Allusion, Authority, and Truth: Critical Perspectives on Greek Poetic and Rhetorical Praxis 9783110245400, 9783110245394

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Allusion, Authority, and Truth

Trends in Classics – Supplementary Volumes Edited by Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos Scientific Committee Alberto Bernabé · Margarethe Billerbeck · Claude Calame Philip R. Hardie · Stephen J. Harrison · Stephen Hinds Richard Hunter · Christina Kraus · Giuseppe Mastromarco Gregory Nagy · Theodore D. Papanghelis · Giusto Picone Kurt Raaflaub · Bernhard Zimmermann

Volume 7

De Gruyter

Allusion, Authority, and Truth Critical Perspectives on Greek Poetic and Rhetorical Praxis

Edited by

Phillip Mitsis Christos Tsagalis

De Gruyter

ISBN 978-3-11-024539-4 e-ISBN 978-3-11-024540-0 ISSN 1868-4785 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Allusion, authority, and truth : critical perspectives on Greek poetic and rhetorical praxis / edited by Phillip Mitsis, Christos Tsagalis. p. cm. -- (Trends in classics. Supplementary volumes ; v. 7) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-024539-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-3-11-024540-0 (ebk.) 1. Greek poetry--History and criticism. 2. Allusions in literature. 3. Rhetoric, Ancient. I. Mitsis, Phillip II.Tsagalis, Christos. PA3095.A55 2010 881'.0109--dc22 2010034958

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. © 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York Typesetting: Michael Peschke, Berlin Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ∞ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Preface This volume of papers by fellow scholars and students of Pietro Pucci is a collective act of admiration, friendship, and gratitude. It represents, of course, only a small fraction of the many scholars worldwide who have been touched by the force of his scholarship and the generosity of his intellect and person, and as such, it can only pretend to address a few of the many critical questions that Pucci has been instrumental in raising in his remarkable career. As is well known, Pietro Pucci has been among the handful of key figures who have transformed the study of archaic and classical Greek texts over the past several decades from what was a dominant philological approach, and if there is no longer any common consensus about how we are to approach the powerful riddles that these works confront us with, it is in large part because of the scholars who along with Pucci have been exploring the possibilities and limits of these conflicting critical discourses. Traveling between Ithaca, Paris, and Rome, Pucci has been at the center of an international conversation that has been opening new critical perspectives from which to view the cultural contexts, the ethical and religious aspirations, and the nature of the oral and written representations formulated by the Greeks as they attempted to fathom their own difficult social and individual protocols. By invoking notions of allusion, authority, and truth in our title, we have hoped to signal the centrality in this international conversation of Pucci’s characteristically brilliant and innovative explorations into key aspects of the divine voice created by the human poets to give expression to the deepest conundrums of life and death. Of course, this captures only a fraction of the significant and powerful insights that Pucci has made in a body of scholarship that itself has explored many forms, including translation, commentaries, critical studies, and works for a wider public. As well as taking on many guises, Pucci’s work appears in a variety of languages and that has allowed him not only to speak to, but also to unite and energize a broad international community of scholars. The fact that the language of this volume is only English perhaps fails to capture the particular nuances and richness of those individual conversations, but we would be remiss if we did not thank Jeannine Routier-Pucci and her gifted translation team of Loredana Comparone, Elizabeth Rawlings, Susan Tarrow, and Aaron Tate for their devotion and care in helping to make possible what is perhaps an artificial, but we

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hope, stimulating conversation among Pucci’s French, Italian, British, Greek, and American interlocutors. By the same token, we could hardly fail to mention that other gifted team, of course, Pietro and Jeannine. Those who have had the good fortune to spend time with them either as students, friends, or colleagues know how difficult it would be to imagine finding any better company in which to partake of the life of the mind, bask in marvelous and seemingly unending hospitality, and marvel at the possibilities of mutual wit, good cheer, and love.

