, Iphicles ‘caught sight of the evil beasts over the curved edge of the shield (#$ 2X %( ) and saw their merciless fangs’ (vv. 23–4) – though Iphicles is not holding the shield, but lying inside it, and he is certainly not taking aim! His shout in v. 23, i  V C b .$%  ‘immediately he gave a shout’ repeats and overturns the Homeric formula , .$% : the Iliadic battle-cry or exhortation to fight63 becomes the sudden cry of fear of an infant. So too, when Alcmena asks her husband (v. 37)  &  '   Z  V%% &$ 5, ‘Can’t you hear the younger child screaming?’, &$  had been typically used for the battle-cry of Homer’s heroes.64 A similar technique is used with Iphicles’ parents. Alcmena’s worried X

 ' K%!  ]  ‘a troubling fear grips me’ (v. 35) overturns the proud denial of Diomedes in Iliad 5.817, 3    ' K%!  &4 3   A ‘neither base fear nor any anxiety inhibits me’ (cf. also Idomeneus at Iliad 13.224–5); the synonyms ' and A are not found together in poetry, apart from in these three passages.65 Diomedes is indeed likely the point of comparison here, for Alcmena’s urgent address to her husband (vv. 35–7) also echoes the words with which Nestor had woken Diomedes in another famous night scene of epic poetry, the agonising vigil of the Greeks in Iliad 10 (  ) s$' $eU  Q! [ & 5U |  &   #. ‘Wake up, son of Tydeus! Why do you sleep all night? Do you not hear . . .?’ vv. 159–60). As for Amphitryon, the humour of his clumsy groping in the dark is sharpened by the detail that his sword was ‘always hanging’ on a nail over his bed (vv. 43–4); is this so that it would be ‘always’ ready in case of need, or because Amphitryon made little use of it? *X .  (v. 43) is a Homeric clausula used in Iliad 3.272 and 19.253 to refer to a knife ((!) which always hung, not in a bedroom, but next to the sword worn by Agamemnon on the battlefield.66 These Homeric allusions also connect events in the palace of Amphitryon with the representation of daily life in the Odyssey; here it is similarity to, not difference from, the Homeric model which is suggested, as though Theocritus is acknowledging that his nocturnal ‘mime’ had roots in the illustrious tradition of archaic epic poetry. Thus, for example, the eery 63 64 65

66

Cf. above, p. 251. For the mixed stylistic level of v. 50, where this verb reappears, cf. above pp. 209–10. Even if this combination of ' and A was probably idiomatic in later everyday language (cf. Plut., Virt. Mor. 444c3; Flav. Jos., Bell. Iud. 7.165; Appian, BC 2.69 and 2.104), a Homeric echo is guaranteed in Theocritus by the added reuse of K%! . Elsewhere in the Iliad the place where a sword was to be hung was not the bedroom wall, but at a warrior’s side: cf. 22.306–7 (%  ]Mb) | e 2, #(      % 9  ‘his sharp sword, which always hung, large and heavy, at his side’.

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divine light of vv. 21–2 may recall67 the divine light provided by Athena to illuminate the transfer of arms by Odysseus and Telemachus in Book 19 of the Odyssey, vv. 31–40; if so, Alcmena’s words, ‘Can’t you see that the walls are all illuminated as if it were daybreak? And yet it is dead of night! There’s something strange in the house, my husband’ (vv. 38–40), would be analogous to those of Telemachus, ‘Father, this is a great miracle that I can see with my eyes: the walls of the house, the beautiful arches, the pine-wood beams, [. . .] all look as if there were a fire burning inside them. There is a god in there’ (Od. 19.36–40). The presence of light is, of course, an ubiquitous marker of the divine (cf. e.g. HHom. Dem. 188–9, Eur. Bacch. 1083),68 and so this allusion should not be regarded as certain. Less doubt surrounds the case of the ‘Phoenician woman whose bed is close to the millstone’ (v. 51) who first hears Amphitryon’s call and who wakes the other servants (cf. above p. 208). The epithet with which she calls her fellow-servants, #% , was extremely common of Odysseus, but is rare outside the Odyssey,69 and it is the Odyssey which is, of course, in play here. At 20.98–121, Odysseus had asked for confirmation of divine support and Zeus had sent a clap of thunder; this was heard and understood by a servant-girl in charge of the millstone (&# ), who was C . e Q# l   # ‘where the millstones of the shepherd of peoples were situated’(v. 106) and the only servant still awake as the rest slept. Theocritus offers us another &#  who stays awake in another house pervaded by an atmosphere of magic and miracle. 4 apollonius rhodius The Argonautica, the only extant third-century epic, provides the most significant example of the paired Hellenistic techniques of analogical variation from the Homeric model, and partial dissimulation of that debt. Apollonius uses repetition with great care, both internal, ‘quasi-formulaic’ repetition, and repetition of Homer or of archaic epic more generally, and it is variety, not faithfulness, which is sought.70 Thus, for example, there are only two ‘formulas’ for the Argonauts as a group which occupy the whole of a hemistich, and only two examples of each of these: &' 1Z  5 % # (1.970) | &'. 1.  5 % # (2.1091) for the first half of the verse up to the bucolic caesura (with a shorter variant up to the trochaic 67 70

68 Cf. Dover (1971) on v. 21f. As suggested by Gow on v. 22. For what follows cf. Fantuzzi (2001a).

69

Cf. above, p. 209, n. 80.

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caesura: 1Z  V# 3.1166), and &% 4 % # &' (2.458, 2.958) or &% 4  V# (1.109) for the second half of the verse. For the central part of the verse, from A1 or A2 71 to the bucolic diaeresis, there is a group of ‘flexible’ variations of these phrases, all different from one another: &% 4 &' % # (3.1006), 1 &'  (1.548: var. lect. ) and &%  ,72 (  (4.1773). The same discretion is found in terms of ‘external’ formularity, that is to say, imitation of archaic epic: only the genitive &' 1Z at the beginning of the verse (1.970, 2.1091) exactly repeats an archaic pattern (four times in the Odyssey, and four times in Hesiod), but then the noun that accompanies this genitive is a non-Homeric word, % #, as the Homeric 1  &' (Iliad 12.23) is formally varied in the Apollonian 1 &'  (1.548). The Golden Fleece occurs fifteen times in the Argonautica, and it is not easy to imagine that poetic language offered many different ways to say ‘fleece’; moreover, ‘golden’ was only !Q% (). Apollonius succeeds, however, in achieving a level of internal formulaic expression that avoids repetition as far as possible, by making use not only of a careful alternation between  ‘fleece’ and ' ‘skin’ (the former eight times, the latter seven times) and between !Q%  (eleven times) and !Q%  (four times), but also of hyperbaton:  and ' are regularly separated from their adjective.73 Hyperbaton is, in fact, an important weapon in Apollonius’ avoidance, and echoing, of a formulaic style; in the proem of the first book, out of five noun + adjective or noun + apposition combinations, four are found in hyperbaton, and one in enjambement. Apart from expressions introducing direct speech,74 the only phrase which approaches the frequency and fixedness of a Homeric formula is  4 ‘swift ship’ (seven times), though it behaves more like a ‘movable formula’, as defined by Hainsworth. In three cases, it takes the form  4 at the beginning of the line, but in all other cases it occupies different positions and/or is divided by hyperbaton. Moreover, Apollonius’ favoured verse-initial position for this ‘formula’ is found only once in the Iliad and once in the Odyssey (compared with the thirty or so occurrences of  4 at other points in 71 72 73 74

For the structural scheme of the hexameter, cf. above, p. 36, n. 143. I accept Fr¨ankel’s emendation of the transmitted &% 4, which is however defended by Livrea ad loc. !Q%  [. . .]  or  [. . .] !Q% (): 1.4, 2.1193, 3.13, 4.162, 4.341, 4.439, 4.1035, 4.1142; !Q% () ' [. . .] or ' [. . .] !Q% : 1.889, 2.1224, 3.88, 3.180, 3.404, 4.87, 4.1319. For which cf. Fantuzzi (1988a) 65–85.

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the line), almost as if Apollonius deliberately avoids combining an ‘internal formula’ with the echo of a well-established Homeric ‘external formula’.75 The same may be said for the most frequent expression for ‘swift feet’, 1.539, 5% (trochaic caesura) . . .  ' %% (end of line), and 2.428 (= 4.79), b (penthemimeral caesura) . . .  ' (bucolic diaeresis), which never use either the order or the metrical position of either of the two terms in the Homeric formula (%)% 5% (six times in the Iliad after a penthemimeral or trochaic caesura). In both cases, then, the echo of words previously used by Homer is not combined with a noticeable echo of their Homeric structure. Apollonius’ para-formulaic style, which satisfies both an aesthetics of regularity based on repetition and echo effects and the need to avoid Homeric heaviness, is based on an alternation between internal and external formulas; in the following cases, repetition never involves more than two elements. The phrase |# %    ‘with sails unfurled’ in 4.299 and 4.1623, for example, is found in a different position in 4.1229–30 (  % | # %), and in a different case, though in the same position, in 2.903 (|#   ): this expression, which is never attested before Apollonius, and is not borrowed from everyday language, is subsequently found only in hexametric poetry, where it might be an imitation of Apollonius.76 The same may be said for the case of 1.967 $# C # | ∼ 1.1124 $# # |,‘they took care of the sacrifices’, where the noun $# ‘activity of sacrificing’ is attested for the first time in Apollonius (and the corresponding verb only from Aeschylus onwards). Another example is the purely and typically Apollonian    (2.225) ‘an effective expedient’, with its positional and case variations in 2.1050, 2.1068, and 3.184, and a verbal variant,   # ‘cunning expedient’ in 3.781 and 3.912, where the phrase occupies different positions in the two verses; in Homer, both  and # referred only to people or divinities (though Hesiod, WD 67 has # D ‘cunning character’). 9(# 

 | C 7 4 ‘the daughter of the morning sent light’at 3.823–4 is varied by C 7O - 8 

 9(# ‘Dawn, daughter of the morning, sent light’ at 4.981; the phrase as a whole has no precedent, and 

 appears in archaic epic only in HHom. Dem. 278.  #  75

76

The extreme rarity in Homer of the only position which Apollonius uses as many as three times escaped the attention of M. Parry, The Making of Homeric Verse (Oxford 1971) 29, who therefore underestimated the formularity of the phrase in Apollonius. Oppian, Hal. 1.222; Greg. Naz., Carm. mor., PG xxxvii, col. 543.10 and de se ipso, ibid. col. 1376.1; Nonnus, Dion. 36.409; Iohann. Geom., PG cvi, col. 950, carm. 108. Apart from these texts (and the glosses on the first of them), the expression is found only in Byzantine scholia on Hesiod, WD 169 (p. 121 Gainsford).

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]'   ‘full of sharp teeth’ describes Jason’s helmet in his fight against the bulls (3.1281, 1321), and this unusual rˆole for a helmet is marked by the use of  ; the meaning ‘sharp’ is foreign to Homer, who uses the word only in the sense ‘swift’. A final example in this category is . "  .$' ‘silent and speechless’ before the trochaic caesura at 3.503, 967, and 4.693; .$' here probably functions as an explanatory gloss, by means of which Apollonius assumed a position on the disputed Homeric .  versus . " ‘in silence’ (the former to be interpreted as an adverb, the latter as an adjective).77 Beyond these scattered examples, the two levels of repetition, external (allusion) and internal (reuse of internal formulas), tend not to coincide, and the effect is the avoidance of accumulation. In particular, there are many cases in which the first time (or the first few times) that a phrase from archaic epic enters the Argonautica, it carries with it an allusion to its original context (Homeric or Hesiodic), but in subsequent reuses it has become an organic element of Apollonian diction, without alluding to any earlier Homeric or Apollonian instance.78 This technique may be readily illustrated from the opening verses of the epic. 2%Q ‘advice’ occurs twice in Homer, in the form 2%Q"% C;4 ‘thanks to the advice of Athena’ (Il. 15.412, Od. 16.233); the first two occurrences in Apollonius refer to advice given once again by Athene (1.19, 112), but in three further passages there is no connection with the goddess (1.367, 2.1146, 3.1246). In 1.20–2, Apollonius proclaims the subject of his poem: $% | '#!  $ /#, V%% C  M | #_   ‘I would like to tell [. . .] both of the pathways over the great sea and of all the exploits they accomplished during their journey’. The expression  $ /#  ‘pathways over the sea’ before the bucolic caesura occurs only once in Homer (Od. 12.259), as an isolated alternative to the more common 2  # $ ‘watery courses’, and in a context which is very similar to that of Apollonius: Odysseus says that his meeting with Scylla and Charybdis was the most fearsome ( ) V%%C 

%  $ /#, M   ‘of all the sufferings I encountered while exploring the pathways over the sea’.  $ /# , combined with V%% C  M imitating Odysseus’ V%%C 

%, points clearly to this 77 78

Cf. Rengakos (1994) 51 and 165. This kind of allusion does not come as a surprise in epic poetry, where the use of analogical formulas as a mechanism for the formation of ‘new’ expressions always existed. It is not limited to Apollonius: for an example, in Nonnus, of the repetition and variation of the Callimachean , '  of Hecale fr. 68 Hollis, cf. A. S. Hollis, CQ 26 (1976) 142–3 and D. Gigli, ‘Tradizione e novit`a in una ricorrente espressione nonniana’ GIF 32 (1980) 107–17.

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passage of the Odyssey; Apollonius thus creates an analogy between himself as a narrator of the sea voyages of the Argonauts and Odysseus, the greatest of all such narrators. After this first use, this Homeric hapax legomenon becomes an ‘internal’ and variable formula for Apollonius, who reuses it without any reference to the context of the Odyssey (cf. 1.361, 1.986, 4.335, 586, 1556). Another example is the rare nomen agentis, '4, ‘expert’. On its first occurrence, it is specified by  %$( ‘in prophecies’ (1.80 '4  %$(|), a combination which will probably have created an echo of one of the (few) Homeric occurrences of '4, Od. 16.253 '4 ' %$(| ‘experts in carving’. '4 is subsequently used twice more (2.874 and 887), and it is also exploited to coin a new word, '%Q ‘experience’ (2.175, 1260, 4.1273): it becomes an element of Apollonian diction without any evocation of Homeric models. One of the most common Homeric–Hesiodic periphrases to indicate Heracles had been 9 67#  ‘strength of Heracles’ (seven times in Homer, always at verse-end, against eight occurrences of ‘Heracles’; in Hesiod, the periphrasis occurs as many as eighteen times, always at verseend, and ‘Heracles’ only ten times). The first time that Heracles is mentioned in the Argonautica (1.122, 9    67# ‘stouthearted strength of Heracles’), Apollonius creates a kind of combination between the traditional periphrasis, its isolated adaptation at Il. 18.117 9 67# ‘strength of Heracles’ with the penthemimeral caesura after 9 and the genitive of the name instead of the adjective, and finally the rarity 67#    ‘stout-hearted Heracles’ (Il. 14.324, [Hesiod], Aspis 458), with respect to which Apollonius inverts the order of the words, while leaving the epithet in front of the bucolic diaeresis, as it was in Homer and in the Shield. The archaising periphrasis with 9 does not, however, appear again in the Argonautica, where only the non-periphrastic ‘Heracles’ is subsequently found. This name is always placed at the end of the line (12 times), thus creating, as already in 1.122, a spondaic clausula totally unknown to Homer and Hesiod, but one which becomes very popular with Hellenistic poets.79 For Apollonius, Homer was not just the model and source for the recreation of a limited degree of formularity – a langue of epic poetry, to which one’s parole should always make (moderate) reference – but, as for every post-Homeric poet, Homeric language can lend particular epic colour to new poetic contexts, whether for elevation or parodic debasement. Jason’s 79

After the isolated cases of Meropis, PEG 2.4 = SH 903A.6 and Antimachus fr. 118.6 Matthews, cf. Callim., HArt. 108; Theocr. 17.27, 24.16 and 54, 25.110, 143 and 191; epic. adesp. CA p. 76 no. 3.8; p. 80 no. 6.10; p. 81 no. 8.7.

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aristeia at the end of Book 3 offers a particularly nice example. This passage clearly offers more ‘heroic potential’ than much of the rest of the poem, but this potential is activated in non-traditional material – the taming of the bulls, the sowing of the dragon’s teeth, the fight against the ‘men born from the earth’ – and in non-traditional ways: Jason succeeds through Medea’s magic, and thus the final result of his aristeia is, in a certain sense, a foregone conclusion. His antagonists are not other heroes, but monstrous bulls and ‘men born from the earth’, and his weapons too are put to novel uses: the helmet serves first of all as a bowl for the dragon’s teeth, and then as a drinking vessel, and in the clash with the ‘men born from the earth’, it is never even mentioned; Jason’s spear is used as a goad for the bulls. Archaic epic will have offered Apollonius only a limited number of precedents here, and we may imagine that certain of these situations were not easy to express in Homeric language. On the other hand, it is also reasonable to suppose that in the only real aristeia of the poem, Apollonius was potentially more interested than elsewhere in measuring himself against the Iliadic heritage. Such a linguistic shortfall, together with the need to exploit the epic opportunities of this episode, led Apollonius to develop a complex series of strategies of ‘epicisation’.80 One of these strategies consists in emphasising the ‘Homeric quality’ of the scenes which can most easily be traced back to traditional models and de-emphasising the rˆole of magic.81 Thus, for example, vv. 1278–87 describe the arrival of Jason and his companions and the initial preparations for the battle; these verses abound in Homeric linguistic detail, which creates the effect of a ‘typical scene’. In v. 1278, $4% '% ‘they attached the forward hawsers’, repeats a phrase from Il. 1.436 and Od. 15.498, which Homer had used for brief periods ashore, not involving the operation of pulling up the ships onto the beach; Apollonius may have used this Homeric expression precisely because Jason and his companions were not expecting to stay long.82 In v. 1279, Mb '$  &%' 95 ‘he went with his spear and sword’ has a long history,83 which, however, starts with Il. 20.407, 9 %b '$ and 5.297, %b &%' '$ ; in v. 1280 |, &Z ‘jumping out of the ship’ imitates |, &Z% 80 81

82 83

Most of the parallels to be discussed are listed in Campbell (1981), and some of the analysis has been anticipated by Campbell (1983) and Hunter (1989a). Cf. Campbell (1983) 78: ‘From the moment (Jason) begins his task magic recedes into the background with only two curt and matter-of-fact references to Medea [. . .] Most of the items of weaponry required by Jason (1279f.) are going to be used in unconventional, ‘unheroic’ ways’. Cf. 4.244, a brief stop for a sacrifice. Cf. Hunter (1989a) 241. Cf. particularly Achaeus, TrGF 20F29 Mb ' Mb &%'.

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of Il. 16.748 or |, &Z%  of Il. 2.702; E#  %| ‘he took his shining (helmet)’ in v. 1280 imitates E# Z | ‘he took the shining (bowl)’ of Il. 23.613 and Od. 19.386; in v. 1282 M &C N ‘(he took) his sword on his shoulders’ imitates the formula (five times in the Iliad) & 'C .C N% 9(#  M ‘he put his sword on his shoulders’. More generally, every weapon or object between v. 1280 and v. 1287 receives an epithet, in the Homeric manner,84 even if hardly any of these epithets was the one used by Homer for the same object.85 Just when we might be wondering what has happened to Jason’s breastplate, for this is an inevitable element of Homeric arming scenes, Apollonius describes Jason as $, ') .## X ; h   | K #) .## ' $ !$% " C; ## ‘naked in his body, similar in some ways to Ares, but in others to Apollo with the golden sword’ (vv. 1282–3). This is not un-Homeric (see below), even though the difference from conventional epic clashes is here clearly marked, but it establishes a link with one of Apollonius’ most important models, the narration of the same events in Pindar, Pythian 4. The Homeric model is Il. 2.478–9: A    #8 K #   Q") ; h  { 'X _Z) %  'X J% '(. In eyes and head he was like Zeus who delights in the thunder-bolt, in waist like Ares, in chest like Poseidon.

This passage describes Agamemnon commanding the Greeks in the first (and most famous) review of the Greek army on the battlefield that we find in the Iliad. Jason, however, is a leader who is accompanied by his comrades-at-arms to the place of his trial, but then he must face his battle alone; he faces it, moreover, not armed with a breastplate (which would be no use), but ‘naked’, as is appropriate for a sower (cf. Hesiod, WD 391–2, which instructs the farmer to carry out certain activities, including sowing,

$  ‘naked’, and Aristophanes, Lysistrata 1173). Furthermore, the gods that Jason is said to resemble are Ares and Apollo,86 that is to say, the two gods to whom the crowd immediately compared him when he arrived at Iolcus in Pindar’s version (Pyth. 4.88–92). Jason looks around carefully (vv. 1284–6):  4 ' C &  , K' _$ !(#  Q 

$  C  5 % 9 &'(  . U !: ' C    Z)  #. Looking around the ploughland, he saw the bronze yoke for the bulls and next to it the plough of tough adamant, all in a single piece. He drew close to them . . . 84

Cf. Hunter (1989a) 241.

85

Cf. Campbell (1983) 79.

86

Cf. Campbell (1983) 81.

