Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry

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TRADITION AND INNOVATION IN HELLENISTIC POETRY

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

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

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

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

Contents

Preface List of abbreviations

page vii ix

1 Performance and genre

1

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

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

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

42 42 44 49 51 60 66 76 83

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

1 17 26 37

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

89 89 98 104 117 126

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

133

1

v

133 141 167 170

vi

Contents

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

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

6 The style of Hellenistic epic 1 2 3 4

Introduction Callimachus Theocritus Apollonius Rhodius

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

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

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

10 Roman epilogue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

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

Bibliography Index of passages discussed General index

191 191 196 201 210 215 224

246 246 249 255 266

283 283 291 338

350 350 371 377

404 404 432 437

444 444 449 461 467 474 476 477

486 500 506

Preface

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

viii

Preface

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

Abbreviations

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

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

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

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

All dates are bc, unless otherwise indicated.

chap t e r 1

Performance and genre

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

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

1

2


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

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

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

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

3

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

1 Invoking the Muses, evoking models

3

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

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

4


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

9

10

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


5

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

12 13 14 15

16

There was a widespread belief that this game had given rise to comedy, cf. K. Latte, ‘;?@;' C &, 4 : ancora poetica della brevitas?’ MD 38 (1997) 153–73. Cf. Selden (1998) 357. At least until Fronto, Epist. ad M. Caes. 1.4.6, it was clear that the verb - % ‘came towards’, used by Callimachus, fr. 2.2, to describe the Muses approaching Hesiod, implied that the latter was awake at the time. It was only later that allegorical interpretations imagined that Hesiod’s meeting, as well as Callimachus’, had taken place while he was asleep, cf. Massimilla (1996) 234. Cf. Selden (1998) 356. On the reasons why Callimachus chooses to set the appearance of the Muses in a dream cf. R. Pretagostini, ‘L’incontro con le Muse sull’Elicona in Esiodo e in Callimaco’, Lexis 13 (1995) 170–2: ‘a poet of the third century bc like Callimachus, who makes truth one of the bases of his poetics, [. . .] in order to make the meeting with the Muses on Mount Helicon credible, has no other means than transferring it from the rationally incredible level of reality to the rationally plausible level of a dream: the epiphany of the goddesses [. . .] for the learned Alexandrine poet, can be hypothesised only in the realm of the imaginary’.

8


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

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


9

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

33

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

10


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

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

35

36 37 38 39

40

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


11

Iambus 5, the epodic pattern of iambic trimeter plus iambic dimeter, actually found in Hipponax (fr. 129 Deg. = IEG 118) and Archilochus, is modified to admit choliambs.41 In these poems, moreover, Callimachus plays some very iambic variations on the game of masking the persona loquens, thus concealing, as Aristotle thought iambic authors did, his own identity when impersonating a series of more or less embarrassing roles. Iambus 2 offers an explicit application of the lesson taught by Hipponax through the story of the cup of Bathycles in Iambus 1. The application is presented as a fable (D 5 2$ , HI #., ‘it was the time when . . .’): the animals once spoke the same language as men, but then Zeus, in his anger at their importunate requests and claims, gave the voices of the animals to men, ‘with the result that men became chatterboxes’;42 in particular, the narrator adds, Eudemus inherited the voice of the dog, Philton that of the donkey, and the tragedians those of marine animals (vv. 10–13).43 The voice in which the fable is spoken is remarkably like that of Callimachus: the periphrastic and erudite definitions of birds as , , marine animals as #(%%" and man as #, J4 ‘mud of Prometheus’ are particularly noteworthy.44 Nevertheless, the voice now reveals itself as that of Aesop ( 'C ;K% '$% ) C . C E_ L% &Q'") $, ') #. Why, Odysseus, do you sit thus like a speechless man, eating your spirit . . .? (Homer, Odyssey 10.378–9)

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

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

Cf. Clauss (1993) 200–1.

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The Argonautica of Apollonius and epic tradition

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

95

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

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

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

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

104 105

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

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

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

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

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

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

1145 1145a

1150

1155

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

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

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

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

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

112

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

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

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

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

120

121 122 123 124

Cf. Hunter (1989a) 39–40; below, pp. 262–82. Here, too, Virgil’s practice is different and more ‘Homeric’, cf. Conte (1986) 64–6. F. Cairns, ‘Orality, Writing and Reoralisation: Some Departures and Arrivals in Homer and Apollonius Rhodius’ in H. L. C. Tristram (ed.), New Methods in the Research of Epic. Neue Methoden der Epenforschung (Tübingen 1998) 63–84 seeks to gloss the conventional view by noting ‘reoralisation’ of certain recurrent rhetorical ‘genres’ in Arg. This would amount to the stylistic equivalent of the familiar practice of verbal analogising. Cf. K. Nickau, Untersuchungen zur textkritischen Methode des Zenodotos von Ephesos (Berlin–New York 1977) 62–123, M. L. West, Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad (Munich–Leipzig 2001) 33–45, and A. Rengakos’ review of West in BMCR 2002 (December). Cf. Rengakos (1993) 53–78, id. ‘Apollonius Rhodius as a Homeric scholar’ in Papanghelis–Rengakos (2001) 193–216. Cf. esp. Fantuzzi (1988a), (2001a), and below, pp. 262–82. Cf. Hutchinson (1988) 121–41, M. Williams (1991) 273–94. Cf. Goldhill (1991) 298–300, Knight (1995) 200–7.

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

126 127 128 129

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cf. above, p. 111.

chap t e r 4

Theocritus and the bucolic genre

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

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

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Theocritus and the bucolic genre

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

6

7 8

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

1 Theocritus and the ‘realism’ of everyday life

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

55

60

65

70

Cf. further below. Cf. Suda 166 (II p. 687.18–9 Adler) 4 U p '8 4% ' 4% # ) (%"% ]M ' %%) B 5C V A ( # Q%% % E% 'C &Z C K% *Z %%. And there was among them a man of surpassing knowledge, master especially of all kinds of wise works, who had acquired the utmost wealth of understanding: for whenever he reached out with all his understanding, easily he saw each of all the things that are, in ten and even twenty generations of men. (Empedocles fr. 129 D–K, trans. Kirk–Raven–Schofield) humana ante oculos foede cum uita iaceret in terris oppressa graui sub religione, quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans, primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra; quem neque fama deum nec fulmina nec minitanti 156 157

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

6 The Phainomena of Aratus

229

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

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

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

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

159

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

230

Epic in a minor key

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

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

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

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


231

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

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

232

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

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

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

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


233

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

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

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

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

234

Epic in a minor key

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

169

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


235

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

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

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

236

Epic in a minor key

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

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

172

173 174

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


237

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

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

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

238

Epic in a minor key

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

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

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


239

9%#) 2 5 'X (_ % 4' 'U

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

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

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

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

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Epic in a minor key

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

181 182

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


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

183 184

185

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

242

Epic in a minor key

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

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


243

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

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

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

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

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

244

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

chap t e r 6

The style of Hellenistic epic

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

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

2

3

4

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

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

6 8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

, ‘ancient 26

Cf. Fantuzzi (1988a) chapter 4.

27

Cf. above, p. 205.

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

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

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

29 30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

40 41 42

43

44

45

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

57

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

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

59

60 61

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

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

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

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

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

66

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

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

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

69

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

76

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


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

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

%, points clearly to this 77 78

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

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

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


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

82 83

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

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

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

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

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

Cf. Hunter (1989a) 241.

85

Cf. Campbell (1983) 79.

86



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

89



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Cf. Effe (1996) 309.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

chap t e r 7

The epigram

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

Cf. Puelma (1996).

283

284

The epigram

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

3

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

1 Inscription and epigram: the ‘prehistory’ of a genre

285

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

5

6

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

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The epigram

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

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

8 9 10 11

12

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


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

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

288

The epigram

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

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

18

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


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

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

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The epigram

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

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

2 Funerary and dedicatory epigrams

291

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

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

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

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The epigram

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

28

29

30

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


293

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

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

32

33

Cf. AP 7.264 (Leonidas), 265, 268, 269 ([Plato]), 270 and 496 ([Simonides]), 276 (Hegesippus), 279 (adesp.), 282 (Theodoridas), 288 (Antipater Thess.), 350 (adesp.), 400 (Serapion), 404 (Zonas), 636 (Crinagoras), 651 (Euphorion). See S. Georgoudi, ‘La Mer, la mort et les discours des e´pigrammes funéraires’ AION (Archeol.) 10 (1988) 58. Leonidas, AP 7.478 and 480 = HE 2421ff. and 2427ff.; Antiphilus, AP 7.175 and 176 = GPh 929ff. and 935ff.; Heraclides, AP 7.281 = GPh 2390ff.; Isidorus, AP 7.280 = GPh 3887ff.; adesp. AP 7.356–60. HE ii.139.

294

The epigram

very familiar features of sepulchral inscriptions and funerary epigrams.34 One formal reason which in all probability led Gow and Page to consider this epigram as a ‘poem of mourning’ was the form of its presentation. Compared with the most frequent forms of archaic sepulchral inscriptions, where the persona loquens was the tomb or, later, the deceased, there has been a tendency to consider fictitious those funerary epigrams in which an external ‘I’ mourns for the dead – even more so if this external ‘I’ sympathises with and consoles the father of the dead no less than the deceased himself, as happens for example in some epigrams by Callimachus.35 Thus scholars have considered ‘epideictic-consolatory’ texts such as [Simonides], AP 7.511 = FGE 1006f., % 0 # c C K') | * % ) (# =##) P C ‘whenever I see the tomb of the dead Megacles, I pity you, poor Callias: what distress you suffered!’, in which an external ‘I’ sympathises with the sorrow of one of the dead person’s nearest and dearest, rather than mourning for the deceased, and addresses the bereaved in the second person; such poems are not far from the manner in which the external ‘I’ mourns for Botrys and his son in the epigram by Asclepiades (above p. 293). More recently, however, the ‘anonymous first person mourner’ has been acknowledged as an important epitaphic form of presentation,36 and the epitaphic nature of the poems of [Simonides] and Asclepiades has been properly appreciated. Inscribed examples include CEG 470 of 550/540 bc, ; # ' ' % % & ) #. ‘when I see this tomb of Autokleides, I am distressed, etc.’, CEG 51 of about 510 bc, * % [] ', ' % | 3( . . . – s 'X ; – J ' . . . – C^ 'X ; – =# ' C * $. – ^* &$ ( $; – d4% ' C ' M # 9. – ^* &' M; – = 5 ' C (' . – s # ; My name is . . . – What does it matter? – My country is . . . And what does that matter? – I am of noble race. – And if you were of the very dregs? – I quitted life with a good reputation – And had it been a bad one? – And I now lie here. – Who are you and to whom are you telling this? (trans. Paton)

From the third and second centuries bc on, however, we also find a different form of dialogic dramatisation, which does not transform the moment of vision and reading into a dialogue between the passer-by and the dead, but merely translates the act of reading by the passer-by into an act of listening; the message written on the monument is now pronounced by the monument itself. This form of presentation presupposes and, as it were, transforms into a narrative monologue the previous convention of true dialogue, leaving the responsibility for the message still with the inscription and/or the dead: cf. e.g. GVI 1620.1–3 (third/second century bc): Q9 .%) / ' | , ( % 5, | C;' 99 ) #. ‘the tomb is not without signs, and the stone will reveal the dead person: who, and the son of whom, has gone to Hades, etc.’, 1745.3f. = SGO 05/01/42 (third century bc): M % 'X Q & Q | , $ &

"

% , #. ‘above, the smooth stone announces the dead, speaking with a mouth without sounds, etc.’, 1621.3 (second century bc) ∪ – ∪ – ∪ – ∪ &

]# 5 4) #. ‘the inscription will announce, etc.’.90 Inscriptions like those discussed so far are, more or less explicitly, ‘words’ that the convention of the speaking , whether dedicatory or funerary, lends to the stone, or to the dead person, or to the object to which the stone refers. As such, they presuppose that the passer-by/reader had in front of his eyes the monumental context of the dialogue, which was of course also 89 90

Kaibel (1893) 51 rather fancifully hypothesised that the occasion (real or imaginary) for the epigram was the discovery of a fragmentary inscription in which a homo insipidus supplied foolish answers. Many other examples in GVI 1622–1635. This compendious form of dialogue is not common in literary epigrams, but cf. Callimachus, AP 7.447 = HE 1209f., the pseudo-Theocritean AP 7.262 = HE 3504f., and Antipater Sid., AP 7.425.3 = HE 382.

312

The epigram

the subject of the dialogue: the passer-by was expected to ask about the monument, not about anything else. When epigram-writers began to link their names with the text of single epigrams, and to consider a circulation for texts separate from inscription on stone, and hence a reception which did not involve actual vision of a monument, it was to be expected that this would affect the character of the dialogue itself. In fact, literary epigrams of the third and second centuries present a mixed picture. Some very faithfully follow epigraphical traditions, with the presupposition of a monumental context: a passer-by asks questions and a tombstone or monument explains itself. Examples of this kind include Leonidas, AP 7.503 = HE 2355ff. and AP 7.163 = HE 2395ff.,91 Phalaecus, AP 13.5 = HE 2939ff.,92 Theaetetus, AP 6.357 = HE 3342ff., Theodoridas, AP 6.224 = HE 3524ff., Philetas of Samos, AP 7.481 = HE 3028ff.,93 [Theocritus], AP 7.262 = HE 3504ff.94 There are, however, also other more ambiguous epigrams which play on the absence of the monumental context. An interesting case is Nicias, AP 6.122 = HE 2755ff.: 0 C^$#$) # ' ) ( ) Q % T" ' %(!; – 04U D #( . y % (! C>'Q% '4 '. Maenad of Ares, sustainer of war, impetuous javelin, who now has set you here, a gift to the goddess who awakes the battle? – Menios; for by springing lightly from his hand in the forefront of the fight I wrought havoc among the Odrysae on the plain. (trans. Paton, adapted)

This dedication of a javelin contrasts its present immobility with its past violent speed. This was probably a common type of dedicatory epigram by 91

92

93

94

Leonidas was imitated by Antipater Sid., AP 7.164 = HE 302ff., who even copied the name of the dead person (!); see also the further variations of Antipater or Archias, AP 7.165 = GPh 3658ff., and of Amyntes, SH 43 = FGE 13ff. (cf. also Agathias, AP 7.552). A later dedicatory parallel is offered by Philip of Thessalonica, AP 6.259 = GPh 2789ff. The text is corrupt and the division of lines controversial. In all probability, the epigram is in the form of a dialogue between a passer-by and the four characters on a monument; so, most recently, Gow-Page and Buffière. The exegesis of Kaibel (1893) 50–1, followed by Beckby, according to which the dialogue is between only two characters commemorated by the statue or the relief, is much less likely. Here, the dialogue is not between the dead person and the passer-by, but between the father of the little girl, who will have been depicted on the stele, and the girl herself, likewise portrayed on the stele: cf. CEG 512 (above, p. 299). ‘The inscription will say which tomb it is, and who lies beneath it: “I am the tomb of the famous Glauce”’, which finds a precise parallel in GVI 1625 (first century bc)‘The stele will tell you of my destiny, and the letters engraved on it will tell of my death and the name of my parents [. . .] my name is Ploutos, and at the age of three I arrived at the threshold of Hades, etc.’ For Glauce, however, seeing that she is ]_ ‘famous’, no other details are necessary, as Walsh (1991) 87 observes.


313

Nicias’ time; its roots lie perhaps in Alcaeus’ description of an arms-room (fr. 140 V.),95 and other examples are found in [Simonides], AP 6.52 = FGE 932ff., Mnasalces, AP 6.125 and 128 = HE 2611–2620, and Antiphilus of Byzantium, AP 6.97 = GPh 909ff. There is a close parallel in Anyte, AP 6.123 = HE 664ff.:96 g ^% T"' ) ( 9 ) ' C #$ !(# & C A$! % (_ 'U &## C & ( ' 1 *b C;() .

## C & = , C^! '. Stand here, you murderous javelin, no longer drip from your brazen barb the dismal blood of foes; but resting in the high marble house of Athena, announce the bravery of Cretan Echecratidas. (trans. Paton)

Anyte, perhaps writing before Nicias, gives greater prominence to her relationship with the lyric-archaic model of Alcaeus: !(# [ . . .] ( ' picks up 'X ' !(#" ‘the great hall sparkles with bronze’ etc. in Alcaeus. Anyone who read Nicias’ epigram in its monumental context, next to the dedicated javelin, will not have had any doubts about its interpretation. The visible dedication will have made clear that ‘Maenad of Enyalius’ was a metaphor for ‘fury of Ares’, a metaphor of a common kind in which Dionysus and Ares were often involved.97 The reaction of a reader of the epigram in book form will have been different, and Nicias may have wanted to suspend understanding by means of the metaphorical ( and the ambiguous C^$(#, which was both one of the names of Ares and (less commonly) an epithet of Dionysus.98 Anyone who encountered the epigram without its monumental context, however, might until the clear signals of v. 2 have been led to suppose that the apostrophe was addressed to the statue of a ‘Maenad of Dionysus’, and that Enyalius was to be interpreted in its secondary, less common meaning; the uncertainty would only 95 96

97

98

Cf. M. B. Bonanno, L’allusione necessaria: ricerche intertestuali sulla poesia greca e latina (Rome 1990) 125–46. The standard view, deriving from Reitzenstein (1893) 123–5, is that Anyte is the model for Nicias. This has recently been denied by Bernsdorff (2001) 113–14, in the course of a detailed survey, which lowers the chronology of Anyte, traditionally considered to be an authoress of the very first generation of Hellenistic epigram-writers. The use of ( in the sense ‘javelin’ is found only in these two poems and would seem to guarantee a relationship between them. The ambiguity of Nicias’ opening might point to the priority of Anyte. Timotheus had called the shield ‘the drinking-bowl of Ares’ (PMG 797) and ‘cup of Ares’ to mean ‘shield’ or ‘shield of Dionysus’ to mean ‘cup’ are typical examples of a metaphor by analogy, according to Aristotle, Rhet. 3.1407a14–15; cf. also Rhet. 3.1412b34 and Poet. 1457b20–1. Cf. PMG 1027b, Macrob., Sat. 1.19.1: ‘Bacchus has the name of C ^$(#, which is also one of the names used for Mars’.