Table of Contents Preface ...........................................................................................

v

Introduction ................................................................................... 1 EPIC AND LYRIC 1. The Authority of Orpheus, Poet and Bard: Between Tradition and Written Practice (C. Calame) ............. 2. Remembering the Gastēr (E. Bakker) ...................................... 3. Achilles Polytropos and Odysseus as Suitor: Iliad 9.307-429 (P. Mitsis) ....................................................... 4. Hector’s Inaction (Iliad 5.471-492) (Ph. Rousseau) ................. 5. Epic Space Revisited: Narrative and Intertext in the Episode between Diomedes and Glaucus (Il. 6.119-236) (C. Tsagalis) .................................................... 6. Idealism in the Odyssey and the Meaning of mounos in Odyssey 16 (S. Goldhill) ......................................................... 7. Reading the Epic Past: The Iliad on Heroic Epic (D. Turkeltaub) ..................................................................... 8. The Meaning of homoios (ὁμοῖος) in Theogony 27 and Elsewhere (G. Nagy) ....................................................... 9. Hesiod, Th. 117 and 128: Formula and the Text’s Temporality (P. Judet de La Combe) ..................................... 10. Pylades and Orestes in Pindar’s Eleventh Pythian: The Uses of Friendship (T. Hubbard) ....................................

13 37 51 77

87 115 129 153 169 187

DRAMA 1. Aeschylus, Suppliants 112-150 (V. Citti) ................................. 203 2. Sons of the Shield: Paternal Arms in Epic and Tragedy (B. Goff) ................................................................................ 219 3. Echoes from Mount Cithaeron (O. Taplin) ............................ 235

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4. Notes on Tragic Rhetoric in Euripides’ Hecuba (J. Bollack) ............................................................................ 5. The Lady Vanishes: Helen and Her Phantom in Euripidean Drama (F. Zeitlin) ................................................ 6. “A Song to Match my Song”: Lyric Doubling in Euripides’ Helen (A.L. Ford) ...................... 7. Tyrants and Flatterers: Kolakeia in Aristophanes’ Knights and Wasps (A.T. Edwards) ...................................................................... 8. Do Not Sit near Socrates (Aristophanes’ Frogs, 1482-1499) (St. Jedrkiewicz) .................................................................... 9. Veiled Venom: Comedy, Censorship and Figuration (G. Dobrov) ..........................................................................

249 263 283

303 339 359

PROSE 1. Shifting Paradigms: Mimēsis in Isocrates (L. Collins Edwards) .............................................................. 377 2. Polybius and Daniel: Two Universal Histories, or What Does It Mean To Be Contemporary? (F. Hartog) .................. 401 Bibliography ................................................................................ 413 List of Contributors ..................................................................... 445 Publications by Pietro Pucci ........................................................ 451 General Index .............................................................................. 457

Introduction All the contributors have taken as their point of departure critical issues that have been at the center of Pietro Pucci’s scholarly interests and writings, especially how conceptions of allusion, authority, and truth helped to shape the poetical and rhetorical practices of our ancient Greek texts. The volume begins with Claude Calame’s far-ranging study of that preeminent singer of the Greek tradition, Orpheus. Beginning with the question of how the songs of poets gain their authority and are able to project their truths, Calame proceeds to examine a wide array of textual and iconographic evidence surrounding the practices of ancient Orphism. He deftly shows the multiform ways and contrivances by which the “incantorial authority” of Orpheus’ singing voice is projected to orphic initiates and how it is able to be transferred to orphic written texts whose authority is, in turn, further supported by a practice of written commentaries. Calame’s arguments about the nature of Orphic song and its relation to writing raise a fascinating set of critical questions that also confront scholars of ancient epic. At the same time, however, these questions of poetic authority become further complicated in the context of the intertextual, ideological, and metapoetical rivalries staged in the Iliad, Odyssey, and Hesiod. What Hubbard in his paper describes as the “semionarrative” of the archaic poets is weaved from a complex association of heroes, cults, places, political centers, and rival poetic voices, each with their own ethical, religious, and generational aspirations. The authors of the next set of papers on Homer, Hesiod, and Pindar have all taken on some of the most difficult problems or texts in the archaic corpus. While not always agreeing either in their methodologies or in their results, they nonetheless have created an interesting commonality by keeping in mind, if not always following, many of Pucci’s own theoretical gestures and questions about the nature of ancient poetic praxis. The first two of these papers take as their starting point questions about the uses of allusion in epic texts. Egbert Bakker begins with an intriguing discussion of the intertextual and metapoetic aspects of Odysseus’ return and slaughter of the suitors. Focusing on the metapoetic signification of Odysseus’ gastēr, another theme that has become closely identified with Pucci’s reading of the Odyssey, he argues that there are Iliadic cross-references that distinctively mark the Odyssey’s representation of the slaughter of the suitors. In a way that recalls Achilles’ own murderous anger, Odysseus’ gastēr is the principle driving him on in this