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Jason’s gaze recalls how Homeric heroes surveyed the battlefield before identifying the chosen enemy. We may compare Il. 17.84–87 (   'C .C     % !)   'C   [. . .] 9  #. ‘he looked around through the ranks and immediately spotted [. . .] he went etc.’ or 12.333–35 (   'C & Q  C;! K C K'  1   [. . .]  'C  %C ;K 'Q)  #. ‘he looked around, along the wall, to see if he could spot any of the leaders of the Greeks [. . .] he saw the two Ajaxes, etc.’, though it should also be noted that Jason’s subsequent movement is indicated by means of a verb, ! , which is not attested before the fifth century. Jason is, however, not eyeing the enemy ranks, but a field to be ploughed, and he is not trying to find individual enemies, but rather farm tools. The alternating references to Homer and Hesiod are symptomatic of the alternation between the two environments, martial and rustic. As in the formula for Homer’s warrior, Jason’s  ! ‘spear’ is A9 ‘mighty’, even if it remains totally idle at first, used only as a prop for the helmet-container (cf. v. 1287); it is indeed used later on, but only as a goad for the bulls during ploughing (cf. 1323–4). As for the plough itself, it is described by means of a rare technical word, 

$, ‘with the beam all a single piece’, a word authorised by its appearance in Hesiod (WD 433), but not found subsequently until Apollonius; through the linguistic strategy discussed above, this rare word has been integrated into one of the very few Apollonian formulas: 

$  [. . .] % 9 &'(  .  (v. 1285) ‘with the beam all a single piece, made of the hardest steel’ repeats the first reference to the plough at 3.232, 

$ % 9 &'(  . . Despite its obvious non-conventionality in epic terms, the following scene, in which Jason follows the bulls’ tracks and the bulls come out of their underground stable, also evokes archaic epic. The fire-breathing bulls are presented in vv. 1292 and 1327 (respectively $, %# &  | ‘breathing a flame of fire’ and |#(9   $, %# ‘breathing on him a violent flame of fire’) in terms that recall another flamethrowing monster, the Hesiodic Chimera, |' , & $% $,  ‘breathing out a terrible power of fire’ (Theogony 324). The Argonauts’ amazement, '' % 'C w  V K' ‘the heroes were frightened when they saw’ (v. 1293), echoes the reactions of the companions of Odysseus at the sight of Circe’s beasts,  'C '' %)   K' * # ‘and they were frightened, when they saw the horrendous monsters’ (Od. 10.219).87 Jason stands firm, c '9( ‘four-square on his legs’ (v. 1294), repeating 87

Homer’s expression is also reused in a similar context by Callimachus, HArt. 51 e Q ' C '' %) V K' * # ‘the Nymphs were frightened, when they saw the terrible monsters’ (the Cyclopes).

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a phrase of Homer (Il. 12.458) and Tyrtaeus (fr. 7.31 Gent.–Prato); Y  [. . .]   ‘he waits for the attackers’ (vv. 1294–5) imitates Il. 13.836,   . . .   ‘they waited for the attackers’, even if the transfer of   inside the simile creates a sort of anacoluthon in Apollonius’ main clause; the simile in vv. 1293–95 repeats in a concise form Il. 15.618–21 (cf. below);  % ' e %( %!    ‘in front of him he held his shield’ in v. 1296 reworks Il. 5.300 (= 17.7),  % ' e ' $ C %!  &%' ‘in front of him he held his spear and his shield’, even if this echo once again underlines the paradox that Jason fights without using a spear; , 'C .  '4 K ‘a fighting heat enshrouded him’ in v. 130488 takes up Hesiod’s b 'C .   , &$ 4 ‘a burning fire enshrouded them’ (Theogony 696), and varies it by two words that are typical of the language of Attic tragedy.89 In the description of the peira itself, Apollonius ‘epicises’ both by echoing epic-archaic expressions for epic objects and situations (1) and also by adapting Homeric expressions to the radically new context of Jason’s trials (2); the effect is both to mark difference and to maintain, sometimes only at the level of phonic memory, a sort of epic tone for situations which in themselves are thoroughly non-conventional from an epic point of view. Let us consider only a few examples.90 First, some cases of technique (1): v. 1311 b . . . %( ‘wide shield’ = Il. 11.527 (same position), and    ‘here and there’ is found some twenty times in this position in Homer; in v. 1312 "  " ‘on one side and on the other’ = [Hesiod], Aspis 210; in v. 1314 % & ‘the man’s strength’ = Il. 21.308 (same position); in v. 1315 '8 ( % (#  ' D  ‘for it had in fact been decided for some time with them’ suggests Od. 16.280 '8 ( %  – ‘for in fact with them’ (same position), together with Il. 22.301 D ( B (# #  D  ‘truly this had been for some time the most acceptable thing’ and Hesiod, WD 655  ' ‘decided’ (same position). In this last case, we have a sort of traditional editorialising comment by the author, of a kind which we find in the more Homerising voice of the Callimachean Hecale (cf. above pp. 196–200). Secondly, some cases of technique (2): v. 1306 ' M 5 9,  ‘the horn of the bull on the right’ ∼ Il. 24.81 & Q# 9,  ‘the horn of the rustic bull’ (same position); 1307 P#    ‘he pulled with all his strength’ (at the bull’s horn) ∼ Il. 23.863 D    ‘he shot (an arrow) with all his strength’ (same position); 1308 _ Q #" !# " ‘to the yoke of 88 90

If Merkel’s .  for the transmitted & is correct. For further parallels see in particular Campbell (1981) 63–4.

89

Cf. Campbell (1983) 83.

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bronze’ ∼  !  !# " ‘to the spear of bronze’ (seven times in the Iliad, same position), and *!8 !#  ‘the tip of bronze’ (ten times in the Iliad, same position); 1308 () ! (99# ‘he toppled (the bull) to the ground’ ∼ [Hesiod], Aspis 462 ( 'X) ! (99# ‘he toppled (the enemy warrior) to the ground’ (same position). Furthermore, the large number of similes in this section of the poem,91 often clearly indebted to the Homeric model, creates a strong impression of the ‘already-heard’. In the use of similes, Apollonius moves in two different directions, both emphasising Jason’s courage in fighting and exploiting the similarity between the often rustic character of the martial similes in Homer and the quasi-rustic elements that characterise Jason’s deeds; by means of Homeric allusions, Apollonius guides our understanding of the far-from-Homeric feat which Jason performs. Jason’s resistance as the bulls butt against his shield is truly epic-heroic:    Q% c '9     x %#  * /#     &  %"% ' Q  Q C &## But Jason planted his feet firmly apart and withstood their charge as a rough rock in the sea withstands the waves whipped up by ceaseless storms. (Apollonius, Argonautica 3.1293–5)

Here, Apollonius contracts into the space of one and a half lines a simile (Il. 15.618–21) describing the resistance of the Greek ranks to the attacks of Hector and the Trojans: K%!  $ ', & ) -‚   -#9   (# # /#, 

b %) w   #  & #: # $ Q (   ) ( %  Q  & " They closed wall-like against him and stood their ground, like a huge sheer cliff at the edge of the grey sea, which stands against the shrill winds on their rapid pathways and the waves that swell large and burst on it. (Iliad 15.618–21, trans. Hammond)

Practically all the lexical components of Homer’s image are systematically varied, though the Homeric backbone remains – the subject,  , the verb   ∼  , and one of the objects, Q ; note too the extreme brevity of Apollonius, which is emphasised by the syntactic complexity of  , functioning both inside and outside the simile. 91

Cf. Hunter (1989a) 240, ‘Apollonius portrays Jason’s deed largely by means of simile’. See also Fusillo (1985) 330–33; Reitz (1996) 87–100.

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The strong Iliadic flavour of this simile recurs in vv. 1350–3: . . .   ' C #4%  $  &#) Z %$ƒ K #) V B( C ]'   4   $ %  C &'(%) & 'X ##  &, &, %   !(' B !. . . . he filled his great heart with martial spirit. He was eager for the fray, like a wild boar which sharpens its tasks against men who hunt it and streams of foam flow to the ground from its angry mouth. (Apollonius, Argonautica 3.1350–3)

We may compare Il. 22.312–13   'C #4%  $, | & $ ‘he filled his soul with violent strength’, and Z ‘eager’ was already found in this same position at Il. 15.742. Apollonius combines more than one epic-archaic ‘boar’ simile to characterise Jason’s new-found power: most important is [Hesiod], Aspis 386–90: ‘as the long-tusked boar, difficult to track down in the mountain gullies, contemplates attacking the hunters (&'(%  $ ") in its mind, and sharpens its white tusks (4  ' # $, ]'  ) turning sideways, and the froth runs down from its mouth as it gnashes etc.’, but both Il. 13.471–5 and Il. 17.281–3 (&#4) have also made contributions. Already in vv. 1256–8 Apollonius had underlined that Jason’s &#4 ‘strength’ was in reality a gift of the ointment obtained from Medea, ‘then Jason rubbed the ointment on his body, and a terrible, immense, intrepid strength entered into him (' '  &#4)92 ; his arms throbbed, emanating energy, etc.’; moreover, by virtue of this magical strength, Jason was, if anything, like the successful hunter rather than the hunted boar.93 At this point in the story, Apollonius wants us to forget about magic94 and to think of Jason as a strong and brave warrior, but the very ‘inappropriateness’ of the simile marks the difference in situation: this is a very unusual aristeia, because Jason does not fight on equal terms. In the following simile, Jason’s attack on the ‘men born from the earth’ is compared to the speed of a bright star: P ' C    $  &(##  &% 4 #, 2$ (_)  &'(% l  K'  $  %  'C - &M  – 5 .C ;K% $e, %%$    %%)  #. As a fiery star quivers upward in the heaven trailing a furrow of light behind it – a wondrous sight to men who see it shoot through the dark air with a brilliant 92 93

There is a memory of Hector, possessed by a warlike fervour of divine origin at Il. 17.210–11, ' '  h; '   ‘terrible Ares ran him through’; cf. Knight (1995) 100. 94 Cf. Campbell (1983) 86. Cf. Effe (1996) 308.

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gleam – just so did the son of Aison rush upon the earth-born . . . (Apollonius, Argonautica 3.1377–80)

The only Homeric parallel has a shooting star, a  ‘portent’ sent by Zeus, as the term of comparison for Athena’s swift crossing of the sky: P ' C &%  z = $ ({ & $#4  v Q "%  -X %   { # # U  ' ## &, %  l  U  {$5C i{M   !  J##  C;4)  #. Like a star that the son of devious-minded Kronos sends down as a sign to sailors or to an army’s broad encampment, a bright star with sparks of light streaming thick from it: that was how Pallas Athena came shooting down to earth . . . (Iliad 4.75–78, trans. Hammond)

The Homeric model underlines the fact that ‘Jason descends on his antagonists like a god – thanks to the superiority created by Medea’s pharmakon’.95 If Jason’s exploits are elevated by Homeric allusion, Apollonius also aims to have him surpass his epic predecessors. In vv. 1366–7 the stone which Jason hurls into the midst of the earthborn is described: 3   .'  *_ %$   . $ , .  four strong men would not have been able to lift it even an inch from the ground (Apollonius, Argonautica 3.1366–7)

In Homer, such stones were of a size that ‘not even two men could carry [them], at least not the men of nowadays’ (Il. 5.303–4 = 20.286–7; cf. also 12.447–9); Apollonius, however, raises the number of men from two to four and avoids any qualification of those men, such as ‘men of nowadays’. By connecting the speed of Jason’s armed attack with that of a divine portent-star and with the movements of Athena, and by suggesting the more-than-heroic level of Jason’s strength, Apollonius reminds us of the magical powers that Jason possesses and prepares us for the slaughter to come. The relationship with the Homeric model is very different in the case of Jason’s antagonists, the bulls and the ‘men born from the earth’; the unheroic difference of these non-traditional creatures is signalled by the marginal rˆole they play in the model Homeric similes. In vv. 1299–1303, the fire from the mouths of the bulls is compared to the fire that comes out from furnaces, as blacksmiths ply the bellows; this has no specific Homeric 95

Cf. Effe (1996) 309.

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model, even if the image in itself was not absent from epic poetry. Bellows and furnaces had already been mentioned in Il. 18.470–1, in connection with Hephaestus’ forge, and in Hesiod, Theogony 862–3 the !  ‘furnace’ was described as 3   ‘well vented’, picked up in the Apollonian   5% . . . !(% ‘in the vented furnaces’. As this first simile combines the two terms &$ 4 ‘wind’ and 9  ‘roar’ (vv. 1301–2), so in the following simile the fiery &$ 4 that emanates from the bulls is compared to a 9 , the booming blast of the wind that falls on a ship and forces the sailors to strike the sails: e 'C i  † l X  Z%† $ %) #(9   $, %#) „  ' C &$ 4 -Q 9$ ( & 9 ) [ (#%  ' '    #5 /## % # . At first the bulls showed their savage anger by exhaling a fierce blast of glowing fire; their breath arose like the groan of buffeting winds which cause terrified sailors to take in the great sail. (Apollonius, Argonautica 3.1326–9)

In Book 15 of the Iliad, near to the image of the rock exposed to the winds which had been exploited for the first simile referring to Jason in his aristeia (above p. 275), a simile describes Hector’s furious attack and the strenuous resistance of the Greeks:  ' C  %C F V    ƒ %"% #(9 2   &   U ~ ' T% .!" 2 Q) & 'X ' , &4  e% " 9 ) $% '    ' ' U $ ,  2C  (   U o '_  $,  % 4 %% C;!. He fell on them as when a wave, wind-fed to high fury under the clouds, falls on a fast ship and shrouds it wholly in foam: the fearful blast of the wind roars in the sail, and the sailors’ hearts tremble with fear, as they are carried only just out of the grip of death – so the Achaians’ spirits were troubled in their breasts. (Iliad 15.624–9, trans. Hammond)

Homer and Apollonius thus share a nexus of images: Hector = bulls = forces of the sea; Greeks = Jason = rock/sailors. In the passage of the Iliad, however, the simile was centred around the image of the wave, and not so much on that of the winds and their roar; in Apollonius, it is the winds which hold centre-stage, because the fiery blasts are, in reality, the ‘arms’ of Jason’s antagonists, whereas, in Homer, the winds and the waves had only been metaphors for Hector’s fierceness. Furthermore, only the roar of the wind against the mast was mentioned in Homer, whereas the sailors’

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action of striking the sails is described explicitly in Apollonius, in order to underline the extreme danger of the bulls’ fiery blast. This dissonance between model and imitation is signalled already in v. 1327, when Apollonius transforms a highly formulaic expression from the Iliad, „  'C &$ 4 ‘the battle-cry rose up’ into „  'C &$ 4 ‘the blaze rose up’, thus underlining the peculiar character of Jason’s encounter:96 his ‘enemies’ do not react with the typical battle-cry, but with bursts of fire from their mouths. This complex pattern of similarity to and difference from the Homeric model is also clearly seen in the following image, the appearance of the warriors ‘born from the earth’: e 'C i'  T% &% !Q % .$

  U 5M  'X   % 95 % %% 'Q% C & Q Q %% #"% h;   %9 $) l  ' C K #     >3#$ ' ' C - &% ( $%. F ' C  C)  5 #  5  %  ) : &, !    # '%% . ## #$ " 2, $ ) 'C &  (  (   #   ' U H .  #( &#'4%  2X ! )  #. The earth-born were now springing up all over the ploughed field. The enclosure of Ares the man-destroyer bristled with stout shields and sharpened spears and shining helmets; the gleam flashed through the air, reaching all the way from the earth to Olympus. As when, after a heavy snowfall, wind gusts suddenly scatter the wintry clouds in the gloom of night, and all the stars of heaven shine brilliantly in the darkness; just so did the earth-born shine as they rose from the earth . . . (Apollonius, Argonautica 3.1354–63)

Of particular importance is the description of a battlefield at Iliad 13.339–43: M  'X (! %9   ! "% )  † L!  %!U A%% ' C . '   8 !#  Q . # ( 4  %4  %   ! .$')  #. The murderous battle shivered with the long spears they held to cut through flesh: their eyes were blinded in the flash of bronze from shining helmets and newpolished corselets and bright shields as the men came on in their masses . . . (Iliad 13.339–43, trans. Hammond) 96

Cf. Knight (1995) 112, ‘the density of similes, along with other similarities to Homer, constructs Jason’s aristeia as a perverse kind of battle scene; the exaggeration of Homeric elements and their appearance in new contexts shows the contrast with Homer’.

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The style of Hellenistic epic

The virtuosity of Apollonius’ reworking is underlined by the repetition, at the beginning of the description, of the keyword 5M ; this verb, which had been used metaphorically in Homer to indicate the upright position of spears, is used by Apollonius in terms very close to its primary meaning, the bristling of hair (often due to trembling). Ancient scholars already noted the fact that %%  at Iliad 13.339 was a ‘metaphor close to a simile’ for the upright position of the spears, seen as ‘something similar to the movement of ears of wheat’ (cf. the schol. ex. ad loc.); Homer in fact uses %%  in this primary, concrete meaning at Il. 23.598–9: . . . F K   % !Q %% %) #$ &#'4% ) V %%$% .$)  #. . . . like the dew on a grain-field, as the crop grows, and the fields bristle . . .

Apollonius divides up, between the first and the last verses of his description of the ‘bristling’ earthborn men, the two verbs that Homer had combined in the same line of this last passage of the Iliad (5M  < %%$% and &#'4%  < &#'4% ). He thus underlines, as he does again in the simile of vv. 1386–91, to which we will return, that while the image of the ears of wheat, which stand for spears in Iliad 13, is indeed reused, it is so for warriors who are in fact born, like ears of wheat, from the earth; the verb that indicates this growth in v. 1354 is &% !Q , ‘to grow up like an ear of corn’, in what is actually both a battlefield and a true .$, just ploughed and sown. The agonistic spirit underlying the attitude of Apollonius towards the Homeric model is seen also in the detail that the glint (K #) of the arms of the earthborn l  . . .     >3#$ ' 'C - &% ( $% ‘flashed through the air, reaching all the way from the earth to Olympus’. This image is based on two Homeric passages, in which the K # of arms  % 'C * , P ‘arrived gleaming in the sky’ (Il. 2.458, cf. 19.362), but it substitutes Olympus for the sky, apparently presupposing their identification; whether or not Homer accepted this identification was a problem discussed by philologists before and after Apollonius, though it is undoubtedly presumed in some fifth-century poetry.97 As for the simile which accompanies this description, vv. 1359–63, this borrows from several images which appear in Homeric similes (cf. Il. 8.555–59, 12.278–83, 19.357–60), but it cannot be closely connected with any of them. The effect is a simile which sounds very ‘Homeric’, but at 97

Cf. M. Noussia, ‘Olympus, the Sky, and the History of the Text of Homer’ in F. Montanari (ed.), Atti del convegno internazionale ‘Omero tremila anni dopo’ (Rome 2002) 489–503.

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the same time it is not ‘really’ Homeric, but rather a truly autonomous synthesis. Most instructive of all perhaps are the last two similes for Jason’s antagonists, in which the earthborn are literally mown down by Jason as a farmer might prematurely harvest his crop: F ' C  C) & !Q%  $ #) ' %   4 e  (  &Q) x     ! %  Z |, % Q'    % (!$) 'X 9#%     F %4  - # – H V    5  % (!$U As when there is war between neighbouring peoples and a farmer fears that the enemy will ravage his fields before the harvest: he snatches up his well-curved sickle which has just been sharpened and hurriedly cuts the crop before it is fully ripe, not waiting until harvest-time for it to be dried by the rays of the sun; just so did Jason cut the crop of the earth-born. (Apollonius, Argonautica 3.1386–91)

Such slaughter had already been compared to the reaping of wheat in Il. 11.67–71: t 'C) € C &     &##4#% A  #Q% &', (  C .$ $ v U 'X '(     U o s   C;! C &##4#%    '4"$)  #. As bands of reapers work towards each other on a rich man’s land, cutting their swathes to meet across a field of wheat or barley: and the crop falls handful after handful to the ground. So the Trojans and Achaians leapt at each other and cut men down . . . (Iliad 11.67–71, trans. Hammond)

As was obvious to the ancient scholiasts,98 the core of this very long-lived image99 is the functional analogy between arms and scythes. For Apollonius, however, the common ground is much larger: the earthborn have, after all, just sprung up like ears of wheat, and this allows Apollonius to reconstruct a much more precise correspondence between the image and the narrative context; moreover, Apollonius’ emphasis is specifically on the fact that the reaping is premature, rather than on the reaping tout court, as it had been in Homer. A comparable intensification of an image occurs in the following simile. Apollonius imagines the bodies of the earthborn, which have only partly 98 99

‘He compared the fighters, with their swords and spears, to the reapers with their scythes.’ Cf. e.g. Aesch. Suppl. 638, Ag. 536; Virg. Aen. 7.520–6; Hor., Epist. 2.2.178.

