Critical Moments in Classical Literature: Studies in the Ancient View of Literature and its Uses

CRITICAL MOMENTS IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE

Through a series of innovative critical readings, Richard Hunter builds a picture of how the ancients discussed the meaning of literary works and their importance in society. He pays particular attention to the interplay of criticism and creativity by not treating criticism in isolation from the works which the critics discussed. Attention is given both to the development of a history of criticism, as far as our sources allow, and to the constant recurrence of similar themes across the centuries. At the head of the book stands the contest of Aeschylus and Euripides in Aristophanes’ Frogs, which foreshadows more of the subsequent critical tradition than is often realised. Other chapters are devoted to Euripides’ Cyclops; to ancient reflection on Greek and Roman comedy; to the Augustan critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus; to ‘Longinus’, On the Sublime; and to Plutarch. All Greek and Latin is translated. richard hunter is Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Trinity College. He has published extensively in the fields of Greek and Latin literature; his most recent books include Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry (with M. Fantuzzi, 2004), The Shadow of Callimachus (2006) and Wandering Poets in Ancient Greek Culture (with I. Rutherford, 2008). Many of his essays are collected in On Coming After: Studies in Post-Classical Greek Literature and its Reception (2008).

CRITICAL MOMENTS IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE Studies in the Ancient View of Literature and its Uses

RICHARD HUNTER Regius Professor of Greek, University of Cambridge

cambri dge uni versi ty p re s s Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, S˜ao Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York http://www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521519854  c Richard Hunter 2009

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2009 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Hunter, R. L. (Richard L.) Critical moments in classical literature : Studies in the ancient view of literature and its uses / Richard Hunter. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-521-51985-4 (hardback) 1. Greek literature – History and criticism. 2. Greek literature – Appreciation. I. Title. pa3079.h86 2009 880.9 001 – dc22 2009001092 isbn 978-0-521-51985-4 hardback

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Contents

Acknowledgements List of abbreviations

page vi vii 1

Introduction 1 Aristophanes’ Frogs and the critical tradition

10

2

Readings of Homer: Euripides’ Cyclops

53

3

Comic moments

78

4 The ugly peasant and the naked virgins: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On Imitation

107

5

The grand and the less grand: ‘Longinus’, On the Sublime

128

6

Reading for life: Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’

169 202 212 215

Bibliography Index of passages discussed General index

v

Acknowledgements

Much of this book has been inflicted on (too) many seminar and lecture audiences over the past few years, and it is to their questions and criticisms, and the opportunity for self-criticism which they offered, that I am most indebted. I would also like to thank Michael Sharp of Cambridge University Press for his support and the Press’s anonymous readers for their suggestions. I owe a particular debt to the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, which supported a period of research in Athens and Thessaloniki in 2006, during which serious reading and thinking for some of this book got underway.

vi

Abbreviations

Standard abbreviations for collections and editions of texts and for works of reference are used, but the following may be noted: FGrHist Gow–Page, HE LIMC RE S TrGF

F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Berlin and Leiden, 1923–) A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, The Greek Anthology. Hellenistic Epigrams (Cambridge, 1965) Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Zurich, 1981–99) A. Pauly, G. Wissowa and W. Kroll, Real-Encyclop¨adie d. klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart and Munich, 1893–1978) scholium (on) Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (G¨ottingen, 1971–2004)

vii

Introduction

At an important transition within the Ars Poetica Horace announces that he himself will abandon poetry, because (thanks to appropriate purges) he does not suffer from inspired madness; instead he will become a Professor of Creative Writing: ergo fungar uice cotis, acutum reddere quae ferrum ualet exsors ipsa secandi; munus et officium, nil scribens ipse, docebo, unde parentur opes, quid alat formetque poetam, quid deceat, quid non, quo uirtus, quo ferat error. (Horace, Ars Poetica 304–8)

Thus I’ll play the part of a whetstone, which can sharpen iron, though it itself cannot cut. I will write nothing myself, but will teach the office and task of the poet – the source of his material, what nurtures and shapes him, what he should do and what not, where virtue leads, and where error.

Horace here plays, as he does in the Satires, with the allegedly ‘un-poetic’ nature of verse, particularly didactic verse, on banal or technical subjects,1 but what might strike a modern reader is the strongly educational, not to say moralising flavour of Horace’s treatment both of the writing of poetry and of his rˆole as a teacher. Horace’s attitude, as we shall see throughout this book, is not in fact untypical for antiquity, but, typically also, Horace’s is no conventional handling of traditional material. By Horace’s day poetry had been the basis of the early stages of education for several centuries and was to continue in this rˆole; it was, as for example Plutarch’s essay ‘How the young man should study poetry’ clearly demonstrates,2 poetry which ‘taught’ young men their munera et officia, and which thus ‘nurtured’ and ‘shaped’ them. Although one of the rˆoles which ‘didactic’ writing often imposes upon its audience is that of being 1 2

For related issues in other didactic verse see Hunter 2006b. See Chapter 6 below.

1

2

Critical Moments in Classical Literature

children,3 and although Horace elsewhere stresses the youth of the Pisones to whom the Ars is addressed (see v. 366), writing about poetry itself is a special case, for poetry lay at the heart of ‘classical’ education. Horace gives emphasis to the point immediately afterwards by his description of the Roman obsession with arithmetic and money in primary education (vv. 325–32), where there is a clear, if implicit, comparison with the stress in Greek education upon poetry and the development of stylistic skills (cf. vv. 323–5). In the passage under discussion Horace has turned the relationship of poetry and education around so that it is now the child poet who needs to be instructed, to be ‘nurtured’ and ‘shaped’. We may be reminded of the famous anecdote in which Virgil is said to have described his pattern of working on the Georgics as ‘licking the poem into shape’, as a mother bear was said to lick her formless young into shape;4 in Horace, it is the poet himself, not the poems, who needs this treatment. Our earliest explicit witness to the discourse which Horace assumes is the analogy which the Aristophanic Aeschylus draws between the rˆole of schoolteachers for children and that of poets for adults (Frogs 1054–5). In Horace’s text the influence of the critical and ethical theory of the intervening centuries is very obvious, but it is the Frogs which, at least for us and, to an important extent, for antiquity as well, set the parameters of discussion. The reader of ancient critical texts is constantly confronted and perhaps surprised by his or her memories of the Frogs; whether these are in fact deliberate textual memories or echoes is often difficult to determine and will sometimes not, in any case, be the most important question about the textual relationship. For us the Frogs dramatises, as Plato’s Protagoras was to do some years later, the emergence of a language of literary criticism5 and the emergence of the critic; as with the closely related satire of intellectual movements in the Clouds, Aristophanes no doubt had in mind in the Frogs real contemporary developments, and probably also comic predecessors, but the state of our evidence means that we will never be able to proceed beyond discerning the tantalising traces of the outline of a history of the ideas which for us first surface in the Frogs. One of the aims of this book is to make some of those traces more visible. However influential the Frogs undoubtedly was at different periods of ancient thinking about literature and its heritage, a confrontation between the comedy and the 3 4 5

Hence Lucretius’ famous simile of ‘the honey round the cup’ (1.935–50), see below p. 188. Suetonius, De Poetis 23.90 Rostagni; Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 17.10; see below p. 162; the verbs used in the anecdote are fingere, effingere and conformare. For some of the problems with assessing the Frogs in this regard see Dover 1993: 32–3; Willi 2003: 87–94.

Introduction

3

later tradition must be aimed not principally at the usually hopeless task of trying to establish clear lines of descent, but rather at seeing whether patterns of similarity can have an explanatory power for both the comedy and the later texts. Examples are scattered throughout this book, but a few cases here may illustrate some of the different issues which arise. I begin by returning to the passage of Horace from which I started. Poets have a munus et officium, just as all craftsmen have a ‘function’, an ›rgon, which it is theirs to perform: this is what they do.6 Horace’s language is, however, tinged both with the imperative force of an appeal to traditional Roman values and with a moral earnestness which lifts the poet’s rˆole beyond the neutrality of ‘function’ or ›rgon, and indeed beyond modern ideas of what poetry is: this is also what poets should do. Both the prescriptive language and the moral earnestness take us back again to the Aristophanic Aeschylus and to his perception of the rˆole of poetry in society: taÓta g‡r Šndrav crŸ poiht‡v ˆske±n, ‘this is what poets should work at’ (Frogs 1030). The realignment of language and ideas that are used to depict social or ethical positions towards more purely rhetorical or literary virtues is another familiar pattern of ancient criticism, and one which we will meet again. Horace picks up the ‘duty’ of the poet in verses 333–4 when he considers the two possible aims which a poet might have: aut prodesse uolunt aut delectare poetae aut simul et iucunda et idonea dicere uitae. (Horace, Ars Poetica 333–4)

Poets aim to be of benefit or to give delight or simultaneously to say things which are both pleasing and appropriate for life.

A whole book could of course be written on the origins and development of this triad of aims in ancient poetry and thinking about poetry, but though Horace may well have his eye on Hellenistic critics such as Neoptolemus,7 the Frogs too demands our attention. One of Aeschylus’ claims for the beneficial rˆole of his poetry is based on the effect of Persians: Ai. e²ta did†xav P”rsav met‡ toÓtì –piqume±n –xed©daxa nikn ˆeª toÆv ˆntip†louv, kosmžsav ›rgon Šriston. Di. –c†rhn goÓn, ¡n©kì + ¢kousa perª + Dare©ou teqneätov, ¾ c»rov dì eÉqÆv tÜ ce±rì Þdª sugkroÅsav e²pen ‘«auo±’.

(Aristophanes, Frogs 1026–9)

6 7

See Brink on v. 306; Norden 1905: 498–502. See Brink 1971: 352–3, citing Neoptolemus as quoted by Philodemus, On Poems V xvi.10–14 Mangoni.

4

Critical Moments in Classical Literature

aesch. Then after this by putting on (didaxas) The Persians I taught (exedidaxa) the Athenians to want always to defeat the enemy, by celebrating a most heroic deed. dion. I certainly enjoyed it when . . . the dead Darius, and the chorus immediately knocked its hands together like this and cried ‘iau!’

Here then is the Horatian dichotomy with an added twist: the same poem can be instructive and pleasurable, but it can be so for different sections of its audience.8 The critical dichotomy had almost certainly not been formulated in stark Horatian terms as early as the late fifth century, but the Aristophanic context here is precisely the social rˆole of poetry, how poets ‘make men better in the cities’ (Frogs 1009–10), and ‘pleasure’ too had long been central to thinking about how audiences react to poetry; as so often, what later becomes explicit is already woven into the fabric of the Frogs. Moreover, Horace’s apparent gloss on being beneficial, ‘saying things appropriate for life’, embraces a very wide range of subject matter: the Iliad meets the requirement because, however unlikely it is that we will find ourselves in the position of an Agamemnon or an Achilles, the emotions and ethical choices of the characters carry lessons for the most humble of us, as the whole ancient scholiastic tradition amply attests. Nevertheless, the phrase also evokes a closeness between the subject matter of poetry and our own lives, and here it seems hard not to remember the boast of the Aristophanic Euripides that he brought tragedy within the understanding of the audience by introducing o«ke±a pr†gmata, ‘familiar’, but also ‘appropriate’ things (Frogs 959), things idonea uitae we might well say.9 Some of the questions which both Euripides (implicitly) and modern critics (explicitly) have asked about Aeschylus’ catalogue of the benefits of poets to society (Frogs 1031–6)10 are already posed by Horace’s choice of language: in what does the benefit of poets for our own lives actually exist? We shall return to the question.11 The language and imagery of ancient criticism is remarkably persistent over time. The ‘weighing scene’ of Frogs may be indebted to Aeschylus’ Psychostasia, in which the souls of Achilles and Memnon were weighed against each other on Zeus’s scales and ‘on one side Thetis, on the other Eos, pleaded for their sons who were fighting’ (Plutarch, ‘How the young man . . . ’ 17a),12 but it also very probably illustrates the typically Aristophanic phenomenon of the literalisation of an existing metaphorical 8 9 12

On this distinction in Frogs see further below pp. 25–9, 37–8. 10 See below p. 49. On this phrase see below pp. 18–20. For a full account of the testimonia see TrGF vol. iii, pp. 374–5.

11

See below pp. 48–52.

Introduction

5

language;13 intellectual ‘weighing up’ becomes physical measurement. In its turn, the ‘weighing scene’ might have influenced the critical terminology which followed it. Tristano Gargiulo has attractively suggested that kaq”lkein ‘draws down’, used in a very difficult passage of the prologue of Callimachus’ Aitia (fr. 1.9) of the opposition between two poems, borrows and reverses, as well as ‘re-metaphorising’, the image of the Frogs.14 Be that as it may, we may also sense the Frogs somewhere behind Plutarch’s advice that one way of counteracting the potentially baneful influence of morally dubious passages of literature is to point out to young readers that there are other quotations which can be used as a balance, ‘so that the scales incline to the better side’ (Plutarch, ‘How the young man . . . ’ 21d). There is here (once again) a shared heritage whose exact development we can no longer trace. As a second case, we may consider a small example of the familiar critical problem of the relationship between a poet’s character and the style of his poetry, a problem in which Aristophanes revels, for example, in his portrayal of Agathon in Thesmophoriazousai. In the Frogs Aeschylus is reluctant to enter debate and falls into brooding silence (like, of course, one of his own characters, as the comic Euripides would have us believe).15 At one point Dionysus has to urge him to ‘answer the question’: A«scÅle, l”xon mhdì aÉq†dwv semnun»menov cal”paine. (Aristophanes, Frogs 1020)

Aeschylus, speak and don’t get annoyed – all self-willed and haughty!

aÉq†deia, a surly refusal to ‘go with the crowd’, is ascribed to Aeschylus in part because it is an Achillean characteristic which distinguishes him from Euripides, who is portrayed as only too keen to ingratiate himself with popular taste. It was, however, also to become a stylistic term, and one well suited to Aeschylean style.16 For Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the ‘austere style’, of which Aeschylus was the pre-eminent tragic example, had a beauty marked by ‘an archaic and self-willed flavour’ (ˆrcaik¼n d” ti kaª aÎqadev –pide©knutai k†llov, On the Arrangement of Words 22.35),17 and Dio Chrysostom too finds in Aeschylus ‘great nobility and an archaic flavour, and a self-willed (aÎqadev) quality to the thought and diction’ (52.4, 15).18 13

14 17 18

The most familiar example is probably the ‘King’s Eye’ of the Acharnians. Another way of putting this would be to see a comic ‘confusion’ of the literal and metaphorical senses of staqm†w (Frogs 797, see LSJ s.v.). 15 See further below. 16 See, e.g., M¨ Gargiulo 1992. uller 2000: 259–60. ‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 22.3 applies the term, as does Dionysius elsewhere, to Thucydides. On this speech of Dio see further below pp. 39–48.

6

Critical Moments in Classical Literature

Here the sense of a link between Aristophanes’ portrayal of the poet and later critical terminology is strong; both the Aristophanic Euripides (vv. 924–34) and the later tradition comment on the ‘idiosyncratic’ nature of the Aeschylean poetic lexicon (cf. Dion. Hal. On Imitation 2.10 Aujac: poihtŸv «d©wn ½nom†twn kaª pragm†twn, ‘a poet/creator of words and things which belong only to him’), and at Frogs 837 Euripides himself calls Aeschylus aÉqad»stomov. What the nature of that link is, we are unlikely ever to be able to explicate in full,19 but it would also be na¨ıve simply to ignore the possibility that Aristophanes himself has here picked something up from what seems to have been an explosion of ‘critical’ terminology at the end of the fifth century. Aeschylus’ initial silence itself (Frogs 832) and the silences which Euripides accuses him of having introduced into his plays (Frogs 911–20) both had a long history and were to have an illustrious future.20 Although Aeschylus is, in the first place, playing out the rˆole of his own Achilles, the most famous silence in Greek literature was, and was to remain, that of the ghost of Ajax before Odysseus in the Underworld in Odyssey 11. Like the Aristophanic Aeschylus, the ghost of Ajax is angry (the point is made with remarkable insistence, Odyssey 11.544, 554, 562, 565), and both anger and silence could be, in the later tradition, grand, sublime effects, and thus very much in keeping with the ‘grand–plain’ critical dichotomy at the head of which the Frogs stands. Virgil was, of course, to use the Homeric scene to write one of the most ‘sublime’ of all passages, Dido’s silence before Aeneas in the Underworld.21 ‘Longinus’ describes Ajax’s silence as ‘grand and more sublime than any words’ (On the Sublime 9.2) and uses it to illustrate his aphorism that ‘sublimity is the echo of greatness of mind’ (megalojrosÅnh);22 silence was then to have an important rˆole in eighteenth-century discussions of the sublime.23 When the scholiast on Odyssey 11.563 (‘So I spoke, but he made no answer . . .’) observes that Ajax’s silence is ‘better than the speeches in tragedy’, it is hard perhaps 19 20 21

22 23

Willi 2003: 59 is rightly cautious about this example, but the matter is more complex than he represents it. The fullest discussion of Aeschylean practice itself in this matter remains Taplin 1972. Aeneid 6.469, illa solo fixos oculos auersa tenebat, perhaps picks up the Argonauts’ stunned reaction to the appearance of the solar Apollo at Ap. Rhod. Argon. 2.683 (on this passage see below pp. 143–9); if so, the appearance of Dido in the Underworld is framed by two ‘sublime’ moments taken from the Argonautica (vv. 452–4 deriving from Argon. 4.1477–80), and Dido’s first and last glimpses of Aeneas cast him as the brilliant sun-god (cf. Aeneid 1.586–93). For Dido and Aeneas as the moon and the sun more generally see Hardie 2006. On ‘Longinus’’ view of Ajax’s silence see Halliwell 2003: 72–4. See Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry . . . Part II, Section VI (= Burke 1958: 70–1). On silence, anger and ‘sublimity’ see further below pp. 145–6.

Introduction

7

not to recall Dionysus’ reaction to Euripides’ denunciation of Aeschylean silences: –gÜ dì ›cairon ti siwpi, ka© me toÓtì ›terpen oÉc ¨tton £ nÓn o¬ laloÓntev.

(Aristophanes, Frogs 916–17)

I liked the silence – I got no less pleasure from it than from the modern chatterboxes!

Just as no single pattern can explain all the apparent echoes of the Frogs throughout antiquity, even when we have made allowance for the fact that this play figures larger on our horizons than it might have done in antiquity, so too the spread of our evidence does not allow the writing of any linear ‘narrative’ of ancient criticism and thinking about literature. Some small bits of the most obvious gaping hole in our knowledge – the Hellenistic period – are being filled in by the publication and discussion of new texts of Philodemus, and the recent renewed interest in scholia bodes well for advances in understanding. Nevertheless, the overall picture is desperately patchy and uneven. In most modern ‘histories’ of these subjects, the figures of Plato and Aristotle rightly loom large: in their very different ways, the engagement of the two philosophers with both poetry and rhetorical prose mark a, rather than the, beginning of a discipline which still flourishes today and much of which is still informed by their concerns. Plato and Aristotle will, of course, be very important in this book too, though no single chapter is devoted to them. Whether it be foreshadowings in the Frogs of the critical concepts and literary histories which Plato and Aristotle systematised, or the importance of their ethical and political ideas for thinking about comedy, or the omnipresence of Plato in the critical works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, ‘Longinus’ and Plutarch, there is no getting away from these two great figures. Nevertheless, there are other critical currents which preceded them and then persisted after them, often affected by them but also with their own independent momentum, and I hope that this book also gives some of these currents their due. The institutional and disciplinary implications of the term ‘criticism’ have sometimes served to conceal the variety of ancient ways of thinking about the literary heritage; I hope that the chapter devoted to Euripides’ Cyclops will illustrate not just how the process of literary mim¯esis was in antiquity, as it is today, also a ‘critical’ process, but also how, in the Athens of the later fifth century no less than in Ptolemaic Alexandria or Augustan Rome, reflection upon the literature of the past went hand-in-hand with the creation of the literature of the present. Like scholarship, ‘criticism’ as a particular activity, whether ›rgon,

8

Critical Moments in Classical Literature

t”cnh or ars, does of course have its own history, and I hope that this book will indeed contribute to the writing of that history. Nevertheless, without the disciplinary straitjacket that ‘criticism’ imposes, histories of ‘literary criticism’ in antiquity would, for example, devote considerable space to tragedy’s pervasive and notorious engagement with its epic ancestor, and not just to notorious one-offs, such as Electra’s debunking of Aeschylean recognition tokens in Euripides’ Electra. As is well known, from what are to us its very beginnings Greek poetry seems to have contained an important strain of reflection upon its own nature and history (the concern with song in the Odyssey is perhaps the most familiar example), and it is very probable that early prose followed suit. Thucydides’ famous reflections upon the nature of his own and his predecessors’ writing of history may seem to speak with a new explicitness and a new vocabulary, but Herodotus’ self-positioning against Homer already reflects an equally powerful, if rather differently directed, selfconsciousness. These elements within archaic and classical literature have been very much studied, and they here remain in the background; so too, though I have tried throughout to call attention to the interplay between the practice and criticism of poetry, I am very conscious that this book is not the much-needed study of the mutual interchange between poetic imagery and ideas and the language of ancient criticism.24 Although some very loose chronological pattern may be divined in the arrangement of the chapters, it will be very clear that even less is this book intended to be another survey of ‘ancient literary criticism’. The choice of texts around which individual chapters revolve was in part almost inevitable (Frogs, ‘Longinus’) and, in part, dictated by a wish to bring out some of the dominant directions of the ancient engagement with literature. I have been concerned to show how themes and ideas constantly reappear over time and in different genres (as, for example, Thucydides’ ‘programmatic’ pronouncements share ideas with the dichotomies of the Frogs and look forward to important currents of later rhetorical criticism),25 thus suggesting a more fruitful way of studying critical traditions than the more usual narrative history, and to pay particular attention, as the book’s subtitle and the passages from which I began suggest, to antiquity’s concern with what literature was for, what its ‘uses’ were. It is a utilitarian view of literature and of ‘literary criticism’ which predominated in antiquity, and I hope that it will become clear why this made sense in antiquity and why it still should. 24 25

For some possible directions for such a study see below pp. 125–7 on Horace and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. See Hunter 2003c.

Introduction

9

This book takes bits of the story into the second century ad, but not seriously beyond that,26 though of course the date of scholia is often disputed, and I hope that how much we can learn from, say, Eustathius’ commentaries on Homer will repeatedly emerge. The story did not, of course, stop there, but it may be that the extraordinary œuvre of the century-straddling figure of Plutarch offers an endpoint which both does not misrepresent too badly the pattern of ancient criticism as it emerges from the texts which have survived to us and looks forward to the sophisticated work of the centuries to come. Not, of course, that chronological order is the only necessary way in which the story can be told. The dominant currents of later antiquity, above all neo-Platonic and allegorical criticism (of a variety of hues), continued many of the critical directions of the periods treated in this book and, as we shall see, the central importance of Platonic (and quasi-Platonic) ideas is already very strongly marked in the critical and rhetorical texts of the early empire; nevertheless, the intellectual structure and educational purposes of the most important texts in these other traditions demand separate treatment, and in this they have indeed been fortunate in recent years.27 One conviction, however, which all traditions shared and which indeed helps to explain the metamorphoses through which the reception of literature passed was that classical literature actually mattered; it was worth the continuing struggle to understand and exploit, even as intellectual and cultural contexts shifted. I hope that some sense that classical literature and classical interpretation still matter also emerges from this book; a persistent conviction of this truth, together with the pleasures that that conviction brings, are in fact what gave birth to it. 26 27

I assume the standard dating for ‘Longinus’, see below p. 128 n. 1. See, e.g., Lamberton 1989, Dawson 1992, Struck 2004. For some continuities between ‘Longinus’ and later criticism see Heath 1999 (though he would not put it like this) and Hunter forthcoming.

chapter 1

Aristophanes’ Frogs and the critical tradition

tragic history As the second half of the Frogs opens,1 one of Pluto’s slaves explains to Xanthias the system of rewards given in the Underworld to the pre-eminent practitioner of each of the ‘important and clever’ technai. Aeschylus holds the position for tragedy, but that is now under threat: O«. Âte dŸ katlqì EÉrip©dhv, –pede©knuto to±v lwpodÅtaiv kaª to±si ballantiot»moiv kaª to±si patralo©aisi kaª toicwrÅcoiv, Âper ›stì –n íAidou plqov. o¬ dì ˆkroÛmenoi tän ˆntilogiän kaª lugismän kaª strojän Ëperem†nhsan kˆn»misan sojÛtatonáá kŠpeitì –parqeªv ˆntel†beto toÓ qr»nou, ¯nì A«scÅlov kaqsto. Xa. koÉk –b†lleto; O«. m‡ D©ì, ˆllì ¾ dmov ˆneb»a kr©sin poe±n ¾p»terov e­h tŸn t”cnhn sojÛterov. Xa. ¾ tän panoÅrgwn; O«. nŸ D©ì, oÉr†nion gì Âson. Xa. metì A«scÅlou dì oÉk §san ™teroi sÅmmacoi; O«. ½l©gon t¼ crhst»n –stin, ãsper –nq†de. (Aristophanes, Frogs 771–83)

slave. When Euripides came down, he put on shows for the pickpockets and muggers and cut-throats and burglars – there’s a lot of them in Hades. When they heard his antilogies and twistings and turnings, they went crazy and 1

The sense of a major structural break is given by the strong closural sense of vv. 668–71, in which Dionysus and Xanthias are admitted to Pluto’s palace (the geographical, if not emotional, object of their journey), the intervening parabasis, and the prologue-like conversation between the two slaves which follows; see Dover 1993: 6. With vv. 759–60, ‘something, something very big is stirring, big indeed, among the dead and there is huge strife’, designed to stir the audience’s curiosity, compare Lysistrata’s complaints about the women not arriving ‘for no insignificant matter’ (v. 14), but one which is ‘big and fat’ (vv. 23–4) at the start of her play.

10

Aristophanes’ Frogs and the critical tradition

11

thought him the best; he then fancied himself and laid claim to the chair [of honour] where Aeschylus sat. xan. Didn’t people throw things at him? slave. Not at all, but the d¯emos shouted that there should be a contest (krisis) to see who was the better in the art. xan. You mean the criminals? slave. Yes, they shouted to the heavens! xan. Didn’t Aeschylus have supporters too? slave. People of worth are scarce, just like here.

The precise nature of Euripides’ epideixeis (‘displays’) is unfortunately not spelled out for us. In some ways the closest parallel to the slave’s account is the Platonic Socrates’ description (apparently) of a proag¯on at which Agathon appeared before the citizens with his actors ‘to give an epideixis of [his own] logoi’ (Symposium 194b3–4). What actually happened at a proag¯on, in which poets and plays to compete at the festival proper were somehow presented to the audience, remains very obscure, but one of our very few other sources speaks of ‘an epideixis of the dramas which would compete in the theatre’.2 Socrates may be speaking loosely (as well as teasingly), and it might be thought improbable that poets would ‘perform’ extracts from coming plays rather than merely announce subjects or titles, but some kind of dramatic ‘taster’ as a way of whetting the audience’s appetite is at least hardly unthinkable, and Euripides’ Underworld performances are indeed his way of introducing himself to the audience. Whether or not a theatrical proag¯on is also evoked here, it is well recognised that Euripides’ arrival in the Underworld and his subsequent behaviour are likened to the epideixis of a ‘sophist’ visiting Athens.3 We are perhaps to imagine that Euripides’ posthumous performances consisted in solo recitals of extracts from his plays, less perhaps a praelection before the (really) dead for the Chair of Tragedy than a series of ‘greatest hits’ concerts, of a kind that was to become very common in the festival culture of the Hellenistic world. Leonard Woodbury has indeed suggested that we are to understand that Euripides brought with him to the Underworld a new form of performance (‘formal recitations’), which had been ‘inaugurated in Greece, under sophistic influence, in the second half of the century, after the death of Aeschylus’;4 if so, then this will be an example of what we will come to recognise as an important feature of the contest 2 3 4

Scholium on Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon 67 (p. 119 Dilts), see Pickard-Cambridge 1968: 67–8. See, e.g., Woodbury 1986: 242–3 and the notes of Del Corno 1985 and Sommerstein 1996 on v. 771. A rather different angle on the passage is taken by Rosen 2006: 34–6. Woodbury 1986: 242. Woodbury has an interesting discussion of the possible rˆole for ‘books’ or ‘written scripts’ in such epideixeis, but it must be admitted that this is not strictly necessary.

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in Frogs, namely the way in which not just a snapshot in time of a stark literary contrast is dramatised, but also a process, no less in fact than the developmental history of tragedy over time. Be that as it may, if the slave’s account naturally makes us think of the reports of the Sicilian Gorgias’ effect on the Athenians when they first heard his ‘antitheses and isok¯ola and parisa and homoioteleuta and suchlike’ (Diod. Sic. 12.53.4 = Gorgias A4 D-K), it is rather Plato who provides us with the best comparative evidence for the effect of the dead Euripides upon his audience. In the Protagoras, for example, the great sophist’s demonstration of an inconsistency in Simonides’ poem is greeted by ‘uproarious praise from the large audience’ (pollo±v q»rubon . . . kaª ›painon tän ˆkou»ntwn, 339d10). We may also think of the Platonic Hippias’ epideixeis, whether before large audiences (Àclov polÅv, Hipp. Min. 364b7) in Athens, or the assembled Hellenes at Olympia (363c7–d4). Hippias sees these appearances as ‘contests’ on a par with (indeed surpassing) those of the athletes (364a3–9), and this may remind us that Euripides’ agonistic spirit, his desire (and that of the ‘rabble’ which followed him, Frogs 779–81) for a public contest, is itself part of the portrayal of ‘modern man’. A challenge to the universally acknowledged supremacy of Aeschylus might be thought a (comically) outrageous challenge to the shared cultural assumptions of the community of the dead,5 no less than the newly educated Pheidippides’ offer to demonstrate his right to strike his mother as well as his father (Clouds 1440–6); part of the provocation of these challenges lies precisely in the pleasures of contest and paradox, and paradox was (as we know) a central tool in the art of epideixis. It is, however, the Euthydemus of Plato which the Aristophanic scene most calls to mind. Like Euripides (Frogs 774), the confrontation of Socrates with the pair of ‘displaying’ sophists attracts ‘a great crowd’ (polÆv Àclov placed significantly at the opening of the dialogue, 271a2, cf. 304d9). The brothers are in Athens to ‘display’ their sophia, and they do not disappoint their claque of fans who react with amused uproar at their apparent success (276b6–7, 276d1); the brothers’ sophia is what drives their fans crazy (276d2): ‘everyone present praised the performance and the two men to the skies (Ëperepžinese) – they almost died with laughing and clapping and enjoying themselves’ (303b, cf. 274a). We can hardly fail here to recall the enthusiastic reaction (Ëperem†nhsan) of the Underworld underworld to Euripides’ ‘antilogies and twistings and turnings’ – ‘they thought him soph¯otatos’ (Frogs 776). The brothers are verbal ‘wrestlers’ no less than the 5

See Olson on Acharnians 236 for the ‘pelting’ which Euripides might well have expected (v. 778).

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Aristophanic Euripides (271d–272a, 277d1–2, 278b7, cf. Frogs 775); unlike Gorgias, Euripides and the brothers grip the audience, not – or not primarily – with their verbal style, but rather with their arguments. Moreover, those who admire Euripides’ forensic ‘dodges’ reveal thereby their moral badness, or – in the case of the Underworld – it has already been revealed by a ‘criminal record’. The idea persisted in the critical and educational traditions, as the following stern warning from Plutarch’s ‘How the young man should study poetry’ makes clear:6 It is particularly necessary to [award moral praise and censure] in the case of tragedies, which contain plausible and cunning arguments for disreputable and wicked actions . . . Euripides represented Phaedra as accusing Theseus because it was through his mistakes that she fell in love with Hippolytus, and, similarly, in the Trojan Women he gives Helen the freedom to say against Hecuba that it is she who should be punished, not Helen herself, because Hecuba had given birth to the man who seduced Helen. The young man must be trained not to think any such argument witty and cunning and he must not smile at such verbal inventiveness (eËrhsilog©ai), but he must loathe the arguments of wantonness even more than its deeds. (Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 27f–28a)

The distinction which the Aristophanic slave makes between the audience which enjoys Aeschylus and that which enjoys Euripides heralds in fact what was to become a crucial element in subsequent representations of theatrical history and culture. Thus, for example, in the eighth book of the Politics, Aristotle – picking up Plato’s narrative in Laws 3 (see below) – notes that ‘a gentleman’ (–leÅqerov) should not train in musical skill to a professional level where he could take part in competitions because such artists aim ‘not at their own aret¯e, but at the pleasure of the audience, and it is a pleasure which is vulgar’ (1341b10–12). For Aristotle, there are two kinds of spectator, ‘the educated gentleman, and the vulgar spectator, drawn from the class of manual workers, low labourers (qtev) and suchlike’ (1342a19– 20); here very clearly is the Aristophanic distinction, though expressed in Aristotle’s social code, rather than the code of comedy. For Plato the brother-sophists of the Euthydemus are aiming at the wrong target – at hollow success and notoriety rather than truth; in modern idiom we might say that, for Plato, this is ‘prostituting philosophy’, not unlike perhaps some of the criticism which one sometimes hears of academics who make (allegedly) large sums of money by ‘popularising’ their knowledge on radio and television. As with this latter case, of course, there is always another, and more flattering, way that such activities can be viewed; 6

See Chapter 6 below.

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everything depends on who is telling the story, and neither Aristophanes nor Plato was a neutral observer of the cultural scene, and neither is likely to have played fair. Be that as it may, the contest in the Frogs will show Euripides’ art also to be hollow at its core, an art which perverts ‘true tragedy’, as Plato’s brothers pervert ‘true philosophy’ (see 307a–c). That a great deal is in fact at stake here is shown by another Platonic narrative which tells a somewhat similar story. In a famous passage in the third book of the Laws, Plato considers the parallel development of government and musical performances at Athens (698a–701d). ‘Once upon a time’ music and poetry were divided into clearly distinguished types or ‘genres’ which were listened to in respectful silence; with the passage of time, however, came poets and performers, ‘leaders of unmusical paranomia’ (3.700d2), who ‘though poetical by nature were ignorant of what was just and lawful (n»mimon) with regard to the Muse’ (3.700d4–5). These men mixed up and confused the different musical categories ‘as though music had absolutely no standard of correctness (½rq»thv), but was judged most correctly by the pleasure of the hearer, whether he be a good man or a bad one’ (700e2–4). This led to paranomia in the audience and the rise of a noisy and undisciplined theatrokratia in place of the aristokratia which had been in control before;7 what was worse, things did not stop there, but the newly found power of the masses with regard to music led them to throw off their fears in regard to other matters also, and the result was a ‘freedom which is excessive and reckless’ (701b2, cf. 699e3) and finally a breakdown of all social authority and respect for religion (701b–c). There are elements here which bring the Frogs to mind – ‘the uneducated shouting of the mob’ (700c2) reigns in the Underworld as on earth (cf. Frogs 779–81) – but what is most important is the narrative of an abandonment of what is ‘correct’ in favour of rule by popular pleasure rather than educated judgement, and the link which Plato makes between musical and theatrical licence and the breakdown of social order and hierarchy. Plato describes a kind of chain reaction. Indiscipline and the pursuit of pleasure first infect the poets: ‘in bacchic ecstasy (bakceÅontev) and possessed (katec»menoi) more than was appropriate by pleasure’ (700d5–6) gives a pointed spin to ideas of poetic inspiration8 in order to suggest that, like the Theban women of Euripides’ Bacchae, the poets have thrown off all conventional restraint and respect for hierarchy and ‘the order of things’. After this, it is the mass of the people who catch a taste for this licence, first in their musical lives and then as 7 8

On the historicity of Plato’s account see Wallace 1997. Of particular relevance is, of course, Plato, Ion 533e–534b (note 534a4 bakceÅousi kaª katec»menoi ktl.).

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citizens. What is left, at least in the comic vision, is the ‘few good men’ (Frogs 783) who support the claims and tragedy of Aeschylus. No less than Plato’s account of music in the third book of the Laws, the Frogs tells a story of the history of tragedy. In this history a principal characteristic of Aeschylus’ drama, at least as presented by Euripides, is the prominence of the chorus (914–20) and hence – by modern standards – the smaller rˆole of individual characters. In the Poetics Aristotle claims that ‘Aeschylus increased the number of actors from one to two, reduced the choral element (t‡ toÓ coroÓ) and gave speech the principal rˆole’ (1449a15–18); this – particularly the last element9 which would greatly surprise the Aristophanic Euripides – might seem to run counter to the satirical picture in Frogs, but in fact the two different perspectives, one comic and one historical, are telling the same story. Aristotle clearly sees in the history of tragedy a gradual move from lyric song to speech, and this too is the picture which the Frogs offers. The Frogs lets us see that as early as the late fifth century the relative prominence of the chorus was already a notable feature of discussion of the history of tragedy, and it was particularly in his treatment of the chorus that Aeschylus could be seen to be ‘archaic’. For the Aristophanic Euripides the chorus is not really part of the play and the audience do not really listen to it: rather, in Aeschylean tragedy, while the chorus is singing the audience are wondering when the real ‘talking’ is going to start (919–20), whereas in the case of Euripides himself the drma, the ‘real action’, begins with the first verse and never lets up (945–50, contrast 920, 923 of Aeschylus). Aristotle’s later protest, itself problematic given the philosopher’s view of what was important in tragedy,10 that ‘the chorus should be treated as one of the actors, should be a part of the whole and contribute to the action, as in Sophocles but not in Euripides’ (Poetics 1456a25–7) may thus be seen to be a contribution to a debate already under way in Frogs. The Aristophanic Euripides might well in fact have applauded the modern practice of asking students to read the iambic parts of plays only; this is normally excused on the grounds of the linguistic difficulty of the choral parts, but the idea that the choral parts are not really part of ‘the action’ perhaps still lurks over educational practice. Be that as it may, this idea was, as we know, to have a profound influence on Hellenistic performance practice and, indeed, critical theory. At the other end of this development Dio Chrysostom describes his own 9 10

For the influence of such accounts see, e.g., Philostratus, Vita Apollonii 6.11.10 (= Aeschylus T106 Radt). See, e.g., Halliwell 1987: 152–4.

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fondness for listening to all forms of performance, but especially drama; this leads him to a description of drama as performed in his own day: Every part of comedy is preserved, but of tragedy only apparently the strong parts (t‡ «scur†); by this I mean the iambics, and parts of these they deliver in the theatres. The softer parts (t‡ malakÛtera), namely the lyrics (t‡ perª t‡ m”lh), have fallen into oblivion. As perhaps in the case of the old, the firm parts of the body, namely the bones and the muscles, resist the passing of time, whereas the rest diminish; thus it is that the bodies of the very old are wasted and shrunken . . . (Dio Chrysostom 19.5)

Here we should remember not just Euripides’ dietary treatment of the tragic art (Frogs 939–44), but specifically his notorious ‘sinews of tragedy’ (t‡ neÓra tv tragwid©av) at Frogs 862;11 although the idea of a literary text as a ‘body’ is familiar enough, Dio seems to have picked up and elaborated this particular Aristophanic idea from a play with which he was very familiar.12 Tragedy is now very old; it moved from growth to decay long ago, but – like old men – it preserves the sound wisdom of ancient times and is thus more than worthy of a hearing. In his narrative of tragic history, the Aristophanic Euripides has replaced an old ‘heroic’ silence, the silence of an Achilles or a Niobe,13 with a new ‘democratic’ (952) freedom of speech for characters who belong to categories with which the audience were very familiar (and which, curiously or not, recall the cast of a New Comedy) – ‘the wife, the slave, the master, the young girl, the old woman’ (949–50).14 The old hierarchy on stage has broken down, and – as in Plato – it is to be followed by a related breakdown in society; in both narratives that breakdown takes the form of extreme democracy, or – as Plato would see it – ochlocracy.15 When Aeschylus complains that, because Euripides has taught the Athenians to chatter, ‘the ordinary sailors speak back to their commanders (to±v Šrcousi)’ (1071–2), it is very hard not to recall a crucial stage in Plato’s account of the consequences of musical licence: ‘unwillingness to be subservient to those in authority (to±v Šrcousi)’ (Laws 3.701b5–6). In the narratives of both Plato’s Athenian stranger and Aristophanes’ Aeschylus, standards 11

12 14 15

To Dover’s note ad loc. add, inter alios, Kassel 1994: 48. I am not aware that Dio 19.5 has been connected with Frogs 862 previously; the use of stere»v and malak»v as stylistic terms is obviously relevant here, and note the stylistic use of eneruare in Latin (e.g. Petronius, Satyrica 2.2). For the ideas, if not the language, cf. ‘Longinus’ On the Sublime 11.2. Why t‡ m”lh could be malak† is vividly illustrated by Aeschylus’ parody of Euripides at Frogs 1301–64 and the parody of Agathon at Thesmophoriazousai 99–167. 13 See above pp. 6–7 on Aeschylean silences. See below pp. 39–48 on Dio 52. For Euripides and New Comedy see below p. 46. For the relevance of Plato’s account in Republic 8 of the ‘democratic man’ see below p. 89.

Aristophanes’ Frogs and the critical tradition

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of ‘correctness’ in both mousikž and political life have collapsed. If we ask ‘who is to decide where “correctness” lies?’, then the answer in both cases is at best shadowy. In the Laws the starting position is an ‘ancestral constitution’ characterised by an aid¯os which ensured willing subservience to laws and magistrates (698a–b); its superiority to the ‘excessive freedom’ which followed is shown by the subsequent grim history of Athens. So also in Frogs: although it is clear that Euripides’ status is such that, while he was alive, tragedy still flourished at Athens, it is also clear that, in the view at least of Aeschylus, he is both a cause and a symptom of moral and political decline. The strongest argument against Euripidean tragedy, or rather for Aeschylean tragedy, is simply the current parlous state of Athens. However we interpret Dionysus’ decision to take Aeschylus rather than Euripides back,16 a simple choice between ‘the good old days of a powerful Athens’ and the ‘perilous position of 405 bc’ was really no choice at all: no process of kr©siv is actually involved. Why the ‘ancestral constitution’, the separation of musical forms into allegedly discrete types, and the way Aeschylus created tragedy were ‘correct’ (½rq»n, cf. Laws 3.700e2, 4) is not really a matter for debate, and in any case debate itself is, as both Clouds and Frogs clearly show, a weapon of the opposition. The appeal to correctness is very powerful in ancient criticism,17 in part because of the polyvalence of ½rq»n and in part because the appeal can be to an authority which is hard to define and therefore hard to attack. It should be self-evident to any ‘rightthinking’ person that neither Euripides’ logical ‘twistings and turnings’ (Frogs 775) nor the metrically meretricious ‘windings’ of his spiders (Frogs 1314–15) are ‘straight’. practical criticism Euripides’ distaste for the prominence of the chorus in Aeschylean tragedy is part of a preference for drama which engages the audience by presenting a world familiar to them outside the world of the theatre; however familiar choral performances were to the Athenians, they were marked off as phenomena of festivals and theatre – people simply do not behave or sing like this in ‘unmarked’ situations. In the comic vision, Aeschylean drama was a strange, even outlandish (Frogs 1029), spectacle, whereas Euripidean drama demanded an intellectual response from an audience actively engaged in 16 17

See below pp. 36–8. See below pp. 21–2 on Aristotle’s Poetics. I leave out of account for the moment the question of ‘correctness’ of language (Frogs 1180–97; Dover 1993: 29–30; below pp. 22–4).

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a process of interrogation (Frogs 957–8), and one made possible because what they were witnessing were things of a kind with which they were familiar (959–61).18 Euripides’ drama is ‘democratic’ not just because everyone speaks, but because the audience too take an active part. A number of issues arise here. We may start with the nature of the claim itself. EÉr. leptän te kan»nwn e«sbol‡v –pän te gwniasmoÅv, noe±n, ¾rn, xuni”nai, str”jein, +–rn, tecn†zein, kacì Ëpotope±sqai, perinoe±n Œpanta – A«s. jhmª kˆgÛ. EÉr. o«ke±a pr†gmatì e«s†gwn, o³v crÛmeqì, o³v xÅnesmen, –x æn gì ‹n –xhlegc»mhná xuneid»tev g‡r oÕtoi ¢legcon Šn mou tŸn t”cnhná

(Aristophanes, Frogs 956–61)

eur. [I taught the Athenians] opportunities for subtle measurings and precisely judged verbal angles, I taught them to reflect, observe, understand, twist . . . 19 devise, suspect the worst, carefully consider everything – aesch. I agree! eur. I brought on everyday things, the kind we’re used to, the kind that are familiar and from which I could have been found out; for the audience here knew what was going on and could examine my art.

More than one kind of o«ke±on prgma, ‘everyday thing’, is involved here. Euripides’ examples (vv. 971–9) of the logism»v (‘reasoning’) and sk”yiv (‘examination’) which he has introduced to tragedy with the result that the Athenians now ‘manage their homes’ (o«k©av o«ke±n) better, Dionysus’ ‘bomolochic’ response which focuses upon the most banal of domestic incidents (980–91), and Aeschylus’ subsequent destruction of Euripides’ prologues by means of ‘a little oil flask’ all suggest that ‘household objects’ or ‘household events’ is one way in which Euripides’ phrase may be understood; we may recall the report that Hesiod too was mocked by some critics for ‘banality’ (smikrolog©a) because petty household objects turned up in his poetry (Plutarch fr. 62 Sandbach). Lysias was for later writers the model of plain purity and the use of ‘everyday’ words in oratory (Dion. Hal. Lysias 2.1, 3.1, etc.), and when Demetrius, On Style illustrates the subject matter appropriate to the plain and simple style of oratory (the «scn»n) from Euphiletus’ description of his o«k©dion in Lysias 1 (chap. 190), we are given a very striking illustration of where Euripides’ o«ke±a pr†gmata could lead within a critical concern with style. The distinction between ‘high’ 18 19

See, e.g., Walsh 1984: 88–9; Walsh’s whole discussion of the Frogs is a particularly valuable contribution. The transmitted text is here very unlikely to be correct.

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and ‘low’ subject matter and verbal style which the Aristophanic Euripides ushers in was to be one of the dominant critical discourses of antiquity. Thus, for example, in order to prove the power of arrangement (synthesis), rather than selection, of words, Dionysius of Halicarnassus cites the opening of Odyssey 16, in which Telemachus returns to Eumaeus’ hut and is greeted by the swineherd as, unrecognised by both of them, the young man’s father looks on: Where is the power (peiqÛ) of these verses and why are they as they are? Is it the choice of words, or their arrangement? I know that no one will say ‘the selection’, for the language (lexis) of the verses is woven from the most ordinary and humble vocabulary, such as a farmer or a seaman or an artisan or anyone at all who takes no trouble over speaking well would use without thinking. If you break up the metre, these same verses will appear banal (jaÓla) and without quality; they contain no excellent (eÉgene±v) metaphors or examples of hypallag¯e or katachr¯esis or any other type of figurative language, nor are there many glosses or exotic or newly coined words. (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On the Arrangement of Words 3.9–11)

For Dionysius, this Homeric scene was drawn straight from life (biwtik»n), as elsewhere he seems to have noted Euripides’ preference for ‘the wholly true and that which was close to real life’ (On Imitation, 2.2.11 Aujac).20 We see here that the Frogs has bequeathed to the critical tradition not just a way of talking about poetic style, but also a critical language which uses sociopolitical distinctions to describe levels of style; from the comic perspective, at least, Euripides’ radically ‘democratic’ tragedy (Frogs 952) will have ‘lowered’ and flattened the level of the language also.21 It is also clear that the o«ke±a pr†gmata of verses 959–61 cover a very wide field. pr†gmata is used of the events of the dramatic plot (what people pr†ttein), in both Frogs itself (v. 1122) and subsequently,22 and part of Euripides’ claim is that the situations (and characters) of his dramas were analysable, that is subject to elenchos, by the same rules as govern our everyday lives; such pr†gmata are o«ke±a in the sense of ‘fitting’, ‘appropriate’.23 This critical process of ‘thinking, examining, reasoning’ probably finds no better real illustration than Electra’s (misguided) demolition of the old man’s suggestion that Orestes has paid his respects at his father’s tomb (Euripides, Electra 524–46); Electra’s rejection is precisely based on an appeal to ordinary experience (men have larger feet than women, their hair 20 21 22 23

On this work see Chapter 4 below. Commentators on Horace, Satires 1.4.53–62 (the style of satire and the style of Ennius contrasted) should pay more attention to this passage of Dionysius; see also Oberhelm and Armstrong 1995. See, e.g., Aristotle, Poetics 1454a14, 34; Plutarch, Moralia 347f, citing Menander T 70 K-A. See above p. 4 on Horace’s idonea uitae (Ars Poetica 334).

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has a different quality, clothes don’t grow bigger, though children do, etc.). Here too we can translate the comic claim into an Aristotelian mode. For Aristotle, both the ‘characters’ (¢qh) and the ‘structure of events’ (pragm†twn sÅstasiv) should follow patterns of either necessity or probability (Poetics 1454a34–7), and there should be no room in the pr†gmata for t¼ Šlogon, ‘the irrational’ (1454b6); the Aristophanic Euripides and Aristotle privilege very different kinds of mimetic realism,24 but both are in fact arguing about the same thing more suo. When Euripides says that the audience would be able to check his art from their own knowledge, we have a comic version of Aristotle’s view of the pleasure which comes from manq†nein kaª sullog©zesqai, ‘understanding and making inferences’, when one contemplates images (1448b16–17). In the comic vision, Euripides’ audiences would immediately smell an improbability or a narrative or dramatic motif (or even just a word) which was not properly prepared or in accordance with ‘probability or necessity’, and they would ‘catch him out’ (–xel”gcein). The semantic flexibility in the sense of pr†gmata is thus mediated through the verbs crÛmeqa, ‘we use/are used to’, and xÅnesmen, ‘we live with/are familiar with’, which may refer both to ‘objects’ and to ‘experiences’. As for Aeschylus, his, as he proudly claims (Frogs 1040), is very clearly an ‘epic’ drama of Homeric inspiration, and Aristotle was indeed to acknowledge that epic more easily admits the Šlogon, namely an irrational element not susceptible to intellectual processes, than does tragedy (1460a12–14); Euripidean rules do not, therefore, apply to him. When many centuries later ‘Longinus’ (On the Sublime 36.3) asserts that ‘in statues we seek a likeness to man, but in logos, as I have said, that which surpasses the human’, we see another transformation of the dichotomy of the Frogs, and one much on the side of Aeschylus. So too, when ‘Longinus’ observes (32.4) that a combination of many daring metaphors in oratory is possible if they are accompanied by ‘timely and vehement emotion and genuine sublimity’, because then the hearer is carried forward by their sweep and does not have the time for a close elenchos of the number of metaphors (scol†zein perª t¼n toÓ plžqouv ›legcon), we recognise again the ‘Aeschylean’ view of poetry;25 ‘examination’ of what is said on stage (as of everything else, see v. 961) is precisely what Euripides asks for and what is anathema to Aeschylus.26 24 26

25 See further Hunter 2003c: 220. For Aristotle see, e.g., Halliwell 1986: 24–5. One heir of the Aristophanic Euripides which is not always acknowledged is Antiphanes fr. 189 K-A, in which a character (perhaps Poetry herself ) complains that, whereas tragedians follow ‘pre-made’ plots where everybody knows what is going to happen, comic poets have to invent everything de nihilo, and if any plot detail is omitted or loose end not tied up, the audience will boo the play

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The claims of the Aristophanic Euripides, who, like Plato’s sophists, revels in the opportunity for display that an agonistic context of elenchos offers him, not merely reflect the febrile world of literary and intellectual dicussion in late fifth-century Athens, but also usher in the whole ancient tradition of literary ‘problems’ (zhtžmata) and their solution. Texts, particularly of course the text of Homer, were to be subjected to an endless process of interrogation, in which characters and their actions were precisely examined by the standards of ‘realism’ familiar to the audience, whether that be through an appeal to historical practices or language which may or may not be obsolete, or through an appeal to universal human experience; in the latter case, we might today speak of the psychological exploration of fictional characters. Often the characters of epic will be asked to behave ‘like us’, and we may well think that this marks a genuinely innovative moment in critical history. The fragments of Aristotle’s own Homeric Problems (frr. 366–404 Gigon = 142–79 Rose)27 already show the way: why is Paris such a low specimen that immediately after losing the duel to Menelaus he is thinking about sex with Helen (fr. 374 Gigon = 150 Rose)? Answer (according to Aristotle): ‘because the fear or prospect of losing what one desires increases the desire’. (Incidentally, the full range of ancient answers to that particular question would make for a whole sociological study by itself – like any good husband, Paris tries to calm his wife down by pretending he loves her, etc.).28 For Aristotle, even Homeric dogs obey the observable rules of human (and canine) life and death (fr. 400 Gigon = 177 Rose). When, however, Aristotle considers the general question of poetic ‘problems’ and their solution in chapter 25 of the Poetics,29 he notes that poetry does not in fact demand the same ‘correctness’ (½rq»thv) as other arts, including civic life, and he offers ‘solutions’ to apparent ‘mistakes’. To the charge that something in poetry is not true, it is possible to respond that it is ‘as it should be’ (Poetics 1460b32–3); it is noteworthy that this ‘solution’ is then illustrated by the observation of Sophocles (T 53 Radt) that his characters were as ‘they should be’, whereas Euripides’ were as they actually are. Why Aristotle’s mind moves to this anecdote at this point we cannot say, but we will clearly recall important parts of the debate of the Frogs. Aristotle’s discussion of the ‘correctness’ appropriate to poetry and

27 28 29

off the stage. However ironical the passage, it posits a similar relationship between the poet and a ‘suspicious’ audience as does Euripides in the Frogs; this is another way in which Euripides, and his reputation, influenced later comedy. See Richardson 1992: 36–7 with further bibliography. Kirk’s note on Iliad 3.441 would, however, not be a good place to start such a study. Plutarch, ‘How the young man . . . ’ 18f, takes a very straightforwardly ‘moral’ view of the whole matter. See Pfeiffer 1968: 69–71; Feeney 1991: 27–9.

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to the kinds of claims that we can make about it may indeed be seen as a response to the Aristophanic Euripides: ‘realism’ in poetry is not in fact a (comically) simple thing. It is the Aristophanic Euripides who thus stands at the head of a tradition which emphasised stylistic and narrative akribeia, namely ‘accuracy’, ‘clarity’ (see Frogs 927, 1122, etc.), ‘attention to detail’; some believed that true poets rose above such things.30 The search for difficulties in a poetic text, and explanations for those difficulties, is one manifestation of what we might term the ‘invention’ of literary criticism in the later fifth century.31 Euripides’ claim to have introduced ‘reasoning and examination’ into his plays, thus instilling the same qualities in his audiences, finds a parallel in the fact that plays, and poems more generally, were indeed open to a process of elenchos outside, as well as inside, the original arena of performance. The critical habit, which texts such as Plato’s Protagoras and Hippias Minor encourage us to associate with ‘the sophists’, now operates at every level of the creative process; Euripides is made to all but acknowledge that this habit, the search for inconsistencies, ambiguities and loose ends, has in fact affected the way dramas are written. This too is another way in which the Frogs both describes a historical process and captures an extraordinary moment of literary history.32 The Frogs is replete with literary ‘problems’ and problems in the making. When Aeschylus challenges the claim from Euripides’ Antigone (fr. 157 Kannicht) that Oedipus was ‘at first fortunate (eÉtucžv)’ and ‘subsequently became the most wretched of mortals’ (1182–94),33 Dionysus places this under the sign of ‘correctness of words’ (1181), and it indeed may be that we are to sense Prodicus and/or Protagoras behind such criticism.34 Aeschylus’ objection rests on two points, both of which might be thought captious, despite the common wisdom that no one was to be counted happy until after death (see Sophocles, Trachiniai 1–5):35 first, a rather narrow etymological interpretation of ‘of good tych¯e’, in the face of common usage by which Oedipus was indeed ‘fortunate/prosperous’ until his life unravelled 30 31 32

33 34 35

See Hunter 2003c: 216–20 and below pp. 160–8 on ‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 33. Ford 2002 offers a helpful introduction to the whole subject. See below p. 42 on Dio’s view of Euripides. For the interaction of composition and criticism see also Hunter forthcoming. Ledbetter 2003 emphasises the revolutionary importance of the Platonic Socrates’ insistence that poems should be held to interpretative account. That eÉtucžv rather than eÉda©mwn, which Dover still retains, is indeed to be read in v. 1182 is now generally accepted. See Pfeiffer 1968: 39–40; Dover 1993: 29–30. It is somewhat puzzling that this ‘captious’ criticism is given to Aeschylus, when it may be thought rather to suit the character of Euripides; I wonder whether we are to see here an Aeschylean interest in inherited curses and the inescapable rˆole of fate.

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around him,36 and, secondly, a particular emphasis on t¼ präton. Not dissimilar is a discussion of such words in Plutarch’s ‘How the young man should study poetry’. In considering the attention that young men and their teachers must pay to the ‘ordinary usage of words’ (¡ tän ½nom†twn sunžqeia) and to the ‘separation and discrimination of words’ (¡ dia©resiv kaª di†krisiv tän ½nom†twn, 23a), Plutarch notes that no one should imagine that the poets use eudaimonia and related concepts in the way that philosophers do to mean ‘the complete possession or attainment of good things, or the completeness of a life flowing smoothly in accordance with nature’ (24f–25a); in particular, the young must be on their guard against the ‘misapplication’ (kat†crhsiv) of eÉda©mwn or mak†riov to describe a rich man or eÉdaimon©a to refer to the possession of power or reputation. Here we may feel ourselves not far from either the Frogs or from the discussion of Simonides’ poem in Plato’s Protagoras (ˆretž is another word where Plutarch urges careful watchfulness, 24c–f ), particularly when Plutarch (25a) notes that Homer and Menander use the words ‘correctly’, ½rqäv.37 Here too, as in the Frogs, it is the deprecated usage which is in fact that of ‘ordinary speech’, whereas the ‘philosophical’ usage which Plutarch admires, like Aeschylus’ understanding of eÉtuc©a, is in fact a form of special pleading, though one of course very appropriate for young men for whom reading literature is a preparation for philosophy. The two examples of Euripidean ‘disturbance and confusion’ in this matter which Plutarch cites (Medea 598 and Phoinissai 549–50) are precisely places where there is a clash between the language of eudaimonia and moral worth. Aeschylus’ objection to Euripidean language suggests also the structure of a literary ‘problem’: ‘Why did Euripides say that Oedipus was in the beginning fortunate, when even before he had been born . . . ?’ ‘Problems’ could of course turn on the meaning of ‘glosses’ (see Poetics 1461a9–16), a study which was certainly in full swing by the time of Frogs (cf. Ar. fr. 233 K-A), and the idiosyncratic diction of Aeschylus – tragedy’s Homer – itself afforded much room for puzzlement. One manifestation of Euripides’ claim that he, unlike Aeschylus, used pr†gmata with which the audience were familiar is the accusation that Aeschylean characters used huge words 36 37

See, e.g., Dover 1974: 174–5. The Homeric verse which Plutarch cites, Odyssey 4.93, does not in fact use the vocabulary which is being discussed, though it is precisely on the ‘possessions do not mean happiness’ theme. Plutarch may have cited a different text for this verse (so, e.g., Babbitt ad loc.), which has then been ‘corrected’ away in transmission, or his mind has here run ahead of his pen. It is noteworthy that one of the explanations which the scholia to Odyssey 4.93 give is that the rich ‘are not eÉda©monev’; Plutarch’s slip may, therefore, have been made under the influence of his knowledge of the critical tradition.

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which were ‘unknown to the audience’ (926). Euripides accuses Aeschylus in fact of using ‘huge mountains of words that it was not easy to understand’ (929–30), at which point Dionysus breaks in: ‘Yes, by the gods; I for one have certainly before now lain awake (dihgrÅpnhsa) through the long watches of the night trying to fathom (zhtän) what sort of bird a tawny horsecock (¬ppalektrÅwn) was’; this was in fact, as the exasperated Aeschylus points out, an emblem painted on a warship. Dionysus’ language of sleepless searching strikingly foreshadows that of later scholarship. We may think of Callimachus on Aratus’ sleeplessness (Anth. Pal. 9.507 = Epigram 27 Pf.), the nocturnal researches (zhtžseiv) which are said to have finished off Philitas (Athenaeus 9.401d–e = Philitas T5 Dettori, T21 Spanoudakis), or Celsus’ claim that medicine developed together with early natural philosophy, because it was particularly needed by those ‘who had damaged their strength by reflection and nocturnal watchfulness’ (Proem 7). Dionysus’ words pick up those of Phaedra in Euripides’ Hippolytus, ‘before now, during the long watches of the night, I have pondered the ways in which human lives are destroyed’ (vv. 375–6), and the move from a great moral problem of the kind which tragedy seems designed to address to the meaning of a ridiculous gloss might be thought precisely to skewer what is wrong with ‘linguistic scholarship’ as narrowly conceived and practised;38 Dionysus here becomes ‘the scholar’, whose persistent ‘but what does it actually mean?’ still seems to some the worst kind of pedantry, to others the highest form of philology. The verb which Dionysus uses of ‘understanding/working out the meaning of ’ a word, sumb†llein, is used also by Plato in the Cratylus of the interpretation, etymologising, of words (416a4, cf. 412c8). In continuing to puzzle on the meaning of a word long after leaving the theatre, Dionysus is in fact behaving as Euripides would wish a member of the audience to do; the process of critical engagement, of skepsis and logismos, precisely demands such an attitude. We may also be tempted to think that it demands or requires, not only time, but also written texts which can be studied and re-consulted as problems are pored over. Caution is, however, necessary. We are all lectores scrupulosi now, and we are inclined to retroject our practices into antiquity. The tradition of posing and solving critical ‘problems’ will have had deep roots in the oral culture 38

See Del Corno on Frogs 931. The same passage of Hippolytus may lie behind Knights 1290–4, where again there is the language of zhte±n and a bathetic shift to an absurd subject, ‘why Cleonymus’ diet is so awful’. There may also be a distant echo at Life of Aesop 35 where a market-gardener poses a question to Aesop’s owner, the ridiculous philosopher Xanthos: ‘I cannot sleep at night because I am tortured by a little problem (zhthm†tion); I am trying to reason and work out (logiz»menov kaª suzhtän) why [uncultivated plants are much more prolific than those which have been planted and laboured over] . . . ’

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of the symposium, and we must avoid overfine distinctions between what is possible with an oral, performance tradition and what requires written texts. Nevertheless, the very clear foreshadowing in the Frogs of later critical practices makes it more than tempting to use our hindsight to see here the dramatisation of the birth of a particular kind of criticism, one usually traced from Aristotle to Alexandria and on into the scholia and later antiquity. Dionysus, we know, is an avid reader of tragic texts (Frogs 52–3), and Euripides’ impatience with choral performances points in the same direction – before long texts would be produced which did indeed omit the choral parts; is his the impatience of a reader? moral endangerment At Frogs 1009–10 Euripides acknowledges that, through their cleverness and the advice they give, poets should make men ‘better in the cities’, a claim clearly related to those of Protagoras’ great speech in Plato’s dialogue, and then (vv. 1043ff.) he has to defend his ‘Phaedras and Stheneboias’ which, according to Aeschylus, have produced immorality rather than virtue. ‘How’, asks Euripides (v. 1049), ‘do my Stheneboias harm (t© bl†ptousi) the city?’ Here too we should think ahead. Aristotle notes that one basis for criticism of poetry is that it is ‘harmful’, blaber»n (Poetics 1461b23); the category has caused trouble to modern critics because Aristotle does not actually give any examples of such accusations or how to ‘solve’ them, but it is not difficult to imagine what is involved. The concern with the moral danger posed by poetry was to remain a leitmotif of critical discussion throughout antiquity. Plutarch notes that without proper guidance young men will be carried off course by (literary) pleasure towards ‘the harmful’, t¼ bl†pton (‘How the young man should study poetry’ 15d, cf. 20c).39 When Aeschylus observes that decent women have killed themselves in outrage at Euripides’ ‘Bellerophons’, the younger poet falls back on a version of the appeal to realism: EÉr. p»teron dì oÉk Ànta l»gon toÓton perª tv Fa©drav xun”qhka; A«s. m‡ D©ì, ˆllì Àntì, ˆllì ˆpokrÅptein crŸ t¼ ponhr¼n t»n ge pohtžn, kaª mŸ par†gein mhd• did†skein. to±v m•n g‡r paidar©oisin –stª did†skalov Âstiv jr†zei, to±sin dì ¡bäsi pohta©. (Aristophanes, Frogs 1052–6) p†nu dŸ de± crhst‡ l”gein ¡mv. 39

See below pp. 176–7. For the discourse of t¼ blaber»n see, e.g., Plato, Rep. 3.391e; Plut. ‘How the young man . . .’ 18f, 20a, 22d, 26b, etc.; below Chapter 6.