314

The epigram

be increased by ( , which normally means ‘cornel tree’, but here is used for a spear made from cornel-wood. Someone, of course, who knew Anyte’s poem, if it was indeed the earlier of the two, will have understood from the end of v. 1 that the subject was a javelin, and that the startingpoint for the initial metaphor was the Homeric custom of personifying lances and the hands of warriors who brandish them through the use of the verb %.99 Nevertheless, initial misunderstanding will have been even more likely if, at the beginning of the third century, the ekphrasis of statues in dialogue form was already a common epigrammatic form. An example from the late third century was inscribed on the plinth of a statue of Lysippus the Younger:100 Z ) () ) %C #% L 5) | & ) K % #%(%) ##$ ) #. ‘tell me truly, little boy, who formed you and whose child you are, if your young tongue is loosened up, etc.’. Other examples involving statues of Bacchants include [Simonides], APlan. 60 = FGE 914f., s x' – a(!. – s ' M% – `; 'X J#Q – 0. – C;# . – > , #

3 &# U * 'X , 1'Q 9Q# ) J ##$ 9 * C;'". Tell me, is Charidas buried here? – If it is the son of Arimmas of Cyrene you mean, he is here. – Charidas, how is it down there? – Very dark. – What of return? – A lie. – And Pluto? – A myth. – We are done for, then. – I have given you the truth. If you prefer a pleasantry, beef is a penny a pound in Hades. (trans. Nisetich, adapted)

The poet first apostrophises the tomb (2, %) and then the deceased himself, whereas the ‘talking’ tomb conventionally spoke either in the first person or in the voice of the dead. Here a ‘conventional’ dialogue between passer-by and tomb leads into a conversation with the deceased Charidas; as the epigraphic tradition had so frequently imagined that not only the tomb, on behalf of the dead, but also the dead person himself could speak in the first person through the inscription, why should it not be considered legitimate to ask him for some more information, besides the usual details of identity, particularly as the tomb itself had already taken care of these details in the first couplet? The second epigram in this group is AP 7.520 = HE 1199ff.: v '_" s! h ;{') A Q i :$! v (# % ) '_ % $# J # ' $e J$%$U '4 ' C , % 9. If you search for Timarchus in Hades, to find out anything about the soul, or how you will exist again, search for the son of Pausanias of the tribe Ptolemais: you will find him among the pious. (trans. Nisetich, adapted)

The poem starts off in a similar manner to the second couplet of CEG 545: ‘the earth has the bones and the flesh of the sweet boy, but his soul has 132

Cf. Callimachus, AP 7.471 = HE 1272ff., on Cleombrotus, who committed suicide after reading the Phaedo.

324

The epigram

gone to the chamber ((#) of the devout. If you ask my name ( * 'X A _ 5), I who lie here in illustrious Athens am Theogeiton, the son of Thymouchos, a Theban by birth’; this and other epigraphic occurrences demonstrate that this conditional clause was a part of epitaphic formulaic language,133 just as ‘you will find him in the area of the devout’ ('4 'C , % 9) also alludes to such repetitive assertions. In CEG 545 and other inscriptions, however, ‘if you ask my name etc.’ refers to the usual curiosity of the uninformed passer-by about the name of the dead person,134 but in Callimachus the addressee already knows who he is looking for, and the investigation in which he is imagined to be engaged from the beginning (v '_") is completely different. Timarchus’ personal details (v. 3) seem to be introduced only as necessary to trace him in Hades, together with his new ‘address’ (v. 4); the information that the passer-by would like to receive is not of the traditional kind about the deceased’s identity, but rather first-hand information about the quality of life beyond the grave, and the whole epigram is centred on the possibility of such an extraordinary interview at this new, and highly unlikely, address in the Underworld.135 By starting in the same way as sepulchral inscriptions, which elicited the conventional request from the passer-by about the identity of the dead person, and finishing with the equally conventional dwellingplace of the blessed, Callimachus makes the tomb itself speak the whole poem: an interview with the dead about life after death, which may be supposed to be a motif invented by Callimachus, is introduced within traditional epigraphic conventions, as if tombs could learn to speak with the intellectual voice of Callimachus, as the bronze cock of Euainetos had done (above pp. 316–17). Thus far the primary meaning of the epigram. But if Callimachus’ Timarchus was the Alexandrian Cynic philosopher, who was a disciple of Cleomenes,136 and who, as a Cynic, will not have believed in life after death and may even have written, as other Cynics did, against mythical beliefs regarding Hades,137 then the epigram acquires a high degree of irony. 133

134

135 136 137

Cf. GVI 1260.11 (second century bc) and 1163.3 (second/third century ad); the first century ad inscription in J. G. Milne, Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire (Greek Inscriptions), Oxford 1905, 61 no. 9253.4–6; SGO 05/01/57 (third century ad), and 18/01/19 (second/third century ad). Cf. CEG 535, 558, 593, which are all parallel to the funerary monument for the fallen at Potidea (CEG 10) and reflect the same religious conception as, e.g., Euripides, Supp. 533–4: cf. A. Skiadas, ^J@ s0aS@ (Athens 1967) 81–2, J. D. Mikalson, Athenian Popular Religion (Chapel Hill–London 1983) 77; R. Garland, The Greek Way of Death (London 1985) 75 takes a different view. Cf. P. Karpouzou in Pagonari-Antoniou (1997) 131–2. Cf. Livrea (1993) 78–84, Gutzwiller (1998) 204–5, Meyer (forthcoming) chapter B.3.2. We have the titles of two works of Antisthenes, J & 5 and J h ;'$ (Socr. et Socratic. rell. VA.xxviii Giannantoni and cf. vol. iv. 250–1); according to Diogenes Laert. 6.5 (176 Giannantoni), he argued that true immortality consisted of a devout, just life.


325

Callimachus, too, was probably sceptical, like the Cynics and Timarchus, about life after death;138 it is, at least, likely that he conceived of the afterlife in a more sophisticated manner than contemporary popular opinion. The poem thus not only pokes fun at Timarchus himself (an atheist in Paradise . . .), but becomes a parody of the conventions of inscriptional dialogues with the dead and of their remorselessly certain pieties (cf. CEG 545 cited above). We may compare the case of Hippo, a natural philosopher of the age of Pericles, who affirmed that nothing existed except what can be perceived by the senses (VS 38A9); he was mocked for his materialism by Cratinus, PCG 167, and is regularly called ‘the atheist’ in later sources.139 Nevertheless, he was credited with a self-epitaph which Clement of Alexandria (Protrep. 4, p. 43 Stählin) quoted as proof that Hippo had had a kind of conversion, though modern scholars have normally seen it as satirical (FGE 564–5): g @ ' %) , &( % 5% L% % 05 . This is the tomb of Hippon, whom in death Fate made equal to the immortal gods.

In Callimachus’ epigram, the exploitation of the stock expressions of sepulchral inscriptions is marked by the double specification ‘in Hades’/‘where the devout are’. We may fill out the translation as follows: ‘If you want to know what life after death is like, and therefore you are looking for Timarchus in Hades – but it must be Timarchus the Cynic, the son of Pausanias of the Ptolemaic tribe of Alexandria – you will find him (the very one who denied immortality), obviously in the ! % 9 (as epitaphs put it)’! The idea of a !/' /(# % 9 (or () for those who have lived righteously can be glimpsed in its very early stages in the Odyssey and is commonly attested in classical literature.140 There is, however, no epigraphical reference to any ‘dwelling-place of the devout’ until CEG 545 (above pp. 323–4) of the fourth century, though this becomes quite frequent in the third and second centuries,141 when sepulchral inscriptions 138 140

141

139 VS 38A4, 6, 8, 9 and B2–3. Cf. Livrea (1993) 83. Cf. E. Rohde, Psyche (4th ed., Tübingen 1907) i.307–14 and ii.381–85; P. Siegel, Untersuchungen zu einigen mythologischen und eschatologischen Motiven in den griechischen metrischen Grabinschriften (Diss. Innsbruck 1967) 228–53; Sourvinou-Inwood (1995) passim but esp. 17–56. See, e.g., GVI 1572 (third century bc), GG 194 (third century bc), GVI 677 = SGO 03/02/62 (third/second century bc), 842 (third/second century bc), 2018 = SGO 01/20/25 (200 bc), 753 = SGO 05/01/49 (second century bc), 805 (second century bc), 1154 (second century bc), 1346 (second century bc), 48 (first century bc), 258 (first century ad), 531 = SGO 03/02/60 (first century ad), 1474 (first century ad), 1967 (first century ad), 973 (first/second century ad), 1719 (first/second century ad), 1764 (first/second century ad), 1970 (first/second century ad), 2040 = SGO 06/02/32

326

The epigram

often express the comforting thought that the dead person is indeed in Hades, but in the “dwelling-place of the righteous and/or blessed.’142 It is thus very likely that the expression was fashionable in the formulaic sepulchral language of the third century, as Callimachus’ ostentatious irony also suggests.143 Scepticism about life after death was an element of Greek culture existing alongside ordinary belief in the afterlife (cf. e.g. Euripides, Troades 1248– 50 and Helen 1421), but it is not until the late imperial age that we find it clearly attested in sepulchral inscriptions.144 Callimachean scepticism as regards the topoi of funerary inscriptions, however, would appear to find an isolated parallel in an inscription of the third century bc, namely GVI 350, engraved on the stele of a tomb from Eutresis in Boeotia:145 C ^(' C O 5 6 '. #5 % [] %#( A# # 5 x%. * ' & # ) [] 9 ' C & # . Here I, Rhodius, lie. I do not utter jokes and I leave the cursed moles throughout the whole land. If anyone has a different view, let him come down here to express it.

The ‘absurdities’ which Rhodius146 proposes to ‘pass over in silence’ are best understood as the usual expressions about the virtues of the deceased and the immortality of the soul, and the last verse points out that if anyone wants to converse with Rhodius and answer him back, he will have to go down into Hades; this may be an implicit criticism of the idea of an interview with the

142

143

144 145 146

(first/second century ad), 1871 (second century ad), 431 (second century ad), 1090 (second century ad), 1162 (second century ad), 1776 (second century ad), 1289 (second/third century ad), 1562 (third century ad), 1772 (third century ad), 2061 (third/fourth century ad). On this consolatory motif, cf. Vérilhac (1978–82) ii 313–32 and see, e.g., GVI 1128.5–6 (third century bc); 1139.8 (second century bc); 1148.17–20 (second century bc); 760.1–4 = SGO 05/01/35 (second/first century bc); 994.3 (second/first century bc); vv. 6–7 of the epigram (second/first century bc) published by E. Atalay and E. Voutiras, ArchAnz 1979, 64; GVI 764 (first century bc); 642.4–6 = SGO 05/01/30 (first century ad). See also Carphyllides, AP 7.260.8 = HE 1355f. (above, p. 300): &4 , #$b [ | T% !Z : C % 9. For further discussion of this epigram cf. Gutzwiller (1998) 204–5. In another poem, Callimachus parodies the topical expressions of dedications to the Dioscuri, AP 6.301 = HE 1175ff.: by playing on the ambiguity of x# as both ‘sea’ and ‘salt’, he reduces the sea-storms after which survivors made dedications to the Dioscuri to the ‘storms’ of debts (v. 2), from which Eudemus saved himself by eating only bread and salt. See, for example, GVI 1905 (third century ad) and 1906 (third/fourth century ad), and the epitaph from Side SGO 18/15/13 (third century ad). Cf. W. Peek, AthMitt 56 (1931) 120 n. 1 and Nicosia (1992) 54. ‘Rhodius’ could, of course, designate the dead’s origin, but the proper name is occasionally attested (LGPN i.398 and ii.391; SGO 01/20/21.6 = GVI 1344.6 of the third/second century bc; Nuova silloge epigrafica di Rodi e Cos no. 267 Maiuri); the practice of giving only the name, with no further details, was common in central Greece and in Boeotia (see above, p. 291).


327

dead, such as we have seen in Callimachus, or rather, more generally, of the inscriptional convention of the dialogue between passer-by and deceased.147 The epitaph of this ‘new Timon’ remains an isolated third-century example, but it offers a precious parallel for the scepticism with which Callimachus deals with the typical expressions of sepulchral inscriptions in general, and his particular fun with the conventional dialogue form: what if someone took seriously the convention of a dialogue between passer-by and deceased and actually went looking for Timarchus in Hades . . .? Rhodius too foresees the possibility that someone may want to answer the bitter affirmations that he has left written on his tomb, but only in order to demonstrate his scornful certainty that nobody will ever come down to give him an answer – after all, only a person who had descended into the nether world could know as much as he knew about it . . . Lastly, let us consider AP 7.317 = HE 1269f., one of the two epigrams which Callimachus dedicates to the best-known misanthrope, Timon148 : s ( C %%)) ) % v () ! ; – s, % U 2 # * C;'". ‘Timon (I can ask you, now you’re dead), darkness or light: which do you hate?’ – ‘Darkness, for there are more of you in Hades.’ (trans. Nisetich, adapted)

From the outset, Callimachus knows and presents the name of the dead, thus violating one of the basic conventions of sepulchral dialogues; he abandons the traditional rôle of uninformed passer-by and assumes the rôle of astute poet, who pretends to be carrying out a sort of reportage on life after death by contacting those who are most directly ‘qualified’ to answer. Immediately afterwards, however, the parenthetic C %% reveals a metapoetic awareness that he is exploiting that same convention which the opening has violated: one who ‘is no longer’ obviously cannot ‘really’ talk to a living person,149 but he can do so within the inscriptionalepigrammatic structure of dialogues with ‘talking’ monuments. We would be wrong, however, to think that this insistent game of provocative play with the conventional structures of sepulchral epigrams 147

148 149

The second line is very difficult. Rhodius is perhaps referring to his good fortune in not being plagued by moles, a curse which he is happy to ‘leave’ to the rest of mankind, rather than the more usual epitaphic topoi. The reference to moles must reflect the paradoxographic tradition whereby either the whole of Boeotia, or certain areas of it, were free from these beasts, cf. Aristotle, Hist. anim. 8.605b31–606a2, Aelian, Nat. anim. 17.10, Antigonus, Mir. 10. For earlier (less convincing) attempts at interpretation, cf. H. Goldman, AJA 32 (1928) 179–80 ∼ id., Excavations at Eutresis in Boeotia (Cambridge, MA 1931) 279–80; Peek and Nicosia (n. 145) and Peek, GG 307–8. See above, pp. 302–6. Cf. Hutchinson (1988) 72, for whom the expression underlines ‘the impossibility of the conversation before it begins’.

328

The epigram

can be found in all epigram-writers. Rather, the epigrammatists seem to divide between (principally) Callimachus, who exploits changes in the circulation and reception of epigrams for humour and ambiguity, and other poets – Anyte, Leonidas, Phalaecus, Posidippus, Theaetetus, Theodoridas, etc. – who prefer broadly to maintain the traditional conventions of the dialogue between passer-by and tombstone (or statue); the intervention of their authorial voice is mostly limited to the heightening of poetic imagery and linguistic expression. It is, perhaps, not surprising that authors like Callimachus (or Dioscorides), who were also masters of the purely literary form of the erotic epigram, felt freer of the typical conventions of real inscriptions, even when writing on the traditional subjects of inscribed epigram.150 2.4 Puzzles and speculations One extreme case of the didactic dialogue between the deceased (or the stele on his behalf ) and the passer-by concerns the depictions of objects or animals that on funerary monuments sometimes accompanied, or more rarely substituted for, the usual representation of the dead (and their relatives); such depictions often had a rôle that was little more than decorative, but at times they carried symbolic value, connected with the name of the dead person, or the circumstances of his death, or his characteristics in life.151 This is an extreme case because this is ‘half-information’, i.e. non-verbal messages which are not immediately clear, or are not to be interpreted in their primary meaning, and depend on the passer-by for their decoding. Symbolic depictions on sepulchral monuments go back at least as far as the fifth century. For the most part, these were immediately understandable objects (arms, baskets, etc.) or animals (horses, birds, dogs, hares, etc.) which recalled the name of the dead person, his rank, his merits, or his favourite activities. Ambiguous cases undoubtedly existed: thus, for example, a lion was often just a semi-decorative ‘guardian’ of the tomb, but at times it indicated the strength and warlike courage of a fallen soldier;152 on the tomb of ? of Sinope (Attica, fourth century bc), it marks the 150

151 152

Without wishing to return to Reitzenstein’s division into ‘schools’, it would thus appear to be true that the authors usually attributed to the Peloponnesian ‘school’ felt closer to the epigraphic tradition than did the authors traditionally considered ‘Alexandrian’: cf. H. Beckby, Anthologia Graeca (Munich n.d., but 2nd ed. 1966), i.32. Cf. Weisshäupl (1889) 68–94. The lion was a frequent effigy on polyandria for those who died in war: examples include the polyandrion at Cnidos for the Athenians who died at sea in 394, and that for the Greeks who fell at Chaeronea against Philip in 338 bc (cf. below, p. 334); for later periods, cf. GVI 34 (second/first century bc).