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Introduction

slaughter. It also impels him to the completion of his nostos. At a metapoetic level, Odysseus’ return functions as his own return to epic out of the anonymity and disconnectedness that he has been forced to endure. Phillip Mitsis’ paper also considers Odysseus’ slaughter of the suitors in an intertextual context, and following Pucci’s claim that the epic texts engage in a mutual dialogue, he argues that embedded in the language of Achilles’ famous response to Odysseus in Iliad 9 is the implication that Odysseus has come with gifts in the position of a suitor and is thus, in Achilles’ eyes, deserving of death. Mitsis links these intertextual threats to the wish Achilles secretly expresses to Thetis in Iliad 1 for the death of his fellow Greeks. He concludes by questioning the trustworthiness of Achilles’ speech in the light of this wish and sees a blurring of the two epic protagonists’ identities to the extent that he finds some justice in Plato’s claim that Achilles too is polytropos. The next pair of papers carefully analyze two difficult passages that highlight the Iliad’s complex representations of a prominent, but troubling, Lycian presence at Troy. Philippe Rousseau takes as his focus Sarpedon’s ferocious rebuke to Hector in Iliad 5 and finds that the interpretations of both analyst and oralist critics fail to explain the narrative gaps one finds surrounding his rebuke. They fail as well to capture the intricate textual protocols suggesting that Hector did not come to his decision to fight without some hesitation. Perhaps, because of his putative identification with another Lycian, Pandarus, the archer who was responsible for violating the truce that might have saved Troy, Sarpedon provokes Hector to assume responsibility for the breaking of the truce and to enter into a battle whose divine destiny, as Hector himself recognizes, is likely to continually overwhelm mortal efforts. Christos Tsagalis argues that space is a crucial factor for the interpretation of the episode of Diomedes and Glaucus. Although the emphasis given by both heroes on genealogical catalogue-based pedigrees, abstract thought in the form of the vivid imagery of the leaves, and extended analepses reflects a strong preoccupation with time, the entire scene is inscribed on an almost palimpsestic notion of space. The story space designating the setting where the scene will take place, the embedded story space referring to various locations in both Greece and Asia Minor, and the historical space comprising several Foucaultian heterotopias (real places effectuating the interaction between space and time, like the function of the palace in the xenia scenes and the countryside symbolizing danger) create a critical juncture that brings into focus the interrelation between space and time. Spatial patterns are intricately interwoven with various temporal registers creating a topochronic totum, a whole that narrativizes space, turning it into a generator of time within this episode. Tsagalis argues that, if the Iliad is seen as