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eur. Is this story about Phaedra which I composed not true? aesch. No, by Zeus, it’s true, but the poet should hide away what is wicked and not parade it or include it in his plays (didaskein). For little boys have a schoolteacher to instruct them, but grown-ups have poets. It is imperative that what we say is valuable.

Many commentators note that Ànta in 1052 means not so much ‘true’ as ‘traditional, already in circulation’, and they might appeal for support (though they do not) to Horace’s advice in the Ars Poetica: aut famam sequere aut sibi conuenientia finge (Horace, Ars Poetica 119–20) scriptor. In your writing either follow the received story or invent material which is consistent.

As Brink’s note indicates, fama in this passage seems to cover both the plasma and the historia of the rhetorical tradition, the pareilhmm”noi mÓqoi, ‘inherited tales’, of Poetics 1453b22; the examples which Aristotle there gives (that Orestes and Alcmaeon both killed their mothers) suggest that the basic mythos of Phaedra was that she fell in love with her stepson, and after that individual poets had a free hand or, as in the case of Euripides’ two ‘Phaedra’ plays, more than one to elaborate the details as they wished. The distinction between ‘true’ and ‘familiar’ is, of course, not one to be pressed, but nevertheless the resonance of ‘truth’ in Euripides’ claim is also not wholly to be suppressed. When Aeschylus urges that the poet should ‘hide away what is base (ponhr»n)’ rather than parading it before the city, because poets are the teachers of young men, we should recall the view of the Platonic Socrates that the stories of Kronos and Zeus should not be told to the impressionable and young ‘even if they are true’, but should rather be covered over in silence; at the very most, they are to be told to a few people as a secret ¬er¼v l»gov (Republic 2.378a), and the Derveni papyrus has now confirmed that Plato is here reflecting an actual feature of religious life. Aeschylus’ logic is, of course, of a still very familiar kind: the poet who puts the ponhr»n on stage will make the citizens mocqhr»teroi (1011), whereas the crhst»n will produce crhsto© citizens (1011, 1056). Drama is an imitative art in two senses, because poets imitate ‘reality’ and audiences imitate what they see; as poets are ‘teachers’ (did†skaloi), their audiences can hardly be blamed for behaving like good pupils. Be that as it may, even if Euripides is not claiming that his story of Phaedra was true, merely familiar or ‘already in existence’ as Alan Sommerstein translates, his exchange with Aeschylus points forward again

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to the subsequent tradition. ‘Unnecessary’ ponhr©a was a charge brought later against at least one Euripidean character, Menelaus in the Orestes (Aristotle, Poetics 1454a29, 1461b21), and in ‘How the young man should study poetry’ Plutarch insists that young men must be taught to recognise wicked actions and sentiments as appropriate to wicked characters but not as ‘true or admirable’ (18b); in the utterly changed reception conditions of Plutarch’s world, a real did†skalov must come between the young man and the dramas he reads. The Aristophanic Euripides is thus constructed by the subsequent tradition, as by the Aristophanic Aeschylus, as having abrogated his social responsibility by a concern with realism which replaces moral by purely aesthetic criteria. It is of course the discussion of Homer and other poets in the second and third books of Plato’s Republic which was for antiquity the key text on the ‘harmful’ in poetry, and which is very probably the immediate, though as we have seen not the ultimate, origin of Aristotle’s category of the blaber»n. The Platonic Socrates argues (Rep. 2.379b) that, as god is good (ˆgaq»n) rather than ‘harmful’ (blaber»n), it is impossible for him to ‘do harm’ (bl†ptein); any verses which suggest otherwise are therefore untrue and will of course have to be censored. Such censorship is far more radical than the ‘solving’ of literary problems, but in laying down the laws which poets are to follow Plato himself is not unaffected by the ‘problems’ mode of criticism: If someone writes plays . . . about the sufferings of Niobe or of the descendants of Pelops or about the Trojan War or any other such thing, either the poets are not to be permitted to say that this is the work of god, or, if they do say so, they must discover the kind of explanation which we are currently seeking (–xeuret”on aÉto±v sced¼n Án nÓn ¡me±v l»gon zhtoÓmen). They must say that god acted justly and well, and the characters were benefited by being punished; the poet must not be permitted to say that in paying the penalty they were wretched and that this was god’s work. The poets may say that the wicked were wretched because they needed punishment, but the claim that god, who is good, is responsible for bad things in anyone’s case is to be resisted with all possible force and no one is to say such things in his city, if he wants it to be well run, nor anyone to hear them, neither young nor old, whether the tale is told (muqologoÓnta) in verse or prose. If told, such tales are impious, not to our advantage, and inconsistent with each other. (Plato, Republic 2.380a6–c4)

Plato’s ‘solution’ is very much his own, but the language and mode of thought reflects the same developments in ‘criticism’ which we have traced in the Frogs. Examples of reflections of this mode, or passages where Plato has influenced the subsequent tradition, are legion, but I will pick just

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a few very familiar cases. At 3.390a–b Plato will not allow the young men to listen to Odysseus’ famous ‘ golden verses’ (Odyssey 9.2–11) on the pleasures of the well-provided feast, because these verses are hardly a protreptic towards ‘restraint’, –gkr†teia. The Homeric scholia preserve a whole raft of explanations to exculpate Homer: Odysseus is merely being polite in trying to please his hedonistic hosts,40 eÉjrosÅnh is not the same thing as ¡donž, and so forth. Immediately after this example, it is Zeus’s overpowering desire to make love with Hera in the open air in Iliad 14 which falls under the philosopher’s strictures (3.390b–c). Here again the subsequent tradition found both an explanation for, and a didactic purpose in, Zeus’s apparent lack of self-control (SbT Iliad 14.315b). Finally, there is perhaps the most notorious case of all, the adultery of Ares and Aphrodite in the song of Demodocus in Odyssey 8, an episode to which Xenophanes at least had already drawn attention in unflattering terms (fr. 166 D-K) and on which Plato can hardly bring himself to dwell more than momentarily (3.390c6–7); in this case the full panoply of didacticism and allegorisation was deployed to acquit Homer of any immorality or mistakes of judgement (S Odyssey 8.267, cf. Plut. ‘How the young man . . . ’ 19f–20c).41 By the time of the Frogs the fact that Aeschylus’ hero, Homer, contained material of an ‘offensive’ nature, particularly where the gods were concerned, had long been a subject for discussion. The Aristophanic Aeschylus simply ignores this critical tradition, in part because the ‘offensive’ bits on the whole concerned the gods, and Olympian hanky-panky is not really relevant to the dramatic plots of which Aeschylus is thinking; what is at issue is the behaviour of ¡m©qeoi, not qeo©. We could of course say that this is a disingenuous silence, but in fact it is one that sheds interesting light on attitudes to what was seen on the stage. One could always appeal to the behaviour of the gods to justify immoral action on earth, but Aeschylus’ concern is with how tragedies mould behaviour, and here gods really are marginal players. The song of Ares and Aphrodite may well be a ‘wicked song’ (Šisma ponhr»n) or a logos with a ‘base plot’ as Plutarch puts it (‘How the young man . . . ’ 20a), but dramatic characters must have some elements in common with the audience if they are to act as paradeigmata (for good or ill), and gods are simply too ‘unlike us’ to qualify. When Aeschylus demands that the poet, qua teacher, ‘say good (crhst†) things’ (vv. 1054–6, quoted above), we may recall Xenophanes’ rejection of titanomachies, gigantomachies and all such violent fabrications 40

Cf. ‘Heraclitus’, Homeric Problems 79.8.

41

See below pp. 188–9.

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as possible subjects for sympotic song because ‘there is nothing crhst»n in them’ (fr. 1.23 West).42 Euripides immediately counters that Aeschylus can hardly ‘give good lessons’ when his characters use huge and unknown words and refuse to speak ‘like human beings’. Euripides might just be shifting ground from an uncomfortable subject to one where he feels he has the upper hand, but in fact his observation is very much to the point: in order for moral lessons to be learned and patterns of imitable behaviour given, the audience must feel that the characters they are seeing on stage are not entirely remote from their own experience. Euripides’ tragic practice, as portrayed by Aristophanes, has carried that insight to its logical conclusion. tragic style Dionysus went to the Underworld to find a ‘fertile’ (g»nimov)43 poet who can say such risky/audacious (parakekinduneum”non) things as ‘aether, Zeus’s bedroom’ or ‘the foot of time’ (98–100). One reading of the second half of the play might be as the god’s journey towards the revelation that it is Aeschylus, not Euripides, who is the really ‘risky’ poet, at least where poetical style is concerned. The language of ‘risk’ was to remain a recurrent feature of ancient discussions of the ‘grand style’ – it is central, for example, to Horace’s imagining of what it would be like to imitate Pindar (Odes 4.2) and to ‘Longinus’’ contrast between poets who are ‘flawless’ (Šptwtoi) and those who are truly sublime and hence run the risk of sometimes ‘falling flat’ (On the Sublime 33)44 – and it has long been recognised that the contrast between Aeschylus and Euripides in Frogs ushers in what was to remain the dominant stylistic dichotomy throughout the ancient critical tradition, between (to put it very banally) ‘grandeur’ and ‘simplicity’.45 As tragedians, both Aeschylus and Euripides are, from one angle, ‘grand’ writers, but the Aristophanic Euripides, particularly with his insistent emphasis on the need for ‘clarity’ in language (927, cf. 1434) is, as the subsequent tradition was later to affirm,46 very much on the side of ‘the simple’, one version of which, Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ glajur† style, is indeed said to avoid ‘all boldness and risk-taking’ (t¼ qrasÆ pn kaª parakekinduneum”non, On the Arrangement of Words 23.1). The dichotomy manifests itself in various ways. When Aeschylus claims that he never represented 42 43 44

See Ford 2002: 56–7. On this word cf. Dover 1993: 33 n. 65; Willi 2003: 89; and on this passage of Frogs see below pp. 131–3. 45 See Wehrli 1946, N. O’Sullivan 1992. 46 See below pp. 32–3. See Hunter 2003c: 223–4.

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a ‘woman in love’ in his plays (1045),47 Euripides retorts that no trace of Aphrodite had indeed ever touched the older playwright. As commentators note, Euripides’ joke operates at two levels: Aeschylus himself is entirely without sexual attractiveness for women and his plays lack all ‘charm’ (also ìAjrod©th),48 whereas (of course) Euripides is the opposite in both respects – ›rwv is (unsurprisingly) an appropriate subject par excellence to be expressed in a ‘lovely’ style (cf. Demetrius, On Style 132, 163). From here there is a path which leads to the later critical association of Euripides with a style characterised by c†ritev and elegance. For Dionysius of Halicarnassus, for example, Aeschylus and Euripides are the tragic examples of the utterly opposed aÉsthr»v and glajur»v styles respectively, with (naturally) Sophocles representing the happy mean of the ‘mixed’ (eÎkratov) style (On the Arrangement of Words 22.7, 23.9, 24.5). We might almost imagine that we are hearing the Aristophanic Euripides when Dionysius describes the ‘severe style’ (aÉsthr‡ ‰rmon©a) of which Aeschylus is a model as ‘not at all flowery, high-minded, straightforward, short on pretty adornment’ (¤kistì ˆnqhr†, megal»jrwn, aÉq”kastov, ˆk»myeutov, On the Arrangement of Words 22.6, cf. Frogs 836–9);49 as for Euripides, the Aeschylean parody of his choral lyrics (1309–22) might well be intended (inter alia) to point to the empty and enervated ‘charm’ of his language: when Aeschylus’ parody begins with an invocation to the halcyons, we might remember that Demetrius picks out ‘loves and spring and the halcyon’ as among the ‘lovely’ subjects of which Sappho sings in ‘lovely’ words (On Style 166).50 ‘Longinus’ stages a very different kind of contest between Aeschylus and Euripides in chapter 15 of On the Sublime, but one which both reflects and sheds light upon the contest of the Frogs. ‘Longinus’ is here discussing phantasiai as productive of impressiveness (Àgkov), grandeur of style (megalhgor©a) and ˆgÛn or ‘sense of contest/urgency’, as Donald Russell translates it, and he notes that the purpose of poetical phantasia is ekpl¯exis, that quality which the Frogs, and the critical tradition more generally, associate above all with Aeschylus. It is, however, with Euripides that he starts his discussion: In these passages [the madness of Orestes in the Orestes and the Iphigenia among the Taurians] the poet himself saw Furies, and he all but compelled the audience 47 48 50

The play’s silence about the representation of Achilles’ feelings for Patroclus in the Myrmidons (frr. 134a–137 R) is potentially interesting. 49 See above pp. 5–6 on Aeschylean aÉq†deia. See LSJ s.v. II 3; Hunter 2007: 220–1. Sommerstein’s view of the ‘message’ of this parody (n. on 1309–28), ‘Euripidean lyric combines tuneless music with meaningless words’, seems to me a misreading.

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also to see what he had visualised (–jant†sqh). Euripides works hardest in fact to give tragic form to these two emotions, love and madness, and here, if anywhere, he is most successful, though he does not lack the boldness (oÉk Štolmov) to put his hand to other forms of visualisation also. His natural gifts are very far from grand, but he often compels his nature to become tragic, and in the grand passages, as the poet says, With his tail he lashes his ribs and his flanks, one side, then another, and rouses himself for the battle (Homer, Iliad 20.170–1). (‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 15.2–3)

Here is a Euripides, who is not naturally a sublime or ‘grand’ writer, forcing himself to write against his nature;51 he whips himself on to enter the epic fray like the wounded lion to which Achilles is compared at Iliad 20.164–73. The battle here is both the struggle to produce sublime thoughts – Aeschylus ‘dares the most heroic phantasiai’ (15.5) – and also the struggle with other poets, as becomes clear later in the chapter when ‘Longinus’ observes that it was Euripides’ ‘competitive spirit’ (jilotim©a) which led him to ‘take the risk’ of imitating, while (typically) softening, a bold Aeschylean phrase in his Bacchae (Bacch. 726, cf. Aeschylus fr. 58 R).52 The battle between Aeschylus and Euripides in Frogs had itself of course been stylised as an epic clash (see esp. 814–29), but there it was Aeschylus who was the ‘Achilles’, in part of course because he is portrayed as the angry Achilles of his own Myrmidons; when ‘Longinus’ uses an epic simile describing Achilles to refer to Euripides, it is plain that he is dealing with something very unusual. That this is indeed the case becomes clear when he immediately illustrates Euripidean sublime imagination from the messenger’s speech of the Phaethon describing the fateful chariot ride (vv. 168–77 Diggle = fr. 779 Kannicht), a passage in which the idea of sublimity, Ìyov (‘height’), is (as so often) literalised, here in the soaring chariot of the sun. As the poet-lion had whipped himself to new heights, so the poet-Phaethon ‘struck the flanks of his winged chariot and set it racing, and the horses flew into the expanses of the air’. Here, for once, Euripides soars to the poetic heights: ‘Would you not say that the writer’s

51 52

See Russell 1981: 79–80. Russell understands ‘Longinus’’ observation about Bacchae 726 to be that it is ‘more pleasant’ and less paradoxon than Aeschylus’ verse because the mountain is said to revel ‘with’ the bacchants, rather than by itself; there may be something in this, but it is presumably also relevant that the idea of a mountain, the standard site of bacchic revelling, joining in the revels is less paradoxon than a royal palace doing so. That which accords with our expectations is ‘more pleasant’ than that which does not.

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soul is in the chariot too, and it too has wings to share the horses’ peril (sugkinduneÅousa)?’53 The contrast which the Aristophanic Euripides draws between the language of his tragedies and those of Aeschylus is of a kind which was to become very familiar. For ‘Demetrius’, for example, the grand style is appropriate to themes such as battles or cosmic events (75), and here again we must think of the two plays which the Aristophanic Aeschylus singles out – the Seven against Thebes, a ‘drama full of Ares’ (1020), and the Persians, through which he taught the Athenians ‘to desire always to be victorious over their enemies’ (1026–7), much as epic heroes themselves were taught by their fathers ‘always to be the best and to rise above others’ (Iliad 6.208, 11.784). Metaphors are, for ‘Demetrius’, particularly appropriate to this style (On Style 78; see also ‘Longinus’ On the Sublime 32.6), but his advice to orators, which follows that of Aristotle and Theophrastus,54 is that if a metaphor appears ‘risky’ (kindunÛdhv), it should be converted into a simile by the addition of ‘like’ or some such word (chap. 80); the metaphoricity of Aeschylean language hardly needs exemplification here. So too, compound words and the creation of neologisms, both faults with which Euripides charges Aeschylus, are appropriate in this style but not in the ‘slender’ style, which uses ordinary and familiar words, avoids metaphors and compounds, and places the greatest emphasis upon clarity of expression and the avoidance of ambiguity (On Style 91–8, 190–6). Here we may recall not just Euripides’ criticism of Aeschylus’ prologues, but also (again) the younger poet’s claim to have confronted his audience with ‘things which we know and with which we are familiar’ (959); ‘Demetrius’ of course advises the orator to use these grand devices moderately, even in the grand style, just as Horace allows the poet to create new words, provided that that licence is sumpta pudenter (Ars P 51). The association between Euripides and the oikeion at the level of diction was to become an important tenet of the critical tradition.55 In his discussion of the diction of forensic oratory, Aristotle notes that the only diction appropriate to prose consists of ‘ordinary’ words (t¼ kÅrion), words in their ‘own’ or normal meaning (t¼ o«ke±on) and metaphors (Rhetoric 3.1404b31– 5), and in considering the difference between poetry and prose, he notes that the licence of poetry is certainly not unrestricted: 53 54

On this passage see Segal 1959: 128–9. The influence of the ‘chariot of the soul’ in Plato’s Phaedrus hardly requires emphasis. 55 See above p. 29. Cf. ‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 32.3.

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Even in poetry, if a slave or a very young man were to use fine words (kalliepe±to), it would not be fitting, or if such language were used about very banal matters; what is fitting (t¼ pr”pon) consists here too in contraction and amplification. Therefore, one must do this without being noticed, and appear to speak naturally rather than artificially, for naturalness is persuasive, whereas artificiality is the opposite . . . The deception is successful if someone arranges their composition after selecting from ordinary discourse (e«wqu±a di†lektov); this is the manner of Euripides, who was the first to show how this could be done. (Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.1404b14–26)

‘Longinus’ follows in Aristotle’s footsteps in this matter: I have clearly demonstrated56 that many prose writers and poets, who are not sublime by nature and indeed perhaps quite without grandeur, nevertheless while largely employing the current diction of ordinary people (koino±v kaª dhmÛdesi to±v ½n»masi) and adding nothing unusual to it, have achieved impressiveness and distinction (Àgkon kaª di†sthma) and a reputation for rising above the low; among the many examples are Philistos, Aristophanes sometimes, and Euripides very often. After killing his children Heracles (Euripides, Heracles 1245) says: g”mw kakän dŸ koÉk”tì ›sqì Âpoi teqi. I am laden with disasters and no more can be stowed on board. What is said is extremely common (dhmädev), but it becomes sublime as appropriate to the situation (ti pl†sei ˆnalogoÓn).57 If you put the verse together in another way, you will see that Euripides’ poetic art lies more in the arrangement than the meaning. (‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 40.2–3)

As often, we may suspect that ‘Longinus’ has in mind more of the original context – Heracles’ debate with Theseus after he has recovered his senses – than the quoted single verse, but unfortunately the text is very probably lacunose: Hr. hÕrev d” gì Šllouv –n kako±si me©zosin; Qh. Œpthi k†twqen oÉranoÓ dusprax©ai. Hr. toig‡r pareskeu†smeqì ãste katqane±n. Qh. doke±v ˆpeilän sän m”lein ti da©mosin; Hr. aÎqadev ¾ qe»v, pr¼v d• toÆv qeoÆv –gÛ. Qh. ­sce st»mì, Þv mŸ m”ga l”gwn me±zon p†qhiv. 56 57

Commentators note that the reference must be to a work which is no longer extant. The meaning of this and of the last quoted sentence are both disputed.

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her. Have you seen others in greater misfortunes? thes. Your suffering reaches from here to heaven. her. Therefore I am ready to die. thes. Do you think that the gods care about your threats? her. God does what he pleases, and I do the same with regard to the gods. thes. Be quiet, lest your big talk bring bigger suffering. her. I am laden with disasters and no more can be stowed on board. thes. What do you intend to do? Where is your anger taking you? her. To death. I will return under the earth from where I came.

The situation here is certainly desperate and may well, as Russell notes, ‘demand t¼ Ëyhl»n’. There are in fact appropriately ‘sublime’ pointers in the language of the passage: there are no greater (‘bigger’) woes than Heracles’; Heracles ‘touches heaven’ in his misfortune; the gods are threatened (cf. Otus and Ephialtes);58 and aÉq†deia and anger are the dominant emotions.59 As a whole, these few verses stretch from the heavens (v. 1240) to the Underworld (v. 1247). Within this cosmic scope Heracles’ comparison of himself to a ship which (perilously) has no room left to take on board (from the gods) more cargo of kak† both reminds us of his ‘bulk’, both in terms of actual physical size and of his difference from ordinary men, and portrays him as a receptacle sinking under the weight of what he has been forced to endure; both j”rhi (‘you are being swept away’) and the idea of passing beneath the earth in the following verses pick up the nautical metaphor. Heracles is a ship whose heavy cargo leaves him dangerously exposed. ‘Longinus’, however, seems concerned rather with the way in which the arrangement of words in a ‘very common’ expression raises the verse to sublime heights.60 He does not explain in any detail what he has in mind and this has led to much critical head-scratching; whether, however, it is the ‘lofty’ sounds produced by the verse as it stands61 or the manner in which the verse is framed by the two nautical terms which has caught ‘Longinus’’ attention, it seems likely enough that behind his analysis stands the powerfully emotional contrast between Theseus’ injunction 58 60 61

59 See above pp. 5–6. See below p. 149 on On the Sublime 8.2. For the importance of synthesis see above p. 19. See Russell ad loc. The context certainly lends support to this suggestion.

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to Heracles not to ‘talk big’, a command prompted by the violent language of verse 1243, and the humble image which the great hero then uses. It is Theseus’ injunction, if understood from a stylistic perspective as ‘do not talk in the grand style’, which throws light on Heracles’ very ‘ordinary’ language. He moves from apparent defiance against the gods to the helpless resignation of a vessel which can do nothing about its fate.62 ‘Longinus’ is here very much the heir of the Aristophanic Euripides’ pride in the o«ke±a pr†gmata which he has introduced into tragedy. Finally, we should note that the dramatisation in the Frogs of a move (as at least the comic Euripides sees it) from a grand obscurity of language and ideas to plainness and clarity was to be repeated many times in the cultural history of Greek writing.63 Thus, for example, Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ account of how Lysias differed from his predecessors reveals this same pattern; like Euripides, Lysias was a model of ‘clarity’ arising from the use of plain language, but the same could not be said for his predecessors: When they wished to add some adornment to their speeches, they abandoned ordinary language and took refuge in poetic diction, using many metaphors, hyperboles and other figurative modes, and they knocked out (kataplhtt»menoi) the ordinary member of the audience with glosses and foreign words and unusual figures and other linguistic innovation. (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lysias 3.3)

On this narrative, Lysias’ predecessors, such as Gorgias, were almost as incomprehensible as the Aristophanic Euripides claims Aeschylus to have been, and their methods too resembled his; like Aeschylus, they were far more ‘poetic’ than what followed.64 This passage should remind us that the Frogs sets a pattern for imagining not merely the history of tragedy, but also two other, closely related, phenomena, namely the difference between poetry and prose and the developmental history of prose itself. The key figure who here reflects the basic pattern of the Frogs is, of course, Aristotle; the following passage from the Rhetoric, which lies behind Dionysius’ account, touches upon all three histories and shows their interrelations: The poets were, as was natural, the first to promote stylistic elaboration . . . Since the poets seemed to have gained an excellent reputation through their style, although what they had to say lacked sense, for this reason a poetic style first 62 63 64

For the sublime as a consolation for the human condition see Most 2003. The discussion of the move from a ‘classical’ to an Aristotelian view of poetry in Struck 2004 contains much of relevance here. Cf. also Strabo 1.2.6 on the poetic nature of early prose which imitated the poetry which preceded it.

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gained prominence [in oratory] as, for example, the style of Gorgias. Even today the majority of the uneducated think that such men speak most beautifully. This is, however, not the case, as the style of prose and poetry are different. Events have shown this to be the case. Not even tragedians now write in the same manner, but just as they changed from tetrameters to iambic trimeters because this is the rhythm which is most like prose, so they have rejected words which differ from ordinary discourse, i.e. the words with which earlier poets adorned their works and which are still used by poets of hexameters. It is therefore ridiculous to imitate those who themselves no longer write in this way. (Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.1404a19–36)

The history of tragedy adumbrated in the Frogs was to become the received wisdom about Greek literary history more generally. criticism from the heart Few aspects of the Frogs have been more discussed than the reasons for Dionysus’ decision in favour of Aeschylus. Many recent critics have argued for the essential arbitrariness of the decision, but others – notably George Walsh and Ismene Lada-Richards – have (with different emphases) stressed that Dionysus’ choice reflects the fact that tragedy’s appeal should indeed be to the psych¯e, not to the rational facility of logismos, and that Aeschylean tragedy, particularly as represented comically in Frogs, represents the more genuine tragic mode.65 It will be clear that I have sympathy with the general direction of this latter view, which still finds echoes in the debates of modern aesthetics,66 but some flesh remains, I think, to put on the bones. Two points are, however, worth noting first. At one level, Dionysus is in the position of the panels of judges at an Athenian dramatic contest; we have really no idea what criteria these panels used in making their decisions,67 but it would hardly be unexpected for Aristophanes to satirise the ‘unartistic’ and possibly inconsistent nature of the making of such decisions, just as in the Wasps he pokes fun at the criteria through which 65

66

67

See Walsh 1984: 85–97, and Lada-Richards 1999 passim; for the ‘real’, as opposed to the comic Aeschylus, see also De Romilly 1975: 17–18. Wilamowitz glossed Dionysus’ decision as following ‘seine innere Neigung und Stimmung ohne R¨ucksicht auf soj©a oder sonstige Erw¨agungen’ (Hermes 64 (1929) 474); see also Woodbury 1986: 245–6; Dover 1993: 19–20 with further bibliography. Many critics have accepted Van Leeuwen’s suggestion that v. 1468 (or part of it) is a parodic quotation from Euripides (it is now Eur. fr. 888a Kannicht). Thus, for example, certain aspects of Susan Sontag’s well-known essay ‘Against interpretation’ (Sontag 1967: 3–14), with its attack on the modern (over-)emphasis on the content and hence on the interpretation of a work of art, irresistibly call to mind the Aristophanic Euripides; for Sontag, the ‘but what does it mean?’ question, which obsesses both Euripides and Dionysus (above p. 24), is just the wrong question. Cf. Ledbetter 2003: 203. See Pickard-Cambridge 1968: 95–9.

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the popular juries reached their verdicts. Secondly, it is true, as several critics have insisted, that Dionysus’ decision to choose the poet ‘whom his psych¯e wants’ (1468) does not necessarily mean that the contest which has immediately preceded has had an effect on his decision. Nevertheless, even after making allowance (as we should) for the fact that Dionysus’ longing (p»qov, 66) for Euripides at the start of the play is in part a reaction to the poet’s relatively recent ‘departure’ (contrast the case of Aeschylus), the clear dramatic contrast between Dionysus’ decision at the end and his attachment to Euripides at the beginning does indeed suggest that all that he has heard does carry weight of some kind; it is Aeschylus’ performance in the contest, and indeed Euripides’ attack upon Aeschylus, which has stirred his psych¯e and reminded it of the pleasures which the older poet offers. It is, however, trying to define the nature of that weight which has proved an almost impossible critical task. ‘Control over the psych¯e of the audience’, yucagwg©a, was acknowledged at least by the fourth century as a proper activity of drama (e.g. Timocles fr. 6 K-A; Aristotle, Poetics 1450a33), just as Plato dismissed it as the ‘proper’ (and disreputable) effect of rhetoric,68 and in the later tradition it is particularly associated – not surprisingly – with the dulce of poetry rather than the utile.69 It is all but certainly Gorgias who stands behind this tradition, and such a distinction in fact is visible already in Isocrates, who contrasts crowd-pleasing psychag¯ogia with ‘giving advice and counsel’ (nouqete±n kaª sumbouleÅein, To Nicocles 49) and, perhaps with one eye on Gorgias, notes that even poets who are deficient in language and ideas can nevertheless yucagwge±n their hearers through ‘rhythms and symmetries’ (Evagoras 10–11). Polybius contrasts the momentary ekpl¯exis and psychag¯ogia of tragedy, operative through a kind of persuasive deceit, with the proper historian’s commitment to a truth which will last for ever and bring benefit (Ýj”leia) to those who wish to learn (2.56.11–12). Polybius of course is also reflecting Thucydidean ideas about the writing of history, ideas which famously privilege claims to truth, clarity and the benefit of the reader, against that which is muqädev – and hence ‘beyond elenchos’ – and ‘more attractive to listen to’, prosagwg»teron ti ˆkro†sei (Thucydides 1.21.1), a phrase which does not sound too far away from psychag¯ogia. Be that as it may, this subsequent history may serve as another reminder that the commitment of the Aristophanic Euripides to a kind of ‘realism’ 68 69

See Phaedrus 261a7–8, 271c10. At Ion 536a Socrates at least evokes yucagwg©a as the proper effect of poetry. See, e.g., Brink on Horace, Ars P 100, 333.

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is also a commitment to a kind of ‘truth’ susceptible of elenchos, a truth which dismisses Aeschylean tragedy to the realm of the utterly fictitious. If we go back to Frogs, we can see how this pattern also informs Dionysus’ decision-making process. At 1416ff. he decisively turns to the matter in hand and redefines his task in terms of the utile – he needs a poet ‘so that the city might be saved and continue to have its choruses’ (1419) – and so he says that he will take back whichever of the two poets can offer the city good advice, something which Aeschylus and Euripides have of course already agreed to be fundamental to the poet’s task. There follows the difficult passage of questions about Alcibiades and current politics, which apparently lead nowhere. The criterion of the utile has thus proved indecisive, and so the god falls back upon the promptings of his yucž; here then yet another familiar pattern of the later critical tradition is set before us in embryo. The matter had already been suggested at 1028–9: Aeschylus sees in his Persians a didactic lesson for the Athenians, whereas Dionysus – a typical (?) member of the audience – merely remembers the pleasure he took in the chorus’ emotional, but utterly inarticulate, cries.70 Words really are unimportant to the essential effect of tragedy. classical tragedy In a stimulating recent discussion James Porter has argued that Frogs dramatises, and comically subverts, the ‘fantasy of classicism’ by allowing us direct contact with the great figures of the past;71 Dionysus’ desire for Euripides (vv. 52–3) is a ‘canonical and classical desire’. Porter notes that we should therefore recognise that ‘classical Greece produced a form of classicism internal to itself, at the very least by the end of the fifth century’; if Aeschylus wins he does so in part, on Porter’s reading, because he is ultimately ‘more classical’ (which also in fact means ‘more archaic’). Euripides has, of course, always been a problematic figure for ‘classicism’,72 and it can indeed be argued that the importance of Frogs for ideas of ‘the classical’ rests not solely on the basic conceit of the second half of the play, but on the structure of the contrast between the two poets, in which we are invited to admire and be amazed at the one from a distance, but to examine and engage with the work of the other at very close quarters. A sense of ‘the classical’ may in fact demand the symbiosis of these reactions. 70 71

See above pp. 3–4. The general sense is clear, even if the text of v. 1028 is a notorious crux; to the commentators add Totaro 2006. 72 See, e.g., Porter 2006a: 23. Porter 2006b: 301–7.

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Plato’s creation of a Socratic past is an instructive example here. In some dialogues, most notably perhaps the Symposium,73 the sense of a lost world beyond reach is fundamental to the effect, indeed to ‘the meaning’, of the text; we are, however, at the same time invited by the text to engage with the arguments in the present, as though we too are speaking to Socrates. This is, if you like, the philosophical version of the later rhetorical challenge to match oneself against the great orators of the past, to see how you measure up.74 In the Phaedo, which is in part a foundation or charter myth for Plato’s fourth-century Academy, Phaedo says that, as he witnessed Socrates’ final hours, ‘I felt something odd – a strange mixture of pleasure and grief’ (59a5–6), and this clearly is something which we too are invited to feel while reading the Phaedo, engaging with its arguments, and envisioning its narrative. Both the superlatives with which the text closes (‘This was the death . . . of the best and wisest and most just of the men of that time (t»te) whom we encountered’, 118a15–17) and the specification of a past time emphasise the distance which separates us from the object of admiration but also leave open the possibility of, and provocation to, challenge in the present. The existence of classical models, whether of virtue or rhetorical brilliance, and the contemplation of the past must not be used as an excuse for inaction: as ‘Longinus’ put it, quoting Hesiod in his discussion of Plato’s own contest with Homer: ‘. . . “this striving (›riv) is good for mortals” [Works and Days 24]. Glorious indeed and well worth winning is this contest for fame and the crown which goes with it; to lose to those who went before us is no disgrace’ (On the Sublime 13.4).75 In the course of his analysis Porter observes: ‘classicizers who enjoy a readerly relation to their authors are protected by the disavowed knowledge that the presence they pursue will forever elude them. They are screened from their desire by the very same object that acts as the screen of their desire: the text they are reading. Classicism thrives on this disavowed fantasy.’76 One ancient reader who very neatly illustrates Porter’s dictum, and in what may be a replay of the Frogs, is Dio Chrysostom, who in Oration 52 offers a synkrisis of plays of the three ‘classical’ tragedians on the theme of Philoctetes.77 Dio begins by very clearly establishing a physical 73 75 76 77

74 See below p. 118. See Hunter 2004a: 114–15. For these ideas in rhetorical teaching see below p. 116. Cicero expresses very similar ideas at greater length at Orator 4–6. Porter 2006b: 303–4. On Dio 52 see esp. Luzzatto 1983 and M¨uller 2000: 240–91; I have learned and borrowed from both of these discussions. There is an English translation in Russell and Winterbottom 1972: 504–7.

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and moral context (mens sana in corpore sano) in which ‘classical pleasures’ can be properly enjoyed: I rose about the first hour of the day, both because of my physical weakness and because the dawn air was rather chilly and more like autumn than the midsummer which it was; I prepared myself and said my prayers. Then I got into my carriage and made a number of turns around the hippodrome with the carriage proceeding as gently and comfortably as possible. After this I had a walk and then a short rest; then, after oil and a bath and a small meal, I began to read certain tragedies. (Dio Chrysostom 52.1)

Nothing, we might think, could be further from the democratic context of public contest in which tragedies were originally performed, though Dio’s creation of a quiet space in which the pleasures of ‘the classics’ could properly be enjoyed, free from the distractions of public and vulgar performance, illustrates one conclusion to which Plato’s narrative of cultural and theatrical history inevitably led.78 The solo man of learning, or at most he and a few like-minded friends, are now the proper audience for great works; the cultural and educational system indeed constructs them as in fact the authorially intended audience. Nevertheless, despite the changed context, Dio expresses his scholastic activity in terms of the theatrical festivals: I feasted on the spectacle (q”a) and I reflected that if I had been in Athens at that time I would not have been able to see those men competing with each other, though some did enjoy the young Sophocles competing against Aeschylus when the latter was old and the aged Sophocles in competition with the young Euripides; Euripides, however, never overlapped with the career of Aeschylus. Moreover, the tragedians rarely, if ever, competed against each other with plays on the same subject. I was therefore enjoying a rare treat and a new form of consolation for my illness, and so I did not stint myself (–coržgoun –mautäi p†nu lampräv), but I tried to pay close attention as though I was judging the leading tragic choruses. (Dio Chrysostom 52.3–4)

Dio’s feast – a contrast to the ‘bite to eat’ (mikr¼n –mjagÛn) of the opening chapter – is specifically a visual one (q”a), and this is not just explicable from the language of envisionment and enargeia which accompanies any proper and educated reading experience at this period; Dio is indeed living out Porter’s ‘classical fantasy’ – the great playwrights of the past are performing for him – but this is a fantasy that he can bring to an end at any time: he is the chor¯egos for all the poets. It is, moreover, a fantasy in another sense 78

See above pp. 14–17, Hunter 2002: 190–1. With Dio 52 may usefully be compared Oration 32, Dio’s attack upon the entertainments and theatre-going behaviour of the people of Alexandria.

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also. Aristophanes brought Aeschylus and Euripides into competition by moving his play to the Underworld, where they are both now citizens (simultaneously alive and dead, as it were); with the educated man’s sense of historical chronology and theatrical history, a sense matching his equally displayed familiarity with medical precepts in the first chapter, Dio knows, and lets us know (52.3), that he too is able to stage a ‘fantasy contest’ of a kind which similarly could never have happened – it may not be too flippant to be reminded of ‘fantasy football’ in which the greatest players from different ages and different countries are put together and matched against each other. The ability to control the past is an essential element of classicism, and Dio has shaped the chronology of the past to fit a cultural model: first Aeschylus, then Sophocles, then Euripides, in an overlapping Venn diagram in which the two extremities never meet; Aeschylus and Euripides are ‘opposites’, ˆnt©strojoi (chap. 11). It hardly needs stressing, but I shall return to the issue in a moment, that this chronology then maps perfectly on to the perceived critical qualities of each – Sophocles is always the golden mean (m”sov, chap. 15). We, of course, know better: Euripides’ Philoctetes was staged, together with the Medea, in 431, Sophocles’ play in 408. Dio’s private pleasure is made public through his writing of the essay. What Dio offers us is a snapshot of the virtues of the three tragedians, mediated through the sensibility of an educated man steeped in the critical tradition; an important forerunner of that tradition is of course the Frogs itself, and it is no surprise that it is easy enough to map the characteristics of Aristophanes’ tragedians on to Dio’s stylistic views.79 Thus, for example, in chapters 5–6 Dio discusses the fact that, whereas Euripides used the Homeric device of having Athena disguise Odysseus so that he was not recognised, Aeschylus (apparently) made nothing of the issue, and hence laid himself open to the critical charge of writing ‘implausibly’, oÉ piqanäv. The pattern of the discussion is basically that of a z¯et¯ema: ‘Why, in Aeschylus’ Philoctetes, did Philoctetes not recognise his hated enemy Odysseus after only ten years?’ Dio has an answer and it is one based, as often (cf. Paris’ desire for Helen, above p. 21), on what we would call psychology: Perhaps indeed ten years was not a sufficient passage of time to prevent recall of [Odysseus’] appearance, but Philoctetes’ disease and his wretchedness and his solitary existence during these years made this not impossible. This has indeed 79

See, e.g., Russell in Kennedy 1989: 301.

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been the experience of many, whether from frailty or misfortune. (Dio Chrysostom 52.6)

The appeal to ‘ordinary’ experience to explain an apparently irrational phenomenon (ˆlog©a) shows not just how powerful the scholastic z¯et¯ema tradition was, but once again also how the Frogs and particularly Euripides’ claims for his own art are a foundational text for western criticism; we judge whether or not something is ‘plausible’ on the basis of our experience, on – to put it another way – o«ke±a pr†gmata . . . o³v crÛmeqì o³v xÅnesmen, ‘everyday things, the kind we’re used to, the kind that are familiar’. As for Euripides’ Philoctetes itself, we might be tempted to think that a miraculous transformation by a protecting divinity was the very stuff of ˆlog©a, but in fact the case is somewhat different. It is instructive that when Aristotle discusses ‘the irrational’ (t¼ Šlogon) in epic and tragedy (Poetics 1460a12–b2) the gods are not involved; divine action belongs to a different realm where explanation of a quite other kind is involved. Secondly, Euripides had Odysseus already transformed at the start of the play, as he explained in the prologue (Dio 52.13). To some extent, the prologue is ›xw toÓ muqeÅmatov (Aristotle, Poetics 1460a28), a given at the point where the action proper happens and, as such, not in fact an Šlogon aspect of the dramatic narrative. The motif of divine disguise is, of course, a familiar one in dramatic prologues: in the Bacchae Dionysus announces that he has transformed himself (v. 4), and in Plautus’ Amphitruo Mercury explains how both he and his divine master are disguised (vv. 115–30, 140–7).80 Be that as it may, Dio’s point is that it is part of Euripides’ attention to detail, his akribeia, that he forestalls the z¯et¯ema by the device of divine transformation, just as, by having his chorus of Lemnians apologise to Philoctetes for their previous neglect of him (chap. 7), he forestalls any puzzlement as to why they had not visited him before, a puzzlement that could arise in the case of Aeschylus’ chorus who simply (apparently) ignore the past. So too, it offends against a sense of ‘probability’ (t¼ e«k»v) that Philoctetes had had no human contact and received no help at all and yet had survived for ten years (Robinson Crusoe famously had help . . . ); therefore, Euripides introduced the character of Aktor, a Lemnian shepherd and apparently the king’s son, who had indeed had contact with the castaway over the years (chap. 8).81 Dio’s Euripides, like Aristophanes’, has covered every base: no 80 81

It is hard to believe that these verses do not go back to a Greek original (influenced by Euripides?). On this character see M¨uller 2000: 344–9; I wonder whether the name might have been used to suggest ‘He of the sea-shore’ as much as ‘driver’ (of flocks).

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elenchos is possible, and we may sense again the interplay of the practice of criticism and the way in which plays were actually written. Dio’s debt to the critical tradition inaugurated by the Frogs could, of course, be illustrated at great length: thus, for example, the ‘clear and detailed’ narrative of the situation (dr†matov Ëp»qesiv) which the Euripidean prologue speaker, Odysseus, gives (12–13), reminds us of the Aristophanic character’s claim that ‘the person who came on at the very beginning immediately related the origin of the drama’ (Frogs 946–7), and what in the comedy is the ‘empty chatter’ (lali† and stwmul©a), which Euripides taught the citizens (v. 1069) and which has led to a generation of deceptive demagogues (vv. 1083–6), becomes for Dio, as indeed for Quintilian (10.1.67–8), a source of enormous benefit for both citizens and orators (11). Dio has here recast the Aristotelian history which saw a move in tragedy from the politikž to the çhtorikž (Poetics 1450b7–8), a history in which Euripides himself will have been an influential figure and which is clearly related to the broad dichotomies of the Frogs, to reflect the changed cultural and educational values of the empire. The condensed picture of the poets which emerges is, of course, very different from the condensed picture which Aristophanes offers, but the latter also claims to present the whole ‘truth’ about Aeschylus and Euripides in a very small space; in one work the essence of the tragedians has been squeezed into a brief set of comic sketches, in the other into a set of reasoned, critical judgements. In both cases, the audience (whether that be the Athenian audience, Dio’s readers, or we ourselves) is offered not necessarily just what they expect, but rather a vision of the past which accords with the received notions about the poets which are appropriate to their respective contexts – a comedy, and an educated critical essay. Classicism is, after all, a confirming comfort, or – as Dio puts it – a paramuq©a. We turn to the past (inter alia) when the present threatens to erode a sense of identity. In the Apology, for example, the Platonic Socrates imagines the pleasures of the afterlife. Alongside the chance – as the audience of Frogs found – to ‘meet with’ the great poets of the past, there is another pleasure (oÉk ˆhd”v, 41b5) in store: ‘whenever I meet Palamedes or Ajax the son of Telamon or any other of the ancients who died as a result of an unjust verdict, I would compare my sufferings to theirs’ (41b1–4). Such use of mythological exempla in consolation requires no extensive illustration, but what is important is that such ‘parallels’ do not merely confirm that one is not alone and that suffering is in part compensated by posthumous fame, but they also justify one’s present stand; to put it bluntly, the past can prove that one is right. The Platonic Socrates’ construction of

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that past is no less self-serving than Dio’s critically informed picture of the virtues of the three classical tragedians. Crucial to the classical sense – at least from Homer onwards – is a contrast between ‘then’ and ‘now’, and the one Philoctetes tragedy which survives to us, that of Sophocles, shows that this story could lend itself very well to such concerns. That play is permeated by a sense of a noble and simple past, the world of the Iliad, and a complex and morally questionable present, the world after the Iliad and, indeed, the world of fifth-century Athens. At the heart of the contrast is of course the figure of Odysseus, and Dio’s description of Aeschylus’ Odysseus is here of particular interest: The great-mindedness and archaic flavour of Aeschylus, as well as the strong independence (t¼ aÎqadev)82 of his thought and language, seemed appropriate to tragedy and to the old-time character of the heroes; there was no scheming or idle chatter and no lowness (tapein»n) in his play. Even his Odysseus was sharp and cunning, as men were in those days, but far removed from modern maliciousness, with the result that he seems really archaic in comparison with those who now wish to seem straightforward and great-minded. (Dio Chrysostom 52.4–5)

The absence of ‘scheming and idle chatter and lowness’ from Aeschylus’ play, which is marked by a noble simplicity (‰pl»thv) of action and language (7, 15), leads almost inevitably to thoughts of Odysseus. In Dio’s vision, however, the craftiness of the Aeschylean Odysseus is an archaic, or perhaps classical, form of craftiness, ‘far removed from the maliciousness (kakožqeia) of the present day’, a phrase which almost inevitably calls to mind (Philoctetes’ view of ) the Odysseus of Sophocles’ play; when Dio includes the Sophoclean Odysseus among characters who are ‘amazingly dignified and upright’ (qaumastäv semn‡ kaª –leuq”ria) and notes that he is much ‘milder and more straightforward’ (prai»teron kaª ‰ploÅsteron) than his Euripidean counterpart (16), many critics may differ as to the first judgement and shake their heads in wonder at what the Euripidean Odysseus must have been like. We may, however, suspect that Dio’s triadic structure, with Sophocles occupying the midpoint between ‘simple’ Aeschylus and ‘complex’ (poik©lov) Euripides, has here determined his judgement, rather than the other way around. Such a sequence would, of course, be far from unusual in ancient criticism. The study of the language of ‘simplicity’ and ‘complexity’ in these contexts would in fact make for an interesting chapter in the history of ancient

82

See above pp. 5–6.

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criticism.83 These terms involve not just judgements about the characters depicted in drama, but also an implicit history of drama itself, in which the form gradually becomes more ‘complicated’, more reliant on t”cnh, as the characters too become more given to t”cnh in all its senses. The interplay of character and literary history is here very old. When in the Platonic Hippias Minor Hippias contrasts a ‘very straightforward’ (‰ploÅstatov) Achilles with a ‘very twisting’ (polutropÛtatov) Odysseus (364c4–365b6), we are already on the way to an influential contrast between their respective poems. Be that as it may, if one model for the Aristophanic Aeschylus is the Homeric and Aeschylean Achilles (Frogs 993 etc.), it is hardly fanciful to sense the figure of Odysseus lurking behind Euripides’ claims to have introduced ‘scheming’ (tecn†zein) and ‘suspecting the worst’ (k†cì Ëpotope±sqai) into tragedy (Frogs 957–8). When ‘Longinus’ describes Homer’s ‘character sketches of the daily life in Odysseus’ household’ as ‘a sort of comedy of character’ (On the Sublime 9.15), he stands in a line of descent from the descriptions of his own tragedies which the Aristophanic Euripides proudly gives (Frogs 948–79). The oppositions between ‘nature/simplicity’ and ‘culture/art’ and between ‘then’ and ‘now’, which inform Dio’s synkrisis, are of course very important in the Sophoclean Philoctetes and, not improbably, were so in at least Euripides’ play too. Dio’s critical essay in fact probably in this also mirrors, and is shaped by, the works it discusses. There are three related aspects of this to which I would particularly call attention, though the risks arising from the fact that only one of the three tragedies actually survives must here be stressed again. In taking the shape of some of his contrasts from the plays themselves, Dio’s discussion suggests that we may read Sophocles’ opening conversation between Odysseus and Neoptolemus about different modes of approaching Philoctetes as (in part) a metaliterary debate about different tragic treatments of the story and as a device by which Sophocles creates space for his own play; whereas we can entertain this idea because of our knowledge of the chronology of the three plays, it would no less suit Dio’s model in which Sophocles mediates between Aeschylus and Euripides. When the Sophoclean Neoptolemus rejects t”cnh (vv. 80, 88–9), it is easy enough to see him aligning himself, not just with his father, Achilles, but also with the standard critical picture of Aeschylus and his drama; Dio indeed, in praising the stratagem by which the Aeschylean Odysseus won Philoctetes 83

See below pp. 94–5, Luzzatto 1983: 56, 64–9 on ‘simplicity’. The same developmental narrative informs, for example, the Vita Aeschyli. There is relevant material on the interplay of style and character in Worman 2002.

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over, observes: ‘What need was there of cunning scheming and plotting (poik©lhv t”cnhv kaª –piboulv) against a man who was sick . . . ?’ (52.10). On the other side in Sophocles’ play, inevitably, stands Odysseus, who teaches others to speak poik©lwv (v. 130) and whose acceptance of the power of ‘the tongue’ (vv. 96–9) might with hindsight be seen to foreshadow the Aristophanic Euripides’ invocation of glÛtthv str»jigx, ‘the turning-point of tongue’ (Frogs 892); in that very same prayer Euripides also invokes xÅnesiv, ‘understanding’, the first quality which Dio praises in Euripides when he turns to him from Aeschylus (52.11, cf. 52.14). The Sophoclean characters must thus choose an ‘Aeschylean’ or a ‘Euripidean’ path. Secondly, if Dio’s ‘then’ and ‘now’ contrast replays a classical contrast, for Dio the ‘now’ becomes, not a post-Iliadic world or the Athens of the fifth century, but Dio’s own world;84 here again, however, things are not straightforward. When Dio contrasts the sharpness of the Aeschylean Odysseus, a sharpness typical ‘of men of that time’ with ‘the maliciousness of the present day’ (52.5), he is primarily referring to his own day. Nevertheless, he has just praised the quality of t¼ aÎqadev in Aeschylus’ thought and diction, and if this is not enough to make us think of the Frogs,85 he immediately observes that his heroic characters showed no trace of malicious plotting,86 of a propensity to gossip, or of lowness (tapein»n); the praise is here shaped by (an implicit) comparison with a standard view of Euripidean characters, a view descending of course from Attic Comedy, most notably the Frogs. The ‘present day’ is thus not just Dio’s time, it is also Euripides’ time. There is a tension here between Euripides as ‘the last classical tragedian’ and Euripides as ‘the first of the modern age’, and it is a tension which we can illustrate from elsewhere also in Dio. When in Oration 18 he advises young men to concentrate their dramatic reading on Euripides and Menander, he seeks to forestall objections to the fact that he has preferred ‘Menander to Old Comedy (ˆrca©av kwmwid©av) and Euripides to the old tragedians (ˆrca©wn tragwidän)’ (Dio 18.7). The two contrasts are not exactly parallel, but the phrasing at least suggests that Euripides is on a par with Menander, as both Hellenistic educational practice and the world of performance had indeed made him. Euripides was ‘contemporary’ in a way in which neither Aeschylus nor Sophocles was.87 84 87

85 See above pp. 5–6. 86 The text here is uncertain. See M¨uller 2000: 140–2. For the persistent link between Euripides and New Comedy in the critical tradition see, e.g., Quintilian 10.1.69, Euripides T 136–7 Kannicht and below p. 99.

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Finally, the projection of an ancient contrast into the present is as much a part of Dio’s experience of the plays as it was for the original audience. This blurring of time is a kind of compromise between the direct experience of watching or reading the plays and the classicising impulse born of social and cultural context. If we turn back to the Frogs, we find (unsurprisingly) that a contrast between a heroised past and a more degenerate present is also at the heart of Aeschylus’ view of the contrast between his tragedies and those of Euripides. Aeschylus claims to have depicted a world in which ¡m©qeoi thought and spoke great things (vv. 1058–61) and in which the audience in their turn were made ‘noble’ (genna±oi) and filled with martial spirit, like those they saw on the stage (vv. 1013–35); Euripides, by contrast, depicts beggars and promiscuous women and, as a result, no one wants to fight or perform public service any more and the citizens ‘of the present day’ are ‘low tricksters and rascals’ (v. 1015). Both the Aristophanic Aeschylus and the Dio of Oration 52 are, of course, laudatores temporis acti, but there is more to it than that: their view of the past, which for Aeschylus means everything before Euripides, as he sees an almost seamless continuity between the great poets of the past (most notably, of course, the Homer of the Iliad) and himself, is fashioned by literature, and their views of literature in turn determine their views of ‘real life’ in the present. Dio is not merely chor¯egos and audience, he is also, like Dionysus, the judge (dikastžv) of the tragic competition, and, like Dionysus, he cannot make up his mind: ‘I would not on oath be able to give any reason why any of these men could have been defeated’ (4). In refusing to pronounce judgement, Dio is adopting a familiar posture of the educated reader: Quintilian refuses to decide (iniudicatum relinquo) on the relative poetic merits of Sophocles and Euripides, apparently a hot subject for debate, because it is not germane to his subject, though there is no doubt that it is Euripides who is the more useful for aspiring orators (10.1.67). In the Frogs Dionysus did not wish to choose because he did not wish to fall out with either poet (v. 1412) and because he recognised that each had relevant, though different, virtues (vv. 1413, 1434); he is compelled by Pluto to choose,88 but otherwise his position is, again, not entirely unlike that of Dio. Whereas a ‘Longinus’ can be very free with judgements because he is concerned, like Quintilian, with a single (though complex) aspect of poetic composition, Dio can recognise difference, but is unwilling to hierarchise, because to do so would be to ‘fall out’ with one of these Škroi Šndrev (2); unlike some of the writers whom ‘Longinus’ happily assigns to the 88

See above p. 38.

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second class, Dio is dealing with ‘the big three’, and a choice between them risks the inevitable ridicule of part of the critical tradition. Moreover, Dio’s posture here is that of the educated reader, not the kritik»v, and it is the latter whose authority is confirmed by the making of such judgements. In the Frogs, it is inconceivable that there should be an eventual winner other than Aeschylus; in Dio’s essay, the classical past was to remain a picture of various hues, but it was the overall canvas which lingered in the mind’s eye. poetry and society In the Ars Poetica Horace offers a history of the early days of poetry which emphasises its seriousness and the importance of the rˆole it has played: siluestris homines sacer interpresque deorum caedibus et uictu foedo deterruit Orpheus, dictus ob hoc lenire tigres rabidosque leones; dictus et Amphion, Thebanae conditor urbis, saxa mouere sono testudinis et prece blanda ducere quo uellet. fuit haec sapientia quondam, publica priuatis secernere, sacra profanis, concubitu prohibere uago, dare iura maritis, oppida moliri, leges incidere ligno. sic honor et nomen diuinis uatibus atque carminibus uenit. post hos insignis Homerus Tyrtaeusque mares animos in Martia bella uersibus exacuit; dictae per carmina sortes et uitae monstrata uia est et gratia regum Pieriis temptata modis ludusque repertus et longorum operum finis: ne forte pudori sit tibi Musa lyrae sollers et cantor Apollo. (Horace, Ars Poetica 391–407)

Orpheus, a holy man and interpreter of the gods, deterred the men of the woods from killing and shameful food; for this reason he was said to tame tigers and ravening lions. Amphion also, the founder of the city of Thebes, was said to move rocks by the sound of his lyre and lead them wherever he wanted by his winning entreaties. Once upon a time this was wisdom, to distinguish public from private and sacred from profane, to keep men from promiscuous unions, to impose rules upon married couples, to build towns, and to carve laws on wood. Thus it was that honour and repute came to divine bards and to their songs. After these, the pre-eminent Homer and Tyrtaeus stirred with their verses the hearts of men for the battles of Mars; in poetry oracles were given and the path of life laid out, the favour of kings was sought in the tunes of Pieria and relaxation and the close of

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long labours invented. Therefore, there is no need to be ashamed of the Muse skilled in the lyre and Apollo the singer.

As has long been recognised, these verses are strikingly like Aeschylus’ account of the helpfulness of early poets in Aristophanes’ Frogs: sk”yai g‡r ˆpì ˆrcv Þv Ýj”limoi tän poihtän o¬ genna±oi geg”nhntai. ìOrjeÆv m•n g‡r telet†v qì ¡m±n kat”deixe j»nwn tì ˆp”cesqai, Mousa±ov dì –xak”seiv te n»swn kaª crhsmoÅv, ëHs©odov d• gv –rgas©av, karpän ãrav, ˆr»touvá ¾ d• qe±ov íOmhrov ˆp¼ toÓ timŸn kaª kl”ov ›scen plŸn toÓdì, Âti cržstì –d©daxen, (Aristophanes, Frogs 1030–6) t†xeiv, ˆret†v, ¾pl©seiv ˆndrän; Observe from the earliest times how beneficial noble poets have been. Orpheus taught us rites and to keep away from killing, Musaeus taught cures for diseases and oracles, Hesiod how to work the land, the seasons for crops, ploughing; did not the divine Homer receive honour and renown precisely from this, that he taught us useful things, battle-formations, acts of valour, how men are armed?

Whether or not in this passage Horace has (inter alios) Aristophanes directly in mind may be debated,89 but the juxtaposition of the passages carries an instructive weight, whatever view is taken of their relationship. The Horatian passage might appear at first glance to be as self-contained as any passage in this section of the poem, whose structure remains a matter for fierce debate. Horace has been arguing, to put it broadly, that there is no room for second-rate poets or poetry, although people seem to think that there is nothing to stop one versifying, even if (for example) those who are no good at athletics avoid the pursuit for fear of ridicule. If we do write something, we should submit it to the judgement of others and put it away for a long period, for it can always be destroyed, whereas nescit uox missa reuerti. Immediately after the section under consideration, Horace turns to the famous problem of ‘whether it is nature or art which produces an excellent poem’; his answer – both – is then followed by a long section 89

The most obvious similarities are Ars P 391–2 ∼ Frogs 1030–2, with sacer interpresque deorum picking up the implications of telet†v, honor et nomen ∼ timŸn kaª kl”ov, diuinis uatibis ∼ qe±ov íOmhrov, sortes ∼ crhsmoÅv. The rich tradition of such cultural histories is sketched by Brink 1971: 384–6, and see also Solmsen 1932: 151–4. Of particular interest here is Plato, Protagoras 316d–e, and for the ‘sophistic’ background of the Aristophanic verses see also Woodbury 1986: 249–50; Ford 2002: 144–5. It is noteworthy that Horace’s Homer here plays a rˆole very like that of Aeschylus’ own self-presentation at Frogs 1019–27, i.e. someone who stirred the martial enthusiasm of his audiences, rather than the didactic military instructor of Frogs 1035–6. For further links between this passage of the Frogs and the Ars Poetica see above p. 4, and for Horace and the Frogs more generally see below p. 99.

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on the need to learn one’s trade and the need for serious criticism and correction before any poem can be regarded as finished. If verses 391–407 were not there, we would in fact hardly miss them. The justification offered for them is (apparently) that one has to work hard at poetry because poetry is, and always has been, socially important, and certainly nothing to be ashamed of (see vv. 406–7); we poets stand on the shoulders of the very men who ‘invented’ society. The point is made ‘structurally’ at the end of the passage where the invention of drama suddenly introduces a lighter note, ludusque repertus | et longorum operum finis; ludus evokes not just the modern style of poetry, but also satyr drama in which the addressees of the poem, the Pisones, may have had a particular interest (cf. v. 235). We, like the Pisones, do indeed stand at the end of a very long tradition, and it is a tradition which must be respected. Before verse 391 the emphasis is on the fact that ‘mediocre poets’ are simply not to be allowed; nothing is said about what ‘makes’ such a poet, and the natural implication is that there (just) are good and bad versifiers – in other words, it is a matter of natura: you either have it or you do not, and if you do not, you should rely on the honest advice of a critic, a father, or a concerned friend (vv. 387–8) to save you from yourself. After verse 407, when the natura–ars dichotomy is explicitly raised, the emphasis switches to the latter, to the effort and training involved, and to the necessity for serious criticism and correction. This sequence implies two further matters of importance. First, a primacy both chronological and poetic, of ‘substance’ over ‘style’; in the Frogs, Euripides’ initial attack is on the manner and ‘style’ of Aeschylean tragedy (907ff.), whereas when Aeschylus replies, his concern is with the substance of what poets say, not how they say it (1006ff.). Secondly, the Horatian sequence suggests that the poets of verses 391–407 were the great figures of natura; ars is a secondary historical development, and this is, as we have seen, a recurrent feature of such poetic and cultural histories.90 The Horatian sequence thus brings out an important feature of the Aristophanic passage: the comic Aeschylus is made to appropriate the great figures of the past for his own ‘project’, and as such they stand on his side of the dichotomies which this play bequeathed to the subsequent tradition, one of the most important of which is indeed ‘greatness of genius’ versus ‘technical proficiency’. This sequence also helps to explain why Horace included the rationalising and/or allegorical interpretations of the stories of Orpheus and 90

See above p. 45.