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developed when they are cut down by Jason, as out of proportion, with big, heavy heads which they cannot support (#'5% 4% ‘with drooping heads’: v. 1398); he thus changes the image for the earthborn from ears of wheat to shoots on a vine, which are battered down prematurely by a violent rainstorm sent by Zeus:  ( $ ) , .%  ]94% ) $ #      Q$% _ #%  B_ ) &#4   &') , 'X     #, .#  e(  #4$ %  $    – H C .  ;*4  9 5 2,  D# &5. It is no doubt like this when a fierce storm from Zeus causes young shoots in the vineyard to bend to the ground, broken at the roots. The labour of the farmworkers is wasted, and the farmer who owns the land is seized by despair and bitter grief. Just so then did grievous pain grip King Aietes’ mind. (Apollonius, Argonautica 3.1399–1404)

In this case also, Apollonius had two Homeric precedents behind him, a comparison between the deaths of warriors and plants that fall under their own weight (Il. 8.306–8) and a comparison between the deaths of warriors and shoots battered down by the violence of natural elements (Il. 17.53–60). Apollonius makes a complex use of these images, as he employs them both to describe in greater detail how the earthborn are killed and collapse, and to describe Aietes’ subsequent grief. A very brief mention in Iliad 17 of the farmer whose olive shoot is destroyed becomes the focal point of Apollonius’ simile: the ‘men born from the earth’ really are the ‘shoots’ that King Aietes had made Jason ‘sow’ shortly before. Jason’s extraordinary exploits, which fit neither into Homeric narrative patterns nor the Homeric lexicon, thus become a sort of ‘rustic epic’, based on a repertory of, mostly agricultural, images drawn from the similes with which Homer had amplified his battle-narratives. The significant analogy between Jason’s martial trials and ordinary agricultural activities motivates and ‘justifies’ this reuse of these images and allows a closer match between simile and narrative than we find in Homer.100 Thus could Apollonius be both original and Homeric, or even more correct than Homer himself.101 100 101

This motivation emerges openly at least once, in vv. 1340ff., when a periphrasis for the time of day introduces a true ploughman, beside Jason who had himself just finished ploughing with the bulls. Effe concludes in a recent study of Apollonian similes that they reveal an awareness that Homerus non nisi imitando vincitur (Effe (1996) 312).

chap t e r 7

The epigram

1 in scription and epigram: the ‘prehistory ’ of a genre In accordance with their common derivation,   and  4 were originally almost synonymous: both referred to ‘engraved’ writing on a material which had not been specially constructed to receive writing, such as a waxed tablet, parchment or papyrus. Even as late as the early Hellenistic age, there is no indication that the idea of the epigram, as a specific genre of short poems usually in elegiac couplets, ever existed.1 Moreover, it is probably only from the end of the fourth century that we can trace a tradition of literary epigrams, that is to say poems not, or not necessarily, designed for public inscription; when it did appear, this new form took up the two main earlier traditions of short poetry, namely epitaphic or dedicatory inscriptions, usually in hexameters or, increasingly from the end of the sixth century, elegiac couplets, and shorter lyric poetry and erotic elegy (represented most notably by Mimnermus and the second book of the corpus of Theognis). At the heart of this new form was the quest for concentrated expression and the acuteness of a final pointe, rather than specific and generically determinative subject-matter; consequently we find, in our corpus of literary epigrams, sad epitaphs alongside both serious and parodically solemn dedications, and playfully erotic anecdotes alongside moral maxims, witticisms, and convivial banter. From the earliest days, epigrams had two different origins and two different aims: they were both graffiti engraved on cups or vases which were never meant to last and were linked to particular social circumstances, and also ‘monumental’ texts, devised with eternity in mind, and therefore fixed ‘for ever’ on a durable substance, such as stone. In both cases, the exceptional nature of this writing and the limitations imposed by the requirement of public inscription determined the limited scope and size which subsequently remained a peculiarity of the literary  . 1

Cf. Puelma (1996).

283

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The epigram

The rˆole of public inscriptions in the development of the literary epigram of a funerary or dedicatory nature has long been familiar, but ‘occasional’ inscriptions may also have contributed to Hellenistic erotic epigram. Most of the ‘occasional’ epigrams known to us are engraved on cups or vases of the second half of the sixth century. Like the objects on which they are engraved, these graffiti are mainly connected with sympotic life: music, singing, drinking and, above all, eros. These short texts are, with few exceptions, all in prose, and some function as captions to the figures represented on the vases, often musicians or poets, but mythical characters also appear in such contexts. Sometimes these graffiti express, as in cartoons, rhythms and words of songs or dialogue, or expressions taken from the poetic texts that the depicted figures are imagined as reading or singing;2 sometimes, too, the graffiti are independent of the representations on the vase, and they are situated between the figures, offering sympotic advice and exhortation such as (%b) !5   ( c) ‘good health, and drink up’. By far the largest group, however, at least from the middle of the sixth to the third quarter of the fifth century, is made up of inscriptions proclaiming the beauty of a young man, in the standard form: G #  ‘G is beautiful’; these inscriptions, and the cups on which they appear, thus served as public avowals of love, designed to spread the kleos of the beloved among the symposiasts. There survive also other, more generic, graffiti of the kind  5 #  ‘this boy is beautiful’, which could be used as professions of love or admiration for any ‘boy’ who took a symposiast’s fancy. These texts transformed the objects on which they were inscribed into something more than simple vessels for the symposium: they acted as substitutes for more polished verbal compliments (in the case of the #  inscriptions), or as incentives for discussion and comment among the symposiasts.3 The banality and absence of any clear aesthetic ambition show that these texts were not so much complete messages in themselves, but rather stimuli or aides-m´emoire to oral sympotic performances, which would often be in verse, whether extemporised compositions or recitals or adaptations of earlier lyric or elegiac poetry. A symbiosis between, on the one hand, the 2

3

Poetic texts are in fact extremely rare among inscriptions of this kind; most examples depict poetic quotations written on a papyrus resting on the knees of boys learning to read and write, cf. J. D. Beazley, ‘Hymn to Hermes’ AJA 52 (1948) 336–40. Cf. N. Slater, ‘The Vase as Ventriloquist’ in E. A. Mackay (ed.), Signs of Orality: the Oral Tradition and its Influence in the Greek and Roman World (Leiden 1999) 143–61; F. Lissarrague, ‘Publicity and Performance’ in S. Goldhill and R. Osborne (eds.), Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy (Cambridge 1999) 365–7. The compilation by W. Klein, Die griechische Vasen mit Lieblingsinschriften (2nd ed., Leipzig 1898) is still useful.

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composition and reading of brief erotic and sympotic inscriptions and, on the other, ‘literary’ performance, whether of new or old poetic texts, was therefore probably already a reality in the archaic Greek symposium. Many erotic epigrams of the third century dramatise avowals of love or comment appreciatively on the aesthetic qualities of boys and girls, and this form is more prominent than our remains of archaic lyric and elegiac poetry would have led us to expect; it may therefore be that the first generation of ‘literary’ epigrammatists in the first half of the third century, who had behind them not a fixed genre with its topoi and conventions, but rather the unlimited cultural and literary heritage of the past, thought of their texts as a meeting-point between the sympotic practice of composing and reading graffiti on vases and the refined literary forms elaborated in the sympotic genres of archaic poetry. Moreover, although there are very few non-epitaphic or non-dedicatory inscriptions of the archaic period to which it might perhaps be possible to attribute aesthetic ambitions, there are nevertheless some metrical graffiti which reveal a literary spirit foreshadowing that of the Hellenistic epigram. These include the hexameter scratched during the last part of the eighth century on a proto-geometric oenochoe (the ‘Dipylon vase’), apparently to ‘personalise’ the vase as a prize in a dancing contest (CEG 432): h,  ]! %  (  & #   _  ‘of all the dancers, the one who dances most sweetly’.4 Apart from the metrical form, the word & #Z   leaves no doubt about the aesthetic ambition of the graffito. & #  is an uncommon Homeric and poetic word, used three times in archaic epic in the neuter plural, as on the oenochoe, but always combined with the verb  ‘I think’5 in the sense ‘think childish thoughts’ or ‘think things typical of young people’;6 on the oenochoe, however, & #Z   is combined with the verb _ (‘I amuse myself ’, or more specifically, ‘I dance’), and the whole expression must mean ‘dances the sweetest dances’ or ‘dances in the sweetest way’. This is not merely a change from the formulaic combination of epic, but seems also to allude to Iliad 18.567 (the Shield 4

5

6

The verse was followed by the dactyl  ' ‘this is his’, and by an apparently meaningless series of letters (##), cf. G. Annibaldis and O. Vox, ‘La pi`u antica iscrizione greca’ Glotta 54 (1976) 223–8. Cf. Hom., Il. 18.567, Hes., Th. 989, HHom. Dem. 24. It has been conjectured that this adjective arises from an erroneous division of & #, cf. M. Leumann, Homerische W¨orter (Basel 1950) 139–41. On the meaning of & # , cf. C. Moussy, ‘& # ) & (##) &  (##’ in M´elanges de linguistique et de philologie grecques offerts a` P. Chantraine (Paris 1972) 157–68.

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of Achilles), where the young people who danced at a harvest festival were described as & #  .7 Another eighth-century text which is certainly a product of the world of the symposium8 is the famous inscription on ‘Nestor’s cup’, found at Ischia and dated to between 735 and 7209 (CEG 454): W%   [*] 3 []  . h, ' C   '  %  []      h  h%  ##% [(] j' . I am the cup of Nestor, easy to drink from. Whoever drinks from this cup, the desire of fair-garlanded Aphrodite will seize him at once.

It is very likely that the first line, which is more probably prose than a trimeter composed of a choriamb and two iambic metra, regardless of the choice between ¯ / * and % / , alludes to the Nestor of the Iliad (perhaps a namesake of the cup’s owner), whose monumental cup had been made famous by the description in Iliad 11.632–7, which concluded: ‘any other person could hardly have lifted it up from the table when it was full, but old Nestor picked it up without any difficulty’.10 With this allusion, the first line makes clear that, unlike the unwieldy vessel of the heroic symposium, the little cup that bore the inscription was 3  ‘convenient for drinking’, an adjective foreign to epic language and perhaps a ‘technical’ term from symposia (cf. Athenaeus 11.482b); analogously, in view of what follows,  4 was perhaps drawn from the language of magical practice.11 Be that as it may, the two hexameters which follow first lead us to expect a curse of a familiar kind which threatens severe consequences for anybody who misuses the object on which the curse is engraved;12 this expectation is, however, defeated in a closural pointe 7

8 9 10 11

12

The Dipylon vase may have originated in the world of the symposium – cf. Powell (1991) 161–2 and 172–3 – but a public feast cannot be excluded as a possible context: cf. e.g. Friedl¨ander–Hoffleit (1948) 55. Cf. Powell (1991) 165. Cf. O. Vox, ‘Bibliografia’ in G. Buchner and D. Ridgeway, Pithekoussai I: la necropoli (Rome 1993) 751–9. For a survey of the views which have been held about the ‘Nestor’ of the cup cf. A. Bartonek and G. Buchner, Die Sprache 37 (1995) 153–4. Cf. C. Faraone, ‘Taking the “Nestor’s Cup Inscription” Seriously: Erotic Magic and Conditional Curses in the Earliest Inscribed Hexameters’, CA 15 (1996) 77–112, p. 105. S. West, ZPE 101 (1994) 9–15 had also maintained that the inscription on Nestor’s cup descends from a Peloponnesian epic tradition and is not connected to our Iliad; contra A. C. Cassio, ‘= 5) ##% , e la circolazione dell’epica in area euboica’ in Aion (archeol.) 1 (1994) 55–68. The roughly contemporary lekythos of Tataies, also from Magna Graecia, bears the inscription s    #f$U h, ' C .  #%  $#, %  ‘I am the lekythos of Tataie: anyone who steals me will go blind’, cf. L. H. Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece (2nd ed., Oxford 1990) 409 no. 47.3.

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foreshadowing the technique of Hellenistic epigram: far from being cursed, whoever drinks from the cup will be overcome by uncontrollable desire, a very familiar (ancient and modern) result of too much to drink. The joke would have been even funnier if, as has been suggested, the inscription also alluded to an episode of the Cypria, in which Nestor gave hospitality to Menelaus after Helen had eloped with Paris and tried to console him with a series of mythological paradigms (PEG p. 40.26–9 = EGF p. 31.36–9); it was probably on this occasion that Nestor declared (PEG fr. 17 = EGF fr. 15): ‘O Menelaus, in wine the gods have devised an excellent way for mortal men to scatter their cares’ (‘cares’ of love, of course). The wine in the Ischia-cup was no longer (as the heroic Nestor had claimed) a remedy against the sufferings of love, but rather an aphrodisiac for the easy love affairs of the symposium.13 This common interpretation of the inscription on ‘Nestor’s Cup’14 has been challenged as too ‘modern’, and it has been suggested that the verses may simply be a kind of magical formula asserting the effectiveness of aphrodisiac potions which were to be drunk from the cup.15 In any event, even if it was truly epigrammatic ante litteram, ‘Nestor’s Cup’ remained an isolated example. With every allowance for the impermanence of pottery in comparison with stone, verse inscriptions linked to the symposium and other types of social occasion seem to have been very rare; verse is, however, much more common for funerary and dedicatory inscriptions, and it is likely that verse was thought the appropriate mode, as stone the appropriate material, for inscriptions which were intended to offer eternal kleos. Another exception which confirms the clear separation between lyric and elegiac poetry – which was largely oral, addressed to a particular individual or group, and arose from particular social and performative contexts – and written inscriptions – which were intended to be read ‘for ever’ by a general public – is offered by the didactic herms of the Athenian tyrant Hipparchus (late sixth century), one of which is extant (CEG 304). According to the account of [Plato], Hipparchus 228d–229b, Hipparchus wanted to make provision for ‘the instruction also of those who lived in the countryside’, and so he had herms erected ‘along the roads connecting the towns and the single demes’, on which were inscribed couplets containing the name of Hipparchus himself ( 'C 6 @(!$ ‘this 13 14 15

Cf. W. Kullmann, Die Quellen der Ilias (Wiesbaden 1960) 257; G. Danek, ‘Der Nestorbecher von Ischia, epische Zitiertechnik und das Symposion’ WS 107–8 (1994–95) 29–44. Cf. P. A. Hansen, ‘Pithecusan Humor: the Interpretation of “Nestor’s Cup” Reconsidered’ Glotta 54 (1976) 25–43 and Powell (1991) 163–7. Cf. Faraone (n. 11 above).

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The epigram

is a monument of Hipparchus’) and brief maxims, such as % 5! '  ‘go forward on the basis of just thoughts’, or 8 # M(  ‘do not deceive a friend’; according to Pseudo-Plato, these maxims were supposed to act as an alternative to Delphic wisdom, creating the desire in countrymen to seek a more comprehensive education in town.16 In this way (contravening the principle of anonymity, which is a constant of all other epigraphic texts of the archaic period and the fifth century, and borrowing from sympotic elegiac poetry, such as that composed by Phocylides and Theognis, both the custom of the %  ‘seal’ and the taste for aphoristic maxims), Hipparchus exploited the epigraphic medium to reach the wider non-aristocratic public with easily-digestible pills of wisdom and to familiarise them with that ethical knowledge which had previously been the prerogative of the speculations (and poetry) of aristocratic symposia. This, however, remained an isolated exception. The history of the archaic and early classical inscribed epigram is the history of a ‘lesser literature’, more subordinated to, than operating in parallel with, orally transmitted verse. Such poems are satisfied with anonymity: they convey a limited number of messages in relatively standardised forms (see further below, pp. 296–7).17 Not long after Hipparchus, Simonides began to write short poems in elegiac couplets, in which the  ( # #

 for which Simonides became famous anticipated the taste for the witty quip and the humorous anecdote typical of the later ‘literary’ epigram. Furthermore, Simonides was perhaps the first to link his name to sympotic ‘epigrams’ and to clearly fictitious and witty dedicatory and funerary texts, the most famous of which is the sarcastic epitaph for his rival, Timocreon of Rhodes (AP 7.348 = FGE 831f.). He was also credited with the authorship of real epitaphic and dedicatory epigrams, and thus continued the tradition which we have already surveyed. There are, however, considerable uncertainties surrounding Simonides’ epigrams and their ‘publication’,18 and not just because his taste for the witty quip and brevity of expression might have led subsequent compilers of anthologies to attribute to Simonides epigrams about contemporary figures or events, or to imagine that some epigrams attributed to otherwise unknown poets were actually by Simonides. Herodotus (7.228.3) attributes 16 17

18

Cf. A. Aloni, ‘L’intelligenza di Ipparco’ QS 10 (1984) 109–48. The metrical form too is standardised: initially we find only hexameters, but from the middle of the sixth century the elegiac couplet becomes popular; inscribed epigrams in iambics or trochaics appear at about the same time, but they are rare and disappear almost completely during the fifth century. ´ Cf. B. Gentili, ‘Epigramma ed elegia’ in L’Epigramme Grecque (1968) 41–2; but cf. FGE pp. 119–23 and Puelma (1996) 125 n. 8.

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an epitaph for the fortune-teller Megistias to Simonides (AP 7.677 = FGE 702ff.), but it is significant that in citing the epigram, Herodotus, who lived a generation after Simonides, observes that Simonides composed it because he was united to Megistias by a bond of xenia; this perhaps suggests that Herodotus received the information about Simonides’ authorship from an oral source and not from some form of written anthology, created by, or based on, the author’s wish to assert his authorship. The extreme variability between witnesses in recording the authorship of Simonides points in the same direction: many poems are disputed between Simonides and another poet, or are claimed by some as Simonidean and by others as anonymous.19 The large number of epigrams referring to characters or events of the sixth and fifth centuries, some of which may be ancient but many of which are clearly Hellenistic compositions falsely attributed to Simonides, Plato, Anacreon, and a host of other authors whose interest in the epigram is otherwise unattested (Sappho, Bacchylides, Empedocles, etc.), shows that the custom of anonymity continued to be observed for a long time, and gave rise to the Hellenistic practice of assigning anonymous poems to the great figures of the past. Before the Hellenistic age, we simply cannot know whether an author deliberately decided to link his name to an inscribed text, which will thus also have had a non-epigraphic transmission where the name of the author was preserved. As for the idea of compiling an anthology of one’s own epigrams or those of others, it is important to remember that collections of inscriptions in book form must have been in circulation from the beginning of the fourth century, and it is very tempting to hypothesise20 that these collections of inscriptions, both before and alongside the great editions of archaic lyric and elegiac poetry prepared by the Alexandrian philologists, acted as models for the collections of epigrams that a Leonidas or a Callimachus probably conceived for themselves (or others conceived for them, shortly after their death).21 What is certain is that in the fourth century, which was the crucial period for the development of the literary epigram, there are at least two clear examples of inscribed epigrams which include the name of the author in the text (CEG 819 and 88822 ); in one of these two cases, moreover, the epigrams of Ion of Samos (CEG 819), the affirmation of authorship is found, together with an element of literary innovation; this raises doubts about the standard historical account, according to which 19 21 22

20 Cf. Meyer (forthcoming) chapter A.5.1. Cf. FGE pp. 119–20. On the circulation and collection of inscriptions in the fourth century, cf. H. T. Wade-Gery, ‘Classical Epigrams and Epitaphs’ JHS 53 (1933) 71–104, pp. 80 n. 35 and 88–95. The cases of 700. 3 and 889.7–8 appear more uncertain; see, however, CEG ii.283.

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The epigram

(anonymous) inscribed epigrams were characterised by a relative roughness and conventionality, and were then replaced by the literary epigram, bringing with it greater refinement and a new importance for authorial identity. The epigrams of Ion, on the contrary, suggest that verse inscriptions had already followed their own autonomous course towards literary pretension and an authorial awareness, when the high period of the ‘literary’ epigram dawned. CEG 819 consists of a triptych of three epigrams of two couplets each, inscribed on the plinth of a group of bronze statues for the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi; the statues represented the Dioscuri, Zeus, Apollo, Artemis, and Poseidon crowning Lysander, who had defeated the Athenians at Aegospotami, and also included images of twenty-eight other commanders of the Spartan fleet (cf. Pausanias 10.9.7–10).23 Both the better preserved epigrams (CEG 819.ii and CEG 819.iii) include the name of the author, Ion of Samos, and the text is not presented as the voice of the dedicator or of the statues (as is usual in dedicatory inscriptions), but rather as the voice of the poet who ‘comments on’ the statues, in a manner familiar from Hellenistic deictic epigram: [5 \ ) „] J#Q' $[]  h @ [? 5%]' C # [] [?#{] 'C % (%[ ? ]) [&!, ]   )  [ ' C ]  ' $([!$] [?%  / ]   6^##(' [$!] $. (CEG 819.ii) [Child of Zeus], Polydeuces, [with these] elegiacs Ion crowned [your stone] base, because you were the principal [commander], taking precedence even over this admiral, among the leaders of Greece with its wide dancing-places. *  +  &  []  " '  V  $% 5 %  = []'T 'Q ?Q%') ? ' &   % Z%[] 6^##(' & #[) ]##!  '. M( &Q [] M # 5 h @. (CEG 819.iii) Lysander set up this image of himself on this monument when with his swift ships he victoriously routed the power of the descendants of Kekrops and crowned the 23

In view of the script, these epigrams may be dated very close to the event that they commemorate; cf. J. Bousquet, BCH 80 (1956) 580–1; more commonly, however, they are dated to the late fourth century, cf. R. Meiggs and D. Lewis, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions (rev. ed., Oxford 1988) 290.

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invincible Lacedaimon, the citadel of Greece, the homeland with the beautiful dancing-places. Ion of sea-girt Samos composed these elegiacs.