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an epic of multiple frontiers and polarities, then we can see how in the Diomedes and Glaucus episode the “timing of space” (topographical and historical) is transformed into a “spacing of time”, making possible the collapse or, at least, the transgression of borders, and the friendly encounter of enemies in the battlefield. The next two papers elaborate and explore, in the context of the Greek oikos, how ancient texts construct fathers and, in turn, their relations with sons. Simon Goldhill begins with an analysis of the word μούνωσε and shows how it has a marked use in Homeric epic to describe one who is alone and in danger. By following out the implications of its striking use by Telemachus in Odyssey 16 to declare that he is a single son from a line of single fathers, Goldhill argues that the Odyssey projects an idealized normative vision of the Greek household in which there is a generational descent of single males capable of defending their household. At the same time, to the extent that μούνωσε marks individuals in danger, the text of the Odyssey acknowledges the precariousness of such an ideological vision. Daniel Turkeltaub takes up these questions about the relations of fathers and sons and places them in an interesting and novel metapoetic context in the Iliad. He analyzes the ways in which the poem constructs its own epic memories in a past in which one feels the palpable tensions and generational competition produced between sons and fathers. By focusing on the charged set of exchanges between Agamemnon, Diomedes, and Sthenelus at Iliad 4.364418, he is able to initiate a wide-ranging and fascinating discussion about the attractions and dangers presented to the Iliad’s heroes by their fathers’ and their father’s actions in an epic past. He then draws out the metapoetic consequences of the Iliad’s construction of its own past by arguing that its poet too is inevitably in a position parallel to the one that Hesiod attributes to himself in the Theogony. Recalling Pucci’s influential analysis, Turkeltaub suggests that such a poet can only sing with the Muses lies that look like truths. Gregory Nagy takes on the scholarly controversies that have surrounded the interpretation of these lines of Hesiod (Theogony 26-28) and the precise meaning of ὁμοῖος. After first examining its Indo-European roots, he then goes on to carefully analyze a wide-ranging set of examples in epic texts in order to show the ways that ὁμοῖος is used to make comparisons in the form of similes; what unites all these particular epic instances of ὁμοῖος, he concludes, is that they are primarily visual. In opposition to those who have claimed that ὁμοῖος means “equivalent” or “identical”, Nagy agrees with Pucci about the basic meaning of this passage that has become so crucial for our understanding of the poetics of

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Introduction

ancient Greek epic. Hesiod, Nagy argues, only claims for himself the ability to sing false things that look like real things. When juxtaposed against Calame’s arguments about the traditions of poetic authority in Orphism, we can see the kinds of tensions and difficulties that human poets faced in attempting to sing with the Muses. Pierre Judet de La Combe poses a further set of probing theoretical questions about the nature of archaic poetics in addressing what some have taken to be a stark incompatibility between Hesiod’s assertion at Theogony 117 that the Earth “is the ever immovable seat of all the immortals” and his attribution of the same expression a few moments later (128) to Sky, which he says is begotten by Earth. He argues that this seeming incongruity, rather than being merely an occasion for philological athetēsis, is, among other things, a complex product of an intertextual conversation. Hesiod is not merely content to construct a theocosmogonical representation, but he also subtly indicates how he finds the Homeric formulation problematic, and he then attempts to reinterpret it. In the final paper of this section, Thomas Hubbard turns to a difficult and long-standing problem in the understanding of Pythian 11. Pindar’s mythical exemplum of the friendship of Orestes and Pylades seems particularly ill-suited for praising the victor’s family and, as a consequence, has mostly occasioned critical perplexity. It also raises difficult political questions because Pindar places Agamemnon’s palace in Sparta. Hubbard postulates two audiences for the poem, a Theban one and a second composed of Spartan friends. This helps to clarify the relevance to Pindar’s encomiastic program of this myth of Spartan friendship since it provides a compelling perspective from which to begin to understand the complexity of the associations that go into forming Pindar’s poetic “semionarrative.” In turning to drama, we begin with a paper by Vittorio Citti who is preparing a new edition of Aeschylus’ Suppliants. His paper offers a practicum to demonstrate the difficulties and critical gaps inherent in any of our attempts to even begin to read these texts. Taking a notoriously problematic passage from the play’s opening section, Citti shows how one assesses and organizes all the conflicting linguistic probabilities and blind alleys that ultimately come to comprise, in this case, an invocation of the gods by the chorus of suppliants. While Citti’s paper serves as a reminder about the basic difficulties that are always lurking in any of our attempts to make sense of these texts, Barbara Goff takes on the correspondingly difficult question of how we are to understand the cultural and poetic transitions between