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Amphion.91 For Aristophanes and his audience, the figure of Orpheus was as closely associated with cultic and mystical lore as with the power of his music, though this story too was of course well known,92 whereas by Horace’s time, the story of his charming of wild animals could hardly be ignored. By calling specific attention to this, Horace completely subordinates the ‘sweetness of song’ to the social and communal function of poetry – the former is in fact merely a mythical way of talking about the latter – and so ars is firmly put in its place, at least for Orpheus; in the early days, poetic soj©a really was sapientia. The case is even stronger for Amphion, who replaces Mousaios in the Aristophanic account. Amphion was the lyre player who engaged in a famous debate with his brother Zethos in Euripides’ Antiope over the value of music, and mousik¯e more generally, in society; in the tragedy Zethos urges him to abandon music for other more physically robust and socially useful pursuits, and this fraternal dispute became a touchstone for debate about the value of intellectual and cultural pursuits. Most famously perhaps, Plato makes Callicles attack Socrates’ ‘childish’ pursuit of philosophy with an explicit memory of Zethos’ attack upon Amphion (Gorgias 484e–485e). Horace thus tackles head-on any suggestion that poetry is an idle pastime ‘of no use to one’s home or city or friends’, as Zethos presented it in the tragedy (fr. 187.5–6 K);93 Amphion was in fact the founder (conditor) of his city, on a par with, say, Aeneas, and the whole business of rocks following his music was just a colourful way of referring to his civic achievements. That of course was then, and this is now, a point made by verses 406–7 in which Horace addresses one of the Pisones directly; now means modern critical standards and a proper appreciation of the importance of ars. One of the patterns informing this whole section of the Ars is, therefore, the familiar historical narrative in which literary and cultural forms move successively closer to ‘technical’ skill: we may be reminded of Horace’s treatment of Lucilius in Satires 1.4 and 1.10.94 The pattern is, as we have seen, recurrent in ancient criticism and touches Aeschylus himself, of course, well beyond the confines of the Frogs. Quintilian, for example, reports that Aeschylus was ‘sublime and serious and grandiloquent often almost to a fault, but very 91 92 93

94

The origin and chronology of these interpretations remains unclear, though there is no reason why they might not be relatively early, see Brink 1963: 133 n. 2. See, e.g., West 1983: 3–7. In the light of Ars P 383–4 (equestrian census is a good enough reason to write poetry!), it is interesting that the tragic debate seems to have made much of mousik¯e as a pastime of the well-to-do, see frr. 187, 198 K, Wilson 1999/2000: 440–9. See below pp. 99–100.

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often rough and unpolished; for this reason the Athenians allowed later poets to enter corrected versions of his plays in competition, and many won the crown in this way’ (10.1.66 = Aeschylus T 77, 133 R). Here we seem to have a combination of the narrative traced in this chapter with the familiar story of posthumous reproductions of Aeschylean plays, together perhaps with an echo of the fact that poets did indeed not infrequently revise their own plays for reproduction. We may, however, have serious doubts that ‘roughness and lack of polish’ were the real reason for any changes in Aeschylus’ tragedies when they were reperformed; rather, as so often, critical judgements have been imposed upon, and have shaped, the writing of literary history.

chapter 2

Readings of Homer: Euripides’ Cyclops

been there, done that The story of Odysseus and his men caught in the cave of the cannibal giant and of their escape clinging to the bellies of sheep is one of the most familiar, and most imitated, of the Odyssey’s narratives; it has become an iconic story for western narrative literature. As for antiquity, enough evidence survives to allow us to track the main outlines of a set of interpretations which saw in this story a foundational text of Greek identity, the triumph of intelligence (mtiv and logism»v), social convention and respect for the gods, a mixture to which we might be tempted to give the name ‘civilisation’, over an unreasoning and impious reliance on brute force and a rejection of socialised community in favour of radical self-will and individual appetite (qum»v, cf. Odyssey 9.278). Like Achilles’ struggle with the impulse to draw his sword on Agamemnon in Iliad 1,1 Book 9 of the Odyssey can with hindsight be seen to stand behind much Greek, most notably Platonic, psychology, and it is thus not surprising that it became the subject of elaborate allegory;2 something of the flavour of this material, and something of the fascination of the story of the Cyclops, may be gained from Eustathius’ discussion, which sums up a whole tradition of interpretation: The allegory concerns thumos . . . The Cyclops has one eye because the man ruled by thumos (¾ qumoÅmenov) has no other thought or consideration for anything else, but he looks only at one thing, namely the accomplishment of his own will (q”lhma). Odysseus does not destroy such thumos entirely, as it is not possible to destroy the tripartite soul, of which the thumos is one part. Rather, he blinds it; that is, he makes the Cyclops’ bestial and murderous impulses without consequence. How does he blind it? Quite simply by neglecting and, as it were, closing his eyes 1 2

See below p. 195 for Plutarch’s discussion of this scene; another particularly noteworthy discussion of Achilles’ impulse is ‘Heraclitus’, Homeric Problems 17–18. The remarks which follow expand upon Hunter 2004b: 244–5.

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to the perceptible things which make him beastlike, and thus he seems to blind the Cyclops within himself. When we foolishly concentrate too much on perceptibles, this makes the Cyclops of this kind within ourselves very sharp-sighted; the person who wisely avoids such gazing would, on the other hand, be said to blind [the Cyclops]. So also with desire (–piqum©a): the presence of perceptibles evokes it, their absence removes it. (Eustathius, Commentaries on Homer 1622.56–64)

There is little point in trying to distinguish too narrowly between interpretations of this kind and the, often rather simpler, moralising that the Odyssey attracted from an early date and which often surfaces within literary texts (e.g. Horace, Epistles 1.2); writing in the early empire, ‘Heraclitus’ neatly sums up such moralising, while adding a particular etymological twist which may be his own: When examined closely, Odysseus’ wanderings will overall be found to be allegorical. Homer has made Odysseus a sort of instrument of every virtue, and through him has expressed his own philosophy, because he hated the vices which ravage human life. Pleasure is represented by the land of the Lotophagi, who cultivate exotic delights: Odysseus shows restraint and sails past . He cripples our wild anger [thumos] by cauterizing it, as it were, with verbal advice: the name for this anger is Cyclops, he who “steals away” [hupokl¯op¯on] our powers of reasoning. (‘Heraclitus’, Homeric Problems 70.1–5)

For earlier antiquity, however, our information is much less rich, but it is clear that moralising readings of the Odyssey were familiar from an early date. Xenophon reports that Socrates used such a mode of interpretation ‘in jest’: Whenever [Socrates] accepted an invitation to dinner, he resisted without difficulty the common temptation to exceed the limit of satiety; and he advised those who could not do likewise to avoid what was set out to make one eat when not hungry and drink when not thirsty; for he used to say that such things ruined the stomach, the brain and the soul. He said in jest that he thought that it was by offering a feast of such things that Circe turned men into pigs; Odysseus had survived this fate partly through the advice of Hermes, but also because he was self-restrained and avoided excessive indulgence in such things. (Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.3.6–7)

It is a great pity in this context that we do not know more of the Homeric criticism of Antisthenes who, unlike what (little) we know of the bestknown interpreters of Homer in the latter part of the fifth century, seems to have paid more attention to the Odyssey than to the Iliad and whose interests will have been largely ethical and moral.3 The subject of the 3

See Richardson 1975: 78–81, below pp. 75–6.

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present chapter makes the all but total loss of Antisthenes’ ‘On the use of wine or On drunkenness or On the Cyclops’ particularly keenly felt.4 In this situation the survival of Euripides’ Cyclops is a singular piece of good fortune for those interested in the ancient critical tradition, and not of course just for them.5 As the only satyr play which has survived to us complete and, together with the Rhesus of (very probably) the fourth century bc, one of only two extant plays which turn episodes from the Iliad and the Odyssey into drama, the Cyclops is for many reasons a very significant text, and, as I hope will become clear, the apparently discrete reasons for that significance are in fact mutually reinforcing. Moreover, the Cyclops is a potent reminder that ‘scholastic’ traditions of criticism, so many strands of which we have seen foreshadowed in the Frogs, are very far from the only mode of interpretation practised in antiquity from relatively early periods. The Cyclops is a very striking instance of how later writers appropriate, and often, as in this case, literally ‘re-write’ their predecessors by bringing out the ‘modern’ structures which can be found there; as is well known, Euripides reads Homer in the light of some of the political and ethical interests of late fifth-century Athens, but he also translates the Homeric contrast between the (hyper-)civilised Phaeacians and the brute Cyclops into the language of Athenian social conventions, most notably, of course, those of the elite symposium.6 As such, Euripides’ Cyclops is a text of the greatest interest for anyone concerned with how myths, and the texts which incorporate them, are made to work in, perhaps we might say to ‘have meaning for’, the time of their telling; as is well understood, myths often speak to the contemporary concerns, as well as the historical memory, of the communities which tell them. A text such as the Cyclops shows us how this now generally accepted view of why communities have and tell myths may be viewed as the ‘oral model’ from which the allusive textual practice of literate composers derives; the imitation and rewriting of prior texts thus has deep roots in oral cultural practice and is not to be thought of as merely a sophisticated and e´lite game. In the history of ancient interpretation the situation of Euripides’ Cyclops and the ninth book of the Odyssey has in fact some similarity to that of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and the Lucianic Onos (on the most probable interpretation of the latter relationship); in both instances we possess both model and copy, and it is clear that the secondary text does not merely 4 5 6

See further below pp. 75–6. For a guide to recent bibliography on the Cyclops see Kn¨obl 2005. Much has recently been written about how satyrs both are, and are not, like Athenian men, see, e.g., Lissarrague 1990, Hall 1998, Griffith 2002, 2005.

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‘translate’ the model into its own idiom and linguistic form but also offers one or more exegetical readings of that model. Although the Onos and the Metamorphoses were probably written close in time to each other, the importance of the Homeric poems in Athenian cultural life and education will probably have reduced the sense that Euripides had taken up a model from a very remote past, and as such the difference between the two cases should not be exaggerated. So too, the Metamorphoses may well advertise its exegetical concerns much more openly than does the Cyclops, but in both works a pre-existing narrative pattern and a specific textual instantiation of that pattern are interpreted in terms of, or we might say ‘glossed by’, cultural and intellectual patterns which were potent within the society that was the audience for the later text. To put it at its simplest, the Metamorphoses offers a Platonising reading of the story of the man whose unnecessary curiosity caused him to become an ass; such a reading is rooted in a specific intellectual context on which the other writings of Apuleius shed considerable light. Both the Cyclops and the Metamorphoses, therefore, lend themselves very readily to certain modern approaches to intertextual practice, and Michele Napolitano and others have already set the Cyclops within the context of G´erard Genette’s well-known work on ‘palimpsestic literature’, which examines a rich text as a layered artefact.7 Moreover, certain features of satyr play generally, and the Cyclops in particular, will be seen to make it less surprising that this play is a primary text for the history of ancient criticism. To judge by what remains, satyr play was not only characterised by a marked typicality and formularity well beyond that of tragedy,8 but was also a highly self-conscious and self-referential genre – in this (at least) closer to Old Comedy than to tragedy – and, as such, it was fertile ground for the breeding of a critical sense: explicit consciousness about one’s own literary form and techniques, and in particular about how a literary or dramatic genre relies on repeated elements and structures (we may recall, for example, the treatment of Euripides’ prologues in the Frogs), naturally carries over into appreciation and exploitation of the work of others. As we have seen before, a new emphasis upon literary techn¯e goes hand-in-hand with the rise of criticism. The self-consciousness of the Cyclops takes two (interrelated) forms. First – and this seems to have been a feature of satyr play more generally – there is what we might call ‘generic’ awareness; the play itself, of course, contains clear allusions to various familiar topoi of satyr play (e.g. v. 465 – the 7 8

See Napolitano 2005. See, e.g., Krumeich, Pechstein and Seidensticker 1999: 28–32, with further bibliography.

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satyrs’ pleasure in ‘inventions’, eËržmata), but – more important – is the sense that we, and the characters, have been here (i.e. performing and/or watching satyr play) before, and we all know it. Some at least of the ‘countless troubles’ (mur©oi p»noi) of which Silenos complains in the opening verse and to which he makes further brief allusion in the prologue will have been the subject of previous satyr plays;9 such reference to previous dramatic experience reinforces our (comforting) sense of familiarity and of ‘knowing where we are’. Not dissimilar are the past pleasures and pains which Dikaiopolis, qua regular theatre-goer, recalls in the prologue of Aristophanes’ Acharnians; in both instances, the present case, namely the play we are about to watch, is claimed to surpass those past (dramatic) examples (Ach. 17–22, Cyclops 10).10 So too, the very end of the play, in which the joyful chorus pick up Silenos’ opening reference to Dionysus, ‘for the future we shall be the slaves of (douleÅsomen) the Bacchic one’, does not merely point the familiar paradox that, for the satyrs, release from servitude to the Cyclops (cf. vv. 24–5, 76–7) is release into a servitude which is actually freedom,11 but also promises future satyr play to come: we are back where we started from, and when we next see Euripides’ satyr chorus (i.e. at next year’s festival) they will again be slaves, whether Dionysus’ or some other character’s. There is, in Mark Griffith’s words, a ‘timeless and unchanging quality’ about the satyr chorus who ‘are always the “same” satyrs, who always were and always will be getting into and out of trouble, then and now’.12 The world of satyr play, like – perhaps not coincidentally – the world of bucolic/pastoral, is a familiar landscape always waiting to receive us, always still in the state we left it; pastoral too creates its sense of familiarity in part by constant reference to (alleged) previous pastoral events beyond the immediate occasion. The self-consciousness of satyr play is often viewed in terms of metatheatrical phenomena, such as the insistently regular reference to the performative aspects of drama – dance, music and costume.13 Thus, for example, as the chorus of satyrs approaches, Silenos calls our attention to their ‘signature tune’ – the sikinnis dance – and again we know where we are.14 The parodos of the Cyclops, however, may offer a particular, and rather more interesting, case of the concern with generic space which seems to have 9 11 12 13 14

10 For this priamel effect see Davies 1999. See, e.g., Seaford on vv. 3–5, 5–9, 11–17, 39. See, e.g., Dodds on Bacchae 65–7, Seaford on Cyclops 76–7. For the theme of servitude in satyr play see, e.g., Seaford 1981: 272. Griffith 2002: 212; see also Griffith 2005: 171–2. For a collection of material see, e.g., Kaimio et al. 2001. On the dancing of a satyr chorus see, e.g., Seidensticker 2003: 110–17.

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characterised satyr drama. It has often been noted that, as ‘the earliest extant pastoral song’,15 the parodos may exploit a (real or imagined) tradition of rustic Sicilian song-making, a view strengthened by the bucolic parody of Philoxenus’ dithyramb, Cyclops or Galateia, in Aristophanes’ Ploutos and by the later poetry of the Sicilian Theocritus.16 The pastoral song of the satyrs, however, draws no explicit attention to goats, as opposed to sheep (and, of course, in particular to the ram of the Odyssey), though mla (e.g. vv. 35, 162, 218) could refer to both, and such a mixed flock would be normal within Mediterranean pastoralism.17 Like the absence of wine (see further below), this difference from Homer (whether it works at the textual or visual level, or both) may be seen as one sign of the satyrs’ radical separation from Dionysus, because the goat is a notoriously Dionysiac animal; the only tangible remnant of the Dionysiac left to the satyrs is the ‘wretched goatskin cloak’ in which Silenos at least is dressed (vv. 80–1).18 However the parodos was actually presented, it may be worth wondering whether it gestures towards (the origins of ) tragwid©a as ‘goat song’, but steers away from too open a declaration by avoiding any explicit reference to goats; what we are offered, perhaps, is mhlwid©a in place of melwid©a. This can, of course, be no more than a speculation. Theocritus was later to make creative use of the idea of his ‘bucolic’ poetry as in fact ‘goat song’,19 but how early this etymology of tragwid©a had established itself remains unclear.20 If, however, there is anything to this speculation, we may see here a striking example of how satyr play positions itself generically as both like and unlike tragwid©a; what we are watching is related to tragwid©a, but it is also (not very subtly) different. Reflection on the history and relationship of the dramatic genres did not, of course, begin with Aristotle, and, had more satyr plays survived, we might well, for example, possess more material relevant to Aristotle’s claim that tragedy developed ‘from those who lead off the dithyramb’ (Poetics 1449a10). As soon as he is released from ‘war and evils’ (v. 201), Dikaiopolis in Aristophanes’ Acharnians celebrates the phallic procession of the Rural Dionysia, in a scene which can hardly fail to bring to mind Aristotle’s later claim that comedy developed ‘from those who lead the phallic songs such as 15 17 18

19

16 See, e.g., Hunter 1999: 9. Seaford 1988: 106. In Theocritus the Cyclops seems to have only sheep, see Hunter 1999: 250. For the post-Homeric use of mla see Schmidt 1979, Slater on Aristophanes of Byzantium frr. 118–19. If this does not refer to regular satyric dress (the matter has been much discussed), then it may be thought that these verses indeed point to the presence of goats among the satyrs’ charges. What is important, rather, is what is given emphasis in the text which directs the gaze of the spectators. 20 See, e.g., Pickard-Cambridge 1962: 112–24. See Hunter 1999: 61–2.

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still today continue in many cities’ (Poetics 1449a11–13);21 the restoration of (personal) peace means the restoration of kwmwid©a in its original form, and it is at least worth asking whether this (in part) reflects late fifth-century discussion of the history and development of dramatic form. Secondly, there is a very strong sense, noted by many modern commentators on the play, that the characters are acting out a story which they know, that they (and the audience) are in fact familiar with the Odyssey and are playing out a script which all know in advance;22 the story we are watching has already passed into the world of mÓqov (vv. 375–6).23 When Odysseus ‘heroically’ declares that he will ‘either die nobly, if die I must, or survive and preserve24 my former reputation (a²nov)’ (vv. 201–2), we may be reminded of Hector facing his final duel: mŸ m‡n ˆspoude© ge kaª ˆkle©wv ˆpolo©mhn, ˆll‡ m”ga ç”xav ti kaª –ssom”noisi puq”sqai.

(Homer, Iliad 22.304–5)

May I die not without contest and glory, but having accomplished a marvellous deed and one for later generations to hear.

Whereas, however, Hector dreams of a future glory arising from an undefined deed still in front of him, Odysseus’ concern is with the preservation of the past, and it might be thought difficult not to hear ainos as ‘story’, ‘fable’: Odysseus is indeed in a story in which he does in fact survive, as he and we know only too well. With this sense of a predetermined future the Cyclops might be thought to anticipate some familiar features of Hellenistic and Roman poetry.25 Thus, for example, Odysseus foreshadows (vv. 460–3) the blinding of the Cyclops with a rewriting of the shipbuilding simile of Odyssey 9.384– 8; Odysseus ‘knows’ that this is what will happen – similes referring to future action are strikingly rare – because he and we have read ‘the script’. So too, when Odysseus first enters and identifies himself to Silenos 21 22

23 24 25

See Pickard-Cambridge 1962: 132–62. See, e.g., Gargiulo 1996; Wright 2006: 35–6, who correctly observes ‘it is as if the Odyssey has already been written – and all the characters know it’. Wright’s discussion (pp. 32–40) of ‘metamythology’ in the Cyclops draws much relevant material together. Vv. 447–9 might contain an example of a related phenomenon. The satyrs’ expectation that Odysseus will ambush the Cyclops in a lonely place may be based on their ‘familiarity’ with the Iliadic Doloneia, as well perhaps on earlier satyr play (cf. Ussher 1978 ad loc.), but such a scheme is not d»lion enough for Odysseus. The particular point of these verses, on which many have commented, is that Odysseus himself attests to the ‘unbelievability’ of probably the most famous of his tales. The text is problematic (see Seaford ad loc.), but the general sense seems clear. For which see Barchiesi 1993.

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as ‘Odysseus of Ithaca, lord of the land of the Cephallenians’, we are presumably to recall Odysseus’ identification of himself to the Phaeacians: e­mì ìOduseÆv Laerti†dhv, Áv psi d»loisin ˆnqrÛpoisi m”lw, ka© meu kl”ov oÉran¼n ¯kei. naiet†w dì ìIq†khn eÉde©elon. (Homer, Odyssey 9.19–21)

I am Odysseus son of Laertes, known to all men for cunning, and my fame reaches heaven. I dwell in far-seen Ithaca.

The Euripidean Odysseus omits his fame for d»loi, but Silenos (who has clearly read his Odyssey) is only too keen to fill the gap in his own malicious manner: o²dì Šndra, kr»talon drimÅ, SisÅjou g”nov. (Euripides, Cyclops 104)

I know the man, a cunning trickster, offspring of Sisyphus.

Sisyphos replaces Laertes and kr»talon drimÅ is an unflattering version of the Homeric Odysseus’ assertion of fame. In performance, ‘I know the man’ was presumably also ‘I know the man . . .’, thus mocking the Šndra . . . polÅtropon through the opening word of the poem which celebrates him and from which the plot of the present play is taken.26 So too, when Silenos later urges his master to eat the newcomers as a nice change of diet, ‘because no other strangers have recently (newst©) come to your cave’ (vv. 250–2), we are, I think, to understand that the last such x”noi were indeed the Homeric Odysseus and his men; ‘(not) recently’ marks the distance between model text and copy. Silenos in fact knows his Odyssey rather well. The fate of the satyrs in being blown off course while rounding Cape Malea (vv. 18–20) is an obvious replay of the fate of Odysseus and his crew (Odyssey 9.80–1);27 Seaford here rightly notes ‘the light absurdity of Silenos’ epic pretensions’, but this story makes clear, long before Odysseus enters, that Silenos is not only playing out a rˆole from the Odyssey, namely captivity by the Cyclops but has in fact modelled his fate, and that of his colleagues, upon that of the epic hero of a poem he cannot, of course, ‘actually’ have read. He is the satyr of mur©oi p»noi (v. 1), living out the nightmare of the ˆnžr of poll‡ Šlgea (Odyssey 1.4). When Odysseus tells him that storm winds have carried the Greeks to Sicily, Silenos exclaims: 26 27

See Wright 2006: 36. Commentators note a number of Odyssean parallels for the language of vv. 16–17.

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papa±á t¼n aÉt¼n da©mon ì –xantle±v –mo©. (Euripides, Cyclops 110)

Ah! You are suffering from the same fate as me.

It would have been more correct, but less amusingly self-absorbed, for Silenos to note that in fact his fate is ‘the same’ as (indeed modelled upon) Odysseus’, not vice versa;28 the humour is somewhat akin to Ovid’s inverted presentation of the situation of Amores 1.4: uir tuus est epulas nobis aditurus easdem

(Ovid, Amores 1.4.1)

Your partner is going to the same dinner-party as us . . .

A rather more extended instance of this phenomenon occurs in the course of Odysseus’ first interview with the Cyclops: Ku. q”lw dì –r”sqaiá p»qen –pleÅsatì, å x”noi; podapo©; t©v Ëmv –xepa©deusen p»liv; Od. ìIqakžsioi m•n t¼ g”nov, ìIl©ou dì Špo p”rsantev Šstu, pneÅmasin qalass©oiv sŸn ga±an –xwsq”ntev ¤komen, KÅklwy. Ku. § tv kak©sthv o° metžlqeqì ‰rpag‡v ëEl”nhv Skam†ndrou ge©tonì ìIl©ou p»lin; Od. oÕtoi, p»non t¼n dein¼n –xhntlhk»tev. Ku. a«scr¼n str†teuma gì, o¯tinev miv c†rin gunaik¼v –xepleÅsatì –v ga±an Frugän. Od. qeoÓ t¼ prgmaá mhd”n ì a«tiä brotän. (Euripides, Cyclops 275–85)

cycl. I have a question: From where did you sail, strangers? Where are you from? What city raised you up? od. By race we are Ithacans. Returning from Ilium after having sacked the city, we were blown off course by sea winds and have come to your land, Cyclops. cycl. Are you those who pursued the foul woman Helen to the the city of Ilium, neighbouring the Scamander, after she had been carried off? od. Yes we are and we endured terrible suffering. cycl. A disgraceful expedition! To sail to the land of the Phrygians for the sake of one woman! od. It was god’s doing; do not blame any man.

Odysseus’ self-presentation to the Cyclops is a close reworking of the corresponding passage in Odyssey 9: ¡me±v toi Tro©hqen ˆpoplagcq”ntev ìAcaioª panto©ois ì ˆn”moisin Ëp•r m”ga la±tma qal†sshv, 28

The force of papa± may be almost ‘That’s amazing!’, with however heavy a dose of irony we wish to assume. On these verses see also Griffith 2002: 207 n. 39.

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We are Achaeans coming from Troy who have been knocked off course by battling winds as we sailed over the vast sea. We were heading for home, but have come on a different route and another journey. This no doubt was how Zeus willed it to be. We are proud to be from the army of Agamemnon son of Atreus, whose fame is highest under heaven; so great was the city he sacked and many the soldiers he killed.

The Cyclops’ incongruous knowledge29 of Helen and the Trojan War does not merely, as the commentators rightly note, humorously echo a familiar motif of Euripidean tragedy itself (was the Trojan War actually worth it?), but it resonates against the Homeric Odysseus’ declaration of Agamemnon’s ‘unsurpassed kleos beneath heaven’; it is clear from the scholia that later readers were puzzled as to why Odysseus said this to a monster who will hardly have been impressed (and is most unlikely to have heard of either Agamemnon or his father Atreus), and it may be that behind Euripides’ text lies (once again) the early forerunners of such z¯et¯emata,30 but what is clear is that Odysseus’ rhetoric in this passage is fashioned so as to suggest that he has learned about his adversary not just from Silenos, but from the Odyssey itself. The specificity of ‘we are Ithacans’, rather than the Homeric ‘Achaeans’, may be designed to appeal to a Sicilian who might be thought to have heard of the western Greek island, although it was of course the Odyssey itself which had made Ithaca famous. Clearly, however, the omission of the boast about Agamemnon’s kleos and the downsizing of the ‘very great city’ he sacked and the ‘multitudes of men he killed’ to merely ‘we sacked Troy’ shows that Odysseus is now trying to adapt to the situation which confronts him. Most striking of all is the absence of Zeus from Odysseus’ rhetoric. Whereas in Homer it is Zeus who is behind the winds which cause the Greek loss of direction on the homeward voyage (v. 262), in Euripides no divine force is placed behind the completely natural phenomenon of adverse weather conditions (vv. 278–9). When the Euripidean Odysseus explains the Trojan expedition as ‘a work of god’ (v. 285), the vague generality is evasive, but the audience will naturally think 29 30

Anachronism was to remain a feature of the scholarly concern with the Homeric Cyclops episode, see the scholia on Odyssey 3.71, Meijering 1987: 65. For this tradition see above pp. 21–4.

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of the famous story of the aetiology of the war in the Cypria, namely Zeus’s plan to relieve the world of overpopulation; Zeus himself, however, is never mentioned. Moreover, when in this passage Odysseus makes his plea to the Cyclops for hospitality and protection, this is couched completely in terms of the Cyclops’ father, Poseidon, and Zeus remains a remarkable absentee, nowhere more remarkable of course than in Odysseus’ appeal to the nomos governing suppliants (vv. 299–303; contrast Odyssey 9.269–71). That the Cyclops, however, understands Odysseus’ silences is strongly suggested by the fact that he throws back in Odysseus’ face the name of the god whom Odysseus very deliberately suppressed (vv. 320–1);31 the Cyclops too has read the Homeric script. The world has thus moved on from the time of the Odyssey, geographically, culturally and intellectually and, as Euripides will make us see, it is in part the Odyssey itself which is responsible for that progress. Perhaps no verse is as startling in this context as the Cyclops’ opening question to Odysseus, ‘What polis raised you up ?’ (–xepa©deusen, v. 276), but an Athenian audience, being used perhaps to being told that their city was ‘an education (pa©deusiv) to Greece’ (Thucydides 2.41.1), may have been less surprised. Democracy too has been invented (v. 119).32 The Cyclopes now inhabit a specified location in Sicily, a fact which does not seem to surprise the Euripidean Odysseus. When Silenos tells him that he has reached ‘the Aitnaian rise, the highest point of Sicily’ (v. 114), Odysseus asks in surprise, ‘But where are the walls and the towers of a/the city?’ The question would certainly have surprised us coming from the Homeric hero. The Euripidean Odysseus apparently knows that Sicily is an inhabited (and indeed fortified) island, but perhaps too he knows of, and thus expects to see, the city of Aitna, founded by Hieron I and celebrated on more than one occasion by Pindar. The Sicilian location also helps to explain the apparent elimination of the famous ‘goat island’ (Odyssey 9.116–51) from which the Homeric Odysseus launches his raid on the Cyclopes: once we have a specific Sicilian location, then ‘goat island’ too should be identifiable; later Homeric scholars might well have explained that this is one of those 31

32

See Seaford ad loc., noting that some have even seen these verses as evidence for a lacuna in Odysseus’ speech in which Zeus was mentioned. Most commentators see these verses in the Cyclops’ reply as picking up vv. 299–301, and this would of course fit with their Homeric model; nevertheless, the Cyclops’ dismissal of ‘Zeus’s thunderbolt’ would also be a very suitable retort to the vague threat with which Odysseus had ended (‘many have reaped punishment for wicked gains’, vv. 311–12). Paganelli 1979: 31 thinks of legendary qeom†coi such as Typhoeus and Capaneus, and this seems to me along the right lines. Seaford observes that Odysseus’ question is a ‘natural’ one, and it is easy enough to find parallel phenomena in tragedy (cf. Easterling 1985: 2–3, 9–10), but the context and identity of the speaker gives this instance particular effect.

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instances where Homer blended a real and a plasmatic geography,33 but it is unlikely that this was a motive for Euripides’ silence. ‘Goat island’ simply does not exist for the purposes of the satyr play.34 So too, the sacred geography of Greece with which Odysseus seeks to impress the Cyclops at verses 290–6 is clearly a post-Homeric geography, just as the rhetoric of Greek monuments rescued from eastern savagery belongs to the world after the Persian Wars. The place in the drama of Dionysus, almost entirely a non-Homeric figure,35 and Bromios, who of course never appears in early epic, is itself a marker of change. In ‘updating’ its model, the Cyclops represents a kind of criticism, and indeed a kind of dramatic performance, which seeks the concerns of the present in the literary texture of the past. One not really paradoxical result of this familiarity, or what we may perhaps call ‘pre-scriptedness’, is that the Cyclops has a distinctly improvisatory feel, not unlike (in some ways) modern pantomime or even Plautus;36 as characters and audience both know ‘the script’, they can concentrate on how it is actually going to work out and enjoy the old favourites when they come along. The teleological control which Odysseus imposes upon his narrative in Homer has becomes a series of scenes ‘made up as they go along’. Some ‘jokes’ are unavoidable: the oÔtiv business has to be there, but not a lot need be made of it (vv. 549, 672–3). If we ask ‘Why don’t the Greeks and the satyrs just run away?’, the answer will be ‘Because there would not be a play . . .’, and there has to be a ‘trapped in the cave’ scene.37 It is tempting to wonder whether earlier ‘dramatic improvisations’ of Homer were like this: many critics have thought that satyr play preserves more of the spirit of early drama than does the tragedy of the late fifth century. civilised pleasures One of the most discussed differences between the Homeric and the Euripidean narrative is that, in the drama, wine is completely unknown to the 33

34 35 36 37

The most notable discussion is Strabo 1.2. As far as I am aware, ancient scholarship did not offer a location for ‘Goat Island’, though that of course has not stopped some moderns; it is to be noted that Eustathius seems to stress that the island was a plasma of the poet (Hom. 1619.5–6). Rosen 2007: 143 sees the changed motive for the Greek arrival as one instance of how Euripides ‘glosses over much of the moral ambiguity in the Homeric version’. I have considered, but rejected, the possibility that this is to be connected to the Dionysiac nature of goats, see above p. 58. See below p. 66. The scene of plotting at vv. 441–78 has a distinctly Plautine feel (note the metaphor of ˆrcit”ktosin at 477, where see also Seaford’s note). Zwierlein 1967: 453–4 suggests that the apparent revelation at the end that the cave has a second entrance (v. 707) shows that the whole action was ‘blosse Farce’.

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Cyclopes (vv. 123–4). This obviously intensifies the radical separation of the satyrs from their god,38 but it is also the case, as Luigi Enrico Rossi stressed,39 that the complete absence of wine also means the absence of a knowledge of how to use wine, that is of how to behave in a civilised and socialised manner, which in the Cyclops is equated to the world and the imaginaire of the e´lite Attic symposium of the late fifth century. The theme is of course already prominent in Homer, and Euripides has here anticipated many modern studies of the cultural concerns of the Odyssey. In Homer, Polyphemus’ uncivilised appetites, most strikingly marked not just by his eating of human flesh but by his willingness to drink unmixed a wine so strong that it should have been mixed with twenty measures of water (Odyssey 9.209), are set against, as is the behaviour of the suitors, the pleasures of the well-ordered feast, celebrated by Odysseus in the famous ‘golden verses’ which stand at the head of Book 9 (9.1–11); the Phaeacians, naturally enough, drink their wine properly diluted (9.9–10). The Euripidean Polyphemus’ ‘k¯omos mancato’, as Rossi put it, which dramatises a failure of socialisation and cuts Polyphemus off from his brothers, may perhaps in this context be seen as the counterpart of the Homeric bož, the call to one’s neighbours for help and protection, by which Polyphemus summons the other Cyclopes after his blinding (9.399–412); these social practices should dramatise and reinforce communal cohesion, but (unsurprisingly) in the society of the Cyclopes such mechanisms do not work. The complete absence of wine from the world of the Cyclopes is also fundamental to the Euripidean fashioning of the Homeric episode as a story about the introduction of Dionysus’ rites to a land which did not know them before. Modern students of the play will, of course, first think of Euripides’ own Bacchae (see further below) and of Aeschylus’ Lykourgeia, which certainly influenced and is imitated in the Bacchae. We should, however, also remember Attic myths of the introduction and proper use of wine (i.e. the manners of the symposium). Best known perhaps is the story of Ikarios, father of Erigone, who was killed by the peasants with whom he shared the wine given to him by the god, because they thought he was poisoning them; the story cannot certainly be traced before Eratosthenes’ third-century poem, but there is no good reason to doubt that he had earlier Attic sources.40 Philochorus (c. 340–260 bc), the great chronicler of Athenian legend and history, recorded that the Athenian king 38 39 40

See Kassel 1955: 283; Olson 1988. See Rossi 1971; further discussion in, e.g., Hamilton 1979, Napolitano 2000. See Rosokoki 1995: 21–5.

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Amphictyon learned from Dionysus the art of mixing wine, established altars to ‘Dionysus the Erect’ (because the invention of diluted wine finally allowed men to stand up straight!) and the Nymphs (as the goddesses of water), and instituted sympotic practice in Athens (FGrHist 328 F5).41 The Bacchae and the Cyclops are both similar stories of the introduction of the god’s rites,42 and in his satyr play Euripides has brought out how such a pattern lies waiting already in Homer. This reading in some ways compensates the patron god of drama for what looks at first like the snub he receives in the Homeric poems, from which he is all but completely absent;43 he was not in fact absent – one merely had to know where to look. The following passages of the two plays point the analogy sharply: m†kar Âstiv eÉi†zei botrÅwn j©laisi phga±v –pª kämon –kpetasqeªv j©lon Šndrì Ëpagkal©zwn, –pª demn©oiv te + xanq¼n + clidanv ›cwn —ta©rav mur»cristov lipar¼n b»strucon, aÉdi d”á QÅran t©v o­xei moi; (Euripides, Cyclops 495–502)

Blessed is the man who shouts the holy cry, spurred on to the k¯omos by the sweet juices of the grape; he rests upon a friend, and on her bed a lovely hetaira awaits her myrrh-besprinkled lover. ‘Who will open the door for me?’ is his shout. å m†kar, Âstiv eÉda©mwn telet‡v qeän e«dÜv biot‡n ‰gisteÅei kaª qiaseÅetai yuc‡n –n Àressi bakceÅwn ¾s©oiv kaqarmo±sin, t† te matr¼v meg†lav Àrgia Kub”lav qemiteÅwn ˆn‡ qÅrson te tin†sswn kissäi te stejanwqeªv Di»nuson qerapeÅei.

(Euripides, Bacchae 72–82)

Blessed is the man who is happy in his knowledge of the gods’ rites and keeps his life holy and gives his soul to the thiasos, as he performs Bacchic rites on the 41 42 43

See further Hunter 1983: 184–5. See Seaford 1981: 272–4; for more on the parallelism of the two plays see Hunter 2006a: 75–6. The few relevant passages are gathered and discussed by Privitera 1970; see also Davies 2000, Tsagalis 2008: 1–29.

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mountains in pure acts of cleansing; as he carries out the sacred rites of the great mother Kybele and shakes the thyrsos he serves Dionysus, his head crowned with ivy.

The plays foreground different ‘rites’ of the god, but we must not seek to draw too sharp a distinction between the ‘maenadic’ and cultic rites of the Bacchae and the sympotic practice of the Cyclops; it is well understood that one of the questions which the tragedy explores is indeed the relation between the ecstatic rites on the mountain and the cultured pleasures of the symposium.44 The juxtaposition of Silenos and his ‘children’ to ‘polite’ sympotic practice, a juxtaposition of course very common in Attic vase painting, raises very similar issues in a different mode. This may be no more than saying that both plays explore the nature of the Dionysiac, but they do so in illuminatingly complementary ways. Alongside this ‘Dionysiac reading’ of Odyssey 9, sits another which has also been much discussed in various terms.45 At verses 310–12 Odysseus appeals to Polyphemus to abandon his outrageous appetite and to choose ‘respect for the gods’ over impiety: p†rev t¼ m†rgon sv gn†qou, t¼ dì eÉseb•v tv dussebe©av ˆnqeloÓá pollo±si g‡r k”rdh ponhr‡ zhm©an  me©yato. (Euripides, Cyclops 310–12)

Give up your gluttony and choose the path of piety rather than impiety! Base profits have been the undoing of many.

We are here at a ‘moment in history’: the ‘savage’ (cf. v. 289) is to renounce his way of life and become ‘civilised’. Odysseus appeals to Polyphemus through human nomos, only to find that the Cyclops, like the newly educated Pheidippides in Aristophanes’ Clouds, knows all the arguments against nomos (338–40); far from being a ‘savage’, he has in fact passed beyond the constraints of ‘civilisation’, and Cyclops society may thus be thought of as both pre- and post- the rule of n»mov. In this reading of Odyssey 9, self-willed hedonism and the indulgence of power, governed only by the appetites of the thumos, are set against respect for nomoi, justice and the gods and a recognition of the need for men to live together in socialised groups. Although the Cyclops’ witty speech of self-presentation 44

45

I should perhaps add that I see no grounds in the text to take Polyphemus’ (culinarily sophisticated) anthropophagy as a ‘satyric’ version of a Dionysiac Ýmojag©a, which might have been another way in which the wild and the sympotic rites were brought together. See, e.g., Paganelli 1979; Seaford 1988: 51–7; Mastromarco 1998; 30–1; Hunter 2004b: 244–5; P. O’Sullivan 2005, all citing further bibliography.

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at verses 315–46 has often been thought to exploit sophistic arguments, Patrick O’Sullivan, in particular, has stressed that Polyphemus’ devotion to bodily pleasure, blasphemy and the rejection of law and convention associate him much more closely with popular notions and stage dramatisations of tyranny than with ideas that can plausibly be associated with ‘the sophists’.46 What is clear, however, is the ‘modern’ flavour of the arguments of this surprisingly articulate monster; as is well known, the strongest parallels are with the figure of Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias, who argues that the strong should, indeed have a natural duty to, indulge their natures by ruling over the weak (e.g. Gorgias 483d) and who appeals to a ‘justice’ rooted in nature, not in convention (e.g. 484a, 488b, 491e). Callicles’ hedonism is a fairly straightforward one: Natural decency and justice (t¼ kat‡ jÅsin kal¼n kaª d©kaion) . . . demands that the person who would live properly (½rqäv) should allow his appetites to grow as powerful as possible and should not check them, should serve them when they are at their height through manliness and intelligence, and should satisfy his appetites as they arise. (Plato, Gorgias 491e6–492a2)

The Euripidean Cyclops has a similarly straightforward approach to pleasure: ¡ g dì ˆn†gkhi, k‹n q”lhi k‹n mŸ q”lhi, t©ktousa po©an tˆm‡ pia©nei bot†. ‰gÜ oÎtini qÅw plŸn –mo©, qeo±si dì oÎ, kaª ti meg©sthi, gastrª tide, daim»nwn. Þv toÉmpie±n ge kaª jage±n toÉjì ¡m”ran, ZeÆv oÕtov ˆnqrÛpoisi to±si sÛjrosin, lupe±n d• mhd•n aËt»n. o° d• toÆv n»mouv ›qento poik©llontev ˆnqrÛpwn b©on, kla©ein Šnwga. tŸn dì –mŸn yucŸn –gÜ oÉ paÅsomai drän eÔ, katesq©wn ge s”. (Euripides, Cyclops 332–41)

The earth is forced, whether it likes it or not, to give birth to the grass which fattens my flocks. I sacrifice them to no one except myself, not to the gods, and to the greatest of higher beings, this belly of mine. Having enough to drink and eat each day, this for wise men is what is Zeus, and causing oneself no pain. As for those who have made men’s lives complicated by instituting laws, they can go hang! I shall not cease from benefactions to my own spirit, by eating you!

We may see here two complementary forms of gloss: on the one hand, a bringing-out of the implications of the fact that the Homeric Cyclops 46

P. O’Sullivan 2005.

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is guided only by his thumos (Odyssey 9.278), that is, a translation of this attitude into modern terms, and, on the other, a translation of modern ideas, such as those represented by the Platonic Callicles, into the remote ‘mythical’ world of the cannibal Cyclops. When the Cyclops notes that what matters to the wise is wealth and that everything else (i.e. justice and piety) is ‘empty nonsense and pretty words’ (k»mpoi kaª l»gwn eÉmorj©a, v. 317) and that nomoi are an unnecessary complication (poik©llontev) of the business of life, at the heart of which is the simple daily pursuit of food and drink, and brusquely dismisses those responsible for this situation (kla©ein Šnwga), we seem very close to Callicles’ dismissal of conventional morality:47 Expensive pleasures and unrestrained behaviour and freedom, this is virtue and happiness, if they have support.48 All of these embellishments [kallwp©smata, i.e. ideas such as justice and s¯ophrosyn¯e], namely the agreements which men make contrary to nature, are worthless nonsense (jluar©a kaª oÉden¼v Šxia). (Plato, Gorgias 492c4–7)

In the terms of Plato’s Republic we would say that Polyphemus is completely under the control of the –piqumhtik»n part of the soul, which is ‘responsible for sexual desire and hunger and thirst and is roused by the other desires; it is irrational and appetitive, the companion of satisfactions and pleasures’ (Rep. 4.439d6–8), When ‘Heraclitus’ and other later interpreters read the clash of Odysseus and the Cyclops as a Platonic struggle between reason and appetite, they were again following Euripides’ lead.49 The ‘state of nature’ to which the Cyclops appeals is, as we have noted, both pre-nomos, as was (basically) the world of the Homeric Cyclops, and post-nomos, as was some of the radical speculation which was in the air when Euripides wrote and which presumably lies behind some of the arguments of the Platonic Callicles. Euripides has thus drawn out the apparent analogies between Homer’s description of Cyclops society, contemporary speculation about the life of early men, and ‘intellectualist’ claims for the rights of nature and the strong. The force of this anthropology is clearly seen, for example, in the famous verses of Sisyphus in a play of Critias, probably not far removed in time from the Cyclops:50 §n cr»nov Âtì §n Štaktov ˆnqrÛpwn b©ov kaª qhriÛdhv «scÅov qì Ëphr”thv, Âtì oÉd•n qlon oÎte to±v –sqlo±sin §n oÎtì aÔ k»lasma to±v kako±v –g©gneto. 47 49

48 The meaning is (deliberately?) vague. Dodds ad loc. compares Cyclops 316–17. 50 See also Sextus Empiricus, Against the Physicists 1.14–17. See above p. 53.

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(Critias fr. 19.1–8 K-S)

There was a time when mens’ lives were disordered and beastlike and enslaved to force. There was no prize for the good nor punishment for the wicked. I think that men then established laws as punishers, so that justice might rule . . . and have hybris as her slave; if someone did wrong, he was punished.

In this passage Sisyphus proceeds to explain how fear of gods was then invented by ‘some clever man of wise intellect’ to prevent secret wrongdoing. Euripides’ Cyclops is not an atheist in the strict sense, but he too certainly does not allow that the gods have any place in his life (see further below). The Homeric Cyclops is notoriously a loner, living apart from his fellow Cyclopes, and, by some ancient accounts at least,51 quite different from them; his attempt at mobilising communal self-help networks through the bož is, as we have seen, a complete failure. In the fifth century the tyrant too was typically conceived as unable to have ‘friends’,52 in part because he must always be suspicious of everyone. So too, for the Socrates of the Gorgias, the life of unrestrained indulgence which Callicles champions is not just ‘the life of a brigand’ (507e2), but it is a life which denies all ‘fellowship’ (koinwn©a) and ‘friendship’ (jil©a, 507e5). In Euripides this aspect of the Cyclops is paradoxically dramatised as, against his initial sociable inclination, he is persuaded to overturn the whole notion of the rites of the socialised god, and of the very word sump»sion (cf. v. 540), by drinking alone, a practice which – as in the Athenian Choes ritual – is often marked as transgressive of ordinary human culture, the prerogative rather of gods (including of course Dionysus himself ) and heroes.53 Polyphemus’ delusions of grandeur and his complete confidence in his own self-sufficiency are such, of course, that he takes little persuasion to adopt such a godlike pose. We may perhaps compare (and contrast) Bdelycleon’s persuasion of his old father in Aristophanes’ Wasps to perform another quintessentially communal act, jury service, alone and at home, a rˆole which also suits the old man’s delusions that, like the Euripidean Cyclops, his absolute power (vv. 548–9) is no less than that of Zeus (vv. 619–30, cf. Cyclops 320–1); both Philocleon and the Cyclops indeed compare their respective ‘thundering’ to that of 51 53

See below p. 75 on Antisthenes. See, e.g., Steinhart and Slater 1997.

52

See P. O’Sullivan 2005: 142–5.

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Zeus (Wasps 621–5, Cyclops 327–8), and for both this godlike position is in part manifested by blissful imperviousness to Zeus’s weather (Wasps 771–5, Cyclops 323–31). It is curious, if no more, that the Wasps too has a scene derived from the Cyclops adventure of Odyssey 9,54 and also a scene of the sympotic instruction of a skai»v (vv. 1122–1264).55 Like the Euripidean Cyclops, if not quite so radically, Philocleon is also unused to wine (see Wasps 1252–5) and it has a startling effect on him; the closing scenes of the Wasps may in fact be viewed as another version of the ‘introduction of wine’ narrative. The various aspects of Euripides’ translation of Odyssey 9 into a modern idiom could be exemplified at length from Polyphemus’ speech at Cyclops 316–46, but one further complex instance may suffice here. One of the famous problems of Odyssey 9, and one which concerned ancient readers as well (see further below), was how the Cyclops’ primitive savagery appeared to be combined with ‘Golden Age elements’, most notably the richness of the land: KuklÛpwn dì –v ga±an Ëperji†lwn ˆqem©stwn ¬k»meqì, o¯ ça qeo±si pepoiq»tev ˆqan†toisin oÎte juteÅousin cersªn jut¼n oÎtì ˆr»wsin, ˆll‡ t† gì Šsparta kaª ˆnžrota p†nta jÅontai, puroª kaª kriqaª  dì Šmpeloi, a¯ te j”rousin o²non –rist†julon, ka© sjin Di¼v Àmbrov ˆ”xei. (Homer, Odyssey 9.106–11)

We came to the land of the brutal, lawless Cyclopes, who, trusting in the immortal gods, neither plant with their hands nor plough; everything grows unsown and unploughed – wheat and barley and vines which produce a lovely wine, nurtured by Zeus’s rain.

In the bounty of the land we recognise a familiar element of ‘Golden Age’ discourse, and the Cyclopes (or some of their characteristics) have indeed often been read, both in antiquity and modern times, as illustrative of the life of early man, golden or otherwise. Thucydides’ account of Greek prehistory – no walled settlements (cf. Cyclops 115) and no trade or agriculture, just the pursuit of ‘enough for survival’ (1.2.1–2) – seems clearly indebted to it,56 and in the Laws Plato’s description of the pastoral life of the survivors of the great flood evokes the Cyclopes more than once, though it also differs notably from Cyclopean society in important respects; 54 55 56

See Napolitano 2005: 45–7. See Seaford on Cyclops 521. For the lack of culture see Cyclops 490, Wasps 1320–1. See Nicolai 2005. Plato, Protagoras 322a seems to draw elements from the Homeric picture, without actually echoing it closely.

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verses 112–15 of Odyssey 9 are explicitly quoted to illustrate the governance of these primitive men (Laws 3.680c–d).57 We recognise here also the discourse of colonialism, which has, at least with respect to cannibalism, recently been brought to bear upon Odyssey 9 to excellent effect;58 just as faraway people are often reported to have one eye (cf. Herodotus 3.116, 4.27 on the Arimaspians),59 so they often enjoy human flesh, or indeed the two characteristics may coexist.60 For the bounty of the land of the Cyclopes we may compare a much-quoted description by James Cook of the aboriginal inhabitants of what is now Australia, whom he encountered in the second half of the eighteenth century: From what I have said of the Natives of New Holland, they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon Earth, but in reality they are far happier than we Europeans; being wholy unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary Conveniences so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in a Tranquility which is not disturb’d by the Inequality of Condition; the Earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life.61

The Euripidean Cyclops, however, has no time for the ‘romanticism’ of Homer’s Odyssey or of a James Cook; for him this is all a matter of the fixed rules (ˆn†gkh) of natural processes: ¡ g dì ˆn†gkhi, k‹n q”lhi k‹n mŸ q”lhi, t©ktousa po©an tˆm‡ pia©nei bot†. (Euripides, Cyclops 332–3)

The earth is forced, whether it likes it or not, to give birth to the grass which fattens my flocks.

Commentators rightly compare how Socrates describes the ‘compulsory natural phenomenon’ of thunder in Aristophanes’ Clouds (vv. 376–80), and the ‘necessity’ of nature was indeed an important idea in the world-view of more than one contemporary theorist;62 the Cyclops’ point, however, is not that nature has simply to give him what he needs, but that nature is compelled to serve him by producing the food for his animals: there is a food chain, at the top of which sits the Cyclops. What this involves, for both 57 58 60

61

See also Aristotle, Politics 1.1252b22–4. In other accounts, both serious and comic, cannibalism was also a mark of early man, see, e.g., Athenion fr. 1 K-A. 59 See also Strabo 2.1.9. See Dougherty 2001: 122–40. Christopher Columbus reported approaching a land, in what is now the Caribbean, where ‘there were people who had one eye in the forehead, and others whom they called “canibals” . . .’, see Hulme 1986: 16–17, 27; Hall 1989: 49–50. 62 See, e.g., Paganelli 1979: 36. I take the quotation from Macintyre 2004: 28.

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the Cyclops and the comic Socrates, is eliminating the gods from a rˆole in ‘natural phenomena’. Thus, although Zeus is still apparently acknowledged (though sarcastically) by the Cyclops as responsible for the weather (Cyclops 320–31), there is a sense already in these verses that Zeus is just a name, and in verse 337 the Cyclops makes explicit that for him (and for anyone of sense) ‘Zeus’ is the satisfaction of daily wants and the avoidance of distress; the implication is that ‘Zeus’ is just a name which anyone will give to what is for them the highest good. Here too, we seem to have a combination of contemporary theorising and Homeric interpretation. At Odyssey 9.358 Odysseus puts into the mouth of the Cyclops the same description of the wine which grows in his land as Odysseus himself had used in the introduction to the episode: o²non –rist†julon, ka© sjin Di¼v Àmbrov ˆ”xei (Odyssey 9.358 = 111)

a lovely wine, nurtured by the rain of Zeus

It may seem surprising that the Cyclops, of all monsters, should acknowledge Zeus’s beneficence, and there must thus have been a strong temptation for later readers of Homer to give ‘of Zeus’ in this verse the weakest possible reading, that is, to take away divine responsibility for the rain, perhaps by understanding the Homeric phrase to mean merely ‘rain from the sky’; Euripides may well have seen this possibility, which in fact foreshadows what was later to become a standard way of dealing with apparently problematic divine names in poetry by appealing to ‘metonymy’.63 It is at least intriguing that, in his note on Odyssey 9.111, Eustathius (Hom. 1618.58) observes: Àmbrov d• Di¼v, tout”stin ˆ”rov, dhlo± mŸ aÉcmhr‡n tŸn tän KuklÛpwn e²nai, ‘the rain of Zeus, that is from the air, making clear that the land of the Cyclopes is not without water’. What Hellenistic scholarship lies behind this note, and how far back it goes, we cannot say, but (once again) we may at least wonder whether the Euripidean Cyclops reflects contemporary discussion of Homer. The representation of the Cyclopes as in some respects representatives of ‘early man’ also sheds light upon the Euripidean Cyclops’ insistence upon the value of wealth and possessions (see esp. vv. 316–17). This is usually (and rightly) seen in the context of how one element in the composite make-up of this character is that of the well-to-do young member of the contemporary

63

See, e.g., Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 23c–24c.

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e´lite, a man who can spend his time hunting with dogs, while his slaves do the work; O’Sullivan, however, has associated this with the ‘tyrannical’ aspects of the Cyclops, and the acquisitiveness of tyrants needs indeed no illustration.64 The growth of private property is also an important element in most accounts of the development of society, and we may see here another motif which looks in more than one direction. The account of early man by Aristotle’s pupil Dicaearchus, which is partly preserved for us by Varro and in Porphyry’s treatise On Abstinence (from Eating Meat), places the pastoral life (¾ nomadik¼v b©ov) as the second stage in human development after the ease and good health of the Golden Age.65 In this second stage, man began to take thought not just for ‘where the next meal is coming from’, but also from where the one after that and the one after that were likely to come; hence men collected fruits and herded animals. So too, Thucydides notes that, in the prehistoric condition, there was no ‘superfluity of goods’ (perious©a crhm†twn, 1.2.2). There is, of course, a very fine line between such sensible forward planning and the acquisition of excessive property or, as Porphyry puts it in his report of Dicaearchus, perittot”ra ktsiv ‘possessions beyond what was strictly necessary’, so it is no wonder that this acquisitive period also saw the coming of war (Dicaearchus fr. 56a.7–8 Mirhardy). The Homeric Cyclops, who is, even in Odysseus’ account, a careful and provident pastoralist, is certainly at the stage of forethought and planning; what Euripides appears to have done is to push this description a little further so that it begins to slide into acquisitiveness for the sake of acquisitiveness, wealth for wealth’s sake. When the Theocritean Cyclops tells Galateia (rather optimistically?) that he has ‘one thousand animals’ (11.34) we may perhaps see a further extension of this same discourse. Be that as it may, the Euripidean character is a compound of many elements, and here we can perhaps discern a strand of contemporary thought which might have attracted Euripides’ attention as he translated the Homeric monster into a new idiom; that such anthropology was at least in the air in the late fifth century is something that we have good reason not to doubt. It is of course tempting to hope that we may be able to go further in identifying the critics who may have influenced Euripides in this reading of Odyssey 9, but unfortunately the evidence simply does not exist; Dicaearchus ascribes his model of early pastoralism merely to ‘those who 64 65

P. O’Sullivan 2005: 135–7. See Dicaearchus frr. 54, 56A Mirhardy (in Fortenbaugh and Sch¨utrumpf 2001).

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have thoroughly researched ancient matters’ (fr. 56a.7 Mirhardy). To what extent these aspects of Cyclops society had already been brought out on the Attic stage, for example in Cratinus’ comic ìOdussv, again we cannot say.66 We know that, probably after the production of Cyclops, Antisthenes discussed the Homeric Cyclops episode and, in particular, the apparent contradiction between Odysseus’ seemingly laudatory introduction to them in his narrative (vv. 105–11) and Polyphemus’ behaviour and claims about the Cyclopes’ attitude to the gods (vv. 273–8): according to Antisthenes (S Odyssey 9.106 = fr. 53 Decleva Caizzi), Polyphemus was in fact the only ‘bad’ Cyclops, and Antisthenes presumably argued that Polyphemus was lying in his claims about the Cyclopes as a group (cf. S Odyssey 9.275, 411; Eustathius, Hom. 1617.61–2).67 It is likely enough that the explanation of later interpreters that Ëperji†lwn ˆqem©stwn (v. 106) is not pejorative, but simply means that the Cyclopes were physically large and had no need of laws because each Cyclops governed his own family, also goes back, in some form, to Antisthenes. There does not seem to be any trace of this Antisthenean reading (or its putative forebears) in Euripides’ play, but the cupboard is perhaps not completely bare. Of particular interest is the fact that scholia (probably going back to Porphyry) on Odyssey 9.106 cite Hesiod, Works and Days 277–9 in support of the idea that cannibalism is a mark of t¼ qhriädev. These Hesiodic verses sound indeed very like Odysseus’ arguments to the Cyclops in Euripides’ play: å P”rsh, sÆ d• taÓta met‡ jresª b†lleo sisi ka© nu d©khv –p†koue, b©hv dì –pilžqeo p†mpan. t»nde g‡r ˆnqrÛpoisi n»mon di”taxe Kron©wn, «cqÅsi m•n kaª qhrsª kaª o«wno±v petehno±v ›sqein ˆllžlouv, –peª oÉ d©kh –stª metì aÉto±vá ˆnqrÛpoisi dì ›dwke d©khn, ¥ poll¼n ˆr©sth g©netaiá (Hesiod, Works and Days 274–80) Perses, take these things to your heart and listen to justice, utterly forsaking violence. The son of Kronos made this law for mortals – fish and beasts and flying birds may eat each other, since they do not have justice; but to men he gave justice, which is by far the best of things.

66 67

The one fragment of Aristias’ satyric Cyclops, which almost certainly pre-dated Euripides’, has Polyphemus rejecting ‘polite’ society, by wanting to drink his wine neat (TrGF 9 F4). See Buffi`ere 1956: 360–1; Richardson 1975: 78.

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So too, the words of Hesiod’s hawk on the freedom of the strong to act or not upon their appetites could easily have been spoken by the Homeric (cf. Odyssey 9.278) or Euripidean Cyclops: de±pnon dì, a­ kì –q”lw, poižsomai  • meqžsw. Šjrwn dì, Âv kì –q”lhi pr¼v kre©ssonav ˆntijer©zeiná (Hesiod, Works and Days 209–10)

If I want to, I will make you my dinner, or I will let you go. Only a fool wants to struggle against the stronger.

Like the Cyclops, the hawk’s only constraint is his own will. The appeal to ‘natural law’ and, in particular, to the behaviour of animals was a familiar one in the intellectual ferment of the late fifth to early fourth centuries, and it is one which Aristophanes exploits to humorous effect in Clouds (vv. 1427–31). It would be very surprising if these passages of Hesiod, which play a significant rˆole in later arguments about natural law, the eating of meat and so forth,68 had not been brought into the discussion at an early date, and we may well suspect that here, at least, Euripides had forerunners in this interpretation of the Homeric Cyclops. Whether the scholia again reflect the arguments of Antisthenes must remain an open question, but we may note – however unsurprising it is – that the doxographical tradition gives to Antisthenes’ pupil, Diogenes the Cynic, the view that there is nothing wrong in eating human flesh (Diog. Laert. 6.73). Contrary, however, to what is often claimed, it must be stressed that the little we know of Antisthenes’ discussion of the Cyclops episode suggests that he defended the actions of Odysseus and certainly did not represent Polyphemus as some kind of proto-Cynic hero; we would, of course, very much like to know what Antisthenes had to say of the other Cyclopes. Finally, these passages alert us to what may be seen as a prominent Hesiodic strain in the Euripidean Cyclops. It is Odysseus who carries the Hesiodic appeal to a particular morality, whereas the Cyclops (unsurprisingly) plays the rˆole of the ‘gift-devouring kings’; Hesiod links the practice of justice to the gift of Àlbov from Zeus (Works and Days 280–1), whereas the Cyclops makes a radical break between reward and social ethics. Through the Cyclops’ rhetoric Hesiod becomes, as indeed he was, 68

The relevant passages can be found through the apparatus of citations in West’s edition. For some discussion see Renehan 1981: 254–6. I have discussed the use of this section of Works and Days in developing Greek ideas of morality in Hunter 2008a.

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one of those busybodies who had hedged Greek life around with complicating and unnecessary nomoi. An even more central rˆole in the establishment of Greek convention had, of course, been played by Homer, perhaps the greatest of all nomothetai, and in dismissing such people (vv. 338–40) the Cyclops both dismisses his creator and ensures the creator’s revenge.

chapter 3

Comic moments

plutarch’s comparison of aristophanes and menander 1 Transmitted with the works of Plutarch is a fragmentary epitome of a ‘Comparison of Aristophanes and Menander’ (Moralia 853a–854d), which there is no good reason to doubt goes back to a lost work of Plutarch himself.2 What survives of the ‘Comparison’ is as remarkable for the virulence of its attack upon the great poet of Old Comedy as it is for its colourful imagery: Some playwrights compose for the multitude and the common people (pr¼v t¼n Àclon kaª t¼n dmon), and some for the few (to±v ½l©goiv). To find one whose manner suited both factions is difficult. Aristophanes satisfies neither the many (to±v pollo±v) nor the intelligent (to±v jron©moiv). His poetry is like a retired prostitute who pretends to be a married woman. Ordinary folk find its presumption (tŸn aÉq†deian) intolerable; those who pretend to taste (o¬ semno©) are disgusted by the licentiousness and malice (t¼ ˆk»laston kaª kak»hqev).3 But Menander, as well as having charm (c†ritev), never needs anything outside his own powers (aÉt†rkhv). In the theatre, the lecture room (diatriba©), the dinner party, his poetry provides reading, study, and entertainment for a wider public than that commanded by any other Greek masterpiece. He shows what the essence and nature of skill in the use of language (dexi»thv l»gou) really are, approaching every point with inescapable persuasiveness and having under control every resource of sound and meaning that Greek affords. What good reason has an educated man (Šndra pepaideum”non) for going to the theatre, except to see Menander? When else are theatres filled with men of learning (ˆndrän jilol»gwn), if a comic character takes the stage? To whom should the dinner table yield place and Dionysus give way more rightfully? And just as painters, when 1 2 3

An earlier version of the discussion which follows appeared as Hunter 2000 (here reused with permission of Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt). The now standard edition is by G. Lachenaud in vol. xii.1 of the Bud´e, Plutarque, Œuvres Morales (Paris, 1981) but see also Aristophanes T 68 K-A and Menander T103 K-A. There is considerable uncertainty about the text here, but the general sense seems clear, see Luppe 1973: 127–130.