329

name of the dead,153 and on the memorial of ? ' and his companions who fell at Thermopylae154 it obviously carried multiple significance. Another animal which frequently guarded tombs was the dog, but the dog (Q) over the tomb of Diogenes of Sinope pointed to the ‘Cynicism’ of the man they called ‘the dog’,155 whereas the bitch over the tomb of the Athenian ^ etymologised her name, ‘good keeper’, and/or marked her gifts as a housewife;156 the hunting dog on the stele of Apollodorus and ?(, the sons of ?(, very probably recalled the well-known breed of ‘Laconian’ hunting-dogs.157 Such symbolic representations of names158 were, on the whole, very easy to understand: the idea that names had meanings was widespread even in archaic Greece,159 and many words could denote both a person and a category of objects or animals. Other symbols were equally familiar and comprehensible: dogs, hares or horses evoked the dead person’s love of hunting (and therefore his aristocratic origins); the wool basket recalled the diligence of a slave or a housewife, etc. The straightforward comprehensibility of such depictions is shown by the fact that there is no sepulchral or dedicatory monument of the classical period in which an inscription explicitly refers to symbolic depictions on the monument, with the exception of the very unusual Greek-Aramaic stele CEG 596 (quoted above p. 309). CEG 596 is on the sepulchral monument set up for Antipater the Ascalonite by Domsalos of Sidon. The complex iconography of the monument consists of a dead person on a coffin (Antipater), a lion pouncing on him from the left,160 and on the right a composite figure defending him, 153 154 155 156 157

158 159 160

A. Conze, Die attischen Grabreliefs III (Berlin 1906) 285 no. 1318. For [Simonides], AP 7.344 = FGE 1022ff., the lion on the tomb of ? had both meanings. Cf. Herodotus 7.225 and Lollius Bass., AP 7.243 = GPh 1591ff. According to Diogenes Laert. 6.78; see also adesp. AP 7.63 and 64. A. Conze, Die attischen Grabreliefs I (Berlin 1893) 21 no. 66. Cf. B. Freyer-Schauenberg, ‘=SW ?;=SW>#$ &– ' U # b 'X # , 9 * # # % |' U !$% 'C /'Q$ [% &# U

/ –

On holy altars Hephaistos burns the thighs of bullocks; with the flames the smell of incense wafts to heaven; high and clear the reed pours forth intriguing melodies and the sweet-voiced golden lyre resounds to our hymns. (‘Athenian Paean to Apollo’ vv. 9–14, trans. Furley-Bremer)

When such passages are read away from their original performative context, they make demands upon and appeal to an audience’s cultic imagination;34 such must have been the experience for Callimachus and his contemporaries 34

For a fuller discussion and bibliography cf. Hunter–Fuhrer (2002). The existence of that article has led to this very abbreviated treatment here. On the separation of poetry from a specific performative context cf. above, Chapter 1.

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The languages of praise

when reading the great cultic lyric poetry of the fifth century, such as the religious poetry of Pindar. That imagination will have been shaped by experience of contemporary cultic practice, by classical poetry itself, and by prose chronicles on local practices and cultic history; Callimachus’ interest in these matters is very obvious from the Aitia. The Hymns to Apollo, Athena, and Demeter feed the reader’s imagination by greatly elaborating the importance of deixis and of (self-) reference to the festival and its choruses; the hymns actually script a context for performance, whereas such a context needed no such script when the poem was indeed part of a real performance.35 As for the long Hymns to Artemis and Delos, these poems construct an audience crucially interested in sacred spaces, rites, and their history as practised by others – often very remote ‘others’; imaginative religious experience now required no sacred context other than that of reading or listening. Sometimes the effect can be disorienting, as the text pays little attention to the boundaries and categories with which we are familiar; we may feel, as in the Hymn to Artemis, overwhelmed by a body of disparate ritual experiences drawn from all over the Greek world, and never before gathered together. So, too, sacred places are evoked across time, not just as they are at particular moments, for the cultic imagination of the reader is fed on an excess of information, not on too little. The Delos of the end of the Hymn to Delos is identified by the many different rituals which take place there at different times of the year (278–324), and whereas in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo ‘all Delos was laden with gold’ at the sight of Apollo (v. 135–6), in Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos the sacred geography of the island is catalogued for us in its detail: !Q% ( ( # \# ) !$% 'X ! %% 4 #) !Q% 'C % # #) !$% 'X #4$ 9b C @, +#! . Golden then, Delos, were all your foundations, with gold the circular lake flowed all day, golden the leaves of your birthday olive, and with gold flowed the twisting Inopos in full flood. (Callimachus, Hymn to Delos 260–3)

The distinction between Callimachus’ ‘mimetic’ and ‘non-mimetic’ hymns may be broken down in several ways,36 but the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, which Callimachus reworked three times in the Hymns to Apollo, 35 36

Cf. e.g. Fantuzzi (1993c), M. Depew, ‘Enacted and Represented Dedications: Genre and Greek Hymn’ in Depew–Obbink (2000) 59–79. Cf. M. A. Harder, ‘Insubstantial Voices: Some Observations on the Hymns of Callimachus’ CQ 42 (1992) 384–94.

1 Callimachus’ Hymns and the hymnic tradition

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Artemis, and Delos, occupies a place of particular importance. In the closing section of the Delian part of this hymn, the poet tells Apollo that, of all his cult places, it is Delos which is dearest to him, and he then describes the Ionian festival on Delos and, in particular, the amazing performances of the choir of Delian maidens (vv. 144–64). It is not improbable that this poem was originally composed for a Delian festival,37 but, away from a performative context at least, these verses would most naturally be read as addressed to a non-Delian audience which was not familiar with the festival: ‘Anyone who went there would say . . .’ (vv. 151–2, cf. vv. 163–4). The relatively full description of the festival is precisely part of the fulfilment of the poet’s promise to spread the kleos of the maidens, far and wide. In the famous envoi to the Delian section (vv. 166–76), however, the poet addresses the maidens directly and claims to have visited Delos; it is indeeed the ‘natural’ interpretation of the verses that they are addressed directly to the Delian maidens, who may have just performed. In this mixture of third-person description of cult and an empathetic involvement with it by the poet, Callimachus found the seeds of some of his most striking experiments with poetic voice. Moreover, if we can believe the tradition that the Homeric Hymn to (Delian) Apollo was inscribed for public view on Delos (cf. Contest of Homer and Hesiod 18), the effect of these verses becomes not unlike Isidorus’ descriptions of the annual festival in his village: a reminder to the god and a ‘script’ for the cultic imagination of anyone who reads. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, the performance of the Delian choir is clearly (though implicitly) the earthly re-enactment of the Oympian mousike which the god leads; the origins of the festival are nowhere explicitly suggested. So, too, the exchanges between Leto and the island before the birth (vv. 51–88) explain why Delos is at the time of the song a great cult centre, as the narrative of Apollo leading the Cretans, to the accompaniment of music and paean-singing, from Krisa up to the new site of his temple (vv. 514–19) was constantly celebrated and re-enacted in Delphic cult, a fact presumably known to the hymnist’s audience; these aetiological links between past and present are not, however, explicitly drawn, although v. 518 comes very close to pointing to the narrative we have just heard as an explanation for the association between Crete and the paean.38 More 37

38

For the now favoured view of the origins of this poem’s ‘doubleness’ cf. W. Burkert, ‘Kynaithos, Polycrates, and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo’ in G. W. Bowersock, W. Burkert, M. Putnam (eds.), Arktouros. Hellenic Studies presented to Bernard Knox (Berlin–New York 1979) 53–62; A. Aloni, L’aedo e i tiranni (Rome 1989); id, ‘La performance di Cineto’ in Tradizione e innovazione nella cultura greca da Omero all’età ellenistica (Rome 1993) 129–42. Cf. Rutherford (2001) 24–5.

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generally, the hymn as a whole maps out Apolline sacred space (cf. e.g. vv. 16–18), and in doing so tracks not just the origin of cultic practice but also, quite explicitly, of divine names (‘Pythios’, vv. 363–74; ‘Telphousios’, vv. 385–7; ‘Delphinios’, v. 495). An even stronger historical effect is created by the poet of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, who moves from Demeter’s establishment of her ‘mysteries’ to their effect in the present day: . . . % () ( C 3 % M 3 $%) 3 C &! U ( %9 *%!( '4. A#9 p ('C A ! &ZU p ' C & #8 e ) V C .) 3 C L% ! 2, _ " Z . . . . the solemn mysteries which one cannot depart from or enquire about or broadcast, for great awe of the gods restrains us from speaking. Blessed is he of men on earth who has beheld them, whereas he that is uninitiated in the rites, or he that has had no part in them, never enjoys a similar lot down in the musty dark when he is dead. (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 478–82, trans. West)

In this hymn, the past is used to explain the present, often (as inevitably happens with aetiological myth) by retrojecting the present into the past. The poet may occasionally choose explicitly to signal his aetiological focus (cf. e.g. vv. 205, 265–7), but the ‘meaning’ of the poem does not depend for its audience upon such effects. The aetiological focus of Callimachus’ Hymns, both explicit and implicit, is indebted to that of the Homeric Hymns, but now becomes even more prominent.39 It is the aetiological focus which links the past to the present, the myth to the ritual. In the Hymn to Zeus, it is explicitly (v. 11) because Zeus was born on Arcadian Parrhasia that ‘the place is holy’ and no female creature may give birth there; in the Hymn to Delos it is explicitly (v. 275) because the island nursed Apollo that it is called ‘holiest of islands’; in the Hymn to Apollo the origin of the cry e8 e8 is framed by two explicit markers of aetiology (98 Z % ) 104 M 5 ). This pattern of thought is by no means limited to the scholarly Callimachus. In Limenios’ paean to Apollo at Delphi (above p. 358), the choir offers a different aetiology to that of Callimachus – Apollo first went to Athens after his birth and inaugurated his music there – but the aetiological style is very similar, ‘as a result of that from that beginning all we autochthonous Athenians call him Paiêon’ (vv. 17–18). 39

Cf. M. Depew, ‘Mimesis and Aetiology in Callimachus’ Hymns’ in Harder–Regtuit–Wakker (1993) 57–77.


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The aetiological focus does not, of course, have to be explicitly marked in this simple way. Here, for example, is the description in the Homeric Hymn of Apollo’s birth and the ololyg¯e from the assembled goddesses which greets it: & 'X 9(# 4! ) ' C % # #) '% 'X C 2 U 'C , ') 'C ]# #$M x%. She clasped her arms around the palm tree, and braced her knees against the soft meadow grass, and the earth beneath her smiled: out he sprang into the light, and all the goddesses gave a yell. (Homeric Hymn to Apollo 117–19, trans. West)

As every hearer of these verses would know and needed no spelling out, the phoinix was still to be seen on Delos in the poet’s day. Callimachus too sees no need to ‘labour’ the point (h. 4.210), but his description of the actual birth outdoes the archaic account: 1 X U Q 'X † # &' † 0" J #, $#Z% # +9'( \#) 4 % 'X #! " 0$%( A ) &' U 5 %%(%' #Q" '4% !'( [% ) %%( Q C |' %% . %U A ' C . %) 'C ) e ' C Q \#(' ) &!) L C^# $ e , #) 'C *4 !(# & 4!% '$% ]##$ 4.

250

255

She spoke, and the musical swans . . . left Maionian Pactolus and circled seven times around Delos singing over the child-birth, the birds of the Muses, most songful of flying creatures. For this reason the child in later times put the same number of strings on his lyre as the number of songs of the swans at his birth. They did not sing an eighth time, but he leapt forth, and the Delian nymphs, offspring of an ancient river, sang the holy song of Eleithyia; at once the bronze sky re-echoed the far-sounding yell. (Callimachus, Hymn to Delos 249–58)

Verse 255 directs our attention to v. 119 of the Homeric Hymn by actually citing what amounts to a fragment of it ( 'C ), which, however, is moved to the middle of the verse to emphasise the speed of the god’s epiphany. The divine ololyg¯e is, moreover, transferred to the song of the Nymphs in verses which clearly offer an (implicit) aetiology for contemporary performances of ‘Delian maiden-choirs’ (cf. h.Apollo 157) at a festival in honour of Eileithyia.40 Our expectation of aetiology has, however, 40

Cf. Mineur on v. 256, Bruneau (1970) 215–16.

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been aroused by the strikingly parenthetic aetiology of vv. 253–4, which interrupts an otherwise almost lyric succession of short narrative phrases. We are being reminded that every detail has its story to tell. Moreover, the alleged ‘anachronism’41 of \#(' in v. 256 both mingles past and present and points to an important pattern in the poem. In vv. 51–4 Callimachus explains the island’s change of names: 1 'C C; ## # c' 2%! ) % & 9, /## 3 C ) [ C .'# # ) &## C $ Q% ;* ' 4 B_. When you offered your earth for the birth of Apollo, sailors changed your name in this way, because no longer did you float unseen (adêlos), but you put down the roots of your feet amidst the waves of the Aegean sea. (Callimachus, Hymn to Delos 51–4)

Sailors called the island ‘Clearly seen’ because she no longered wandered around .'# ‘obscure’, and the reason for her change of state was her encounter with Leto (cf. vv. 39–40); ‘Asterie’ is thus clearly associated with the island’s wandering status, ‘Delos’ with the time after she has become stationary. The most natural implication of vv. 51–4, however, is that this name-change followed some time after Apollo’s birth; it was not instantaneous at the moment of the god’s appearance. Alongside this purely ‘human’ explanation, therefore, runs another tale of divine planning. The unborn Apollo tells his mother to take him to a small island ‘appearing (' ') in the water, wandering over the seas’ (vv. 191–2); Apollo’s choice of words hints at the name ‘Clearly seen’ which is to come,42 just as ‘wandering over the seas’ points (cf. vv. 51–4) to the current name ‘Asterie’. When the poet immediately after apostrophises the island as ‘Asterie’, this is not just to show that he has command of the narrative chronology of his tale, but it also prepares us for the important fact that, at a level higher than that of ‘the sailors’, the level at which learned poets operate, the island never lost her old name; she simply added a new one to commemorate the god (cf. vv. 300, 316); Pindar, after all, knew that the island had two names, one (Delos) used by mortals, and one (‘far-seen star (.% ) of the dark earth’) used by the gods (fr. 33c.4–6 M., from the ‘Hymn to Zeus’). When 41 42

Mineur on v. 256. Commentators note that Callimachus’ principal Homeric model here is the description of the island Asteris at Odyssey 4.844–7, an island which later scholars normally identified with an C;% , cf. Strabo 1.3.18, 10.2.16, Steph. Byz. s.v.; Callimachus’ reworking thus contains a more sophisticated allusion to the other name of Delos. There is some similarity to the naming of the tiny island of Anaphe, so called in Apollonius because Apollo ‘revealed’ it to the Argonauts (Arg. 4.1711–18); the episode was treated by Callimachus in the first book of the Aitia.


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the island sees the suffering Leto, ‘she stopped’ (if the damaged text of v. 200 is correctly read), and if we are concerned to identify a moment when ‘Asterie’ became ‘Delos’, this moment of drama has as good a claim as any; now is the time of the change, as foretold in the poem, when ‘golden Leto comes to ( % ) the island’ (v. 39) and the island ‘offers Apollo ground on which to be born’ (v. 51). Certainly, the swans announce the god’s imminent birth by circling ‘around Delos’ (v. 251), the first time that name has been used since the moment of transition was foreshadowed in v. 40,43 the nymphs which greet the birth are ‘Delian’, and the island itself knows what has happened: ‘from me will Apollo be called Delian’ (vv. 268– 9). The island’s last words, ‘no longer shall I be a wanderer’ (273), are, as we have seen, tantamount to ‘no longer will my name be Asterie’. More explicitly explanatory is the account in vv. 278–95 of the offerings of the Hyperboreans sent to Delos, which commemorate the first offerings brought by three maidens and some accompanying young men (291–4).44 Callimachus is here following Herodotus (4.33–5), though not very closely, for he has telescoped two the¯oriai into one and changed the names of those involved; he may well have other prose sources also (and there was clearly no ‘canonical’ version), but the effect is of sacred history and geography seen from a distance, without the involved ‘empathy’ of the archaic hymnist. Callimachus remains the scholarly collector of names and places. In both Herodotus (4.33.2) and Callimachus, the Hyperborean offerings are first received by the people of Dodona; Callimachus seizes the opportunity to rework a famous Homeric passage and to refer to a remarkable oracular method using sounds from a bronze cauldron at Dodona: “d . \'5 J #% ) # ) \'Z ' '$%! $) & 'X < ## % $%C 2 & ' ! .” ‘Zeus, Dordonan lord, Pelasgian one who lives far away, ruler of wintry Dodona, around you live the Selloi, prophets with unwashed feet who sleep on the ground.’ (Iliad 16.233–5) \'Z J #% # 9 #b Z % '! )

# ! ( &% 4 #9 . The Pelasgians of Dodona first of all receive [these offerings] which come from far away, they who couch on the earth, servants of the unquiet cauldron. (Callimachus, Hymn to Delos 284–6) 43 44

Cf. Bing (1988) 125. On the change of name cf. also Depew (1998) 179–80. Cf. Bruneau (1970) 38–48 for an account of the various traditions. Callimachus also treated the route of the Hyperborean offerings in the Aitia (fr. 186 = 97M); this broken text seems quite close to the version of the Hymn, but unfortunately not enough survives for what would be a most interesting comparison.