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epic and drama. She touches on many of the questions raised by Goldhill and Turkeltaub about the relations of fathers and sons in epic by focusing on the specific cultural poetics underlying the transmittal of family weapons. She traces how Achilles’ first set of arms, for example, descends from his father, Peleus, who, in turn, had received them from the deities as a token of his excellence. By giving his son these divine arms, Peleus hopes to transmit as well his own particular marks of excellence. Taking Iliad 17.194-197 as a paradigm, she reads other moments when such transmissions are at stake. The arms of Odysseus’ family, for instance, give rise, in her view, to scenes of Oedipal tension and conflict. In Ajax and Philoctetes, the contested transmission of Achilles’ arms serves to detract from paternal identity, while the shield of Hector in Trojan Women, she argues, would seem to feminize and undermine heroic paternity. In effect, Goff shows the ways by which the often idealized but precarious prospects of male generational succession in epic are overturned in drama, perhaps, we might add, giving further resonance to Pucci’s claim that the Odyssey itself shows an awareness that the heroic age has ended and that the transmittal of heroic excellence has been truncated with the completion of Odysseus’ nostos. Oliver Taplin’s paper focuses on a play whose difficult riddles and ending have been at the center of both his own and of Pucci’s writings. He attempts to think about the role that Mount Cithaeron plays in Sophocles’ various representations of Oedipus by charting its mental, physical, historical, and mythographic geography. Taplin’s comprehensive approach helps to bring out the mountain's many intertwined textual resonances, and especially its problematic associations, for an Athenian audience at any rate, with Thebes. Taplin also reopens the enigma of the play’s “dissatisfying” ending and wonders whether Creon’s instructions to Oedipus to re-enter the palace are sufficient to drown out the echoes of Mount Cithaeron that linger from Tiresias’ earlier prediction to Oedipus that he will soon be filling the mountain with his screams. Taplin concludes by holding up for examination some tantalizing parallel questions about the possibilities of a Theban presence in Euripides’ Antiope. With the paper of Jean Bollack, we turn to three connected discussions of Euripides and the rhetorical and metaphysical goals of his tragic art. Employing a powerful hermeneutic to uncover the contours of the tragic rhetoric of Hecuba and Polyxena, Bollack engages in a reading of the Hecuba that both restores to the drama many difficult expressions that have been puzzling to critics, but that also seeks to plumb the depths of the ontological dilemmas facing its captive women. Bollack finds the Odysseus of the play to be of superior political intelligence and skill,