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their eyes are tired, turn to the colours of grass and flowers, so Menander is a rest for philosophers and men devoted to study (jilos»joiv . . . kaª jilop»noiv) from their unrelieved and intense pursuits, inviting the mind, as it were, to a flowery and shady meadow, fanned by breezes . . . (Plutarch, Moralia 854a–c, trans. D. A. Russell (adapted))

Plutarch’ s apparent blindness to Aristophanes’ virtues is unusual in the ancient scholastic and critical tradition, which is otherwise full of praise for his skill and charis (‘wit’, ‘charm’), particularly in comparison with the allegedly cruder style of the other poets of Old Comedy.4 One aspect of the critical tradition concerning Old Comedy was in fact a set of ‘developmental narratives’ of a familiar kind;5 in a pattern which replicates Plutarch’s, but in a quite different way, Cratinus can instantiate ‘vulgar humour’ (t¼ jortik»n) and Aristophanes ‘wit’, c†riv (Ar. T 79 K-A), or Cratinus can mark a major step forward towards ‘formal drama’, but still be ˆrca±ov, whereas Aristophanes is ‘a more developed craftsman’ (tecnikÛterov) and foreshadows later developments (Prolegomena de comoedia V 15–27, XIb 60–6 Koster, cf. Ar. T 1 2–4 K-A). The gradual imposition of t”cnh upon disorder (ˆtax©a), and hence the contrast between them, has of course an Aristotelian flavour, though it might be thought characteristic of such developmental narratives in general; we might well be reminded, for example, of Protagoras’ account of the development of society in Plato’s dialogue named after him. Be that as it may, Aristophanes himself is a primary witness to, and source for, the developmental narrative of Old Comedy which Plutarch here turns against him. In the parabasis of Clouds the ‘skilled’ (soj»v) poet complains that he was let down when he believed the audience to be ‘clever’ (dexio©), but found himself defeated ‘by vulgar men’ (Épì ˆndrän jortikän) when the first edition of the play, to which Aristophanes had devoted ‘more effort than to any other’ (›rgon ple±ston), failed to win (Clouds 520–7).6 The Clouds, so it is claimed, is a sÛjrwn play which does not resort to vulgarity and stale jokes, and Aristophanes’ plays are always innovative, non-repetitive and ‘clever’; his rivals, on the other hand, both steal Aristophanes’ ideas and are endlessly repetitive: Âstiv oÔn toÅtoisi geli, to±v –mo±v mŸ cair”tw, ‘I don’t want someone who laughs at them to enjoy my plays’ (Clouds 560). This plea is offered under the sign of ‘freedom’ – the chorus speak –leuq”rwv, both ‘freely’ and ‘like free citizens’. Such comic rhetoric is, of course, not limited to Clouds or to the parabasis of the plays. The 4 6

5 See above pp. 44–5. See, e.g., Plebe 1952: 105; Quadlbauer 1960: 64–7. The combination of the claim to soj©a and a stress upon the labour involved in composition obviously looks forward in an interesting way to Hellenistic and Roman poetics and criticism.

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prologising slave of the Wasps (vv. 57–66) lists stale comic routines which are not to be part of the present performance and he promises a play, ‘not cleverer (dexiÛteron) than the audience, but more artistic/meaningful than vulgar comedy (kwmwid©av d• jortikv sojÛteron)’. At Lysistrata 1216–20 the Athenians feign unwillingness to go through with a vulgar (jortik»n) comic routine, but are prepared to do it, if the audience are keen. Most striking of all, perhaps, is Frogs 358, where the chorus forbid participation in their rites to ‘anyone who takes pleasure in clownish jokes (bwmol»coiv ›pesi) made at an inappropriate time (mŸ ìn kairäi)’; here Aristophanes himself seems to anticipate not just Aristotle’s stress upon measure in the judgement of paidi† (the bwmol»cov jests excessively, the Šgroikov too little),7 but also Plutarch’s condemnation of Aristophanes’ clownish puns which were made poll†kiv kaª oÉk eÉka©rwv kaª yucräv, ‘excessively, inappropriately and frigidly’ (853b). It is comedy itself which had constructed the basic distinction which Plutarch turns against one of its greatest practitioners. Illuminating for Plutarch’s self-positioning here is Aulus Gellius’ famous comparison of some passages from Menander’s Plokion with their adaptations by Caecilius (NA 2.23), a comparison which is perhaps a century or so later than Plutarch’s essay.8 Menander is (unsurprisingly) praised in very similar terms in both essays, and Caecilius, who Gellius makes clear stands in his essay for the whole of the palliata rather than being singled out for idiosyncratic failings, plays the same structural rˆole as Plutarch’s Aristophanes. Both are characterised by forms of vulgar, low humour (t¼ jortik¼n . . . kaª qumelik¼n kaª b†nauson 853b ∼ alia nescio quae mimica 2.23.12, pigra . . . et a rerum dignitate atque gratia uacua sunt 2.23.20), both produce inappropriate mixtures of stylistic level (t¼ tragik¼n t¼ kwmik»n, t¼ sobar¼n t¼ pez»n ktl. 853c ∼ uerba tragici tumoris 2.23.21), and both do not fit language to character (oÉd• t¼ pr”pon —k†stwi kaª o«ke±on ˆpod©dwsin 853d ∼ ridiculus magis quam personae isti quam tractabat aptus atque conueniens uideri maluit 853d). Of particular interest perhaps is the parallelism between Plutarch’s strictures (853b) on Aristophanes’ use of figures such as ‘antitheses and rhymes and puns’, which Aristophanes employs ‘excessively, inappropriately and frigidly’, and the effect of stupere atque frigere (2.23.7) which Caecilius’ mimica produce.9 The description 7 8

9

Nicomachean Ethics 4.1128a2–9; see further below pp. 101–2. For very different approaches to Gellius’ essay see Vogt-Spira 2000 and Holford-Strevens 2003: 198–201. Riedweg 1993 provides a useful discussion and bibliography of the fragments of Caecilius themselves. See also p. 91 below. Gellius observes that the horror of Caecilius’ style only strikes one when it is compared to the Menandrean original, quantum stupere atque frigere quantumque mutare a Menandro Caecilius uisus

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of Menander’s writing as praeclare et apposite et facete (2.23.11) looks almost like an inversion of the Plutarchan criticism of Aristophanes. What is at issue in both Plutarch’s view of Aristophanes and Gellius’ view of Caecilius is a kind of language (and a kind of humour) which refuses to be taken for granted, which demands equal billing with the characters and the plot, which is insistently self-conscious. In discussing the ‘stylization’ of Plautine language Kathleen McCarthy writes of ‘the consciousness of language as a separate system that is never exactly coextensive with its function as a means of communication’, 10 and it was precisely this to which the classicising Plutarch and Gellius object, though they would of course have articulated their objections in rather different terms. The Epitome singles out t¼ jortik¼n kaª qumelik¼n kaª b†nauson as the characteristics of Aristophanes’ verbal humour (853a). The first term is familiar as an accusation since the days of Old Comedy itself (see above); qumelik»v is a much rarer term, and has been doubted: Kronenberg proposed the much more obvious bwmol»con, which Aristotle, for example, pairs with jortik»v in his discussion of types of humour (Nicomachean Ethics 4.1128a4–5). Nevertheless, qumelik»n, ‘connected with the stage, theatrical’, not only suits both the similarity of Gellius’ account of Caecilius’ unnecessary mimica and the contrast with Menander’s poetry, which throughout the ancient critical tradition is praised as ‘realistic’, ‘true’ and ‘close to life’, but also conveys the appropriately ‘social’ resonance. In his Life of Sulla (36.1) Plutarch notes that in his later years the dictator spent his time with ‘mime actresses, harp players, and theatre types (qumeliko±v ˆnqrÛpoiv)’, and we should not assume that we hear there merely Roman prejudice. As the Latin scaenicus is similarly used (cf. Quintilian 10.7.21), so qumelik»n designates language and performance which is ‘stagey’, ‘over the top’, and calls attention to itself in an undignified way. Elsewhere, Plutarch uses qeatrik»n of a style which is inappropriately ‘showy’ for speechmaking (Mor. 7a) or of the more outlandish of poetic fantasies (Mor. 15f ), and qumelik»n conveys a very similar idea. In the background, the Platonic narrative of ‘theatrocracy’ still resonates.11 As for b†nauson, here too the social implications of stylistic criticism are very clear. Plato had contrasted true education with other pursuits which were b†nauson kaª ˆneleÅqeron (Laws 1.644a), and it is precisely paideia which Plutarch foregrounds in

10

est (2.23.7). It is tempting to see an echo of Virgil, Aeneid 2.274–5 (Aeneas’ dream of Hector), quantum mutatus ab illo | Hectore . . . ; the echo would mark the distance of Caecilius from Menander, as Virgil here marks his derivation and distance from the Iliad. Note that Gellius immediately afterwards uses a proverbial comparison from the Iliad. 11 See above pp. 14–17, below p. 89. McCarthy 2000: 8.

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rejecting Aristophanic humour (853b); so too, for Aristotle the b†nausoi make up a prominent element of the jortiko© in an audience, in contrast to the ‘free and educated’ (Politics 8.1341b15–18). It is very telling that, in discussing the appropriate entertainment at symposia, Plutarch notes that if philosophers become too technical at the table, the other guests ‘turn off’ and give themselves over to ‘songs and absurd tales and talk which is vulgar and low (dihgžmata jluarÛdh kaª l»gouv banaÅsouv kaª ˆgora©ouv)’ (Mor. 615a), thus destroying the ‘sympotic fellowship’ (sumpotikŸ koinwn©a); there is of course, on the other hand, no more appropriate sympotic entertainment for the self-conscious pepaideumenos than Menander himself (854b). What is at stake here for Plutarch is that the language of cleverness, wit, sophia, and s¯ophrosun¯e in which Aristophanes praises himself had become, by Plutarch’s day, an integral part of the self-constructed identity of the Greek e´lite, though the meanings of the terms had undergone, in some cases, radical change.12 The history of Attic comedy proved a particularly fruitful site for reflecting, and reflection upon, these developments and paradoxes. On the one hand, the categories of humour appropriate to the educated man were a major topic of Hellenistic ethical discussion, much of it taking its cue from Aristotle,13 and were a fundamental part of newly emerging ideas about the truly ‘free’ man (the –leuq”riov); we shall see how important such ideas were, for example, to Horace’s presentation of himself as a satirist. Plutarch himself returns to the subject on more than one occasion. The first discussion of the second book of the Sympotic Questions is devoted to the type of non-hurtful teasing appropriate to a symposium, for ‘no small part of social intercourse is knowledge and observance of good taste (t¼ –mmel”v) in asking questions and making jokes’ (629f ); much of this material will have come down to Plutarch from Hellenistic discussions. The symposium, a place where ‘like-minded’ men gather, has replaced the theatre as the proper arena for (appropriate) joking, and it was of course one where Menander was more than welcome (see, e.g., Mor. 673b). Even Aristophanes can offer an example of joking ‘without bitterness’ when he is making jokes against his own baldness (634d). Plutarch concludes the 12

13

A good example is dexi»thv which Aristophanes claims for himself, but which – partly under Aristotelian influence – had quite changed in resonance; it now carried moral implications, as well as those of wit, see ‘Comparison’ 854c ‘I do not know in what Aristophanes’ much vaunted dexi»thv is supposed to consist . . .’ For Plutarch, o¬ car©entev, ‘the witty/graceful’, are educated men of taste, like Plutarch himself. For a brief survey see Bremmer in Bremmer and Roodenburg 1997: 18–21, and see further below p. 102.

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discussion by appealing to the authority of Plato, who indeed is the father of this whole discourse: Those who know and observe the right moment (¾ kair»v) bear witness to Plato himself, that joking with good taste and wit (–mmeläv kaª kecarism”nwv) is a task for the man who has been properly (kaläv) educated. (Plutarch, Sympotic Questions 2.634f )

If, as seems very probable,14 Plutarch is here thinking of Laws 2.654b6–7 (the Athenian Stranger speaks), the man who is properly (kaläv) educated would then be able to sing and dance properly (kaläv),

then the change from ‘singing and dancing’ to ‘joking with good taste and wit’ says much about how ‘educated society’s’ sense of itself has evolved since the heyday of Athenian democracy. At the heart of Plutarch’s analysis of the faults of Aristophanes lies his sense of what constitutes ‘Greekness’ (see the repeated ‘Hellas’ of 854b) and paideia, ‘education’, not least his own (see 854b, cited above); it is the pepaideum”nov who will feel contempt for Aristophanes’ word-plays (853b). Galen, another intellectual with a strongly developed sense of his own social identity, wrote a work entitled ‘Whether Old Comedy is useful reading for the educated (o¬ pepaideum”noi)’,15 but he may well have reached a different conclusion from that which Plutarch elsewhere gave to this question: The comic poets gave much stern political advice to the theatre audience, but the elements of comedy and buffoonery (t¼ gelo±on kaª bwmol»con), like some rancid sauce, rendered their frank-speaking (parrhs©a) ineffective and valueless,16 with the result that they gained a reputation for malice (kakožqeia) and low clownishness (bdelur©a) and the audience gained nothing useful (cržsimon) from what was said. (Plutarch, ‘How to tell a friend from a flatterer’ 68b–c)

The distinction which Plutarch draws in the ‘Comparison’ (854a, cited above) between the many (hoi polloi) and the phronimoi, a word suggesting intelligence, education and moral rightness, plainly reveals how Attic literary history is being written to serve a very particular e´lite agenda, which equates the historically prior (and morally base) with the non-´elite and dangerous.17 Old Comedy, with its freedom from restraint, celebration of pleasure, and sharp political teeth, posed a particular problem for this 14 15 17

This is doubted by Teodorsson ad loc., but it is difficult to think of a better explanation. 16 For comic and satiric parrh¯esia see below pp. 104–5. On His Own Books 18 = XIX 48 K¨uhn. For the relationship between this and the theatrical history of Laws 3 see below p. 89.

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agenda; that Old Comedy, notably Aristophanes, appeared to claim e´lite virtues for itself made it a dangerous threat indeed. On the other hand, no theme is more prominent throughout ancient writing about Menander than his pre-eminence in the reflection of ethical character (t¼  qik»n), and as such he was always likely to appeal to Hellenistic and Roman e´lites, almost obsessively concerned with how they looked and how they really were inside. The image of the aged hetaira confirms that Plutarch’s literary concerns are in essence social and moral ones. It is tempting to think that he here figures Aristophanic poetry itself as a character from ‘low comedy’ (perhaps even from Aristophanes himself ) – the old hetaira who now gives herself graces (cf. perhaps Ar. Ploutos 959–1096); the representation of types of (both dramatic and non-dramatic) poetry as female figures is familiar in Old Comedy itself (Cratinus’ Pytin¯e, Mousik¯e in Pherecrates’ Cheiron, etc.) and in Greek and Roman literature more generally.18 Be that as it may, whereas ‘the many’ are said to reject a poet who claims to be above them (after all, ‘promiscuous’ humour, not the pretence of respectability, is just what they want), the educated know what really lies behind the fac¸ade: something morally corrupt which tries to claim the privileges of the socially respectable (‘a married woman’). For Plutarch, both literature and society function through the maintenance of hierarchies, and it is here that the Aristophanic threat is most acute. In discussing elsewhere the type of entertainment suitable for symposia, Plutarch juxtaposes the ‘low buffoonery’ (bwmoloc©a) of Old Comedy and contemporary mime or farce so as to make clear that there is in fact no moral or ethical difference between Aristophanes and such uneducated performances (Mor. 712a, 712e);19 the hallmarks of both ‘genres’ are unevenness (ˆnwmal©a), inappropriateness (an absence of t¼ pr”pon) and lack of moderation in word and deed (t¼ ˆk»laston), and the danger lies not merely in the distaste with which an educated man views such ‘faults’ but in their effect upon the characters (t‡ ¢qh) of the audience of drinkers. Needless to say, Menander is praised for precisely the opposite style and the ethically beneficial power of his poetry (712b–c). The interplay of ‘literary’ and ‘social’ criticism is nowhere seen as clearly as in Plutarch’s famous remarks about comic vocabulary: Aristophanes’ vocabulary, then, shows many contradictions and inequalities (diajor‡v . . . kaª ˆnomoi»thtav): a tragic element and a comic; the pretentious and 18 19

See Hall 2000; Ovid, Amores 3.1 is perhaps the best-known Roman example. On e´lite attitudes to ‘mime’ and similar performances see Hunter 2002.

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the prosaic; the obscure and the commonplace: grandeur and elevation; vulgar garrulity (spermolog©a) and nauseating nonsense. Despite this, his style fails even to assign appropriate and suitable language (t¼ pr”pon kaª o«ke±on) to individual characters – grandeur to a king, cleverness to an orator, simplicity to a woman, prosaic words to an ordinary man, vulgarity to a street-lounger. Instead, he assigns to his characters as if by lot (ãsper ˆp¼ klžrou) such words as happen to turn up, and you could not tell whether the speaker is a son or father, a farmer or a god, or an old woman or a hero. Menander’s language, on the other hand, is so polished and its constituents so harmoniously united (sun”xestai kaª sump”pneuke kekram”nh pr¼v —aut»n) that, despite the varied emotions and characters involved and the fact that it has to suit all kinds of personages, it gives a single impression and maintains its uniformity (¾moi»thta) by means of common, everyday words that are in normal use . . . Of all the famous craftsmen there have been, no cobbler has made a shoe, no costumier a mask, no tailor a cloak, that would fit at the same time a man, a woman, a boy, an old man, and a household slave. Yet Menander so blended [›meixe Herwerden: ›deixe codd.] his language as to make it appropriate to every nature, disposition, and period of life. (Plutarch, Moralia 853c–e, trans. D. A. Russell (adapted))

At one level, this passage obviously reflects common rhetorical teaching about stylistic appropriateness, and we have seen that a rather similar structuring opposition is used by Aulus Gellius in his comparison of Menander and Caecilius,20 but the exact point of Plutarch’s contrast remains obscure and has been much debated.21 What is perhaps uncontroversial is that Aristophanes’ characters are said all to speak in a quite random mixture of high and low stylistic levels – this is why they cannot be distinguished – whereas the language of all Menandrean characters maintains stylistic uniformity, both internally and with respect to each other, within the parameters of ‘common’ diction. The passage must, however, also be seen within the context of the Plutarchan concern with order and hierarchy – both completely overthrown by Aristophanes’ fluctuating stylistic level – and his abhorrence of abrupt changes of mood and tone. A different aspect of this same contrast is seen at Moralia 711f–712a where the ‘lack of uniformity’ (ˆnwmal©a) which makes Old Comedy inappropriate as symposium entertainment apparently consists in the striking contrast between the political seriousness of the parabases and the vulgar humour of the other parts, just as aulos music at symposia must avoid emotionally disturbing complexity (713a). That New Comedy is in fact structurally and tonally both simpler and more uniform than Old Comedy requires no lengthy demonstration. 20

See above pp. 80–1.

21

See in particular Sandbach 1970: 113–14.

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Two aspects of the passage just quoted will bring Plutarch’s concerns into sharper focus. Menander is twice praised (853d, e) for a successful ‘mixing’ of his vocabulary into a harmonious whole, whereas the separate, wildly different, ingredients of Aristophanic language remain in jarring and unresolved juxtaposition (853c–d). Here we recognise a fundamental tenet of Plutarch’s Platonic ethics transferred to the realm of language: just as the best state will result from a harmonious ‘mixing’ of its various elements, so the soul should be ‘well-mixed’, a phenomenon in which education plays a key rˆole.22 So too, we find elsewhere, in the discussion of entertainment suitable for symposia, that not only is Menander’s diction ‘well-mixed’, but the plays themselves exhibit ‘a mixture of seriousness and jest (¤ te tv spoudv pr¼v tŸn paidi‡n ˆn†krasiv) which seems expressly designed for the pleasure and profit of relaxed drinkers’ (Mor. 712b–c). New Comedy is in fact so ‘mixed into (–gk”kratai) symposia that one could more easily steer the party without wine than without Menander’ (712b). As the parallel from the ‘Comparison’ shows, these metaphors are not simple reflections of the sympotic context to which the mixing of wine and water was central, though they are that as well.23 By contrast with Menander, the outspokenness of Old Comedy is too ‘unmixed’ for such occasions and Old Comedy is ‘stuffed to overfullness’ (deinäv kat†korov . . . kaª g”mousa . . .) with words one would rather not hear but which are bound to be vomited forth; the language evokes (very coyly) the unpleasant physical effects of overindulgence in alcohol (712a).24 Secondly, we may consider a more narrowly ‘political’ aspect of Plutarch’s account of comic language. The ‘lack of uniformity’ to which Plutarch objects in Aristophanes’ language is described so as to evoke the unpredictable and disordered rabble of the radical democracy of Aristophanes’ own day, as the Platonising Plutarch imagines it. The reference to distributing words to characters ‘as if by lot’ is hardly innocent: just as in classical Athens anyone could (in theory) speak in the assembly and anyone could hold public office or serve as a juror ‘by lot’, so Aristophanes, according to Plutarch, preserved no hierarchies, no ‘good order’ (kosmos), of language. In 854a Plutarch praises Menander with an echo of the ‘Funeral Oration’ of the Thucydidean Pericles: ¾ d• M”nandrov met‡ car©twn m†lista —aut¼n aÉt†rkh par”schken ktl., ‘But Menander, along with his charm, shows 22 23 24

See, e.g., Duff 1999: Chapter 3. For another extensive use of such imagery in a similar context see Mor. 15e–f; below p. 178. We should not weaken the resonances of nautiÛdhv (translated above as ‘nauseating’) at 853c in the ‘Comparison’.

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himself above all complete in himself ’ (cf. Thucydides 2.41.1); this evocation of Pericles’ view of an imperial city-state, which was, as the poetry of Menander the Athenian had now become, an education to all of Greece and which sensibly allowed itself to follow the counsel of one great leader, may well carry a special charge in the context of Greek paideia in the Roman empire. Aristophanes is the poet of democratic rabble, Menander of civilised (i.e. e´lite) good order which flows down from above. The ‘Comparison of Aristophanes and Menander’ reflects a number of familiar ancient narratives of cultural and literary history. On the one hand, there are the scholastic histories of comedy, preserved particularly in various late antique and Byzantine prolegomena to the plays of Aristophanes.25 Broadly speaking, these tell a story of change from a completely outspoken comedy of mockery to a quieter, less boisterous style. The change is variously placed during or after what we call the Old Comedy, but a persistent motif of these narratives traces the cause of comic change to political pressure and/or change; put simply, it became too dangerous in the Athenian democracy openly to scoff at ‘the people, the judges and the generals’.26 Writing the history of Attic comedy is thus (as it already was for Aristophanes himself ) necessarily ‘political’, in both broad and narrow senses, and for no one is this more true than for Plutarch. Moreover, this political narrative has very deep cultural roots: as always, we begin with Homer. In Iliad 2 Thersites, whose very name (‘The Reckless/Outrageous One’) places him on the wrong side of the Plutarchan divide, appears – as has often been noted – as a kind of forerunner of the outspoken comic tradition: Qers©thv dì ›ti moÓnov ˆmetroepŸv –kolÛia, Áv ›pea jresªn ¨isin Škosm† te poll† te e­dh, m†y, ˆt‡r oÉ kat‡ k»smon, –riz”menai basileÓsin, ˆllì  t© o¬ e­saito gelo©ion ìArge©oisin ›mmenai. a­scistov d• ˆnŸr Ëp¼ ïIlion §lqen. (Homer, Iliad 2.212–16)

Thersites alone, whose speech knew no measure, kept up his abuse; his mind contained a vast store of disordered words with which to quarrel with his leaders, all to no good purpose and lacking decency; he would say whatever he thought the Achaeans would find funny. He was the ugliest man who went to Troy.

The extraordinarily ugly speaker of words which lack ‘measure’ and ‘order’ (kosmos), who, like the Aristotelian buffoon (bwmol»cov) after him (cf. 25

See Koster 1975.

26

Koster 1975: I, 27; see further below p. 104.

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Nicomachean Ethics 4.1128a4–7), would say anything against ‘his betters’ to get a laugh and who is finally silenced by a violent assertion of aristocratic privilege (vv. 243–77), looks forward to important elements of the later narratives of the historical development of comedy. Moreover, the Thersites episode so strikingly foreshadows the troubles endured in Aristophanes’ Acharnians by Dicaeopolis, who comes to the Assembly ready to ‘shout, interrupt and abuse’, that it is tempting to believe that Aristophanes deliberately evokes the Homeric passage in a play which (in part) dramatises the poet’s triumph over the attempts of vested interests to silence comic freedom;27 be that as it may, the Homeric, Aristophanic, and later scholastic narratives are here very close. For Plutarch, Dicaeopolis, one of whose triumphant and mocking jokes against Lamachus is in fact cited in the ‘Comparison’ to illustrate Aristophanes’ frigid ‘wit’ (853c), would have been as abhorrent a character as Thersites. In Homer, however, the ‘many’ acquiesce in their own subordination to the will of their ‘betters’ and approve Odysseus’ treatment of Thersites (Iliad 2.270–8): Plutarch, much Hellenistic kingship theory, and the Roman imperial class would certainly also have approved. The scholia to Iliad 2.212–16 show that ancient scholarship too was interested in the relationship between the portrayal of Thersites and later forms of comedy and mockery. The scholia note that there are different and opposed ways of putting an end to anger and tension, and Homer demonstrates both modes: Odysseus uses harsh rebuke,28 whereas Thersites and his fate make the Greeks laugh; the scholia draw an interesting comparison between this and the divine gathering at the end of Book 1, where Zeus restrains Hera by threats, whereas Hephaestus does so by making her laugh. When it is noted that Thersites’ attack upon Agamemnon ‘does not cause pain’ (oÉ lupe±) because of the nature of the attacker, we can hardly fail to recall Aristotelian language about the appropriate nature of mockery (Nicomachean Ethics 4.1128a7, 26), and the whole idea of laughter as ‘cathartic’ of anger perhaps owes something (at an unknown number of removes) to Aristotelian ideas. Be that as it may, the scholia proceed to find in the Thersites episode the origin of the genre of satiric verse known as s©lloi ‘squint-eyed verses’, which were later most associated with Xenophanes and Timon of Phlious. Whatever one may think of this literary history, the scholia here come close to sketching a theory of comedy of a 27

28

For Thersites and Dicaeopolis see Whitman 1964: 46–8; Hunter 2004b: 242. For Thersites and the Paphlagonian of Knights see Rosen 2007: 67–116 (with useful further bibliography); Rosen does not refer to Cairns’ suggestion (Cairns 1982) that the Thucydidean Cleon is another descendant of Thersites. In Porphyry this alternative is expressed as ‘fear’ (Schrader 1880: 29).

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kind with many Hellenistic and later analogues; it is tantalising that part of the A scholia on verses 212–16 draw a distinction between the spouda±on and the gelo±on, but unfortunately in a context where textual corruption has obscured the sense. Although Plutarch is, at one level, heir to the ethical discussions of types of humour with which the Hellenistic world abounded, the overriding influence remains his version of Platonic ethics and theatrical history. As we have seen,29 Plato’s view of Athenian theatrical history, as expressed particularly in Laws 3, was fashioned precisely to offer an analogy to political history and therefore to be an argument for his political vision. The modern ‘uneducated shouting of the rabble’ stood in alarming contrast to the silent kosmos of the past, which itself was enforced by sticks and beatings (shades of Thersites again). As Plutarch objects to the apparently random jumbling of linguistic hierarchies, so Plato objects to the ‘mixing’ of musical forms (‘laments with hymns, paians with dithyrambs’) to provide the undifferentiated audience with ‘pleasure’; thus it came about that the uneducated no longer respected the views and tastes of their ‘betters’, and their new freedom from fear gave way to ‘shamelessness’ and ‘recklessness’ (qr†sov, shades of Thersites again). Plato’s theatrical history maps closely on to his account of democracy and the democratic man in Republic 8: just as, for Plato, democracy is a complete jumble of different constitutions and is characterised by utter freedom to do what you like, even disobey the laws (557b–e), so the democratic man lives without any ranking (t†xiv) or necessity (ˆn†gkh) in his life, ‘handing control over himself to whichever pleasure happens to come along, as if chosen by lot’ (561b–d). Plato’s sneer at the democratic institution of the lot foreshadows Plutarch’s, but, more importantly, the alleged absence of hierarchies which lies at the heart of this e´lite view of democracy foreshadows the standard rhetoric with which particular performance arts were attacked in the subsequent centuries. In particular, parodic and parasitic forms such as mimes and farces which exploited material drawn from ‘higher’ genres such as tragedy and New Comedy confused the proper order of things.30 With such confusion went a decidedly improper pursuit, by both performers and audience, of pleasure rather than instruction. the problem of plautus In his comparison of Caecilius and Menander, Gellius observes that Roman comedies appear to be written so lepide . . . et uenuste that nothing could 29

See above pp. 14–17.

30

For various aspects of this history see Hunter 1995, 2002.

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surpass them, until, that is, one takes up the Greek originals (NA 2.23.2– 3). The choice of the adjectives is pointed, for they recall a Catullanneoteric aesthetic of self-conscious polish and ‘up-to-the minuteness’,31 which lends a historical dimension to the discussion which is to follow; these works might seem ‘polished’, but one only has to see a truly uenustum work, such as that of Menander (2.23.11), to put things in perspective.32 Horace is perhaps the most insistent ancient voice calling for such perspective.33 In Satires 1.10 Horace insists that one can properly recognise Lucilius’ satiric power without denying his stylistic shortcomings; to insist that admiration should be unqualified would be like regarding the mimes of Laberius as pulchra poemata (v. 6), a phrase with much the same kind of resonance as Gellius’ lepide . . . et uenuste. Horace demands for himself the same critical freedom which is permitted to those studying the greatest text of all, Homer (v. 52), and he acutely points out that Lucilius’ writing, like that of all poets, is conditioned by the taste of his age, so that a ‘modern’ Lucilius would write in a modern mode: fuerit Lucilius, inquam, comis et urbanus, fuerit limatior idem quam rudis et Graecis intacti carminis auctor quamque poetarum seniorum turba; sed ille, si foret hoc nostrum fato delapsus in aeuum, detereret sibi multa, recideret omne quod ultra perfectum traheretur, et in uerso faciendo saepe caput scaberet uiuos et roderet unguis. (Horace, Satires 1.10.64–71)

Lucilius was, I grant, jolly and witty, he was also more polished than someone writing a form of verse which was quite new and untouched by the Greeks and than the crowd of old poets. If, however, he had been brought down by fate to our own age, he would have wiped away much of his work, would cut back everything which dragged on beyond the proper end, and as he wrote his verses he would often scratch his head and gnaw his fingernails to the quick.

In the later Epistle to Augustus Horace confronts a related phenomenon, the unquestioning enthusiasm for archaic poetry: 31 32

33

See, e.g., Catullus 1.1, 6.17, 35.17 (all of the style of poetic works). Menander’s uenustas rerum et uerborum (Gellius, NA 2.23.11) is c†ritev in Greek, cf. Demetrius, On Style 136: c†ritev . . . a¬ m•n –n ti l”xei, a¬ d• –n to±v pr†gmasin. It is perhaps worth noting in this context Plutarch’s observation that Menander’s gentle wit (Œlev, ‘salt’) seems to have been born ‘from the very same sea as Aphrodite’, i.e. Venus (‘Comparison’ 854c); see further below p. 98. See above pp. 51–2.

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Ennius, et sapiens et fortis et alter Homerus, ut critici dicunt, leuiter curare uidetur quo promissa cadant et somnia Pythagorea. Naeuius in manibus non est et mentibus haeret paene recens? adeo sanctum est uetus omne poema. ambigitur quotiens, uter utro sit prior, aufert Pacuuius docti famam senis, Accius alti, dicitur Afrani toga conuenisse Menandro, Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi, uincere Caecilius grauitate, Terentius arte. hos ediscit et hos arto stipata theatro spectat Roma potens; habet hos numeratque poetas ad nostrum tempus Liui scriptoris ab aeuo. (Horace, Epistles 2.1.50–62)

Ennius, wise and brave and a second Homer, as the critics claim, seems not too bothered what happens to his promises and dreams of Pythagoras.34 Do not we have Naevius in our hands and stuck in our minds, as though it were yesterday? So sacred is every ancient poem. Whenever their relative merits are debated, Pacuvius earns the accolade of the learned old man, and Accius of the lofty; the toga of Afranius is said to have fitted Menander, Plautus to hurry along on the pattern of Sicilian Epicharmus, Caecilius to be pre-eminent in grauitas, and Terence in art. These mighty Rome learns by heart and watches, packed into the narrow theatre; these she owns and counts as her poets from the days of Livius the writer down to our own age.

To think that archaic poetry is unsurpassable in quality is very like the similarly uneducated mistake of thinking that the quality of Roman comedy could not be surpassed (Aulus Gellius, NA 2.23.2); the silliness of this attitude is marked by the fact that every poet named is awarded ‘first place’ in some aspect – real ‘criticism’, which includes the finding of fault, is something the critici do not practise. Horace is arguing for higher critical standards than merely ‘old is good’; old is not necessarily bad, but it is sheer folly not to see that archaic Latin poetry falls short of modern standards of critical polish (emendata . . . pulchraque et exactis minimum distantia) and to turn one’s back on modern poetry as a result. The verses have been very much discussed,35 particularly the questions of how the Latin is actually to be understood, of the identity of the critici (? Varro), of the meaning of the critical labels which are stuck on each of the poets, and of the evidential value of the passage for the poetical and theatrical culture of Augustan Rome.36 Here, however, I want to look more closely at verses 58–9 on the 34 35 36

The meaning is very unclear, but this is not crucial to my present concerns. The starting point remains of course Brink 1982; see also White 1987; Jocelyn 1995: 242–6; Hinds 1998: 69–71; Feeney 2002: 178–9. See e.g., Goldberg 2005: 58–60.

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comoedia palliata, verses which shed light on how the Romans adapted Greek literary history to their own past. Horace quotes the positive views of the critici about archaic poets, though we must assume that he is putting his own spin upon that praise. The grounds upon which Plautus was alleged to resemble Epicharmus must, at one level, be grounds which bring credit to both poets, but it was justly observed by Harry Jocelyn that this ‘has never been elucidated even to the full satisfaction of the elucidator’.37 It is perhaps hard to believe that properare does not have something to do with the fact that some (admittedly late) evidence tells us that the catalectic trochaic tetrameter (the trochaic septenarius), which – to judge by the plays which have survived – was Plautus’ favourite metre,38 was called the epicharmeion, as well as the archilochion, and that this metre was appropriate for ‘rapid (festinis) narrations’;39 the connection between the troca±ov and tr”cein was of course well known to Greek critics.40 Epicharmus’ tetrameters admit high levels of resolution (which may be thought to increase their ‘speed’) and he seems to have written whole plays in this metre, which predominates in the fragments that survive;41 it is perhaps telling that this includes the chance finds of Epicharmus on papyrus, and Theocritus used three such tetrameters, including one in the programmatic position at the head of the poem, in his ‘polymetric’ epitaph for his Syracusan forebear (Ars P 9.600 = Epigram 18 Gow).42 Whatever praise for dramatic form or structure the critics meant by properare,43 Horace himself would probably have taken a dim view of such unsophisticated metrical practice: in the Ars Poetica he describes the Romans of a previous generation as ‘overly tolerant’ in their approval of Plautus’ numeros et sales (Ars P 270–1), and this passage of the Epistle to Augustus has often been brought into alignment with the Epistle’s 37 38

39 40 41 42 43

Jocelyn 1995: 242. See, e.g., Duckworth 1952: 362–3, 367; Hunter 1985a: 46. The fact that Plautus ‘has other characteristic metres’ than the trochaic (Brink 1982: 420) would presumably not bother critics on either side of the argument. See Epicharmus T 32 K-A. See, e.g., Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.1409a1; Hephaestion 78.4–12, 214.4–7, 300.7–10, 332.23–6 Consbruch. On the nature of Epicharmus’ tetrameters see W¨ust 1950: 343–6, where the statistics are naturally somewhat out of date. For Epicharmus more generally see now Willi 2008: 119–92. West 1982: 151 n. 82 observes that these tetrameters, like those of Epicharmus himself, do not preserve a regular caesura. For the various solutions which have been offered see Brink 1982: 109–10, 419–20. PickardCambridge 1962: 283 suggests that the reference might be to ‘the rapidity of [Epicharmus’] “patter”, or perhaps of the interchange of question and answer’; Jocelyn 1995: 246 suggests that the point of Horace’s comparison between Epicharmus and Plautus was precisely the ‘number and variety of Epicharmus’ metres’.

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later harsh criticism of Plautus ‘running across’ (percurrat) the stage like one of his own characters (Epist. 2.1.174).44 Moreover, in the Ars Poetica (vv. 268–71) Horace associates his disapproval of Plautus’ numeri with an injunction to imitate exemplaria Graeca (something which Plautus’ supporters would indeed seem to find the Umbrian poet doing, ad exemplar Siculi . . . Epicharmi). If we ask what metrical practice Horace would have approved in a comic poet, then we probably can hardly do better than look to Quintilian’s judgement on Roman comedy: In comedy most of all we trail behind [the Greeks]. It is true that Varro said that in the opinion of Aelius Stilo the Muses would have used the language of Plautus if they wished to speak Latin, that our predecessors give high praise to Caecilius, that Terence’s works were ascribed to Scipio Africanus, and these works are indeed the most elegant of comedies and would have had even more charm (gratia) if they had been limited to iambic trimeters; nevertheless, we are scarcely a dim shadow of the Greeks, so that I have come to the view that the language of the Romans itself is unable to achieve that charm (uenus) which was granted to the people of Attica alone, since the Greeks themselves fail to achieve it in any other form of their language. (Quintilian 10.1.99–100)

Just as Quintilian wishes that Terence had stuck to iambic trimeters, that is, kept rather closer to Menandrean practice (it may have been Terence’s constant changes of rhythm to which Quintilian objected),45 so Horace would presumably have taken the view that a more obviously regular rhythmical practice than Plautus’ numeri innumeri was appropriate to any poetry with pretensions to sophistication; certainly, Catullus’ practice in his iambics would have supported that view. As for the ‘running’ trochaics, they certainly posed questions of literary decorum. Aristotle cited the ‘running rhythm’ of trochaic tetrameters as evidence for the ‘rather kordax-like nature of the trochee’ (Rhetoric 3.1409a1),46 an observation which Cicero glosses by pointing to the lack of dignitas of this rhythm (De oratore 3.193). In the Poetics Aristotle describes the trochaic tetrameter as both preceding the iambic trimeter in the history of tragedy and as being appropriate to the ‘satyric and lively dancing’ (saturikŸ kaª ½rchstikwt”ra) nature of early tragedy (1449a21–3); although this concerns tragedy, not comedy, the pattern is suggestive, and it would certainly both fit Horace’s expressed 44 45

46

On this passage see Jocelyn 1995: 230–9; Hunter 2002: 191–4. Menander’s use of tetrameters was of course well known to ancient metricians, see Menander T 117 K-A; on the other hand, it was equally familiar that a central difference between Old Comedy and New lay in the polumetr©a of the former, as opposed to the predominant use of iambic trimeters in the latter, see, e.g., Proleg. V 8–9 Koster. For the many allusions to this passage in later writers see the notes of Cope-Sandys and Kassel ad loc.

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views about Plautus elsewhere and turn their own knife back on his supporters. The turning of Plautus into ‘Epicharmus Romanus’, and indeed the whole tradition against which Horace is here taking aim, is part of the familiar Roman critical practice of mapping Greek literary history on to local production by finding equivalences between Greek and Latin authors. Whether or not the critics whom Horace claims to have in his sights had associated Plautus with a Greek poet whom they had actually read and understood at any serious level may be debated, but Epicharmus was certainly a choice name to conjure with: the Platonic Socrates had cited him as the greatest poet of comedy (Theaetetus 152e5), but more importantly he was the ‘first inventor’ (prätov eËretžv) of comedy (see, e.g., T1, 18 K-A).47 Horace’s specific Siculi may in part look to an ancient dispute about whether Epicharmus came originally from that island or from the eastern Aegean,48 or we might speculate that scholarship had associated the early period of the palliata with Sicilian influence.49 That there was a flourishing and long-standing tradition of Sicilian comedy not improbably attracted the attention of those who wished to establish links between Greek and Roman traditions; Sicily was, after all, according to prominent Greek traditions, the place where comedy originated, whether or not in the person of Epicharmus.50 Whatever the precise nuance of properare (and whether it was their word or Horace’s), therefore, Plautus’ supporters had found a great name at the head of the history of Greek comedy who, with something of a stretch, could be made to fill a rˆole in comedy analogous to that of Plautus; after both of them comedy was indeed to develop technically and stylistically, but to criticise them would be to criticise ground-breaking pioneers. This may be seen as the solution of the supporters to ‘the problem of Plautus’: what to do with the Roman poet who was a national glory or a deep embarrassment, depending upon your point of view. However the comparison of Plautus to Epicharmus is evaluated, the triad of Plautus – Caecilius – Terence seems also to sketch a chronological and developmental history of the palliata, and one which is not too far removed 47 48

49

See also Aristotle, Poetics 1448a33. For a survey of the evidence and the arguments see Pickard-Cambridge 1962: 230–3. I have toyed with the idea that the fact that some believed that Epicharmus came not from Syracuse but from the nearby (Sicilian) Megara, which also laid a claim to a pivotal rˆole in the development of comedy (see Aristotle, Poetics 1448a32–3), is relevant here, given the notoriously unsophisticated nature of mainland ‘Megarian’ humour. Plautus, Persa 394–5 suggests that Sicilian humour could be represented as unsophisticated. 50 See Aristotle, Poetics 1449b6–7; Proleg. XVIIIb.3.13 Koster. See Hunter 1985a: 20.

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from the Aristotelian pattern just considered. Literary chronology is, of course, more an art form than a science, a set of ‘facts’ to be manipulated to the service of an argument, and Caecilius could at need stand with Plautus or after him, as indeed he has at different moments of his modern critical reception.51 Horace’s (naturally tendentious) developmental history of the palliata was certainly not the only one available,52 just as his negative views of Plautus seem to have marked a break with the generally more positive criticism of the late Republic, though how sharp a break may be disputed.53 The move from a beginning (Plautus/Epicharmus), a point sharpened by the limiting of Naevius, who also wrote comedies, to the field of epic, through grauitas to ars apes patterns of Greek literary history which go back particularly, like so much else, to the comparison between the grauis Aeschylus and the artful (and craftful) Euripides in Aristophanes’ Frogs, a comparison which also plots the history of a genre;54 Quintilian’s description of Aeschylus as ‘sublime and serious and grandiloquent often almost to a fault, but very often rough and unpolished’ (sublimis et grauis et grandilocus saepe usque ad uitium, sed rudis in plerisque et incompositus, 10.1.66) speaks volumes.55 Genres, and whole literatures, tend, of course, in the familiar patterns of ancient literary history to move from (an often noble) simplicity towards (an often morally doubtful) complexity, from (to put it another way) ingenium to ars;56 we naturally think of Ovid’s history of Greek and Latin literature in Amores 1.15 or of some aspects of ‘Longinus’’ famous comparison of the great but flawed to the non-great but unflawed (On the Sublime 33).57 On this scheme Terence, whose works are also described by Quintilian as in hoc genere elegantissima (10.1.99), plays the rˆole of a Euripides or a Callimachus in the history of the palliata; he is also, of course, the closest Rome got to a Menander, but as Julius Caesar put it famously, he only got half-way there.58 In the construction of this particular history of the palliata, we must not underestimate the part played by Terence himself; poets often have crucial rˆoles in constructing their own critical Nachleben, just as the ‘critical’ view of Ennius as et sapiens 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

See Wright 1974: 87–8. At Horace, Ars Poetica 54 Caecilius and Plautus are bracketed together as archaic writers. See, e.g., Deufert 2002: 72. For the various positions see Jocelyn 1995 and Deufert 2002: 64–84. On Cicero’s enthusiasm for early comedy see also Bl¨ansdorf 1974. It should not need stressing that this argument is largely independent of the actual meaning of Caecilius’ grauitas, which is disputed (see Brink ad loc.). See above pp. 51–2. See above pp. 44–5 on Dio 52; there is much to be learned in this regard from Chapter 3 of Hinds 1998. 58 See Cicero fr. 1 Courtney = Menander T 64 K-A, with Schmid 1952. See below pp. 160–8.

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et fortis et alter Homerus goes back in whole or part to Ennius himself. In the prologues Terence stresses that he is a nouus poeta and one whose works pay particular attention to style and avoid the uitia and peccata of the malevolent uetus poeta who opposes him;59 if aspects of this rhetoric look forward to the ‘neoteric’ rhetoric of Roman ‘Callimacheans’ and Horace and then on towards ‘Longinus’, it may also remind us of the parabases of Aristophanes.60 There too it is the young poet who has ‘new’ ideas, who is, if you like, neÛterov in both senses; ‘old’ poets are out of date and out of fashion, ˆrca±ov in both senses.61 To see that behind Horace’s verses lie not just critical views about individual poets, which were in any case structured as comparisons between poets, as was normal in the Greek tradition and also in the Roman, at least from (roughly) the first century bc onwards, but also a skeletal developmental history of the palliata, throws into relief once again the crucial position of Plautus. What kind of a beginning was he? Was he in fact an Epicharmus, or was he rather closer to the kind of pre-literate farce (the Atellan?) which could be, and was, hypothesised as lying behind the development of formal drama? The problem was not made any easier by the history of Greek and Roman comedy themselves. Unlike Roman comedy (and Greek tragedy, for that matter),62 Greek comedy had two distinct ‘golden ages’, both marked by inimitable qualities of literary c†riv and uenus (see, e.g., Quintilian 10.1.65, 100),63 but differing from each other (as Roman comedies did not) in both subject matter and stylistic form, and this made the writing of parallel literary histories very difficult; almost inevitably, it also led to Plautus being cast in more than one rˆole. Old Comedy was not merely a high point of Attic literature, it had no Roman equivalent, unless one were to seek this in satire (cf. Horace, Satires 1.4; Persius 1.123–5).64 Quintilian for his part does not have recourse to this solution; he rather inserts the purely Roman genre of satire between elegy and iambus (10.1.93–5), and passes directly from Roman lyric to Roman 59 60 61 62

63 64

See Andria 12; Haut. 30, 33, 46; Eunuchus 27, 43; Phormio 5, 13–14. For other similarities between Aristophanes’ claims for his comedies and those of Terence see Hunter 1985a: 30–3. Relevant passages include Knights 507, Clouds 547, Wasps 1044. For a further consideration of these ideas see Hunter 2001b. Something of a parallel for the historical construction of Roman comedy for which I am arguing may be seen in Dio’s contrasts between, on the one hand, Menander and Old Comedy and, on the other, Euripides and ‘the old (ˆrca©wn) tragedians’ (18.6–7 = Menander T 102 K-A), see above p. 46. For the c†riv of Old Comedy see also, e.g., Aristophanes T 69, 79, 130, 131 K-A; Plutarch, of course, begged to differ, see above p. 79. See below pp. 99–100.

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tragedy (10.1.96–8), whereas in the corresponding Greek section, lyric and tragedy had been separated by Old Comedy (10.1.65), for which no Roman equivalent could readily be found. By way of something of a footnote, we may note that the one glimpse that survives of Roman ‘Old Comedy’ in fact confirms rather than denies this gap in the Roman literary record. Pliny tells a correspondent of how he heard Vergilius Romanus ‘reading to a small audience a comedy written on the pattern of Old Comedy’: I am one of those who admire (mirer) the ancients, but – unlike some – this does not make me look down on the talents of our own times. It is not the case that nature is too weary and worn out to give birth to anything worthy of praise. Indeed, I recently heard Vergilius Romanus reading to a small audience a comedy written on the pattern (exemplar) of Old Comedy; it was so good that it could one day be a pattern for others. I do not know whether you know him, but it would be worth your while; he is a man of upright morals, intellectual elegance, and unusual versatility in his writings. He has written mimiambi which are subtle, witty and charming (tenuiter argute uenuste), and the most eloquent examples of their genre; there is no genre which cannot be called very eloquent if it reaches the highest standard. He has also written comedies after the manner (aemulatus) of Menander and other poets of his age; these you may put alongside Plautus and Terence. This was his first effort at Old Comedy, but it did not seem like it. There was no lack of force (uis), grandeur, subtlety, sharpness (amaritudo), sweetness (dulcedo) or charm (lepos); he embellished virtues and castigated vices (insectatus est uitia), and used fictitious names as suitable and real ones appropriately. Only with respect to me did he go beyond the proper limit out of an excess of good will, but poets do indeed have a licence to tell untruths. (Pliny, Epistle 6.21.1–6)

Both Pliny and Vergilius seem to have been reading their Horace. Pliny combines admiration (mirer, a verb Horace uses more than once in these contexts) for ‘old writers’ with recognition of contemporary talent, and Vergilius is not just following the prescriptions of Horace’s Ars Poetica in his attention to exemplaria Graeca, he is almost living out the pattern of poetic life which Horace claims for himself in Satires 1.4, by reciting his ‘satirical’ work, a work in fact descending from Old Comedy, to a small group of a few friends (Sat. 1.4.73–4).65 With some important Roman variations (ornauit uirtutes is of particular interest – presumably Pliny’s uirtutes figured prominently)66 and an admixture of qualities more reminiscent of the critical tradition about later comedy, the terms in which Pliny praises Vergilius’ effort stand squarely within ancient traditions about Attic Old 65 66

See below pp. 99–105. The idea is, however, very close to the Greek kosme±n, which had from the earliest days been recognised as a principal activity of poets.

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Comedy, particularly Aristophanes;67 Quintilian’s account is particularly close: Old Comedy is almost the only form which preserves the genuine grace of the Attic language. It is marked by a very eloquent freedom of speech, castigation of vice (insectandis uitiis), and a high degree of force (uires) in other departments. It has grandeur, elegance and charm (uenus), and – with the exception of Homer, who, like Achilles, is always the exception – there is no poetry more like oratory or more suitable for training orators. There were a number of poets of Old Comedy, but the principal ones are Aristophanes, Eupolis and Cratinus. (Quintilian 10.1.65–6)

Such language, which of course also lies behind the opening verses of Horace, Satires 1.4, was the standard way of describing Old Comedy; we may also compare ‘Diomedes’’ description of the Old Comedy triad qui et principum uitia sectati acerbissimas comoedias composuerunt (Proleg. XXIV 2, 52–3 Koster = Ar. T 82 K-A). This same passage of ‘Diomedes’ notes that the poets of New Comedy omnem acerbitatem comoediae mitigauerunt, just as ‘Evanthius’ notes that New Comedy offers spectators minus amaritudinis than does the Old (Proleg. XXV 1.70–1 Koster), and this throws light on the most striking element of Pliny’s list, amaritudo, particularly striking when set beside dulcedo. ‘Bitter wit’ can of course be a bad thing, as for example Plutarch deprecates the ‘bitter and harsh wit’ (Œlev pikroª kaª trace±v) of Aristophanes which is marked by ‘a fierceness which wounds and bites’ (—lkwtikŸn drimÅthta kaª dhktikžn) (‘Comparison’ 4),68 but here it clearly refers to the same positive quality which Horace found in Lucilius, sale multo | urbem defricuit, ‘he rubbed the city down with a great deal of salt’ (Sat. 1.10.3–4),69 and Dioscorides in the ‘sharp thyme’ (drimÆ qÅmon) of Machon’s ˆrca©h t”cnh (Ars P 7.708 = Gow–Page, HE 1617– 22). Finally, we may note that Pliny goes out of his way to stress Vergilius’ probitas morum and his benignitas (towards Pliny at least); this should be seen not just against the values prevalent in Pliny’s habitual circle, but also against the tradition, going back at least to Aristotle, which linked the moral character of comic poets to the character of what they wrote: we may recall Terence’s repeated ascription of maleuolentia to Luscius, Horace’s vehement denial of inuidia in Satires 1.4, and Plutarch’s condemnation of t¼ kak»hqev in Aristophanes.70 67 68 69 70

See Quadlbauer 1960: 63–4. Quadlbauer’s article offers a still useful collection of (rather unsorted) material. See above p. 79. Pliny’s comment on Vergilius’ use of ‘fictive’ and ‘real’ names is also suggestive for the Roman satirical tradition. See below pp. 106–7.

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To return to the Roman confrontation with Greek literary history. As regards New Comedy, here a particular problem was the undisputed supremacy of Menander (see Quintilian 10.1.69–72), a supremacy which was probably recognised by the middle of the second century at least;71 unlike Old Comedy with its standard trio of superstars, New Comedy only had one, and there was here no obvious internal developmental history which could function as a model for the Roman critics. The choice of Epicharmus perhaps suggests rather an attempt to map the history of the palliata on to the whole history of Greek comedy, from the beginnings to Menander, and such a critical effort was, we might think, doomed to failure. The Greek models of such cross-generational history foregrounded political change, the relative prominence of mythical and tragic parody, and the introduction late in the day of new narrative motifs, some borrowed from Euripides, such as the rape of virgins and the exposure of children; the passage from Livius (or Plautus) to Terence had nothing to match this, though the similarities between Gellius’ comparison of Caecilius and Menander and Plutarch’s of Aristophanes and Menander perhaps suggests that, here too, an attempt to follow the Greek pattern was made. comedy and satire 72 When in the first century bc Roman scholars sought to place the hexameter satire of Lucilius within the scheme of genres inherited from their Greek forebears it is hardly surprising that they homed in on Old Comedy as of particular relevance; it may have been Varro, perhaps following a hint from Lucilius himself, who authorised the dependence of Lucilius on Eupolis atque Cratinus Aristophanesque poetae.73 According to Horace at the opening of Satires 1.4, the link consisted in the freedom with which they ‘marked’ (notabant) wrongdoers; Lucilius may, like the Plautus of the Epistles,74 have his stylistic faults (vv. 8–13), but his res were in the right place. As Horace explores the relationship between comedy and satire, he will never discard the link with Old Comedy, and Andrea Cucchiarelli has indeed made a strong case for seeing Old Comedy (particularly the Frogs of Aristophanes) as a powerful and direct inspiration for Satires 1, not just 71 72 73 74

See Nesselrath forthcoming. For Menander’s superiority to Philemon in the critical tradition see also Philemon T 7, 23, 24 K-A. Some of the discussion which follows reworks Hunter 1985b: 486–90 (reprinted with permission of Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart), where further detailed bibliography may be found. See Leo 1889; further bibliography in Cucchiarelli 2001: 33 n. 63. See above pp. 90–1, Cucchiarelli 2001: 45–6.

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a scholarly theory to be waved aloft;75 nevertheless, Horace also gestures in various ways towards the idea that it is New Comedy, and particularly the comedy of Menander and Terence, which hold a special place in the genealogy of his sermones. One thing that even Plautus’ most ardent supporters would have acknowledged was that there was a lot of him. Aulus Gellius reports that still in the second century ad there were some one hundred and thirty plays in circulation which were attributed to him and that many different scholars had drawn up lists of which plays were actually by Plautus (NA 3.3.1, 11); our twenty-one plays all but certainly go back to a selection made by Varro of those plays ‘which were not the subject of doubt’. Horace and his contemporaries will have had a veritable smorgasbord from which to choose, and one which might well have led to the view that Plautus too could write ‘two hundred verses in an hour, standing on one foot’ (it was, after all, for him all a matter of money, Epist. 2.1.175). Plautus may have aroused differing critical judgements,76 but ‘breuitas which allows the meaning to run on unimpeded by words weighing down tired ears’ (Satires 1.10.9–10 on Lucilius) would probably not have been recognised among his foremost virtues; not only were there (too) many plays, there were also a very large number of ‘words’. In a famous anecdote Gellius (3.3.6) reports that for his friend Favorinus the single comic verse scrattae, scrupedae, strittiuillae, sordidae loose, tottering, hair falling out, unkempt

guaranteed that the play from which it came was by Plautus. As for Terence, there were only six plays, four of which were from Menander, whose stylistic credentials could hardly be challenged, and the Terentian scripts might well have seemed more coherent and stylistically uniform than those which went under the name of Plautus.77 Horace rejects quantity as a meaningful criterion for poetry (Sat. 1.4.13–16) and is only too happy to speak raro et perpauca (v. 18).78 Terence too claims to have been accused of writing paucae fabulae (Haut. 17–18) and, like Horace (Sat. 1.6.62–4), he professes himself proud of his powerful patrons and amici (Adelphoe 15–21). 75 77 78

76 See above p. 95. Cucchiarelli 2001: 15–55. This is, of course, quite independent of the view one takes of the fate of Plautine scripts in the two centuries after they were written, an issue which Otto Zwierlein has kept in the scholarly foreground. Behind Crispinus’ absurd challenge at vv. 14–16 may lie Odysseus’ challenge to Eurymachus at Odyssey 18.366–70 to see which of them would cut more grass during a long day in the fields. There, and in epic generally, quantity does matter, whereas in Horace’s ‘Callimachean’ aesthetic it does not; Crispinus does not know the difference between wielding a scythe and using a pen.

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In Satires 1.4 Horace claims that he does not wish to give public recitations because satire arouses enmity, as the majority of people (‘anyone chosen at random from a crowd’) suffer from some fault, whether it be greed, ambition, or fancying the wrong person (vv. 25–32); here we have clearly moved away from the thieves and murderers ‘marked’ by Old Comedy, towards New Comedy which was thought to draw its material from the ordinary life of everyday people.79 Horace, however, creates an interesting continuity in change between, on the one hand, Old Comedy and, on the other, New Comedy and Horatian satire – auaritia is different from theft, but clearly related to it, the moechus and the man who nuptarum insanit amoribus are clearly not far apart; the proud heritage of Attic Old Comedy is not in fact to be rejected. The tradition of ½nomastª kwmwide±n was to be praised precisely because those whom Old Comedy attacked were indeed digni describi; Old Comedy did not practise indiscriminate abuse.80 This, however, is precisely the charge against satirists which Horace alleges is widespread: faenum habet in cornu, longe fuge; dummodo risum excutiat sibi, non hic cuiquam parcet amico et quodcumque semel chartis inleuerit, omnis gestiet a furno redeuntis scire lacuque et pueros et anus. (Horace, Satires 1.4.34–8) He’s got hay on his horns – keep well away! Provided he can get a laugh, he will spare no friend and as soon as anything is scratched on his pages he’s desperate for everyone to know it, all the slaves and old women as they come back from the bakery and the water-hole.

These verses place the satirist in a line of descent which goes back to Homer’s Thersites, who would say ‘whatever he thought the Argives would find amusing’,81 and have a particular link to the character whom Aristotle labels the bwmol»cov: Those who are excessive with regard to the laughable (t¼ g”loion) seem to be clownish and vulgar (bwmol»coi . . . kaª jortiko©); their concern at all costs is the laughable, and they set more value on causing laughter than on speaking decently and not hurting the object of their mockery . . . The clown is a slave to laughter, and he spares neither himself nor anyone else if he can get a laugh, and his jokes are the sort of things which the witty man (¾ car©eiv) would not say, and some of 79 80 81

The testimonia are legion: see, e.g., Horace, Epist. 2.1.168; Proleg. XXV.1.68–77 Koster. That this was in fact an issue is suggested by Cicero, De re publica 4.10–12. See above pp. 87–8.

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which he would not even care to hear. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 4.1128a4–7, 33–6)

When the alleged opponents of satire return to the charge in verses 78–9, laedere gaudes | . . . et hoc studio prauus facis, ‘you like hurting people . . . and you do this from deliberate malice’, it is this Aristotelian analysis which we hear again. For Horace the really dangerous ‘speaker’ is part bwmol»cov, part malicious gossip: absentem qui rodit, amicum qui non defendit alio culpante, solutos qui captat risus hominum famamque dicacis, fingere qui non uisa potest, conmissa tacere qui nequit; hic niger est, hunc tu, Romane, caueto. (Horace, Satires 1.4.81–5)

The man who criticises behind someone’s back, the man who does not defend a friend when another attacks him, the man who wants to make people laugh loudly and to be thought a wit, the man who can invent what he has never seen, the man who cannot keep a secret with which he has been entrusted, this man, Roman, is black, this is the man you must guard against.

Over against the bwmol»cov Aristotle sets the ‘urbane’ (–pid”xiov) man who is also likely to be –leuq”riov and pepaideum”nov: To the middle condition belongs also urbanity; the urbane man will say and listen to the sort of things which a reasonable (–pieikžv) and well-mannered (–leuq”riov) man would,82 for there are things which it is appropriate for such a man to say and listen to by way of amusement (paidi†), and the amusement of the well-mannered differs from that of the slavish (ˆndrapodÛdhv), and that of the educated from the uneducated. One can see this in the difference between old and new comedies: for poets of the former, obscenity (a«scrolog©a) was amusing, but poets of the latter prefer suggestiveness (Ëp»noia), and these two things are very different with respect to decency. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 4.1128a16–25)

At one level we have here an important ancestor of the attitudes Plutarch expresses in the ‘Comparison of Aristophanes and Menander’, where decency and paideia are everything and that distinction is expressed through a distinction between Old Comedy and New, but this passage also allows us to see the creative use which Horace has made of the critical tradition.83 Aristotle’s analysis is concerned with the conditions under which t¼ g”loion should be operative in ‘decent’ society; the key lies in the fact that 82 83

‘Well-mannered’ does not, of course, catch the play with the idea of ‘free’, which is crucial for the resonance of the dichotomy with ‘slavish’. There is a very large bibliography, but Hendrickson 1900 has well stood the test of time.

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there must always be other considerations to take into account. Whereas a Thersites or a bwmol»cov makes the raising of a laugh the principal end of social interaction, for Aristotle the end is rather the proper employment of ‘relaxation and play’ (ˆn†pausiv kaª paidi†) in ordinary life, which for Horace is translated as the rˆole that ‘satire’ should play within the bounds of amicitia; Horace’s sermones are intended for his amici (1.4.73), among whom we will be glad to count ourselves. That satire is intended for a group of like-minded individuals who have each other’s benefit at heart brings it close to Plutarch’s vision of a Menander who offers appropriate relaxation, whether in the theatre or at a symposium, for the educated, for philosophers and scholars. For Plutarch (Mor. 73d–e) the three principal sources of advice for us at different stages of our life are a ‘well intentioned friend (j©lov –pieikžv), a good (crhst»v) father, and a (school-)teacher’, and both Horatian satire and Menandrean comedy each perform at least two of those rˆoles. Horace places his satires both sylistically (vv. 48–63) and in terms of their purpose and content (vv. 105–26) close to Menandrean and Terentian comedy. The latter point depends upon accepting that the presentation of his father’s educational methods evokes comedy, and particularly the Adelphoe of Terence;84 certainly, notando in verse 106 takes us back to the socially improving activities of the Old Comedy poets (v. 5) and points to the continuity which runs from them, through Lucilius, and on to Horace. The uitia against which Horace’s father seeks to warn his son (wastefulness, greed, and inappropriate romantic entanglements) again are clearly related to those ‘marked’ by Old Comedy; the non bella . . . fama Treboni (v. 115) picks up famosus in verse 5 to make the point.85 Throughout the poem Horace has gestured towards two related narratives of literary history: one traces a line of continuity and dependence from Old Comedy to Lucilius and then on to Horace, and the other suggests that the development of Old Comedy to New Comedy and that from Lucilius to Horace are analogous. The past is not abandoned; rather, some things are taken over almost unchanged, whereas others are given a new (often ethical) direction. The strident opposition which Plutarch seeks to create between Aristophanes and Menander depends in fact upon a generic continuity between them as ‘comedy’, and scholarship reinforced that sense of generic ‘togetherness’, even as it drew attention to differences between them.86 It is indeed a form of literary history which Horace is writing in Satires 1.4. The opening sentence, with the resonant parade of names 84 85 86

See, e.g., Leach 1971, Citroni Marchetti 2004; further bibliography in Hunter 1985b: 490 n. 56. See also vv. 125–6 flagret rumore malo cum | hic atque ille . . . On Hellenistic scholarship in this regard see Montana 2007.