In the poem for Polydeuces, the author displays a highly developed selfconsciousness: as composer of the epigram, he has crowned (% (% ) the plinth () of the statue, and the verb %  raises Ion himself to the same level as Lysander, who, as the other epigram says, had ‘brought glory’ to invincible Sparta (a metaphorical meaning which %  often has), or even to the level of the gods, who were represented ‘crowning’ Lysander quite literally. As Lysander himself seems to have fostered a personality cult and even accepted divine honours, so the poet magnifies his own rˆole. Here, then, is perhaps the earliest ‘literary’ epigram, and it is in fact an engraved monument-inscription, and one with a definitely practical purpose. 2 funerary and dedicatory epigrams: epigraphic con ventions and epigrammatic variat ions 2.1 The importance of the name Hellenistic funerary and dedicatory epigrams are a favoured sphere for the investigation of the literary character of Hellenistic poetry, and in particular for its relationship with earlier literary genres. There is a relatively large amount of comparative material, i.e. anonymous inscriptions, both metrical and not, which have been found on tombs and monuments and against which we can judge the ‘literary’ versions of these forms. Funerary and dedicatory inscriptions had certain clear ‘facts’ to communicate. Dedications commemorated, in most cases, both the donor of the votive offering and the recipient god, and usually also the reason for the dedication; the identity of the god, however, was often of course supplied by the monumental context in which the inscription was placed. Funerary inscriptions identified the dead person on whose tomb they stood; the identification normally included certain details, established by social conventions which sometimes varied from one region to another, or depended on the sex and the age of the deceased. Thus, for example, the name of the dead is generally the only detail in the sepulchral inscriptions of most of central Greece and Boeotia,24 as well as of Sicyon,25 whereas in Attica 24 25

Cf. P. M. Fraser and T. R¨onne, Boeotian and West Greek Tombstones (Lund 1957) 92–101. Cf. Pausanias 2.7.2.

292

The epigram

the demotic and the father’s name are almost always present in the case of a male, or the name of the parents in the case of children; in the case of a woman, the name of her husband is added to that of her father, but it was considered to be excessive if the epitaph also specified her place of birth and the name of her mother.26 Hellenistic ‘literary epigrams’, which were funerary or dedicatory, gradually moved ever further from any necessary basis in the contexts of real life and became fictional works of the imagination. Such distance from a real context encouraged the technique of variation among ‘literary’ epigrammatists, but at the same time the high degree of conventionality and the repetitiveness of inscribed archaic epigram created a precedent which, in a certain sense, authorised the highly topical character of literary epigram, perhaps indeed the most topical genre of all Greek poetry. 2.2 Tombs without names The most basic element in the commemoration of the dead was the recording of the name; on the tomb of Petosiris was written: ‘pronouncing a man’s name means bringing him back to life again’.27 Funerary inscriptions which do not record the dead’s name fall into more than one class: non-metrical inscriptions for infants who had probably never been named survive;28 so, too, some of the few surviving verse-inscriptions which omit the name of the dead29 were for infants or young people, who in all probability had not yet achieved anything worthy of commemoration.30 Among 26 27

28

29

30

Cf. Theophrastus, Characters 13.10 (with Diggle ad loc.), E. L. Hicks, JHS 3 (1882) 141–2. Cf. G. Lefebvre, Le Tombeau de Petosiris (Cairo 1954) i p. 136 no. 81, already quoted by Nicosia (1992) 17. On the general subject cf. also A. Stecher, Der Lobpreis der Toten in den griechischen metrischen Grabinschriften (Diss. Innsbruck 1963) 14–19, H. H¨ausle, Einfache und fr¨uhe Formen des griechischen Epigramms (Innsbruck 1979) 109–13 and S. Georgoudi, ‘Comm´emoration et c´el´ebration des morts dans les cit´es grecques’ in Ph. Gignoux (ed.), La Comm´emoration: Colloque du centenaire de la section ´ des sciences religieuses de l’Ecole pratique des hautes ´etudes (Louvain–Paris 1988) 77. This section is based on Fantuzzi (2000a). Cf. IG vii, 690–722, 2900–1, 3118 (Boeotia), and IG ii/iii (2nd ed.): ii.2, 13184, 13185 (Attica): cf. Pfohl (1953) 150 and 289 n. 53; M. Guarducci, L’epigrafia greca dalle origini al tardo impero (Rome 1987) 387. According to the data given by Page (1976) 169, out of the 711 pre-Christian sepulchral inscriptions in GVI, 66 certainly omit the name. In most of these cases, however, it is difficult to know whether the name of the dead person was completely omitted, or appeared in a non-metrical section of the inscription, which was subsequently lost. For example, GVI 89 (second century ad), 503 (second/first century bc), 790 (third century ad), 793 (third century ad), 869 (after 150 ad), 977 (second/third century ad), 1012 (first century ad), 1124 (second/third century ad), 1280 (second/third century ad), 1663 (third century bc). As for CEG 718 (400–350 bc), Hansen is surely correct to explain that ‘caput defuncti animum corpusque suum lamentari dicitur’.

2 Funerary and dedicatory epigrams

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literary epigrams, the absence of the name is found almost exclusively (a) in epitymbia for sailors found dead on the seashore, in which anonymity underlines the exceptional bitterness of death at sea;31 and (b) in a few epigrams – two by Leonidas, two by Antiphilus, and two in imitation of the latter – which develop another aspect of the lack of funeral honours, namely the theme of the neglected, desecrated or defaced tomb and of sacrilegious behaviour towards dead bodies, or in a few other anonymous epigrams, which describe the criminal concealment of corpses.32 There are, however, also a few literary epitymbia which do not name the dead, but do not fit into these classes. One of the earliest of these is a poem of Asclepiades (AP 13.23 = HE 962ff.): *O )  ) K  &  5) .$% a $  %% '  4') p %9$ ] 'Z C   ,   :  i'  !  %, #  .   ,   )   'X  %) a $ # 5) V% . 1' &Z# $. Ho! Passer-by, even if you are in haste, give ear to the grief of Botrys that passes measure. An old man now of eighty years, he buried his child who already from boyhood spoke with some skill and wisdom. Alas for your father and alas for you, dear son of Botrys: with how many joys untasted have you perished! (trans. Paton, adapted)

This clearly funerary epigram does not appear in Book 7 of the Palatine Anthology, which is dedicated to epitymbia, but its uncommon metrical form (couplets composed of catalectic iambic tetrameters and trimeters) led to it being placed in Book 13, which contains epigrams written in unusual metres. Even the most recent commentators, Gow and Page, fail properly to appreciate its epitaphic character: according to them, it is ‘in spite of the form, rather a poem of mourning than a genuine, or epideictic epitymbion’.33 The epitaphic ‘form’ to which they refer is primarily the initial apostrophe to the wayfarer and the invitation to stop and read, which are 31

32

33

Cf. AP 7.264 (Leonidas), 265, 268, 269 ([Plato]), 270 and 496 ([Simonides]), 276 (Hegesippus), 279 (adesp.), 282 (Theodoridas), 288 (Antipater Thess.), 350 (adesp.), 400 (Serapion), 404 (Zonas), 636 (Crinagoras), 651 (Euphorion). See S. Georgoudi, ‘La Mer, la mort et les discours des e´pigrammes fun´eraires’ AION (Archeol.) 10 (1988) 58. Leonidas, AP 7.478 and 480 = HE 2421ff. and 2427ff.; Antiphilus, AP 7.175 and 176 = GPh 929ff. and 935ff.; Heraclides, AP 7.281 = GPh 2390ff.; Isidorus, AP 7.280 = GPh 3887ff.; adesp. AP 7.356–60. HE ii.139.

294

The epigram

very familiar features of sepulchral inscriptions and funerary epigrams.34 One formal reason which in all probability led Gow and Page to consider this epigram as a ‘poem of mourning’ was the form of its presentation. Compared with the most frequent forms of archaic sepulchral inscriptions, where the persona loquens was the tomb or, later, the deceased, there has been a tendency to consider fictitious those funerary epigrams in which an external ‘I’ mourns for the dead – even more so if this external ‘I’ sympathises with and consoles the father of the dead no less than the deceased himself, as happens for example in some epigrams by Callimachus.35 Thus scholars have considered ‘epideictic-consolatory’ texts such as [Simonides], AP 7.511 = FGE 1006f., %   0 # c C  K') | *  % ) (# =##) P C   ‘whenever I see the tomb of the dead Megacles, I pity you, poor Callias: what distress you suffered!’, in which an external ‘I’ sympathises with the sorrow of one of the dead person’s nearest and dearest, rather than mourning for the deceased, and addresses the bereaved in the second person; such poems are not far from the manner in which the external ‘I’ mourns for Botrys and his son in the epigram by Asclepiades (above p. 293). More recently, however, the ‘anonymous first person mourner’ has been acknowledged as an important epitaphic form of presentation,36 and the epitaphic nature of the poems of [Simonides] and Asclepiades has been properly appreciated. Inscribed examples include CEG 470 of 550/540 bc, ; # ' ' %    %  & )  #. ‘when I see this tomb of Autokleides, I am distressed, etc.’, CEG 51 of about 510 bc, *  % [] ', ' %      | <Q[] h  # A# %  #C & .37 ‘I weep to see this tomb of a boy, Smikythos, who has died, destroying the fine hopes of his dear ones’, and CEG 43.3–5 of about 525 bc, ]#   h '   [. . .] ]#Q h  C .h[] ‘. . . . kles, whose mother this (tomb?) [. . .] I pity because untimely . . .’ 34

35 36

37

This opening address is relatively more common in the metrical sepulchral inscriptions of the sixth to the fourth century bc, cf. CEG 49 (sixth century bc), 556 (350 bc), 686 (fourth century bc?), GVI 1670 (sixth century bc) and 1671 (sixth century bc), and the inscriptions from Selinunte nos. 26, 28, 30–34 (550–450 bc) in R. Arena, Iscrizioni greche arcaiche di Sicilia e Magna Grecia. I: Iscrizioni di Megara Iblea e Selinunte (2nd ed., Pisa 1996). See also Mnasalces, AP 7.488 = HE 2639ff. and 7.491 = HE 2636ff.; [Simonides], AP 7.515 = FGE 986ff. Cf. e.g. AP 7.517 = HE 1193ff., AP 7.519 = HE 1241ff. Cf. D. M. Lewis, ‘Bowie on Elegy: A Footnote’ JHS 107 (1987) 188; A. C. Cassio, ‘I distici del polyandrion di Ambracia e l’ “io anonimo” nell’epigramma greco’ SMEA 33 (1994) 106–17. See also J. W. Day, JHS 109 (1989) 20 n. 31 and 26; R. Scodel, SIFC 10 (1992) 70. For the text, cf. D. M. Lewis and A. C. Cassio (previous note); see also W. Peek, ZPE 23 (1976) 93 n. 1. The emendation of the initial indicative *  into the imperative K <> was proposed by Willemsen and accepted by Hansen.

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Gow and Page’s view of Asclepiades’ epigram was also explicitly influenced by the absence of the dead person’s name: ‘a significant fact, but if this is a poem of mourning, it is possible that Asclepiades did not know it’. In fact, however, there is an alternative explanation: Asclepiades’ poem might have been conceived as the metrical part of an inscription, in which another non-metrical part, below, beside or beneath the verses, indicated the name of the dead. This type of inscription is first found in the fifth century, but becomes common from the fourth century, particularly, but not exclusively, in Attica.38 There are over one hundred and fifty Attic verse inscriptions of the fourth century, of which more than twenty belong to this type.39 From the fifth century, however, only two inscriptions of this kind are extant, CEG 77 and 89, both from Attica. In the earlier of the two, CEG 77 (500–475 bc), a couplet for the Spartan J# % , the absence of the name was very probably made necessary by the difficulty of fitting the name into dactylic verse. The later CEG 89 (late fifth century) honours C; , which would fit the metre, and so must be considered as an anticipation of the practice of the fourth century. Two fifth-century Attic texts offer the earliest evidence for the difficulty that could be encountered when composing dactylic verse to contain the name of the honorand. The earlier inscription, dated by Hansen to 477/476, was engraved on the pedestal of a monument to the tyrant-killers, perhaps the one erected in their honour during the last decade of the sixth century. As C;%    could not fit into a hexameter, the name was divided between the end of the hexameter and the beginning of the pentameter; such division was common for lyric cola, but hardly ever attested in recitative poetry, let alone hexameters or elegiac couplets, Ž  C C; %  

 <>C C j% |   h!     h ' ‘truly a great light shone forth for the Athenians when Aristogeiton and Harmodius killed Hipparchus’ (CEG 430). Another solution to the metrical problem was found by Critias at the end of the century; when he had to name ‘Alcibiades’, which, with its run of three successive short syllables, does not fit dactylic verse, the poet composed an iambic trimeter in place of a pentameter and added an apology for the intrusion of a different metre:   =# $ $e, C;5 % Z% | C;#9(' % 24%  U |  (  D 3C  _  # ") |  'C  *9 "  %   &  ‘and now I will crown the Athenian Alcibiades, son 38 39

CEG 684, e.g., is from Samos, the home of Asclepiades, CEG 724 from Macedonia. Cf. CEG 472 (?), 477, 486, 490 (?), 495 (?), 497 (?), 499 (?), 512, 531, 532, 533, 534, 537, 544, 557, 558, 560, 564, 570, 571, 582 (?), 585, 589, 590, 594, 595, 596, 613, 615 (?), 620 (?), 621 (the question marks indicate uncertain cases).

296

The epigram

of Clinias, singing of him in new ways. It was not possible to adapt his name to the elegiac couplet, and so now it will be in iambics, but not without measure’ (fr. 2 Gent.–Prato).40 The practice of placing the name of the dead, usually together with patronymic and nationality, on the tomb but not in the metrical epigram thus offered a solution to the problem of fitting certain proper names into the hexameter, in a period when the elegiac couplet had almost completely replaced the metrically more flexible iambic trimeter as the ordinary form for sepulchral inscriptions.41 During the fourth century, however, the division of sepulchral inscriptions between the metrical epigram in one part and the name of the deceased (with patronymic and deme or tribe) in another was not limited in Attica to the tombs of those whose names were difficult for the hexameter. An example is CEG 532, which also bears very clear witness to the conscious division of the space of the inscription into two parts. This inscription, which is perhaps from the latter part of the first half of the fourth century, concerns a certain JM5, a name which could fit into the hexameter perfectly well; the epigram, however, dwells rather on the deceased’s nickname and refers the reader for the name of the dead to a separate space on the monument:42 [ A] X ],    , &  Q[ ] [% 4]#  ( U %  'X   E  %![] [J%]  $) Š %( &' $!  . The stele tells the names of myself and my father and our homeland. Because of my faithful deeds I acquired the nickname Trusty – a rare honour.

It is likely that private funerary monuments of the fourth century developed a taste for this layout, not simply to solve the problem of ‘difficult’ names, but also in imitation of the bipartition of inscriptional space between metrical and non-metrical elements which had already been practised for some time on polyandria, i.e. the public funerary monuments, on which lists of those who had fallen in war could only appear separately from the metrical 40 41

42

Another solution was the hyper-Ionic spelling of j!# as’ j!#  in a pentameter attributed to Sophocles: cf. fr. 1 Gent.–Prato: ‘Thus it was possible to speak of him in a metrical form’. For examples from later periods, cf. SH 615, EG 805a, GVI 278 and 1326. For discussion, cf. Page (1976) 167–8 and W. Lapini, ‘I frammenti alcibiadei di Crizia: Crizia amico di Alcibiade? (I parte)’ Prometheus 21 (1995) 2–12. References to the naming titulus in the metrical text are found also in later metrical inscriptions: cf. GVI 632 (third century bc), 1260 (second century bc), 650 (first/second century ad), 1087 (second century ad). At Rome, there are clear cases of a functional differentiation between the prose part of inscriptions, which contain the information about the person’s name and life, and the ‘comment’ of the epigram in verse; cf. CIL i.2 (2nd ed.) 11 for Lucius Scipio (c. 160–50); CIL i.2 (2nd ed.) 15 for Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Hispanus (c. 135 bc), on which see M. Massaro, Epigraphica 59 (1997) 97–124.

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commentary provided by an epigram.43 Such an influence from public funerary inscriptions to private ones is seen also in the conventional greeting between passer-by and deceased; it is a polyandrion, CEG 4, which first attests an address by the living to the dead, a form which was to become very common, whereas in the archaic age it was the dead who greeted passers-by.44 The Attic practice in which the funerary epigram did not necessarily contain the name of the deceased was guaranteed a wider circulation, towards the end of the fourth century or the beginning of the third, by the C^ (  C; ( ‘Attic epigrams’, a collection compiled by Philochorus, the Attic historian;45 this is one of the earliest collections of inscriptions known to us, and may have offered a convenient catalogue of ‘real’ models to Hellenistic epigrammatists. Philochorus’ readers, whether Attic or Alexandrian, may well have gained the impression that this practice of separating the name of the dead from the poem in their honour was a modern technique worth imitating; (we do not know of any other collections of this kind for another century, until the J     #   (  ‘On epigrams, town by town’ compiled by Polemon of Ilium, early second century bc). Asclepiades, AP 13.23 is not in fact the only literary epitymbion without the name of the dead person which does not fall into one of the two categories considered above, namely epitymbia for shipwrecked sailors and those on ‘desecrated’ tombs. Nevertheless, epigrams of this kind are decidedly rare, at least until halfway through the first century bc: all of the surviving examples seem close in time to Asclepiades. Let us start with the two epitymbia composed by Callimachus for his father Battus and for himself, respectively AP 7.525 = HE 1179ff. and AP 7.415 = HE 1185f.: V%  ,  %    ') =##(!$  K% =$$ 5'(   . *'  ' C .  U     ' V# DM )  'C i %  %% 9%.   %U 0% () V%$ K' A  5' 8 #M) #b  &   #$.

43 44 45

A ‘titulus nomina praebens’, obviously not in metrical form, is either preserved or postulated regularly by editors for the polyandria, mostly from Attica, which are extant from the fifth and fourth centuries. Cf. Sourvinou-Inwood (1995) 180–217 and 368–9. For other indications of the influence exerted by public funerary monuments on private ones in classical Attica, cf. Clairmont (1970) 43–6. We do not know the contents of this collection, but it is reasonable to expect from an author like Philochorus, who is credited with a passion for collecting ‘oracles in verse’ (FGrHist 328T6), that he did not limit himself to collecting only historical inscriptions in prose: cf. FGrHist iiib (Suppl.) 1 p. 375.

298

The epigram

You who walk past my tomb, know that I am son and father of Callimachus of Cyrene. You must know both: the one led his country’s forces once, the other sang beyond the reach of envy. No marvel, for those on whom the Muses did not look askance in boyhood, they do not cast off when their hairs are grey. (trans. Nisetich, adapted) a ('   %    ' c X &'4 *' ) c 'C K"  %$

#(%. You are walking past the tomb of Battiades, well versed in the art of song, and also of mixing wine and laughter seasonably. (trans. Nisetich, adapted)

It is plausible that the two epigrams were devised as a complementary pair: the first verse of the epitymbion for the father ‘calls the son =##!, while the first line of the one for Callimachus calls him a ('; the two verses complement each other, thus forming the complete name’; furthermore, ‘the name of the son and of the grandfather, Callimachus, is only found in the epigram for the father [. . .] the name of the father, on the contrary, which is not mentioned in the epigram for his death, appears in the epigram for his son, included in the patronymic’.46 This literary game may have had an extra-literary motivation, such as, for example, ‘Callimachus could not write much about his father, because there was not much to say about him’,47 or he may have preferred not to speak about himself in his own epitaph, ‘trusting that his verses would be sufficient for people to recognise him’.48 What we have, in fact, is a somewhat paradoxical epitymbion by a son for his father, in which the father is not named, and the epitaph of a poet for himself, which named him only by means of his own patronymic (unless a (' is an epithet derived from the name of the founder of Cyrene).49 This is, however, not just another Alexandrian variation on the standard practices of ‘real’ sepulchral inscriptions, nor need we suppose that it was impossible to fit the name of Callimachus’ father into a hexameter.50 Onomastic similarity may in fact have pointed to the complementarity of 46

47

48 49

50

G. Pasquali, ‘Epigrammi callimachei’ (1919), now in id., Scritti filologici (Florence 1986) i.307. The complementary relationship between the two epigrams would be a bit looser if we accept, with Cameron (1995) 8 and 78–9 and White (1999), that ‘Battiades’ is not a patronymic, but refers to the founder of Cyrene. Pasquali loc. cit. (previous note). The exegesis of Wilamowitz (1924) i.175 n. 2, followed by Pfeiffer, is very similar; cf. also Meillier (1979) 142–3;Walsh (1991) 93–4; Bing (1995) 126. The final couplet of AP 7.525, which is identical to fr. 1.37–8 Massimilla, is, I believe correctly, often viewed as an interpolation. Cf. White (1999) 170. See above, n. 46. Similarly, J. Larson, ‘Astacides the Goatherd’ CPh 92 (1997) 131–7, argues that the C;% ' of Callimachus, AP 7.158 = HE 1211ff. is not a proper name, but a poetic pseudonym formed from the name of the town of Astacus in Bithynia. Cf. Gow and Page ad loc. (HE ii.186).

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the two characters: the obvious allusion in the final couplet of the epigram on Callimachus the father to the famous verses of Hesiod (Theogony 81–5) on the protection of the Muses for just kings51 might suggest that both the poet and his grandfather, who had led the army of the city, had operated in the sphere of the Muses, though in very different fields. The Callimachean epigram might be seen as a meeting-point between the Hellenistic taste for Erg¨anzungsspiel, in which the poet leaves his reader the task of working out important details from allusive hints in the poem, and the tradition of sepulchral inscriptions of the fourth century, in which the name of the deceased was not included in the metrical epigram. This necessity for reciprocal reading between the two inscriptions might have been influenced by real examples of inscriptions that stood over the tombs of two deceased relatives, placed side by side.52 An example of the kind, once again from Attica and once again from the sixth century, has come down to us,53 CEG 512 ‰ , & 4% $ %C & T  T% #  | # ,  ! C .'     | % #  $. – ( 'C  ' M()  ) |  5 % #  &#    ‘Oh, you who won fame and glory among your fellow-citizens by reason of your virtue, which will never be forgotten, you who are sorely missed by your children and your dear wife. – I lie to the right of your tomb, mother, and am not separated from your love.’ In this case, the name of the dead person, which is not supplied in the metrical text, is given in a separate inscription, extra metrum, on the same tombstone (s#! <$'(  `#$ Q); the name of the mother, however, who is mentioned without being named, must be found from the nearby tombstone of the mother herself, which was fortunately found in situ: 0 #  <'(  $8 `#$ (IG ii/iii2 : iii.2, 7695). Another example may be found on the Milan papyrus of Posidippus, Poem 56 AB (ix.7–14 Bast.–Gall.):  X |' %% 4  M C^# $Z) '5 Q)  % e%  # !U E  ' C M |'5 &Z# )  , %, %9   +9'( " 4 - #" % ,   %     !) -'X %$  '($  C &  i#$ $9! U  X c) C;%  Q) ( %%  #4%  ) u ' C  %5 Q%  %b  5. 51

52

In the light of this Hesiodic allusion E. Livrea, ‘L’epitafio callimacheo per Batto’ (1992), now in Livrea (1993) 107–17, even suggested that this final couplet should be referred not to Callimachus the poet, but to Battos the father. 53 Cf. Bing (previous note). Cf. Bing (1995) 127–8.