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Introduction

hence reads him more as a figure of the Iliad than of the Odyssey. Odysseus’ political realism, however, offers both captives only a relentless logic of death and nothingness that Polyxena alone chooses to follow out, hoping in this way, it seems, to overcome her objectively powerless situation by her subjective power of freedom. For her own part, Hecuba refuses this vision of, as it were, the Nietzschean stoic gladiator reveling in a power to face nothingness. Bollack defends as well the Herald’s narration of her death against the athetizers, by arguing that it coheres precisely with Euripides’ rhetorical goals and his mechanisms for presenting these characters’ existential dilemmas. Unlike Pucci, however, who often detects in Euripides a powerful, though unstable, attempt to offer metaphysical solace through song, Bollack finds in these representations of characters’ attempts to sublimate nothingness mostly a rhetorical game that impotently jostles against the absurd. Of course, trying to delineate the nature of this “game” leads us to some of the deepest strata, and hence most intractable controversies about the nature and goals of tragic representation. Froma Zeitlin, for her part, argues that Euripides’ Helen can be enlisted to help us gain some of our most profound glimpses into these concerns as well as into the modes of operation of the Greek tragic theater. Examining a series of passages, including Iliad 5.449 ff., where Apollo fashions an eidōlon of Aeneas—a difficult moment in the text given a detailed and elegant reading by Philippe Rousseau—Zeitlin isolates the precise characteristics and connotations of what was to become an almost Euripidean fixation—the doubling of figures in ways that problematize the very nature of our perceptual and cognitive faculties and create seemingly insoluble ethical dilemmas. Zeitlin charts the dazzling array of effects that Euripides achieves with his obsessive gemination in the Helen and gives a concentrated and powerful reading of the play’s metapoetic mechanisms and their effects. Andrew Ford’s argument, on the other hand, returns us to notions of metaphysical solace by focusing on the lyrics of Euripides’ Helen to bring out a musical theme that pulses through the play. Beginning with a close reading of the parodos, he seeks to show that the songs of the play propose a model for the origin of song, tracing it to the spontaneous cries of lamenting women. Euripides’ diction and imagery is shown in this context to portray lament as a primal, inarticulate outburst that is transformed by being “doubled” in various ways—metrically, musically, and verbally—with the result that what begins as a solitary attempt to express incurable grief is transformed into an archetypal musical art, the maidens’ chorus. Ford thus reads this story of origins in the light of Pucci’s well-known deconstructive reading of the Helen’s aesthetics.



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From tragic solace we turn to the healing laughter, artful venom, and political aspirations of Aristophanic comedy. Pucci’s own engagement with Aristophanes goes back half a century to his earliest publications on the Clouds and Frogs and continues apace, for instance, as in his recent paper in honor of Froma Zeitlin (2007). All three papers, two of them by his students, attempt to account for the particular political inflections of comedy both in the context of the so-called Greek enlightenment, but also with an eye toward the increasingly radical democratic changes affecting Athenian political life. Anthony Edwards examines the changing political notions of kolakeia under the heightened political tensions of the 420s and traces its emergence as a term of abuse. He argues that a new politics of kolakeia arises in order to chastise the Athenian dēmos for failing in its role as sovereign and to decry its subservience to self-seeking politicians rather than to the kaloikagathoi of old. The deceitful language of kolakeia itself, however, Edwards argues, destabilizes even the discourse of Aristophanes. Despite his gambit in the parabasis of the Acharnians, Aristophanes fails to attain the privileged ethical position reserved by Thucydides for Pericles since, in the Knights and Wasps the operations of kolakeia and apatē ironically undermine his own stance in attacking the politics of kolakeia. Stefano Jedrkiewicz uses the chorus’ unexpected claim at Frogs 1491-1492 that “it is not stylish to sit next to Socrates and chatter” to further explore Aristophanes’ political goals and to stage a larger debate between comedy and Plato about the nature and possibility of collective discourse and action. Comedy, Aristophanes implies, achieves its most farreaching effects by sparking collective discussion on any ideologically or politically relevant matter. Such democratic political discourse would be destroyed should Athenian citizens sit near Socrates and withdraw their own individual contributions from the enlarged communication circuit that maintains the political health of the polis. To sit and chatter with Socrates, in the end, is to choose solipsistic philosophical isolation over the forms of communal discourse that have been traditionally enabled by the public institution of comedy. For Gregory Dobrov, Borges’ famous aphorism that censorship is the mother of all metaphor serves as his own guiding metaphor for the changing fortunes of aggressively political comedy at Athens. He argues that the survival of Aristophanes’ early work has left a misleading impression that venomous political comedy was the norm, rather than a temporary indulgence permitted by radical democracy. The broad deployment of figuration in the service of politically motivated attack, he argues, coincided with Aristophanes’ and Eupolis’ entrance into the competitive arena in the 420s. Finding support in peripatetic discussions of an “art of concealment”, Dobrov con-