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in verse 1, evokes Greek histories of comedy, descendants of which we possess in the late antique and Byzantine treatises gathered together in the Prolegomena de comoedia.87 Here for example is ‘Platonius’’ description of Old Comedy: As there was complete equality of speech («shgor©a) for everyone, the comic poets had immunity to mock (skÛptein) generals and judges who gave bad judgements and any citizens who were avaricious (jil†rguroi) or led debauched lives . . . In their comedies Aristophanes and Cratinus and Eupolis were unrestrained in their attacks on wrongdoers. (‘Platonius’ I 5–8, 11–13 Koster)

‘Platonius’ is typical in connecting the outspokenness of Old Comedy to the radical nature of fifth-century democracy, itself of course a view with a specific history, as the ‘Old Oligarch’ most famously makes clear ([Xen.] Ath. Pol. 2.18). The ‘equality of speech’ which both ‘the Old Oligarch’ (e.g. 1.12) and ‘Platonius’ highlight as a dominant feature of fifth-century democracy88 recurs in Horace’s account in the shape of libertas (v. 5). Just, however, as the nature of comic humour had shifted over time,89 so had the nature of ‘freedom of speech’, the «shgor©a and parrhs©a which lay at the heart of the democratic ideology of classical Athens.90 Over time, changed political circumstances and the emergence of an educated e´lite had produced a new set of contexts for this freedom; the analogy to ancient histories of comedy is clear and important. Ethical theory turned parrh¯esia into a private virtue exercised among friends; it was particularly associated with the Epicureans, but by no means limited to that school,91 and like much ancient ethical theory it systematised much that was already widespread in popular ethics. That one had a duty to correct the faults of a friend was a very traditional idea, and it is one which we see both dramatised, sometimes with very amusing results (e.g. Terence, Haut. 53– 86), and explicitly formulated in New Comedy (Plautus, Trinummus 23– 7); the analogy (or lack of it) between the relations between j©loi/amici and those between father and son are often implicit in such dramatisations and are explicitly explored in Terence’s Adelphoe, the play to which Horace may look in the depiction of the education he received from his father.92 87 88 89 91

92

See Koster 1975. For ‘Platonius’ see also Perusino 1989. «shgor©a in fact covers a broader ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ than just that of speech, see, e.g., Gray’s note on [Xen.] Ath. Pol. 1.12. 90 See Scarpat 1964. This is first noted for us in Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 4.1128a22–4. Our principal sources are the remains of Philodemus’ perª parrhs©av (ed. A. Olivieri, Leipzig, 1914; cf. Konstan et al. 1998) and the second part of Plutarch’s ‘How to tell a friend from a flatterer’; Philodemus’ principal source seems to have been Zeno of Sidon. See above p. 103. On this aspect of the Adelphoe see Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004: 419–25.

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Ancient discussions of ‘frank criticism’ stress the need for gentleness and courtesy (Plutarch, Mor. 66b),93 but even harshness is not ruled out if there is goodwill behind the reproaches (see, e.g., Cicero, De amicitia 44, 88–9; Plutarch, Mor. 55b–c); criticism should only come from one who is well aware of his own faults (Mor. 71e–72a) and should not be delivered in the hearing of outsiders (Mor. 70e–71c). That such teaching corresponds closely to the picture in Satires 1.4 of a Horace who reads his satires only to friends, and then only under compulsion (v. 73), is very obvious; Horace is the liber amicus whose advice is beneficial, just as this is precisely the kind of therapy which he himself needs (vv. 131–3). In opposition to this image of good and unobtrusive intention is the image of the back-biting slanderer (vv. 81–101) whose poison destroys amicitia and social relationships. Such malice is a corruption of true libertas (v. 90) and to defend it as an exercise of ‘free speech’ is a perversion of language; Horace’s slanderer thus stands in the tradition of Theophrastus’ kakol»gov, who ‘calls slander “freedom of speech” (parrhs©a) and “democracy” and “liberty” ’ (Characters 28.6).94 The slanderer is at his most liber when Liber, the god of wine, has loosened his tongue; as such, he behaves in just the way that ethical theory deprecates (cf. Plutarch, Mor. 68d), whereas for the man of culture drinking, and the frankness which can attend it, hold no fears (Mor. 715e–716c). What, in essence, is at issue is the character of the poet and his audience: for most of antiquity, ‘you are what you write’ was a self-evident truism. For Aristotle, it was not just that audiences for musical competitions were divisible into ‘the free and educated on one hand, and the vulgar class of workers and servile types on the other’ (Politics 8.1342a18–19) and that each type preferred a correspondingly ‘educated’ or ‘vulgar’ performance (8.1341b15–18),95 but that these social and moral distinctions applied to poets as well. The Poetics constructs a history in which ‘the more serious people’ (o¬ semn»teroi) moved from hymns and encomia to epic and then tragedy, whereas ‘people of less worth’ (o¬ eÉtel”steroi) wrote psogoi, iambs and finally comedy (1448b20–38). It goes without saying that the people represented in the various types also conform to these social and moral distinctions (the spoudaioi in tragedy, the phauloi in comedy, etc., 1449a32–b12). Thus the writing or performance of ‘satire’ of any kind could readily expose one to charges of moral degradation (shades of Thersites, yet 93 94

This passage uses Plutarch’s typical image of ‘mixing’ for what is good, as precisely with Menander (see above p. 85). 95 See above p. 13. For the text here see Diggle ad loc.

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again);96 Plutarch’s stress upon Aristophanes’ kakožqeia and the harshly wounding nature of his attacks (‘Comparison’ 854a–d) shows precisely what could be at stake. For Plutarch, unlike for, say, ‘Platonius’ (see above), it is not the people whom Aristophanes attacked who are ‘debauched’ (ˆk»laston), or rather perhaps their debauchery is a side issue, but it is the comedy itself, and those for whom it was written, which is so degraded; Menander’s humour, on the other hand, is, like the advice of the true friend and ‘free-speaker’97 and like that of Horace (vv. 79–81), without malice (Šjqonov) and has as its ideal audience men of learning who are taking well-mannered relaxation. That Horace’s amici fit such a description is made clear throughout Book 1 of the Satires. For Horace, however, it is not Old Comedy which represents the paradigm of malicious abuse which is to be rejected, but rather the poison of ill-founded gossip. If individuals are named, the purpose, like that of his father’s teaching, is our own good; unlike Plutarch’s vision of Aristophanes, Horace is not pandering to our worst instincts, but trying to bring out our best. In doing so, he both distances himself from Old Comedy and parades his attachment to it; this is not just a provocation to his critics (real or alleged), though, like his disquisition on whether or not satire is ‘poetry’ (vv. 39–63), it is that too. It is also a marker of the distinction between the kind of criticism and literary history which we find in the Prolegomena to comedy and that which Horace is writing (or indeed that which Callimachus writes in the Reply to the Telchines); the clear distinctions of the treatises give way to a more open and less clearly defined pattern, and one in which, as perhaps in life itself, shades of grey dominate over black and white. 96 97

The ancient fashioning of the figure of Archilochus (see Pindar, Pythian 2.52–6 etc.) is also an important exemplum here. See Philodemus, perª parrhs©av p. 42 col. I 6 Olivieri = Konstan et al. 1998: 92.

chapter 4

The ugly peasant and the naked virgins: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On Imitation

In the four centuries which followed Euripides’ mim¯esis of Homer in the Cyclops, imitative practice in all its senses was refined and theorised by poets, rhetoricians and philosophers. If the major landmarks of the fourth century – Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle – are still visible to us, most of what followed has simply disappeared, though the empty surface is occasionally broken (e.g. by papyri of Philodemus) to suggest some of what we are missing. It is only from the Augustan age onwards that sufficient material in both Greek and Latin survives to make possible an overview of ancient approaches to the subject of mim¯esis.1 The present chapter concerns an Augustan work which seems to look forwards and backwards in multiple senses: it clearly draws on lost Hellenistic work and is itself preserved only in fragments, whereas the scope of its ambition looks forward to the great synthesising works of the imperial period. In his Letter to Pompeius Dionysius of Halicarnassus refers to a work (or series of essays) of his addressed to one Demetrius on the subject of mim¯esis: ‘The first concerns the enquiry into mim¯esis, the second deals with which poets, philosophers, historians and orators we should imitate, and the third (which is still unfinished) with how we should practise mim¯esis’ (Letter to Pompeius 3.1). It is presumably largely the second of these which is described in rather more detail in the proem to Dionysius’ essay On Thucydides: In the treatises (Ëpomnhmatismo©) on imitation which I published earlier, Quintus Aelius Tubero, I discussed those poets and prose writers whom I considered to be the most distinguished, and I briefly explained the virtues of content and language of each, and where each had particularly fallen short of his own standards, whether because his intention (proa©resiv) did not allow him to see the whole of the subject in its most accurate detail, or because his powers did not operate successfully throughout his work. My intention was that those who set out to be 1

Russell 1979 remains one very valuable attempt at such an overview.

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good writers and speakers should have excellent and approved models (kan»nev) to use in their individual exercises; not that they should imitate everything which they find in the texts of these men, but that they should take their virtues and steer clear of their failings. (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On Thucydides 1)

A work On imitation, arranged in this manner and written by a Greek scholar in Augustan Rome, should be a work of the greatest interest to (inter alios) students of ancient criticism, Augustan literature and ‘higher education’ in antiquity. Moreover, Dionysius’ description of the work, together with the fragments which survive, suggest that its scope covered both ‘imitation’ in a theoretical, Platonising mode, and the more downto-earth practice of allusive mim¯esis as we are familiar with it in later Greek and Roman writing. Had it survived, Dionysius’ work might well have stood witness to a coming-together, or at least juxtaposition, of two of the principal streams of ancient ‘mim¯esis theory’, whose interplay has always been both obviously important and very difficult to locate with precision.2 Unfortunately, time has not been kind to Dionysius’ work. Apart from a few (very interesting) fragments of Book 1, our principal witness to the On Imitation3 is an epitome of Book 2 from late antiquity or the early Byzantine period; unfortunately (again), the text of the Epitome is preserved in a very corrupt state, and due caution is necessary in moving from it to a reconstruction of Dionysius’ actual words and views. Nevertheless, the striking parallelism between the writers considered in the Epitome and the judgements passed on them and the similar material in Quintilian 10.1, a parallelism which shows that Quintilian used either Dionysius or Dionysius’ source (or both),4 allows some confidence that the task of reconstruction is not a hopeless one. Moreover, Dionysius’ description of (at least) Book 2 in On Thucydides 1 (above) is very like that which he gives of the extant On the Ancient Orators in the preface to that work: [My subject is:] Who are the most notable of the ancient orators and prose writers, what were their styles (proair”seiv) of life and writing (l»goi),5 and what should we take from each and of what should we steer clear. This is a splendid subject and one which is vital for those who practise political philosophy . . .6 (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On the Ancient Orators, Proem 4.2) 2 3

4 5

For a related point see Russell 1979: 3–4. The standard edition is now Aujac 1992; Battisti 1997 is a helpful edition but leaves many problems undiscussed. On Dionysius’ theory of ‘eclectic mim¯esis’ see, e.g., Hidber 1996: 56–75. The On Imitation is usually held to be an early work of Dionysius, see Bonner 1939: 36–7. See Tavernini 1953: 5–51; further bibliography in Rutherford 1998: 40 n. 13. 6 On this phrase see below p. 124. l»gwn is Reiske’s emendation of the transmitted l»gou.

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We may thus, with due caution, also use Dionysius’ extant writings on classical oratory to reconstruct his views of and attitudes to the great poets of the past, and some further justification for this confidence may be drawn from the similarity between the passages I have just cited and the close of the epitome of Book 2 of the On Imitation: I have described the style of these orators and shown through the possession of which virtue each of them may contribute to the benefit of those who engage with them (tän –ntugcan»ntwn).7 I have examined the styles («d”ai) of all the writers considered so that I may show what constitutes a careful reading from which can be derived the successful qualities of each. We must not read the ancients superficially, expecting that benefit will come to us imperceptibly (lelhq»twv), but with principles to guide us (–pisthm»nwv), particularly if we wish to adorn our own logos with excellent features drawn from all of the ancients. These things themselves give pleasure through their own nature, but if through art (t”cnh) they are mixed into the form of a single linguistic structure (e«v —n¼v tÅpon logikoÓ sÛmatov), the expression (jr†siv) is improved by the mixing. (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On Imitation fr. VI, pp. 213–14 U.-R. = p. 40 Aujac)

In this chapter my focus will be on perhaps the best-known section of the Epitome, its opening, as it is here that we may hope to be able to trace, however faintly, the classical inheritance of Dionysius’ classicising theory. Dionysius begins with two anecdotes which illustrate the idea that constant exposure to the great works of the past can have a positive effect on the ‘beauty’ of our own speeches and that we should expose ourselves to as great a range of such works as possible so that we can pick out the best of each to put into our own work: We must spend time with the writings of the ancients, so that we can acquire from them not merely material for our arguments but also emulation of their expressions (¾ tän «diwm†twn zlov). For, by constant observation, the reader’s soul attracts a likeness8 of the style (caraktžr), such as the story says happened to the peasant’s wife. The story goes that an ugly farmer was afraid that he would be the father of children like himself, and this fear taught him the art of making beautiful children. He fashioned beautiful images (e«k»nav) and made his wife look at them regularly; when she had looked at them he would sleep with her and was rewarded with beautiful children.9 In this way, in literature also, likeness is born through imitation, whenever someone emulates what seems excellent in each 7 8 9

This verb often denotes simply ‘reading’ (see Chantraine 1950: 122–5), but Dionysius clearly has in mind a form of concentrated reading to which we may as well give the name ‘studying’. The important discussion of Porter 2006b: 339 is perhaps misleading here: ¾moi»thv will here be ‘likeness’, not ‘identity’. The sense is clear, but the text is at best doubtful, even in the context of the very strange expressions of the Epitome; Russell adopts Sylburg’s –kg»nwn for e«k»nwn (Russell 1979: 6).

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of the ancients and, as it were, constructs a single stream from many rivulets and channels this into his own soul. I would like to confirm this account with an actual example. Zeuxis was a painter who was admired by the people of Croton. When he was painting a picture of the naked Helen, they sent along the young girls of the town so that he could see them naked; not that they were all beautiful, but it was not probable that they were completely ugly. He collected together the features of each which were worth painting into a single bodily image (Á dì §n Šxion parì —k†sthi grajv, –v m©an  qro©sqh sÛmatov e«k»na), and from the bringing together of many parts art fashioned a single perfect form (™n ti . . . t”leion e²dov).10 Thus you too, as in a theatre, can examine (–xistore±n) forms of beautiful bodies and pick (ˆpanq©zesqai) the best from their souls, and by bringing together the contribution of your wide learning (polum†qeia) you may fashion, not an image which will fade with time (–x©thlon cr»nwi), but the immortal beauty of art . . . . . . so that the imitation should contain extracts which are obvious and clear to the audience.11 (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On Imitation fr. VI, pp. 203–4 U.-R. = pp. 31–2 Aujac)

The story of how the ugly peasant managed to have handsome children, a version of what Michael Reeve called the ‘Andromeda effect’,12 shows us that the study of the past is, at least in part, a means to influence the present, not a hopeless admiration across an unbridgeable divide;13 by taking careful note of where past writers ‘failed’, we may indeed even hope to surpass the past (see Quintilian 10.2.28). This kind of classicising imitation is not simply ‘reproductive’; it requires thought and intellectual activity, and this is reinforced by the Platonic heritage of the passage. In the Symposium, which seems to be the key text here, Diotima teaches Socrates that er¯os is not ‘er¯os of the beautiful’, but rather ‘er¯os of procreation and of giving birth in the beautiful’ (206e); men and women are stimulated to give birth by the presence of the beautiful, whereas the presence of the ugly (t¼ a«scr»n) causes sterility and drying up (206d). Moreover, we desire to procreate because procreation is immortal and secures our immortality (206e–207a). For those of us pregnant in our souls ‘with things which it is fitting for the soul to conceive and bring to birth’ (209a2), a category which includes poets, artists and lawgivers, if we meet and associate with someone 10 11 12 13

I follow here, as does Aujac, Kiessling’s emendation of the transmitted sullog©santi . . . t”leion kal¼n «doÅ; Battisti preserves the last three words with strong punctuation after kal»n. As Usener realised, this seems to be a stray fragment from a later part of the preface; Usener also proposed –†n tì for ¯na tì. See Reeve 1989, Battisti 1990; Reeve collects references to stories similar to that of Dionysius in n. 12 of his article. Such a view would, however, find at least a relation in Velleius Paterculus’ view that genres reach perfection within a relatively short space of time and are then abandoned because men realise that they will never be able to get close to the great figures (1.17.5–7).

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beautiful in both body and soul, we procreate logoi there ‘both when we are with them and when we are away but remembering them’ (209c2–3). That the offspring of such meetings is more valuable and more immortal than the offspring of those pregnant in body is clear ‘when someone looks at Homer and Hesiod and the other good poets and envies (zhlän) them the offspring which they have left behind, which bring them immortal glory and remembrance’ (209d1–5). The path from these chapters of the Symposium to a classicising theory of literary imitation is anything but straightforward, but a few landmarks remain visible. Both a Platonic inheritance and the language of pregnancy and birth are, of course, ubiquitous both in the imagery of poets themselves for the creative process and in ancient discussions of literary production. Particularly close to Dionysius here is the language and imagery of ‘Longinus’, On the Sublime: the Pythian priestess, for example, is made ‘pregnant’ by the earthly emanations at Delphi (13.2).14 Nevertheless, we can, I think, here move beyond the purely general. First, Plato’s ambiguous ‘in the (presence of the) beautiful’ and the need for those who are pregnant to associate (Œptesqai kaª ¾mile±n, 209c2–3) with the beautiful, if they are to give birth successfully, is at an indeterminate number of removes from Dionysius’ insistence that we must spend time (–ntugc†nein), through reading, with the writings of the ancients in order ourselves to produce kal† speeches, but that there is a line of descent between the two seems clear.15 That the procreative flood does not eventually require the actual presence of the beautiful, provided that we have spent sufficient time with him/it that we remember him/it when we are away, does not merely capture with uncomfortable percipience the nature of sexual desire (and its temporary relief ) but also offers a justification for a continuing, lifelong exposure to ‘beautiful’ works of literature. Those who have been properly trained in the appreciation of the great writers of the past will not need constantly to ‘check their sources’ when themselves composing, because their own sensibilities and skills will ‘remember’ and utilise what they have absorbed through prolonged direct contact. We are here not too far away from the idea, versions of which were to emerge in every period of thinking about literary production up to the present day, that er¯os, fed by memories and mental images of the beloved (‘the beautiful’), was the principal driving force in the production of great literature; whereas such desire and such 14 15

See, e.g., Innes 1995a: 120–1 (though Innes does not mention the Platonic background), below p. 116 n. 30. For the importance of the fact that what is to be imitated should be kal»n see also the collection of definitions of zlov in ‘Ammonius’, De diff. verb. 209–11 Nickau.

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memories and images could be distracting and destructive – one thinks of Apollonius’ Medea (Argon. 3.451–8) or Virgil’s Dido (Aeneid 4.1–5) – they could also lead, as they indeed do for Medea and Dido,16 to a ‘giving birth’ to logoi, which for those of particular natural gifts would not be simply ‘reproductive’, but would be something quite new. Already for Dionysius’ orators, of course, the aim is not to reproduce the words of the ancients but rather to write new speeches as the ancients would have written them.17 The Platonic play between the moral and aesthetic senses of kal»n and a«scr»n, the fact that those who are pregnant in soul search for someone who is beautiful in both body and soul, persists in the classicising insistence that literary models are not just models of style, but also intellectual and moral models (in the language of Dionysius, the ‘style of life’ (proa©resiv b©ou) is just as important as the l»goi); there can be no proper model of style which does not also offer a necessary moral seriousness, and this point is to assume considerable importance in the subsequent anecdote concerning Zeuxis.18 In Plato the examples of (the poetry of ) Homer, Hesiod and the other great figures of the past can make clear to us, as we gaze at them (ˆpobl”pein, Symp. 209d2, cf. Rep. 5.472c7),19 just how much more valuable and immortal than the bodily version is this ‘soul pregnancy and giving birth’; for Diotima the examples of the great poets of the past can serve as a protreptic to us to give birth to spiritual offspring. The late rhetorician Phoibammon cites precisely this passage of the Symposium to stress that the production of immortal logoi offers immortal glory, not just the short-lived pleasure of children,20 and we must bear in mind the possibility that Dionysius’ use of the anecdote of the ugly peasant was more complex (and more overtly Platonic) than now appears from the text of the Epitome. He may, for example, have moved from the anecdote to make much the same hierarchising point as Phoibammon was to do. As in Plato, then, the ‘contemplation of the beautiful’ is productive of fine offspring: a didactic zlov ‘envy’ has now become a striving for emulation (zlov). For Plato, of course, it is our souls which are the crucial part of this operation, and, throughout the classicising tradition, it is indeed our souls which are affected by, as was Dionysus’ in the Frogs,21 and in touch with the great literary works of the past; in Book 10 of the 16 17

18 20

It is tempting to think that Virgil was not unaware of some such theorising at the opening of Book 4: images of Aeneas and his words haunt Dido, just as Apollonius here haunts the Virgilian text. ‘The imitator of Demosthenes is not the person who says what Demosthenes said but the person who speaks Demosthenically’ is a familiar tag from the ars wrongly ascribed to Dionysius (II 373.18–19 U.-R., with Usener’s supplement). 19 See further below p. 115. See below p. 119. 21 See above pp. 36–8. Rabe 1931: 375–6. On this work cf. W. Stegemann, RE 20.330–2.

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Republic it is the fact that poetic representations appeal to the soul and the mind which make them far more dangerous than paintings (see 10.603b–c). For Dionysius we must channel (metoceteÅein)22 what is good in ancient works into our souls (Epitome 1.3); Longinus too makes this very clear: . . . from the natural genius of the ancients emanations as from holy mouths are carried into the psychai of those who emulate them (‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 13.2)

This repeated insistence perhaps suggests that Dionysius made clear that, in the anecdote of the ugly peasant, the peasant’s wife who is forced to ‘contemplate the beautiful’ takes the part of the psych¯e, whereas Dionysius himself and his students are in the position of the peasant. The anecdote thus ‘normalises’ the extraordinary biology of the Symposium in which the male gives birth (though it is his psych¯e which is pregnant) and the description of this giving birth combines language and imagery of both male ejaculation and female reproduction. Whether we should go further and speculate that either in Dionysius’ text or behind it lay a ‘normalisation’ of Plato’s ‘flooding’, very suggestive of male ejaculation, which happens to the pregnant when they approach the beautiful (Symposium 206d2–3), into the familiar language of the ‘channelling’ of past literature into one’s own soul remains unclear.23 The lesson of the anecdote of Zeuxis and the virgins of Croton is usually understood to be that creative mim¯esis requires a wide and deep knowledge of ancient literature,24 selection within those works of the past, for some works excel in one aspect and others in another, and an intelligent eclecticism.25 This is certainly the use to which Cicero, who adds the detail that Zeuxis first selected five of the young ladies to serve as his models, puts the anecdote in the introduction to Book 2 of the De inuentione, and these clearly are important truths for Dionysius. In following the imitative practices of Zeuxis, we will be following in the footsteps of a great master of the high classical period, just as ‘Longinus’ both holds up, say, Plato to us as a model to imitate, but also stresses that Plato himself learned from his great predecessors (On the Sublime 13.2). Plato is indeed again important here, even if the anecdote of Zeuxis seems at first sight far less ‘Platonic’ than 22 23 24 25

For the familiar image of literary influence as the channelling of water see, e.g., ‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 13.3; below pp. 158–60. On this passage see further Walsh 1988: 267. See further Dionysius’ remarks at Dinarchus 7.5 on ‘natural’ mim¯esis arising from ‘long communion and familiarity with ancient models’. For these ideas see also Quintilian 10.2.23–6; for the corresponding tradition in art and art criticism see, e.g., Maffei 1986.

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that of the ugly peasant. Zeuxis composed a t”leion kal»n or a t”leion e²dov (depending on one’s choice of text), and we are reminded once again of Platonic language (not, of course, that Plato would have described any painting as t”leion). The Platonic Socrates himself compares the search in the Republic for ‘real’ justice and for a man who is ‘perfectly just’ (tel”wv d©kaiov) to a painter who paints a ‘model’ (par†deigma) of a man who is k†llistov in every respect but who cannot demonstrate that such a man could ever exist (5.472b–d). The similarity between this and the implications of the ‘Zeuxis anecdote’ (or other exchanges like it)26 seems to have been seen in antiquity. Maximus of Tyre (second half of the second century ad) describes Plato’s undertaking in the Republic as follows: Plato’s foundation and his republic exist in theory; Plato aims at the highest level of perfection rather than of utility. It is like those who fashion statues (ˆg†lmata) and bring together every beautiful element which each thing can contribute and through their art combine (ˆqro©santev) aspects of different bodies into a single representation (m©mhsiv), thus producing a unified beauty which is sound and well-proportioned and harmonious with itself. You could not find a body which was exactly and in real truth like a statue, for the arts aim at what is most beautiful whereas our everyday encounters and experiences fall short of what the arts achieve. (Maximus of Tyre 17.3)

The similarity to the language and ideas of the Zeuxis anecdote in the Epitome seems very clear, even if, of course, Plato might roll in his grave at the purposes to which his texts were now being put. The beautiful girls who exposed themselves to Zeuxis were neither completely kala© nor completely a«scra©; Zeuxis chose (to represent) not any one beautiful body, but rather beauty itself, which was partially reflected in each of the girls, but wholly in none. From Homer onwards, Helen, the subject of Zeuxis’ painting and, we might say, Aphrodite’s ‘representative here on earth’, is the very instantiation of ‘beauty itself’. Zeuxis’ t”leion kal»n is in fact (of course) a created artefact, but otherwise we may again be reminded of the description of ‘perfect beauty’ in Plato’s Symposium: [a beauty] which is eternal and neither comes into being nor is destroyed, neither increases nor diminishes, not beautiful in one respect but ugly in another, not beautiful at one time but not at another, not beautiful in relation to one thing but ugly in relation to another, not beautiful in one part but ugly in another, as some people find it beautiful and others ugly . . . (Plato, Symposium 210e6–211a5) 26

See below p. 119 on Xenophon, Mem. 3.10.2.

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As something of a footnote, we may observe that the opening of Horace’s Ars Poetica is clearly related to the anecdote about Zeuxis: humano capiti ceruicem pictor equinam iungere si uelit et uarias inducere plumas undique conlatis membris, ut turpiter atrum desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne, spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?

(Horace, Ars Poetica 1–5)

If a painter decided to put a human head on a horse’s neck and cover limbs gathered from all over the place with feathers of different colours, making the beautiful woman above end shamefully in a black fish, could you refrain from laughing, my friends, if you were let in to admire the painting?

Horace has taken the idea of bringing together bits of different bodies in both art and literature, but used it to create an exemplary image of ugly disproportion and lack of pleasing unity, rather than of ‘perfect and perfectly proportioned’ beauty. Horace’s concern with structure differs, of course, from the point Dionysius is making about our use of the great writers of the past, but it is tempting to think that both are in touch with similar streams of criticism.27 It would be very typical of the Ars Poetica to offer a novel twist to familiar critical ideas. Diotima had observed that if we remain fixated on any particular single beautiful body or thing, we will be ‘enslaved, worthless and petty’, whereas if we contemplate ‘the great sea of beauty’, the logoi and diano¯emata to which we give birth will be ‘beautiful and grand’ (Symp. 210d2–6); her stress on the need to abandon a single earthbound beauty for its vast multiplicity in order finally to reach a single ‘perfect’ beauty has obvious consequences for what the anecdote of Zeuxis has to teach us, but we may also sense that her division between types of ‘the pregnant’ had consequences for later literary and rhetorical teaching. ‘Longinus’ insists that sublime writing can only emerge from those whose thoughts are grand: The thoughts of the true orator must not be low and mean (tapein¼n kaª ˆgenn”v), for it is not possible that those whose thoughts and practices during their whole lives are small and suited to slaves should produce (–xenegke±n)28 something wonderful and worthy of lasting for all eternity. (‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 9.3) 27 28

For Horace and Dionysius see further below pp. 124–7. I have wondered whether Horace’s mulier formosa gestures towards the anecdote of Zeuxis. The ‘birthing’ metaphor should be fully felt, see LSJ s.v. –kj”rw II.1.

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What in Plato is the pursuit of two very different types of beauty has become the fashioning of two very different types of speaker and writer. Dionysius would certainly have agreed that the quality of an orator’s thought is crucial for the production of ‘immortal’ works, but what is stressed is the central rˆole played also by the proper study of great works of the past, if such immortality is our goal (Epitome 1.5).29 Here too, ‘Longinus’ shows us how crucial Plato was, as he may well also have been for Dionysius. In On the Sublime 13.1 ‘Longinus’ illustrates Platonic sublimity with a citation of Republic 9.586a which contrasts the ‘downward’ trajectory and gaze of those who live for the daily pleasures of the flesh with those who are carried upwards (quite literally sublimis) towards truth and lasting and true pleasure. The temptation to apply the dichotomy of the Platonic passage to the difference between great and ‘low’ writing is merely strengthened by what follows. ‘Longinus’ proceeds to point the lesson by explaining (13.2) that Plato shows us ‘another road towards the heights (–pª t‡ Ëyhl†)’; if we ignore (katoligwre±n) Plato’s lesson, we will be like the beast-men who are ‘carried downwards’ (k†tw . . . j”rontai).30 The clear implication, then, is that Plato’s two classes of men also map on to two classes of writers, namely those who achieve sublimity, and those who do not. For the former, ‘emulation will bring those great characters (i.e. the great writers of the past) before our eyes, and their shining presence will lead our souls upwards to the ideal standards of perfection’ (On the Sublime 14.1); contemplation of the great writers of the past will make us, like the peasant’s wife or like the Pythian priestess (13.2), pregnant with something worthy (see also 9.1–2). We will dare, like Zeuxis, to seek to create something for all posterity. The earthbound writer, however, will have thoughts which are ‘low and mean’ or ‘small and suited to slaves’ (9.3, cited above), and the products of his soul will be ‘unformed and damaged, ripe for abortion’ (14.3). A clear sense of the Platonic ideas (and Ideas) which informed such critical discussion may be gained from the opening chapters of Cicero’s Orator in which Cicero discusses the ‘ideal’ orator as precisely that, an ideal formed upon a Platonic pattern; it is an ideal of beautiful perfection which can only be grasped intellectually: 29 30

On this passage see further below p. 118. It is obviously important that the Platonic passage does not merely refer to metaphysical realities but also contains an extended metaphor or ‘allegory’. In the Republic Glaukon responds to Socrates by saying that his speech has perfectly described the life of the many ‘in the manner of an oracle’ (crhsmwide±v), 9.586b5; immediately after citing the Republic, ‘Longinus’ compares imitation of the great writers of the past to the way in which the Pythia utters her oracles (crhsmwide±n) under the influence of divine vapours from the earth. ‘Longinus’’ own Platonic ‘imitation’, in a chapter discussing imitation, is therefore here more complex than usually appreciated, see further below.

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In fashioning the perfect orator I shall perhaps be representing such a person as has never existed. My inquiry is not who this orator was, but what is that unsurpassable quality which seldom if ever appears constantly in someone’s speaking, but does sometimes shine forth in some parts, more often in some orators than in others . . . This ideal cannot be perceived by the eyes or the ears or any other sense, but we embrace it only with our thought and our minds . . . Pheidias [whose statues are incomparable], when he was making the images of Zeus and Athena, did not look at any individual from whom he took a likeness, but there was in his mind an extraordinary vision of beauty at which he gazed intently and guided his art and his hand towards making a likeness of this. (Cicero, Orator 7–9)

Cicero then proceeds to refer explicitly to Plato’s ‘Ideas’, which he describes with an echo of the same passage of the Symposium (210e6–211a5, cited above) as that to which the story of Zeuxis and the virgins directed our attention. Cicero is using the Platonic analogy to describe the subject of his treatise, not the treatise itself, and his Pheidias’ intellectualism may seem the very opposite of Dionysius’ Zeuxis, whose eye is fixed on some very earthly beauties, but both artists in fact reach the same (Platonic) result. There may be a common Hellenistic tradition lying behind both texts,31 but what is important is that the Platonic inheritance offered more than one possibility to the critical tradition; it itself was a stream which was channelled in very many directions. Dionysius’ Zeuxis bears witness to a productive and ‘Platonic’ combining of two forms of mim¯esis, of neither of which would Plato have approved. The story of the painting of Helen casts Zeuxis as Paris, judging the beauty of women and rewarded with the ‘naked Helen’, which was precisely the subject of the painting around which the story revolves; if it is the case, as is widely held, that this painting in fact showed Helen waiting to receive Paris, then the interplay of art and life, of artist and character, was here complex indeed, at least in ancient writing about the painting, if not in the painting itself. We cannot be sure how Dionysius told the anecdote in detail, but the reference to the theatre in the lesson which the Epitome draws from it perhaps suggests that, in Dionysius’ version, the virgins were first assembled in the theatre at Croton, as, in Cicero’s version, they are brought together unum in locum (De inuentione 2.3).32 Zeuxis would 31 32

On this passage of Cicero and on the history of how art theory took over the Platonic ‘idea’ see Panofsky 1968: 11–18 and passim. It obviously makes an important difference whether the theatre was taken over from the anecdote into the ‘moral’, or belongs purely to Dionysius’ account of how we may examine the texts of the past; I incline, as will be clear, to the former view. Aujac 1992: 15 apparently wishes to dissociate Epitome 1.5 from the immediately preceding Zeuxis anecdote and associates it rather with a now lost image drawn from the theatre; though possible, this seems very unlikely in view of the striking

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then have found himself in a situation parallel to Apuleius’ account of an arousing theatrical performance of the ‘Judgement of Paris’ (Metamorphoses 10.30–4). Be that as it may, it is clear that, within the privacy of our own libraries33 – itself a difference from Zeuxis’ public exercise in krisis which speaks to a cultural shift of very great proportions – we too can all play Paris. The idea is a complementary inversion of ‘Longinus’’ encouragement to us to ourselves ‘perform’ before an imaginary ‘court room and theatre’ where the ‘judges and witnesses’ are themselves the great figures of the past, such as Homer and Demosthenes (On the Sublime 14.2);34 in Dionysius, as in the Frogs or as in Dio’s Oration 52,35 we are the audience and it is those past figures which parade before us. There is, however, a potentially significant difference between Zeuxis and ourselves. Whereas Zeuxis looks at bodies and produces an image of a supreme physical beauty, we may ‘as in a theatre enquire into forms («d”av) of beautiful bodies and pick what excels from the psych¯e of each of them’. We should perhaps not make too much of this difference. The final sentence of the Epitome (above p. 109) holds out the possibility of a combination of art and nature into ‘the form of a single linguistic structure’ (—n¼v tÅpov logikoÓ sÛmatov); the repetition of säma, even within such a complex and charged phrase, and the idea of nature improved by art both seem to pick up the Zeuxis anecdote, which may thus have been given particular, programmatic importance. It is clear, even through the haze of the Epitome’s text, that Book 2 of the On Imitation was marked by formal ring composition; the polyvalence of «d”a, for example, seems to have been exploited to link beginning and end (see above pp. 109–10). Moreover, the commendation for Homer which opens the list of writers to be imitated picks up the ‘body language’ of the Zeuxis anecdote in such a way as to make clear that it does not preclude the portrayal of psychological features: With the poetry of Homer, one should take as a model not just some one part of the work (säma), but rather the whole, and one should seek to imitate the characters and passions and greatness which is there, and the narrative economy and all the other virtues; they should of course be changed so that the imitation is truly yours. (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On Imitation fr. VI, pp. 204 U.-R. = p. 32 Aujac)

33 34 35

parallelisms of thought and language between the anecdote and the ‘moral’. Aujac may have been influenced by Usener’s suggested palaiän for the transmitted kalän, see further below p. 121. See Cicero, De inuentione 2.4. ‘Judges’ naturally refers to the idea of a court, whereas ‘witnesses’ probably refers to the audience in a theatre (see, e.g., Plato, Symp. 175e6). See above pp. 39–48.

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Nevertheless, there are also certain other indications which point to a particular importance for the body–soul distinction. Zeuxis’ fame rested on his innovations (see esp. Lucian, Zeuxis) and his extraordinary reproduction and enhancement of surfaces, of what the eye sees. Xenophon’s Socrates unfavourably contrasts the pleasure of looking at a picture by Zeuxis of a beautiful woman with getting to know the aret¯e of a real woman (Oeconomicus 10.1), and Aristotle observes that Zeuxis’ paintings were entirely without §qov (Poetics 1450a28–9, cf. 1461b12–13). The theme is, of course, a common one in early ‘art criticism’. It is thematised as early as Hesiod’s Pandora story in which all the gods ‘sculpt’ a virgin who is surpassingly beautiful on the outside but inside conceals ‘lies and wheedling words and a thieving character (§qov)’ (Works and Days 77–8); here already is the motif of ‘multiple origins’, although in this case it is the artist, rather than the model, who is multiplied. In an earlier instance of the ‘virgins of Croton’ theme, Xenophon’s Socrates asks Parrhasius whether painting is a ‘representation of things seen’ (e«kas©a tän ¾rwm”nwn) and closely anticipates both the ideas and the language of the Zeuxis anecdote:36 ‘When you are making likenesses of beautiful forms, since it is not easy to find an individual in whom every part is flawless, you combine the most beautiful parts of each of many bodies and thus produce bodies which appear completely beautiful.’ ‘Yes we do’, said Parrhasius. ‘Well, then,’ said Socrates, ‘do you imitate the character (§qov) of the soul which is most winning and pleasant and open and desirable and lovely? Or can this not be caught by mim¯esis?’ ‘How, Socrates,’ said Parrhasius, ‘could one capture that which has neither form nor colour nor any of the things you mentioned just now and is not even visible?’ (Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.10.2–3)

Although Socrates proceeds to argue with Parrhasius and subsequently with Kleiton that painters and sculptors should indeed be able to reproduce facets of character, the point about the artist’s conception of art seems clear. A similar point is made in another text which is regularly (and correctly) brought into connection with the Zeuxis anecdote. The encomium of Pantheia in Lucian’s Imagines is divided into praise of her physical beauty 36

Both this passage of Xenophon and 1.5 of the Epitome may shed light on the notoriously difficult sentence at ‘Longinus’ 13.4 describing creative imitation as a kind of ˆpotÅpwsiv; these passages may be thought to lend support there to Toll’s e«dän for the transmitted  qän. To the commentators add B¨uhler 1964: 98–9. I have wondered whether some version of the Zeuxis anecdote partly lies behind the ‘beauty contest’ of Xenophon, Symposium 5.

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and praise of her cultural and moral attributes. For the former, the character Lycinus draws on the most famous products of classical painting and sculpture; these may, however, be sufficient for describing a woman’s ‘bodily beauty’ (säma kaª morjž), but for ‘virtues of her soul’ (t‡ tv yucv ˆgaq†, 11; cf. 15, a¬ psai tv yucv ˆreta©) they have to be abandoned in favour of figures from poetry, myth and history, and the lessons of the philosophers. ‘Perfect beauty’ (–ntel•v k†llov) is a combination of yucv ˆretž and eÉmorj©a sÛmatov (11), whereas Helen, the object of Zeuxis’ painting, is the paradigm of the woman who is beautiful ‘in body alone’ (22). The close of the Imagines reworks the now familiar idea of combining features drawn from many people into one perfect ‘image’ which will last for ever, while also making a further point about the power of the written word (with some obvious play on the various senses of gr†jein) with which Dionysius might well have agreed: If you are willing, let us now mingle our images (e«k»nev), the one you moulded of her body and those I painted (–gray†mhn) of her soul, let us make one from all of them and, by setting it down in a book, give all men something to wonder at, both our contemporaries and those who will come after. It would at any rate be more long-lasting than the works of Apelles and Parrhasius and Polygnotus, and far more welcome to the lady herself than such works, as it will not be made of wood or wax or paints, but the image will have been made with inspirations from the Muses, and it will be the most accurately detailed image, as it will show off both the beauty of her body and the virtue of her soul. (Lucian, Imagines 23)

If we can trust the Epitome (1.5), Dionysius too used the Zeuxis anecdote to show how rhetorical mim¯esis was both like and unlike the practice of painting: like it in some of its mimetic practices, but unlike it in the immortality of its products.37 Dionysius’ hope, as the Epitome expresses it, that ‘by bringing together the contribution of your wide learning (polum†qeia) you may fashion, not an image which will fade with time (–x©thlon cr»nwi) but the immortal beauty of art’ most immediately recalls Horace’s claims in Odes 3.30 (exegi monumentum aere perennius, etc.); just as Horace’s poetry will outlast bronze statues, so following Dionysius’ prescriptions will allow us to 37

Chapter 15 of the Imagines, ‘to produce a single, but multiform and inconsistent object out of so many beautiful things is less artistic (grajik»n)’, may indeed be read as a hit at the Zeuxis anecdote and the lessons drawn from it. For the links and differences between the Zeuxis anecdote and Lucian’s Imagines see, e.g., Maffei 1986: 154–7; Zeitlin 2001: 226–7. For Dionysius’ concern with this ‘topos’ of immortality see also Ant. Rom. 1.1.2.

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fashion (tupoÓn, a word of artistic creation) a work which will not be destroyed by time.38 As elsewhere,39 suggestive similarities between what we know of Dionysius’ On Imitation and Augustan poetry only make us wish we knew more. Be that as it may, if we can with confidence work back from the Epitome to Dionysius himself, Dionysius reinforced this idea with an echo of a work which had itself proved immortal, Herodotus’ Histories: This is the setting-forth of the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, so that the deeds of men should not be effaced by time (täi cr»nwi –x©thla) and the great and wonderful achievements of both Greeks and barbarians not lack renown; in particular my concern is the reason they fought each other. (Herodotus, Proem)

Dionysius was in fact explicitly to quote Herodotus’ proem later in Book 2 of On Imitation,40 but the allusion in 1.5 of the Epitome seems clear enough.41 The echo also gives particular resonance to –xistore±n, ‘to enquire into’, a verb not otherwise found in Dionysius’ extant works and, by any standards, a very striking verb to have with ‘the forms of beautiful bodies’ (kalän swm†twn «d”av) as its object.42 The awkward language seems to reflect the effort of Dionysius or the epitomator not merely to ‘acknowledge’ the coming debt to Herodotus but also to reflect the shift between the Zeuxis anecdote and its moral from a purely visual and aesthetic activity to an intellectual ¬stor©h. Behind the use of the verb we may sense part of that debate, most familiar from Polybius’ attack upon the ‘bookish’ historian Timaeus of Tauromenium, about how ‘research’ was best conducted in an age of books.43 The technique of citing ‘immortal words’ when discussing literary immortality is of course a familiar one: Theocritus, for example, alludes to Homer’s immortal words in stressing the power of poetry to confer immortal fame (Theocr. 17.116–17).44 Rather closer to Dionysius, we may look to Eumolpus’ ars poetica: 38 39 41

42

43

Nisbet and Rudd’s introduction and commentary to Odes 3.30 offers a storehouse of material relevant to this theme. 40 See Letter to Pompeius 3.3. See below pp. 124–7. It would be nice to associate this form of allusion with the final clause of Epitome 1.5, ‘so that the imitation should contain extracts which are obvious and clear to the audience’, but there must, at the very least, be something missing in the text there, as Usener saw. On the necessity to ‘acknowledge’ your debts to the tradition see, e.g., Russell 1979: 12. The oddity may have been one of the things which led Usener to propose palaiän for kalän; there is clearly, however, conscious play with the aesthetic and moral senses of kal»n and emendation would here be extremely problematic, particularly in view of the abbreviated nature of the Epitome. See further Battisti 1988: 110–11, who, however, sees a clear identity between artistic and literary creation. 44 See Hunter 2003a: 185. See Hunter 2001a with earlier bibliography.

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‘Young man,’ said Eumolpus, ‘poetry has deceived many. For as soon as someone has produced a metrical verse and woven a subtle meaning with some winding words, he thinks that he has instantly arrived on Helicon. So it is that those exhausted with services in the lawcourts often take refuge in the calm of poetry as if in a happier harbour, in the belief that a poem can more easily be constructed than a controuersia adorned with flashing bits of verbal wit. Noble spirits, however, have no time for emptyness, nor can the mind conceive or bring to birth (neque concipere aut edere partum mens potest) unless it has been drenched in the great river of literature. One must flee from all, so to say, verbal cheapness and use words unknown to the vulgar, to enact ‘I hate the uninitiated crowd and I keep them away’ (Horace, Odes 3.1.1). (Petronius, Satyrica 118.1–4)

Among the flotsam of many theories of composition and style we recognise a version of the need to ‘immerse’ yourself in the many great writers of the past in order to ‘give birth’ to successful literary products. Both the idea and the imagery are familiar from, for example, Dionysius and ‘Longinus’. The ‘great river of literature’, the equivalent of Dionysius’ polum†qeia, resonates amusingly against the ‘Callimacheanism’ of 118.4,45 but we may wonder too whether also to trace it back to Plato’s ‘great sea of the beautiful’, the contemplation of which will lead to the giving birth to ‘many beautiful and grand words and thoughts’ (Symp. 210d2–5).46 Be that as it may, just as ‘Longinus’ echoes Plato when he is talking about imitation of the great figures of the past47 and Dionysius echoes Herodotus’ immortal words about immortality when his theme is the same, so too Eumolpus seems to have a particular text in mind. In Poem 65 Catullus apologises to Hortalus for being unable to send him a poem: etsi me assiduo confectum cura dolore seuocat a doctis, Ortale, uirginibus, nec potis est dulcis Musarum expromere fetus mens animi, tantis fluctuat ipsa malis . . . (Catullus 65.1–4)

Although, Hortalus, I am worn out by constant grieving and emotional pain cuts me off from the learned maidens, and the mind inside me cannot bring forth the sweet offspring of the Muses – so great are the disasters in which it is drowning . . . 45

46

See, e.g., Connors 1998: 134, 143. On Eumolpus’ ars poetica see also Conte 1996: 68–72. For his reading Conte places great weight on sanitatem in 118.3, but uanitatem, found in an early printed edition, has much to be said for it, and is now adopted by most editors, see, e.g., Courtney 2001: 181 n. 2. uanitatem would pick up the sententiolae uibrantes of the previous clause and forms a good contrast with generosior; the rejection of sanity, however, comes in very oddly here, even for a Eumolpus with Horace’s Ars Poetica in his mind. I have pondered also the possibility of inanitatem. 47 See above p. 116. See above p. 111.

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Here we have the alleged inability of the flooded mens to give ‘birth’,48 an idea which Eumolpus then reverses. What Catullus did produce, of course, was a highly allusive poem followed by a translation from Callimachus (Poem 66), both of which amply attest to the fact that his mind was indeed ingenti flumine litterarum inundata. The echo of Catullus thus both confirms and ironises Eumolpus’ claims. Whether Dionysius’ allusion to Herodotus was similarly sophisticated we cannot know, but the proems of works are special sites of display and another Dionysian prologue may strengthen the suspicion that the prologue of On Imitation was indeed complexly allusive, as would fit its subject. The prologue of On the Arrangement of Words presents that work to Rufus Metilius with a graceful reworking of Odyssey 15.125–7, in which Helen presents a robe to Telemachus to be stored away by his mother until the time of his wedding. Dionysius’ gift to a young man will surpass that one: I am sending you not an artefact made by my own hands, as Helen said when she gave the robe to the young man, nor one suited only to the time of marriage and to please a bride, but the creation and offspring (po©hma kaª g”nnhma) of my education and my soul (paide©av kaª yucv tv –mv), one which will be for you both a possession and something of use and benefit (ktma . . . kaª crma . . . Ýj”limon) in all the encounters of life which take place through speech. It is the most necessary of all such things, if I have any sense of what is required (t‡ d”onta), for all alike who practise political oratory, of whatever age or situation they may be. (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On the Arrangement of Words 1.2–3)

Dionysius’ description of his work picks up the generative power implied by the Odyssean reference to marriage, but in the present context it is perhaps more significant that it also repeats the ‘reproductive’ ideas of the On Imitation – with paide©a holding the place of, though perhaps being critically different from, polum†qeia – in a context in which Dionysius in fact advertises his independence from previous critical literature (1.9, 4.19–20);49 here perhaps is a fundamental difference between the ways in which ‘creative’ literature, which depends crucially upon the mim¯esis of earlier texts, and works of criticism could be represented. Be that as it may, we may be tempted here to recall Thucydides 1.22, when Dionysius describes his work as a ‘possession and thing of use’ (ktma . . . crma), which will be ‘beneficial’ (Ýj”limon) in all the textual situations of life, 48 49

See Fitzgerald 1995: 191–2. For other aspects of this passage and for the argument which follows see also Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004: 474–5. See also On the Ancient Orators Proem 4.3. For this proemial topos see also Hidber 1996: 131–2.

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and refers to his concern for t‡ d”onta, ‘what is required’.50 If this allusion is correctly identified, then the description of the audience of On the Arrangement of Words, those who practise political oratory (o¬ ˆskoÓntev toÆv politikoÆv l»gouv 1.3, cf. On the Ancient Orators Proem 3.2, 4.2), which may also be assumed to be the desired audience of the On Imitation, is seen to take the place of, and to descend from, Thucydides’ desired audience, ‘all those who wish to gain a clear view of what happened . . .’ (1.22.4). Both audiences share an appreciation of the fact that the past should inform our judgements and views about the present. In arguing for this Thucydidean pattern in the proem of On the Arrangement of Words, I do not, of course, wish to minimise the crucial and long-recognised debt which Dionysius’ conception of politikoª l»goi owes to Isocrates;51 the combination of Thucydides and Isocrates is in fact one way in which Dionysius constructs the ‘great tradition’. We have, then, sufficient material to allow us to reconstruct something of the intellectual background, and something of the imagery, of some of the ‘theoretical’ parts of the On Imitation. As I have noted before, it would be a great gain to be able to see more of how the kind of teaching reflected in Dionysius interacted with the great poetry which also was being written under Augustus in Rome. Here too we must look for suggestive analogies rather than hope for clear proofs. To conclude this chapter, I want to explore a possible link between Dionysius and Horace which might well encourage us to look for more.52 The verb which Dionysius uses of how we can ‘gather’ the best of each soul we examine, ˆpanq©zesqai (lit. ‘gather from flowers’), is closely paralleled by libauimus which Cicero uses in making the same point (De inuentione 2.4), and the language of collection53 may well make us think of the bee, that image for a writer, particularly a poet, familiar (at least) 50

51

52 53

The general importance of Thucydides 1.22 for Dionysius does not require demonstration (see On Thucydides 7). We may perhaps compare here Ant. Rom. 1.4.2 where the assertion that nearly all Greeks are ignorant of ‘the ancient history’ of Rome and are deceived by false opinions which derive –k tän –pituc»ntwn ˆkousm†twn seems to rework Thucydides 1.20. See Gelzer 1979: 19–22; Hidber 1996: 44–6, 97–100. Commentators point to Ad Demonicum 28 as the origin of Dionysius’ play with ktma and crma; a memory of that passage, on the distinction between having something and knowing how to use it properly, would certainly suit the proem of On the Arrangement of Words, but the Isocratean passage is also playing with the ambiguity of cržmata as ‘things for use’ and ‘money’. What follows is largely drawn from the more detailed exposition in Hunter 2007: 217–19. The striking image of ‘collecting an eranos from your wide learning’ seems to be that, when you are in need of beautiful passages from the past, you will be able to call on your memory for different contributions. By implication, through your knowledge of them your books are your friends, from whom you would normally raise an eranos. Lucian, Lexiphanes 22 (on the choice of vocabulary) is very close to Dionysius here.

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from Plato’s Ion onwards. When in Odes 4.2 Horace contrasts his own ‘bee behaviour’ with the foolhardy undertaking of someone who Pindarum . . . studet aemulari, he may well be reacting to Greek criticism as well as to Greek poetry. The image of a bee would fit well with Dionysius’ privileged practice of ‘eclectic mim¯esis’, and Horace’s warning against Pindaric aemulatio by a poet may seem, in any event, like a response to Dionysius’ claim in On Imitation that there were many reasons why Pindar was ‘worthy of imitation’ (zhlwt»v) for the aspiring orator (2.5 Aujac = II 204–5 U.-R.).54 Odes 4.2 is preceded by a poem which, as is well known, presents itself as a new version of Sappho fr.1. Our principal source for Sappho fr. 1 is in fact Dionysius’ treatise On the Arrangement of Words 23.11; Dionysius quotes the poem as an illustration of what he calls the ‘smooth’ (glajur†) style of composition, of which Sappho is the principal example in the field of lyric poetry. The choice of Sapphic poem, by both Horace and Dionysius, is presumably influenced by the fact that it stood first in the Alexandrian edition of Sappho, which seems largely to have been the work of Aristophanes of Byzantium.55 The style which Dionysius opposes to the ‘smooth’ is the ‘severe’ (aÉsthr†); the two styles are said to be completely opposed to each other ‘in the most important points’ (23.8 = II 113.16–18 U.-R.). The principal lyric example of the ‘severe’ is Pindar (22.7 = II 98.10 U.-R.), and to illustrate this Dionysius cites a dithyramb of that poet (fr. 75 Maehler); there may thus be more than one reason why Horace places dithyrambs first in his survey of the subjects of Pindar’s grand lyric style (Odes 4.2.10–12).56 The ‘severe’ has the grandeur of ‘the 54

55

56

We cannot rule out the possibility that by the time he was writing Odes 4 Horace did in fact know the critical treatises of Dionysius or at least was familiar with the ideas contained therein, even if not exactly in the shape which Dionysius gives them, see further G¨orler 1979: 176–7. For the sense of aemulari in Horace see Kiessling and Heinze ad loc., Hills 1999: 72–3. In the language of Dionysius this is zlov, rather than m©mhsiv, see On Imitation fr. 2 Aujac = II 200.21–5 U.-R., though the distinction is in practice a fluid one (see, e.g., On Imitation 1.3 Aujac = II 203.6–7 U.-R.; ‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 13.2; Russell 1979: 10); for the importance of these ideas for Catullus’ ‘translation’ of Sappho see Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004: 472–4. The zlov of a great figure such as Pindar will, by its very nature, ‘carry our souls upwards’, as ‘Longinus’ puts it (On the Sublime 14.1), and Horace is pointing out the dangers of such Platonic transport. The Pindaric eagle is sublimis in more than one sense. See Pfeiffer 1968: 181–9. The position of the poem in the edition will also shed light on the contrast between the many references to it in the later grammatical tradition – to say nothing of Horace’s use of it – and the apparent paucity of allusions in poetry of the high Hellenistic period (though note Theocritus 1.77–8). Whether or not the lyric text preserved with the new Cologne Sappho (P. K¨oln 430, see Gronewald and Daniel 2005; Esposito 2005: 61–2; Lundon 2007) alludes specifically to Sappho fr. 1 should here be brought into the argument. POxy. 2438.36–9, however, offers an ancient list of Pindar’s works in which the dithyrambs are placed first. For the importance of dithyramb to Horace’s conception of high Greek lyric see Freis 1983, and for Dionysius’ engagement with Pindar more generally see Hornblower 2004: 354–75.

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archaic’ (t¼ ˆrcaik»n, 22.12 = II 100.15–101.1 U.-R.), whereas the ‘smooth’ style avoids t¼ . . . qrasÆ pn kaª parakekinduneum”non ‘everything bold and hazardous’ (23.4 = II 112.16 U.-R.), which the ‘severe’ by implication embraces; here we will recall not just Horace’s per audacis . . . dithyrambos (Odes 4.2.10–11), but the thrust of some famous chapters of ‘Longinus’, On the Sublime.57 It may also be worth suggesting that Horace’s description of the rhythm of Pindar’s dithyrambs, numeris . . . lege solutis, picks up some such critical description as Dionysius, On the Arrangement of Words 19.8 in which the dithyrambists of ‘the new music’ are described as ‘treating rhythms with great freedom and licence’ (to±v çuqmo±v kat‡ pollŸn Šdeian –nexousi†zontev); Šdeia ‘immunity’, like lex itself, is a word with resonance in both the legal and the literary spheres. In the second stanza of Odes 4.2 Horace uses the image of a swollen torrent to describe the power of Pindar’s style; the image is very familiar in both poetry and criticism.58 Here it resonates against the immediately preceding aquas . . . uolubilis (presumably of the Tibur) at the close of Odes 4.1 and perhaps prompts the thought that there too issues of style may be involved. Dionysius says of Sappho fr. 1 that the style ‘flows easily and softly’ (eÎrouv . . . kaª malakž), with no disruptive ‘waves’ (On the Arrangement of Words 23.15 = II 117.4–5 U.-R.); even more striking perhaps is his general description of the ‘smooth’ style: oÉdì Âlwv t¼ bradÆ kaª staqer¼n toÓto j©lon aÉti, ˆll‡ kekinsqai boÅletai tŸn ½nomas©an kaª j”resqai q†tera kat‡ tän —t”rwn ½nom†twn kaª ½ce±sqai tŸn ˆllhlouc©an lamb†nonta b†sin ãsper t‡ ç”onta n†mata kaª mhd”pote ˆtremoÓnta. (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On the Arrangement of Words 23.1–2 = II 112.2–7 U.-R.)59 The style does not care for the slow or immobile, but it demands that the words are kept moving, carried along and riding one on top of another, protected by their mutual interdependence, like flowing streams which are never still.

As Pindar is a mountain torrent, so Sappho is an ever-flowing stream, and in appealing to him through echoes of the Lesbian poet, Horace really is pursuing Ligurinus per aquas uolubilis. The boy’s harshness which intrudes into the phrase (per aquas, dure, uolubilis, Odes 4.1.40) jars with 57 58

59

See below pp. 160–8; Hunter 2003c: 219–25; see also Hills 1999: 76–82; Brink on Horace, Ars P 352. For Sappho’s risk-taking in a different context see ‘Demetrius’, On Style 127. See Hunter 2003c: 219–25, citing earlier bibliography, and above pp. 121–3 on Petronius, Sat. 118.3. Quintilian picks up Horace’s image at 10.1.61, Pindarus princeps . . . uelut quodam eloquentiae flumine. On Odes 4.2 see now Hardie 2008: 149–54. Translation here is singularly difficult, but I hope that this does not misrepresent.

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the soft ‘smooth’ style of a Sappho and prepares for the major contrast of styles which is to be the subject of the following poem. That Horace is here making creative use of stylistic ‘theory’ is obvious; further close attention to Dionysius may reveal that we can know more about the interaction of Augustan criticism and Augustan poetry than is often believed.60 60

On this subject see G¨orler 1979 and further bibliography in De Jonge 2008: 26.

chapter 5

The grand and the less grand: ‘Longinus’, On the Sublime

the frogs revisited One of the best-known and certainly most influential descendants of the Frogs is the treatise peri Ìyouv, On the Sublime, conventionally ascribed to ‘Longinus’ (abbreviated to L in the present chapter) and probably to be dated to the early Empire, perhaps in fact not very much later than the work of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, though rival claims and rival chronologies are still heard;1 earlier chapters have often had cause to refer to this extraordinary treatise. Just as Aristophanes presents a contest between poets, as part of his own contest with other (comic) poets, so the terms of L’s own ag¯on are set at the very beginning of the work: When, as you know, you and I were examining together Caecilius’ little work (suggramm†tion) on the subject of the sublime, my dear Postumius Terentianus, it seemed to us too humble (tapein»teron) for the subject as a whole and not to cover what was salient, thus offering little help to the readers, which must be the principal aim of a writer. Every technical work must first define its subject and secondly, though in fact more importantly, demonstrate how and through what procedures we may achieve the end. Caecilius, however, tries through countless instances to show what the sublime (t¼ Ëyhl»n) is, as though we were quite ignorant of this, but neglected to say, perhaps deeming it unnecessary, how we might be able to develop our own natures towards some higher level of grandeur (m”geqov). Perhaps, however, we ought to applaud the intention and effort involved in this man’s work rather than fault its omissions. Since you have urged me too to sketch out an essay on the sublime for your sake . . . As I am writing, my 1

See Heath 1999. I shall here be assuming the conventional dating of the work, but I hope that too much of the argument does not depend upon it. There is, of course, a huge bibliography on L and his Nachleben; the perspective of this chapter must necessarily be a limited one, and I am particularly conscious of the small rˆole that later discussions of ‘the sublime’ play here. I hope that my debt to Russell’s commentary is visible throughout; helpful recent guidance and bibliography towards other approaches to L may be found in, e.g., Too 1998: 187–217; Whitmarsh 2001: 57–71; and Porter 2001. Aevum Antiquum 3 (2003) is a recent collection of papers on the sublime from antiquity to the present day.

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dear friend, for an educated and learned man such as yourself, I am virtually released from the necessity of a lengthy proem showing that the sublime is an outstanding excellence of language, and that it was through this, not through any other endowment, that the greatest poets and prose-writers reached the forefront and clothed their fame with immortality. Excessive effects (t‡ Ëperju) induce not persuasion but transport (›kstasiv) in the audience, and what is marvellous and knocks us out is always stronger than what is persuasive and attractive. Whether or not we are persuaded is up to us, whereas the other effects bring an overpowering and irresistible force to bear and overcome the listener. Experience in invention and the ordering and arrangement of material is not something we find in one or two details, but it emerges slowly from the whole texture of the words, whereas a sublime effect if deployed at the right time shatters all the material like a thunderbolt and reveals the whole power of the speaker at one go. (‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 1.1–4)

The opening of the work presents not one, but two (related) contests, that between L and Caecilius of Caleacte (Sicily), an Augustan critic who shared many of the Atticist views of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and that between the sublime and the non-sublime or even the ‘humble/low’ (tapein»n), itself all too evident in Caecilius’ inadequate ‘little treatise’.2 These two interconnected contests run like a leitmotif through On the Sublime; when, for example, Caecilius’ favourite orator, Lysias, is later set against L’s Plato (chapters 32.8, 35) or Hyperides against Demosthenes (34), the same battles of the opening chapter are being fought out through illustrious proxies, and these are battles in which we may suspect that neither Caecilius nor L played wholly fair.3 Moreover, just as the opening of Dio, Oration 52 established a readerly community to which Dio belonged and for which he spoke,4 so too L establishes an intellectual and social setting which will give authority to what follows. He and his ‘dear friend’ have studied Caecilius’ essay together and have reached a shared view; as his friend is a man paide©av –pistžmwn ‘knowledgeable and educated’ (1.3), this view carries general weight, particularly when it is accompanied by L’s (exquisitely condescending) display of educated sensibility in noting that perhaps Caecilius deserves praise for trying rather than censure for not bringing it off, that he himself is only writing under pressure from Terentianus (an extremely 2

3

4

The diminutive suggramm†tion itself suggests that Caecilius’ work, even in its very form, will not get you far with ‘the sublime’; cf. poihm†tion (33.4) and log©dion (34.3) for other ‘unsublime’ compositions. It is a great pity that L chose not to detail Lysias’ ‘many faults’ in chapter 35.1 (with the correction of the transmitted ˆpous©av). That L does not actually tell us what the sublime is is a common eighteenth-century complaint against the essay, see, e.g., Ashfield and de Bolla 1996: 49, 87. See above pp. 39–40.