300

The epigram

For five labours Eleutho raised her bow, O noble woman, and stood beside your bed. After the sixth labour you died and your infant child passed away on the seventh day still seeking the swollen breast, and combined tears fell from the eyes of both undertakers. Of five of your children, Asiatic woman, the blessed ones will take care, and one of them you too will tend as it lies on your knees. (trans. Austin)

If we accept the interpretation of C;%  Q proposed by the first editors,54 ‘Asian woman’, the dead person remains without any name.55 Another epigram of this kind is by Carphyllides (AP 7.260 = HE 1349ff.), a minor author usually dated to the third century: 8 :" O 4 ( $) '5 U 'X ! 4 .M 'X Z.   ##U  &#$% $  %$

4$U %%5 % ' ($) M H ##( 5' 5  %  #) ' , *ZM   %)  ( U l   % %  &4 , #$b [ T% !Z : C % 9. Find no fault with my fate, traveller, in passing my tomb; not even in death have I aught that calls for mourning. I left children’s children, I enjoyed the company of one wife who grew old with me. I married my three children, and many children sprung from these unions I lulled to sleep on my lap, never grieving for the illness or loss of one. They all, pouring their libations on my grave, sent me off on a painless journey to the home of the pious dead to sleep the sweet sleep. (trans. Paton)

Yet another example might be AP 7.662 = HE 3410ff., an epigram which the bucolic manuscripts attribute to Theocritus, but the Palatine and Planudean anthologies to Leonidas: 1 5 N!  C .  +9' " w' C $  * C;' ## 1#  ) ' #) $% , *%( &' # ) 4 &%  $ $%(  ( $. *5 #  % J % ) F  + " &Z '  #$   . The girl is gone to Hades before her time in her seventh year, before all her many playmates, hapless child, longing for her little brother, who twenty months old 54 55

Bastianini–Gallazzi (2001) 178–9. C;%  may, however, be a proper name. It is not otherwise attested, but related male names are certainly known. C;% and C;%( are two of the readings suggested in IG xiv. 1421 (cf. SEG xxx. 1211 and xxxv. 1049), and C;% was the name of one of the daughters of Themistocles (and is also attested in Attic inscriptions of the fifth and fourth centuries bc: cf. LGPN ii.72–3). For the name with Q, cf. GVI 411.1, <  &4 (second/third century ad).

2 Funerary and dedicatory epigrams

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tasted of loveless death. Alas, Peristera for your pitiable fate! How has Heaven decreed that the saddest events come all too easily to human beings. (trans. Paton, adapted)

J % , the proper name in the penultimate line, is standardly taken as the name of the mother, and not that of the young girl who has died; it is, however, more likely to be the name of the dead girl.56 Among all the other epigrams of Book 7 of the Palatine Anthology which can be attributed to poets from the third century to the first half of the first, there is not one epitymbion which does not include the name of the dead person, usually with patronymic and nationality.57 Immediately after this group, we have a small group of such epigrams by poets who lived between the mid-first century bc and the mid-first century ad, which seem to testify to a sort of relatively short-lived ‘fashion’ for such poems: Apollonidas of Smyrna, AP 7.180 and 389, Heraclides of Sinope, 7.281, Erycius of Cyzicus, 7.368, Antonius Thallos, 7.373, Leonidas of Alexandria, 7.547, Crinagoras of Mytilene, 7.638. Apart from this small group, the ‘signed’ epitymbia without the name of the dead are very few and very late (sixth century): Julianus of Egypt, AP 7.32 and 603, Macedonius the consul, 7.566, Agathias Scholasticus, 7.568–9. All other epigrams of this kind, some fifteen in total, are anonymous,58 and it is reasonable to suppose that most are transcriptions of actual sepulchral inscriptions,59 where the name of the dead would have occurred elsewhere on the stone. For Callimachus, Posidippus (if C;%  is not a proper name) and Carphyllides, the unsuitability of the name of the dead person for the hexameter might be argued to explain its absence, but this is less convincing for Asclepiades, given that his epigram is iambic. The most plausible hypothesis is that these poets, three and perhaps all of whom were born towards the end of the fourth century or the beginning of the third, followed the example of the bipartite inscriptions of the fourth century, in which, as we have seen, it was not only names that were ‘difficult’ which were placed 56 57

58 59

Cf. Laura Rossi, The Epigrams Ascribed to Theocritus: a Method of Approach (Leuven 2001) 265–77. AP 7.472 by Leonidas of Tarentum (HE 2443ff.) does not belong here, as it is a philosophical diatribe about the fragility of human life. As regards Callimachus, AP 7.728 = HE 1255ff., the name of the priestess of Demeter to whom the epitymbion is dedicated is presumably concealed in the lacuna in v. 3. AP 7.48, 157, 323, 324, 325, 331, 332, 335, 336, 339, 342, 349 (attributed – probably wrongly – to Simonides, cf. FGE p. 253), 361, 474, 734. Cf. Weissh¨aupl (1889) 80–1. The lemmas which are sometimes placed before epigrams to record the name of the dead person and/or the geographical location of the original inscription (see e.g. AP 7.330–4) demonstrate beyond all doubt that some of the epigrams of the Anthology were ´ transcriptions of inscriptions: cf. F. Chamoux, ‘Epigraphie et litt´erature: M´el´eagre de Gadara fut-il un plagiaire?’ REG 109 (1996) 35–43.

302

The epigram

outside the metrical text. This is a phenomenon of no little cultural significance. The poets – mostly (to us) anonymous – who entrusted their verses to stone could count on the fact that the stonecutter would divide the text into a non-metrical part (with the names) and the metrical ‘epigram’. The writers of ‘literary’ epigrams, whose names were preserved through personal editions or the various anthologies which eventually merged together in the Palatine Anthology, were ‘high’ poets who thought of a circulation of their texts in book form, whether or not they were also actually inscribed. These poets will hardly have been able to take for granted the continuity of this ‘double space’ in the course of tradition; there was no guarantee that something equivalent to the space on an inscription for the name of the deceased would be available in a book. Both the ancient papyri (above all, the Milan papyrus of Posidippus) and the obvious improvisation of the headings in the Palatine Anthology raise the suspicion that, during the Hellenistic age, the custom of placing supplementary headings in front of single epigrams was far from standard. Thus, Asclepiades and Callimachus, and perhaps also Posidippus and the obscure Carphyllides, testify to an early phase in which the presentation of ‘real’ inscriptions could still influence the presentation of ‘literary’ epigrams, shaping the latter in accordance with requirements and possibilities that are typical of inscriptions, but foreign to the literary text.60 The later development, in which the monumental context is no longer taken for granted, finds a precise parallel in the history of the dedicatory epigram. As mentioned above, the dedicatory inscriptions of the sixth and fifth centuries often omit the name of the god to whom the dedication is addressed, in all probability because the place where they were to be set up (a temple or other place consecrated to the god)61 or a reproduction of the figure of the god on the same votive monument (cf. e.g. CEG 286) guaranteed knowledge of the name. On the contrary, with very few exceptions, the dedicatory epigrams of the Palatine Anthology hardly ever omit the name of the god.62 The exceptional nature of funerary inscriptions without the name of the dead person is clear also from a group of epigrams of the third century bc, which take the form of self-epitaphs for the misanthrope Timon. The earliest are a poem disputed between Leonidas and Antipater, but usually attributed with some confidence to Leonidas63 (Leonidas, AP 7.316 = HE 2569ff.), 60 62 63

61 Cf. Lazzarini (1976) 59. Cf. Bing (1998) 34–9. Cf. GPh ii.149, with important modifications in FGE p. 139. Cf. J. Geffcken, Leonidas von Tarent (Suppl. Jahrb. Class. Philol. 23) (Leipzig 1896) 9–19 and HE ii.395. The uncertainty of the lemmatist is justified, according to Geffcken, by the frequency of the imitations of Leonidas in Antipater of Sidon.

2 Funerary and dedicatory epigrams

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8  C   % 4#  9  4  !  *O 4C V% ) 8  M (%U v 4) 8 &Q ) #% ' . v 'X #" % ) ' C [ ) ~ &Q ) #%. Pass by my monument, neither greeting me, nor asking who I am and whose son. Otherwise may you never reach the end of the journey you are on, and if you pass by in silence, not even then may you reach the journey’s end. (trans. Paton)

and a parallel poem attributed to Callimachus (AP 7.318 = HE 1271–2): 8 !  K"  ) , ) &## ( # U L%  !  %  , 8 %X  #T (Graefe: #T cod.) Wish me not, well, evil-hearted one, but pass on. It will be well with me if I get rid of your presence

Close in time to these poems must be two hexameters which the biographical tradition presents as really engraved on Timon’s tomb: ('C &4M :$!8 9$'  5U | 3 'C   Q% % ,  'X  & #% ‘Here I lie, after breaking off a life oppressed by ill fortune. My name you will not know: may you come to a sticky end, you evil ones’ (= adesp. AP 7.313). This might, of course, be a late and fictitious text, but expressions like &4M :$!4 and 9$' appear closer to the tragedy of the fifth century than to the Hellenistic age,64 and the metrical form (two hexameters, and not the elegiac couplet which had became practically the canonical metre for sepulchral inscriptions by the fourth century) might suggest an early date. Epigrammatists naturally followed the biographical tradition in their representations of this terrible misanthrope. In his Life of Antony (chapter 70), Plutarch recounts the misanthropy of Antony during the last few years of his life: he believed that his friends had shown ingratitude to him, nourished a distrust and a hatred for all men, and consequently he said that he could see analogies between the life of Timon and his own. The historian seizes the opportunity to narrate several anecdotes about this bad-tempered individual, and he also describes Timon’s tomb, which, partly by chance and partly in accordance with the dead man’s intentions, was a symbolic monument to misanthropy. It had been built on the seashore at Halai, on a spur of land, but as a result of erosion it was now ‘out at sea’ and could no longer be reached, or even approached, by other human beings. Plutarch informs us that on Timon’s tomb stood the hexameters cited above, and moreover: ‘They say that he composed this himself, while he was still alive.’ The epigram that circulates, however, is the one by Callimachus, 64

Cf. A. Wifstrand, Von Kallimachos zu Nonnos (Lund 1933) 161. See also Schmid (1959) 165.

304

The epigram

s %( . &## ( # | *Z_  K ##() ( #   (‘I, Timon the misanthrope, dwell here. Be on your way after heaping curses on my head – just be on your way’). The verses, which Plutarch erroneously attributes65 to Callimachus, are in fact the second couplet of an epigram by Hegesippus (AP 7.320 = HE 1931ff.): ]M 5 ( "   , ( *% .  % # U 9#(:  b  ') v %". s %( . &## ( # *Z_  K ##() ( #  . All around the tomb are sharp thorns and stakes; you will hurt your feet if you go near. I, Timon the misanthrope, dwell here. Be on your way after heaping curses on my head – just be on your way. (trans. Paton, adapted)

In view of their emphasis on the anonymity of Timon’s tomb, the epigrams of Leonidas (7.316) and Callimachus (AP 7.318) may be compared with another variation of Timon’s ‘original’ inscription by Ptolemy, AP 7.314 (FGE 470f.): 8    * (" 'C 3U #8 V  4%  b C 8 % 4# !$ #. Learn not whence I am nor my name; know only that I wish those who pass by my monument to die.

Hegesippus’ epigram, however, belongs with one by Zenodotus or Rhianus (AP 7.315 = HE 3640ff.): !   C  ) :8  ) B( +#%% (   v %# .  # 9( $) F C  'C A  K   ' K!) (_ 'C w%$!  #. D   %()  ' C &% 5% #  s) 'C C;'" 4%  * $. Dry earth, grow a prickly thorn to twine all round me, or the wild branches of a twisting bramble, that not even a bird in spring may rest its light foot on me, but that I may repose in peace and solitude. For I, the misanthrope, Timon, who was not even beloved by my countryman, am no genuine dead man even in Hades. (trans. Paton)

The epigrams of Hegesippus and Zenodotus/Rhianus distinguish themselves by imagining Timon’s tomb as isolated by a prickly tangle of 65

For hypotheses about the origin of Plutarch’s error, cf. HE ii.304 ad loc.

2 Funerary and dedicatory epigrams

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brambles,66 and by giving the name of the dead, as though the tombstone was not anonymous.67 They thus differ from both Plutarch and, at least in part, his source, the ‘On famous men’ of Neanthes of Cyzicus, a historian of the third century bc, which presented the tomb as isolated inside the sea (cf. FGr Hist 84 F35).68 The variant version which these poets followed perhaps came from Aristophanes, Lysistrata 806–15 or another similar text; Aristophanes’ chorus report that ‘Timon was a vagabond who showed his face surrounded by unapproachable thorn-bushes (&9( %  %Z#%  %    ), an Erinys come to life. This Timon had withdrawn into solitude, out of hatred for wicked men . . . after pronouncing many curses on them (##  %( )’. Zenodotus/Rhianus and Hegesippus might have taken such a tradition of the misanthropic hermit69 and extended it to his tomb. Such anti-social habits had, however, long since become part of the standard characterisation of any misanthrope, which itself, of course, was largely based on the rich ‘Timonlegende’.70 Monotropos (‘Hermit’), the protagonist of the comedy of the same name by Phrynichus, a contemporary of Aristophanes, had claimed to live ‘the life of Timon’, a man & %' and &'(#  , ‘impossible to approach or converse with’ (PCG fr. 19)71 , and our fullest picture of such a ‘Timon-like’ hermit is, of course, Cnemon, the central figure of Menander’s Dyskolos. Hegesippus (first half of the third century bc) and Zenodotus/Rhianus differ principally from the ‘original’ self-epitaph of Timon and the epigrams of Leonidas (7.316), Callimachus (AP 7.318), and Ptolemy (7.314) in 66

67

68 69 70

71

The epitaphic topos of the blissful luxuriance of nature around tombs appears first at a later date, cf. Philodemus, AP 7.222 = GPh 3320ff. = 33 Sider; GVI 1409 (second century ad), 2027 (first century ad), 2005.34–9 (first/second century ad). Curiously, the first three of these all include the absence of those 9(  which made Timon’s tomb unapproachable; see also Prop. 4.5.1: terra tuum spinis obducat, lena, sepulcrum. Callimachus too seems to be thinking of a tombstone with a name in another epigram (AP 7.317 = HE 1269f.). This poem is, however, closer to the ‘interview with the dead person about the afterlife’ (below, p. 327). Cf. Piccolomini (1882) 251–57 and F. Leo, Die griechisch-r¨omische Biographie nach ihrer litterarischen Form (Leipzig 1901) 114–15. So Piccolomini (1882) 258. Cf. F. Bertram, Die Timonlegende (Diss. Heidelberg 1906); Schmid (1959) and id., ‘Menanders Dyskolos, Timonlegende und Peripatos’ RhM 102 (1959) 263–6; P. Photiad`es, ‘Le type du misanthrope dans la litt´erature grecque’ CE 34 (1959) 305–26; A. M. Armstrong, ‘Timon of Athens – a Legendary Figure?’ G&R 34 (1987) 7–11; T. Hawkins, ‘Seducing a Misanthrope: Timon the Philogynist in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata’ GRBS 42 (2001) 143–62. In Posidippus 102 AB Menoitios the Cretan asks passers-by not to disturb him with the usual questions, but this may not be pure misanthropy: cf. M. Gronewald, ZPE 99 (1993) 28–9, E. Voutiras, ZPE 104 (1994) 28–31, Gutzwiller (1998) 198–9. Menoitios later provides full information about his identity.

306

The epigram

removing the anonymity, which had either been a real characteristic of the tombstone and its epigram or a creation of a biographical tradition which may be reasonably supposed earlier than Leonidas and Callimachus. They thus belong to the same series of ‘self-epitaphs’ of Timon, but would both appear to derive from a different tradition, one more concerned with the ekphrasis of the tomb and its isolation, and one in which Timon’s name was openly displayed. In the face of the uncertainty of the attributions and of the relative chronology of some of the poets, any attempt to establish a sequence for the various epigrammatic motifs is destined also to remain uncertain. Nevertheless, the development of these epigrams in the first half of the third century confirms that the idea of a tombstone for an unknown dead person was something atypical and exceptional; on the other hand, however, it could be taken as a real sign of recognition for an atypical, exceptional character like the ‘inventor’ of misanthropy, a true disrupter of the common social values celebrated in sepulchral inscriptions, which for the ‘normal’ dead included the presence of the name. 2.3 Dialogues with statues Omission of the name of the dead was a radical departure from the conventions of funerary epigrams, and perhaps it is not surprising that such a tomb should arouse so much interest among epigrammatists of the third century. The very repetitive information contained in classical funerary and dedicatory inscriptions and epigrams put the search for variation at the centre of poetic concerns. As has already been observed for archaic sepulchral inscriptions, one of the most frequent variations consisted of adopting, not the common narrative form, but a dialogue form which dramatised the passage of information from the inscription to the passer-by; this was a natural outcome of the widespread practice of making the tomb, or the monument, the speaker of the epigram (‘talking inscriptions’), thus transforming the person who observes the tombstone from its reader into its interlocutor.72 Epigrams in dialogue form which have come down to us in the Anthologia Graeca have regularly been considered to be typical products of Hellenistic affectedness, and their origin has been sought in the dialogic literature of the fourth century,73 or both in it and in the dialogic element of Theocritean bucolic poetry.74 Thus, for example, an epigram ascribed to Simonides 72 73 74

As Meyer (forthcoming) chapter A.2.5 points out, at the end of a perceptive survey of the forms of presentation in archaic inscriptions. Cf. R. Hirzel, Der Dialog: ein literarhistorischer Versuch (Leipzig 1895) i.398–401. Cf. W. Rasche, De Anthologiae Graecae epigrammatis quae colloquii formam habent (Diss. M¨unster– Westf. 1910) 13–21.

2 Funerary and dedicatory epigrams

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(Anthologia Planudea 23 = FGE 808f.) is in dialogue form, as a question put to the tombstone by a passer-by about the identity of the dedicator and the reasons for the dedication, followed by the answer of the tombstone: L) )  %%)   ')  'X ‡  – =%Q# ^ $) JQ QM) 6  '. Say who you are, whose son, from what country, and in what a victor. – Casmylus, son of Evagoras, victor in boxing at the Pythian games, a Rhodian.

Not only is Simonidean authorship, as almost always, uncertain, but so is a date for the poem. The boxer from Rhodes, Casmylus, was the subject of a lost Isthmian by Pindar (cf. frs. 2–3 Maehler), and as it is difficult to imagine that he was important in subsequent periods, the most obvious hypothesis is that the poem celebrating him was contemporary with him. Page, however, pointed to the dialogue form of the epigram as an indication of ‘Alexandrian ingenuity’ and hence of a Hellenistic dating.75 Such ‘ingenuity’ is, however, not in fact a prerogative of the Hellenistic age. A dialogue between the passer-by and the dead or the dedicator, about the monument erected for him or by him, occurs already in the comic ‘dialogues with statues’ of the fifth century (Aristophanes, Clouds 1478–85; Plato Com., PCG 204, Phrynichus, PCG 61)76 and is perfectly understandable in the light of the strong archaic tradition in which inscriptions speak in the first person.77 After all, reading a funerary or dedicatory inscription meant first of all, in anthropological terms, performing a kind of ritual to commemorate the dead or the dedicator. Inscriptions in dialogue form express the questions that the reader/passer-by is to put to the monument; they offer precise instructions, by which the person who had the monument set up guides the passer-by, point by point, in the execution of the ritual, often taking precautions against an ‘imperfect’ ritual by a hasty passer-by, through admonitions not to hurry, but to take one’s time to read. Such instructions are very common in sepulchral inscriptions of all periods.78 There are at least two other metrical inscriptions which are closely parallel to that for Casmylus, and which can be dated in all probability to roughly 75 76 77 78

Cf. FGE p. 245; against, U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and G. Karo, AthMitt 45 (1920) 159–60 and Kassel (1983) 11. Cf. Kassel (1983). Cf. M. Burzachechi, ‘Oggetti parlanti nelle epigrafi greche’ Epigraphica 24 (1962) 3–54; A. E. ´ Raubitschek, ‘Das Denkmal-Epigramm’ in L’Epigramme grecque 9–26; Svenbro (1993) 26–43. Cf. J. W. Day, ‘Early Greek Grave Epigrams and Monuments’ JHS 109 (1989) 22–7 and ‘Interactive Offerings: Early Greek Dedicatory Epigrams and Ritual’ HSCPh 96 (1994) 43–6. As Meyer (forthcoming) chapter A.1.3 observes, an essential distinction between the reception of a literary text and that of an inscription is the discretional character of the latter: a guest at a banquet will rarely go away when the bard starts singing, but the passer-by may not stop to read.