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The very mannerism of the rewriting – # ! is clearly invented to map exactly on to the Homeric ! ; in Callimachus, the offerings come to Dodona from ‘far away’, whereas in Homer, Dodona itself is ‘far away’ – establishes poetic !, which is, after all, Apollo’s gift, as the focus of our interest. A related instance concerns the passage of the offerings through Euboea. Herodotus has them crossing the Melian Gulf and then being relayed ‘from city to city’ until they reach Karystos at the far south of the island; Callimachus has them crossing from Malis to ‘the fertile Lelantian plain of the Abantes [the aboriginal inhabitants of Euboea]’, which lay between Chalcis and Eretria on the western side of the island. Callimachus may be taking this as the first stop on the Herodotean route, but he clearly wants us to recall that Apollo himself had stood on this plain (h.Apollo 219–20), which thus acquires special significance in Apolline geography. Moreover, the principal Homeric source for the Abantes is Iliad 2.536–45 from the ‘Catalogue of Ships’, a passage which actually lists the principal cities of Euboea. Callimachus is thus more suo glossing Herodotus’ account by reference to Homer. The principal difference between Callimachus’ hymns as a group and most other hymns (in all metres) which survive from the Hellenistic period lies in the importance to the former of extended mythic narrative. Whether it be Isidorus’ hymns to Isis or the Egyptian hymns to her at Philae,45 Cleanthes’ stoic Hymn to Zeus, the brief Epidaurian hymn to Pan,46 or even a Greek hymn to the sun in stichic lyrics from ancient Iran (SGO 12/03/01), the principal focus is always upon asserting and celebrating the god’s powers and marvellous deeds, affiliations with other gods, and benefactions to mankind. Even the rather different hexameter representation of a lyric festival song in honour of Aphrodite and Adonis in Theocritus 15 has no ‘narrative’ to speak of.47 This is not, of course, to say that narrative is absent from cultic poetry of the Hellenistic period – we have already noted the quite extensive narrative of Limenios’ paean to Pythian Apollo (above p. 358) – but rather to stress that there is no real ‘point of departure’ in what survives of contemporary cultic poetry for Callimachus’ complex and witty narratives; that the world was, however, full of hexameter compositions in honour of gods, places, and great men is something which we cannot doubt. The double impulse to Callimachus’ extended hymnic narratives comes from the longer Homeric Hymns and the great religious lyric poetry of the classical period, notably that of Pindar. The only principal exceptions to the 45 47

46 Cf. Furley–Bremer (2001) ii 192–8. Cf. Zabkar (above n. 1) On this song cf. Hunter (1996b) 123–38.

2 The dialect of kings

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general position outlined in the previous paragraph are the longer mythic ‘hymns’ of Theocritus, Idylls 22 and 24, and it is striking that here too the Homeric Hymns and Pindar are among the foremost models.48 One may indeed debate, as with Callimachus, just how untypical, say, Pindar’s hymns and paeans themselves were for the classical age,49 but of their importance for Callimachus there is no doubt. Although the Theogony is the principal intertext for the Hymn to Zeus,50 it was Pindar whose collected Hellenistic edition began with a hymn to Zeus. Pindar is, of course, a major source for the narrative of the Hymn to Delos,51 and one which already showed one way of rewriting the Homeric Hymn to Apollo; the very idea of a hymn * \# derives indeed some of its substance from Pindar’s religious poetry, in which (e.g.) C; * \# would be a standard Hellenistic title for one of Pindar’s paeans.52 It is, in any case, in Pindar’s hymns and paeans where Callimachus would have found extensive ‘hymnic’ praise of islands, and much of their mythology.53 When, at the beginning of his poem, Callimachus declares that ‘Delos wishes to receive pride of place ( %) from the Muses’ (vv. 4–5), this should (inter alia) be understood as a generic assertion: hexameter poems on the glories and antiquities of islands may have been nothing new, but a ‘Homeric’ hymn was. 2 the dialect of kings In Theocritus’ Idyll 15 Gorgo and Praxinoa, two Syracusan women resident in Alexandria, visit the royal palace to see the festival of Adonis which is being staged by Arsinoe, the wife and sister of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, in honour of their dead mother, the now deified Berenice.54 When the women reach the palace, their admiring comments about the displayed tapestries celebrating the Adonis story are apparently overheard by another member of the crowd, who makes his feelings plain; he, however, then gets more than he bargained for: J. C C;) 5 :C % ) 5 _ ( &9 ( C :. F $ C +% ( F $C ' ) :$!C) $ (. % ! C .. 48 49 50 52 54

Cf. Hunter (1996b) 11–13, 46–76, above, pp. 205–7. Cf. e.g. Rutherford (2001) 176–8, Furley–Bremer (2001) i 112–13. 51 Cf. Bing (1988) 96–110. Cf. Hunter–Fuhrer (2002) 167–9. 53 Cf. Paean 4 (Keos), Paean 6 (Aegina). Cf. Rutherford (2001) 150–1. Arsinoe’s death is variously placed in 270 or 268 by modern scholars, cf. Hunter (2003b) 4, with bibliography, below n. 82; Idyll 15 is thus set in the late 270s.

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The languages of praise , ' C F , C & $ ( #%) T K$# &, ( 9(##) # h ;') - C;! # . q^W>< Q%% C) 'Q% ) &($ ##%) $ U % # (%'% x . J. T) ; 'X ) * # *; %( %% U W`SWs>< n;0>@. Marital Life and Magic in Fourth Century Pella (Amsterdam 1998) 20–34, C. Brixhe, ‘Un “nouveau” champ de la dialectologie grecque: le Macédonien’ in A. C. Cassio (ed.), = \(# . Atti del III Colloquio Internazionale di Dialettologia Greca (Naples 1999) 41–69.

3 Posidippus and the ideology of kingship

377

between the local dialects of Macedonia and Doric speech had survived through to the Ptolemaic court, then, as the language of both Argos and Macedonia, Doric would indeed have been marked in a particularly powerful way at the court. Its ‘otherness’ marks it as the preserver of genuine Greek tradition, and in particular of the rightful claim of the Ptolemies to be the heirs of Heracles and Alexander. If this analysis is even remotely on the right lines, then we may see reflected in Posidippus’ poem an act of historical reconstruction, operative at the level of public ideology, which bears a significant resemblance to the recuperative and historical operations which dominated the scholarship and literature of third-century Alexandria. Whereas the Macedonian e´lite had – whatever the nature of their local dialects – for at least a century adopted the Attic koine in their push for international prestige and power, and it was this standard language which Alexander’s armies carried throughout the world, when indicators of continuity and genuineness were needed, it was to now fading linguistic markers that they and their poets turned. The use of a Doricising language is thus a politically and culturally charged act of repetition. It must be stressed (again) that this is not a matter of ‘writing in Macedonian’. Posidippus’ Ptolemy speaks a language which subsumes local traditions into a distinctive, but (as far as we can tell) not specifically localised, linguistic mimesis of Greek heroic culture. Praxinoa’s claim to share in such a culture may seem inherently absurd, and this would be in keeping with the mimic context in which it is set, but in fact she reflects both Ptolemy’s Macedonian heritage and his claims to be the standard-bearer of Greek culture. 3 posidippus and the ideology of kingship Our knowledge of the encomiastic poetry of the Ptolemaic period has been greatly enriched by the recent publication of PMil.Vogl. VIII 309, containing some one hundred and ten new epigrams; it is now widely held that these are all the work of Posidippus of Pella. Among other things, these epigrams show ever more clearly how different poets carved out special areas of encomium with which to support the claims to power and influence of different monarchs. For Posidippus, as seen both in the poems already known and in the poems of the Milan papyrus, a very particular area of ‘specialisation’ seems to have been in themes connected with the female figures of the Ptolemaic house, whose importance in contemporary encomium was already known from Callimachus’ ‘Victoria Berenices’ (above pp. 83–5). Despite their importance in eastern kingdoms, with the

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exception of a few important figures connected with archaic tyrants71 or the recent history of the Macedonian royal house (Olympias and Eurydice, both ‘warrior queens’), queens had hardly ever been crucial figures in the theatre of Greek political power. If Hellenistic monarchs wished to ‘rule by qualities of character rather than position’,72 then queens would appear to be difficult subjects for encomium. Royal charisma was propagated and understood mainly as martial or agonistic ', proven by success which could be attributed to bravery and strength and cleverness and (of course) the gods’ favour.73 Already in archaic and classical Greece, the principal arenas for the winning of personal kudos were in battle and athletic contests; military victory was, of course, perceived as one of the most self-evident proofs of the qualities and claims of Hellenistic royalty, but the arena of war was, with very rare exceptions (such as, perhaps, Arsinoe and Berenice II),74 off limits for women. It is for this reason that victory in the races of the great Panhellenic festivals assumed such importance for queens who wished to spread their fame and prove their power. Seven (78–82 and 87–8 AB) of the eighteen Hippika (i.e. epigrams commemorating victories in equestrian contests) on the Milan papyrus are dedicated to Ptolemaic victories, and all but one (88 AB) celebrate the victories of two female members of the royal house, Berenice I and another Berenice who could be Berenice II, the honorand of Callimachus’ ‘Victoria Berenices’, or perhaps more likely Berenice ‘the Syrian’75 ; victories of other (past and present) members of the royal house are also mentioned in these poems, but in the final hippikon Ptolemy II himself declares the agonistic success of Berenice I to be a marvel exceeding all others. Beyond the Hippika, four of the six Anathematika, i.e. dedicatory epigrams, concern dedications to Arsinoe II, Ptolemy II’s divinised sister and wife, and two of these (37 and 39 AB) refer to a temple of Arsinoe; this is certainly in the 71 72

73 75

Cf. C. Catenacci, Il tiranno e l’eroe: per un archeologia del potere nella Grecia antica (Milan 1996) 160–8. A. E. Samuel, ‘The Ptolemies and Ideology of Kingship’, in P. Green (ed.), Hellenistic History and Culture (Berkeley 1993) 192; cf. also O. Murray, ‘Aristeas and Ptolemaic kingship’ JThS 18 (1967) 353–9. The definition of 9%# in the Suda (9 147 Adler) is commonly believed to derive from a Hellenistic source: ‘it is neither descent nor legitimacy which gives monarchies to men, but the ability to command an army and to handle affairs competently’ (cf. Polybius 11.34.15–16 on Antiochus III). 74 See below, pp. 380–2. Cf. Kurke (1993) 132. The editors of the Milan papyrus proposed to identify the Berenice quoted at 78.13, 79.1, and 82.1 AB with Berenice II, the daughter of Magas of Cyrene and wife of Ptolemy III, whose Nemean victory in a chariot race was celebrated by Callimachus. Dorothy Thompson, ‘Posidippus, Poet of the Ptolemies’, in Gutzwiller (2005) has now argued attractively for Berenice ‘the Syrian’, daughter of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe I and sister of Ptolemy III: after the Second Syrian War she was married to Antiochus II and was killed when her husband died in 246.


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case of 39 AB and very probably in the case of 3776 the temple of Arsinoe Zephyritis, which is also the subject of two previously known poems of Posidippus (116 and 119 AB). For Arsinoe, whose victories in three different chariot categories at a single Olympic festival are briefly mentioned in one of the Hippika, Posidippus chose an encomiastic strategy different from that which he used for the two Berenices, but one which seems similarly coherent and appropriate to what we know of Arsinoe as a political and religious figure. The first dedicatory epigram for Arsinoe (36 AB) is also the first of the section of Anathematika on the Milan papyrus. This may be the result of the fact that it includes a description of a dream and thus makes a natural transition from the preceding section of Oi¯onoskopika ‘poems about bird omens’; moreover, the final oi¯onoskopikon (35 AB) concerns favourable omens for Alexander, and Alexander is also important for the understanding of Poem 36. In this poem, Arsinoe, armed with a spear and shield, appears in a dream to a Macedonian girl called Hegeso, and seems to want the sweat from her ] ( ‘busy toils’ wiped away with a linen cloth (9Q%% 9 ); in response, Hegeso dedicates a strip ( %) of white material, which is very probably to be understood as representing the white diadem which is prominent in the iconography and the legend of Alexander the Great:77 C;% ) % ' % #' & % 9Q%% . 9 C &, W$( ) H" %Q) #) C A ] M% #$b e' i # ) ] $% ( U o () `#(' # ) ! 'Q *!4) ) 4! 5# !$% %(U 1 'X % * 5% , # $ % 67 %O 0[ . To you, Arsinoe, to provide a cool breeze through its folds, is dedicated this scarf of fine linen from Naucratis. With it, beloved one, you wished in a dream to wipe the pleasant perspiration after a pause from busy toils. Thus you appeared, Brother-loving one, holding in your hand the point of a spear and on your arm, Lady, a hollow shield. And at your request the strip of white material was dedicated by the maid Hegeso of Macedonian stock. (Posidippus 36 AB, trans. Austin) 76 77

Cf. below, pp. 384–5. This new interpretation of % (and of 9 ) has been proposed by Stephens (2005). The fact that the words used by Posidippus for the piece of material are hapaxes in this meaning, and # $! (# $ on the papyrus; ' C W. Lapini, Lexis 20 (2002) 48) a complete hapax, suggests a strong technical flavour, which might be justified as a reference to the garb of the Ptolemaic monarchs; ] in the sense of ]MQ is also attested here for the first time.

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That the appearance of an armed Arsinoe refers to her personal interest in the struggle of the cities of mainland Greece against Antigonos Gonatas, an interest most famously associated with the so-called Chremonidean War (cf. below, p. 381), was already suggested by the first editors of the Milan papyrus.78 The image of a strong Arsinoe who was the real power behind the throne of her weak husband, particularly in foreign policy, is a familiar one in modern accounts of the early Ptolemies; that image is almost certainly at least exaggerated,79 but behind it lies the reality of Ptolemaic propaganda and image-making which did indeed give a significant rôle to the king’s sister-wife,80 and there is no reason to doubt that court-poets took up the theme with enthusiasm. The most famous witness to this image-making is SIG I.434–5 (= Staatsverträge des Altertums III.476 Schmitt), a decree by the Athenian Chremonides of 268/7 which formalised the Athenian alliances with Areus I of Sparta and Ptolemy II, and which in essence amounted to a declaration of war against Antigonos. The decree states that Ptolemy had undertaken the war, &#Q 5 5 &' # % ‘in accordance with the intention of his ancestors and his sister’. It is not implausible that Arsinoe had in fact influenced her brother-husband, particularly in a desire to secure Macedonia for her son by Lysimachus (also called Ptolemy),81 but what is important here, of course, is not ‘what actually happened’, but what image is projected by the decree. That Ptolemy himself at least approved the wording of the decree is clear, if from nothing else, from the fact that Arsinoe had been dead for at least some months, if not for a couple of years, when the decree was promulgated.82 If this indeed is the background of Posidippus’ epigram, then its political subtlety emerges with great clarity. As it is divinities who normally appear in dreams, the epigram confirms the divine status which Arsinoe probably enjoyed even before her death. It is likely that the queen probably did not live 78 79

80 81

82

Cf. Bastianini–Gallazzi (2001) 151. Cf. S. M. Burstein, ‘Arsinoe II Philadelphus: a Revisionist View’, in W. L. Adams and E. N. Borza (eds.), Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Macedonian Heritage (Lanham–New York–London 1982) 197–212. For the more traditional view cf. e.g. Hauben (1983). Cf. R. A. Hazzard, Imagination of a Monarchy: Studies in Ptolemaic Propaganda (Toronto 2000) 81–100. So, e.g., W. W. Tarn, Antigonos Gonatas (Oxford 1913) 290–3; G. H. Macurdy, Hellenistic Queens (Baltimore 1932) 11–20; G. Longega, Arsinoe II (Rome 1968) 93–5. Will (1979) I 222, seems unnecessarily sceptical of the possibility of Arsinoe’s influence on foreign policy, whereas Heinen (1972) 97–100 and 132–9 essays a middle path. Arsinoe’s death is normally dated to 270 (cf. H. Cadell, ‘A quelle date Arsinoé II Philadelphe est-elle ´ décédée?’, in H. Malaerts (ed.), Le Culte du souverain dans l’Egypte ptoléma¨ıque au IIIe siècle avant notre ère, Leuven 1998, 1–3), but the alternative of 268 has been proposed (cf. E. Grzybeck, Du calendrier macédonien au calendrier ptolémaique (Basel 1990) 103–12).