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common proemial motif in ancient treatises), and that the value of what he has to say is a matter for debate (1.2). The sublime involves an excess, as the expression t‡ Ëperju (1.4) suggests, and it is an excess of both language and emotion; it does not make a straightforward appeal to an intellectual faculty such as determines what is ‘persuasive’ (piqan»n),5 it does not seek to please the audience in any simple sense, but it seeks rather to astound (–kplžttein) them, it carries the threat of overpowering violence, like a thunderbolt (1.4, 34.4), its success is nothing short of ‘victory’ in a cosmic battle (34.4),6 and, like the Aristophanic Aeschylus (Frogs 814), its greatest practitioners – above all Homer and Demosthenes – are Zeuses (see 34.4).7 The martial language is appropriate to a quality much more on show in the Iliad than the Odyssey (9.11–15), and in Aeschylus rather than in Euripides, as the critical tradition descending from the Frogs portrayed them, though Aeschylus was in fact a problematic figure for critics of the sublime.8 Euripides may occasionally reach the heights, for it is passages (even very short passages) rather than poets which are truly ‘sublime (1.4 above), but it is not his way to ‘drag the audience from their senses and knock them out (–kplžttein)’ (Frogs 962), which is what the sublime offers. For L the capacity for sublime writing is a natural gift, but one which must be aided by rules of art, lest, left to its own devices, the inherently risky daring of the sublime suffer a catastrophic fall (2, 33.5). When the text resumes after a lengthy lacuna, L is apparently discussing precisely the risks to which the writer striving for the sublime is exposed: tumidity (t¼ o«de±n), puerility (t¼ meirakiädev) and pointless emotional effects, or the ‘falsely bacchic’ (par”nqurson), a term which L takes over from his contemporary Theodorus of Gadara (3.5, cited below). For a tragic poet tumidity is a particular danger, because the genre is ‘naturally swollen and allows grand language’ (½gkhräi jÅsei kaª –pidecom”nwi st»mjon, 3.1). The inheritance of the Frogs seems here particularly clear,9 given the nature of Euripides’ charges against Aeschylus, but it is important that the very idea that tragedy ‘naturally’ permits grand, even bombastic, language itself descends (in part) from the comedy. In the Frogs it is Aeschylus, the unchallenged master of the tragic t”cnh, who is on the side of nature, whose tragedy is the model of the shared, if unspoken, communal assumption of what tragedy and the tragic experience are; nature and art are here 5 6 7 9

On the relationship between the effects of the sublime and ‘truth’ see, e.g., Halliwell 2003. See further below p. 142. 8 See Luzzatto 1981. On the image of Zeus in ancient criticism see also Hunter 2006c: 127–8. See Russell ad loc. On L’s language here see also Luzzatto 1981 and Heath 1999: 64–6.

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in harmony. Or, rather, were in harmony: Euripides represents ‘the shock of the new’, the challenge to received ideas and comfortable certainties. L’s tactic for restoring that harmony is not just to reunite nature and art as working together to the same end, but also by in fact appealing to human nature: as we are not a ‘humble’ or ‘ignoble’ creature, so it is sublime literature which we are called to admire (35.2). It is perhaps not always easy for us, if indeed it was in antiquity, to distinguish the tumid from the childish; some might think that Gorgias’ infamous ‘vultures, living tombs’, cited by L to illustrate tumidity (On the Sublime 3.2), is no more one than the other, and the fact that Hermogenes (248.24–249.4 Rabe) found this same expression coarse (pacÅ), vulgar (eÉtel”v) and frigid (yucr»n), a quality which L associates with puerility (3.4), suggests that such categories overlap freely. What is important is a suitable ‘middle way’.10 Nevertheless, for L tumidity is the result of a failure of judgement in reaching for the sublime, whereas puerility is the very opposite of ‘the great qualities’: Tumidity seeks to go beyond the sublime, whereas puerility is exactly the opposite of great effects, for it is a fault which is completely low and petty and in truth very mean (ˆgenn”staton). What then is puerility? Is it not clearly a thought deriving from school (scolastikŸ n»hsiv), where attention to detail (perierg©a) results in frigidity? It is when writers aim at something unusual and artificial and, particularly, pleasing that they slip into this vice and come to grief in the perils of tawdriness and affectation (t¼ kak»zhlon). Related to this in emotional writing is a third kind of vice, which Theodorus called the ‘pseudo-bacchic’ (par”nqurson); this is untimely and empty emotion, where it is not called for, or unrestrained emotion where moderation was required. (‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 3.4–5)

The language and ideas here may bring to mind the reasons why Dionysus travelled to the Underworld: Di. g»nimon d• poihtŸn ‹n oÉc eÌroiv ›ti zhtän Šn, Âstiv çma genna±on l†koi. ëHr. päv g»nimon; Di. Þdª g»nimon, Âstiv jq”gxetai toiouton© ti parakekinduneum”non, “a«q”ra Di¼v dwm†tion” £ “cr»nou p»da” 10

For the Aristotelian background here see Russell 1964: 73. A very similar set of opposed faults is set out in [Plutarch], ‘On the education of children’ 7a–b: on one side, the qeatrikŸ kaª paratr†gwidov style and, on the other, smikrolog©a tv l”xewv kaª tape©nwsiv. Two other features of that passage are also noteworthy in the present context: the comparison between the health of a speech and the health of the body (see Russell 1964: 72–3), and the explicit privileging of ‘the middle way’ as ›ntecnon and –mmel”v.

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Critical Moments in Classical Literature £ “jr”na m•n oÉk –q”lousan ½m»sai kaq’ ¬erän, glättan dì –piorkžsasan «d©ai tv jren»v”. (Aristophanes, Frogs 96–102)

dion. You couldn’t any longer find a fertile poet if you looked for one, the kind who can utter forth a noble saying. her. What do you mean ‘fertile’? dion. I mean a poet who will say something risky like ‘Air, Zeus’s bedroom’ or ‘foot of Time’ or ‘my mind was unwilling to swear over the sacrifices, but my tongue committed a little perjury on its own’.

Dionysus understands that what is needed for tragedy is a ‘productive’ poet who can hazard ‘noble expressions’ (genna±on çma: contrast L’s ‘a very mean fault’, kak¼n ˆgenn”staton, of puerility); Dionysus is thus precisely looking for what the later tradition, and indeed the coming contest in Frogs itself, would classify as a ‘high’, or in fact ‘sublime’, poet. So far so good. Dionysus’ problem, however, and the comic point of the exchange, is precisely that the phrases he proceeds to adduce seem very far from sublime, and L’s category of the ‘puerile’ would fit them well. ‘Air, Zeus’s bedroom’ is a parodic quotation of the Euripidean ‘sacred Air, Zeus’s dwelling’ (Euripides fr. 487 K); the prosaic diminutive dwm†tion emphasises ordinariness and smallness, tapein»n . . . kaª mikr»yucon in L’s terms, and though there are no rules for such things, it would not seem unfair to regard this as a ‘clever’, ‘scholastic’ elaboration of a relatively simple idea. That the aith¯er is Zeus’s dwelling is indeed relatively straightforward; that it is his ‘bedroom’ is, by this reasoning, the result of trying to move beyond the straightforward towards ‘something more’, in L’s terms ‘the unusual and artificial’ (t¼ peritt¼n kaª pepoihm”non). It is the result of conscious effort, and that effort shows. A similar analysis may be applied to ‘the foot of time’, a phrase which Euripides had used in the Alexandros (fr. 42 K kaª cr»nou proÎbaine poÅv) and repeated in the Bacchae (vv. 888–9). In this case, what is natural or straightforward is the idea that time moves forward (see LSJ s.v. cr»nov 3b); to go further by moving from time’s progress to the conclusion that it must therefore have feet is a very ‘scholastic thought’. Some of the other examples cited in the critical tradition may be thought to confirm this analysis. L himself cites as an example of Timaeus’ frigidity and puerility the statement that Alexander ‘took control of the whole of Asia in fewer years than it took Isocrates to write the Pan¯egyrikos in favour of war against the Persians’ (On the Sublime 4.2 = Timaeus, FGrHist 566 F139); a contrast between the man of action in the East and the man of words about the East would be fair enough, but the specific detail about the writing of the Pan¯egyrikos seems too ‘clever’

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and artificial. So too, Demetrius cites from an unknown writer the conceit that ‘while the rock [which the Cyclops hurled at Odysseus’ ship] was in mid-air, goats were grazing on it’ (On Style 115); Demetrius cites this to show how frigidity is a fault associated with the grand style. In Homer, the Cyclops hurls ‘the peak of a great mountain’ (Odyssey 9.482), which is clearly a grand, sublime moment; the ‘clever’ detail of the goats debases the grandeur, like ‘Zeus’s bedroom’, and pushes the utterance over into the critical abyss. The actual critical language which we find, for example, in L and Demetrius may not, of course, have been available to Aristophanes, but there is a remarkable shared body of ideas which speak across the centuries. As is well known, there are striking parallels between On the Sublime and the opening chapters of Petronius’ Satyrica, in which Encolpius and Agamemnon make speeches about the current state of education.11 Encolpius’ scholastic rant against tumidity and scholastic puerility can hardly fail to call L to mind,12 and his chaotic denunciations might well confirm our view that such negative categories cannot be firmly kept apart. Whether or not ‘Air, Zeus’s bedroom’ and ‘the foot of time’ would qualify as mellitos uerborum globulos (Sat. 1.3) may be debated, but there is a clear affinity of argument with an important idea of the Frogs. Encolpius complains that the subjects of scholastic declamation are not drawn ex his quae in usu habemus, ‘from the events of ordinary life’ (Sat. 1.3). Here Euripides’ claim to have introduced into tragedy ‘everyday things which we know and with which we are familiar’ (o«ke±a pr†gmatì . . . o³v crÛmeqì o³v xÅnesmen, Frogs 959) is given yet another twist.13 Education which used to be connected to ‘real life’ has now severed that connection; ‘natural’ grandeur has given way to the ingenuities of scholastic ‘art’ (see Sat. 2.3–6), which are now so far removed from ‘the real thing’ that when declaimers find themselves in a real court ‘they think that they have been transported to another universe’ (1.2).14 Secondly, both L and Petronius’ Agamemnon 11

12 13 14

See, e.g., Alfonsi 1948; Soverini 1985: 1717; Conte 1996: 66–7. Cosci 1978 points out that our text of the Satyrica was probably immediately preceded by a reference to the tragic Furies of Orestes, as at On the Sublime 15.8. In the context of the relations between L and Caecilius, Encolpius’ attack upon Asianism is of obvious interest, but the matter cannot be pursued here. Courtney 2001: 54–62 provides a good introduction to the subject, and see Luzzatto 1981, who does not, however, refer to Petronius. Such arguments against contemporary declaimers are, of course, not restricted to Petronius and L; for instructively similar Plutarchan views against ‘nonsensical chatter . . . in the schools’, where students are much more interested in style than substance cf. Mor. 41f–42e, 802e–f. Note how Agamemnon’s opening address to Encolpius, adulescens . . . , picks up Encolpius’ denunciation of adulescentulos in scholis. See above pp. 18–20. Commentators usually (and rightly) cite the story in Seneca the Elder of the master declaimer Porcius Latro, who was so confused by finding himself in the open spaces of a real court that the

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see the principal cause of such puerility in the pursuit of gratifying the audience, the pursuit of ‘pleasure’, t¼ ¡dÅ (On the Sublime 3.4, cf. Sat. 3.3–4), an argument which of course goes back (again) to Plato’s views on public oratory;15 the magnificum has given way to quod pueris placeret, and again we can hardly fail to call to mind the narrative of tragic development enshrined in both the Frogs and the Laws.16 mannerism? In chapter 10 L discusses how a crucial factor in sublimity can be the selection of elements to be described and their arrangement; sublime poets make skilful selections of the ‘most intense’ elements involved in any description. L’s prime example here, and one which, in the general context of a discussion of Ìyov, is in fact much more surprising than is often acknowledged,17 is Sappho’s description of her body’s reaction to extreme emotion in what we now call fr. 31 Voigt. A less surprising choice for ‘sublimity’ follows, namely the epic storm, perhaps one of the principal loci for ‘cosmic’ poetry describing the tumult of nature on the grand, sublime scale.18 The blast of storm winds corresponds in fact to the blasts of ‘sublimity’ through which the great poet is inspired and with which he ‘blasts away’ the senses of his hearers and readers (see in general On the Sublime 8.4, 9.11, etc.). Here, as so often, we may think of the Frogs in which Aeschylean storm blasts (vv. 845–55, cf. 825, 1221) seem to be contrasted with the much more refined and insubstantial A«qžr which nourishes Euripides and to which he prays (892), as the comic Socrates had before him (Clouds 264–5). In storm descriptions also, however, no less than in descriptions of physical desire, the choice of detail has to be made; here L – in a rather disconcerting effect – first produces a negative example: The author of the Arimaspeia thinks the following lines awe-inspiring (dein†): qaÓmì ¡m±n kaª toÓto m”ga jresªn ¡met”rhisin. Šndrev Ìdwr na©ousin ˆp¼ cqon¼v –n pel†gessiá dÅsthno© tin”v e«sin, ›cousi g‡r ›rga ponhr†,

15 16 17 18

trial had to be moved indoors (Controversiae 9, Pref. 3). At the base of the motif, however, probably lie the exchanges between Callicles and Socrates in Plato’s Gorgias about what would happen to each of them if they found themselves in the other’s natural habitat (Gorgias 486a–d, 526e–527a). Cf. [Plutarch], ‘On the education of children’ 6b–c on those who ‘practise speaking ˆrestäv kaª kecarism”nwv to the common rabble’. See above pp. 14–17. See Russell 1981: 77–8. Hertz 1983 offers an interesting reading of L’s analysis of the Sapphic poem. See Hardie 1986: Index s.v. storm; Conte 1996: 55–8.

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Àmmat ì –n Šstroisi, yucŸn dì –nª p»ntwi ›cousin. § pou poll‡ qeo±si j©lav ˆn‡ ce±rav ›contev eÎcontai spl†gcnoisi kakäv ˆnaballom”noisi. This is another great marvel for our minds: men dwell on the water, removed from the land, in the oceans. Wretched creatures they are, terrible what they endure: they have their eyes on the stars and their lives dependent on the sea. No doubt they often lift up their arms to the gods and pray, while their stomachs sickeningly heave up and down. It is, I think, clear to everyone that these verses have more charm (Šnqov) than the power to inspire awe (d”ov). (‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 10.4)

The Arimaspeia, a poem of perhaps the seventh or sixth century bc, told of marvel-filled travels in the far north.19 It has been doubted whether the present fragment (fr. 1 Davies) actually belongs to that poem, but the matter is not important in the present context. For L these verses were doubtless intended to be dein†, but they are, rather, ˆnqhr†; L activates the etymological connection of d”ov, ‘fear’, with dein»v to suggest that these verses will not make the hearer/reader afraid.20 As critics have pointed out,21 it is in fact far from clear that these verses do describe a shipwreck; they seem rather to be a deliberately na¨ıve description of the ordinary business of sailing by someone who does not understand what sailing is: ‘how ships and the sea would have seemed to a Scythian nomad if he had sent a “letter” home’, as Robin Lane Fox puts it.22 As such, their appeal to us is that of a ‘thought experiment’ which asks us, at one level, to defamiliarise the familiar, and hence they work in a quite different way both from Sappho fr. 31, which, as L points out, draws from universal experience (10.3), and from the verses of Homer which he proceeds to cite (see below). The intellectual and stylistic ‘conceit’ of the verses (to say nothing of the ‘low’ thought and diction of the final phrase), so L would argue, detracts from their power; when Donald Russell describes verse 4, Àmmatì –n Šstroisi, yucŸn dì –nª p»ntwi ›cousin, as ‘a mannered zeugma’ (because the verb means rather different things with its two objects), he is using much the same set of critical tools as L himself. Style which calls attention to itself (‘mannered’), where art takes precedence over ‘nature’ (see 36.2–3), is felt to distract the audience from their concentration on what is being described; in such a situation true fear is not possible. 19

20 21

See Bolton 1962. At Thucydides 23.3 Dionysius of Halicarnassus refers to the poem of Aristeas as one whose authorship has been doubted (= Aristeas T2 Davies); the poem may thus have enjoyed a certain ‘notoriety’ in classicising circles. On the relation between fear and the sublime see below pp. 141–2. 22 Lane Fox 2005: 83. See Bolton 1962: 9–11, 26–7; Bowra 1956.

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Something rather similar occurs in 9.5 where the description of ìAclÅv, ‘Gloom (of death)’, on the Hesiodic Shield,23 ‘from her nostrils flowed mucus’ (Aspis 267), is regarded as misht»n, ‘revolting’, rather than dein»n, ‘awe-inspiring’. As often, we may think that L has a whole passage, not just the cited snippet, in mind: p‡r dì ìAclÆv e¬stžkei –pismugerž te kaª a«nž clwrŸ ˆustal”h limäi katapepthu±a, gounopacžv, makroª dì Ànucev ce©ressin Ëpsaná tv –k m•n çinän mÅxai ç”on, –k d• pareiän a³mì ˆpele©betì ›raz’á ¥ dì Šplhton sesaru±a e¬stžkei, pollŸ d• k»niv katenžnoqen ßmouv, ([Hesiod], Aspis 264–70) d†krusi mudal”h. Beside them stood Gloom, murky and terrible, pale, parched, collapsed with hunger, her knees swollen, her hands ending in long nails; from her nostrils flowed mucus, and from her cheeks blood was dripping to the ground. She stood there, grinning fearfully, and her shoulders were covered in dust drenched in tears.

The details may indeed be ‘revolting’ to most sensibilities – subject as well as style matters for the sublime; it is tempting to think of Theophrastus’ ‘offensive man’ (¾ dusceržv): The offensive man is the kind who parades about with scaly and blanched skin and black nails . . . He is quite apt to have sores on his shins and lesions on his toes, and instead of treating them he lets them fester. His armpits are infested with lice and their hair extends over much of his sides, and his teeth are black and rotten . . . He wipes his nose while eating . . . and uses rancid oil at the baths so that he reeks of the pig-sty. (Theophrastus, Characters 19 (trans. J. Diggle))

As Theophrastus works in the Characters by the accumulation of detail, so too does the poet of the Aspis, and it may perhaps be this which lies at the heart of L’s problem. It is, at least in part, the very detail of the Hesiodic description, a detail which forces us to ‘look’ at one small part of the hideous body after another and which makes listening to or reading the description an ‘intellectual’ act in which we can never forget that we are being manipulated by the poet, that, for L, removes all Ìyov from the passage.

23

L’s introductory ‘aside’, ‘if indeed the Shield too is to be counted a work of Hesiod’, is not just a display of learning: although sublime effects could be found anywhere, they are more likely in the great ‘sublime’ writers, and failures to reach the sublime are correspondingly more likely in the minor and the anonymous, as with the Arimaspeia at 10.4.

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Although the text of L is lacunose immediately before this, it would seem certain that it is Iliad 4.440–3, a very influential passage,24 which is here contrasted with the Aspis: årse d• toÆv m•n ïArhv, toÆv d• glaukäpiv ìAqžnh De±m»v tì  d• F»bov kaª ïEriv Šmoton memau±a, ïAreov ˆndroj»noio kasignžth —t†rh te, ¤ tì ½l©gh m•n präta korÅssetai, aÉt‡r ›peita oÉranäi –stžrixe k†rh kaª –pª cqonª ba©nei. (Homer, Iliad 4.439–43)

The Trojans were urged on by Ares, the Achaeans by grey-eyed Athene and Terror and Panic and Strife who seethes incessantly, the sister and partner of man-slaying Ares; at first she rises a little, but then her head touches the sky as her feet walk on earth.

Eris’ cosmic stature, a description which, as L observes, is as appropriate for Homer as it is for Eris, excites our wonder and fear – this is what dein»n means – but it is very short on detail: if asked ‘what does Eris look like?’, would we be able to answer?25 It was this very ‘obscurity’, that is, lack of specificity, which, in L’s wake, made this Homeric passage, together with Virgil’s Fama, a model of sublimity for Edmund Burke and the eighteenthcentury critics,26 and their elaborations seem indeed true to L’s argument. It is, moreover, this concentration of detail, rather than the distastefulness of what is described, that brings this passage of the Aspis close to two later passages to which Winfried B¨uhler compared it,27 one of which at least may well be indebted to it:28 ½rqwqeªv dì eÉnqen, ˆkžrion  Åtì Àneiron, b†ktrwi skhpt»menov çikno±v posªn §ie qÅraze, to©couv ˆmjaj»wná tr”me dì Œyea nisom”noio ˆdran©hi gžrai teá p©nwi d” o¬ aÉstal”ov crÜv –sklžkei, çinoª d• sÆn ½st”a moÓnon ›ergon. –k dì –lqÜn meg†roio kaq”zeto goÓna barunqeªv oÉdoÓ –pì aÉle©oioá k†rov d” min ˆmjek†luye porjÅreov, ga±an d• p”rix –d»khse j”resqai nei»qen, ˆblhcräi dì –pª kÛmati k”klitì Šnaudov.

200

(Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 2.197–205)

Like a ghostly dream Phineus got up from his bed, and supporting himself on a staff, made his way to the door on withered feet, feeling along the walls. His 24 26 27

25 See also ‘Heraclitus’, Homeric Problems 29.4–7. See, e.g., B¨uhler 1964: 21. See Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry . . . Part II, Sections III–IV (= Burke 1958: 59–64), Part V, Section V (= Burke 1958: 166–71). 28 The Hesiodic parallel is noted by Hollis on Ovid, Met. 8.801ff. B¨uhler 1964: 23.

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limbs shook with the feebleness of old age, his desiccated flesh was caked with filth; there was nothing behind his skin but bones. He came out of his dwelling and sank down on his weary knees at the threshold of the court. A dark dizziness enveloped him, the earth beneath seemed to him to revolve, and he sank into a helpless torpor, unable to speak. quaesitamque Famem lapidoso uidit in agro unguibus et raras uellentem dentibus herbas. hirtus erat crinis, caua lumina, pallor in ore, labra incana situ, scabrae rubigine fauces, dura cutis, per quam spectari uiscera possent; ossa sub incuruis exstabant arida lumbis, uentris erat pro uentre locus; pendere putares pectus et a spinae tantummodo crate teneri; auxerat articulos macies genuumque tumebat orbis et immodico prodibant tubere tali.

800

(Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.799–808)

She saw the object of her quest, Hunger, in a stone-filled field, scratching with her nails and teeth at the few bits of vegetation. Her hair was matted, her eyes hollow, her face pallid, her lips grey with thirst, her throat rough and peeling, her skin was hard and her insides were visible through it; beneath her hollow loins, her hip-bones stood out, and where her stomach should be was an empty spot for the stomach; you would think that her breast was hanging loose and was only just held up by the joints of the spine; wasting had made the joints seem larger, her knees were swollen and her ankles protruded in large bulges.

A glance at Apollonius’ principal archaic models here will confirm that what is most distinctive about Apollonius’ Phineus is, again, the concentration of precise, physical details covering different aspects of his misery.29 As for the Ovidian passage, the sequential order and matched phrases with which Fames’ body is described, the pointed wit of uentris erat pro uentre locus, and the self-conscious invitations to the audience to ‘look’ (vv. 803, 805) and to imagine (putares 808) the detailed physiology which kept her breast from falling off compel again a form of ‘mannered’ reading inimical to L’s conception of ‘the sublime’. There are two related effects in play here. One is the idea that, because of the intellectual demands of such writing, the audience never ‘gives itself’ completely to it, in the way in which we respond to ‘the sublime’. Secondly, notions of greatness and sublimity are closely connected with ideas about the level of detail appropriate to high poetry. When the bT-scholium on Iliad 14.352 refers to a category of 29

For Apollonius’ models here see, e.g., Hunter 1993: 91; Cuypers 1997: 221–2. Zanker 1987: 72–3 sees here an example of Apollonius’ ‘scientific realism’.

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poetic material which involves ‘imaginative elaboration of the truth’ (kat‡ jantas©an tv ˆlhqe©av),30 and which is not to be examined in detail, in the manner of deducing from the fact that ‘the ghosts [in Odyssey 11] can taste and talk that they have tongues and throats’, we can see how these detailed descriptions in the Aspis, in Apollonius and in Ovid would not merely fall foul of L’s sense of the sublime but posed difficult problems for much wider ancient critical notions of ‘what poetry was’. The critical framework on show in L’s analysis of the passage from the Arimaspeia is confirmed by what follows it: What then does Homer do? One example from many will suffice: –n dì ›pesì, Þv Âte kÓma qoi –n nhª p”shisi l†bron Ëpaª nej”wn ˆnemotrej”v, ¡ d” te psa Šcnhi ËpekrÅjqh, ˆn”moio d• dein¼v ˆžthv ¬st©wi –mbr”metai, trom”ousi d” te jr”na naÓtai deidi»tevá tutq¼n g‡r Ëp•k qan†toio j”rontai.

(Homer, Iliad 15.624–8)

He fell on them, as when a wave falls on a swift ship, a wild wave stirred up under the clouds by the winds; the whole ship is hidden in foam, and the terrible blast of the wind roars in the sails, and the sailors tremble with fear in their hearts, for a small margin separates them from death. Aratus too tried to adapt this same idea: ½l©gon d• di‡ xul¼n ïAidì –rÅkeiá (Aratus, Phainomena 299)

A little piece of wood keeps Hades at bay. But he has made the idea petty (mikr»n) and elegant (glajur»n) rather than terrifying. Moreover, he has reduced the danger by saying ‘a piece of wood keeps Hades at bay’; death is then kept away. The poet [i.e. Homer], however, does not reduce the terror once and for all, but depicts them as constantly and virtually with every wave on the point of destruction. (‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 10.5–6)

It is precisely ‘smallness’ which, for L, gets in the way of true sublimity, as chapters 35 and 36 set out quite explicitly (see further below). The Šnqov which L found in the Arimaspeia is the same quality as the glajur»n which he finds in Aratus; so too, in his treatise On Style, Demetrius notes that some people run together what he separates out as the «scn»v and the glajur»v styles, ‘as though the elegant (glajur»n) had elements of smallness (mikr»thv) and pretty refinement (komye©a)’ (On Style 36). 30

For bibliography and discussion see Hunter 2005: 181–2; the translation is that of Halliwell 2002: 305.

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The ‘small margin’ by which the Homeric sailors escape death becomes in Aratus the ‘thin piece of timber’ (i.e. the ship’s hull) which keeps all sailors from drowning; Aratus’ unusual use of the singular xÅlon reinforces the precariousness of the sailors’ position. L punishes Aratus for this ‘mannered’ transference by accusing him of making the whole description mikr»n. The passage of Aratus’ Phainomena, of which verse 299 is the conclusion, is – like the passage of the Arimaspeia – a description of the ordinary experience of sailing, not of a ferocious storm at sea: ˆll‡ kaª ›mphv ¢dh p†ntì –niaut¼n Ëp¼ ste©rhisi q†lassa porjÅreiá ­keloi d• kolumb©sin a«qu©hisi poll†kiv –k nhän p”lagov peripapta©nontev ¤meqì, –pì a«gialoÆv tetramm”noiá o¬ dì ›ti p»rsw klÅzontai, ½l©gon d• di‡ xul¼n ïAidì –rÅkei.

(Aratus, Phainomena 294–9)

But the sea swirls all year long under the keel, and we, like diving gulls, often sit gazing around at the ocean from our ships, turning ourselves towards the beaches; but far off the surf pounds there, and a little piece of wood keeps Hades at bay.

The image of sailors as sea birds is a common one,31 but Aratus has done something very unusual with it: birds too scan the waters, but in hope of spotting potential food, whereas for sailors it is disaster that will come from that direction; the diving birds are in their element, the sailors are unhappily out of theirs. Here a comparison, as often, points difference as much as similarity. The Homeric and Aratean passages are, however, similar and different in another way also. In Homer the fearful sailors correspond to the Achaeans in the tenor of the simile (Iliad 15.629), but L’s omission of this verse from his quotation does not merely serve the contrast with Aratus which he wishes to draw; it also emphasises how the fearful sailors, who are the audience of the storm, are our ‘representatives’: the storm has another audience too which is just as fearful. Homer’s description ‘roars’ at us, as the storm roars at the sailors.32 In Aratus the audience for the poem is directly written into the first-person plural description, but the comparison of us to ‘diving sea-birds’ overelaborates in Longinian terms: it is per©ergon (On the Sublime 3.4, cited above), witty perhaps, but certainly not dein»n. The ‘ordinary’ is of course an important element of Hellenistic poetics.33 In the second book of the Argonautica Apollonius describes the storm at 31 32 33

Cf. the notes of Kidd and Martin ad loc. The bT-scholia on vv. 625–6 seem to be feeling their way towards this perception: ‘The din of what is said and the noise of the words prevent us from seeing the ship which is hidden in foam.’ For what follows see Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004: 99–102.

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sea which wrecks the ship of the sons of Phrixos and thereby brings about their fateful meeting with the Argonauts (Argon. 2.1097–1117); the storm works with the divine scheme of the narrative, and when the weather is ascribed to Zeus (v. 1098), we will be inclined not to dismiss this as merely a poetic fac¸on de parler.34 Nevertheless, Apollonius describes the storm in such a way as to make it as ‘natural’ as possible: a north wind, blowing with particular force at night after a day of gentle breeze, signals the time of the rising of Arcturus, always a dangerous time for sailors. When the ship breaks up, the sons of Phrixos are saved by clinging to ‘one of those mighty (pelwr©ou) planks which had been held together by sharp bolts’; the adjective picks up that used to describe the force of the wind (v. 1102), as part of the ‘epic’ nature of the description, but Apollonius in fact works towards ‘realism’ by stressing that this is precisely what happens when a ship breaks up. The planks are indeed, as everyone knows, ‘huge’, and the reference to the nails which hold the planks together and perhaps also the contrast with Aratus’ pointed ½l©gon xÅlon reinforce the sense of the familiar.35 In the Iliad ‘ordinariness’ is most conveyed through simile, and it is a simile which L sets against the Arimaspeia and Aratus. Whereas, however, we might think that the experience of the Homeric sailors is an unusually terrifying one, L stresses the repetitiveness of the experience: this is what sailors face ‘with every [huge] wave’. There is no explicit warrant for this in the text,36 but L is perhaps drawing out the implications of the simile form: this is a familiar, repeated experience, not an event as remarkable as the narrative it is trying to illustrate. As such, L’s approach sits neatly within ancient teaching about the simile form.37 Be that as it may, there is nothing ‘small’ about this storm which hides the boat from view: here is a cosmic event befitting epic, one in which, as L sees it, even the smallest units of language, such as prepositions, are to be twisted into new and ‘unnatural’ combinations, like structures blasted by a hurricane.38 seeing gods For ‘Longinus’, then, ‘it is a proper function of “the sublime” to let us feel frightened’;39 Hades’ dread fear as Poseidon threatens to break the solid world apart (Iliad 20.61–5; On the Sublime 9.6) is in part our fear: as he leaps from his royal throne with a scream, we will be startled from 34 35 36 39

See Feeney 1991: 61; Hunter 1993: 80. For the possible allusion to Aratus see Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004: 100 n. 50. 37 See Hunter 2006a: 92–3. 38 See Porter 2001: 83 on this effect. See B¨uhler 1964: 78–83. Russell 1979: 14, cf. Innes 1995b: 331.

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our reading or listening repose by the power of Homer’s envisionment.40 The representation of the divine is in fact crucial to the poetic sublime, and divine epiphanies, in which gods regularly assume ‘large’ stature, might seem a promising locus for sublime effects, particularly t¼ jober»n. Mortals often react to divine epiphanies in epic in much the same way as L guides our reactions to the sublime: fear, amazement, an overpowering of the senses, in a word ›kplhxiv (see, e.g., On the Sublime 1.4, 15.11).41 It is the effect upon the audience which links the motif of epiphany in poetry to sublime effects. The epiphany may be not merely a site of the sublime, but also its textual representative: Semele’s fate, consumed by Zeus’s blazing thunderbolt, awaits the reader of Demosthenes (34.4). Like an epiphany, effects of sublimity may come with a blinding light (15.11, 34.4) which shuts everything else out.42 Both offer a sudden revelation of power (1.4). In particular, epiphany might well seem to be a prime site for those phantasiai where ‘you [i.e. the writer], under the sway of possession and emotion, seem to see what you are describing and bring it before the vision of the audience’ (15.1). However often gods do (or did) appear on earth, a divine epiphany makes particular demands upon ‘imagination’ and ‘envisionment’. Very few have ‘really’ seen such things; there is very little reservoir of lived experience, whether in himself or in the audience, upon which the poet can draw. L’s first example of such phantasiai bursts in upon the text, on the cue of t¼ sugkekinhm”non (‘emotional excitement’) but without introduction, as suddenly as the Furies of the example burst into Orestes’ vision (15.2, citing Euripides, Orestes 255–7).43 Madness is here a particularly illuminating example of the process of poetic jantas©a because madmen (like also another category of inspired visionaries very close to poets, namely prophets) do ‘see’ delusional appearances which others are spared (cf. 15.8); so must a poet,44 and then he must ‘compel the audience to see them also’ (15.2), just as Orestes appeals emphatically to Pylades (‘Do you spy this one? Do you not see this deathly snake . . . ?’) in the narrative (vv. 285–6) 40

41 43

44

For the treatment of this passage in Plutarch see below pp. 179–81. ‘Terror’ was at the heart of Burke’s theory of the sublime and is much discussed in the eighteenth century; for the place of ‘fear’ in Kant’s ‘dynamically sublime’ see Section 28 of the ‘Analytic of the Sublime’ (= Kant 2007: 90–1). 42 Cf. Goldhill 2007: 3–8. There is a useful collection of material at Richardson 1974: 208–9. Such a quotation without introduction is not entirely unparalleled in our text of On the Sublime, but it is very uncommon and here clearly serves a specific didactic function. The verses quoted from Euripides mark the beginning of a new attack and the speed of that attack is emphasised in the text (v. 254); thus, once again, the (unquoted) context is relevant for understanding L’s use of quotations. There is some line of descent from chapter 17 of Aristotle’s Poetics, on the poet working things out in advance ‘as far as possible putting them in front of his eyes’, to this passage of L, but see, e.g, Halliwell 1987: 145–8 for cautionary remarks.

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from the Iphigeneia among the Taurians which L cites, or as the repeated aÔtai of the Orestes scene forces us to look (v. 257). In the Argonautica of Apollonius, which L takes as a model of nonsublime epic (33.4),45 human contact with the divine, indeed the rˆole of the divine itself, is very much reduced from Homeric levels, and this may be thought to have reduced the opportunity for some of the most common types of sublime effect; in particular, the characters have almost no direct contact with the major Olympian divinities. This programmatic distance is most clearly thematised in Apollo’s principal appearance to the Argonauts at the island of Thynias in Book 2:46 §mov dì oÎtì Šr pw j†ov Šmbroton oÎtì ›ti l©hn ½rjna©h p”letai, lept¼n dì –pid”drome nuktª j”ggov, Âtì ˆmjilÅkhn min ˆnegr»menoi kal”ousi, tmov –rhma©hv nžsou lim”nì e«sel†santev Quni†dov kam†twi polupžmoni ba±non ›raze. to±si d• LhtoÓv u¬»v, ˆnerc»menov Luk©hqen tlì –pì ˆpe©rona dmon ëUperbor”wn ˆnqrÛpwn, –xej†nhá crÅseoi d• parei†wn —k†terqen plocmoª botru»entev –perrÛonto ki»ntiá laii dì ˆrgÅreon nÛma bi»n, ˆmjª d• nÛtoiv «od»kh tet†nusto katwmad»n. ¡ dì Ëp¼ possª se©eto nsov Âlh, klÅzen dì –pª kÅmata c”rswi. toÆv dì ™le q†mbov «d»ntav ˆmžcanon, oÉd” tiv ›tlh ˆnt©on aÉg†ssasqai –v Àmmata kal‡ qeo±o. st‡n d• k†tw neÅsantev –pª cqon»vá aÉt‡r ¾ thloÓ b çì ­menai p»nton d• diì  ”rov.

670

675

680

(Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 2.669–84)

At the time when the immortal sunlight has not yet appeared, but it is no longer quite dark and a faint gleam has pierced the night – the time which those waking call amphilyk¯e – at that hour they entered the harbour of the deserted island of Thynias and stepped on to the land, completely worn out by their efforts. The son of Leto, travelling from afar from Lycia to the countless race of the Hyperboreans, appeared to them. On both sides of his face golden curls like bunches of grapes waved as he proceeded; in his left hand he carried a silver bow, and his quiver was slung around his back from the shoulder. Under his feet the whole island shook and waves washed over the dry land. At the sight of him the Argonauts were struck helpless with amazement; no one dared to look directly into the god’s brilliant eyes, but they stood looking at the ground, and he passed through the air far away out to sea. 45 46

See below pp. 162–3. The discussion that follows is complementary to that of Hunter 1986; see also Feeney 1991: 75–6; Hunter 1993: 76; Belloni 1999.

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Elements of this epiphany may be paralleled from many scenes in early epic, but two Iliadic scenes may be thought of particular importance. The first is Apollo’s famous first appearance at the beginning of Book 1, an appearance in response to Chryses’ prayer: toÓ dì ›klue Fo±bov ìAp»llwn, b d• katì OÉlÅmpoio karžnwn cw»menov kr, t»xì ßmoisin ›cwn ˆmjhrej”a jar”trhná ›klagxan dì Šrì ½istoª –pì ßmwn cwom”noio, aÉtoÓ kinhq”ntová Á dì ¢ie nuktª –oikÛv. ™zetì ›peitì ˆp†neuqe neän, met‡ dì «¼n ™hken, deinŸ d• klaggŸ g”netì ˆrgur”oio bio±o.

45

(Homer, Iliad 1.43–9)

Phoebus Apollo heard him. He came down from the peaks of Olympus, angry at heart, with his bow and his covered quiver on his shoulders. In his anger the arrows clattered on his shoulders as he moved; he went like night. He sat far off from the ships and let loose an arrow; there was a terrible twanging of the silver bow.

The second famous scene to which Apollonius directs our attention is Poseidon’s passage at the start of Iliad 13, a passage which both L (9.8) and ‘Heraclitus’ (Homeric Problems 2.2) later single out for its sublime representation of divinity: oÉdì ˆlaoskopiŸn e²ce kre©wn ìEnnos©cqwná kaª g‡r Á qaum†zwn ¨sto pt»lem»n te m†chn te, ËyoÓ –pì ˆkrot†thv korujv S†mou Ëlh”sshv Qrhik©hvá ›nqen g‡r –ja©neto psa m•n ïIdh, ja©neto d• Pri†moio p»liv kaª nev ìAcaiän. ›nqì Šrì  gì –x ‰l¼v ™zetì «Ûn, –l”aire dì ìAcaioÅv Trwsªn damnam”nouv, Diª de krateräv –nem”ssa. aÉt©ka dì –x Àreov katebžseto paipal»entov kraipn‡ posª probib†vá tr”me dì oÎrea makr‡ kaª Ìlh possªn Ëp¼ ˆqan†toisi Poseid†wnov «»ntov. trªv m•n ½r”xatì «Ûn, t¼ d• t”traton ¯keto t”kmwr, A«g†vá ›nqa d” o¬ klut‡ dÛmata b”nqesi l©mnhv crÅsea marma©ronta teteÅcatai, Šjqita a«e©.

15

20

(Homer, Iliad 13.10–22)

The mighty Earth-Shaker was keeping no careless watch. Looking with wonder at the battle, he was sitting up high on the very topmost peak of wooded Samos in Thrace; from there he could see Ida, and he could see the city of Priam and the ships of the Achaeans. He had come from the sea to take his seat there; he pitied the Achaeans who were being crushed by the Trojans and he was mightily angry with Zeus. Without delay he came down from the steep mountain, moving forward swiftly on his feet; the tall mountains and the woods trembled beneath

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the immortal feet of Poseidon as he went. Three times he stepped towards his goal, and the fourth time he reached it, Aigai; there his glorious palace of shining gold is built in the depths of the harbour, unperishing for all time.

Apollo’s appearance in Iliad 1 was the subject of a very large critical discussion, and Apollonius may reflect that in the (for him very unusual) gestures that he here makes to ‘rationalising’ traditions: is Apollo an anthropomorphic deity or rather the rising sun (note ˆnerc»menov and –xej†nh) at which no one can look directly, and does the island move as he passes or is this, together with the attendant waves, a way of figuring seismic movements, particularly near coastlines?47 Be that as it may, Apollonius combines the two Homeric models by writing Apollo as Poseidon, the ‘earth-shaker’. It is in fact tempting to believe that the seismic reaction of nature to Apollo’s passing is, at least in part, a ‘tidying up’ of the troublesome aÉtoÓ kinhq”ntov (‘as the god himself moved’) at the head of Iliad 1.47;48 it is, as it should be, the earth, not the god himself, who is ‘shaken’. If we look at the Hellenistic passage and its archaic models with the Longinian sublime in mind, certain differences stand out. The first is divine motivation. Both the Homeric Apollo and Poseidon are ‘emotionally’ engaged with the action of the epic; Poseidon, the divine spectator filled with wonder and pity is clearly at one level an ‘ideal’ audience for sublime epic. Just as clearly, the Apollonian Apollo is not. More importantly in the present context, however, both the Homeric Apollo and Poseidon are angry, whereas we have no idea what (if anything) Apollo is feeling. Anger is a ‘high’, indeed a sublime, emotion; it is the characteristic of Aeschylus, modelled on his own Achilles, by which he is defined in the Frogs (vv. 814, 844, 855–6),49 as it is the most remarkable emotional absence 47

48

49

It is, however, noteworthy that Apollo’s other appearance in the poem (4.1705–18) makes similar gestures: the Argonauts are trapped in impenetrable darkness, Jason calls on Apollo, the god comes down, raises his brilliant bow aloft and in its gleam the Argonauts spy a tiny island; dawn then immediately rises and they found a cult of Apollo the Gleamer. That passage is marked by deliberate variation from the scene at Thynias (note particularly 2.678 ∼ 4.1709), with Apollo’s motivated appearance having an immediate effect in the poem. Whatever the debt of the scene at Anaphe to Callimachus (cf. frr. 9–23 Massimilla), it, like the scene at Thynias, also rewrites Apollo’s opening appearance in the Iliad, with Jason playing the rˆole of Chryses and Apollo’s appearance ‘like night’ replaced by his gleaming light which saves the heroes from darkness. On this phrase see the notes of Kirk and Pulleyn ad loc.; it is a pity that we do not know why Zenodotus excised vv. 46–7; klÅzen in v. 680 may be an aural echo of the Homeric ›klagxan (Iliad 1.46). There may, of course, also be more going on in these Apollonian verses than just Homeric rewriting; the elements shared with the opening of Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo (–se©sato . . . Âlon . . . pod©) are at least suggestive, particularly in view of other similarities between that poem and this passage of the Argonautica (Hunter 1986: 57–60). See above p. 6. In 1704 John Dennis noted: ‘of all these [sublime] ideas none are so terrible as those which show the wrath and vengeance of an angry god; for nothing is so wonderful in its effects . . . ’, cited in Ashfield and de Bolla 1996: 38.

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from Apollonius’ Jason.50 Moreover, the elaborately detailed identification of the time at which Apollo appeared in the Argonautica (vv. 669–71) seems far from the startling effect of a burst of the sublime of which L speaks. Secondly, Apollonius offers us a detailed picture of the god’s appearance, one at least in part ‘put together from iconographic convention’.51 Here, on a now conventional analysis,52 the detail may work against sublime effects: the golden locks of hair hanging like bunches of grapes ‘on his cheeks on both sides’, the silver bow held specifically in the left hand (as in the cult statue on Delos),53 the quiver hanging off the shoulder on his back. In the scene of Apollo’s intervention in Iliad 1, which is also our introduction to divine action in the poem as a whole, Apollo is, by contrast, threateningly disembodied: he too carries a bow and has arrows on his shoulders, but otherwise all we know is that he ‘moved like night’, a comparison which must have struck with great force any ancient reader used to thinking of Apollo as a god of solar light, and one which Apollonius has clearly reversed in his image of Apollo as the rising sun.54 The sublimity of night and darkness was to become a critical commonplace.55 As for Poseidon in Iliad 13, he too has feet which play a prominent rˆole (vv. 18–19), but beyond that we know nothing of his appearance; the emphasis is on the swiftness of divine action, and descriptive epithets are largely reserved for the god’s house, his horses, and even his whip, rather than for the god himself. The numerous verbal repetitions which mark both Homeric passages show that at the level of style, as well as substance, akribeia (as understood by critics such as L) is of greater concern to later writers than to Homer. The case against Apollonian ‘sublimity’ must not, however, be exaggerated. Apollo’s very remoteness and silence56 and the brilliant intensity of the light into which even the Argonauts cannot look57 are both powerful effects, and the Argonauts’ ‘helpless amazement’ (681) before the god might well seem to be a paradigmatic reaction to the sublime. The difference from the Homeric manner is palpable and would certainly have been felt by L, as it has been by modern critics, but the extraordinary nature of this crucial moment in the Argonautic voyage is not to be gainsaid. It 50 53 54 55 56 57

51 Green 1997: 243. 52 See above p. 136. See Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004: 106–17. See Callimachus fr. 114.8 Pf. = 64.8 Massimilla. There is, however, no reason to think that this detail here carries the symbolic force which it does in the Callimachean passage. For ancient discussion of the Homeric Apollo as the sun see ‘Heraclitus’, Homeric Problems 7 = Apollodorus of Athens, FGrHist 244 F98, and the other texts gathered by Jacoby there. See, e.g., Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry . . . Part IV, Sections XIV–XVIII (= Burke 1958: 141–7). See above pp. 5–7. See the interesting observations of Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry . . . Part II, Sections XIV (= Burke 1958: 79–80) on the ‘sublime’ effect of intense light, such as that of the sun.

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is perhaps, as so often, a question of degree. Thus, for example, the ‘whole island’ shakes, and this may be thought to be a natural event of a kind habitually associated with the sublime. Nevertheless, Thynias is in fact a small ‘uninhabited’ island, and (as far as we know) Apollo’s appearance has no effects elsewhere. In Iliad 13, however, Poseidon is watching from the highest point, a ‘steep/rugged mountain’, on Samothrace, from where he can see ‘all of Ida, the city of Priam and the ships of the Achaeans’, and his subsequent journey, however imprecise such poetic geography may be,58 clearly covers a considerable chunk of the north-east Aegean (for otherwise the emphasis on his giant steps would lose some of its force). Geographical expanse is fundamental to the sublime conception of divinity, as indeed of much else, for expanse carries with it a sense of power and awe. Even where expanse is not stressed, the nature which is affected by divine action should, in the sublime view of things, be itself imposing and ‘terrible’. When Aeneas experiences the god on an island, Delos, the description goes well beyond its Apollonian and Callimachean models: tremere omnia uisa repente, liminaque laurusque dei, totusque moueri mons circum et mugire adytis cortina reclusis.

(Virgil, Aeneid 3.90–2)

Everything seemed suddenly to tremble, the threshold and the laurel of the god, and the whole mountain round about seemed to be moved and the tripod to groan as the shrine was opened up.

The specification of ‘the whole mountain’ immediately raises the ‘height’ of the passage,59 as do the tall mountains and forests which tremble as Poseidon passes in Iliad 13. One further passage of early epic which Apollonius recalls by Apollo’s appearance is Zeus’s famous, and famously aweinspiring,60 nod of assent to Thetis in Iliad 1: §, kaª kuan”hisin –pì ½jrÅsi neÓse Kron©wn, ˆmbr»siai dì Šra ca±tai –perrÛsanto Šnaktov krat¼v ˆpì ˆqan†toioá m”gan dì –l”lixen ïOlumpon. (Homer, Iliad 1.528–30)

He finished speaking, and with his dark brows the son of Kronos nodded; the lord’s heaven-sweet locks streamed down from his immortal head, and he shook mighty Olympus.

‘Great Olympus’ is certainly more sublime than ‘all of Thynias’. 58 59 60

For the details see Janko on Iliad 13.21–2. On this passage see Heyworth 1993 and Barchiesi 1994. See, e.g., ‘Heraclitus’, Homeric Problems 2.2.

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We may gauge something of what is at stake here by considering a passage of Callimachus at his most cosmic. In the Hymn to Delos Ares is watching from a Thracian mountain lest anywhere offer Leto refuge and, when Mount Peneios offers to do so, the god’s reaction is swift: ˆll‡ o¬ ïArhv Pagga©ou proq”lumna karžata m”llen ˆe©rav –mbal”ein d©nhisin, ˆpokrÅyai d• ç”eqraá Ëy»qe dì –smar†ghse kaª ˆsp©da tÅyen ˆkwki doÅratová ¡ d ì –l”lixen –n»plioná ›treme dì ïOsshv oÎrea kaª ped©on KrannÛnion a¯ te dusae±v –scatiaª P©ndoio, j»bwi dì Ýrcžsato psa Qessal©há to±ov g‡r ˆpì ˆsp©dov ›bramen §cov.

(Callimachus, Hymn to Delos 133–40)

But Ares had it in mind to raise the peaks of Pangaion from their base and hurl them into the waters, effacing the streams of Peneios. From on high he roared and beat his shield with the tip of his spear, and it rang out with a martial sound. The peaks of Ossa and the plain of Krannon and the stormy wastes of Pindos trembled; all of Thessaly danced with fear – such was the crashing from the shield.

Ares threatens to uproot mountains and makes a truly cosmic noise which embraces most of the north Aegean and central Greece, with particular effect upon mountains; immediately after this the reverberation of Ares’ shield is compared to an eruption of Etna, a truly sublime event (cf. On the Sublime 35.4). There is much here of which L would probably not approve,61 but the cosmic scale of the description cannot be gainsaid, and Ares is serving Hera whose dominant emotion is, once again, anger (vv. 55, 106–7, etc.). The ‘trembling’ of the mountains picks up, as we have seen, a familiar element of descriptions of divine movement, but we may think that, just as ‘all of Thessaly danced with fear’, so ›treme also in 137 will carry the implication of fear; nature, not unreasonably, is worried by what Ares has in mind. Whether or not there is a similar effect at Iliad 13.18 may be debated,62 though Eustathius, at any rate, thought the use of tr”mein ‘as though the mountains were living, perceiving creatures’ worthy of note (Hom. 917.26). So too, when the arrows clatter on Apollo’s back (Iliad 1.46), the bT-scholia note that ‘inanimate objects too feel the divine power’. At the appearance of Apollo in Book 2, however, Apollonius 61

62

See further Hunter 2006a: 94–5. Callimachus has chosen –l”lixen (‘rang out’) in v. 137 to evoke the appearance of this word in scenes in which the divine shakes the world, as Zeus’s nod –l”lixen Olympus; ›treme in the same verse makes sure that we do not miss the point. Janko ad loc. notes, ‘The forested slopes quake . . . to suit Poseidon’s mood.’

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chooses the verb (se©esqai) which offers least hold to such personifying readings. size matters The link between subject and style is crucial to ideas of the sublime. The choice of the plan of the giants to pile Pelion upon Ossa and both on Olympus (Odyssey 11.315–17) to illustrate ‘sublime passages free of emotion (p†qov)’ was certainly not a random one (On the Sublime 8.2). If L does not actually quote the verses (Odyssey 11.309–12) in which Homer stresses the hugeness of these giants, we nevertheless must have them in mind; here, as elsewhere in On the Sublime, silences make demands upon our imaginations, in a (silent) illustration of how the sublime works. So too, in his discussion of the difference between the Iliad and the Odyssey, Longinus singles out from the latter poem as examples of Homer’s continuing power in old age, despite the new prominence of t¼ muqik»n, ‘the storms and the episode of the Cyclops and certain other parts’ (9.14). The importance of the epic storm to ideas of the sublime we have already noted, and it is significant that L proceeds to single out the wineskin in which Aeolus confined the winds as an example of the ‘nonsense’ (lrov) into which great genius can lapse after it has passed its prime (9.14). The episode of the ‘bag of the winds’ was much discussed in antiquity – why on earth did Aeolus give this to Odysseus?63 – but one of L’s objections, presumably, is to the very idea of confining the cosmic sublimity of the winds within the small space of a skin bag, even one made from a whole ox (Odyssey 10.19). Virgil’s sublime ‘Cave of the Winds’ (Aeneid 1.50–63)64 must be seen as in part a corrective reaction to the Homeric passage, perhaps indeed under the influence of the kind of criticism of Homer which we see in L. L presumably chose the Cyclops episode for praise (inter alia) because of its emphasis upon the monstrous size of the Cyclops and everything around him (see Odyssey 9.187, 190–2, 240–3, 257, 481ff., etc.); our first glimpse of his dwelling emphasises its Ìyov: ›nqa dì –pì –scatii sp”ov e­domen Šgci qal†sshv, Ëyhl»n, d†jnhisi kathrej”vá ›nqa d• poll‡ mlì, Ài”v te kaª a²gev, «aÅeskoná perª dì aÉlŸ ËyhlŸ d”dmhto katwruc”essi l©qoisi 63 64

The scholium on Odyssey 10.20 is a very interesting example of its kind. See Hardie 1986: 90–7, with earlier bibliography.

185

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Critical Moments in Classical Literature makris©n te p©tussin «d• drusªn Ëyik»moisin. ›nqa dì ˆnŸr –n©aue pelÛriov ktl.

(Homer, Odyssey 9.182–7a)

There at the edge of the land by the sea we saw a cave, tall, covered over with laurels; large flocks, both sheep and goats, slept there. A high courtyard had been built around the entrance with hewn stones and tall pines and lofty oaks. There a monstrous man used to sleep . . .

Here Virgil could go beyond, rather than reject, the Homeric model: his Cyclops touches the stars (at least in the na¨ıve telling of Achaemenides, Aeneid 3.618–20; cf. 632, 636–7, 647, 656–9, 664–5, 672–4, 679–81). Size matters, particularly in epic, and it may be possible through the figure of the Cyclops still to trace some of the features which, in L’s view, prevented Apollonius from being a ‘sublime’ poet. We may begin by comparing, on the one side, the great staff which the Homeric Cyclops was preparing for himself and which Odysseus and his men compare to the mast of a ‘broad’ merchant ship which sails across ‘the great sea’ (Odyssey 9.319–24), and the ‘lopped pine-tree’ with which the Virgilian Cyclops guides his blinded steps (Aeneid 3.659),65 and, on the other, the fir-tree which the Apollonian Heracles uproots ‘roots and earth and all’ to make himself a new oar (Argon. 1.1187–1205). The Apollonian tree is indebted to the Homeric staff (Odyssey 9.324 ∼ Argon. 1.1193), and Heracles’ uprooting of it is indeed compared to the demasting of a ship by a sudden winter squall,66 but whereas Heracles’ actions, like the immediately preceding scene in which he rows the Argo single-handed, are clearly intended to be understood as those of a superhuman strongman, the description of the fir which he selects for his oar may seem curiously detailed (ˆkrib”v): eÕren ›peitì –l†thn ˆlalžmenov oÎte ti pollo±v ˆcqom”nhn Àzoiv oÉd• m”ga thleq»wsan, ˆllì o³on tanav ›rnov p”lei a«ge©roioá t»ssh ¾mäv mk»v te kaª –v p†cov §en «d”sqai.

(Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1.1190–3)

In his wandering he came across a fir-tree which was neither weighed down by too many branches not too far (mega) grown, but to look upon resembled rather a slender poplar in both height and width.

Here the two words of size, ‘many’, ‘great’, are immediately preceded by negatives; Heracles, the focaliser of these verses, looks for the right tree 65 66

See Ovid, Met. 13.782, and Quintilian 8.4.24 on the amplificatio here. See Knight 1995: 128.

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with the eye of an experienced oarsman, and fitness here lies in a surprising absence of bulk. Odysseus and his men also look at the Cyclops’ staff with the eyes of experienced sailors – note the specification of ‘a twentyoared . . . merchant-ship’ (Odyssey 9.322–3) – but those eyes see amazing size, not appropriate control. Given other opportunities to stress ‘size’, Apollonius may again seem curiously reticent. The boxing match between Amycus (another ‘Cyclops’ figure) and Polydeuces replays the struggle of the Olympians against darker and older forces,67 and Amycus is compared to ‘a monstrous child of deadly Typhoeus or of Gaia herself ’ and to a great wave battering a ship (Argon. 2.38–9, 70–3), but the episode as a whole places very little emphasis upon Amycus’ size. We may here contrast the Theocritean version of the encounter, in which size is actually made an issue, though not perhaps in a way of which L would approve, and in which the debt of the figure of Amycus to the Homeric Cyclops is much more obvious than in Apollonius:68 Amycus is ‘a man like Tityos’ (22.94), the monstrously huge sinner of Odyssey 11, and the boxing match itself is framed by Amycus’ transition from the m”gav ˆnžr of verse 84 to the ‘smallness’ of verse 113 (–k meg†lou d” | a²yì ½l©gov g”netì ˆndr»v). A striking case of downsizing is the introduction of Amycus in the Argonautica as Ëperoplh”staton ˆndrän ‘most arrogant of men’ (Argon. 2.4), for when the same adjective is used to introduce the Theocritean Amycus (22.44), the primary reference must be to his physical size, rather than to his ethical quality.69 Here again Virgil’s epic manner is quite different from that of Apollonius. In the boxing match of Aeneid 5, Dares rises to enter the fray uastis . . . uiribus (v. 368), and we are told that at the Trojan tomb of maximus Hector he had defeated a descendant of Amycus himself, Butes of ‘the huge body’, immani corpore (vv. 371–4); huge size is again at issue in the question of the choice of boxing thongs (vv. 401, 404–5), and the fight itself is dominated by Entellus’ great size and strength (vv. 422, 431–2, 447–9). Apollonius resists these epic temptations. Examples could be multiplied. On the promontory of Cyzicus the Argonauts encounter the ‘Earthborn’: kaª t¼ m•n Ëbrista© te kaª Šgrioi –nna©eskon Ghgen”ev, m”ga qaÓma perikti»nessin «d”sqaiá šx g‡r —k†stwi ce±rev Ëp”rbioi  er”qonto, 67 69

68 See, e.g., Sens 1997: 111–12. See Hunter 1993: 28–9. See, e.g., Cuypers 1997: 19, 36–7. The sense in Theocritus is primarily established by the focalisation of the scene, see Hunter 2003b: 488.

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Critical Moments in Classical Literature a¬ m•n ˆp¼ stibarän ßmwn dÅo, taª dì Ëp”nerqen t”ssarev a«not†thisin –pª pleuriv ˆraru±ai.

(Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1.942–6)

Violent and savage were those who lived on the island, children of the Earth – an extraordinary sight for their neighbours. Each had six mighty arms, two coming out from their stout shoulders and the other four attached lower down on their terrible sides.

Like the Homeric Cyclops, these creatures hurl ‘jagged bits of cliff’ (v. 995) and are ‘terrible monsters’ (a«n‡ p”lwra, v. 996); in death they are compared to ‘long timbers’ stretched out on the beach, half in the water and half out. The image, which concentrates on the strangeness of the sight,70 would seem to imply the great size of the Earthborn, but nothing explicit is said about this; it is interesting to speculate how Virgil might have written this simile. The Earthborn have two principal models in early epic, Homer’s Laistrygonians71 and Hesiod’s ‘hundred-handers’. The Laistrygonians are ‘like Giants’ (G©gantev, Odyssey 10.120), and Odysseus’ men encounter a woman ‘the size of a mountain’ (10.113); so too Hesiod’s children of Gaia and Ouranos are explicitly and repeatedly m”gav: Šlloi dì aÔ Ga©hv te kaª OÉranoÓ –xeg”nonto tre±v pa±dev meg†loi te kaª Àmbrimoi, oÉk ½nomasto©, K»ttov te Bri†reÛv te GÅghv q’, Ëperžjana t”kna, tän —kat¼n m•n ce±rev ˆpì ßmwn ˆ©ssonto, Šplastoi, kejalaª d• —k†stwi pentžkonta –x ßmwn –p”jukon –pª stibaro±si m”lessiná «scÆv dì Šplhtov kraterŸ meg†lwi –pª e­dei. (Hesiod, Theogony 147–53)

Then came forth three further sons of Earth and Sky, great and violent, unspeakable, Kottos and Briareus and Gyges, arrogant children. From their shoulders shot forth a hundred terrible arms, and each had fifty heads growing from their shoulders above their massive limbs; dreadful was the powerful strength in their great forms.

Apollonius’ ‘six-handers’ are clearly not in the same ‘epic’ league as Hesiod’s creatures, and by making us able explicitly to visualise how their ‘violent arms’ actually fit on to an apparently otherwise normal body (vv. 945–6), Apollonius has reduced the threatening unclarity of the Hesiodic text to a matter of detailed physiology.72 Apollonius’ Earthborn may be ‘violent and savage’ (v. 942), but what causes m”ga qaÓma is their oversupply of arms, 70 72

71 See Knight 1995: 147–52. See Hunter 1993: 41–2. West’s note on Theogony 150–2 shows the embarrassment of trying to visualise the Hesiodic creatures; see also Theogony 671–3.

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not any monstrous size they might possess. A somewhat similar analysis may be applied to Apollonius’ Talos, another creature able to break rocks off cliffs and hurl them at ships (Argon. 4.1638–40); when he is brought low, it is like the felling of a great pine-tree (Argon. 4.1682–6), but although art represents Talos as larger than life,73 Apollonius is again silent about his actual size. So too the size of the other Earthborn Men against whom Jason battles at the conclusion of Book 3 is really only implied in the comparison of the sight of them in death to ‘sea monsters’ (kžtea, 3.1395).74 As part of the presentation of an epic world marked by familiarity and ‘ordinariness’,75 then, Apollonius has in part cut epic down to size, and it is L’s critical sensibilities which allow us to trace this most clearly. The difference between Homer and Apollonius is, of course, one of degree, not an absolute one. The passage through the Symplegades (2.549–606) is the Argonautic version of Homer’s Scylla and Charybdis,76 though Apollonius places these terrors themselves next to the ‘Wandering Rocks’ in the strait between Sicily and the Italian mainland, as one of the perils through which the Argonauts must pass on the return jouney of Book 4. In his description of the passage through the Symplegades it is clear that Apollonius does wish to stress the magnitude of the task facing the Argonauts; we are to feel fear for the fearful sailors (2.552, 575, 577).77 Here there is a very clear distinction between the passage through the Symplegades and that through the Planktai, where the Argo is lifted up on high by Thetis and the sea-nymphs, as young girls play with a ball, and the only fear is that of Hera, who throws her arms around Athena as she watches the sight (4.959–60); the Argonauts are indeed all but written out of the scene.78 It is easy enough to guess what L would have made of this scene. In the passage through the Symplegades, however, elemental nature plays its part: årto d• pollŸ Œlmh ˆnabrasqe±sa, n”jov ãvá aÔe d• p»ntov smerdal”oná p†nthi d• perª m”gav ›bremen a«qžr. ko±lai d• spžluggev Ëp¼ spil†dav trhce©av kluzoÅshv ‰l¼v ›ndon –b»mbeon, Ëy»qi dì Àcqhv leukŸ kacl†zontov ˆn”ptue kÅmatov Šcnh. (Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 2.565–70)

73 74 75 77 78

See LIMC s.v. Talos 1. The comparison associates these Earthborn with their namesakes in Book 1, but Vian (note compl´ementaire on 3.1395) rightly calls attention to it as an ‘isolated allusion’ to their great size. 76 See Knight 1995: 41–8. See Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004: 98–104. See above pp. 139–41 on Iliad 15.624ff. See Vian, Note compl´ementaire to 4.955; Hutchinson 1988: 131–2; Hunter 1993: 78 n. 11.