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cludes that Aristophanes is part of an artistic phase for which strong motivation existed until a drastic shift in self-projection occurred on the part of playwrights themselves, thereby signaling the swift decline of political comedy. Our final two papers focus on Greek prose authors. Leslie Collins Edwards raises a series of probing questions, relevant to poets as well, of course, about the nature and origins of mimēsis in Isocrates. Pucci’s own work has continually gappled with the epistemological and metaphysical complexities of Platonic and Derridean mimēsis, but Collins Edwards here flags an important attempt to formulate an alternative form of mimēsis. Although she sees evidence that Isocrates was engaged in a hostile exchange with Plato over pedagogical approaches in the Antidosis, her examination of Against the Sophists reveals that the epistemological foundation for this conflict emerged within his own tradition, that is, in his inheritance from the sophists and Presocratics. She carefully isolates in Democritus major elements of Isocrates’ account of mimēsis, an account in which, interestingly, a model is not so much copied, but taken as inspiration for something analogous but different. To be found in Democritus as well, is Isocrates’ conception that this kind of innovative and productive mimēsis is the outcome of a particularly dexterous mind, not just the inevitable outcome of any routine perception, thought, or linguistic expression. Collins Edwards’ important argument serves to illustrate as well, how mimetic doctrines are grounded in their metaphysical roots, e.g. Plato with his metaphysical realism of universal and particular and Democritus with his reductive causal materialism. With the paper of François Hartog our volume comes full circle. Scholars of epic contend with the tensions that arise between local and pan-hellenic traditions, between accounts that seem to embody a poet’s urge to speak within those local traditions or to include those from without. With such worries we can see in embryonic form Hartog’s own fundamental questions about the nature of writing history. Bracketting for the moment Pucci’s well-known worries about the capacity of a text to speak either historically or universally, Hartog raises a fascinating conundrum about two historical texts that are contemporaneousʊthe universal histories of Polybius and Danielʊbut that neither speak from the same world nor tell the same history, so that paradoxially, their differences call into question what it means for anything either to be contemporary or universal. By juxtaposing Daniel’s apocalyptic version with Polybius’ notion of a universal history that tells a continuous causal story of a particular city from its earliest times to the present, Hartog



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locates a series of fundamental tensions and dilemmas facing anyone wishing to write down or, indeed, to sing the story of his origins, his deeds, or his impending death. New York–Thessaloniki, January 2010 Phillip Mitsis Christos Tsagalis

EPIC AND LYRIC

The Authority of Orpheus, Poet and Bard: Between Tradition and Written Practice Claude Calame École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris From Apollo there came the lyre-player, the father of song Orpheus of fair renown.

With these lines characteristic of his allusive and intricate style, Pindar inserts the poet Orpheus in the catalogue of heroes who, in the story recounted in the 4th Pythian, participate in the Argonauts’ expedition. These verses are in fact constructed in such a way that the reader does not know whether he should consider Apollo, the citharode and the chorēgos of the Muses, as the father of Orpheus or simply as the hero’s source of inspiration.1 Whatever the case may be, Pindar presents the hero, contemporary and companion of Heracles, of the Dioscuri and of Jason, as the father and thus as the initiator of song (aoidai); from as early as Homeric poetry this term designates, generally speaking, the song in epic diction. In doing so, Orpheus assumes the role of phorminx-player (phormigktas), a role that Apollo himself takes on, notably in Aristophanes.2 Visual arts fully confirm this tradition as well, since, dating to as early as the second quarter of the 6th century, the famous frieze of the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi inserts an Orpheus aoidos in a representation of the Argonauts’ expedition. Standing at the ship’s prow beside a corre-

1

2

Pind. Pyth. 4.176-177 = Orphica 899 I T/1006 T Bernabé, cf. sch. ad loc. (II, p. 139 Drachmann) = Orphica 899 II and III T Bernabé, as well as the attestations assembled as Orphica 985 T and 896 T Bernabé; see also infra note 8. Cf. [Apollod.] Library 1.2.3 = Orphica 901 II T Bernabé: Orpheus as the son of the Muse Calliope and Oiagros or Apollo; see also, for example, Ovid Met. 10.187, and 11.8 = Orphica 897 T and 1035 II T Bernabé: Orpheus as the son and prophet of Apollo (vatis Apollineus). Aristoph. Frogs 231.