381

to see even the outbreak of the war, in which in any case Ptolemy may well have achieved very little, and thus her %, ‘intention’ or ‘strategy’, was not in fact realised in concrete action; for this reason, perhaps, her ‘strategy’ is expressed through the unreality of a dream appearance, in which the pattern of ] ( ‘busy labours’ followed by rest ($%), which points to the certainty of victory, occurs only in the dream of a young and pious girl. The epigram foreshadows this certain military success, for divine appearances in dreams were considered auspicious (Arsinoe’s sweat is ‘sweet’); in Poem 30 Posidippus himself uses the idea that in wartime one should invoke the aid of sweating divinities, ‘a statue that has perspired – what woe for the citizen and what a snowstorm of spears is on the move! But summon the god who perspired, and he will push back the fire against the dwellings and crops of the enemy’. Hegeso’s prompt reaction to the dream reciprocates Arsinoe’s prompt assistance. Immediately after the reference to Arsinoe’s ‘intention’, the decree of Chremonides presents Ptolemy as acting 2X 6^##4 # $ , ‘for the common freedom of the Greeks’. Control of the Aegean and the Greek grain supply and fear of the ambitions of Antigonos were of course rather more important motives,83 but here again we may see a crucial theme of Ptolemaic propaganda, and one in which Arsinoe herself may have been involved in the years before her death;84 her links to the Aegean states went back to the years of her marriage to Lysimachus. The alliance of Athens, Sparta, and Ptolemaic Egypt is presented by the decree as a defence of the liberty of the Greek states parallel to that of Athens and Sparta during the Persian Wars; moreover, Ptolemy I had invoked the ‘freedom of the Greeks’ in his struggles with Antigonos Monophthalmos in 315-314,85 and with him, Cassander, and Lysimachus between 310 and 308.86 War was, of course, ‘the concern of men’ (Homer, Iliad 6.490–3), and this was true for gods as well, with the sole exception of Athena, who is normally represented armed. A late source ascribes martial feats to Berenice II, who is said to have saved her father Ptolemy II,87 and Olympias and Eurydice personally directed Macedonian military operations in the latter years of the fourth century,88 but the dream of the armed Arsinoe, who is normally identified with Aphrodite rather than Athena, is anything but expected. It is in 83 85 87

88

84 Cf. A. Stewart, Faces of Power (Berkeley 1993) 256–9. Cf. Will (1979) I 220–1. 86 Cf. Diod. Sic. 20.19.3–4 and 20.37.2. Cf. Diod. Sic. 19.62.1. Cf. Hyginus, Astron. 2.24. Perhaps this is the reason why she probably was called something equivalent to magnanima (Catullus 66.26) by Callimachus ( ($?). On the reliability of Hyginus’ information, which has been challenged in the past, see Parsons (1977) 45 and Marinone (1997) 22–3 n. 28. Cf. E. D. Carney, Women and Monarchy in Macedonia (Norman–Oklahoma 2000) 121–2 and 132–7.

382


fact no less unexpected than the reference to the queen, alongside the king’s ancestors – whose cult is a common feature of Hellenistic monarchies – in the decree of Chremonides, but we may be able to discern Posidippus’ intention here also. We learn from a papyrus of the mid-third century89 that Ptolemy had named various streets in Alexandria after his now divine sister-wife, with epithets indicating her different spheres of influence; we hear of streets named for Arsinoe Basileia, Arsinoe Eleemon (‘Goddess of Pity’), Arsinoe Teleia (‘who brings things to completion’), and also Arsinoe Chalkioikos (‘Of the Brazen House’). The only other occurrence of this last epithet is with reference to Athena Poliouchos (‘protectress of the city’), who was worshipped in a temple of bronze on the acropolis at Sparta (Pausanias 3.17.1–3). Moreover, apart from the few isolated instances from Macedonian history noted above, the Doric culture of Sparta and Argos is the only known context for an important rôle for women in warfare.90 A strong interest in Spartan traditions is a known element of Ptolemaic ideology,91 and here we should perhaps see both Ptolemaic street-naming and Posidippus’ epigram about Arsinoe’s dream-appearance against the background of the alliance between Sparta and Egypt in the early 260s.92 The word & % in the opening verse of the epigram has suggested that Hegeso makes her dedication in the famous temple between Canopus and the Pharos, which was built by the admiral Callicrates for the divinised Arsinoe as ‘Arsinoe Aphrodite Zephyritis’. This temple is the subject of two other anath¯ematika in honour of Arsinoe; the divinised queen is called #_$ ‘zephyr-loving’ by Hedylus (HE 1843), and the promontory on which the temple was erected is called by Posidippus himself a ‘wind-swept (& Z' ) breakwater of Libya facing the Italian Zephyr’ (116.3–4 AB).93 In this temple, Arsinoe was above all ‘Euploia’, the protectress of those at sea, but she was also worshipped as ‘Ourania’, under which title she probably exercised power over the spheres of love and marriage; certainly, in another epigram Posidippus summons both sailors and the ‘pure daughters of the Greeks’ to worship Arsinoe Aphrodite (116.7–10 AB, cf. below, p. 386).94 If 89 90 91 93

94

SB 10251 Preisigke, dated to 252–1. Cf. F. Graf, ‘Women, War, and Warlike Divinities’ ZPE 55 (1984) 245–54. 92 Cf. Fraser (1972) I 238, Heinen (1972) 99. Cf. e.g. Hunter (1996b) 149–66. That Hegeso’s dedication was made in the temple of Arsinoe Aphrodite was suggested by Bing (2002–3) 258–9. It was from the same temple that the lock of hair of Berenice II ascended through the agency of the Zephyr, according to Callimachus fr. 110.51–8. Cf. K. Gutzwiller, ‘The Nautilus, the Halcyon, and Selenaia: Callimachus’s Epigram 5 Pf. = 14 G.-P.’ CA 11 (1992) 194–209, pp. 198–9. It has been attractively suggested that ‘while sailors came to the shrine to pray for fair sailing, the young women came in the hope of a smooth voyage on the sea of love and marriage . . . could it be that the maiden was thinking about an armed Arsinoe Aphrodite, even dreaming of her, because she cared about someone involved in a war, a prospective husband perhaps?’, Bing (2002–3) 259–60, and cf. already E. Lelli, ARF 4 (2002) 22.


383

this very feminine goddess seems hard to reconcile with the armed Arsinoe of Hegeso’s dream, we might think again of Sparta, where the temple of Athena Chalkioikos/Poliouchos was very close by the temple containing the statue of Aphrodite Areia95 or Aphrodite Enoplios; this striking Spartan mixture of the female with the martial attracted the attention of more than one Hellenistic epigrammatist,96 and perhaps it was Sparta which again provided the model for an Arsinoe who combined a rôle as Aphrodite, protector of sailors, with Athena’s epithet Chalkioikos and the martial bearing which went with it. Ptolemaic championing of the ‘freedom of the Greeks’ may also help with the third of the anath¯ematika (38 AB), in which a freed slave-woman dedicates to Arsinoe the cup from which she made her first libation as a free woman; Arsinoe is here called # $ [ '$% ‘guardian of freedom’97 or perhaps # $ [ '% ‘who shared the freedom (with me)’:98 C;% " C [&] C ^ H' C [ ['] (# [ ] # $) L U [. . . . .] !5 C) # $ [ '$%) 'M[ . . . .] ' C ^ '[. Epicratis thus dedicated me to Arsinoe, after she had first [drunk] from a cup [the water] of freedom. And she said: [ ] and rejoice, [guardian?] of freedom, and receive [. . .] as a gift from Epicratis’. (Posidippus 38 AB, trans. Austin (adapted))

Of itself, there is nothing particularly striking about this dedication or its recipient: as we have seen, Arsinoe was indeed ‘Eleemon’, ‘she who pities’; so, too, Callimachus describes Sosibius, a Ptolemaic courtier, as . '4" | *' # ‘friendly to the people and not forgetting the humble’ (fr. 384.53–4). Callimachus is praising Sosibius for his attitude towards the most humble free citizens (cf. '), and it is rather more difficult to imagine that any member of the royal court pursued a policy of slave-emancipation.99 If, however, there is anything in the argument outlined above about Arsinoe and the freedom of the Greek cities, here we may perhaps not merely see Arsinoe ‘guardian of freedom’ or ‘sharer of freedom’ as taking some interest in social freedom, but also recall the goddess’ concern for the political freedom of the Greek cities. Against 95 96 97 99

Cf. Pausanias 3.17.5, A. C. Villing, ‘Aspects of Athena in the Greek Polis: Sparta and Corinth’ in A. B. Lloyd (ed.), What is a God? (London–Swansea 1997) 81–9. Cf. HE ii 334, J. Flemberg, Venus Armata (Stockholm–Göteborg 1991) 29–42, E. Magnelli on Alex. Aet. fr. 9. 98 Supplement by W. Lapini, ZPE 143 (2003) 46. Supplement by C. Austin. The papyri suggest in fact that the emancipation of slaves was not very common in Egypt, cf. R. Scholl, Corpus der ptolemäischen Sklaventexte (Stuttgart 1990) i 144–5.

384


the background of a prominent theme of Ptolemaic propaganda, Poem 38, following hard after Poem 36 AB, which, as we have seen, allows a very political interpretation, can be easily read as a confirmation of Arsinoe’s love for all forms of liberty. At least one further anath¯ematikon involves this same temple of Arsinoe Aphrodite (39 AB), and Poem 37 AB is about a lyre which is rescued by a dolphin from the sea and then dedicated by a temple-attendant in a temple of Arsinoe: C;% ) % 4[]' #Q 2, ! [. . . . . . .] M[] ' # i C C; [ E#C [. . . .] Q &## C V [ . . .] 5 [. . . .] # $ T #([ ##[. . .] * # [ [. . .] , &'[ . ' C) [ `#](' # ) , i#% [. . . . C;] ' '[!$) .]$%$ # #[$. To you, Arsinoe, this lyre, which the hand . . . made to resound was brought by Arion’s dolphin. With the tail he raised . . . from the wave, but when . . . that one go on his journey through the white sea – composing many various songs (?) . . . with voice the nightingales . . . new. As an offering, O Brother-loving queen, receive this . . . whom Arion rode/composed (?), . . . a present from . . . the guard of the temple. (Posidippus 37 AB, trans. Austin (adapted))

It is a natural inference that the temple is on a coastline, and the first editors cautiously speculated that we might be dealing again with the temple of Arsinoe Aphrodite Zephyritis;100 the case for believing this can be strengthened. The first ‘dolphin of Arion’ rescued Arion and his lyre when the poet was forced by the crew of his ship sailing from Tarentum to Corinth to jump into the sea; the dolphin carried Arion to Cape Taenarum.101 According to a presumably later tradition reported by Aelian (Nat. anim. 12.45), Arion celebrated his rescue by dedicating at Cape Taenarum a bronze statue of himself riding a dolphin; the inscription on the statue read: &( 5% C; =$# $e e Z ) poetae novi, and cantores Euphorionis’ CQ 20 (1970) 322–7, C. Tuplin, ‘Cantores Euphorionis’ PLLS 1 (1976) 1–25, R. O. A. M. Lyne, ‘The Neoteric Poets’ CQ 28 (1978) 167–87, A. Cameron, ‘Poetae novelli’ HSCP 84 (1980) 127–75, Courtney (1993) 189–91, Lightfoot (1999) 56–67. Cf. above, pp. 85–8. This famous Callimachean epigram on Aratus’ Phainomena was also echoed (rather more closely) in an epigram by Helvius Cinna (fr. 11 Courtney). Cf. e.g. Wilamowitz (1924) II 282. For the apparent echo of Call. h. 2.4–7 at Cat. 61.76–8 cf. S. Heyworth, MD 33 (1994) 51–2. Cf. Lightfoot (1999) 68–9. Lightfoot (1999) 56–67 also offers a helpful guide through the maze of thorny problems associated with the Roman reception of Euphorion; cf. also Magnelli (2002) 103 n. 1 for further bibliography. It is far from certain that Catulus fr. 2 Courtney has anything to do with Theocr. 18.26–8; for the Latin epigram cf. C. Weber, ‘Roscius and the roscida dea’ CQ 46 (1996) 298–302, Morelli (2000) 152–64.

3 Graecia capta

465

reflects familiarity with Theocritus, and the refrain which structures the final section of Catullus 64 may in part derive from the similar structures of Theocritus 1 and 2. Cat. 64.96, (Aphrodite) quaeque regis Golgos quaeque Idalium frondosum, looks very like a reworking of the opening verse of the ‘Hymn to Adonis’ in Theocr. 15 (v. 100); that this reworking occurs within a larger echo of the apostrophe to Eros at Arg. 4.445–9 (cf. Cat. 64.94–8) is a mark of how Catullus constructs a shared tradition within his third-century Greek models.91 As for Apollonius’ Argonautica, this was ‘translated’ into Latin by Varro ‘Atacinus’92 and is a primary model for both the framing narrative and the ekphrasis of Catullus 64.93 Even more remarkable is the success at Rome enjoyed by Aratus’ Phainomena. This was translated by the young Cicero in the first of a line of Latin versions (Germanicus, Ovid, Avienus); the section on weather signs was translated by Varro of Atax (and subsequently became an important model in Virgil, Georgics 1), and Aratus’ ‘Myth of Dik¯e’ has clearly had its influence upon the end of Catullus 64. Cinna fr. 11 is an epigram intended to accompany a gift of the text of Aratus.94 Nicander’s didactic poems were also certainly read in Rome by the 50s; they seem to be echoed by Lucretius and were a principal source for the Th¯eriaca of Aemilius Macer.95 A historical explanation for part of this apparent explosion in interest in at least certain aspects of third-century Greek poetry has been seen in the coming to Rome of Parthenius of Bithynia, captured during the Mithridatic wars and brought to Rome, perhaps by the poet L. Helvius Cinna.96 In an extant preface to his Er¯otika Path¯emata Parthenius commends the collection of stories to Cornelius Gallus for use in his # )

91

92 93 94

95 96

Cat. 3.13–14 may well echo Bion, EA 55, cf. MD 32 (1994) 165–8. Possible echoes of Theocritus in Catullus are 63.85–6 (cf. Theocr. 13.64–71, below p. 480), 64.260 (cf. Theocr. 3.51) and 68.71 (cf. Theocr. 2.104); Simaitha’s invocation of Ariadne and Theseus at Theocr. 2.45–6 may have been in Catullus’ mind while writing 64.52ff. (cf. Wiseman (1985) 198 n. 68). The ‘evidence’ that Catullus translated or adapted Theocr. 2 (cf. Wiseman (1985) 193 and Appendix 2) is very slight, though of itself the idea is not implausible. Cf. below, p. 485. For Catullus’ imitation here of Theocritus cf. Perrotta (1972) 397 and in general cf. A. Perutelli, ‘Teocrito e Catullo’ in L’officina ellenistica. Poesia dotta e popolace in Grecia e a Roma (Trento 2003) 317–30. Cf. Courtney (1993) 235–43, A. S. Hollis, ‘The Argonautae of Varro Atacinus’ in Accorinti–Chuvin (2003) 331–41. Cf. below, pp. 481–3. Cf. S. Hinds, ‘Cinna, Statius, and “immanent literary history” in the cultural economy’ in L’histoire littéraire immanente dans la poésie grecque (Entretiens Fondation Hardt 47, Vandoeuvres–Geneva 2001) 221–65, pp. 224–36. Cf. Cicero, De Oratore 1.69, Courtney (1993) 292–9, A. S. Hollis, ‘Nicander and Lucretius’ PLLS 10 (1998) 169–84, J.-M. Jacques, Nicandre, Oeuvres (Paris 2002) ii cxvi–cxvii. For Parthenius’ importance cf. Clausen (1964) and (more cautiously) N. B. Crowther, ‘Parthenius and Roman poetry’ Mnem. 29 (1976) 65–71. Lightfoot (1999) 50–76 surveys the arguments and (scanty) evidence.

466

Roman epilogue

and subsequent hostile tradition standardly groups Parthenius with Callimachus and Euphorion as ‘modern’ and obscure writers. It has often been conjectured that Calvus’ elegy on the death of Quintilia (frs. 15–16 Courtney, cf. Catullus 96) owed something to Parthenius’ elegiac epik¯edeion for his wife Arete (SH 606–14), but there is no more than general probability upon which to build; there is slightly more solid evidence with which to postulate Parthenian influence on Cinna’s ‘epyllion’ Zmyrna,97 and the hypothesis that Parthenius was an important influence in the appearance of a number of such ‘epyllia’ (Catullus 64, Calvus’ Io) is not of itself improbable. Nevertheless, it is also clear from the outline sketch already given that Hellenistic poetry was already known and imitated at Rome before Parthenius; the broad cultural movements I have been tracing cannot be laid at the door of any one traveller from the east. This engagement with the poetry of the third century is, moreover, not limited to echoes and reworkings. At one level, modern scholars have been able to point to stylistic (including metrical) imitation of the Hellenistic manner, alongside verbal echo.98 At the level of macroscopic form, moreover, Catullus 62, an amoebean wedding song in hexameters, is an act of imaginative ‘historical’ recreation which has much in common with Theocritus 18, the epithalamian for Helen and Menelaos, even though it is not given a ‘mythical’ setting. Catullus 63, the Attis, shares many of the techniques of Hellenistic hymns such as Call. h. 5 and Theocritus 26.99 Poetic form and poetic sensibility were both fashioned by the experience of the great Alexandrian poets. The simultaneously inhibiting and inspiring influence which archaic and classical poetry had had upon third-century poetry was recreated (deliberately) by the manner in which these Latin poets constructed Roman literary history. Our best evidence is Catullus, but in this he may not have been untypical. The Roman poetic (especially Ennian) and moral tradition was constructed as something ‘past’, something to be ‘assumed as read’, utilised, alluded to and rewritten in a quite new mode, rather than just simply thrown away;100 the parallel with the Hellenistic attitude to the classical past is obvious. Of course, the image of third-century poetry and its poetics created by these poets was a very partial one,101 and one which has in fact impeded modern appreciation of Hellenistic poetry, 97 98

99 101

Cf. Courtney (1993) 220. Cf. Ross (1969) 115–69 (whose metrical arguments, particularly about distinctions within the Catullan corpus, are not weakened by Hutchinson (1988) 298 n. 43), W. Clausen, ‘Catullus and Callimachus’ HSCP 74 (1970) 85–94. 100 Cf. J. E. G. Zetzel, ICS 8 (1983) 264–6. Cf. below, pp. 477–85. Cf. e.g. Wimmel (1960) 128–9, Cameron (1995) 460–1, Hunter (1996b) 196.