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A huge body of spray was thrown up like a cloud, the sea gave a terrible roar, and all around the limitless sky resounded. As the sea surged around the harsh rocks, hollow sea-caves boomed within, and the white foam from the thundering wave was hurled high above the cliffs.

The verses echo Hesiodic descriptions of cosmic battles (Theogony 678– 80, 839–41) to stress what is at stake in the Argonauts’ struggle;79 here, if anywhere in the Argonautica, we should feel t¼ jober»n and t¼ qaum†sion before the great forces of nature.80 Even in this instance, however, the Virgilian description of Scylla and Charybdis in Aeneid 3 embraces the whole cosmos in a manner quite absent from both Homer and Apollonius.81 Size, m”geqov, is of course itself both a physical and a stylistic quality (cf. On the Sublime 9.1–4, 11–12). Homer himself, his poetry and the characters are all megaloprepžv or megalojužv: this is the proper epic mode. At Iliad 17.262, for example, Hector leads a Trojan charge: Träev d• proÅtuyan ˆoll”evá §rce dì Šrì íEktwr. Þv dì Âtì –pª procoisi diipet”ov potamo±o b”brucen m”ga kÓma potª ç»on, ˆmjª d” tì Škrai  i»nev bo»wsin –reugom”nhv ‰l¼v ›xw, t»sshi Šra Träev «aci ­san. (Homer, Iliad 17.262–6)

The Trojans moved forward in a close mass; Hector led them. As when at the mouth of a rain-fed river the great wave of the sea roars against the stream, and all around the headlands scream as the sea heaves further out, with such shouting did the Trojans advance.

The scholia tell us that the magnificent envisionment and sound of this simile caused both Solon and Plato to despair of their own efforts at poetry, but it is the bT-scholium on diipet”ov in verse 263 which is of interest here: diipet”ov: ‘fed by rain’. With natural greatness (megalojuäv) he did not use a river which is always flowing (for these flow more gently), but a winter torrent, in order to increase the size (m”geqov) of the roaring and to emphasise the clash of forces. The harshness of the sounds and the lengthening in bo»wsin contribute to the powerful image (jantas©a). (bT-scholium on Iliad 17.263c)82

A similar case concerns the description at Iliad 2.149–54 of the frantic Achaean preparations to abandon Troy: 79 80 81 82

The Hesiodic model is noted by Green 1997: 241, but otherwise seems to have passed unnoticed. See Innes 1995b: 330–1 on the kind of ‘fear’ which is appropriate to the sublime. See Hardie 1986: 259–62; Nelis 2001: 45–8. See also Aristotle, Poetics 1458b31; Dion. Hal. On the Arrangement of Words 15.13.

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toª dì ˆlalhtäi nav ›pì –sseÅonto, podän dì Ëp”nerqe kon©h ¯statì ˆeirom”nh. toª dì ˆllžloisi k”leuon Œptesqai nhän  dì —lk”men e«v Œla d±an, oÉroÅv tì –xek†qaironá ˆutŸ dì oÉran¼n ³ken o­kade ¬em”nwná Ëp¼ dì ¤ireon ™rmata nhän. (Homer, Iliad 2.149–54)

With wild shouting they rushed to the ships, and beneath their feet the dust was stirred and rose up. They urged each other to lay hold of the ships and to drag them into the bright sea, and they began to clear the launching-tracks. In their eagerness for home the shouting reached the sky. They began to take away the props from beneath the ships.

On verse 153 the scholia comment: ˆutŸ dì oÉran¼n ³ken: With natural greatness (megalojuäv) he increased the confusion (taracž), which Aristophanes in the Acharnians diminished (kataleptol»ghsen). (AbT-scholium on Iliad 2.153c)

What the Homeric scholiast means is that by bringing in a cosmic element (‘the shouting reached the sky’) Homer has ‘increased’, that is, lent m”geqov to, the description; rhetoricians indeed defined ‘increase’ (aÎxhsiv) as ‘language which invests the subject matter with m”geqov’.83 Behind the note presumably lies a slight critical unease that, without this grand touch, the passage threatened to sink under the weight of unusual nautical detail. As for Aristophanes, the reference must be to the description of the q»rubov and bož of Athenian preparations for an expedition at Acharnians 545–54, a description which far surpasses that of Homer in vivid ‘local’ detail. The piling up of such detail and its ‘vulgarity’ show the difference between the grand and the low treatment of a similar subject; that the scholiast uses a verb for Aristophanes’ relation to the Homeric ‘model’ (kataleptologe±n) which otherwise occurs only in the Frogs in a choral description of Euripides (Frogs 828) tells its own story.84 Greatness of both subject and style cannot, of course, be considered in isolation from their opposites. For L, t¼ megaloju”v is a sine qua non for any writer who wishes to produce ‘great’ or sublime work: The thoughts of the true orator must be neither low (tapein»n) nor ignoble (ˆgenn”v), for it is impossible for someone whose thoughts and practices throughout 83 84

See ‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 12.1, with Russell’s note. It was perhaps not important to the scholiast that, in this speech in Acharnians, Dicaeopolis was pretending to be a character from a Euripidean tragedy, but the fact is worth noting.

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their life are small and slavish to bring forth something wonderful and deserving of immortality. (‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 9.3)

mikr† and tapein† thoughts or, in the language of the Frogs, o«ke±a pr†gmata are the products of correspondingly limited spirits, and it is therefore important to see how Homer and other great writers rise above these limitations, as in the case from Iliad 2 which we have just considered. We may begin with the scholia to the famous simile from the opening of Iliad 10 which compares Agamemnon’s flickering and anxious thoughts to the lightning of Zeus: With appropriate greatness (megaloprepäv) he likened the commander of the Greeks to the greatest of the gods; but when Odysseus was dressed as a beggar he applied a lowly (tapein»v) simile to him: ‘As when a man turns a haggis’ . . . (Odyssey 20.25–30). (bT-scholium on Iliad 10.5b)

As in the case of the preparations for departure in Iliad 2, the note takes its starting point from the observation of a similarity of situation between two passages, but here two passages of Homer. In Odyssey 20 Odysseus too, like Agamemnon at the start of Iliad 10, is lying awake at night and thinking. The scholiast implies that Homer observed t¼ pr”pon by using an appropriate simile in both cases, one drawn from the highest of conceptions (Zeus and Agamemnon have been associated since the beginning of the poem)85 and one drawn from a very low reality, matching Odysseus’ disguise as a hungry beggar; modern critics would probably add that Odysseus has already been associated with ‘stomachs’ as a form of food by the prize suggested by Antinoos for a fight between Odysseus and Iros (Odyssey 18.44–9) and with hunger by the ‘accursed belly’ motif to which he regularly turns.86 Here, then, tapein† material does not reflect badly on the poet, but rather shows up another of his outstanding literary qualities. As a result of the very great critical worry about ‘impropriety’, such observations concerning Homer’s extraordinary skill are not uncommon in the scholia, and (unsurprisingly) are often found in connection with similes, for it is here where ‘low material’ tends to occur, particularly in the Iliad. Thus, for example, of the simile through which Achilles compares the crying Patroclus to a little girl tugging at her mother’s dress to be picked up (Iliad 16.7–10) the bT-scholia note that this is a ‘low subject’ (eÉtel•v prgma), but that the poet has expressed it ‘grandly and with clarity of envisionment’ 85

86

There is a similar conception lying behind the bT-scholium on Iliad 2.402, which notes the appropriateness of Homer’s ‘detailed’ description of Agamemnon’s sacrifice to Zeus, ‘the king properly sacrifices to the king’. See, e.g., De Jong 2001: 182.

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(megaloprepäv kaª metì –narge©av). At Iliad 18.346–8 Homer describes how water is boiled in preparation for washing Patroclus’ body: o¬ d• loetroc»on tr©podì ¯stasan –n purª khl”wi, –n dì Šrì Ìdwr ›cean, Ëp¼ d• xÅla da±on —l»ntev. g†strhn m•n tr©podov pÓr Šmjepe, q”rmeto dì Ìdwr. They set a tripod used for pouring over the blazing fire, poured water into it, and threw wood underneath and lit it. The fire played around the belly of the tripod and heated the water.

Here too the scholiasts on verse 346 have thought about what is distinctively Homeric about this otherwise banal description: Having to describe vulgar events (tapein‡ pr†gmata), the poet has concealed (–k†luye) it by the use of the epithets. It is a wonderful skill to be able to give grand expression and a solemn description (megaloprepäv –xenegke±n kaª semnäv ˆpagge±lai) to small, unimportant things. (bT-scholium on Iliad 18.346a)

‘Epic decorum’ in sexual matters is of course a further aspect of the poet’s skilful handling of the low and vulgar. In Iliad 9 Agamemnon says that he will swear that Briseis is just as he received her: –pª d• m”gan Ârkon ½moÓmai, mž pote tv eÉnv –pibžmenai  d• mignai, ¥ q”miv ˆnqrÛpwn p”lei, ˆndrän  d• gunaikän. (Homer, Iliad 9.132–4)

And I will swear a mighty oath that I never entered her bed nor had intercourse with her, as is normal for mortals, both men and women.

Here the bT-scholia express their admiration: ¥ q”miv ˆnqrÛpwn: With wonderful skill the poet has concealed a shameful word (tŸn a«scr‡n l”xin –k†luye) by a law of nature, covering (–piski†zwn) the vulgar (tapein†) and human business of intercourse with the most honorific of expressions. (bT-scholium to Iliad 9.134b)

The Aristophanic Aeschylus’ dictum that poets should conceal t¼ ponhr»n (Frogs 1053) applies to the decorum of language as well as to the immoral stories of myth. Stylistically, the ordinariness and ‘smallness’ of the ‘plain’ or ‘slender’ («scn»n) style are, for Demetrius, On Style (190), to be used to describe small and ordinary things, for ‘everything which is rather familiar is rather simple (lit. ‘small’, mikr»teron)’; as we have seen, Demetrius cites the opening of Euphiletus’ narrative in Lysias 1 – ‘I have a small house on

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two floors . . .’ (Lysias 1.9) – as an illustration of this.87 Here we are once again confronted with a manifestation of that central stylistic dichotomy which descends from the Frogs, but Demetrius’ illustration, which takes ‘smallness’ literally, follows the same logic as L’s treatment of the distinction between Homer and Aratus (the ‘small piece of wood’). For Demetrius, this ‘plain style’ is also the proper arena for the accumulation of precise detail in which ‘nothing is omitted’, an accumulation which is productive of enargeia (209) and clarity. What is most important for an orator about the ‘plain’ or ‘slender’ («scn»n) style, with its precision and clarity, is that this style is persuasive, it is productive of t¼ piqan»n (On Style 221), and thus engages the audience in an intellectual process leading to ‘rational’ judgements about what is being said, whereas, as we have seen, our contact with the grandly sublime is an experience of ›kstasiv and ›kplhxiv (On the Sublime 1.4). This must not, however, be understood to suggest that sublime images are not to be examined too closely, to be ‘held up to the sunlight’, as L puts it (3.1, cf. Horace, Ars P 363); our response to the sublime may be an emotional one, but the sublime itself, and our reactions to it, should be the product of both art and nature (On the Sublime 2). Moreover, when properly employed, akribeia may make a significant contribution to ‘grand’ poetry; the scholia, of course, constantly praise Homer for the accuracy of his information. Moreover, such akribeia, an idea which combines ‘detail’ with ‘(factual) accuracy’, belongs, as L and the Hellenistic poets themselves show us, to an important way in which the differences between Hellenistic and earlier poetry were envisaged.88 The example of completeness and precision leading to enargeia which Demetrius gives is the famous simile of Iliad 21.257–62 describing Achilles’ pursuit by the enraged river: Þv dì Âtì ˆnŸr ½cethg¼v ˆp¼ kržnhv melanÅdrou ‹m jÅta kaª kžpouv Ìdati ç»on ¡gemoneÅhi cersª m†kellan ›cwn, ˆm†rhv –x ›cmata b†llwná toÓ m”n te pror”ontov Ëp¼ yhj±dev Œpasai ½cl”ontai, t¼ d” tì åka kateib»menon kelarÅzei cÛrwi ›ni proale±, jq†nei d” te kaª t¼n Šgonta. As when a man working on irrigation directs water from a dark spring through his plants and fruit, by working with a mattock and throwing muck out of the channel; as the stream flows forward, all the pebbles roll down and the swift-flowing water gurgles as it runs down the slope and catches up with the gardener. 87 88

See above p. 18. Whether or not Euphiletus’ house was actually (relatively) small and what is the real force of the diminutive may, of course, be debated, see Todd ad loc. Cf. Hunter 2003c: 225–6.

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Very ‘ordinary’ things indeed; the bT-scholia on this simile confirm that we have here a switch from a ‘forceful’ (‰dr»n) style to one which is ‘slender and florid’ («scn¼n kaª ˆnqhr»n), and the Ge-scholia refer to the ‘polished style’ (glajur¼n pl†sma) of Homer’s picture. It would have been easy enough for stylistic critics to pick up the pointed contrast in the Homeric text between the ‘great roaring’ of the river, which introduces the simile, and the ‘burbling flow’ (kateib»menon kelarÅzei) of the irrigation stream. Whether this simile has influenced the common language of the literary ‘source’ and of how one writer ‘channels’ the power of another cannot be determined, as such imagery is too common to allow certainty.89 Nevertheless, looking back at this passage through the lens of the all-pervasive ‘Wassermetaphorik’90 of later criticism and, particularly, of Hellenistic and Roman poetry, it is (at least) tempting to see here one element in a principal way of imaging stylistic difference and in the self-construction of the poetry of Callimachus and his Greek and Roman imitators. As L (see 35.4) and other critics (to say nothing of the poets themselves) show us, an important ancient way of thinking about the stylistic difference between Homer and later poetry was between the grand, such as the roaring of the river in pursuit of Achilles or the mountain torrent to which Ajax is compared at Iliad 11.492–7,91 and the ‘slender’ or ‘small’ like the farmer irrigating his crops. The farmer’s action in clearing ‘hindrances’ out of the way of the stream picks up the river’s action in trying to clear itself of the foul corpses and other debris which choke its ‘lovely streams’ (note v. 237 ∼ v. 259), but it is tempting to trace a line of descent from this Homeric passage to the ‘Callimachean’ insistence on a clean flow of pure water – erat quod tollere uelles, says Horace of Lucilius’ ‘muddy flow’ (Sat. 1.4.11). It is possible that this Homeric passage echoes in the opening exchanges of Theocritus 1, which introduce a new sound of poetry,92 and certain that it does in the locus amoenus described by Simichidas at the end of Idyll 7 (v. 137), which – however one wishes to interpret its tone – is clearly designed as a ‘showpiece’ of a new poetic style. 89

90 91 92

See Russell on ‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 13.3. At 13.2, however, L seems clearly to construct Republic 6.485d8–9 as an imitation of the Homeric simile, thus reinforcing stylistically the point he is making, namely Plato’s ‘channelling’ of Homeric material. See Asper 1997: 109–20. See Hunter 2003c: 221. The scholiast on Theocritus 1.1d cites Iliad 21.261 to illustrate onomatopoeia; whether this indicates that ancient criticism traced a wider affinity or even genetic relationship between the two passages is hard to say. It is also at least worth noting that Homer’s description of how the irrigating stream disturbs the pebbles made Eustathius think of Theocritus’ ‘every stone sings’ (Idyll 7.26, cf. Eustathius, Hom. 1236.3–5).

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One further possible echo of this Homeric passage reveals its hold on the ancient poetic imagination. At the end of Argonautica 3, Jason’s reaping of the ‘sown men’ is compared to a farmer cutting down his crop prematurely to prevent it being destroyed by war: âv t»te ghgen”wn ke±ren st†cuná a¯mati dì ¾lkoª  Åte krhna©av ˆm†rai plžqonto çoisi. (Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 3.1391–2)

So did Jason cut the crop of the earthborn. The furrows were filled with blood as irrigation channels fill with streams from a well.

Jason’s slaughter ‘pollutes’ the Homeric irrigation channel (ˆm†rh, a Homeric hapax) in a ghastly (epic) staining of the bucolic peace of the Homeric simile. polish without flaws I have discussed elsewhere some of the implications of and intellectual influences upon L’s famous discussion of the difference between ‘sublime’ writers who admit ‘flaws’ and the flawless but essentially ‘small’.93 The history of this distinction, however, takes us back to some of the texts which have been central to this book. L’s distinction is related to the lively Hellenistic and Roman debate94 over the relative contributions of t”cnh/ ars and jÅsiv/ natura / ingenium to the production of successful writing of any kind;95 for L both are necessary for the sublime (On the Sublime 2). That this debate had been related to perceived differences between classical and ‘Hellenistic’ poetry before L is suggested by Ovid’s bon mot about Callimachus, quamuis ingenio non ualet, arte ualet (Amores 1.15.14). As McKeown (ad loc.) rightly notes, Ovid will in part be picking up Callimachus’ own stress on the criterion of t”cnh in the Aitia-prologue (another instance of a poet directing his own critical reception),96 but it is very probable that he is also reflecting a critical judgement familiar to his audience. How early such judgements arose we cannot say, and it is important to remember that it is far harder to trace (before the classicising L) the sense that poetry after Alexander formed a distinctive ‘period’ than an equivalent view about oratory; perhaps until at least the middle of the first century bc ‘Hellenistic’ poetry was in fact 93 94 95

See Hunter 2003c: 230–3, and forthcoming. The origins of the debate are, of course, earlier than this, see Isocrates, Antidosis 187–91. 96 See above pp. 95–6. See Brink on Horace, Ars Poetica 408–18.

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just ‘poetry’.97 Moreover, just as the debate between ars and natura need not necessarily have a chronological dimension, despite the general trend to see cultures moving towards t”cnh and away from ‘nature’,98 so too ars and natura by no means exhaust the criteria of difference by which the evolution of either oratory or poetry over time may be traced. If there is little in Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ famous attack on post-Alexandrian oratory (On the Ancient Orators, Proem) which could immediately be mapped on to post-Alexandrian poetry, the same is not true of Cicero’s analysis of the oratory of Demetrius of Phaleron, whom he sees as marking an important transition in the history of Attic oratory:99 In my opinion, the sap and blood of oratory was uncorrupted down to this age [that of Lycurgus, Dinarchus, etc. in the second half of the fourth century], and its brilliance was natural, not the result of cosmetics. When these orators were in old age, they were succeeded by that young man from Phaleron, who was the most erudite of them all, but who was trained not so much for battle as for the exercise arena. He delighted the Athenians more than he inflamed them, for he stepped forward into the sun and the dust, not from a soldier’s tent, but from the shaded bowers of Theophrastus, a man of utmost learning. He was the first to make oratory bend and he rendered it soft (mollis) and gentle (tener); he preferred to seem charming (suauis), as he was, rather than serious (grauis). His charm poured over his hearers’ minds rather than breaking them; his elegance, however, did not, as Eupolis wrote of Pericles, leave a sting in the minds of his hearers, along with the pleasure it gave them. (Cicero, Brutus 36–8)

Here ‘nature’ gives way to artifice and to learning (almost indeed to ‘the ivory tower’), and oratory delights rather than moves; in style, oratory becomes mollis, tenera and suauis, and the audience are charmed rather than ‘shattered’. It is very difficult here not to be reminded of the language which Roman ‘Callimacheans’ apply to their poetry, partly in imitation of Callimachus’ own critical vocabulary and partly perhaps as a borrowing from the language of rhetorical history, such as we find in this passage of the Brutus. The distinctions with which L is operating are of course fluid, and we must resist the temptation to impose firm schemata upon the history of 97 99

98 See above pp. 44–5 on the Frogs. See Hunter 2001a. Cf. Quintilian 10.1.80. Cicero’s attitude to Demetrius is far from hostile (see Orator 91–2, 94–6), and Demetrius is by no means uniformly held up in the tradition as ‘the cause of the rot’, see Heldmann 1982: 98–122; Russell 1983: 18–19; on the passage of the Brutus see Heldmann 1982: 112. Nevertheless, the uses to which Cicero’s language could be put and the cultural history which it might suggest are what is important. At 2.4.41–2 Quintilian places the beginnings of declamation on imaginary themes at roughly the time of Demetrius, and declamation may of course also be seen as a cause or symptom of decline (most famously and amusingly in Petronius, Sat. 1–2, see above pp. 133–4).

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ancient criticism. Nevertheless, a passage of Quintilian, perhaps not far removed in time from L, may shed some light on how these distinctions were played out. In 10.1.86 Quintilian sets Virgil alongside Homer: Homer holds first place because of his natura caelestis atque inmortalis, but Virgil is not far behind: I agree completely with what Domitius Afer said to me when I was a young man. I asked him who he thought came closest to Homer, and he said, ‘Virgil is second, but closer to first than to third’. Although indeed we must give way before Homer’s divine and immortal genius, there is more care (cura) and accuracy (diligentia) in Virgil, if only because he had to work harder, and though we are defeated by Homer’s highspots, we perhaps make up for it by the uniform excellence (aequalitas) of Virgil. (Quintilian 10.1.86)

Quintilian is not of course denying Virgil’s ‘natural gifts’, and the emphasis upon his cura, diligentia and labor is presumably in part related to the famous story of his working methods preserved in the Suetonian-Donatan Life (chap. 22): in composing the Georgics he would dictate plurimos uersus in the morning and then spend the rest of the day ‘licking them into shape’, like a mother bear licks her cub, and thus reducing them to paucissimos [uersus].100 Virgil is here the anti-type of the Horatian Lucilius who often composed ‘two hundred verses in an hour, standing on one foot’, but did not then take the next step of expending the necessary labor to get them right (Sat. 1.4.9–13); Lucilius’ ‘muddy flow’ marks him as not measuring up to ‘Callimachean’ standards.101 Ideas of poetic labor and p»nov are particularly associated, more generally, in both the poetic and critical tradition, with the allegedly ‘scholastic’ poetry of the Hellenistic period;102 here Quintilian has turned Virgil, who breaks all the rules, into a very exceptional example of the later mode of ars rather than natura. Moreover, in praising the (very high-level) uniformity (aequalitas) of Virgilian poetry in contrast to the more uneven Homeric output, Quintilian again puts Virgil in a ‘Hellenistic’ category, though of course he is again an exceptional example of that category. In 10.1.54 Quintilian had described Apollonius’ Argonautica as non . . . contemnendum . . . opus aequali quadam mediocritate, and in chapter 33 L’s statement that ‘the higher excellences [like, e.g., those of Homer] should always be voted first place, even if they do not maintain an equal level throughout (e« kaª mŸ –n psi diomal©zoien)’ (On the Sublime 33.4) leads into the famous comparisons of Homer with Apollonius and 100 101 102

On the Virgilian anecdote see Horsfall 1995: 15–16, with earlier bibliography. See above pp. 99–100. See Hunter 2003c. Horace’s amusing version of the ars–natura contrast (Ars Poetica 289–302) is particularly relevant here.

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Theocritus and of Archilochus with Eratosthenes. The move from Homer to Virgil is thus both like and unlike both that from Homer to Hellenistic poetry and that from Ennius arte carens (Ovid, Amores 1.15.19) to Virgil.103 For Quintilian, Ennius is an ancient and numinous grove (10.1.88) which, presumably, affects us emotionally in ways which cannot be analysed.104 As often, the trail for poetic ‘mistakes’ really begins, at least for us, with the Frogs. At verse 1119 Euripides turns to ‘examine’ (basan©zein) Aeschylus’ prologues, with a particular concern for their clarity of exposition. His first exhibit is the opening verses of the Choephori which Aeschylus then cites: Di. toÅtwn ›ceiv y”gein ti; Eu. ple±n ¢ dÛdeka. Di. ˆllì oÉd• p†nta taÓt† gì ›stì ˆllì £ tr©a. Eu. ›cei dì ™kaston e­kos©n gì ‰mart©av. (Aristophanes, Frogs 1129–31)

dion. Can you find any fault in these verses? eur. More than twelve. dion. But there are only three verses in total! eur. Yes – each with twenty mistakes (hamartiai).

These ‰mart©ai (cf. 1147; bl†bov, 1151; kak»n, 1171) are errors of unclarity or ambiguity, whereas what L seems to have in mind in chapter 33 is rather occasional stylistic ‘misjudgements’, as when, for example, the striving for grand sublimity leads to ‘tumidity’ (t¼ o«doÓn, On the Sublime 3)105 or when a metaphor is simply judged unsuccessful, as in the following (amusing) Platonic example: It does not need to be spelled out that the use of metaphorical language, like all stylistic embellishments, can lead writers into excess. It is for such things in particular that they tear Plato apart, on the grounds that his writing often seems that of someone possessed by Dionysus, as he is carried away into untempered (ˆkr†touv) and rough metaphors and allegorical bombast. ‘It is not easy to understand’, he says, ‘that a city needs to be mixed like a wine-bowl; in the latter case, maddening wine seethes as it is poured in, but it is chastened by another god, a sober one, and finding a noble partnership it makes a fine and moderate drink’ (Plato, Laws 6.773c). In the view of Plato’s critics, to call water a god and the act of mixing a chastisement is the mark of a poet who is really less than sober. (‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 32.7)

Even here the link between subject and style exercises a tenacious hold: when Plato writes about wine, so the argument goes, his language is 103 104

For Ennius as the embodiment of ingenium see McKeown’s note ad loc. 105 See above pp. 130–1. See Hinds 1998: 14, 69–70.

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‘unmixed’ like wine at its most dangerous106 and he himself becomes possessed by the god. L goes on to say that it was for ‘such faults’ as this that Caecilius, in response to whom On the Sublime was written, claimed that Lysias was a better writer than Plato; what Caecilius presumably found most wonderful about Lysias in fact was the ‘purity’ (kaqar»thv) of his language, that virtue which took precedence over all others, and which referred not merely to his choice of words but also to an avoidance, for the most part, of metaphorical language (see Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lysias 2–3). We probably catch something of the flavour of Caecilius’ criticisms107 in a passage of Dionysius of Halicarnassus in which he catalogues the ‘faults’ (‰martžmata) to which Plato was liable when he wrote in the grand manner: When, as often happens, he launches unrestrainedly into unusual and elaborated language (¡ perittolog©a kaª t¼ kalliepe±n), he badly lets himself down. This style of his is less pleasant than his other mode, his use of language is less pure (k†kion —llhn©zousa), and the style flabbier; clarity is obscured and darkness all but prevails, and the meaning is dragged out to great length when a few concise words were called for. Vulgar periphrases and an empty display of verbiage flow forth; scorning ordinary words used as they are normally used (tän kur©wn kaª –n ti koini cržsei keim”nwn), this style prefers the artificial and exotic and archaic. It is particularly with regard to figurative language (¡ tropikŸ jr†siv) that the going gets stormy (ceim†zetai),108 as it is rich in added adornments, inappropriate in its use of metonymy, and harsh and without regard to analogy in the use of metaphor. It frequently embraces allegories which have no concern for measure or appropriateness, and luxuriates inappropriately and childishly in poetic figures, which produce a very displeasing effect, and in particular in the Gorgianic figures. (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demosthenes 5.4–6)

In discussing the examples from the Phaedrus which follow (Demosthenes 7) Dionysius shows (unsurprisingly) no regard to speaker, situation or ‘tone’ in assessing Plato’s ‘faults’; for Dionysius, the Platonic corpus is all the work of a great man109 and all potentially imitable – hence the need for stern warnings. As for L, he has used but extended this notion of ‘purity’ and ‘fault’ to cover a wider area of poetic technique (see 33.2 ‘I am perfectly aware that 106 107 108 109

For such imagery see below p. 178. Dionysius notes that such criticisms were made before him by ‘Demetrius of Phaleron and many of his predecessors’. The metaphor presumably imitates the alleged Platonic manner here. Cf. Letter to Pompeius 2, where Dionysius has to defend his attack upon Plato; in doing so, he rather misrepresents its severity, but also comes very close to Longinus’ language of risk and inevitable (occasional) ‘fall’.

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natures of real greatness are the least pure’), though the use of ‘transferred’ language remains dominant in our minds. The debate on the relative merits of Plato and Lysias, a debate behind which must stand Plato’s Phaedrus, takes much the same shape for L as the debate he sees played out in a comparison of the great ‘classical’ and Hellenistic poets,110 although L himself does not apparently share Caecilius’ view of Lysias as ‘flawless’ (On the Sublime 32.8, 35.1).111 Quintilian’s judgement of, and imagery about, Lysias show how close the comparison of prose writers and poets could be: Lysias belongs to an earlier era [than Aeschines and Hyperides]; he is subtle and elegant and, if it were sufficient for an orator just to instruct his audience, you could find no one more complete: there is no emptiness (inane) and nothing artificial (arcessitum). He is closer to a pure spring than to a great river. (Quintilian 10.1.78)

Rather similar things had been claimed for ‘Hellenistic poetry’ and its Roman imitators. Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ assessment of Lysias’ virtues also shows much the same intellectual structure as is on show in L’s chapters on the difference between ‘flawless’ and ‘great’ writing: Let me summarise my account of Lysias’ virtues: purity of language, correctness of dialect, the presentation of ideas through ordinary rather than figurative expressions, clarity, brevity, concision and sharpness of thought, vivid presentation . . . But Lysias’ style is neither lofty nor grand nor indeed does it knock us out (kataplhktikž) or move us to wonder; it is not pungent or intense or terrifying, it does not grab us and hold us fast, it is not full of spirit and inspiration; it is persuasive in the presentation of character, but lacks strength in the presentation of the emotions, just as it can please and persuade and charm us, but it cannot force and compel us. It is a safe style rather than one that takes risks, and it is better suited to the representation of the truth of nature than to the display of the power of the orator’s art. (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lysias 13)

A passage of Plutarch shows us how, in a different context, this same intellectual structure, which L and Quintilian use to contrast styles, could be used to attack those who looked to the style in which something was said, rather than to its substance; this too, like counting stylistic virtues rather than their importance, is to mistake surface for what really matters: The person who, from the very beginning [of a lecture], does not pay close attention to its substance but demands that the style be Attic and slender («scn»v) is like the person who is unwilling to drink an antidote for a poison except from 110 111

See Hunter 2003c. The text of 35.1 is, however, very uncertain, and it comes in very awkwardly where it is currently placed.

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a cup made of fine Attic clay or to put on a cloak in winter, unless the wool come from Attic sheep; he sits useless and without profit, dressed as it were in a thin and simple shirt of Lysianic language. This kind of obsessiveness has produced in the schools much absence of intelligence and good sense and a lot of hair-splitting subtlety and useless chatter (stwmul©a). The young men do not have regard to a philosopher’s life or his actions or his public deeds, but award points for verbal style and phrasing and excellence of delivery; as for what is actually being said, whether it is useful or pointless, essential or vain and unnecessary, they neither understand nor wish to examine. (Plutarch, ‘On listening to lectures’ 42d–e)

The Aristophanic Euripides had indeed very much to answer for.112 L apparently distinguishes between ‘unpardonable’ (ˆsÅggnwston) errors,113 such as inappropriate tumidity in tragedy which by its nature encourages ‘swollen’ language and thoughts (3.1), and the slips and misjudgements which are inevitable in great, risk-taking writing (33.2, cf. Horace, Ars P 347–60).114 As the introduction to the discussion of tumidity and other faults to which a striving for sublimity can lead is lost, it is hard to be certain, but the distinction, though hardly an unnatural one, is, as we have seen, at best slippery.115 It is a great pity that L did not cite some of the apparently many examples where the ‘flame’ of Pindar or Sophocles is ‘without reason extinguished and they fall most horribly flat’ (33.5) or, except in the context of his general discussion of the Odyssey, any of Homer’s ‘careless oversights’ to which he refers (33.4). Nevertheless, we are able to fill in some of the probable background to L’s discussion. In chapter 25 of the Poetics Aristotle tends to run together problžmata, ‘problems’, and ‰mart©ai, ‘faults’, but this blending is instructive.116 Once a question is raised about something which seems difficult in what a poet has written or presented, we may find a ‘solution’ by applying one of the many recipes which Aristotle and others offer;117 by implication, then, such a ‘problem’ should no longer be classed as a ‘mistake’, for it is explicable within the critical rules applicable to the poetic art, and poetry does not have the same standard of correctness (½rq»thv) as other arts (1460b13). Unsurprisingly, however, in then distinguishing between ‘faults’ which are ‘intrinsic’ to the art of poetry and those which are ‘incidental’, Aristotle’s vocabulary does not neatly preserve such a distinction: 112

113 114 116 117

It is tempting to trace the rich later tradition of comparing verbal style to the ‘clothes’ in which thought was dressed (Bion of Borysthenes was, for example, said to have dressed philosophy in gaudy clothes (T 11–13 Kindstrand)) and/or of describing style in the language of clothing back to Aeschylus’ argument at Frogs 1058–61. For this language cf. Horace, Ars P 347, sunt delicta tamen, quibus ignouisse uelimus. 115 See above p. 131. So, e.g., Brink 1971: 360–1. See above p. 21. For a helpful appreciation of this chapter cf. Halliwell 1987: 176–80. On this form of ‘problem-solving’ criticism see above pp. 21–4.

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First to faults within the art itself. If a poem contains impossibilities, a fault has been committed; it is however in place (½rqäv ›cei) if the poetry reaches its goal (which has been stated), if in this way that part or some other part of the poem is made more striking (–kplhktikÛteron). An example is the pursuit of Hector. If, however, the end could be reached better or no less well within the bounds of the art of these matters, the mistake is not in place; if possible, there should be no faults whatsoever. (Aristotle, Poetics 1460b22–8)

Impossibilities are ‘faults’, but they may be ‘in place/correct’ (½rqäv ›cei).118 Aristotle’s language is deliberately paradoxical, as he is making a point about the particularity of, and the particular rules governing, poetry. Poetry will, for example, properly admit some impossibilities or irrationalities, such as the pursuit of Hector in Iliad 22, if these serve the proper poetic goal of making the poem ‘more dramatic’ (–kplhktikÛteron, 1460b26).119 Of course, it would be better, if it were possible, for a poem to have its full effect without containing any (such) ‘faults’ (1460b27); here then is one of the challenges which L was to throw back in the face of ‘faultless’ poetry. Aristotle’s language helps to reveal part of the history of L’s distinction between ‘sublime’ poetry, the poetry of ›kplhxiv, which will naturally fall into ‘faults’ from time to time, and ‘flawless’ poetry of less ambition. If a poet makes a ‘mistake’, everything will then depend upon what kind of ‘mistake’ it is. A simple error of zoological detail may be thought venial (Aristotle, Poetics 1460b31), though it is precisely that kind of ‘error’ over which scholiasts debate with such intensity, and of which they sought to acquit Homer. At Iliad 17.673–5 Menelaos is compared to an eagle: âv Šra jwnžsav ˆp”bh xanq¼v Men”laov, p†ntose papta©nwn ãv tì a«et»v, Ân ç† t” jasin ½xÅtaton d”rkesqai Ëpouran©wn petehnän ktl. With these words fair-haired Menelaos went off, staring all around him like an eagle, which men say has the sharpest sight of any winged creature in the sky . . .

Here the bT-scholia comment: ‘He added “men say” to lend credibility (ˆxiop©stwv), as though he had examined the whole matter carefully (–xhtakÜv ˆkribäv) before including it in his poetry.’ Hellenistic poets wrote in fact in the knowledge that their poetry would indeed be subject to such scrutiny and, as such, both a striving for ‘flawlessness’ and the creation of problžmata to which ‘solutions’ were available to skilled readers could be built in to how they went about their business. They had written sources of botanical, zoological and anthropological lore to which 118 119

There are difficulties with the text here, but the general sense is clear. See Hunter 2005: 188–9.

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they could, and did, turn; for them it was indeed possible to ‘examine the whole matter carefully before including it’.120 It is likely enough that, for example, the Erigone of Eratosthenes (cf. On the Sublime 33.5) was indeed ‘flawless’ (ˆmÛmhton) in the matter of mythological, geographical and zoological detail. If we are reduced to guesses about the Erigone, a poem such as the archly learned composition which Simichidas recites in Theocritus, Idyll 7 shows us that, here as so often elsewhere, the critical discourse of Hellenistic scholarship both looks back to the Frogs and to Plato and Aristotle and reflects a complex relationship of give-and-take with the forms and language of Hellenistic poetry itself.121 On the Sublime is the product of several centuries of reflection about how literature ‘works’ and how it affects us. As has long been recognised, L’s essay itself, no less than the Frogs or, say, Callimachus’ ‘Reply to the Telchines’, ‘dramatises’ and exemplifies the issues which it discusses – it is itself a web of sublime moments – in a manner which reminds us again that the division between ‘literature’ and ‘criticism’ was not always simple or straightforward in antiquity. It is for this reason, if for no other, that the modern tendency to treat ‘ancient literary criticism’ as a discrete area of ancient writing, to be studied in isolation from the literature which the ancient critics discussed, has done a disservice to our understanding of the way in which the ancients sought to explain and use creative art. 120 121

Cf. Hunter on Apollonius, Argon. 3.845; the instances of jas© in Homer are collected and categorised by De Jong 1987: 237–8. See Hunter 2003c: 226–9.

chapter 6

Reading for life: Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’

poetry and education ‘What is poetry for?’ is the insistent question which the Frogs bequeathed to the Greek critical tradition. Plutarch’s treatise ‘How the young man should study poetry’ offers a clear answer: for the seriously minded young man1 and his father, poetry is an introduction to philosophy, particularly ethical philosophy. There are, of course, other ways to read poetry – the ‘lovers of stories’ (jil»muqoi) may prefer to pay attention to the stories which poetry offers or the ‘scholars’ (jil»logoi) to ‘the beauty and arrangement of the words’ – (30d–e) but Plutarch’s concern is, and ours should be, no less than paideia. The reading of poetry is a stage on a journey, a sea voyage in fact (15d, 37b), and the goal of the journey is an adult engagement with philosophy; as such it is to be distinguished from the ‘philology’ of the grammarians, concerned with glosses and etymologies, a study which has its own pleasures (22c–d, cf. 31e–f ), but offers no practical benefits in ‘real life’. At the conclusion of the work Plutarch expresses this process of initiation into the Mysteries of philosophy through a rewriting of Plato’s famous image of mortals as prisoners in a cave (Republic 7.514a–18b), from which the philosopher alone may escape into the sunlit world of intelligible truths above;2 for Plutarch, as for Plato (see Rep. 7.514a2, 518b–c), what is at stake 1

2

Plutarch’s ‘young men’ are those who are beyond ‘elementary schooling’; in modern terms we might think of them as ‘young adolescents’. It is often remarked that ‘On listening to lectures’ may be seen as something of a sequel to ‘How the young man . . . ’, whatever the actual relationship between them; the opening of the former and the closing of the latter share language and thought very closely (36d–37b ∼ 37e–f ), as if to form an authorial link between the two essays. There are a helpful few pages devoted to ‘How the young man . . . ’ by Russell in Kennedy 1989: 302–5, and see also Van Der Stockt 1992: 39–49, 89–95, 125–6. The language of 36e (›kplhxiv kaª taracŸ kaª q†mbov) suggests the Mysteries, see Plutarch fr. 178 Sandbach (jr©kh kaª tr»mov kaª «drÜv kaª q†mbov); Lada-Richards 1999: 86 n. 162, 236–7. Both those who do not know philosophy and those who are uninitiated fear death.

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here is indeed paideia. Poetry can serve to help our eyes prepare for the full dazzle of philosophy: [Philosophical readings of poetry] open and stimulate the young man’s mind to what philosophy has to say. He comes to it, not entirely ignorant of it nor utterly unexposed, nor full of the random stuff he has heard from his mother and his nurse, and indeed from his father and his tutor, who all pronounce the rich blessed and holy, who shudder at death and pain, and who consider virtue to be nothing to admire and worthless unless it is accompanied by money and reputation. When they hear the ideas of the philosophers which are opposed to such views, at first they are gripped by astonishment and confusion and amazement, and do not allow or endure these ideas, unless, as though they were going to see the sun after having been in thick darkness, they have become accustomed, by means of a borrowed light in which the brilliance of the truth is softened by being mixed with stories, to gazing on such things without pain rather than fleeing from them. (Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 36d–e)

Poetry performs this function because views are expressed in poetry which can be seen to anticipate or be concordant with philosophical views (36d– 37a),3 but it offers those views tempered by the pleasant effects of mÓqov. Moreover, just as the cave passage in the Republic itself depicts the ‘ascent’ of education, so its reuse allows Plutarch to fashion his treatise mimetically as an ascent from very preliminary education to a stage where the young man is ready to make the crossing to philosophy. The very frame of the essay dramatises the ascent at which Plutarch aims. When the practical lessons in interpretation begin in chapter 4 (‘pay attention to how poets themselves tell you to interpret’),4 we begin at the beginning, with a Menandrean prologue (19a = Men. fr. 163 K-A), which itself echoes the real beginning of the whole classical heritage and of classical education, namely the opening verse of the Iliad; Menander, of course, is one of the superstars of paideia (as most obviously in Plutarch’s own ‘Comparison of Aristophanes and Menander’),5 but immediately we move again (and this time explicitly) to the poet himself, Homer, ‘who does this sort of thing best’, and to the most discussed and taught episode of the Iliad, one familiar to every schoolboy, namely the opening scenes between Agamemnon and Achilles.6 3 4 5 6

Plutarch calls this process t¼ sun†ptein kaª sunoikeioÓn to±v d»gmasi ‘joining and accommodating [poetry] to philosophical doctrines’ (36d). On the structure of the treatise see Schenkeveld 1982. The division between chapters 3 and 4 is not, in fact, clear-cut, but the present point is, I think, sufficiently well established. See above pp. 78–89. For the popularity in education of Iliad 1 see Morgan 1998: 105, 111; Cribiore 2001: 194–5.

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Plutarch’s mode of instruction at this point comes as close as possible to the simplest form of scholastic (and schoolmasterly) glossing: Homer does this kind of thing best, for he reproves the base and commends the good in what is said before the words are uttered. Examples of the latter are: aÉt©ka meil©cion kaª kerdal”on j†to mÓqon [At once he gave gentle and valuable advice (Odyssey 6.148)] and t¼n dì ˆgano±v –p”essin –rhtÅsaske parast†v [He stood beside him and restrained him with gentle words (Iliad 2.189)] In reproving in advance he virtually acts as witness and announces that we are not to adopt or pay attention to what is said, because it is inappropriate and base. For example, when he is going to narrate how Agamemnon treated the priest harshly (ˆphnäv), he says in advance: ˆllì oÉk ìAtre©dhi ìAgam”mnoni ¤ndane qumäi, ˆll‡ kakäv ˆj©ei, [But this did not please Agamemnon son of Atreus in his heart, and he sent him away roughly (kak¯os) (Iliad 1.24–5)] that is (tout”stin), savagely and without regard and contrary to what was appropriate. (Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 19b–c)7

It is a long way from here to an understanding of Plato’s Form of the Good, to which the close of the essay alludes. Anyone ‘who pays attention’ (19e) can grasp this help which the poet offers, but even here – as Plutarch’s activity of glossing shows – the young man will need guidance,8 and through his familiar practice of steering our reactions to speeches Homer himself becomes the model of the teacher, a Plutarch even, ‘standing beside’ the young man to offer ‘profitable’ advice, as in the positive Homeric verses just cited.9 The kind of paideia which Plutarch has in mind is not, of course, for everyone. Plutarch is aiming to reproduce his own kind, an e´lite class whose cultural power depends on shared values;10 no less than Dio in 7

8 9 10

The D-scholia, in which the tout”stin style is common, gloss kakäv as meqì Ìbrewv. ˆphnäv in Plutarch’s introduction to the quotation picks up one of the scholiastic glosses (see bT-scholia) for krater»n in the second half of Iliad 1.25, which Plutarch does not in fact quote. See below pp. 176–7. See the scholia on Odyssey 6.148, ‘Homer gives the listener a way of judging (kanÛn) the words which will be spoken’. See Whitmarsh 2001: 49–54 on this aspect of the treatise.

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Oration 52 and ‘Longinus’ in On the Sublime, Plutarch is here marking out his cultural territory. The guidance which Plutarch offers to young men and their teachers may be ‘a rather haphazard collection of rules’,11 but the authority which informs those rules is very plainly the ethics and ideology of the e´lite, educated class; Plutarch’s treatise is in fact a very good example of how the purpose of much ancient education was the reproduction of that class. The very reading practices which Plutarch advocates mark the boundary between his kind of reading and a mindless ‘reading for pleasure’; that those practices and rules are in fact extremely familiar – almost all, like also almost all of Plutarch’s examples, can be paralleled from (and may indeed have been drawn from) the critical traditions into which the Homeric scholia are perhaps our best introduction12 – speaks volumes for the nature of the treatise as a public document, rather than for Plutarch’s impoverishment as a critic. When Plutarch insists that it will be necessary to question and ‘resist’ the misleading gnomic sayings of tragic characters, he is asking us to be actively engaged in the reading process in a manner which prepares us for the cut and thrust of philosophic debate, in which what is said is subjected to close analysis, but he is also asking us to reject all that is characteristic of the low (jaÓlon) and the common/ignoble (ˆgenn”v): People accept major issues on trust without examining them (ˆbasan©stwv), such as the following examples: doulo± g‡r Šndra, k‹n qrasÅsplagcn»v tiv §i, Âtan suneidi mhtr¼v £ patr¼v kak† [Even a bold-hearted man is enslaved by knowledge of disasters which befell his mother or his father (Euripides, Hippolytus 424–5)] and smikr¼n jrone±n crŸ t¼n kakäv peprag»ta [The man of misfortune must pitch his thoughts low (Euripides fr. 957 K)] These things, however, affect our characters and disturb (diatar†ttei) our lives, by making our judgements base and our opinions ignoble, unless we accustom ourselves to respond to each of them: ‘Why must the man of misfortune pitch his thoughts low and not rather rise up against his fortune and make himself lofty and grand? Why, if I am good and intelligent though my father was base and foolish, should I not be proud of my own virtue but rather cast down and humble because of my father’s ignorance? The person who comes back like this and resists 11 12

Schenkeveld 1982: 70. The essay lacks a full commentary, but much relevant material is gathered in Schlemm 1893.

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(ˆntere©dwn) and does not abandon himself to everything which is said, like a ship tossed by every breath of wind, but regards the saying ‘a fool gets excited at every word’ (Heraclitus fr. 87 D-K) as correct (½rqäv ›cein), will reject much of what is said neither truly nor usefully. This practice, then, will render studying poetry harmless (ˆblab). (Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 28c–d)

To read like Plutarch is itself to celebrate paideia. What is the alternative? One answer is an unquestioning adoration of ‘the classics’ which amounts to worship: The person who is amazed at everything and who adapts himself to everything and whose judgement is enslaved by the names of heroes because of what he believes will, without meaning to, open himself to much that is base, like those who imitate Plato’s stoop and Aristotle’s lisp. We must not, as though we were cowards or feeling dread within a holy shrine, shudder at and fall down in awe before everything, but rather become accustomed with confidence to say ‘that is wrong’ (oÉk ½rqäv) and ‘that is not appropriate’ (oÉ proshk»ntwv), no less than ‘that is right’ (½rqäv) and ‘that is as it should be’ (prep»ntwv). (Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 26b)

At rather elementary levels of education Homer was, no doubt, portrayed as a god,13 and cults of Homer were a familiar phenomenon of the Greek world,14 but to carry such an attitude over into the real business of ethical self-improvement is not worthy of a truly free man, but rather of one ‘whose judgement (kr©siv) is enslaved’ and who has thus in fact abandoned judgement.15 The young man must become a moral scholiast: when a character acts rightly, the young man must learn to mark the passage with an ½rqäv and a prep»ntwv, whereas when something is wrong, the correct observations are oÉk ½rqäv and oÉ proshk»ntwv (26b). The incorrect attitude is to imagine that everything which appears in a text like Homer is to be approved, simply because of the stature of the text in which it is found. Plutarch often uses qaum†zein of an audience’s reaction to literature, but here we are to see an undiscriminating attitude which is the exact opposite of the cool devotion to judgement which is the mark of the philosopher, whose watchword will be Horace’s nil admirari (Epist. 1.6.1). Elsewhere Plutarch cites the saying of Pythagoras to the effect that what 13 14 15

Cf. ‘Homer, a god not a man’ scratched in a writing exercise of the third century ad (Michigan Papyri VIII, no. 1100). See Brink 1972, Clay 2004. Dio Chrysostom too (18.12–13) notes this danger when reading the greatest writers of the past, though he appears to accept it as a fact about which we can do nothing; for related ideas in Latin see Horace, Epist. 2.1.54, Quintilian 10.1.88 (on Ennius).

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he had gained from philosophy was ‘to be amazed at nothing’ (t¼ mhd•n qaum†zein, ‘How the young man . . .’ 44b). The young man’s exercise of critical judgement is (again) a preparation for philosophy. David Konstan has argued interestingly that, in urging us in these directions, Plutarch’s treatise offers us an ancient example of the modern notion of ‘the resisting reader’, in which ‘accountability for the meaning or message of the text is . . . shifted from the poet to the audience’.16 Reading is certainly an active, at times argumentative, process of ‘seeking the useful amidst the pleasurable’, but two obvious reservations are in order. First, it is clear that Plutarch believes that, in a majority of cases, poets have made the ‘proper’ meaning of the text clear; there is such a thing as ‘authorial meaning’ and ‘authorial intention’, and the purpose of much education is to find it, by paying attention to such things as ‘who speaks?’, ‘how does the poet show his opinion?’, and so forth; the treatise makes plain the ‘rules’ by which such resistance as there is (see 28d above) is to be practised. Secondly, the rˆole of the teacher and guide is crucial to Plutarch; although the discussion of poetry will indeed sharpen the young man’s desire and aptitude to question, there is no suggestion that he is free to interpret outside the strict parameters with which he will be supplied by his teachers.17 With the correct paidagwg©a he will no more wander from the ‘straight and narrow’ in his reading than he will talk to strangers on the street (see 15a). One aspect of the education that Plutarch holds out for young men that might seem to us underplayed by the stress on preparation for philosophy is preparation for public life. It is true that an engagement with philosophy did not mean a retreat to the ivory tower, and ethical concerns were positively advantageous, rather than the reverse, in public life. Plato’s image of the cave (above pp. 169–70) cuts both ways in this matter. On the one hand, it explains why the philosopher will have nothing to do with the honours and rewards which are sought after in this world and why he looks ridiculous when he gets caught up in some earthly procedure (such as a trial); on the other hand, Plato insists that, in his ideal state, those who have seen the truth should return to the cave to benefit the community as a whole (Rep. 7.519c–521b), so that the community may be well and peacefully governed without internal strife. Against such ‘political’ engagement, however, we may set the very final quotation of the work, very probably from Epicurus:

16 17

Konstan 2004: 8. I am indebted more generally to Konstan’s stimulating essay. As Konstan indeed acknowledges, see 2004: 8.

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Happiness and blessedness do not consist in vast wealth or grand business affairs or offices or authority, but on freedom from distress (ˆlup©a), calmness of emotion and a disposition of the soul which sets its limits in accordance with nature. (Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 37a = Epicurus fr. 548 Usener)

So too, three of the final poetic quotations (36f–37a) which are matched with philosophical doctrines are precisely to do with the rejection of any pursuit of excessive wealth or power. If ‘it is tempting to interpret [this aspect of the treatise] as the quietism of a Greek e´lite under Roman domination’,18 we must also recognise that the kind of knowledge and character with which Plutarch’s ideal pupils will be equipped in fact equip them ideally to benefit their own society and kind; an engagement with poetry is not an activity carried out in isolation from the real facts of the world around us (see 26f on the characters of literary figures). If Plato provides the dazzling climax of education, he also here provides its very raison d’ˆetre. As has long been recognised,19 much of Plutarch’s essay is written in dialogue (never explicitly acknowledged) with Books 2 and 3 of the Republic, in which Plato outlines the reason why the poets, most notably of course Homer, can have no place in the education of the guardians; Plutarch’s essay should be seen as one of many ancient attempts to resolve the ‘ancient dispute between philosophy and poetry’ which Plato bequeathed to the subsequent tradition.20 Whole stretches of Plutarch’s essay follow the order of, and take over the poetic examples from, Plato’s discussion. Plato’s principal argument was that the poets contain wrong and malicious representations of crucial matters, such as the gods and death, and too much was at stake to give them a place in the state. Between Plato and Plutarch fall many intermediaries, but Plutarch reaches back to the master, not polemically, but because it is Plato who saw more clearly than anyone the dangers of literature in the hands of the young; the whole critical tradition which the work celebrates takes its starting point precisely from Plato. Plato, however, was legislating for an ideal state, whereas Plutarch is dealing with the real world and a real system of education in which it is ‘neither possible nor profitable’ (15a) to prevent young men from reading poetry. Plutarch does not deny the dangers, but he has a talisman by which such dangers may be guarded against, and that talisman is kub”rnhsiv ‘steering, guiding’ (37b), the proper direction that an older and wiser man 18 20

19 See, e.g., Weinstock 1927: 135–7. Morgan 1998: 148. Republic 10.607b6–7. Other (very different) examples include Orations 4 and 26 of Maximus of Tyre.

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may impart to a younger. Reading is not just a matter of picking up the text and getting on with it. The young man, both n”ov and naÓv, must in fact be given the chance to listen to the Sirens, but only under certain conditions: Shall we then stop up the ears of young men with hard and unmelting wax, like the ears of the men from Ithaca, and force them to launch an Epicurean yacht and flee from poetry and steer well clear of it, or rather shall we put them up against a correct method of reasoning and bind them there, steering and watching over their judgement so that pleasure does not blow them off course towards the harmful? (Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 15d)

As Odysseus was bound fast to the upright mast of his ship so that he could hear the song of the Sirens, so education is the binding of a young man fast to an upright standard of reasoning when he reads or listens to poetry; thus is the ability of the young man to make the right decisions, his kr©siv, kept on a straight path away from the harmful detours which the pursuit of pleasure can bring. The principal example of poetry which it is worth listening to is, of course, Homer himself, and Eustathius (Hom. 1708.62–1709.8) will not have been alone in seeing the Homeric passage as a ‘self-advertisement’ which Homer has included in his poem.21 Although most of the evidence is later than Plutarch, it is clear that he here exploits a tradition of ‘allegorical’ interpretation of the Homeric Sirens episode;22 in such accounts the Sirens are regularly taken to represent dangerous pleasures of various kinds, ‘literary’ as well as erotic, to which only a man of Odysseus’ fortitude and intelligence may give ear without catastrophic results. Much earlier material has fed into the extensive discussion of the episode in Eustathius’ commentary (Hom. 1707.40ff.): the Sirens represent (inter alia) the seductive pleasures of poetry, which Odysseus ‘the philosopher’ can safely hear, though his ignorant companions cannot. The philosopher may hear the music because he is protected by the ‘constraints (desm»v) of philosophy’ (1707.61), his uprightness marked by the mast to which he is bound; anyone who approaches the Sirens in ignorance is heading for disaster. In Plutarch, on the other hand, the young man will not be approaching the dangers of poetry alone but, for as long as he needs it, until his own correct judgement is properly and fully formed, he will have a knowledgeable guide who will steer his course safely. He will need such a ‘steersman’ until he himself has internalised, and is able to act upon, his 21 22

Eustathius also begins his commentary on the Iliad with a similar analogy between Homer’s Sirens and Homer’s poetry (Hom. 1.1–9). See Buffi`ere 1956: 380–6; Kaiser 1964: 113–36; Wedner 1994.

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knowledge of poetry’s deceit (16a–f ); accepting the deceit of poetry is, in fact, one aspect of a mature reaction to it, in a tradition descending at least from Gorgias (15d) and put in its most influential form by Aristotle, but it is precisely something which can only be entrusted to mature judgement. Without that, there is a danger that the young man will be swept away (o­cetai jer»menov, 16d).23 Epicurus is reported to have told his pupil Pythocles ‘launch your boat and flee from all paideia’ (paide©an psan . . . jeÓge tˆk†tion ˆr†menov, fr. 162 Usener), for the Epicureans saw no value in traditional Greek education, which was of course centred around Homer.24 Having begun by discarding the ‘Epicurean option’, Plutarch concludes his treatise by twisting the knife: young men who have become accustomed to the ideas of poetry and how they may be reconciled with philosophical ideas are less ‘disturbed and upset’ (tar†ttontai kaª duskola©nousi, with a glance at Epicurean ataraxia)25 when they graduate to studying with philosophers and thus hear (Epicurean) doctrines such as ‘death is nothing to us’ (37a); poetry is in fact the proper basis for philosophers of all schools. Plutarch’s use of the image of the Sirens may seem to go against his rejection in 19e–f of ‘what were once called “under-meanings” (Ëpono©ai) and are now called “allegories” (ˆllhgor©ai) by which some people force and twist the story . . .’; there, however, Plutarch was taking aim at the sort of cosmic allegorical explanations of Homer familiar from, for example, ‘Heraclitus’, whereas there was no objection to the use of ‘images’ (Plato’s own cave and ship-of-state images from the Republic were among the most famous and influential such e«k»nev), and Plutarch’s own use of the image of Odysseus and the Sirens is certainly not presented as an ‘interpretation’ of Homer. Just as for young men the full blaze of philosophical truth must be mixed with the softening effects of poetic mÓqov (36e), so the powerful effects of poetry must be mixed with the first steps into philosophy, as wine is mixed with water: oÉd• g‡r oÉd• DrÅantov u¬¼v, krater¼v Luk»orgov [Not even, not even Lycurgus, the powerful son of Dryas (Iliad 6.130)] had sound judgement, because when many became drunk and behaved outrageously he went around cutting down vines, instead of bringing the water sources closer in, and thus restraining ‘the raging god by chastising it with another sober god’, as Plato says (Laws 6.773d).26 For mixing water with wine takes away the 23 24 26

It seems probable that the nautical metaphor is again picked up here, see LSJ s.v. j”rw B 1. 25 Cf., however, taracž in 36d immediately above. See, e.g., Asmis 1995: 18–19. See above pp. 163–4.

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harmful aspect of wine, without also removing the beneficial aspect. Therefore, let us not cut down or destroy the poetic vine of the Muses, but where unmixed pleasure causes the mythical and theatrical part of poetry to grow unrestrained and out of control, its eye wilfully and boldly upon reputation, let us take it in hand and prune it and keep it in check. But where its grace has some share of the culture of the Muse and the sweet attractiveness of its language is neither fruitless nor empty, there let us introduce and blend in philosophy. Just as mandragora, when it grows beside vines and lends its influence to the wine, makes the effect gentler for the drinkers, so poetry, by taking its themes from philosophy and mingling them with the mythical, makes the task of learning light and agreeable for the young. (Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 15e–f )

Images from the mixing of wine are truly ubiquitous and all-purpose in Greek literature, but there is here a particular point. From Homer onwards the proper use of wine had been a touchstone of approved e´lite behaviour; Plutarch himself wrote nine books of Sympotic Questions which precisely display members of that cultured e´lite discussing ‘problems’ while enjoying their wine in moderation, and the proper attitude to wine was in fact a matter for discussion in philosophical gatherings (see Mor. 613c).27 Plutarch’s choice of image is therefore another way of naturalising the reading of poetry within e´lite culture; elsewhere he uses very similar imagery (including the figure of Lycurgus) to describe (in very Platonic mood) how reason must temper emotion, as water tempers wine (Mor. 451c–d). Here too Plato is in play. Plutarch adduces what was clearly a muchdiscussed, and sometimes criticised, image from the Laws (6.773d),28 in which Plato compares the need to produce children from contrasting parents to the need to temper wine with water; Plutarch turns the image from the conception of children to their education. The image of wine mixing is then itself blended, in part through the shared element of madness (main»menon ∼ Ëlomane±), with the necessity of pruning the vine of poetry when it grows out of control (15f ); here Plutarch also evokes the familiar idea that young men are themselves young plants (›rnh) which need careful tending and ‘training’: Ìbriv, no less than aÉq†deia, is a danger not just with vines, but it can be the particular fault of the young.29 27 28

29

For another instance from the ‘Second Sophistic’ of properly restrained sympotic behaviour as a mark of education and seriousness see Dio Chrys. 27.2–4. See ‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 32.7 (above pp. 163–4), Plutarch, Mor. 791b–c. Both ‘Longinus’ and Plutarch (15f ) play with the ‘metaphorical’ sense of Škratov, the former in the explicit context of metaphors. Commentators note that Plutarch seems to echo Theophrastus, De causis plantarum 3.1.5: the lupine does not bear any fruit when it is Ëlomanän kaª –xubr©zwn; the context of the allusion is therefore important. For the hybris of the vine see also ibid. 3.15.4; LSJ s.v. Ëbr©zein I 3.

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If a quotation from Plato points the proper way ahead, it is of course Plato who posed the problem in the first place, through his eradication of poetry from ideal education. Plutarch compares such a totalising policy to the behaviour of Lycurgus who ‘went around cutting down vines when many people became drunk and violent’. From his first appearance at Iliad 6.130–40 in the passage which Plutarch cites, Lycurgus was one of the qeom†coi, like Pentheus, whose opposition to Dionysus did them no good whatsoever; total censorship injures only yourself and, like prohibition, is ineffective, because young men will read poetry (15a), just as people will drink alcohol. The Iliadic passage, in which Lycurgus scatters the god’s ‘nurses’ and the god himself takes refuge in the sea with Thetis, was itself allegorised/rationalised as an image of the harvesting of the grapes and the making of wine;30 Plutarch may thus here be influenced by interpretations which saw Dionysus and Thetis together as precisely wine mixed with water, but he seems also close to another interpretation of the Homeric Lycurgus story which is preserved only in Eustathius (Hom. 629.22–6). In this version, when wine was first introduced, Lycurgus tore up the vines and punished the drunken ‘out of his concern for those in his charge who were suffering as a result of the pure (ˆkr†tou) indulgence’, but stopped this behaviour when the mixing of wine with water was devised. Plato therefore, like Lycurgus, acted out of concern for the health of the community, but now there is a less radical way to proceed. Plutarch thus uses Plato to show the way out of a difficulty in Plato himself, a paedagogical method which he later explicitly describes (20e–21d), and also shows how the proper ‘guided’ interpretation of poetry does indeed produce beneficial results. poetic lies If the young man has his wits and/or his guide about him and constantly remembers that t¼ yeÓdov is an inevitable part of poetry, ‘he will check himself when he is afraid of Poseidon and fearful that [the god] will break open the earth and lay Hades bare’ (16e). The reference is to a famous passage from the Battle of the Gods: dein¼n dì –br»nthse patŸr ˆndrän te qeän te Ëy»qená aÉt‡r ›nerqe Poseid†wn –t©naxen ga±an ˆpeires©hn ½r”wn tì a«pein‡ k†rhna, p†ntev dì –sse©onto p»dev polup©dakov ïIdhv 30

See Cornutus, Theol. Graec. 30 (62.16–22 Lang); ‘Heraclitus’, Homeric Problems 35; Athenaeus 1.26b; Pontani 2005: 205–6.