308

The epigram

the same period. One is a dedication from Halicarnassus, dated to the first half of the fifth century79 (CEG 429 = SGO 01/12/05): '8 !4 %% #) #  ' C .[ #] % %  C; ## 9,  #[%.] JQ $e, =%9Z##) K  C [ Q ] M   ) ' (  4'C &  [].  80 Artful voice of stone, tell me who set up this dedication and decorated the altar of Apollo. Panamyes, the son of Kasbollis – if you urge me to speak out – dedicated this tithe to the god.

Another funerary inscription from Thessaly, dated about 450 bc (CEG 120), is engraved on the plinth of a column which evidently supported a sphinx81 ; in the first two verses the passer-by addresses the sphinx, and the second couplet must have contained the answer:82 %M) h'[] Q) C [. . . .][. . $]#(%  h [ . .][. . . . . .]'[.] &<>[]; M 5[( ) (∪–∪) – ∪–∪ – ∪ &][() (∪) ∪ – –] [– ∪–∪ – ∪–∪ – – ∪ ∪ – ∪ ∪ –] ‘Sphinx, deadly dog, whose corpse do you sit and guard . . .?’ ‘Stranger . . . of the dead . . .’

Together with these epigrams,83 we should place other inscriptions of the late fifth and fourth centuries, which, so to speak, imply dialogue: they suggest the possibility of a question or at least a comment by the passerby, but they express only the answer. The earliest is an Attic dedicatory inscription of the beginning of the fifth century, CEG 286: T% K%C &  h$ h %  [] T h   C & C &' U C; (  ' ( . To all men I answer the same, whoever asks which man dedicated me: Antiphanes, as a tithe. 79 80

81 82 83

Cf. H. J. Rose, CR 37 (1923) 162–3. Panamyes also appears in an inscription from Halicarnassus which can be dated between 465 and 450: cf. R. Meiggs–D. Lewis, (n. 23), no. 32. Cf. Svenbro (1993) 56–62. The paradoxical nature of the ‘voice’ of the tombstone is also noted in SCO 05/01/42 = GVI 1745, of the third century bc: ( ) &

" 

 %   ‘(stone) that speaks with a voiceless mouth’. For the frequent representation of the sphinx on a stele as the ‘guardian’ of the tomb, cf. E. Vermeule, Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry (Berkeley 1979) 171; Woysch-M´eautis (1982) 83–7. The opening of v. 3 has been variously interpreted as M 5 (Peek) or as the genitive of a proper name (e.g. q ( , Friedl¨ander). Cf. Kassel (1983) 11.

2 Funerary and dedicatory epigrams

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Parallel to this is AP 6.269 = FGE 672ff., whose origin as an inscription is clear both by the heading in the anthology, F <, ‘in the manner of Sappho’,84 and by the obvious exploitation of a monumental context: 5' ) . 5%  ) K   )   &(     , 'U ;*    ?  &  C;%  † C^#  †  <‹{(') %  #) '% $U‘ %b ! 5%   /  #%  (. Children, though I am a dumb stone, if anyone asks, then I answer clearly, having set down at my feet the words I am never weary of speaking: ‘Arista, daughter of Hermocl- (?) the son of Sauneus, dedicated me to Artemis Aethiopia. Your ministrant is she, sovereign lady of women; rejoice in this her gift of herself, and be willing to glorify our race’. (trans. Paton)

A question by the passer-by is also implicit in the second couplet of an Attic inscription of about 350 bc (CEG 545): ‘The earth has the bones and the flesh of the sweet boy [. . .] if you ask my name [. . .], I am Theogeiton, etc.’, and we may also note another Attic sepulchral inscription of the late fourth century (CEG 596), where a bilingual (Greek-Aramaic) metrical titulus, containing the personal information about the dead, together with the depiction of a lion and a figure, half-human, half-prow of a ship, is accompanied on the tombstone by an epigram:   &Z $_  *  4' ) F     #)   'X C I C *  ($% U D#  *!# & # %(%U &## # C i$  $  % ( [  ’  # #) e T &, , *  U ` ' C #) 5' ! % $. Let no one wonder at this image, that on one side a lion stretches out, on the other the prow of a ship. A hostile lion came, wishing to tear me apart. But my friends fought for me and buried me here, the friends whom I most wanted, coming from the holy ship. I left Phoenicia, and my body is buried here in the earth.

Here the opening anticipates and answers the surprised question of the passer-by about the meaning of the figures (cf. further below, pp. 329– 30).85 In the inscriptions discussed so far, the epigraphic text acts to complete the message of the tomb, which is transmitted in part symbolically 84 85

Cf. FGE pp. 181–2. Another Attic inscription of the fourth century, CEG 512, also has a dialogic form, but the dialogue is not between the reader and the statue or the tombstone, but between the figures of two dead people, mother and son, who are buried next to each other and portrayed on the stele.

310

The epigram

by a statue, by an object that the inscription accompanies, or by a figure engraved on the tombstone. These inscriptions, however, do not perform their didactic function descriptively – that is to say, they do not describe what the passer-by/reader can ‘see’; they presuppose the inscribed monument, which either speaks in the first person, or is indicated briefly by means of a deictic pronoun or adjective. They thus transform the act of vision (of the monument) and of reading (of the supplementary verbal message) into an act of verbal dialogue, which, even if fixed in writing, creates a typically oral situation of communication between the ignorant passer-by/reader and the stele or the dead person. In only one case, which also displays an unconventional metrical structure,86 do we find a change in these rˆoles, and the person who seems at the beginning of the epigram to have the rˆole of the passer-by turns out to be very well informed, with the result that he can anticipate the self-description of the stele, which depicts a bearded man and a woman (Onesimos and Melite), CEG 530: !5 ( 0 # U !% 8 $8 ('  5 U # 87 & #% , .' C>4% D%  % U    5 %( % ) D%  !% 8 $4. –  %b !5 #  C &') &## b b # . ‘Hail tomb of Melite: a good woman lies here; returning the love of your husband Onesimos, you were the best of women. Therefore in death he misses you, for you were a good woman.’ ‘And you too, hail, dearest husband, and cherish my children.’

Even if he received the !5 of the dead woman which is usually addressed to the passer-by (v. 4), and even if he speaks of himself and of his own image on the stele in the third person (v. 3), the speaker of the first three verses must be Onesimos, as is confirmed by Melite’s final exhortation: ‘Love my dear ones’, and as the ancient reader of the inscription will have understood at once from the depiction of a man standing up and talking to a woman. The speaker is thus the person who had the stela set up, who is obviously as well informed as the stele itself, even if he here assumes the rˆole which is usually played by the uninformed passer-by.88 Dialogic inscriptions survive in their traditional forms into the Hellenistic age (cf. e.g. GVI 1833 and 1850, of the second century; 1851, 1859, of the 86 87

88

Two hexameters and two catalectic trochaic tetrameters, a sequence for which no parallels are known to me in metrical inscriptions. The participle is an addition extra metrum to the text, probably requested by someone (perhaps Onesimos) who was interested in recording Onesimos’ feelings. It has also been suggested (e.g. Pircher (1979) 39) that the second verse is an imperfect hexameter. Cf. Walsh (1991) 86–7.

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second/first century; 1882, of the first century), and appear to have become a real fashion under the Roman Empire (GVI 1835–1849; 1860–1872; 1883– 1887), to the point that they generated a parody by Paulus Silentiarius, AP 7.307:89 >3(  . . . – s 'X  ; – J  '  . . . – C^  'X  ; – =#  ' C * $. – ^*  &$ ( $; – d4% ' C ' M # 9. – ^*  &' M; – = 5 ' C (' . – s    # ; My name is . . . – What does it matter? – My country is . . . And what does that matter? – I am of noble race. – And if you were of the very dregs? – I quitted life with a good reputation – And had it been a bad one? – And I now lie here. – Who are you and to whom are you telling this? (trans. Paton)

From the third and second centuries bc on, however, we also find a different form of dialogic dramatisation, which does not transform the moment of vision and reading into a dialogue between the passer-by and the dead, but merely translates the act of reading by the passer-by into an act of listening; the message written on the monument is now pronounced by the monument itself. This form of presentation presupposes and, as it were, transforms into a narrative monologue the previous convention of true dialogue, leaving the responsibility for the message still with the inscription and/or the dead: cf. e.g. GVI 1620.1–3 (third/second century bc):  Q9  .%) / '    | ,  (  % 5,    |  C;' 99 )  #. ‘the tomb is not without signs, and the stone will reveal the dead person: who, and the son of whom, has gone to Hades, etc.’, 1745.3f. = SGO 05/01/42 (third century bc): M % 'X   Q  &  Q  | , $ &

" 

 %  ,  #. ‘above, the smooth stone announces the dead, speaking with a mouth without sounds, etc.’, 1621.3 (second century bc) ∪ – ∪ – ∪ – ∪ &

]# 5 4)  #. ‘the inscription will announce, etc.’.90 Inscriptions like those discussed so far are, more or less explicitly, ‘words’ that the convention of the speaking , whether dedicatory or funerary, lends to the stone, or to the dead person, or to the object to which the stone refers. As such, they presuppose that the passer-by/reader had in front of his eyes the monumental context of the dialogue, which was of course also 89 90

Kaibel (1893) 51 rather fancifully hypothesised that the occasion (real or imaginary) for the epigram was the discovery of a fragmentary inscription in which a homo insipidus supplied foolish answers. Many other examples in GVI 1622–1635. This compendious form of dialogue is not common in literary epigrams, but cf. Callimachus, AP 7.447 = HE 1209f., the pseudo-Theocritean AP 7.262 = HE 3504f., and Antipater Sid., AP 7.425.3 = HE 382.

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The epigram

the subject of the dialogue: the passer-by was expected to ask about the monument, not about anything else. When epigram-writers began to link their names with the text of single epigrams, and to consider a circulation for texts separate from inscription on stone, and hence a reception which did not involve actual vision of a monument, it was to be expected that this would affect the character of the dialogue itself. In fact, literary epigrams of the third and second centuries present a mixed picture. Some very faithfully follow epigraphical traditions, with the presupposition of a monumental context: a passer-by asks questions and a tombstone or monument explains itself. Examples of this kind include Leonidas, AP 7.503 = HE 2355ff. and AP 7.163 = HE 2395ff.,91 Phalaecus, AP 13.5 = HE 2939ff.,92 Theaetetus, AP 6.357 = HE 3342ff., Theodoridas, AP 6.224 = HE 3524ff., Philetas of Samos, AP 7.481 = HE 3028ff.,93 [Theocritus], AP 7.262 = HE 3504ff.94 There are, however, also other more ambiguous epigrams which play on the absence of the monumental context. An interesting case is Nicias, AP 6.122 = HE 2755ff.: 0  C^$#$) # '  )  ( )  Q %   T" '  %(!; – 04U D   #( .  y %  (! C>'Q% '4   '. Maenad of Ares, sustainer of war, impetuous javelin, who now has set you here, a gift to the goddess who awakes the battle? – Menios; for by springing lightly from his hand in the forefront of the fight I wrought havoc among the Odrysae on the plain. (trans. Paton, adapted)

This dedication of a javelin contrasts its present immobility with its past violent speed. This was probably a common type of dedicatory epigram by 91

92

93

94

Leonidas was imitated by Antipater Sid., AP 7.164 = HE 302ff., who even copied the name of the dead person (!); see also the further variations of Antipater or Archias, AP 7.165 = GPh 3658ff., and of Amyntes, SH 43 = FGE 13ff. (cf. also Agathias, AP 7.552). A later dedicatory parallel is offered by Philip of Thessalonica, AP 6.259 = GPh 2789ff. The text is corrupt and the division of lines controversial. In all probability, the epigram is in the form of a dialogue between a passer-by and the four characters on a monument; so, most recently, Gow-Page and Buffi`ere. The exegesis of Kaibel (1893) 50–1, followed by Beckby, according to which the dialogue is between only two characters commemorated by the statue or the relief, is much less likely. Here, the dialogue is not between the dead person and the passer-by, but between the father of the little girl, who will have been depicted on the stele, and the girl herself, likewise portrayed on the stele: cf. CEG 512 (above, p. 299). ‘The inscription will say which tomb it is, and who lies beneath it: “I am the tomb of the famous Glauce”’, which finds a precise parallel in GVI 1625 (first century bc)‘The stele will tell you of my destiny, and the letters engraved on it will tell of my death and the name of my parents [. . .] my name is Ploutos, and at the age of three I arrived at the threshold of Hades, etc.’ For Glauce, however, seeing that she is ]_ ‘famous’, no other details are necessary, as Walsh (1991) 87 observes.

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Nicias’ time; its roots lie perhaps in Alcaeus’ description of an arms-room (fr. 140 V.),95 and other examples are found in [Simonides], AP 6.52 = FGE 932ff., Mnasalces, AP 6.125 and 128 = HE 2611–2620, and Antiphilus of Byzantium, AP 6.97 = GPh 909ff. There is a close parallel in Anyte, AP 6.123 = HE 664ff.:96 g ^%  T"' ) (  9   ) ' C   #$   !(#  & C A$! % (_   'U &## C & (  '  1 *b C;() .

## C & = , C^!  '. Stand here, you murderous javelin, no longer drip from your brazen barb the dismal blood of foes; but resting in the high marble house of Athena, announce the bravery of Cretan Echecratidas. (trans. Paton)

Anyte, perhaps writing before Nicias, gives greater prominence to her relationship with the lyric-archaic model of Alcaeus: !(# [ . . .] (  '  picks up   'X   '  !(#" ‘the great hall sparkles with bronze’ etc. in Alcaeus. Anyone who read Nicias’ epigram in its monumental context, next to the dedicated javelin, will not have had any doubts about its interpretation. The visible dedication will have made clear that ‘Maenad of Enyalius’ was a metaphor for ‘fury of Ares’, a metaphor of a common kind in which Dionysus and Ares were often involved.97 The reaction of a reader of the epigram in book form will have been different, and Nicias may have wanted to suspend understanding by means of the metaphorical ( and the ambiguous C^$(#, which was both one of the names of Ares and (less commonly) an epithet of Dionysus.98 Anyone who encountered the epigram without its monumental context, however, might until the clear signals of v. 2 have been led to suppose that the apostrophe was addressed to the statue of a ‘Maenad of Dionysus’, and that Enyalius was to be interpreted in its secondary, less common meaning; the uncertainty would only 95 96

97

98

Cf. M. B. Bonanno, L’allusione necessaria: ricerche intertestuali sulla poesia greca e latina (Rome 1990) 125–46. The standard view, deriving from Reitzenstein (1893) 123–5, is that Anyte is the model for Nicias. This has recently been denied by Bernsdorff (2001) 113–14, in the course of a detailed survey, which lowers the chronology of Anyte, traditionally considered to be an authoress of the very first generation of Hellenistic epigram-writers. The use of (  in the sense ‘javelin’ is found only in these two poems and would seem to guarantee a relationship between them. The ambiguity of Nicias’ opening might point to the priority of Anyte. Timotheus had called the shield ‘the drinking-bowl of Ares’ (PMG 797) and ‘cup of Ares’ to mean ‘shield’ or ‘shield of Dionysus’ to mean ‘cup’ are typical examples of a metaphor by analogy, according to Aristotle, Rhet. 3.1407a14–15; cf. also Rhet. 3.1412b34 and Poet. 1457b20–1. Cf. PMG 1027b, Macrob., Sat. 1.19.1: ‘Bacchus has the name of C ^$(#, which is also one of the names used for Mars’.

314

The epigram

be increased by ( , which normally means ‘cornel tree’, but here is used for a spear made from cornel-wood. Someone, of course, who knew Anyte’s poem, if it was indeed the earlier of the two, will have understood from the end of v. 1 that the subject was a javelin, and that the startingpoint for the initial metaphor was the Homeric custom of personifying lances and the hands of warriors who brandish them through the use of the verb  %.99 Nevertheless, initial misunderstanding will have been even more likely if, at the beginning of the third century, the ekphrasis of statues in dialogue form was already a common epigrammatic form. An example from the late third century was inscribed on the plinth of a statue of Lysippus the Younger:100 Z  ) () )  %C #%   L 5) | &  ) K % #%(%)  ##$ )  #. ‘tell me truly, little boy, who formed you and whose child you are, if your young tongue is loosened up, etc.’. Other examples involving statues of Bacchants include [Simonides], APlan. 60 = FGE 914f., s x' ‡ – a(!. – s '  M% ‡ – < . | – s 'C M ) a(! v < ‡ – <  ‘Who is this? – A Bacchant – Who sculpted it? – Skopas. – Who inspired the passion, Bacchus or Skopas? – Skopas’, and the non-dialogic Glaucus of Athens, AP 9.774, 775 = GPh 3869–74, Paulus Silentarius, APlan. 57 and adesp. APlan. 58.101 Thus Nicias’ epigram, with its metaphorical use of ( , perhaps in competition with Anyte’s, fully exploited the ambiguities created in dialogues between passer-by and inscription, when these epigrams could be read without the monumental context to which they refer. Other epigram-writers too used the absence of the monumental context to problematise, while pretending to adopt, the dialogic conventions of the epigraphical tradition, which continued to be followed faithfully by many literary epigrams. Consider Dioscorides, AP 7.430 = HE 1657ff.:   %Q# $    '$ T"' T:   ;  #  \ & ( ; #(   k$ T  2C l  x' #! T) !&X & C C;   'Q #   . – (  $ (% $ ' '$ ) 4   C $ #    <(  ' #:  . – K%! 9(%.    C &%' H' ?Z  5   9 l  C>$(') 99 100 101

For lances that ‘rage’, cf. Iliad 8.111 and 16.75; for the hands of warriors, cf. 16.244–5. Text of R. Herzog, ‘Epigramm der Kinderstatue eines Lysippos in Kos’ in Schumacher-Festschrift (Mainz 1930) 207–8; see also J. D. Beazley and A. S. F. Gow, CR 43 (1929) 120–2. The epigrams attributed to Simonides are notoriously difficult to date; Glaucus of Athens would appear to be later than Nicias.

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!| ' !4% %  #. – }    d ) % QM &(  %Q9# $# '. Who hung the newly-stripped arms on this oak? By whom is the Dorian shield inscribed? For this land of Thyrea is soaked with the blood of champions and we are the only two left of the Argives. – Seek out every fallen corpse, lest any left alive illuminate Sparta in spurious glory. – Nay! Stay your steps, for here on the shield the victory of the Spartans is announced by the clots of Othryadas’ blood, and he who wrought this still gasps hard by. – O Zeus our ancestor, look with loathing on those tokens of a victory that was not won. (trans. Paton, adapted)

This epigram was included ‘by mistake’ in Book 7 of the Palatine Anthology, but, despite its opening, it is not a votive offering. After the first couplet, which clearly recalls dialogic dedications, the reader, who is unaware of the fact that this epigram could never be connected with any monument, expects an answer. The poem develops, however, as a mimetic-dialogic re-evocation of the night following the battle of Thyrea. The Argives and the Spartans had decided to solve the question of the possession of Thyrea by staging a fight between three hundred Spartans and three hundred Argives. At the end, the two Argives who were left alive thought that they were the only survivors and therefore considered themselves the winners (cf. Herodotus 1.82.5: ‘thinking that they had won, they ran back to Argos’); but one Spartan, Othryades, had also survived, and he seized the arms of the fallen Argives and took them to the Spartan camp as a sign of victory. Already by Herodotus’ time, the story of this battle was subject to romantic variations: ‘according to some people’, the historian informs us, Othryades committed suicide from guilt at being the only one who returned home, while his fellow-soldiers had fallen on the battlefield. Dioscorides is our earliest datable witness to a version in which Othryades, with the arms he had taken from the Argives, erected a formal trophy and inscribed on it in his own blood a declaration of Spartan victory.102 This battle was, however, very popular with Hellenistic epigrammatists, and Dioscorides will not have invented his version; an epigram of uncertain date ascribed to Simonides (AP 7.431 = HE 3334ff.) mentions the shield, ‘stained with the manly blood of Othryades’, and Nicander, AP 7.526 = HE 2723ff. describes Othryades as the one who ‘had inscribed the spoils captured from the Inachidai (i.e. the Argives)’. Instead of offering the usual ‘dialogic reading’ of the dedicatory inscription, as the opening appears to announce, Dioscorides expands on the story of the origin of the inscription itself, 102

This version, which enjoyed great fortune in the early imperial age, is also adopted by the two historians Chrisermus and Theseus, FGrHist 287F2 and 453F2: cf. P. Kohlmann, ‘Othryades’ RhM 29 (1874) 463–80.