4 Verbum pro verbo

467

though this has been a failing of understanding for which the Roman poets themselves can hardly be blamed. Many elements of third-century poetry are simply ignored in Roman poetry; others make but a faint appearance, and others are given a quite new prominence. Thus, for example, if Catullus 64 and 68 are anything to go by, an elaborate interlocking structure within longer poems was one of these features which had Greek forebears, but which now assumed new importance as poetic signifiers;102 this example is the equivalent, at the level of structure, of the verbal remoteness from the everyday available to Greek poets through the existence of a poetic Kunstsprache.103 By emphasising structural artifice, Latin poets were able to claim for their poems a similar e´lite privilege to that which Hellenistic poets had asserted through linguistic and generic difference from classical models.104 4 verbum pro verbo ‘Translation’ and its discontents had been a (perhaps the) central theme of the Roman engagement with Greek literature from the very beginning.105 Terence’s prologues are our best second-century evidence for debates within the literary e´lite about the protocols of translation; as well as the larger issue of the combination of more than one Greek model (so-called ‘contaminatio’), these prologues evoke a whole range of issues (‘accuracy’, individual style within a ‘repetitive’ genre etc.) which seem to have been transferred from Greek stylistic and rhetorical theory to the realm of crosslanguage translation. When Terence claims that a scene from Diphilus’ Synapothn¯escontes has been imported into the Adelphoe ‘uerbum de uerbo expressum’, modern scholars would probably not speak of a ‘word-for-word translation’. More than one explanation – beyond Terentian mendacity – may be suggested. It is a familiar fact that preliterate cultures may have quite different notions of ‘faithfulness’ in repetition or translation; Albert Lord’s researches among Balkan bards are full of relevant evidence: thus, for example, ‘to [a particular Guslar singer] “word for word and line for line” are simply an emphatic way of saying “like” . . . singers do not know what words and lines are’.106 Terence’s Rome was not a preliterate song culture, though 102 103 104 105 106

For Hellenistic predecessors cf. Kidd on Aratus, Phain. 367–85. Cf. above, p. 442, on Lycophron. This is not, of course, to suggest that linguistic modes of differentiation were not available to, and intensively used by, Latin poets. For rhetorical teaching on translation and the use of ‘translation’ in education cf. H. D. Jocelyn, The Tragedies of Ennius (Cambridge 1967) 25–9, Brink on Hor. AP 133. The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass. 1960) 28.

468

Roman epilogue

the claim of the Andria prologue that Menander’s Andria and Perinthia had pretty much the same plot would indeed be quite at home in such a tradition. Beyond the practical considerations of how an experienced theatrical culture, both performers and audience, might view questions of sameness and difference, there is in fact more than enough evidence from the later period to show that ‘verbatim translation’ meant something quite different in the literate world of Rome than we mean by the term today.107 In discussing his ‘translation practice’ with regard to Greek philosophy, Cicero speaks of early Roman plays as fabellas Latinas ad uerbum e Graecis expressas (De finibus 1.4, cf. 1.7), and – when Cicero’s particular rhetorical agenda here is set aside –108 there is no reason to doubt that genuinely different notions of ‘translation’ than are commonplace today are here in play. ‘Faithfulness’ was, however, an important discriminatory criterion for choosing between categories of appropriation. Cicero describes two (lost) translations of Demosthenes and Aeschines thus: nec conuerti ut interpres, sed ut orator, sententiis isdem et earum formis tamquam figuris, uerbis ad nostram consuetudinem aptis. in quibus non uerbum pro uerbo necesse habui reddere, sed genus omne uerborum uimque seruaui. I did not translate them as an interpreter, but as an orator, with the same thoughts and the forms, or rather figures, of thought, but in words fitted to our usage. I did not regard it as necessary to render word for word, but I preserved the general nature and force of the language. (Cicero, De opt. gen. 14)

Here, the context is the education of students of rhetoric, and such translation was indeed a basic school exercise for Roman boys learning Greek. The association of ‘translation’ with youthful training persisted throughout antiquity: Cicero’s translation of Aratus was done when he was admodum adulescentulus (ND 2.104),109 and in the De oratore he has Lucius Crassus say that as a young man he would train himself by translating Greek oratory (1.155, cf. Quintilian 10.5.2). ‘Faithful translation’ (exprimere)110 was, then, for Roman poets from the middle of the first century, one option which they could claim within 107

108

109 110

¨ Cf. J. P. Small, Wax Tablets of the Mind (London 1997), A. Seele, Römische Ubersetzer (Darmstadt 1995). For Latin terminology of ‘translation’ cf. D. M. Jones, BICS 6 (1959) 27–8, Traina (1970) 57–65. Cf. Traina (1970) 59, citing the very different Acad. 1.10, ‘Why should those skilled in Greek literature read Latin poets, but not Latin philosophers? Is it because Ennius, Pacuvius, Attius, and many others give pleasure, though they reproduce not the words but the force of the Greek poets?’ Cf. D. M. Jones, BICS 6 (1959) 22–3. For exprimere in this sense cf. Traina (1970) 58–9, Marinone (1997) 51–4.

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a broad range of possible stances with regard to Greek models; such a practice, or the claim to it, stands at one end of a continuum of allusive, intertextual practices, as Horace’s use of ‘translated’ mottos, e.g. nunc est bibendum, at the head of poems which then veer away from the model, seems to acknowledge. Thus Catullus 62 (the ‘Greek’ wedding song) and 66 (the ‘Coma Berenices’, translated from Callimachus) are both historical reconstructions of a mode of Greek poetry. Two very different passages of Virgil illustrate something of what is at stake in this open recognition of ‘translation’ as a deliberate choice of poetic mode. The fragments of bucolic song cited in Eclogue 9 show how that poem figures the move away from the countryside, away from ‘bucolic’, as a move towards self-variation (vv. 46–50 < Ecl. 5) and ‘translation’: Tityre, dum redeo (breuis est uia), pasce capellas, et potum pastas age, Tityre, et inter agendum occursare capro (cornu ferit ille) caueto. Tityrus, until my return (my trip is not far), graze the goats and then lead them to drink, Tityrus; take care that you keep out of the he-goat’s way – he butts with his horn. (Virgil, Eclogue 9.23–5) s $ C) , #, # ) 9 % L ) ( . ) s $ U , !) , ?9$, () $#(%% 4 $ Q:". Tityrus, my dear friend, graze the goats and lead them to the spring, Tityrus; take care that the he-goat, the tawny Libyan, doesn’t butt you. (Theocritus 3.3–5) huc ades, o Galatea; quis est nam ludus in undis? hic uer purpureum, uarios hic flumina circum fundit humus flores, hic candida populus antro imminet et lentae texunt umbracula uites. huc ades; insani feriant sine litora fluctus. Come hither, Galatea: for what sport can there be in the water? Here is shining springtime, here the earth pours out her many-coloured flowers by the streams, here the white poplar hangs over the cave and supple vines weave shady bowers! Come hither! Let the waves beat wildly upon the shore. (Virgil, Eclogue 9.39–43) &##C & $% C /) +M 5 'X #%%. #$ 'X (#%% !% ] ! 5U x' N " C Q 'M 5. '( ) B' $(%%) % # %% ) % C . # / #$Q) % :$!, [') / #$'' ;K # $T ! , &9 % . ' (#%% ! Q C E# ;

470

Roman epilogue

But come to me, and you will be no worse off. Leave the grey sea to beat upon the land! The nights will be sweeter beside me in my cave. Here are laurel trees, here slender cypresses, here is the dark ivy, and the vine with its sweet fruit; here is cool water which Etna of the many trees sends forth from its white snow, a heavenly drink! Who would prefer the sea and the waves to these things? (Theocritus 11.42–9)

From one perspective, the principal model for Eclogue 9, Theocritus’ Thalysia (Idyll 7), established the parameters of what, with hindsight, is seen as a primary poetic form, whereas Eclogue 9 is an exploration of decay inherent in the self-consciously secondary. The difference between the allusive style of these quoted passages and that which predominates in the Eclogues replicates at the level of style the abandonment of the bucolic project which the poem suggests.111 A second passage to explore the nature of translation is the Achaemenides scene, which closes Aeneas’ account of his adventures in Book 3. This scene uses the idea of poetic memory in various ways:112 for this survivor from Odysseus’ crew, abandoned in the Cyclops’ cave by his comrades who forgot him (immemores 3.617),113 the retelling is a nightmarish memory which, like Aeneas’ grief (2.3), almost resists telling.114 When, however, he comes to events with which we are familiar from Homer (vv. 618–38), his words are an abnormally close ‘translation’ from Odyssey 9 because actual Homeric experience cannot be relived except through ‘memory’ of Homeric verses: the faithfulness to the Homeric original, which here takes the place of the authorising Muse, is a pledge of the ‘veracity’ of the awful account.115 Moreover, the often-remarked similarities between the episode of Achaemenides and the earlier episode of Sinon’s deception of the Trojans (Aen. 2.57–198) illustrate not merely the epic drive towards repetition, towards what is in this case internally generated memory, but also explore (inter alia) the limits and nature of epic fiction itself.116 ‘Translation’ and ‘self-variation’ are again seen as crises at the extremes of allusive practice. 111 112 113 114 115

116

The re-emergence of the Theocritean Polyphemus and Galatea in vv. 37–43 is particularly marked, as Idyll 11 had already been reworked as Eclogue 2. (I owe this point to Gregory Hutchinson). For ‘memory’ and epic poetry cf. above, pp. 117–26. There is perhaps a wry suggestion in this word that Odysseus and his men ‘forgot’ Achaemenides because Homer and his characters know nothing of him. Note 644 infandi Cyclopes, 653 gentem . . . nefandam. The emphasis on sight in this passage not only acts as ‘a marker of allusion at the level of the narrative intertext’ (Papanghelis in Kazazis–Rengakos (1999) 281), but also evokes the powerful enargeia of the Homeric account, with its associated stimulus to mim¯esis, cf. below, p. 472. The similarities between the two episodes have, of course, generated a large bibliography; for some helpful guidance cf. J. Ramminger, ‘Imitation and allusion in the Achaemenides scene (Virgil, Aeneid 3.588–691)’ AJP 112 (1991) 53–71. It is relevant here that the Cyclops was always regarded as one of Odysseus’ most outrageous lies, within a hierarchy of unbelievability, cf. Juvenal 15.13–23, Dio Chrys. 11.34.

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If Roman poetic practice of the first century bc is in part an imaginative reconstruction of Hellenistic aesthetics, then we should ask about the Alexandrian equivalent of poetic translation. It might seem obvious that ‘translation’ was one form of allusive practice available to the Romans, but denied to their Greek models, who had to be satisfied with, say, rewriting Homer or changing the form of past poems, as Sotades ‘turned’ the Iliad into sotadeans.117 Nevertheless, some translation of non-Greek poetry, particularly occasional lyric,118 into Greek is a conceivable literary practice for third-century Alexandria. That a Callimachus or an Apollonius turned his hand to the poetic rendering of an Egyptian poem (which had been translated for him) is hardly an outrageous notion. That the Alexandrian Library contained some translations of non-Greek works seems overwhelmingly probable; if we are to believe Tzetzes, under Ptolemy Philadelphus it was a positive hotbed of translation activity (xia ii 16–22 Koster). Bi- and tri-lingual inscriptions were, in any case, a fact of life. Neoteric ‘translation’ may thus have had some real or believed Greek forebear. Two other possible models for Roman practice, or what could be constructed as such, may be noted. Erotic epigrams seem to have been one important vehicle for the transmission of Hellenistic poetry to Italy,119 and variation (including self-variation) was a standard feature of Greek epigrammatic practice during the third century; such constant play with the work of oneself and one’s predecessors has important features in common with poetic translation. Secondly, there are the implications of Horace’s placing of his strictures against ‘literal translation’: difficile est proprie communia dicere, tuque rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus quam si proferres ignota indictaque primus: publica materies priuati iuris erit, si non circa uilem patulumque moraberis orbem nec uerbo uerbum curabis reddere fidus interpres nec desilies imitator in artum, unde pedem proferre pudor uetet aut operis lex, nec sic incipies, ut scriptor cyclicus olim: ‘fortunam Priami cantabo et nobile bellum.’ quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu? parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. 117 118 119

130

135

As far as we can tell, this was a mixture of ‘rewriting’ and ‘free composition’. Cf. further below, p. 484. Cf. M. L. West, ‘Near Eastern Material in Hellenistic and Roman Literature’ HSCP 73 (1969) 113–34, pp. 131–3. Cf. above, p. 463.

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It is hard to put generalities in an individual way: you do better to reduce the song of Troy to acts than if you were the first to bring out something unknown and unsaid. The common stock will become your private property if you don’t linger on the broad and vulgar round, or anxiously render word for word, a loyal interpreter, or again, in the process of imitation, find yourself in a tight corner from which shame, or the rule of the craft, won’t let you move; or, once again, if you avoid a beginning like the cyclic poet – Of Priam’s fortune will I sing, and war Well known to fame. If he opens his mouth as wide as that, how can the promiser bring forth anything to match it? The mountains shall be in labour, and there shall be born – a silly mouse. (Horace, Ars Poetica 128–39, trans. D. A. Russell)

Horace connects the ‘translation question’120 to the question of choice and treatment of subject matter, and v. 132 looks directly to ‘cyclical’ poetry, i.e. (in this context) the drearily imitative and repetitive. ‘Formulaic’, repetitive composition is here fashioned as the moral equivalent of ‘literal translation’, and thus an analogue within Greek mim¯esis (note v. 134 imitator) for Roman practice is discovered. In his discussion of what can be gained from studying (not, of course, translating) the great writers of the past, ‘Longinus’ describes how effluences (& ) from them flow into the souls of those who would emulate them (e _# ), as the Pythia was inspired by chthonic vapours at Delphi (13.2). Shifting the metaphor somewhat, he notes that these great figures are ‘presented to us as objects of emulation and, as it were, shine before our gaze . . .’ (14.1). There is, in fact, in ancient discussions of inspiration and mim¯esis a persistent language of sight, of ‘seeing the beautiful’ and wanting to grasp it. The Augustan critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus distinguished two mimetic practices: ‘Mim¯esis is an activity making a copy of the model ( , (' ) by means of theoretical principles. Z¯elos is an activity of the psych¯e, roused to admiration (thauma) of something believed to be beautiful’.121 The erotic language, recalling such Platonic texts as Phaedrus 251a–e, is not to be dismissed as unimportant, for it seems directly relevant to Catullus’ poem about the experience of translating Sappho: 120

121

D. A. Russell, ‘De imitatione’ in D. West and T. Woodman, Creative Imitation and Latin Literature (Cambridge 1979) 1–16, p. 1, unconvincingly denies that vv. 133–4 refer to ‘translation’, but the case seems hard to deny. Opuscula II, p. 200 U.-R., cf. ‘Longinus’ 13.2. Russell’s $ (sc. :$!) for $ has much to commend it.

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ille mi par esse deo uidetur, ille, si fas est, superare diuos, qui sedens aduersus identidem te spectat et audit dulce ridentem, misero quod omnes eripit sensus mihi: nam simul te, Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus flamma demanat, sonitu suopte tintinant aures, gemina teguntur lumina nocte. otium, Catulle, tibi molestumst: otio exsultas nimiumque gestis: otium et reges prius et beatas perdidit urbes That man is seen by me as a god’s equal Or (if it may be said) the gods’ superior, Who sitting opposite again and again Watches and hears you Sweetly laughing – which dispossesses poor me Of all my sense, for no sooner, Lesbia, Do I look at you than there’s no power left me But my tongue’s paralysed, invisible flame Courses down through my limbs, with din of their own My ears are ringing and twin darkness covers The light of my eyes. Leisure, Catullus, does not agree with you. At leisure you’re restless, too excitable. Leisure in the past has ruined rulers and Prosperous cities. (Catullus 51, trans. Guy Lee)

Contemplation of ‘the Lesbian girl’ produces a double desire, part of which, the desire to emulate, and perhaps even surpass (superare), the great figures of the past, issues in the poem in front of us. In this narrativisation of the act of literary mim¯esis, ‘both mistress and literary model take on the attributes of a Muse: Lesbia becomes a surrogate Sappho figure, while Sappho in turn is transformed into a poetic and erotic ideal’.122 This occurs, however, within a specific poetics of imitation and translation. Sappho 31 was a very 122

M. B. Skinner, Catullus’ Passer (New York 1981) 88. For further aspects of mim¯esis and desire in this poem cf. Hardie (2002) 50–4.