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Critical Moments in Classical Literature kaª korujaª TrÛwn te p»liv kaª n¦ev ìAcaiäná ›ddeisen dì Ëp”nerqen Šnax –n”rwn ìAidwneÅv, de©sav dì –k qr»nou Šlto kaª ­ace, mž o¬ Ìperqen ga±an ˆnarržxeie Poseid†wn –nos©cqwn, o«k©a d• qnhto±si kaª ˆqan†toisi jane©h smerdal”ì eÉrÛenta, t† te stug”ousi qeo© per.

(Homer, Iliad 20.56–65)

The father of gods and men thundered terribly from on high. Down below, Poseidon shook the boundless earth and the lofty ridges of the mountains; all the foothills and the peaks of Ida of many springs, the city of the Trojans and the ships of the Achaeans shook. Beneath the earth the lord of the dead, Aidoneus, was afraid, and in fear he leapt from his throne with a shout, lest the earth-shaker Poseidon break open the earth above his head and the dwellings of the dead, grim and dank, hated even by the gods, become visible to mortals and immortals alike.

For Plutarch the danger lies not in Hades’ fear, but in that of the young reader or listener to Homer who has been swept away (16d) into imagining the truth of what he hears, and that would truly be a ‘disturbing and weird jantas©a’, of a kind such as eating the head of an octopus is said to produce (15b). Hades here therefore acts as a kind of ‘reader in the text’. The danger comes from the emotionally powerful enargeia of poetry, and Plutarch chooses his words carefully when he urges us always to ‘remember and keep in mind –nargäv the wizardry of the poetic art in its handling of lies’ (16d); one enargeia will lessen the danger of another. ‘Longinus’ (On the Sublime 9.6) also cites verses 61–5, apparently conjoined to a variant of Iliad 21.388,31 as an example of the cosmic sublimity of Homer’s ‘overarching visions’ (Ëperju . . . jant†smata); he too appeals to the ‘envisionment’ of Homer’s narrative: ‘You see, my friend, how the earth is broken . . . ’, and it is because we, and Plutarch’s young reader, do see it that we are scared. The bT-scholia on verse 61 (and cf. Eustathius, Hom. 1196.29) interestingly note that, if Hades is scared, we can imagine the effect on ordinary men; Plutarch’s point develops from this insight. A version of the phenomenon is of course familiar to us from watching scary movies, and there is perhaps an analogy for the practice of modern film classification by age of viewer in the difference between Plutarch and ‘Longinus’ here. For the former, the young audience cannot properly distinguish truth from fiction and so are tempted by the irrational power of poetry into a 31

Eustathius also links these two passages, see Hom. 1195.15; he too (1195.17) notes the enargeia of the description. It is not easy to decide whether ‘Longinus’, perhaps from faulty memory, is quoting the passage as a whole or whether he is forcing together fragments torn from different parts of the poem in an imitation of the earth being torn open (so Porter 2001: 275 n. 17, and see also Porter 1992: 98–101). See further above pp. 141–2.

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dislocating belief32 in what they hear or read, against which they must be protected by proper guidance; for ‘Longinus’, however, an experienced and mature audience (see On the Sublime 6) may be carried away in ekstasis, but also understands that this is a proper effect of great poetry and that such effects, far from harming them, are positively beneficial. It would perhaps not be too misleading to characterise the two contrasting views, with all due caution, as post-Platonic and post-Aristotelian. If we ask why Plutarch was particularly worried about this passage, then the answer will again lie (originally) with Plato. As, in the Platonic scheme (Rep. 2.379b–c), god cannot work harm, the whole idea of the qeomac©a, which also encourages internal strife in its audience, is a most dangerous fantasy which has no place in the education of the ideal state, and at Republic 2.378b8–e3 Plato simply bans poetic qeomac©ai, both with and without ‘under-meanings’ (Ëpono©ai), which would be lost on the young anyway. That Plato was familiar with such ‘under-meanings’ for this episode, namely interpretations which explained the episode in such a way as to ‘defend’ the poet against charges of offence against religion, is all but certain – Theagenes of Rhegium was not alone in choosing this Iliadic scene for particular attention33 – and the centrality of this episode to the whole subsequent ‘allegorical’ and defensive tradition is shown by the fact that it is in connection with this passage that ‘Longinus’ makes his only reference to that tradition: ‘These passages are fearful, but also completely blasphemous (Šqea) and contrary to propriety (t¼ pr”pon), unless they are understood allegorically’ (On the Sublime 9.7).34 Plutarch will shortly (19e– f ) reject the allegorical interpretation of Homer’s divinities,35 but it is not mentioned here because it is irrelevant. Allegorical interpretation belongs to a level of reading well beyond what is envisaged here (see Rep. 2.378d6– 7); what matters is the emotional power of Homer’s images. Homer makes you believe that what he writes is true. Plutarch trusts the young man and his teachers to be able to remember that it is not true; Plato would not give them that freedom to harm themselves. The second passage which Plutarch cites under this head has a similar Platonic point, but one which is made a little more explicit. As the very last citation of what is for us Republic 2, Plato cites a passage of Aeschylus in which Thetis complains bitterly of the misleading promises which Apollo made when he sang at her wedding to Peleus: 32 33 35

Cf. 15c on the taraktik¼n kaª par†joron in poetry. 34 On this passage see Obbink 2004: 176–8. On Theagenes see, e.g., Feeney 1991: 8–11. See below p. 188.

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We shall not approve . . . Aeschylus (fr. 350 Radt) when Thetis says that in his song at her wedding Apollo told how she would be happy in her children, n»swn tì ˆpe©rouv kaª makra©wnav b©ou, xÅmpant† tì e«pÜn qeojile±v –m‡v tÅcav paiänì –phujžmhsen eÉqumän –m”. kˆgÜ t¼ Fo©bou qe±on ˆyeud•v st»ma ¢lpizon e²nai, mantiki brÅon t”cnhiá ¾ dì aÉt¼v Ëmnän, aÉt¼v –n qo©nhi parÛn, aÉt¼v t†dì e«pÛn, aÉt»v –stin ¾ ktanÜn t¼n pa±da t¼n –m»n [who would be free of disease and enjoy long lives; he raised a song of triumph as he told of my future, dear to the gods, and he brought me cheer. I thought that Phoebus’ holy mouth knew not falsehood, overflowing as it was with the prophetic art. But he who sang this song, he who took part in the marriage-feast, he who said these things, he is the one who has killed my son] (Plato, Republic 2.383a–b)

For Plato, god (least of all Apollo) has nothing to do with falsehoods (t¼ yeÓdov), and so, says Plato, ‘when someone says such things about the gods, we shall be angry (calepanoÓmen) and we shall not award them a chorus . . . ’ (383c1–2). Plutarch picks up Plato’s verb but now uses it of how this passage might turn us against Apollo, not against the poet himself: ‘the young man will check himself when he is feeling angry (calepa©nontov) against Apollo on behalf of the first of the Achaeans . . . ’ (16e). Plato quotes more of Thetis’ words than does Plutarch because the philosopher’s point is that god does not lie. The reader of Plutarch, however, who does not know either Aeschylus or Plato, will not understand this, will be mystified by the reference of t†de in the second verse of Plutarch’s quotation, and will more naturally think that what is wrong with the passage is simply that it accuses Apollo of killing ‘the first of the Achaeans’, an allegation which (again) must be false because god does not do wrong/harm. We may be tempted to explain such ‘difficulties’ in Plutarch by his use of poetic anthologies – just as he assumes that some of the young man’s acquaintance with poetry will come through collections of (sometimes mutually contradictory) passages – and this is indeed important; nevertheless, there may be another didactic technique involved as well. The young man’s guide, who will of course be more fully versed in the Platonic intertext than the young man himself, is in fact constantly forced back to that text. Here, moreover, as with the preceding Homeric example, the educational context of reception through reading is important: as we read aloud Thetis’ words, rather than hearing them delivered on stage, we put ourselves in her position, we indeed mouth

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her reproaches ourselves and we feel her anger against the god. Plato’s fears of the harmful potential of mim¯esis have, paradoxically, been realised through the replacement of the performative foundations on which those fears were based. Reading has become the most dangerously mimetic of all educational activities. Rather similar observations may be made about Plutarch’s third example (16e) of the advantages of bearing in mind the falsity of poetry: ‘[the young man] will cease weeping for the dead Achilles and Agamemnon in Hades, as they stretch out their powerless and weak arms in their longing for life (ˆdun†touv kaª ˆsqene±v ce±rav –piqum©ai toÓ zn ½r”gontav)’. Plutarch is here thinking principally of the description of the ghost of Agamemnon at Odyssey 11.391–5: kla±e dì  ge lig”wv, qaler¼n kat‡ d†kruon e­bwn, pitn‡v e«v –m• ce±rav ½r”xasqai menea©nwná ˆllì oÉ g‡r o¬ ›tì §n ®v ›mpedov oÉdì ›ti k±kuv, o¯h per p†rov ›sken –nª gnampto±si m”lessi. t¼n m•n –gÜ d†krusa «dÜn –l”hs† te qumäi ktl. He lamented loudly, the tears pouring down, and he stretched out his arms in his desire to embrace me. But he had neither the strength nor the force which resided before in his supple limbs. When I saw him I wept and pitied him in my heart . . .

Achilles is not in fact portrayed as behaving in the way in which Plutarch alleges, though he certainly makes it very clear that he would rather be alive than dead (vv. 488–91); Plutarch’s pathetic picture of the heroes ‘stretching out their arms in their longing for life’ offers a virtuoso reshaping of verse 392 of the Homeric scene. If again we ask ‘What is dangerous about this Homeric passage?’, the answer will, once again, take us back to Plato. For both Plato and Plutarch (16e) the whole nekuia is of course a fiction, but in the Platonic view (Rep. 3.386c–7b) it is a particularly dangerous fiction because it represents death as something appalling and to be feared, and this will not help to inculcate bravery in the young; the very first Homeric passage which Plato outlaws under this heading is precisely Achilles’ famous words about preferring to be a ‘serf among the living . . . than to rule over all the dead’ (Odyssey 11.489–91), verses which probably lie behind Plutarch’s pairing of him with Agamemnon. Here too we are expected to know and use the Platonic intertext. Like Plutarch himself in this essay, we do not of course have to direct the young men whom we are teaching explicitly to that intertext; enough that we know, and that we will use it to inform our

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teaching. In finding a space for the poetry which Plato rejected, we are to keep as close to Plato as possible. Two further points are worth making here. There is a risk, says Plutarch, that the young man will weep (dakrÅwn, 16e) for Achilles and Agamemnon. Here again, an emotional reaction of an observer in the text is transferred to the audience, for in Homer it is Odysseus who weeps (d†krusa, Odyssey 11.395) at the sight of the ghost of Agamemnon. This suggests how the Homeric poems contain within themselves material which shapes their performance and reception; as a literary technique, this was to have a long history – we may think of the ways in which the emotional reactions of crowds and other internal audiences within the later novels clearly script a reaction for the audience of the novel.36 We must also, however, once again reckon with the possibility that Plutarch’s approach to the text reflects the reception context which he assumes. The Platonic rhapsode Ion had agreed to Socrates’ proposition that, when reciting particularly exciting or emotional passages of Homer, he feels that he is actually present at ‘real’ events (Ion 535b–c) and had confessed to a powerful ‘sympathy’ with the text he was reciting: When I am reciting something pitiable, my eyes fill with tears; when it is something terrifying or frightening, my hair stands on end from fear and my heart is pounding. (Plato, Ion 535c)37

The emotional power of poetry to affect audiences was a commonplace from Homer onwards (see Plato, Ion 535e), but – as with the Aeschylean Thetis – the reader becomes himself a kind of performing rhapsode, and the sentiments and gestures of the text become his sentiments and gestures, which is, of course, a most alarming prospect for a Platonist. Secondly, Plutarch wittily cites Odyssey 11.223–4 (‘you can tell all these things hereafter to your wife’) as illustration of the fact that the nekuia is ‘suitable mythic material for a woman to listen to’. There is here, at one level, a curiously amusing anticipation of the modern argument that the ‘Catalogue of Women’ which immediately follows these verses (with gunaik© and guna±kev closing consecutive verses, Odyssey 11.224–5) is in part designed to win the favour of the listening Arete.38 More importantly, perhaps, it is precisely in the context of the nekuia that Homer places the 36 37

38

See, e.g., Hunter 1994: 1060–1. –narg”v at 535c3 seems to offer an interestingly early example of this term in a context of the envisionment of narrative; as a rhapsode, Ion naturally has a professional appreciation of Socrates’ ‘vivid’ question. See, e.g., Doherty 1995: 66–7, 82–3; De Jong 2001: 282.

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most explicit discussion of Odysseus’ truthfulness and of the ever-present possibility of lies, yeÅdea: t¼n dì aÔtì ìAlk©noov ˆpame©beto jÛnhs”n teá å ìOduseÓ, t¼ m•n oÎ ti sì –©skomen e«sor»wntev  perop¦† tì ›men kaª –p©klopon, o³† te polloÆv b»skei ga±a m”laina polusper”av ˆnqrÛpouv yeÅde† tì ˆrtÅnontav, Âqen k” tiv oÉd• ­doitoá soª dì ›pi m•n morjŸ –p”wn, ›ni d• jr”nev –sqla©, mÓqon dì Þv Âtì ˆoid¼v –pistam”nwv kat”lexav, p†ntwn ìArge©wn s”o tì aÉtoÓ kždea lugr†.

(Homer, Odyssey 11.362–9)

Alcinous answered him as follows: ‘Odysseus, when we look at you we do not think that you are a deceiver and cheat, one of the very many men on the dark earth who tell lies which no one can personally check.39 Your words have proper shape, there is good sense in them, and with the skill of a bard you have told the whole tale of the grievous sufferings of all the Argives and of you yourself.’

The nekuia was of course the greatest challenge to any simple ‘belief’ in the story of the Odyssey. Among the scholiastic comments on verse 368 is one which brings us very close to Plutarch: ‘They think that there is no poetry without mythoi; for this reason the Pythian could not be called a poet’. Here then, as everywhere, Plutarch reads (and tempers) Plato’s strictures against Homeric poetry through the lens of the subsequent critical traditions, which had found ways of accommodating and explaining some of poetry’s more outrageous creations. Plutarch soon returns to the subject of false and terrifying representations of the Underworld, after a few more general remarks on poetic lies about the gods (16f–17b). The last quotation of these general remarks is a much cited couplet from Aeschylus: qe¼v m•n a«t©an jÅei broto±v Âtan kakäsai däma pampždhn q”lhi. (Aeschylus fr. 154a.15–16 Radt)

God implants a fault in men, when he wishes utterly to destroy a house.

Plato too had used these same verses as his final cited example of views which are to be censored because they ascribe harm to the gods (Rep. 2.380a), and his discussion of false representations of death and the Underworld then opens Book 3 of the Republic. That Plutarch is indeed following Plato here 39

The meaning is not certain.

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is made very clear by the Homeric verse which he pairs with the Aeschylean quotation: ZeÅv, Âv tì ˆnqrÛpwn tam©hv pol”moio t”tuktai

(Homer, Iliad 4.84)

Zeus, who is steward of war for men

The poetic quotation preceding the Aeschylus fragment in Plato is part of an otherwise unattested epic verse: oÉk Šra . . . ˆpodekt”on . . . oÉdì Þv tam©av ¡m±n ZeÆv ˆgaqän te kakän te t”tuktai. (Plato, Republic 2.379c8–e2)

Nor must we accept [into the city] how Zeus is our steward ‘of both good and evil’.

Critics are divided as to whether this is a (deliberate) ‘misquotation’ of Iliad 4.84 or rather derives from an unknown poem,40 but we can see Plutarch clearing up any possible confusion by replacing the Platonic citation with an indisputably Homeric verse, and one in which the god is responsible for an indisputably bad thing.41 Nor (of course) is the verse chosen at random. It comes from the scene in which Zeus sends Athena to earth to engineer a breaking of the truce; she leaps to earth like a shooting star, to the amazement of the watching Greeks and Trojans: åde d” tiv e­pesken «dÜn –v plhs©on Šlloná ¢ çì aÔtiv p»lem»v te kak¼v kaª jÅlopiv a«nž ›ssetai, § jil»thta metì ˆmjot”roisi t©qhsin ZeÅv, Âv tì ˆnqrÛpwn tam©hv pol”moio t”tuktai;

(Homer, Iliad 4.81–4)

Thus would one say to another: ‘Will there be evil war and dread strife, or is Zeus, who is the steward of warfare for men, creating friendship between the two parties?’

Here precisely is the Zeus whom Plato rejects, ‘steward of good and bad’. Moreover, immediately after the quotation of the otherwise unknown verse Plato proscribes the story of Pandaros breaking the oaths and treaties (Rep. 2.379e3–4), which is the action which Athena’s fiery descent to earth initiates. Plutarch then is a creative rewriter of the Platonic text, but he also makes demands upon us; it is a virtuoso performance to turn Republic 2–3 40 41

See, e.g., Lohse 1964: 17–18. This might, of course, be one place where we can see a reflection of the greater stability of the Homeric text in Plutarch’s time in contrast to that of Plato.

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into an argument for the admission of the classics of poetry into education, albeit under certain strictly controlled conditions. The final pages of Republic 2 are largely devoted to the discussion of ‘what is truly yeÓdov’, the deception in the soul concerning ‘the things which are’, and then to the impossibility that god has anything to do with change and metamorphosis, a subject with obvious links to the metaphysics of the later books. Plutarch’s ‘omission’ of this material (but for the complaints of the Aeschylean Thetis which he has used in a different context), an omission to which attention is called by his otherwise close structural tracking of the Platonic model, is a guide to what is meant by poetry as a preparation for philosophy: the omitted Platonic material falls into the latter category, or at least is to be reserved for a later stage of education than that for which the present treatise is designed. Plutarch’s rewriting of Plato continues with the discussion of representations of the Underworld in poetry (17b–c). The Platonic model here, which is marked by the shared phrase ½n»mata jober†, is Republic 3.397b8–c6. Where Plato had named two of the three Underworld rivers which flow into the Acheron (see Odyssey 10.513–14), Plutarch merely alludes to the third, Pyriphlegethon, which Plato had left unnamed, and uses e­dwla, the Homeric word for ‘ghosts’, for ‘images’ of rivers. Whereas Plato had not expanded on his account of the Underworld waters by the use of poetic quotation, Plutarch offers us Pindar (fr. 130 M), Homer (Odyssey 24.11) and Sophocles (fr. 832 Radt). In Plato the citations for how poets mislead us in their descriptions of the Underworld and of the lamentations of the dead precede the paragraph about the rivers of the Underworld, but Plutarch reverses this order. Plato’s quotations (3.386c4–387a) are taken only from Homer, though he concludes by stressing that his strictures apply to ‘Homer and the other poets’ (387b1–2); Plutarch picks up Plato’s hint by the variety of his quotations (Pindar and Sophocles on the rivers of the Underworld; Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis 1218–19 on lamentation). For Plutarch, the characters of literature for whom death is a terrifying thing are people ‘who have suffered and who are in the grip of doxa and apat¯e’ (17d); the Platonic language is of course appropriate to the context, but apat¯e also allows us to sense a resonance of one of the most familiar ancient critical ideas, one we most associate with Gorgias (see 15d), but here it is not the audience who are ‘deluded’ – or at least not if Plutarch can help it – but rather the characters whom they see and read. If Plutarch stands in the traditional mainstream in holding that poetry contains t¼ muqädev and t¼ yeÓdov as well as truth, in the case of these tales of the Underworld the mythical element comes like poison

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(t¼ jarmakädev) mixed into food (17c). We most naturally think of Circe, or perhaps rather of Helen’s drugs, to which Plutarch had already explicitly compared poetry at 15c and which take away grief even after the death of someone close (Odyssey 4.224–6), acting, as Eustathius explains (Hom. 1493.10–19), like speeches of consolation; here, however, the drugs of literature reverse the process by instilling terror and distress at the thought of death and the Underworld. The image may also remind us of the famous ‘honey on the cup’ of Lucretius 1.935–50. Just as Lucretius, and others before him, disguise the health-giving, but hard to swallow, truth of what they write by the sweetness of poetry, as doctors disguise health-giving but foul-tasting medicines in order to fool their young patients, so poetry conceals its baleful lies within a frame which seems to offer nourishment. The aim of the doctors is to fool the young (Lucretius 1.939–41), whereas Plutarch aims to offer the young the guidance which will stop them from being fooled: they are to imbibe from poetry only what is healthful (see 15c), not the sweet but dangerous j†rmakon at its centre. If teaching is a matter of mixing water with wine, philosophy with poetry, it is also a matter of separating out the beneficial from the harmful within the heady mixture which the ‘classics’ offer. the natural meaning of the text For Plutarch, poets usually provide sufficient clues as to how their verses are to be interpreted in an appropriate and ethically nourishing manner; where this is not so, other methods are straightforwardly available. Thus, as we have noted,42 Plutarch (19e–f ) has no time for ‘what used to be called “under-meanings” (Ëp»noiai), but are now called “allegories” (ˆllhgor©ai)’, by which some interpreters have sought to ‘do violence to and twist’ the meaning of some of Homer’s most infamous passages, such as the adultery of Ares and Aphrodite and Hera’s seduction of Zeus in Iliad 14. For Plutarch, the ‘moral’ of the song of Ares and Aphrodite speaks for itself to those who are willing to pay attention (o¬ pros”contev): Low music and obscene songs and stories with base themes produce wanton characters and cowardly lives and men who embrace luxury and softness and rule by women. (Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 19f–20a)43 42 43

See above p. 181. It seems probable that here (as at Life of Cleomenes 33 and Strabo 3.4.18) we should adopt the very poorly attested gunaikokrat©an (presumably a reference to Arete), rather than gunaikokras©an.

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Not only is it the case that only the weak and hedonistic, such as the Phaeacians, would take pleasure in such songs, but such songs are themselves in part responsible for that unmanly weakness. Plutarch’s (perhaps surprisingly modern) language of ‘violence’ to the text implies, of course, that his readings are natural and commonsensical; they are natural, so Plutarch would claim, because they follow the guidance which the poet himself has put in the text. The case of the adultery of Ares and Aphrodite seems open and shut: Homer also uses moral comments (–pirržseiv) to good effect, as though casting his own vote on what has happened or been said; in the case of Ares’ adultery he represents the gods saying, oÉk ˆreti kak‡ ›rgaá kic†nei toi bradÆv ÝkÅn [evil deeds do not prosper: the slow catches the swift (Homer, Odyssey 8.329)] (Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 19d)

–pirržseiv here are often understood to be ‘closing morals’, which Odyssey 8.329 (spoken by ‘one of the gods’ to another) is plainly not, at least not for the whole episode, though Plutarch is presumably influenced by the semi-proverbial nature of the verse and is very probably following a wellestablished paedagogical line in seeing verse 329 as a ‘moral’ for the story.44 Whether or not Plutarch’s pupil would be free to point out that other readings are possible may be debated, but it is probably the case that his eyes would be forcibly averted from the following verses (vv. 333–42), in which Hermes and Apollo joke about how much they would like to swap places with Ares. The scholia in fact tell us that these verses were missing from some texts,45 and it is not impossible that Plutarch’s decorous silence is based on the assumption, which is so obvious as not to need stating, that these verses would not be given to a serious-minded young man. It is perhaps more likely that, through his compilatory method in which previous collections are ransacked, Plutarch has included this example of how Homer offers guidance on the moral interpretation of his work in the wrong ‘category’ (i.e. under –pirržseiv, ‘closing morals’). Be that as it may, however much modern readers might think that it makes all the difference in the world whether such sentiments are expressed by characters or by the poet, all is grist to Plutarch’s didactic mill. No suggestion here, of course, that Plutarch himself is ‘doing violence’ to the text. Literary interpretation 44 45

Cf. the scholia to v. 267, to Iliad 6.162b, and Apthorp 1980: 87. It is possible that this excision has some connection with the ‘false ending’ of vv. 328–32. I hope to discuss this further elsewhere.

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is so much easier when the author does all the work for you. Apollonius of Tyana is reported to have singled this out as a particularly praiseworthy aspect of Aesop’s fables, the educational value of which Plutarch heartily endorses (14e):46 A poet says ‘many are the shapes of what the gods control’ [the famous and repeated Euripidean ending] or adds some such choral tag and disappears, but Aesop pronounces the moral of his own story and brings the exchange to the conclusion he intended. (Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 5.14.3)

In practice, however, different modes of interpretation and different readings prove difficult to keep apart. directed reading In chapter 7 Plutarch turns to the fact that ‘likeness to the truth’ (¾moi»thv toÓ ˆlhqoÓv, Lat. ueri simile) is crucial to the power (and danger) of poetry, which lies principally in its production of ‘what is persuasive’ (t¼ piqan»n).47 In ‘real life’ everyone has faults or makes mistakes – there are no Stoic sages, such as we hear about ‘in the schools’ – and this leads in chapter 8 to a consideration of how the characters of literature are similarly ‘mixed’. Plutarch interestingly runs this important idea together with another familiar argument about literary narrative, namely the fact that it relies on variety (t¼ poik©lon) and ‘multiple change’ (t¼ polÅtropon) to ensure the complexity which is an essential part of the ‘likeness to’, rather than ‘reproduction of’, truth: When it is dealing with things which are not true, then poetry most of all relies on variety and constant change. For it is changes which give stories elements of emotion and surprise and the unexpected, and it is these which provide the greatest effects of amazement (ekpl¯exis) and charm. Simple sameness lacks emotion and < . . . >.48 Therefore poets do not show the same people always victorious in everything or always prosperous or successful. Not even their gods are without emotion and fault, when they become embroiled in human affairs, so that the disturbing and astonishing element in poetry (t¼ tar†tton kaª t¼ –kpltton) should not grow weak because there is no danger and no struggle. (Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 25d) 46 47 48

Brown 1989: 289–90 in fact compares Hephaestus’ revenge to that of the fox over the monkey in Aesop, Fab. 81 Perry. The idea is of course a common one, see, e.g., Eustathius, Hom. 1690.53–1691.10 on Odyssey 11.365–7. On the place of chapter 7 in the treatise as a whole see Schenkeveld 1982. Babbitt prints Kronenberg’s Šmouson for the transmitted Šmuqon; neither seems what is wanted.

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That good literature relies on exciting changes and surprise is a rather different point from the fact that all men are (in their characters) a mixture of virtue and vice, for success and failure do not necessarily reflect changes in character; Plutarch has, however, made these arguments mutually reenforcing. It is Cicero’s famous letter to Lucceius (Letters to Friends 5.12), in which he asks Lucceius to write the history of his consulship, which is for us the most familiar example of the literary observation which Plutarch here makes. What, says Cicero, is particularly attractive in this subject is its enormous variety: The events in which I took part will offer your writing a great variety of material, full of a kind of pleasure which will exercise a powerful hold on the minds of your readers, for there is nothing more productive of the delight of the reader than changes of circumstance and the vicissitudes of fortune . . . the uncertain and changing fortunes of an outstanding individual offer amazement, suspense, joy, annoyance, hope and fear; if however they are concluded by a remarkable finale, the mind is filled with the sweetest pleasure which reading can offer. (Cicero, Letters to Friends 5.12.4–5)

It is precisely because this changeability both comes about through and reinforces ‘the disturbing and astonishing element’ (25d) that the young man must keep his wits about him. This changeability is not the least of the ‘disturbing and strange visions’ (jantas©ai taracÛdeiv kaª ˆll»kotoi, 15b) which the octopus’s head of poetry offers. If the young man understands that, for literature, variety is the spice of life, he will approach it with a mind better prepared to understand that that which is morally dubious is not presented as praiseworthy but is rather part of literary artifice, a truth which the example of gods affected by emotion and error (25d) makes particularly clear. Plutarch’s principal witness for the mixed morality of literary characters is the Homeric Achilles, whose inconsistency (ˆnÛmalon) of character had been noted at least as early as Aristotle (fr. 391 Gigon). Unsurprisingly, the discussion begins with Achilles’ first action of the poem: –nnmar m•n ˆn‡ strat¼n ßiceto kla qeo±o, ti dek†thi dì ˆgoržnde kal”ssato la¼n ìAcilleÅvá täi g‡r –pª jresª qke qe‡ leukÛlenov íHrhá kždeto g‡r Danaän, Âti ça qnžiskontav ¾rto.

(Homer, Iliad 1.53–6)

[For nine days the god’s shafts rained down on the camp. On the tenth day Achilles summoned an assembly of the army; the white-armed goddess Hera

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had put this in his mind, because she was moved by the plight of the Danaans, as she saw them dying.] Achilles gathers an assembly of the soldiers when they are suffering with sickness, as he more than anyone is impatient as the war drags on, because of his military distinction and reputation; he also had medical knowledge, and he realised after the ninth day, on which such illnesses naturally come to a crisis (kr©nesqai), that the disease was no ordinary one nor the result of regular causes (a«t©ai). When he stood up he did not rouse the common herd with a speech (oÉ dhmagwge± pr¼v t¼n Àclon) but acted as an adviser to the king: ìAtre©dh, nÓn Šmme p†lin plagcq”ntav ½©w ‹y ˆponostžsein [Son of Atreus, I think that now we will make the return journey back in our wanderings (Iliad 1.59–60)] This was said correctly and moderately and appropriately (½rqäv kaª metr©wv kaª prep»ntwv). (Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 26b–c)

Why it was Achilles who summoned the assembly was a matter much discussed in ancient criticism (see scholia on 1.53–5 and 54). Homer, however, gives one simple reason – Hera put him up to it – whereas Plutarch offers two quite different reasons: Achilles was impatient as the war dragged on because of his military distinction and reputation, and he realised, thanks to the fact that he was «atrik»v, that the nature of the disease meant that it was not simply going to go away. The first of these reasons may or may not be Plutarch’s own, though it is clearly grist to the educational agenda of his treatise, whereas the second is in line with one of the principal currents of ancient interpretation of this scene. From the scholia we can piece together a fairly detailed account (or more than one) of why the mules and dogs were the first to die, why it was on the tenth day that Achilles acted, why Achilles had medical knowledge (he was Cheiron’s pupil), and how he exercised it (he understood what was happening from the quality of the air, with íHra, as so often, actually being ˆžr). Plutarch’s account has important points of contact with what might be termed this rationalising/naturalistic reading (see also ‘Heraclitus’, Homeric Problems 14–15, Eustathius, Hom. 45.13–33), but it entirely omits Hera’s rˆole and also does not mention why Achilles was «atrik»v. As we have seen, Achilles’ medical knowledge and the rˆole of Hera were often put together in an ‘allegorical’ reading (Eustathius explicitly uses the term of this scene, Hom. 45.24), and Plutarch has already claimed to have little time for such ‘allegories’ (19f ); rather, he has gone for a kind of explanation – unexpressed poetic

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motivation – which he finds ethically more uplifting, but one which allows us to see the selectivity of his methods and how one type of interpretation seeps into another. By failing to explain the ‘mythical origins’ of Achilles’ medical knowledge, an origin which might in fact simply invite further ‘allegorisations’, and by writing Hera out of the scene, he has laid all the emphasis upon Achilles acting out of the best of motives. Plutarch thus prepares the young for the philosophical explanations of human action which they will hear later in life by ignoring (rather than combating) the rˆole of Homer’s gods and by stressing the element of fiction in poetry; with more mature audiences he will take a different line.49 What the teacher who offers these explanations should actually say when the pupil points out verses 55–6 to him, Plutarch does not tell us, though it is perhaps not utterly frivolous to note that verse 55 could easily be removed from the text, leaving Achilles as the subject of kždeto and thus emphasising his concern for his fellow Greeks. It is noteworthy that the scholia supply a similarly ethical explanation, alongside the physiological ones, for why it was that animals were the first to die from the plague: Apollo wanted to frighten the Greeks back to their senses (S(A) v. 50c). Here too we have the exploration of unexpressed poetic motivation. If Achilles’ opening words to Agamemnon (Iliad 1.59–60) deserve full scholiastic approbation (½rqäv kaª metr©wv kaª prep»ntwv), what follows is completely different: When the prophet says that he is afraid of the anger of the most powerful of the Greeks, Achilles swears that no one will lay hands on him while he (Achilles) is alive, and adds, no longer correctly or appropriately, oÉdì £n ìAgam”mnona e­phiv [ . . . not even if you were to name Agamemnon (Iliad 1.90)] thus showing his scorn and contempt for the commander. (Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 26d)

Plutarch could have taken a different line. The scholia on verse 90 observe that this remark is not abusive of Agamemnon (which shows of course that it had indeed been taken as such) but is rather an example of ‘hyperbole’: Achilles is encouraging Calchas to speak freely, and he draws Agamemnon in, as though the king himself was also encouraging the seer. Plutarch chooses the worse (for Achilles) interpretation of the verse for two reasons. 49

See below pp. 197–8.

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It suits his current argument about the ‘mixed’ moral behaviour of literary characters and, secondly, the worse interpretation has Achilles showing ‘disregard and contempt for the man in charge’; Plutarch’s agenda for a particular type of political ‘socialisation’ is here very apparent.50 Reading Homer is not just a preparation for philosophy, but also a preparation for taking one’s place within the elaborate hierarchies of the Greek e´lite class of the Roman empire; it would certainly, for example, never be possible to say ‘I will defend you, even against the emperor . . .’ Even though Agamemnon’s subsequent behaviour at the assembly is ridiculous (katag”lastov, 25e), he is still ¾ Šrcwn. Plutarch had in fact already touched upon Achilles’ insubordination in his account of how Homer makes clear the dangers of anger: Homer gives Achilles the reckless words o«nobar”v, kun¼v Àmmatì ›cwn, krad©hn dì –l†joio [Wine-sodden, with the eyes of a dog and the heart of a deer (Iliad 1.225)] but he suggests his own judgement, Phle©dhv dì –xaÓtiv ˆtarthro±v –p”essin ìAtre©dhn pros”eipe, kaª oÎ pw lge c»loio [Once again the son of Peleus addressed the son of Atreus with hurtful words, for not yet had he ceased from his wrath (Iliad 1.223–4)] It is thus likely that nothing which is spoken in anger and harshness will be honourable (kal»n). (Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 19c)

Here again Plutarch is following Plato’s lead. At Republic 3.389e12–390a6 Socrates had quoted verse 225 and cited ‘the verses which follow’, together with ‘all the other insults (neanieÅmata) which ordinary people have uttered against their rulers (o« Šrcontev) in prose or poetry’, as things which cannot be admitted into the education of the guardians; such things may bring a certain pleasure, but they hardly contribute to the swjrosÅnh of young men.51 For Plato, Homer’s introduction to Achilles’ insults is irrelevant, because what matters is simply the speech which will affect the minds of the young men and which they will be tempted to imitate. Plutarch’s approach, inherited from the rich Hellenistic critical tradition, speaks to a rather different educational system, but the goals of the two systems remain strikingly similar. 50 51

See above pp. 78–89 on the ‘Comparison of Aristophanes and Menander’. The T-scholia on v. 225c go out of their way to exculpate Agamemnon from Achilles’ charges. So too, Athenaeus 5.178d quotes v. 225 as an illustration of the critical principle that ‘if something is said in Homer, it does not mean Homer says it’.

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The scene in which Achilles is tempted to draw his sword on Agamemnon was a notorious site for critical discussion: After this [see 26d cited above] Achilles is provoked further and goes for his sword with the intention of killing Agamemnon, incorrectly both with respect to what is honourable and what is advantageous. Then he changes his mind again, ‹y dì –v koule¼n åse m”ga x©jov, oÉdì ˆp©qhse mÅqwi ìAqhna©hv [He pushed his great sword back into the scabbard and did not disobey Athena’s words (Iliad 1.220–1)] This is again correct and honourable (½rqäv . . . kaª kaläv), because, being unable utterly to eradicate his anger, he nevertheless bypassed it and held it in check, by making it obedient to his reason (logism»v). (Plutarch, ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 26d–e)

Plutarch’s explanation for Achilles’ change of heart has a distinctively Platonic feel (see also 31c–d on Odysseus’ restraint); so too, ‘Heraclitus’ revels in the fact that this scene shows that it was Homer who taught Plato his psychology (Homeric Problems 17–19), and the scholia are replete with Platonic terminology and ideas during this scene. Once again, therefore, Plutarch shares an explanation with the allegorists, for whom Athena, who intervenes here, is ‘forethought’ or jr»nhsiv, that part of Achilles’ mind which finally gets the upper hand,52 and once again Plutarch distinguishes himself from them by omitting the rˆole of the divine in his explanation. He keeps Athena in his citation of Iliad 1.220–1, thus suggesting Achilles’ piety, but makes Achilles’ change of mind a ‘rational’ decision by the hero himself; once again, then, Plutarch’s selective didactic technique feeds, rather than quells, our sense of the multiplicity of interpretation. Almost immediately after the discussion of Achilles in Iliad 1, Plutarch (26f ) cites the not entirely dissimilar case of Phoenix’s account of his reaction to the curse laid upon him by his father because he, Phoenix, had slept with his father’s concubine: t¼n m•n –gÜ boÅleusa katakt†men ½x”i calkäiá ˆll† tiv ˆqan†twn paÓsen c»lon, Âv çì –nª qumäi džmou qke j†tin kaª ½ne©dea p»llì ˆnqrÛpwn, Þv mŸ patroj»nov metì ìAcaio±sin kaleo©mhn.

(Homer, Iliad 9.458–61)

I plotted to slay him with sharp bronze, but one of the gods put an end to my anger, by bringing to my mind what the people would say and how heavily men 52

See, e.g., ‘Heraclitus’, Hom. Probl. 20.5; Max. Tyr. 4.8, 8.5; Feeney 1991: 54–5.

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would reproach me, in order to prevent me being known among the Achaeans as a patricide.

Plutarch reports that Aristarchus excised these verses ‘in fear’, presumably (though Plutarch does not expand), that young men would conclude that patricide was a possible solution to problems with one’s parents. Plutarch pays little explicit attention to the great Alexandrian critics in this essay,53 and that gives this example particular emphasis; a properly didactic understanding proves even the great Aristarchus wrong. These verses are in fact entirely absent from all other witnesses to the text of Homer, though modern critics are generally unwilling to accept Plutarch’s explanation for that absence;54 wherever Plutarch found them, however, he realised that they served his purposes well (26f–27a): The verses are correct for the place where they are (›cei d• pr¼v t¼n kair¼n ½rqäv): Phoenix is teaching Achilles what sort of a thing anger is and how many reckless deeds men are driven to by anger, unless they use their reason (logism»v) and listen to those who try to calm them.

Phoenix is here cast as a Plutarchan teacher, with Achilles as his young pupil; Phoenix controlled his anger, as Achilles may have done in Iliad 1, but failed notably so to do in the greater scheme of things. Phoenix’s narrative in the Iliad is, however, more obviously about his father’s anger than his own (cf. Iliad 9.449, 463), and it is perhaps not altogether surprising that when Plutarch cites verses 459–60 again, at Life of Coriolanus 32.5, there is a different text:55 ˆll† tiv ˆqan†twn tr”ye jr”nav, Âv çì –nª qumäi džmou qke j†tin kaª ½ne©dea p»llì ˆnqrÛpwn

(Homer, Iliad 9.459–60)

but one of the gods turned my intentions aside, by bringing to my mind what the people would say and how heavily men would reproach me

The difference well illustrates how an ancient reader and/or teacher could turn a text in various directions, depending on the use to which it was to be put. 53

54 55

A good example is 25e, where he cites Iliad 16.97–100 as the kind of thing which the young man must learn to censure; these verses had in fact been athetised by Zenodotus and Aristarchus and the scholia collect many arguments against them. See Ludwich 1884: i. 73–4; West 2001: 208, 250–2. The citation of v. 461 at Mor. 72b implies the paÓsen c»lon version (see diì ½rgžn in Plutarch’s introduction to the citation).

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The citation of Iliad 9.459–60 in the Life of Coriolanus is part of a fascinating discussion of divine intervention in Homer.56 Plutarch notes that some accused Homer of depriving people of control over their own actions, of removing the power of logism»v to control proa©resiv, by the divine machinery of the poems. Plutarch denies this. He notes that Homer regularly ascribes decisions of an ordinary kind to human reasoning, but that in the case of ‘great and unexpected actions’ or ‘strange and daring actions, which require inspired transport and extraordinary courage’ he does allow his gods to intervene; Phoenix’s self-restraint falls into this category, and here ‘some god caused a change of mind’ is indeed much more appropriate than ‘some god put an end to my anger’. Even here, however, this is not a case of simple divine control, for Plutarch accommodates the Homeric description to a Stoic account of action: Homer does not make the god remove proairesis, but rather prompt it; nor does the god instil impulses (¾rma©), but rather the impressions (jantas©ai) which lead to impulses, through which he does not make the action involuntary, but rather provides the beginning for the exercise of the will, and he also adds courage and hopefulness . . . by certain beginnings (ˆrca©) and impressions and inclinations (–pino©ai) they rouse the active and prohairetic parts of the soul or, on the other hand, they turn away and check them. (Plutarch, Life of Coriolanus 32.6)

Whereas in his educational treatise Plutarch had more or less written the gods out of poetic explanation, in the Life of Coriolanus he finds a way of retaining them which will, however, also be in keeping with the sensibilities and experiences of educated and philosophically minded people.57 Whether or not we wish to call explanations of the kind offered in the Life of Coriolanus ‘allegories’ is perhaps a matter of taste, but it is obviously important that Plutarch does not remove the divine entirely when offering a more sophisticated account. The long history which lies behind Plutarch’s account is nowhere seen more clearly in fact than in the famous address of Nisus to Euryalus in Aeneid 9: dine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt, Euryale, an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido? aut pugnam aut aliquid iamdudum inuadere magnum mens agitat mihi, nec placida contenta quiete est.

(Virgil, Aeneid 9.184–7)

56 57

See W¨ust 1958: 82–4; Lesky 1961: 18–22; Feeney 1991: 55. For Homer and the Stoics more generally see Long 1992. For other interpretations of Iliad 1.55 see Max. Tyr. 8.5 (an example of daimonic action), Julian 8.249b–c (the mind’s interaction with god).

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Euryalus, do the gods put this burning zeal in our minds, or is his own terrible desire a god for each man? Long since is my mind rousing me to charge into battle or something great, and it is not content with peaceful rest.

Nisus’ words are indeed very close to Plutarch’s description of the kind and nature of action where Homer allows his gods to act upon the human mind, and Plutarch in turn shows how Nisus’ dichotomy is not a truly disjunctive choice.58 Nor, indeed, is the choice between Plutarch’s different explanations in his two different works: one is preparatory of the other. the sleep of criticism Where Homer does not seem to offer sufficient guidance as to how a scene is to be read in an ethically appropriate way, then alternative explanations for praise and blame can be offered (27a–c). Here, once again, a fundamental principle will be, as it had been since the Aristophanic Euripides,59 that characters in literature act in ways and for motives with which readers are familiar; not only, as we have seen, can characters be inconsistent, but they act in accordance with, or contrary to, codes of politeness and common sense prevalent in the readers’ own community. They are ‘people like us’, or perhaps better, given their heroic status, ‘people not wholly dissimilar from us’; when Homer does not explicitly explain their actions, then we can consider possible rival explanations, which may reflect well or ill upon the characters. Some of Plutarch’s examples, such as Penelope’s behaviour to the suitors (27b–c), remain notorious cruces of Homeric interpretation even today; others now attract less attention. Thus, for example, Plutarch notes two possible explanations, one to Odysseus’ credit and the other not, for the hero’s first action on waking up on the Ithacan shore, namely checking that all the gifts which the Phaeacians had given him are present and accounted for (Odyssey 13.215–19). We could, notes Plutarch, put this action down to a regrettable love of wealth; alternatively, we could explain, as some have, that Odysseus calculates that if his possessions are safe, then the Phaeacians must have behaved justly towards him and he is indeed likely to be home. Both explanations are also reflected in the scholia on verse 215, and both have their modern descendants; Plutarch’s point is not that we must choose, but that the moral quality of any explanation must be paramount in our instruction of the young.60 What of Homer? Odysseus’ speech of lament had juxtaposed reproaches against the alleged injustice 58 59

On the philosophical background of the Virgilian verses see further Obbink 2004: 180–1. 60 Cf. Konstan 2004: 19–20. See above p. 21.

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of the Phaeacians to a resolution to count the gifts (vv. 209–16), and the poet had then juxtaposed the fact that all of Odysseus’ possessions are intact with his presence in his native land (vv. 219–21). The later flattering interpretation of Odysseus’ actions clearly, then, grows out of the structure of the Homeric text, though Homer avoids the elaborate explanations of the critical tradition; such explanation belongs more to what we think of as the tradition of the novel, with its sometimes elaborate exploration of the ‘psychology’ of its characters, and it is in fact worth reflecting on how the novels of later Greek antiquity descend not just from Homer, but from Homer as interpreted by scholastic and didactic traditions.61 Even where we might think that the supernatural was at work in the text, characters must still behave in ways in which we ourselves might behave. Consider Odysseus’ arrival back on Ithaca after his travels. Why he arrives asleep was much debated by ancient scholars62 and their modern counterparts remain equally fascinated.63 Here, if anywhere, however, we might think that Homer himself is his own first and best interpreter: âv ¡ ç©mja q”ousa qal†sshv kÅmatì ›tamnen, Šndra j”rousa qeo±sì –nal©gkia mždeì ›conta, Áv prªn m•n m†la poll‡ p†qì Šlgea Án kat‡ qum»n, ˆndrän te ptol”mouv ˆlegein† te kÅmata pe©rwná dŸ t»te gì ˆtr”mav eÔde, lelasm”nov Âssì –pep»nqei. (Homer, Odyssey 13.88–92)

So the ship ran swiftly on, cutting through the waves of the sea. It carried a man whose intelligence was like that of the gods, a man who in former times had suffered very many griefs in his heart as he passed through the wars of men and the grief-bringing waves. Then, however, he slept without stirring, in forgetfulness of all he had suffered.

This famous echo of the opening of the poem would seem explicitly to mark an end and implicitly a new beginning by dividing the poem into two: Odysseus, who has now told his tale, literally ‘forgets’ his past sufferings in sleep. The earliest (known to me) allusion to Odysseus’ remarkable sleep picks up this closural sense: at Trebizond one of Xenophon’s companions expresses the desire ‘to cease from toils and sail home, arriving in Greece 61 62

63

This is, of course, made very explicit in the texture of Heliodorus’ Aethiopica. See Arist. Poetics 1460a35–b2; scholia to Odyssey 7.318, 444, 13.79, 119 (= Heraclides Ponticus fr. 175 Wehrli (2nd edn)), Plut. Mor. 27e. For other (often joking) references to Odysseus’ sleep see Lucian, Parasite 11; [Diogenes] Epist. 36, p. 251 Hercher; [Crates] Epist. 19 Hercher; Philostratus, Heroicus 25.14. See, e.g., Taplin 2002.

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stretched out like Odysseus’ (Anabasis 5.1.2).64 That this interpretation of the Homeric scene persisted is clear, for example, from the closing narrative of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. Book 10 ends with Lucius ‘oppressed by sweet sleep’ (dulcis somnus oppresserat) at Cenchreae: he has found a harbour which is, literally, a tutissimum nauium receptaculum (10.35), but which he will learn is, at a higher level of reality, a ‘harbour of quiet’ in which he has been in tutelam . . . receptus Fortunae . . . uidentis (11.15). Very obviously, the sleeping Lucius embodies (once more, cf. esp. 9.13) the figure of Odysseus, ‘overcome’ (dedmhm”non, Odyssey 13.119) by sweet sleep not just on the Phaeacian ship, but also at the harbour of Phorkys, itself a safe haven for ships (13.100–1), on the shore of Ithaca.65 The Homeric pattern is recognised by the priest’s famous opening words to Lucius in 11.15, multis et uariis exanclatis laboribus . . . , which pick up the description of the polÅtropov who poll‡ . . . –n p»ntwi p†qen Šlgea Án kat‡ qum»n (Odyssey 1.4 ∼ 13.90);66 to ‘cease from toils’ (like Odysseus) is of course Lucius’ fervent prayer to Isis (11.2): sit satis laborum, sit satis periculorum. Despite this clear critical tradition, which is of course not to be mistaken for one which Homer himself has endorsed, Plutarch reports two other explanations for Odysseus’ sleep, without, however, signing up to either of them; both have their charms, though once again one is critical of Odysseus, while the other is laudatory of him. Some, he tells us, claim that the Etruscans preserve a story that Odysseus was naturally drowsy, and so most people found him difficult company! This we might think is an example of rationalist explanation taken to extremes. Homer had not, however, given any sign that Odysseus’ extraordinary sleep was a gift from the gods, thus precisely forcing open issues of interpretation. Although, as we have seen, the divine machinery of epic opens the way to multiplicity of interpretation, it can also act as a control or even check upon it; when that machinery is absent, interpretation is free to run riot. The second explanation, which we might think goes completely against the clear meaning of the text, is that Odysseus was merely feigning sleep because he was embarrassed not to have any gifts with which to thank the Phaeacians and because he realised that his presence on the island would be much sooner noticed if there was a crowd of sailors with him (27e). Here perhaps is the ultimate triumph of Euripidean elenchos and the attitude 64 65 66

Odysseus’ sleep may perhaps have been influential on Plato’s description of him in the Underworld, choosing the soul of an «diÛthv ˆpr†gmwn (Rep. 10.620c–d). See, e.g., Dowden 1998: 13–14. Apuleius’ verb, exanclare, should be allowed its full weight here; cf. also Horace’s translation at Epist. 1.2.21–2.

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of critical suspicion towards everything, which the Aristophanic Euripides proudly claimed as his contribution to the literary heritage:67 the Homeric text is subjected to persistent interrogation – ‘why?’, ‘why?’, ‘why?’ is the question posed at every turn (see 28d). Homer mattered, and he was to be given no peace until he had yielded up all his secrets. 67

See above pp. 19–22.

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Index of passages discussed

Aeschylus fr. 350 Radt 181–3 Antiphanes fr. 189 K-A 20 Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1.942–6 151–3 1.1187–1205 150–1 2.1–97 151 2.197–205 137–9 2.549–606 153–4 2.669–84 143–9 2.1097–1117 140–1 3.1391–2 160 4.1705–18 145 Aratus, Phainomena 294–9 139–41 Arimaspeia fr. 1 Davies 134–5 Aristophanes Clouds 376–80 72 Frogs 66 37 96–102 28, 29, 131–3 358 80 759–60 10 771–83 10–17 862 16 911–20 5–7 923–34 23–5 949–50 16 954–61 4, 18–22, 45, 133 1009–10 25 1020 5–6 1026–9 3–4, 38 1030–6 48–52 1043–7 29–30 1049–56 25–9 1071–2 16 1129–31 163 1182–94 22–3 1309–22 30 1411–71 36–8, 47

Knights 1290–4 24 Lysistrata 1216–20 80 Wasps 57–66 80 Aristotle Poetics 1449a10 58 1449a 15–18 15 1450b7–8 43 1456a25–7 15 1461b23 25, 166–7 Rhetoric 3.1404a19–36 35–6 Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 2.23 80–1, 89, 99 Callimachus Hymn to Delos 133–40 148 Cicero Brutus 36–8 161 Orator 7–9 116–17 Critias fr. 19 K-S 69–70 Dio Chrysostom, Oration 18.7 46 19.5 15–16 52.1 39–40 52.3–4 40–1, 47–8 52.4–5 44–5 52.6 41–2 Dionysius of Halicarnassus On Imitation fr. VI, pp. 203–4 U-R (31–2 Aujac) 109–27 fr. VI, pp. 213–14 U-R (40 Aujac) 118–19 On the Arrangement of Words 1.2–3 123–4 Euripides Cyclops 1–10 57 18–20 60–1 41–62 57–9 103–4 59–60 110 60–1 114 63

212

Index of passages discussed 201–2 59 250–2 60 275–85 61–3 276 63 290–6 64 299–303 63 310–12 67 315–46 67–77 316–17 69 320–1 63 332–3 72–3 338–40 77 447–9 59 460–3 59 495–502 66–7 708–9 57 Heracles Furens 1239–47 33–5 Homer Iliad 1.43–9 144–9 4.440–3 137 6.130–40 179 9.458–61 195–7 13.10–22 144–9 15.624–8 139–41 20.56–65 179–81 21.257–62 158–60 Odyssey 8.329 189 8.333–42 189 9.106–11 71–3, 75 9.358 73 13.88–92 199–200 13.215–19 198–9 Scholia to Iliad 1.50 193 1.90 193 2.153 154–5 9.134 157 10.5 156 16.7–10 156 17.263 154 17.673–5 167 18.346 157 20.61 180 Horace Ars Poetica 1–5 115 119–20 26 304–8 1–3 333–4 3–4 391–407 48–52 Epistles 2.1.50–62 90–9 Odes 4.1.38–40 126–7 4.2.5–8 126 4.2.10–12 126 Satires 1.4.1 103

213

1.4.14–16 100 1.4.25–32 101 1.4.34–8 101–2 1.4.53–62 19 1.4.78–85 102 1.4.106 103 Life of Aesop 35 24 ‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 1.1–4 128–30 3 130–4 8.2 149 9.3 115–16 9.4 137 9.5 136 9.6 180 9.7 181 9.14 149–50 9.15 45 10 134–5, 139–41 13.1–14.3 116 13.4 39, 119 15 30–2 15.2 142–3 32–6 160–8 32.4 20 36.3 20 40.2–3 33–5 Lucian, Imagines 23 119–20 Ovid Amores 1.15.14 160 Metamorphoses 8.799–808 137–9 Petronius, Satyrica 1–4 133–4 118.1–4 121–3 Plato Apology 41b 43–4 Hippias Minor 364c–d 45 Ion 535c3 184 Laws 3.680c–d 71 3.698a–701d 14–17, 89 Phaedo 59a5–6 39 118a15–17 39 Republic 2.378a 26 2.380a–c 27 Pliny, Letters 6.21.1–6 97–8 Plutarch ‘Comparison of Aristophanes and Menander’ 853a 81–2 853c–e 84–7 854a 83–4, 86–7 ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 15d 176–7 15e–f 177–9

214

Index of passages discussed

Plutarch (cont.) 16d–e 179–85 17b–c 185–8 19b–c 171 19c–d 188–90, 194 20a 188 21d 5 25a 23 25d 190–1 26b–7a 191–6 26b 173–4 27c–d 198–9 27e 200–1 27f–8a 13 36d–e 169–70 36f–7a 174–5, 177 Life of Coriolanus 32 197–8 ‘On listening to lectures’ 42d–e 165–6 Sympotic Questions 2.634f 82–3 7.712a–c 86 [Plutarch], ‘On the education of children’ 7a–b 131

Prolegomena de comoedia Koster I 5–13 104 XXIV 2, 52–3 98 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 10.1.65–6 51–2, 95 10.1.86 162–3 10.1.99–100 93 Sophocles, Philoctetes 1–134 45–6 Theocritus, Idylls 11.34 74 17.116–17 121 22 151 Virgil, Aeneid 3.90–2 145, 147 4.1–5 112 6.469 6 9.184–7 197–8 Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.10.2–3 119

General index

Achilles 6, 31, 45, 53, 191–6 Aeschylus Lykourgeia 65; Philoctetes 39–48; Psychostasia 4; in Aristophanes’ Frogs 2, 3, 5–7, 10–52, 130, 145, 147; in ‘Longinus’ 30–2, 130 Aesop 190 Agathon 5 Ajax, in Odyssey 6 allegory, allegorical interpretation 9, 28, 53–4, 176–7, 179, 181, 188, 192, 195, 197 Amphion 51 Amycus 151 anger 6, 145, 194, 196 anthologies, poetic 182 Antisthenes 54 Apollo 143–9 Apollonius, Argonautica 143–54, 162. See also Index of passages discussed Apollonius of Tyana 190 Apuleius, Metamorphoses 55–6, 118, 200 Aratus, Phainomena 139–41 Arimaspeia 134–5 Aristarchus 196 Aristophanes Acharnians 58, 88, 154–5; Clouds 3, 12, 67, 79; Frogs 2–7, 10–52, 95, 99, 128–34; Wasps 70–1; in Plutarch 78–89, 106; parabases 96. See also Index of passages discussed Aristophanes of Byzantium 125 Aristotle 7, 13, 82, 88, 98, 101–3, 105; Homeric Problems 21; Poetics 15, 20–2, 105, 166–8; Rhetoric 32–3. See also Index of passages discussed Athena 195 Atticism 129 authadeia, authades 5–6, 34, 46

Caecilius, comic poet 80–1, 94 Caecilius of Caleacte 129–30, 164, 165 Callicles, in Plato’s Gorgias 68–70 Callimachus 24, 106, 159–61, 168 cannibalism 72 Catullus 122–3 chorus, in tragedy 15–17 Cicero 113, 191. See also Index of passages discussed Circe 188 classicism, ‘the classical’ 38–48, 107–27 colonialism 72 comedy, history of 78–106 Cook, James 72 Cratinus 79 Cyclops, the 53–77, 149–52 ‘Demetrius’, On Style 30, 32, 133, 139–58, 168 Demetrius of Phaleron 161 Demosthenes 129, 130 ‘Derveni papyrus’ 26 Dicaearchus 74 didactic poetry 1 Dio Chrysostom 15–16; Oration 5, 12–14, 39–48. See also Index of passages discussed Diogenes the Cynic 76 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 5, 19, 29–30, 35, 161, 164–5; On Imitation 107–27. See also Index of passages discussed Dionysus 179; in Aristophanes’ Frogs 18, 23–5, 36–8, 112, 131–3; in Euripides’ Cyclops 64–7 Ennius 95 Epicharmus 92–6, 99 Epicurus, Epicureanism 104, 177 epiphany, divine 141–9 Eratosthenes, Erigone 65, 168 Eumolpus, in Petronius 121–3

banauson 81–2 bees, image of poets 124

215

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General index

Euripides 46, 99; Antiope 51; Bacchae 65–7; Cyclops 7, 53–77; Electra 8, 19; Orestes 27; Phaethon 31–2; Philoctetes 39–48; in Aristophanes’ Frogs 4–7, 10–52, 131, 201; in ‘Longinus’ 30–2, 130. See also Index of passages discussed Eustathius 9, 53–4, 73, 148, 176, 179

Naevius 95 Neoptolemus, critic 3

Favorinus 100

Pandora 119 Paris 117–18 Parrhasius 119 parrh¯esia 104–5 pastoral poetry 57 Pheidias 117 Philitas 24 Philochorus 65 Philodemus 7, 104, 107 Philoxenus, Cyclops or Galateia 58 Phoibammon 112 Pindar 125–6 Plato 7, 12–17, 39, 53, 89, 113–14, 116–17, 134, 163–5, 178–9; Euthydemus 12–14; Gorgias 68–70; Ion 184; Laws 14–17; Protagoras 2, 12, 23, 79; Republic 27–8, 89, 113, 169–70, 174–5, 181–8, 194; Symposium 110–13, 115–16. See also Index of passages discussed Plautus 64, 81, 89–100 Plutarch 103; ‘Comparison of Aristophanes and Menander’ 78–89, 99, 102, 103, 106; ‘On listening to lectures’ 169; ‘How the young man should study poetry’ 1, 23, 25, 27, 169–201; ‘How to tell a friend from a flatterer’ 105; Sympotic Questions 82–3, 178. See also Index of passages discussed Polybius 37, 121 proag¯on 11 ‘problems’ (z¯et¯emata) 21–5, 41–3, 62, 166–8 Prodicus 22 prologues 42 Protagoras 22 psychag¯ogia 37–8 Pythagoras 173

Galen 83 goat, Dionysiac animal 58 gods, in epic 141–9, 197–8; in tragedy 28–9, 42 ‘Golden Age’ 71–4 Gorgias 12, 35, 37, 131, 177, 187 Helen 114, 117, 120, 188 Heracles 150–1 ‘Heraclitus’, Homeric Problems 54, 69, 177, 195 Herodotus 8, 121 Hesiod 18; Aspis 136, 139; Works and Days 75–7 Hippias 12 Homer 118, 130, 154–60, 173, 184, 197–8; Iliad 4, 170, 191–6; Odyssey 53–77, 149–52, 183–5, 198–201. See also Index of passages discussed Horace Ars Poetica 1–4, 29, 48–52, 90–106; Epistles 2.1 90–9; Odes 3.30 120; 4.1 125; 4.2 124–7; Satires 1.4 97, 99–106; 1.10 90. See also Index of passages discussed Hyperides 129 Ikarios 65 Isocrates 37, 124 ‘Longinus’, On the Sublime 20, 29, 95, 111, 113, 118, 119, 128–68, 181. See also Index of passages discussed Lucian, Imagines 119–20 [Lucian], Onos 55–6 Lucilius 90, 98–9, 103, 162 Lucretius 188 Lycurgus 179 Lysias 18, 35, 129, 164–5 Machon 98 madness 142–3 Maximus of Tyre 114 Menander 99, 100; in Aulus Gellius 80–1, 89–90; in Plutarch 78–89, 103, 106, 170 metaphors, metaphorical language 32 metatheatre 57–9 mim¯esis 107–27; in Plato 183

Odysseus 44–6, 53–77, 176, 198–201 ‘Old Oligarch’ 104 Orpheus 50–1 Ovid, Amores 1.15 95

Quintilian 47, 96, 108, 162–3 Sappho 125–6, 134 satire, Roman 96, 99–106 satyr-drama 56–9. See also Euripides, Cyclops Sicily, comedy in 94 silence 5–7 Silenos 53–77 similes 141, 156–7 Sirens, the 176–7 Socrates 54 Sophists 11–14, 22, 68

General index Sophocles Philoctetes 39–48 Stoics, Stoicism 197 storms, epic 134, 139–41, 149 style, types of 29–36, 125–7, 130–4, 157–60 sublimity, sublime effects 6, 30–2, 34, 119, 128–68 Talos 153 Terence 93–6, 100; Adelphoe 103, 104 Theagenes of Rhegium 181 Theocritus 58, 92, 151, 159, 168 Theophrastus 32, 105, 136 Thersites 87–9, 101, 103, 105 Thetis 179, 181–3 Thucydides 8, 37, 71, 123–4 thymelikon 81

Timaeus of Tauromenium 132 Timon of Phlious 88 trag¯oidia, etymology of 58 trochee, trochaic verse 92–4 Troy, Trojan War 62 Varro 99, 100 Vergilius Romanus 97–8 Virgil 2, 6, 150–1, 154–60, 162–3 wine 64–7, 70–1, 86, 177–9 Xenophanes 28, 29, 88 Xenophon 54, 119, 128–68 Zeus 62–3, 70, 73 Zeuxis 113–20

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