316

The epigram

told in dialogue form through the words of the two Argives; moreover, the perspective from which Dioscorides organises the aition of the inscription reverses what a reader expected for dedicatory inscriptions, whether dialogic or otherwise. The ordinary point of view in such poems was, of course, that of the person making the dedication, but here it is that of the enemies of the dedicator; the value of the victory celebrated by the trophy of Othryades is thus denied and, instead of containing the usual prayer to the god to accept the dedication, the end of the poem consists of a prayer not to accept it. In this way, Dioscorides overturns the conventions of the dedicatory epigram and the expectations of readers. It is Callimachus who plays most openly and frequently with the dialogue form in dedicatory and sepulchral epigrams. In at least two of his dedicatory epigrams, Callimachus exploits the epigraphical convention of the talking monument, as the spokesman of the person who had it set up.103 These two epigrams are AP 6.147 = HE 1157ff., , ! F &! ) C;%#) , , $  \' C;% N #  M( )

Z% U v ' C } #("  <'>  & )  % M %  $  M. Acknowledge, Asklepios, that the vow Akeson made for his wife Demodice’s recovery is hereby ‘Paid in full’. If you forget and bill me again, this tablet says it is my receipt. (trans. Nisetich)

and AP 6.149 = HE 1161ff.: % V  % 4% ^  (   

Z%)  &    *' &  5% !(#  &#  s$''"%U % Q `'$ ' `#M ' . Euainetos put me here, saying (I don’t know myself ) that he dedicates me to the sons of Tyndareus, a bronze cock in return for a victory I won. Just so: the son of Phaidros, grandson of Philoxenos, has spoken. (trans. Nisetich)

In both cases, the truth of the traditional information presented in the first person by the inscription, namely the reason for the dedication, is ironically problematised. In the first case, the author’s point of view attributes to the inscription the somewhat comic desire to act as a sort of formal ‘receipt’, guaranteeing Akeson against the possibility of a second request for thanksgiving from the god: nothing could be farther from the usual devout tone of dedications. In the second case, the point of view is indeed that of the 103

Cf. Meyer (1993a) 166; Gutzwiller (1998) 192–3.

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talking monument, but it is a monument that expresses itself very idiosyncratically. The epigram underlines the paradox of a bronze object which speaks,104 while the parenthetic ‘I don’t know myself ’ stresses both that a bronze object cannot have a perception of facts105 and, in particular, cannot know about a victory alleged to have taken place before it was created. The talking cock monument is indeed prepared to credit the affirmations of the dedicator, but it also humorously makes clear that if an object ‘speaks’, it can only be the spokesman of the dedicator. In another poem of Callimachus (AP 6.351 = HE 1151f.), it is not the passer-by who apostrophises the dedicated monument, but rather we see a preliminary phase, in which the dedicator presents his gift for acceptance by the god: s  ) #  ( ! C „ %$  ) 4  A_  . – s‡ – C;!5U – J5‡ – 6> =4U – \!. For you, Lord, Lion-strangler, Boar-slayer, I, an oak club, from – Who? – Archinos. – Of? – Crete – Got it. (trans. Nisetich)

The novelty of the speaker is increased by the further ambiguity of the manner and the tone in which the divine interlocutor expresses himself: the gesture of impatience with which he interrupts the pompous words of the dedicator, together with the almost monosyllabic brevity of his questions, do not suggest so much the benevolent majesty of a god receiving a gift, as the rudely imperious haste of a Ptolemaic official, to whom a humble citizen has offered a small present.106 Rather similar is Callimachus, AP 7.277 = HE 1265ff.: s) M „ $ ; ?  ! ('    Š  C * #) !% 'X '  (" 'Q%  +, 9U 'X    w%$!) *$" 'C L% #%% 5. Who are you, shipwrecked traveller? Leontichos found your corpse here on the beach, and piled this grave with a tear for his own hazardous life: he too, without peace, like a gull, roams the sea. (trans. Nisetich, adapted)

The opening four words suggest the usual question about the identity of the dead, but this question remains unanswered. In the nineteenth century, attempts were made to emend the text, so as to obtain a request about the 104 105 106

Cf. Meyer (forthcoming) chapter B.3.4. That ‘written discourse’ can be ‘endowed with reason’ is denied in the passage of Plato’s Phaedrus quoted below, p. 322. ´ Cf. G. Luck, ‘Witz und Sentiment im griechischen Epigramm’ in L’Epigramme grecque 392–3.

318

The epigram

identity of the person who had buried the dead, but the transmitted text lends itself, in fact, to two interpretations, both of which are plausible and presuppose a frustration of the expectations aroused by the tradition of the dialogic inscription. Callimachus may simply have left the initial question suspended, eliminating any answer at all. It is, however, more likely that Callimachus plays on the ambiguity created by the ellipse of the verb in the first hemistich. The ancient reader expected the ellipse of L (‘Who are you, shipwrecked stranger?’), but Callimachus also suggests and favours the possibility of the ellipse of !% (‘Who buried you, shipwrecked stranger?’).107 With either interpretation, the poem draws attention to the fact that there is no answer to the traditional question – it is unnecessary to force the epigram into a dialogue structure, by emending Š  to Š C at the beginning of v. 2.108 On the more likely reading, however, Callimachus inserts his own reflection in place of the answer to the conventional question, thus challenging the reader to understand why there was no answer; the reason is, in fact, that the convention of question and answer about the identity of the dead person clashed with another convention, attested only in literary epigrams and only from the third century onwards, namely that epitaphs for the shipwrecked were anonymous.109 Another epigram, once again by Callimachus (AP 7.522 = HE 1227ff.), is a sort of mise en sc`ene of the act of reading and recognition, or – better – lack of recognition, of the monumental context. This, however, is not the reading of an uninformed passer-by, but a highly personalised reading by a far from generic figure, one who is so well informed as to rival the monument itself and to be able to fill out its message:110 s .  'C %%;  ') 3 %C   ) * 8 s$  ,  A % 4#"  04$ 8  #. D    ! &T% %,  % ^$. Timonoe. Which Timonoe are you? By the gods, I would not have known you, had not the name of your father Timotheus come next on the stele, and Methymna, 107 108 109

110

Other exegeses have been attempted: cf. P. Waltz, vol. iv of the Bud´e Anthologie, p. 174. As T. L. Agar, CQ 17 (1923) 83 does, followed by Gow-Page. Cf. above, pp. 292–3; for a different interpretation, see Gutzwiller (1998) 208–9. The same logic might lie behind Serapion, AP 7.400 = GPh 3404ff.: ‘Whose skull is this? – That of a man who worked hard. – Then you will have been a merchant or a fisherman in the blind wave. – Tell mortal men that they take pains to accomplish other hopes, but this hope here is the one that we have access to’. Cf. Meyer (1993a) 166; Walsh (1991) 97–103. Pace P. K¨unzle, RFIC 11 (1933) 76, GVI 1845 is not parallel to Callimachus’ poem, for that poem has a traditional ‘generic’ passer-by.

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your city. Euthymenes, your widowed husband, is full of grief: that’s for sure. (trans. Nisetich, adapted)

The implication that the figural representation, whether iconic111 or aniconic,112 by which the tomb indicated the identity of the dead woman was inadequate suggests a sort of historical and metaliterary reflection on the nature of sepulchral inscriptions, underlining the indispensability of the verbal element for a correct understanding of the iconic element.113 At the same time, however, the passer-by/reader of the inscription (in actual fact, the author) also occupies the space of the standard epitaphic comment, and, together with the essential personal information, he includes his own highly personalised message. The inscription does not give any answer, on behalf of the dead woman, to the usual question of the passerby/reader about her identity; Callimachus literally denies the inscription the right to speak, by substituting for the comment of the inscription the process of decoding what he sees engraved on the stele.114 As a result, the initial  'C %% unexpectedly proves to come from the soliloquy that follows the reading of the name of the dead woman in the inscription, and not from a dialogue between reader and tomb. Moreover, in the final sentence Callimachus comments emotionally himself, instead of repeating the standard phrases by which the spouse or the parents, who had set up the monument, expressed their mourning for the dead;115 it is as if he were saying, “I, Callimachus, am telling you this; I knew Timonoe well, so this is not the usual rhetorical and generic expression you might find on a funerary stele”.116 The emotional reactions of the poet, not those of the person who commissioned the work, remain in the foreground from beginning to end; together with the process of reading, the poet’s gradual discovery and his own feelings are dramatised, and we recognise here the Callimachus we know, the shrewd ‘detective’ and psychologist of the erotic epigrams. It is in fact difficult to say whether this epigram is closer to dialogues between 111 112 113

114 115 116

Cf. Weissh¨aupl (1889) 95–6. Sepulchral portraits, could be not only badly executed but also generic, paying little or no attention to the specific physiognomy of the dead: cf. Clairmont (1970) 62. Cf. E. Livrea, ‘Tre epigrammi funerari callimachei’ (1990), now in Livrea (1993) 92–3. Iulianus Aegypt., AP 7.565 ‘The painter has portrayed Theodota perfectly ( 8 k '   _ (). Ah, if only his art had betrayed him! He would have granted oblivion to us, who weep for her’ represents a contrasting use of the same motif, and perhaps an imitation of Callimachus. Cf. Meyer (1993a) 166 and Meyer (forthcoming) chapter B.3.5. Some examples from the fourth century: CEG 477, 485, 503, 511, 585. As W. Kullmann, ‘Kallimachos in Alexandrien und Rom’ in Candide iudex: Beitr¨age zur augusteische Dichtung. Festschrift f¨ur W. Wimmel (Stuttgart 1998) 170 observes, the reader of this epigram has the impression that he is not dealing with the usual captatio benevolentiae, but rather acknowledging the reactions provoked in a reader by a successful reading of the epitaph.

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The epigram

passer-by and monument or to erotic epigrams like AP 12.71 = HE 1097– 1102 (below p. 338): ‘O Thessalian Kleonikos, poor, poor you! By the bright sun, I didn’t recognise you. Poor wretch, what has happened to you? Only your bones and hair are left. Are you possessed by the same daimon that dominates me? Have you had this ill fortune? I understand. Euxitheos has enchanted you, too, etc.’ A narrativised and contracted variant of the dialogue form, which is to be interpreted in the light of typically Hellenistic inscriptions such as GVI 1620 (above), is Callimachus, AP 7.447 = HE 1209–10: %Q  D  M 5U p  % !   #M “k C;% $ =8”  C  '#! . The stranger was short, his epitaph verse will also not be long: ‘Theris son of Aristaios, of Crete’ is long on me.

The future tense of #M in v. 1, about which doubts have been expressed,117 has in fact many inscriptional parallels: the act of proclaiming a message is almost always in the future (‘the stone will indicate who the dead person is’, ‘the inscription will announce’ etc.),118 and this is perfectly understandable, given that the passer-by would see the inscription before reading the message (i.e. the name) itself. The exegesis of the couplet is still controversial, but whatever the explanation of the excessive ‘length’ of the truly short k C;% $ =4 – the physical length of the inscription, compared with its stone, which was short because Theris was ‘not tall’, or perhaps rather its long-windedness, compared with the laconic Theris119 – the voice of the poet, well informed about the dead, imposes itself on what remains, only formally, the voice of the tomb (C ); the poem once again problematises the suitability of the sepulchral message in the light of the superior, personal knowledge of the author. The epigram probably also alludes to the taste for ]# % !, an aesthetic preference which is typical of this poet in particular.120

117

118 119 120

See most recently HE ii.193 (with a survey of previous opinions) and P. Karpouzou in PagonariAntoniou (1997) 136. For #  ‘long-windedness’ as the opposite vice to %$ , cf. Celentano (1995) 73–4. Cf. also [Theocritus], AP 7.262.1 = HE 3504 and Antipater Sid., AP 7.425.3 = HE 382. Cf. Celentano (1995) 75–6. Cf. Celentano (1995) 74–5. This does not mean, obviously, that this celebration of concision did not have precise contextual reasons; F. Cairns, ‘The New Posidippus and Callimachus’ in Worte, Bilder, T¨one. Studien zur Antike und Antikerezeption B. Kytzler zu ehren (W¨urzburg 1996) 77–8 supposes that this virtue was particularly appreciated in a Cretan, seeing that the Cretans had a terrible reputation as liars.

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Let us now consider Callimachus, AP 7.725 = HE 1233–7:121 ;K ( %b  H' ) 0  U    $#Q D%;122  % ) M  #% )    (% ; D B ,  = $; – V    [ D# )  'X #4 L !   %. Menecrates of Ainos (you here, too!) were you not still in the prime of life? What destroyed you, O best of guests? Maybe what killed the Centaur too? – The sleep came which was destined to me, but insolent wine provides the reason. (trans. Nisetich, adapted)

Here Callimachus-the-reader is not a generic passer-by, but a close friend of the dead, and thus better informed, or at least more objective, than the inscription itself. Callimachus had imagined that Menecrates was still alive, because he was in the prime of life (  $#Q); as soon as he discovers that he is dead – ‘you here, too!’ (i.e. in a cemetery) – the poet needs no inscription to guess what has happened. The poet himself has witnessed the sympotic excesses of this ‘very dear guest’ of his: Menecrates was as $#Q ‘imposing’ as a Centaur, but wine destroyed him, just as it had destroyed the Homeric Centaur.123 The inscription itself adds nothing to the poet’s hypothesis, except for the self-justification which could be expected from the dead,124 following in the wake of Elpenor in the Odyssey, who was led to his death by too much wine:125 the fatal day came for Menecrates, and excessive drinking was no more than the contingent reason for his death. That wine !   % (v. 4) is open to different interpretations. If the words are given their usual meaning, then ‘wine is justified/has an excuse for itself ’, i.e. it is to be forgiven, because fault is not to be attributed to it, but to inescapable destiny (cf. e.g. Demosthenes, Adv. Leptinem 140); alternatively, the phrase may be interpreted as ‘wine supplies destiny with an excuse’ (cf. e.g. Plato, Rep. 5.469c9), or ‘wine provides the occasion for destiny’ (cf. e.g. Herodotus 4.79.1).126 On any interpretation, Menecrates disagrees with Callimachus’ assessment of the cause of death,127 and the 121 122 123 124 125 126 127

I print the text and share the exegesis of M. Gronewald, ‘Kallimachos Epigramm 42 G.-P. (61Pf.)’ ZPE 100 (1994) 22–4. For the sequence  . . . D%, suspected, in my opinion wrongly, of being corrupt, cf. E. A. Barber, CR 4 (1954) 230 and G. Giangrande, Hermes 91 (1963) 154–6. Cf. Od. 21.295–6, Alcaeus Mess., AP 11.12 = HE 24ff., Nicarchus, AP 11.1. Cf. Hutchinson (1988) 73: ‘Menecrates is indeed sensitive to the disreputable appearance of his decease’. In the Underworld, Elpenor explains to Odysseus: }%  ' L% 8  &%  L ‘the ill fortune of destiny and too much wine blinded me’ (Od. 11.61). Cf. L. Pearson, ‘Prophasis and Aitia’ TAPhA 83 (1952) 205–23. This is demonstrated by the highly probable imitation in [Virg.], Cat. 11.1–4: Quis deus, Octavi, te nobis abstulit? An quae | dicunt, a, nimio pocula dura mero? | – Vobiscum, si est culpa, bibi; sua

322

The epigram

epigram turns on the contrast between the diplomatically softened truth of the presumed traditional inscription which Callimachus imagines that he observes, and the ‘objective’ voice of Callimachus-the-author which suggests a message similar to that of other epigrams ‘for those who died of drink’128 (such as Callimachus, AP 7.454 = HE 1325f.).129 Here again we recognise the experienced psychologist familiar from the erotic epigrams.130 A different mode of variation of dialogic conventions is found in three other epigrams by Callimachus. Ideally, inscriptions should formulate the information that they wish to display in an articulate message, but the stonecutters of archaic inscriptions were well aware of the limits of such messages. Inscriptions did not allow any possibility of feedback between the dead person and the passer-by; inscribed messages were unchangeable, and therefore remained deaf to the request of any future passer-by/‘interlocutor’,131 as can be seen very clearly from CEG 286 (quoted on p. 308). A famous passage of Plato’s Phaedrus (275d) makes this a characteristic of all writing: There is one strange element which truly unites writing and painting. The figures that are the fruit of painting stand in front of you as if they were alive, but if you ask them a question, they remain solemnly silent. The same thing happens in the case of written discourses. You might get the impression that they speak as if they had some sensible thoughts, but if you ask them about something that they have said, in order to understand it better, they continue to say one and the same thing.

The messages of archaic inscriptions remained limited either to information about the dead (identity, virtues, kind of death) or, something particularly common in Attic inscriptions from the late fourth century on, to the expectations of the relatives concerning the afterlife that awaited the dead as a result of their virtues. In three epigrams, however, Callimachus converses with the tomb to elicit from the dead information about the quality of (non-) life after death, a theme no less important in Hellenistic philosophy

128

129

130

quemque sequuntur | fata: quid immeriti crimen habent cyathi? ‘What god, Octavius, took you away from us? Perhaps, as they say, the cruel cups of too much undiluted wine? – If it is an offence to drink, I shared it with you. Everyone has his own destiny: why accuse the cups of a fault that is not theirs?’ On the meaning of  %, cf. H. R. Rawlings III, A Semantic Study of Prophasis to 400 bc (Wiesbaden 1975) and A. A. Nikitas, Zur Bedeutung von J>`;<@< in der altgriechischen Literatur (Wiesbaden 1976). Leonidas, AP 7.455 = HE 2385ff. imitated by Antipater Sid. 7.353 = 356ff.; Dioscorides 7.456 = 1647ff.; Ariston 7.457 = 786ff.; Antipater Thess. 7.398 = GPh 423ff.; Marcus Arg. 7.384 = GPh 1469ff.; adesp. AP 7.329; adesp. FGE 1624ff. For this passage, I follow the interpretation of E. Livrea, ‘Due epigrammi callimachei’ (1989), now in Livrea (1993) 95–100. The reading  9b)  #. attested by Athenaeus (and defended most recently by G. Giangrande, Platon 50 (1998) 3–10) is, however, tempting; Callimachean irony can never be ruled out. 131 Cf. Svenbro (1993) 28–31. Cf. below, pp. 338–41.

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than in Plato.132 The motif of the dead person/tomb that transmits messages which are more wide-ranging than the conventional topics is developed by Callimachus also in the Aitia (fr. 64 Pf.) and the Iambi (11, cf. fr. 201 Pf.), though in both of these cases it is not the afterlife about which the dead instruct us, but rather their final moments on earth. Let us begin with AP 7.524 = HE 1187ff.: R 7 BC 2, % G' &Q ; – ^* , C;  =$$ 5' # ) 2C . – R S G')   ‡ – J#b % . – ;e ' C .' ‡ – ˆ '. – 6> 'X J#Q ‡ – 0. – C;#  . – >Š  , #

 3 &# U * 'X , 1'Q 9Q# ) J ##$ 9   * C;'". Tell me, is Charidas buried here? – If it is the son of Arimmas of Cyrene you mean, he is here. – Charidas, how is it down there? – Very dark. – What of return? – A lie. – And Pluto? – A myth. – We are done for, then. – I have given you the truth. If you prefer a pleasantry, beef is a penny a pound in Hades. (trans. Nisetich, adapted)

The poet first apostrophises the tomb (2, %) and then the deceased himself, whereas the ‘talking’ tomb conventionally spoke either in the first person or in the voice of the dead. Here a ‘conventional’ dialogue between passer-by and tomb leads into a conversation with the deceased Charidas; as the epigraphic tradition had so frequently imagined that not only the tomb, on behalf of the dead, but also the dead person himself could speak in the first person through the inscription, why should it not be considered legitimate to ask him for some more information, besides the usual details of identity, particularly as the tomb itself had already taken care of these details in the first couplet? The second epigram in this group is AP 7.520 = HE 1199ff.: v '_" s!  h ;{') A Q i    :$! v (#  % ) '_ % $# J # ƒ' $e    J$%$U '4  ' C  ,  % 9. If you search for Timarchus in Hades, to find out anything about the soul, or how you will exist again, search for the son of Pausanias of the tribe Ptolemais: you will find him among the pious. (trans. Nisetich, adapted)

The poem starts off in a similar manner to the second couplet of CEG 545: ‘the earth has the bones and the flesh of the sweet boy, but his soul has 132

Cf. Callimachus, AP 7.471 = HE 1272ff., on Cleombrotus, who committed suicide after reading the Phaedo.

324

The epigram

gone to the chamber ((#) of the devout. If you ask my name ( * 'X A _ 5), I who lie here in illustrious Athens am Theogeiton, the son of Thymouchos, a Theban by birth’; this and other epigraphic occurrences demonstrate that this conditional clause was a part of epitaphic formulaic language,133 just as ‘you will find him in the area of the devout’ ('4  'C  ,  % 9) also alludes to such repetitive assertions. In CEG 545 and other inscriptions, however, ‘if you ask my name etc.’ refers to the usual curiosity of the uninformed passer-by about the name of the dead person,134 but in Callimachus the addressee already knows who he is looking for, and the investigation in which he is imagined to be engaged from the beginning (v '_") is completely different. Timarchus’ personal details (v. 3) seem to be introduced only as necessary to trace him in Hades, together with his new ‘address’ (v. 4); the information that the passer-by would like to receive is not of the traditional kind about the deceased’s identity, but rather first-hand information about the quality of life beyond the grave, and the whole epigram is centred on the possibility of such an extraordinary interview at this new, and highly unlikely, address in the Underworld.135 By starting in the same way as sepulchral inscriptions, which elicited the conventional request from the passer-by about the identity of the dead person, and finishing with the equally conventional dwellingplace of the blessed, Callimachus makes the tomb itself speak the whole poem: an interview with the dead about life after death, which may be supposed to be a motif invented by Callimachus, is introduced within traditional epigraphic conventions, as if tombs could learn to speak with the intellectual voice of Callimachus, as the bronze cock of Euainetos had done (above pp. 316–17). Thus far the primary meaning of the epigram. But if Callimachus’ Timarchus was the Alexandrian Cynic philosopher, who was a disciple of Cleomenes,136 and who, as a Cynic, will not have believed in life after death and may even have written, as other Cynics did, against mythical beliefs regarding Hades,137 then the epigram acquires a high degree of irony. 133

134

135 136 137

Cf. GVI 1260.11 (second century bc) and 1163.3 (second/third century ad); the first century ad inscription in J. G. Milne, Catalogue g´en´eral des antiquit´es ´egyptiennes du Mus´ee du Caire (Greek Inscriptions), Oxford 1905, 61 no. 9253.4–6; SGO 05/01/57 (third century ad), and 18/01/19 (second/third century ad). Cf. CEG 535, 558, 593, which are all parallel to the funerary monument for the fallen at Potidea (CEG 10) and reflect the same religious conception as, e.g., Euripides, Supp. 533–4: cf. A. Skiadas, ^J@ s0aS@ (Athens 1967) 81–2, J. D. Mikalson, Athenian Popular Religion (Chapel Hill–London 1983) 77; R. Garland, The Greek Way of Death (London 1985) 75 takes a different view. Cf. P. Karpouzou in Pagonari-Antoniou (1997) 131–2. Cf. Livrea (1993) 78–84, Gutzwiller (1998) 204–5, Meyer (forthcoming) chapter B.3.2. We have the titles of two works of Antisthenes, J   & 5 and J    h ;'$ (Socr. et Socratic. rell. VA.xxviii Giannantoni and cf. vol. iv. 250–1); according to Diogenes Laert. 6.5 (176 Giannantoni), he argued that true immortality consisted of a devout, just life.