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famous poem,123 and it is a fair guess that it was a ‘school text’; it is the choice of this poem, as well as the choice of ‘translation’, here involving the wholesale transposition of metre as well as subject, upon which the final stanza on otium reflects.124 5 poetry or transl ation? In Poem 65125 Catullus is very unexplicit about the request from Hortalus to which he is responding. Most commentators assume a scenario in which Hortalus has actually requested what he finally gets, namely a Latin version of the ‘Lock of Berenice’, extorted (expressa) out of a Catullus with other things on his mind.126 It is possible that the point rather is, ‘I can’t write poetry [which you have requested], but, nevertheless, here is a translation’,127 which would leave quite open the status of Poem 66 as poetry or not, as also the time at which it was composed. Whichever scenario we choose, it is clear that at the heart of the poem lies the nature of allusive poetry, of which expressa . . . carmina are one variety. The continuum of allusive practices is here expressed as an oscillation between expromere (nec potis est dulces Musarum expromere fetus | mens animi) and exprimere. ‘In expromere’, as Fordyce says, ‘the metaphor is that of bringing [apples] out of a store’, though William Fitzgerald has also explored to good effect the ‘birth’ metaphor of the poem. The Muses are the daughters of Memory, and poetic composition is here figured as a species of memory, of ‘bringing out of the mind’s storehouse’. This is an image for memory which recurs 123 124 125 126

127

Cf. Plut. Mor. 763a, Demetrius 38.4, S. Costanza, Risonanze dell’ode di Saffo FAINETAI MOI KENOS da Pindaro a Catullo e Horazio (Messina–Florence 1950). Cf. D. Fowler, Roman Constructions (Oxford 2000) 25, 273–4. Cicero introduces one of his translations of Homer (De div. 2.63 = fr. 23 Morel–Buechner–Blänsdorf ) with ut nos otiosi conuertimus. For this poem’s debt to Callimachus, which is to be set against the very different debt of Poem 66, cf. Hunter (1993c). For this nuance of expressa cf. Cicero, Orator 147 tuum studium hoc a me uolumen expressit; W. Fitzgerald, Catullan Provocations (Berkeley 1995) 191. Suetonius uses the same verb to describe how Augustus ‘forced’ Horace to write a hexameter poem for him (Epist. 2.1), expressitque eclogam ad se . . . (Vita Hor. p. 298 Roth). For the language of literary ‘request’ in general cf. P. White, Promised Verse (Cambridge, Mass. 1993) 64–71. So, e.g. Marinone (1997) 52; D. E. W. Wormell, ‘Catullus as Translator’ in L. Wallach (ed.), The Classical Tradition. Literary and Historical Studies in Honor of Harry Caplan (Cornell 1966) 187–201, p. 196. For the poetic artfulness of the ‘I can’t write poetry’ claim cf. e.g. J. Van Sickle, ‘About Form and Feeling in Catullus 65’ TAPA 99 (1968) 497–508, D. L. Selden, ‘Ceueat lector: Catullus and the Rhetoric of Performance’ in R. Hexter and D. Selden (eds.), Innovations of Antiquity (New York–London 1992) 461–512, pp. 471–5, M. Citroni, Poesia e lettori in Roma antica (Rome–Bari 1995) 95–9.

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throughout antiquity,128 but there is more involved here than just the trope of allusion as poetic memory, about which so much has recently been written. Poem 65 swings (as does the uirgo with whom the poem ends) between memory and forgetting: Catullus’ brother has passed beyond the ‘whirlpool of Forgetting’, but it is precisely memory of that death which both stops Catullus writing and produces the poem in front of us. mens animi is not just, as the commentators say, an archaism for the intellectual faculty, but rather gestures towards the active rôle of the mind in creating the images necessary both for memory (Varro etymologises meminisse from mens, LL 6.44, cf. 6.49)129 and for the creation of true poetic phantasia which relies upon memory. Horace seems to have recognised this in his imitation at Epistles 1.14.6–9: me quamuis Lamiae pietas et cura moratur fratrem maerentis, rapto de fratre dolentis insolabiliter, tamen istuc mens animusque fert et auet spatiis obstantia rumpere claustra. Though I am kept here by my sense of duty and love for Lamia, who is grieving for her brother, mourning inconsolably for the brother who has been snatched away, nevertheless my mind and spirit carry me there and long to burst the barriers that stand in the way. (Horace, Epistles 1.14.6–9)

The city-bound Horace can picture the beloved farm in his mind, even though he is not there, and he echoes the Catullan verses to express that power of imagining. In the context of memory, exprimere will most obviously suggest the impressions on a wax tablet, most familiar to us from Plato, Theaetetus 191c–6d,130 and it is tempting to see a contrast between the ‘production’ of ‘sweet offspring’ (paradoxically created by Memory) and the ‘reproduction’ of previously read poems ‘stamped’ on the mind. Such a contrast takes us back to Dionysius’ distinction between mim¯esis and z¯elos. Mim¯esis involves making a model or likeness of the original: Dionysius’ verb, ( %) is regularly found in the context of making ‘perfect copies’, cf. LSJ s.v. II, Dion. Hal. Dem. 13 (on the opening of Demosthenes 7) , ?$%, ! * A$! (‘catches the Lysianic character exactly’). This, then, is all that Catullus can offer in his present grief. 128 129 130

Cf. thesauros at Cic. De orat. 1.18, Auct. ad Herennium 3.28, Quintilian 11.2.1; a striking passage is Augustine, Confessions 10.8. Cf. R. Sorabji, Aristotle On Memory (London 1972) 4–8. Cf. Cic. TD 1.61 an inprimi quasi ceram animum putamus, et esse memoriam signaturum rerum in mente uestigia?

476

Roman epilogue 6 the limits of transl ation

In Poem 66 Catullus does not seem to have translated the final two verses of Callimachus’ poem, although their wretched state of preservation makes any interpretation hazardous. Only the opening of the last Greek hexameter can be read, and even here there is room for disagreement about the punctuation: ![5 ]) # %% ‘Hail, [lady] dear to your children . . .’

Almost certainly the lock131 here hails the deified Arsinoe, treated as ‘mother’ to Euergetes and Berenice, who were ‘brother and sister’ according to the terminology of the court. It is indeed easy enough to see why Catullus might have chosen to omit this final couplet. Nevertheless, it is to be noted that Poem 67 begins with an address to a door, which bears a certain similarity to the farewell to Arsinoe: o dulci iucunda uiro, iucunda parenti, salue, teque bona Iuppiter auctet ope, ianua . . . O you who bring pleasure to a sweet husband, pleasure to a parent, greetings, and may Jupiter increase your prosperity, door . . . (Catullus 67.1–3)

Peter Wiseman long ago noted that these verses pick up 66 because the address to the door ‘is in terms more appropriate to a bride . . . the joke lies in the unexpected ianua’,132 but the opening of 67 may in fact allude to – or should we say ‘translate’ – the ending of the Greek ‘Coma Berenices’, as one of the many ways in which 66 and 67 are thematically connected, and as part of Catullus’ ongoing exploration of the boundaries of cross-cultural ‘translation’.133 131 132 133

Koenen (1993) 112 argues that this must be in the voice of the poet, not of the lock, but the distinction – problematic at any time – seems here particularly ruinous. Catullan Questions (Leicester 1969) 22. Cf. Hunter (1993c). It is often suggested that Callimachus omitted the final two verses when he incorporated the ‘Coma Berenices’ into the Aitia, as Books 3 and 4 were framed by poems in honour of Berenice, and it would have been strange actually to end with an invocation to the deified Arsinoe; cf. the survey in Marinone (1997) 38–9. Nevertheless, if there is anything in the idea that Cat. 67.1–2 picks up the end of the Greek ‘Coma Berenices’, we might at least toy with the possibility that Catullus knew two Greek versions, one with the verses and one without; he thus marked their ambiguous status by preserving them, but in another poem. It may also be worth suggesting that the sequence of Poems 66 and 67 (an abusive satire) imitates Callimachus’ passing from the ‘Coma Berenices’ to the Iambi, as announced in the ‘Epilogue’ of the Aitia.

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5 catullus’ at t i s Catullus 63, the narrative of Attis’ self-castration when possessed by the furor of Cybele, and his subsequent regret, has links with a number of Hellenistic narrative forms. The in medias res opening is a familiar device of Hellenistic narrative,134 and the apopomp¯e with which the poem ends reverses the conventional piety of the hymnic voice, seen for example in Callimachus’ Hymn to Demeter at the conclusion of the narrative of Erysichthon: ( ) 8 #) V & !4) K ' C !U !. Demeter, may the man you hate be no friend of mine, nor share a wall with me: hateful to me are evil neighbours. (Callimachus, Hymn to Demeter 116–17)

The nature of Cybele’s cult, however, means that, to an outsider, piety looks like punishment, and the god’s ‘friends’ like ‘enemies’. Theocritus 26 (Bacchae) also offers a particularly close analogy to Catullus 63,135 although the personal coda is there relatively more prominent (vv. 27–38) than in Catullus; that poem, too, has a certain thematic similarity to the story of Cybele’s powers (cf. below). Suggestive, too, is a comparison with the narrative of Callimachus’ Hymn to Athena. The story of Tiresias’ blinding begins less abruptly than that of Catullus 63 (cf. Call. Hymn to Athena 57– 69),136 but it too recounts a pathos-laden tale of divinely inflicted suffering. The narrating voice of Callimachus’ Hymn to Athena is identified by the opening section as that of one of the women taking part in the ritual washing of Athena’s statue, or perhaps even their leader. Who then speaks Catullus 63? The analogy of Theocritus 26 might suggest that the myth of Gallus should be told by a ‘pious’ worshipper of the god, i.e. a gallus. The fact that Cybele seems to be depicted in the poem as a cruel tyrant whose followers are sad and deluded ‘half-men’ does not disqualify it as a ‘hymn’ to the god. Hymns express the nature of a particular divinity or indeed of divinity itself, and such powers do not always fit easily into the moral matrix of human beings.137 Despite our possible emotional revulsion, it may be only the final two verses of the poem which, with a startling suddenness, suggest that this is not a (conventional) hymn to Cybele. 134 135 136 137

Cf. e.g. Theocr. 13.25, 22.137, 26.1, above p. 192; for the difference between Cat. 63 and 64 in this matter cf. below, p. 483. Cf. Hutchinson (1988) 311, Perutelli (1996) 266–9. The double start to the narrative, first at 57 and then again at 70 (in a pentameter!), is in fact a good example of Callimachus’ teasingly digressive narrative style. Cf. Hunter (1996b) 73. The suggestion of Wiseman (1985) 198–206 that Catullus 63 is in fact a hymn for the Roman Megalesia is unconvincing, though he is correct to stress the poem’s hymnic elements.

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Relevant to the question of speaker is the galliambic metre. This catalectic ionic tetrameter138 was presumably a Hellenistic invention; the stichic use of such an artificial rhythmical length fits a familiar pattern of Hellenistic metrical experiment.139 In this case, however, there is no divorce of form and meaning, as ionics had long been associated, inter alia, with ecstatic religion (cf. Eur. Ba. 64–169, 370–401), and Hephaistion reports that e Z used galliambics for hymns to the Great Mother;140 there is in fact no reason to doubt that, as the very name suggests, this was the context in which the metre had been first invented. Hephaistion notes that Callimachus wrote galliambics, and he cites two ‘very famous’ verses: n(## , ] #Q% ' ' ) P 5 !(# # Female gallai, thyrsus-loving runners of the Mountain Mother, whose weapons and bronze castanets make a clatter (Callimachus fr. 761)

Whether or not Callimachus wrote these verses, and their possible relation to Catullus 63, have been much discussed;141 the play with the gender of

(##) the ‘Dionysiac’ elements of the cult (#Q%),142 the emphasis on running, and the alliterative instruments of the worshippers are strikingly reminiscent of the Latin poem, though such elements were almost inevitable in any treatment of the theme. The Greek verses are all but certainly spoken by a gallos, for it is a natural assumption (despite Hephaistion’s generic assertion) that it is the possessed worshipper who uses such a possessed metre. Thus, in the satire Eumenides of Catullus’ predecessor, Varro, galli ‘sing’ in galliambics (fr. 132 Astbury), and there is no sign that the metre appeared more extensively in that poem; certainly, what looks like a model for Catullus’ apopomp¯e seems to be in iambics, not ionics: apage in dierectum a domo nostra istam insanitatem Drive that madness of yours straight from my home (Varro, Eumenides fr. 133 Astbury) 138 139 140 141

142

Cf. West (1982) 145, Morisi (1999) 49–56. Cf. e.g. Call. frs. 228–9, Hunter (1996b) 4–5; above, pp. 37–8. The relevant passages are gathered in Pfeiffer’s note on Call. fr. 761 and Morisi (1999) 49–51. The clearest statement of the positivist ‘Callimachean’ case is Wilamowitz, ‘Die Galliamben des Kallimachos und Catullus’, Hermes 14 (1879) 194–201 (= Kleine Schriften II 1–8), cf. also id. (1924) ii 293–5. All subsequent discussions, including the present chapter, are much indebted to Wilamowitz. For the sceptical case cf. D. Mulroy, ‘Hephaestion and Catullus 63’ Phoenix 30 (1976) 61–72, E. Courtney, BICS 32 (1985) 91. The association of the two gods is attested in literature as early as Pindar, Dithyramb 2 (= fr. 70b Maehler). For Greek worship of the Great Mother in general cf. W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Oxford 1985) 177–9.

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There is, then, an initial presumption in favour of the narrative voice of Catullus 63 being that of a gallos. Against this, it may be objected that, with very few exceptions, e´lite poems are not metrically or rhythmically mixed,143 and so Catullus would be following Hellenistic sensitivity in extending the galliambics from Attis’ speeches to that of the whole poem. Nevertheless, an apopomp¯e of Cybele in galliambics, following a poem in which Attis has expressed, also in galliambics, his regret at becoming a worshipper of the god, is at least paradoxical: is it in fact already too late for the speaker? However we imagine the Attis of this poem, his story is paradigmatic: all worshippers experience moments of lucid regret, during which, like Attis (vv. 50–73), they compose poems expressing that regret.144 If, like Callimachus’ fifth and sixth hymns or Bion’s Epitaphios Adonidos, Poem 63 would most naturally be understood as ‘performed’ by a worshipper of the god, that worshipper may himself be a gallus. Attis’ story is a kind of reversal of Euripides’ Bacchae, in which the close association of Dionysus and Cybele, both gods of L% (Ba. 32, 119) and furor, is already plain.145 Many detailed parallels may be assembled,146 but the matter requires no lengthy illustration. If the ionic parodos of the Bacchae offers a makarismos of those who know Dionysus’ blessings ‘on the mountains’, that play, no less than Catullus 63, places those blessings in an ambiguous light. Agaue, no less than Attis, comes to regret a possession which has led to bloody violence. Whereas the chorus of Euripides’ play bring their god ‘from the mountains of Phrygia to the broad streets of Greece, full of dancing’ (Ba. 86–7), the movement in Catullus 63 is in the opposite direction, from the bright streets and seas of Hellenic ‘enlightenment’ to the dark woods and mountains of irrational Asiatic cult.147 Attis bears the name of the mythic consort and/or servant of the Great Mother and founder of her cult, whose story seems to have been told in elegiacs by Hermesianax,148 and who in some versions was punished with castration 143

144 145 147

Thus, for example, the frame of Theocritus 11 cannot really be distinguished from the song of the Cyclops; the elegiacs of Theocr. 8 form one of the rare exceptions to this principle. Metrical mixing is likely to have been commoner in drama (cf. the fragment of ‘ecstatic’ lyric dactyls in honour of the Great Mother, interspersed with spoken trimeters, often assigned to Menander’s Theophoroumen¯e, p. 146 Sandbach) and less formal poetic modes, and there does in fact survive a fragment of a metrically mixed ‘hymn’ in honour of the Great Mother, which may be roughly contemporary with Catullus, cf. Dai Papiri della Società Italiana. Omaggio all’XI Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia (Florence 1965) 9–15; it seems that the ‘chorus leader’ gives instructions in iambics, and the hymn itself is sung in dactylic hexameters. The possibility of ascribing 91–3 to ‘the poet’ and the rest of the poem to a gallus may be considered, but this would merely sidestep, not resolve, the issue of poetic voice. 146 Cf. e.g. Ba. 165–6 (the foal simile) ∼ Cat. 63.33. Cf. Ba. 78–9 with Dodds’ note. 148 Cf. Pausanias 7.17.5 = Hermesianax fr. 8 Powell. Cf. Syndikus (1990) 82–3.

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for his infidelity.149 Catullus’ character seems, however, very Greek (cf. esp. 58–67), and the name evokes ‘Attic’, C; ) with the feminine gender of the Greek word perfectly suited to this notha mulier.150 The movement away from Greece is a movement away from high Attic culture, or – rather – the movement of Attic culture towards an engagement with quite other practices and poetics. The Athenian harbour of the Peiraeus (where Catullus’ Attis, like Theseus in Poem 64, boarded his ship?) was the site of a prominent and long-established cult of the Great Mother and Attis.151 That the movement of the narrative has an element of ‘the tragic’, with Attis’ waking in the light figured as an awakening into the light of understanding being perhaps the most obvious tragic motif (cf. Eur. HF 1089ff., Orestes 211ff., presumably Agaue’s recovery of her senses in Bacchae), is of a piece with this concern with the literary history of Athens. Such a historical sense is very familiar in third-century literature and will be seen to be very important to Catullus also (cf. below). A comparison between Attis and Hylas, another beautiful Greek youth and eromenos destined never to return home but to become the object of Asian cult, may also be productive. Both are stories of ‘stunted’ development, of young men caught forever on the edge of manhood.152 Catullus may indeed echo Theocritus’ version of the Hylas poem in vv. 85–6, where the goddess’ lion behaves like the human lion, Heracles, after hearing Hylas’ despairing cry (Theocr. 13.64–5). One further motif apparently shared by Catullus 63 with the Hylas narratives of Theocritus and Apollonius is of some interest. The disappearance of Attis’ companions from the poem after v. 39 has long been thought problematic, and various explanations have been proposed. The Hylas analogy, however, to say nothing of 149

150

151 152

Ovid’s Attis, Fasti 4.223–46, is a temple servant who breaks an oath of chastity to the god (cf. Daphnis), and is punished with madness and castration. For the myths of Attis cf. H. Hepding, Attis, seine Mythen und sein Kult (Giessen 1903), M. J. Vermaseren, Cybele and Attis: the Myth and the Cult (London 1977), id. LIMC s.v. Attis, G. Thomas, ‘Magna Mater and Attis’ ANRW ii.17.3 (1984) 1500–35, P. Borgeaud, ‘L’écriture d’Attis: le récit dans l’histoire’ in C. Calame (ed.), Métamorphoses du mythe en Grèce antique (Geneva 1988) 87–103, B.-M. Näsström, The Abhorrence of Love. Studies in Rituals and Mystic Aspects in Catullus’ Poem of Attis (Uppsala 1989), L. E. Roller, ‘Attis on Greek Votive Monuments. Greek God or Phrygian?’ Hesperia 63 (1994) 245–62. Cf. Perutelli (1996) 255. For Catullus’ interest in playing with Greek -t- and -th- cf. 64.28–9, Thetis . . . Tethys. W. S. Allen, Vox Graeca, (3rd ed., Cambridge 1987) 23–4 finds no ‘clear evidence’ for the fricative pronunciation of before first-century ad Pompeii. It could, of course, be argued that ‘Attis’ was a name adopted only after the castration, so that when he boarded the ship, he was actually called something else. Cf. e.g. R. Parker, Athenian Religion (Oxford 1996) 188–93, J. D. Mikalson, Religion in Hellenistic Athens (Berkeley 1998) 142–3, 203–4. Approaching the subject from a completely different direction, Marilyn Skinner notes that ‘Poem 63 is preoccupied with the personal and social consequences of an aborted ephebic transition’ (Helios 20 (1993) 113).

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Ariadne,153 suggests that they have sailed away without Attis; he has been abandoned to live out his life as the famula of the god.154 Hylas was, of course, one of the Argonauts who founded rites in honour of the Great Mother on Mt Dindymon near Kyzikos;155 the setting of Catullus 63 – insofar as it can be determined – is far closer to that Mt Dindymon than to the like-named mountain near Pessinos in eastern Phrygia with which the Attis is usually associated, and from where the cult of the Magna Mater was, at least according to Livy (29.11.7), introduced to Rome.156 The story of the Argonauts and the Great Mother is older than Apollonius,157 but it is told at length in the first book of the Argonautica, immediately before the Hylas episode (1.1078–1152, marked off as an ‘episode’ by ring composition); Apollonius’ telling, like Catullus’ Attis narrative, makes clear the links between the Dindymene Mother and Mt Ida in the Troad.158 The Apollonian narrative is in part an aetiology for the tambourines and other musical instruments associated with the worship of the Great Mother (Arg. 1.1134–9). Has Catullus then taken the Apollonian episode one step further by rescripting this worship of the Great Mother in rather harsher and modern terms? The Argonauts, or at least one of their number, become the original galli, ‘calling upon the Mother of Dindymon, mistress of all, the dweller in Phrygia’ (Arg. 1.1125–6), and a tale of piety rewarded by the gracious divinity with favourable signs, such as the wild animals (lions?) which fawn on the Argonauts like dogs and the winds which allow them to sail away (Arg. 1.1140–52), becomes a terrifying story of the cruelty of the god who sends a lion to attack Attis and keeps him on that foreign shore for the rest of his life. ‘Parody’ does not seem the right word for the relation between Catullus and Apollonius, but there should be little doubt that the Catullan narrative depends upon its sense of difference from a classic, authorising version. The dislocations of the poem, about which critics complain, are central to its meaning. 153 154 155 156 157 158

Cf. below, pp. 482–3. Wiseman (1985) 200 associates the ‘disappearance’ of the others with the theatrical nature of the performance: it would be clear to ‘an audience’ that they had left the stage to the principal character. Cf. Hdt. 4.76, Strabo 12.8.11, F. W. Hasluck, Cyzicus (Cambridge 1910) 214–22. For the variant versions and modern discussions cf. E. Gruen, Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy (Leiden 1990) 5–33. Cf. Neanthes of Cyzicus, FGrHist 84 F39, if that fragment is rightly given to the older Neanthes (cf. FGrHist Iic, p. 144); it is worth noting that Neanthes also discussed the mystic story of Attis. Some elements of the narrative seem to have appeared also in Euphorion (cf. fr. 145 Powell), whose interest in Argonautic stories of the Propontis is well attested (cf. frs. 7, 79–84 Powell); it is a great pity not to know more. On the episode in Apollonius cf. Vian I 35–6, M. Williams, ‘The Cyzicus episode . . .’ in C. Deroux (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History (Brussels 1997) viii 5–28.

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Scholars have found various Apollonian reworkings in Poem 63, some more convincing than others.159 There may be something to be said for linking vv. 39–40 with Arg. 1.519–20,160 for the beginning of the expedition would then be evoked and reversed as the beginning of Attis’ horrible awakening. Suggestive also is the similarity between v. 59 and Medea’s bitter words at Arg. 4.361–3,161 for Attis and Medea share more than just parallel (though opposite) journeys; both abandon their homes like runaway slaves (vv. 51–2, Arg. 4.35–40). The significance of each of these similarities and their cumulative weight may be debated. One detail, however, may be particularly important. Attis travels celeri rate (v. 1); is of course the standard epithet for a ship,162 but the Argo was etymologised as, inter alia, ‘the swift (& ) ship’, and Catullus himself plainly plays with this etymology in the opening verses of Poem 64.163 In his excellent study of the opening of 64, Richard Thomas suggests that this etymology, which is first attested in Diodorus Siculus 4.41.3, goes back to Callimachus’ Argonautic episode in the Aitia, but he concludes that ‘for Apollonius the derivation of the name is quite clear; it is naturally taken from the ship’s builder [Argos]’.164 Apollonius calls attention often enough, however, to the Argo’s swiftness to suggest that he too is conscious of this association, but like so many features of Poem 63, this one directs our attention to Poem 64. The similarities between the abandonment of Ariadne and the plight of Attis have long attracted notice, and there have been many helpful readings which have sought to integrate both of these poems within the recurrent concerns of all the ‘longer’ poems.165 Verbal similarities in describing seatravel,166 and the similar emotional turmoil of both characters as they gaze out over the sea (note esp. 63.47 ∼ 64.97, the emotional ‘waves’ on which both are tossed) are perhaps less important than the strategy which informs the rhetoric of both characters, behind whom stands the Medea of the 159 160 162

163

164 165 166

That v. 36 reworks Arg. 3.616 (so, e.g. P. Fedeli, GIF 29 (1977) 44) seems to me very uncertain. 161 Cf. e.g. P. Fedeli, RFIC 106 (1978) 49. Cf. e.g. Fedeli (previous note) 45. Cf. Kroll ad loc. That literary heritage is crucial to its use at Call. Epigr. 17.1, where it is combined with an allusion to the opening of Euripides’ Medea to contrast ‘a distant heroic age . . . with the sad present’ (Hunter (1992a) 120). Cf. R. Thomas, ‘Catullus and the polemics of poetic reference (Poem 64.1–18)’ AJP 103 (1982) 144– 64, pp. 150–4. For this etymology cf. Diod. Sic. 4.41.3, R. Maltby, A Lexicon of Latin Etymologies (Leeds 1991) s.v. Argo, P. Dräger, Argo Pasimelovsa (Stuttgart 1993) 21. Perutelli (1996) 255 draws the comparison between Attis and the Argonauts, but does not suggest etymological allusion. This etymology is attested as early as Pherecydes, FGrHist 3 F106; cf. Vian, Note complémentaire to 1.112. Cf. e.g. G. N. Sandy, ‘Catullus 63 and the theme of marriage’ AJP 92 (1971) 185–95. Cf. 63.1 ∼ 64.121, 63.40ff. ∼ 64.52ff.

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fourth book of Apollonius’ Argonautica; so, too, Bacchus’ retinue at 64.251– 64 also looks very like the troop of galli in Poem 63.167 Ariadne’s furor is the furor of love (64.54, 94),168 but as she rages inops, ardens, amenti caeca furore (64.197), it is hard not to recall Attis, whose furor has put an end to all love. Even her offer to serve as Theseus’ famula (64.158–63) seems to find its echo in the (?) semi-technical language of the Cybele cult (63.68, 90). Are there larger patterns lying behind these similarities? Apollonius’ Argonautica is a crucial model text for both the framing narrative (‘Peleus and Thetis’) and the ekphrasis (‘Ariadne’) of Catullus 64,169 though Catullus notoriously offers a different mythological chronology than does the Greek poet (cf. 64.19–21). The proem to Catullus’ poem closes with an elaborate rewriting of the hymnic close of the Argonautica (Arg. 4.1773–6 ∼ Cat. 64.22–24) to mark the authorising text from which the Latin poem takes its point of departure; for the close of his poem, Catullus preferred the rather darker tones of Aratus’ tale of the departure of Dik¯e from the earth.170 The Latin ‘epyllion’ indeed presents itself in many ways as a recreation of the high Greek poetry of the third century. The carefully mapped and interlocking structures and the repeated dicuntur (2), perhibent olim (76), perhibent (124), ferunt olim (212) are markers of poetic ancestry which confer a classicising authority upon Catullus’ poem, at the same time as they mark it as secondary. The opening dicuntur in fact picks up a technique from the proem of the Argonautica itself (1.22–7, cf. 123, 154, 172, 217 etc.). Poem 63 lacks any such markers, and its narrative seems to float free of any locking in time. Although the in medias res opening without any ‘once upon a time’, ‘the story is that . . .’ has good Hellenistic parallels, the contrast with Poem 64 is very sharp here. We might, loosely, say that Poem 63 lacks the formal markers of literary heritage in which 64 abounds; the same is very obviously true of Poem 63’s galliambics in contrast to the hexameters of Poem 64. Galliambi are catalectic Ionic tetrameters and therefore very open to dactylic words and patterns which might otherwise find their way into hexameters; could they in fact be constructed as hexameters ‘gone wrong’, particularly when they are used for a short narrative (Catullus 63) 167 168 169

170

The alliteration of 64.261–2 seems an almost inevitable part of such descriptions, cf. 63.9–11, Lucr. 2.618, Varro, Eumenides fr. 132 Astbury. The latter instance is perhaps suggested by . in the model passage at Arg. 4.449. Cf. e.g. R. Avallone, ‘Catullo e Apollonio Rodio’ Antiquitas 8.3/4 (1953) 8–79, R. J. Clare, ‘Catullus 64 and the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius: allusion and exemplarity’ PCPS 42 (1996) 60–88. The idea that Poem 64 is, in essence, a translation from the Greek was largely laid to rest by G. Perrotta, ‘Il carme 64 di Catullo e i suol pretesi originali ellenistic’ Athenaeum 9 (1931) 177–222, 371–409; further bibliography in E. Lefèvre, ‘Alexandrinisches und Catullisches im Peleus-Epos (64)’ Hermes 128 (2000) 181–201. Cf. above, pp. 239–41.

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which would otherwise, in both Greek and Roman traditions, find its most natural expression in hexameters? There is, it must be admitted, no ancient support for such a suggestion. The most obvious example of the hexameter ‘gone wrong’ is in fact the Sotadean, another stichic ionic verse, which is used by a gallos in a fragment of a novel, and into which Sotades ‘translated’ the Iliad;171 the ‘translation’ of hexameters into Sotadeans seems indeed to have been something of a regular exercise.172 In quoting an example of such a transposition, Demetrius (On Style 189) notes that the verse ‘seems to have metamorphosed, like the stories about men changing into women’, or into galli, we might add. Quintilian (9.4.6), however, links Sotadeans and galliambics as both verses characterised by short syllables and a lack of uis, for which lasciuia has been substituted; such metres are fragosa atque interrupta, or, as Demetrius puts it, #% .% (On Style 189). It is true that galliambics seem to us more predictable than the ‘protean’ Sotadean,173 but in their soft female rapidity and collocation of short syllables, both metres offer a provoking challenge to the stately and manly gait of the hexameter (note esp. citato . . . pede, 63.2); the long compounds of Poem 63 would certainly have been felt by the critics as praemolle (cf. Quintilian 9.4.65). In both metre and subject, then, the relationship between Poems 63 and 64 seems not unlike that between 63 and the Argonautica of Apollonius: to rephrase what was recently asserted: ‘“Parody” does not seem the right word for the relation between Catullus 63 and Catullus 64, but there should be little doubt that Catullus 63 depends upon its sense of difference from a classic, authorising version [i.e. Catullus 64]. The dislocations of Catullus 63, about which critics complain, are central to its meaning.’ Put another way, the galliambic lamentations of the notha mulier are to be interpreted as a secondary diversion (intended to be understood as such) from the authorising pattern of hexameter female complaint. Whereas the ekphrastic narrative of Catullus 64 swirls around an act of forgetting, Attis’ tragedy lies in his all too sharp memory.174 In his important discussion of Catullus 63, Otto Weinreich175 noted that an alternative to Wilamowitz’s assertion of a Callimachean model for 171

172 173 174

175

Cf. S. A. Stephens and J. J. Winkler, Ancient Greek Novels, The Fragments (Princeton 1995) 368–71. For a collection of the evidence for Sotadeans cf. I. H. M. Hendriks, P. J. Parsons, and K. A. Worp, ZPE 41 (1981) 76–7, M. Bettini, ‘A proposito dei versi sotadei, greci e romani’ MD 9 (1982) 59–105. Cf. Quintilian 9.4.90. The adjective comes from West (1982) 145. A variation of this view would be to see Poem 63 as a revision, not of Poem 64, but of Caecilius’ Magna Mater (cf. Cat. 35), which was, very likely, a hexameter ‘epyllion’; we know, however, nothing of this poet or his poem (if indeed it was his, cf. G. G. Biondi, ‘Il carme 35 di Catullo’ MD 41 (1998) 35–69). ‘Catulls Attisgedicht’, most conveniently available in R. Heinze (ed.), Catull (Darmstadt 1975) 325–59. The relevant pages are 332–5.

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Catullus 63 would be a model in later Alexandrian ‘lyric’, i.e. in postCallimachean poetry. He rightly noted that Poem 63 has very little in the way of aetiology, doctrina, myth etc. – that is, very little of what are usually considered the hallmarks of Callimachean poetry. A glance at, say, Callimachus frs. 228–9 (the stichic ‘lyrics’), to say nothing of Catullus 66, will, I think, confirm Weinreich’s observation.176 More than one explanation for this fact, if fact it is, may be entertained, but Weinreich’s move towards the Greek poetry of, say, the second century bc is suggestive. Kroll associated Catullus 63 with the pantomime (using the term very loosely), and more recently J. K. Newman has seen Catullus 63 ‘as a quasiscript for . . . a virtuoso’;177 Newman seems certainly correct in noting that the poem ‘derives its power from its urge towards the theatrical, the histrionic, even the hysterical’.178 Such an urge, particularly combined with a relatively simple thematic style, does indeed recall what little we know of some Greek poetry of the second, rather than the third, century, whether that be the lyrics of the Fragmentum Grenfellianum or the hexameters of Bion’s Epitaphios Adonidos.179 Here, too, it is dramatised pathos, a ‘spiccata mimicità’,180 which is at the centre of poetic interest, as though – a point which has often been made – the melodramatic element in late Euripides had finally gained the upper hand. Though our knowledge of the ‘performance culture’ in the Greek world of the second and first centuries bc is woefully inadequate, we can just about glimpse how this poetry deconstructs and simplifies the formal structures and genres of what has come to be viewed as a ‘classicising’ Hellenistic poetry. Whatever Greek poetry lies behind the Attis poem, Catullus reconstructs a movement within Greek literary history, from the now ‘classical’ poetry of third-century Alexandria to the freer, and more ‘popular’, forms which followed and were parasitic upon the high poetry of the Alexandrian e´lite. Such an exercise in historical reconstruction would indeed have been at home in Alexandria itself, and must be seen as part of Catullus’ imaginative engagement with, and mim¯esis of, Greek literary history and the Hellenistic aesthetic. 176 177 178 179 180

There is, of course, much that could be said about the relation between Poems 63 and 66 within the Catullan corpus, cf. e.g. G. W. Most, Philologus 125 (1981) 119. Newman (1990) 346. ibid. 366; cf. also Morisi (1999) 30–4. Bion’s date is, of course, uncertain (‘sometime between the mid-second and mid-first century bc, probably in the earlier part of this period’, Reed (1997) 2–3), but the point is unaffected. Fantuzzi (1985) 155.

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