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Callimachus, too, was probably sceptical, like the Cynics and Timarchus, about life after death;138 it is, at least, likely that he conceived of the afterlife in a more sophisticated manner than contemporary popular opinion. The poem thus not only pokes fun at Timarchus himself (an atheist in Paradise . . .), but becomes a parody of the conventions of inscriptional dialogues with the dead and of their remorselessly certain pieties (cf. CEG 545 cited above). We may compare the case of Hippo, a natural philosopher of the age of Pericles, who affirmed that nothing existed except what can be perceived by the senses (VS 38A9); he was mocked for his materialism by Cratinus, PCG 167, and is regularly called ‘the atheist’ in later sources.139 Nevertheless, he was credited with a self-epitaph which Clement of Alexandria (Protrep. 4, p. 43 St¨ahlin) quoted as proof that Hippo had had a kind of conversion, though modern scholars have normally seen it as satirical (FGE 564–5): g @ ' %) , &( %  5% L% %  05   . This is the tomb of Hippon, whom in death Fate made equal to the immortal gods.

In Callimachus’ epigram, the exploitation of the stock expressions of sepulchral inscriptions is marked by the double specification ‘in Hades’/‘where the devout are’. We may fill out the translation as follows: ‘If you want to know what life after death is like, and therefore you are looking for Timarchus in Hades – but it must be Timarchus the Cynic, the son of Pausanias of the Ptolemaic tribe of Alexandria – you will find him (the very one who denied immortality), obviously in the ! % 9 (as epitaphs put it)’! The idea of a !/' /(# % 9 (or () for those who have lived righteously can be glimpsed in its very early stages in the Odyssey and is commonly attested in classical literature.140 There is, however, no epigraphical reference to any ‘dwelling-place of the devout’ until CEG 545 (above pp. 323–4) of the fourth century, though this becomes quite frequent in the third and second centuries,141 when sepulchral inscriptions 138 140

141

139 VS 38A4, 6, 8, 9 and B2–3. Cf. Livrea (1993) 83. Cf. E. Rohde, Psyche (4th ed., T¨ubingen 1907) i.307–14 and ii.381–85; P. Siegel, Untersuchungen zu einigen mythologischen und eschatologischen Motiven in den griechischen metrischen Grabinschriften (Diss. Innsbruck 1967) 228–53; Sourvinou-Inwood (1995) passim but esp. 17–56. See, e.g., GVI 1572 (third century bc), GG 194 (third century bc), GVI 677 = SGO 03/02/62 (third/second century bc), 842 (third/second century bc), 2018 = SGO 01/20/25 (200 bc), 753 = SGO 05/01/49 (second century bc), 805 (second century bc), 1154 (second century bc), 1346 (second century bc), 48 (first century bc), 258 (first century ad), 531 = SGO 03/02/60 (first century ad), 1474 (first century ad), 1967 (first century ad), 973 (first/second century ad), 1719 (first/second century ad), 1764 (first/second century ad), 1970 (first/second century ad), 2040 = SGO 06/02/32

326

The epigram

often express the comforting thought that the dead person is indeed in Hades, but in the “dwelling-place of the righteous and/or blessed.’142 It is thus very likely that the expression was fashionable in the formulaic sepulchral language of the third century, as Callimachus’ ostentatious irony also suggests.143 Scepticism about life after death was an element of Greek culture existing alongside ordinary belief in the afterlife (cf. e.g. Euripides, Troades 1248– 50 and Helen 1421), but it is not until the late imperial age that we find it clearly attested in sepulchral inscriptions.144 Callimachean scepticism as regards the topoi of funerary inscriptions, however, would appear to find an isolated parallel in an inscription of the third century bc, namely GVI 350, engraved on the stele of a tomb from Eutresis in Boeotia:145 C ^(' C  O  5 6  '. #5 % [] %#( A#  #   5 x%. * '  & # ) [] 9  '  C & #  . Here I, Rhodius, lie. I do not utter jokes and I leave the cursed moles throughout the whole land. If anyone has a different view, let him come down here to express it.

The ‘absurdities’ which Rhodius146 proposes to ‘pass over in silence’ are best understood as the usual expressions about the virtues of the deceased and the immortality of the soul, and the last verse points out that if anyone wants to converse with Rhodius and answer him back, he will have to go down into Hades; this may be an implicit criticism of the idea of an interview with the

142

143

144 145 146

(first/second century ad), 1871 (second century ad), 431 (second century ad), 1090 (second century ad), 1162 (second century ad), 1776 (second century ad), 1289 (second/third century ad), 1562 (third century ad), 1772 (third century ad), 2061 (third/fourth century ad). On this consolatory motif, cf. V´erilhac (1978–82) ii 313–32 and see, e.g., GVI 1128.5–6 (third century bc); 1139.8 (second century bc); 1148.17–20 (second century bc); 760.1–4 = SGO 05/01/35 (second/first century bc); 994.3 (second/first century bc); vv. 6–7 of the epigram (second/first century bc) published by E. Atalay and E. Voutiras, ArchAnz 1979, 64; GVI 764 (first century bc); 642.4–6 = SGO 05/01/30 (first century ad). See also Carphyllides, AP 7.260.8 = HE 1355f. (above, p. 300): &4 , #$b [ | T% !Z :  C % 9. For further discussion of this epigram cf. Gutzwiller (1998) 204–5. In another poem, Callimachus parodies the topical expressions of dedications to the Dioscuri, AP 6.301 = HE 1175ff.: by playing on the ambiguity of x# as both ‘sea’ and ‘salt’, he reduces the sea-storms after which survivors made dedications to the Dioscuri to the ‘storms’ of debts (v. 2), from which Eudemus saved himself by eating only bread and salt. See, for example, GVI 1905 (third century ad) and 1906 (third/fourth century ad), and the epitaph from Side SGO 18/15/13 (third century ad). Cf. W. Peek, AthMitt 56 (1931) 120 n. 1 and Nicosia (1992) 54. ‘Rhodius’ could, of course, designate the dead’s origin, but the proper name is occasionally attested (LGPN i.398 and ii.391; SGO 01/20/21.6 = GVI 1344.6 of the third/second century bc; Nuova silloge epigrafica di Rodi e Cos no. 267 Maiuri); the practice of giving only the name, with no further details, was common in central Greece and in Boeotia (see above, p. 291).

2 Funerary and dedicatory epigrams

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dead, such as we have seen in Callimachus, or rather, more generally, of the inscriptional convention of the dialogue between passer-by and deceased.147 The epitaph of this ‘new Timon’ remains an isolated third-century example, but it offers a precious parallel for the scepticism with which Callimachus deals with the typical expressions of sepulchral inscriptions in general, and his particular fun with the conventional dialogue form: what if someone took seriously the convention of a dialogue between passer-by and deceased and actually went looking for Timarchus in Hades . . .? Rhodius too foresees the possibility that someone may want to answer the bitter affirmations that he has left written on his tomb, but only in order to demonstrate his scornful certainty that nobody will ever come down to give him an answer – after all, only a person who had descended into the nether world could know as much as he knew about it . . . Lastly, let us consider AP 7.317 = HE 1269f., one of the two epigrams which Callimachus dedicates to the best-known misanthrope, Timon148 : s (   C %%))  ) %  v () ! ; – s, % U 2  #   * C;'". ‘Timon (I can ask you, now you’re dead), darkness or light: which do you hate?’ – ‘Darkness, for there are more of you in Hades.’ (trans. Nisetich, adapted)

From the outset, Callimachus knows and presents the name of the dead, thus violating one of the basic conventions of sepulchral dialogues; he abandons the traditional rˆole of uninformed passer-by and assumes the rˆole of astute poet, who pretends to be carrying out a sort of reportage on life after death by contacting those who are most directly ‘qualified’ to answer. Immediately afterwards, however, the parenthetic    C %% reveals a metapoetic awareness that he is exploiting that same convention which the opening has violated: one who ‘is no longer’ obviously cannot ‘really’ talk to a living person,149 but he can do so within the inscriptionalepigrammatic structure of dialogues with ‘talking’ monuments. We would be wrong, however, to think that this insistent game of provocative play with the conventional structures of sepulchral epigrams 147

148 149

The second line is very difficult. Rhodius is perhaps referring to his good fortune in not being plagued by moles, a curse which he is happy to ‘leave’ to the rest of mankind, rather than the more usual epitaphic topoi. The reference to moles must reflect the paradoxographic tradition whereby either the whole of Boeotia, or certain areas of it, were free from these beasts, cf. Aristotle, Hist. anim. 8.605b31–606a2, Aelian, Nat. anim. 17.10, Antigonus, Mir. 10. For earlier (less convincing) attempts at interpretation, cf. H. Goldman, AJA 32 (1928) 179–80 ∼ id., Excavations at Eutresis in Boeotia (Cambridge, MA 1931) 279–80; Peek and Nicosia (n. 145) and Peek, GG 307–8. See above, pp. 302–6. Cf. Hutchinson (1988) 72, for whom the expression underlines ‘the impossibility of the conversation before it begins’.

328

The epigram

can be found in all epigram-writers. Rather, the epigrammatists seem to divide between (principally) Callimachus, who exploits changes in the circulation and reception of epigrams for humour and ambiguity, and other poets – Anyte, Leonidas, Phalaecus, Posidippus, Theaetetus, Theodoridas, etc. – who prefer broadly to maintain the traditional conventions of the dialogue between passer-by and tombstone (or statue); the intervention of their authorial voice is mostly limited to the heightening of poetic imagery and linguistic expression. It is, perhaps, not surprising that authors like Callimachus (or Dioscorides), who were also masters of the purely literary form of the erotic epigram, felt freer of the typical conventions of real inscriptions, even when writing on the traditional subjects of inscribed epigram.150 2.4 Puzzles and speculations One extreme case of the didactic dialogue between the deceased (or the stele on his behalf ) and the passer-by concerns the depictions of objects or animals that on funerary monuments sometimes accompanied, or more rarely substituted for, the usual representation of the dead (and their relatives); such depictions often had a rˆole that was little more than decorative, but at times they carried symbolic value, connected with the name of the dead person, or the circumstances of his death, or his characteristics in life.151 This is an extreme case because this is ‘half-information’, i.e. non-verbal messages which are not immediately clear, or are not to be interpreted in their primary meaning, and depend on the passer-by for their decoding. Symbolic depictions on sepulchral monuments go back at least as far as the fifth century. For the most part, these were immediately understandable objects (arms, baskets, etc.) or animals (horses, birds, dogs, hares, etc.) which recalled the name of the dead person, his rank, his merits, or his favourite activities. Ambiguous cases undoubtedly existed: thus, for example, a lion was often just a semi-decorative ‘guardian’ of the tomb, but at times it indicated the strength and warlike courage of a fallen soldier;152 on the tomb of ? of Sinope (Attica, fourth century bc), it marks the 150

151 152

Without wishing to return to Reitzenstein’s division into ‘schools’, it would thus appear to be true that the authors usually attributed to the Peloponnesian ‘school’ felt closer to the epigraphic tradition than did the authors traditionally considered ‘Alexandrian’: cf. H. Beckby, Anthologia Graeca (Munich n.d., but 2nd ed. 1966), i.32. Cf. Weissh¨aupl (1889) 68–94. The lion was a frequent effigy on polyandria for those who died in war: examples include the polyandrion at Cnidos for the Athenians who died at sea in 394, and that for the Greeks who fell at Chaeronea against Philip in 338 bc (cf. below, p. 334); for later periods, cf. GVI 34 (second/first century bc).

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name of the dead,153 and on the memorial of ? ' and his companions who fell at Thermopylae154 it obviously carried multiple significance. Another animal which frequently guarded tombs was the dog, but the dog (Q) over the tomb of Diogenes of Sinope pointed to the ‘Cynicism’ of the man they called ‘the dog’,155 whereas the bitch over the tomb of the Athenian ^  etymologised her name, ‘good keeper’, and/or marked her gifts as a housewife;156 the hunting dog on the stele of Apollodorus and ?(, the sons of ?(, very probably recalled the well-known breed of ‘Laconian’ hunting-dogs.157 Such symbolic representations of names158 were, on the whole, very easy to understand: the idea that names had meanings was widespread even in archaic Greece,159 and many words could denote both a person and a category of objects or animals. Other symbols were equally familiar and comprehensible: dogs, hares or horses evoked the dead person’s love of hunting (and therefore his aristocratic origins); the wool basket recalled the diligence of a slave or a housewife, etc. The straightforward comprehensibility of such depictions is shown by the fact that there is no sepulchral or dedicatory monument of the classical period in which an inscription explicitly refers to symbolic depictions on the monument, with the exception of the very unusual Greek-Aramaic stele CEG 596 (quoted above p. 309). CEG 596 is on the sepulchral monument set up for Antipater the Ascalonite by Domsalos of Sidon. The complex iconography of the monument consists of a dead person on a coffin (Antipater), a lion pouncing on him from the left,160 and on the right a composite figure defending him, 153 154 155 156 157

158 159 160

A. Conze, Die attischen Grabreliefs III (Berlin 1906) 285 no. 1318. For [Simonides], AP 7.344 = FGE 1022ff., the lion on the tomb of ? had both meanings. Cf. Herodotus 7.225 and Lollius Bass., AP 7.243 = GPh 1591ff. According to Diogenes Laert. 6.78; see also adesp. AP 7.63 and 64. A. Conze, Die attischen Grabreliefs I (Berlin 1893) 21 no. 66. Cf. B. Freyer-Schauenberg, ‘=SW ?;=SW><−=SW ?;=;@W;’ AntKunst 13 (1970) 95– 100. A particularly complex problem of ambiguity was created by figures which could, but need not, allude to beliefs about death and the afterlife: e.g. birds, which were possible symbols of the separation of the soul from the body, dogs, which were sacred to Hecate, and goats, which were sacred to Dionysus and connected with mystery cults. The ancients will probably have solved these ambiguities much more easily than we can; at any event, I do not know of any case in which this kind of symbolism is reflected in a verbal text on the tomb. Cf. T. Ritti, ‘L’uso di “immagini onomastiche” nei monumenti sepolcrali di et`a greca’ ArchClass 25–26 (1973–74) 639–60. Cf. M. G. Bonanno, ‘Nomi e soprannomi archilochei’ MH 37 (1980) 65–88. It is difficult to imagine lions roaming freely in Attica in the fourth century: Antipater might have been wounded by a lion in some other part of the Mediterranean and taken on a ship to the Piraeus, where he died, or perhaps the lion escaped from a zoo in the Piraeus, or, more probably, the lion of the relief may have been a Phoenician demon of death, which Domsalos and his companions had driven away from Antipater’s dead body before duly burying him: cf. Clairmont (1970) 116–17 and id., Classical Attic Tombstones (Kilchberg 1993) iii.315; Woysch-M´eautis (1982) 76–7.

330

The epigram

human from the waist down, but the prow of a ship above (representing Domsalos and his companions, who attended to the burial of Antipater). The accompanying epigram, an explanatory ‘caption’ for this sepulchral depiction, is without parallel until the tomb of Menophila in the second century (below pp. 336–8), and the nationality of the dead and the dedicator, the bilingual inscription in prose, and the narrative detail both on the relief and in the inscription161 might suggest that this inscription was a oneoff, foreign to the Greek culture of the fourth century. On the other hand, this same Oriental influence may well have been important for the symbolism which characterised many Hellenistic sepulchral monuments from Asia; moreover, the two principal composers of riddling funerary epigrams, Antipater of Sidon and Meleager of Gadara, both came from Phoenicia, like Domsalos of Sidon and Antipater of Ascalon. The analogy between the first verse of CEG 596 ‘let no one be surprised (  &Z $_ ) at this figure’ and the opening of a riddling epitaph of Antipater, ‘do not be surprised (8 (9 ) at seeing on the tomb of Miro, etc.’ (AP 7.425 = HE 380ff., below, p. 333), might indeed suggest that the stele for Antipater the Ascalonite is merely the only example from mainland Greece of an Oriental tradition of symbolic sepulchral monuments, which to some extent anticipates the custom of Hellenistic sepulchral enigmas. Hellenistic epigrams which explained the riddling symbolism of (real or fictitious) sepulchral representations probably developed alongside more complex symbolic narrative in general. On the other hand, in the Hellenistic age, portrayals of the dead gave less importance to the generic (and predictable) types of virtue privileged by Attic funerary monuments, in favour of a greater emphasis on a whole series of minor details, which reflected specific, individual characteristics of the dead and which therefore had a greater need of illustration.162 This need for ‘captions’, created by the use of a more complex figurative symbolism, was perhaps what in fact originally gave rise to the Hellenistic epitaphic riddle. However that may be, it was to be expected that games with complex symbolism would appeal to the intellectualism of the period, and its taste for the Erg¨anzungsspiel,163 which soon created riddles for stelae which had never existed.164 The earliest such epigram offers a perfect example of the complex relationship between such poems and the dialogue form, which had 161 162 163 164

Cf. Clairmont (1970) 117. Cf. Schmidt (1991) 117–41; B. Schmaltz, Griechische Grabreliefs (Darmstadt 1983) 236–41. For the concept and a rich series of examples, cf. Bing (1995) and G. Zanker, Modes of Viewing in Hellenistic Poetry and Art (Madison 2003) chapter 3. Cf. Goldhill (1994) 197–215 and Gutzwiller (1998) 265–71.

2 Funerary and dedicatory epigrams

331

traditionally served to dramatise the transmission of information by the verbal message on the stele. This epigram is by Leonidas of Tarentum, AP 7.422 = HE 2092ff.:  % !%Z ( %$) J %%  ) !5  

#$ , 2X Q9$    &% ( #‡ D B 8 V  G5;  (. i B C V    D%( )  # 'C) | ) # % 9 #‡ v X 'X %Q

$)  &4 " 'X  %9 G";  ') '  %

% . What shall we conjecture about you, Pisistratus, when we see a Chian die carved on your tomb? Shall we not say that you were a Chian? That seems probable. Or shall we say that you were a gambler, but not a particularly lucky one, my friend? Or are we still far from the truth, and was your life’s light put out by neat Chian wine? Yes, I think now we are near it. (trans. Paton, adapted)

Both signifiers, verbal and iconic, are presented in the first couplet. It is from the inscription on the stele that Leonidas will have learned (or, better, will have imagined that he has learned) the name of the dead, Pisistratus; seeing the name on the inscription and knowing that the dead person was called Pisistratus was one and the same thing. The stele, however, also implies something else about this Pisistratus, by means of the figure of a die in the ‘Chian’ position.165 The poet does not appear particularly interested in the explicit verbal information on the stele – the name of the dead would probably have been joined by other information, such as the patronymic – and his attempt to converse is solely concerned with the iconic signifier. Dice were in fact a frequent sepulchral symbol, for example, on reliefs of the Hellenistic age from Asia Minor; on the tombs of those who had met a premature death, the ., they evoked the precarious nature of human life, but the particular die that accompanies Pisistratus, lying in the position of the least favourable throw, implies here a non-standard meaning,166 and thus the poet has to % !(_  ‘speculate’. In spite of the apostrophe of the poet, who asks to be guided, Pisistratus/the stele does not answer, because the convention of inscriptional and epigrammatic dialogue between passer-by and deceased presupposes that all ‘conversation’ will be one-way; Callimachus, as we have seen, takes pleasure in exploiting this convention. The result is that instead of creating a dialogue between the naturally well-informed deceased and the uninformed passer-by, who 165 166

See Gutzwiller (1998) 268 n. 82, with references to the various reliefs in Pfuhl–M¨obius (1977–9), which include images of dice. As observed by Gutzwiller (1998) 268.

332

The epigram

depends on the monument and/or the deceased for his knowledge, the epigram focuses exclusively on the poet, here generalised by means of a first person plural,‘the other readers of the stele and I’, and dramatises the various mental steps by which he finally arrives at the interpretation that he considers most likely.167 Chronologically, the next sepulchral riddle in the sequence is AP 7.429 = HE 96ff. by Alcaeus of Messene (end of the third century bc): '_  $ ) V $ !( / '5  '%%(  5  ( ## !   # Q %#  #. } $ T" !  $ G#  D A‡    &

##  $Q  * u & . v , X * ]  & ,  # ) / 'C * , $% 'C - #  ` '‡  <

, $ >*' %(. * , 2 '%%5 O K  Q)