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Claude Calame

sponding figure and holding in his hand what is probably a lyre, Orpheus appears to be singing.3

Orpheus as Poet-Musician and as Master of Initiation The figure of Orpheus as a singer traverses the entire poetic and iconographic tradition of antiquity. It is unsurprising to find the Thracian bard in particular in the long epic narrative that the Hellenistic poet Apollonius of Rhodes devotes to the legend of the Argonauts. Orpheus intervenes as the Argonauts are sailing around the flowered island inhabited by the melodious Sirens; they risk falling prey to the enchanting and pernicious charms of the sweet songs (molpai) of these maidens with the bodies of birds, these daughters of the river Acheloüs and the Muse Terpsichore who were once the attendants of Persephone. To the “lilied” voices of these young girls responds the “impetuous melody (melos) of the song (aoidē) with its rapid rhythm” of Orpheus of Thrace who accompanies himself on the phorminx. The instrumental melody eventually overpowers the maidens’ treacherous voices.4 In the case of Orpheus, tradition seems to favor the melodic and instrumental qualities over the verbal aspect of the song generally designated as a reference to the Homeric bard’s type of musical artistry. It appears that melody and its seductive powers of enchantment have primacy over the spoken word and the narrative. What is then the authority of the voice of Orpheus? To what extent can he be considered the author of the cosmotheogonic poems attributed to him by ancient tradition? What role does the authorial figure of Orpheus play in a series of discourses, which, while drawing on an instance of enunciation in I, remain nevertheless anonymous? Indeed, the Orpheus of the Classical age is a not only a singer with a particularly melodious voice, but also an instrumental musician of considerable talent. In a famous passage from Aristophanes’ Frogs, Aeschylus, following a speech that Dionysus, the god of theater, has just made in praise of an exemplary tragedy, draws the following conclusion concern3

4

LIMC Orpheus 6 (cf. also Argonautai, II.1, p. 593 n. 2); a black-figure cup from Heidelberg, dating from around 580, could also represent Orpheus between two Sirens: cf. Riedweg (1996) 1275. Apollonius of Rhodes 4.891-911; the other reports on the effects of Orpheus’ music are assembled and commented by Riedweg (1996) 1273-1279; see also Bernabé (2001) 63-76; for Orpheus’ participation in the Argonauts’ expedition, cf. Graf (1987) 95-99.

The Authority of Orpheus, Poet and Bard

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ing the drama in which the Athenian poet presents the defeat of the Persians at the battle of Salamis: Such are the subjects appropriate to poets. For consider how useful from the beginning have proved themselves those among the poets who have a noble spirit. For it is Orpheus who taught us initiation rites as well as abstention from murder.5

Alongside Homer, Hesiod and Musaeus, Orpheus is thus considered in the eyes of Aeschylus as a poet and as a founding poet, but a poet who has developed his activity primarily in the domain of initiation rites and mystery cults (teletai), a poet who seems to advocate the values of vegetarian asceticism: to “abstain from murders” is to stand apart from blood sacrifice and from the commensality of the flesh, the ritual consequence of animal sacrifice for mortals. In the legendary biography of Orpheus, tradition has favored the episode of his descent into the Underworld as an example of the hero’s musical ability. Yet, in the mythographic summary of Aeschylus’ Bassarai given to us by Eratosthenes, the katabasis appears to play nothing more than an explicative role; the descent into Hell is at the origin of the honors that Orpheus reserves for Helios at the expense of Dionysus. Starting at dawn, on Mount Pangaion in Thrace, he would address a respectful salute to a sun-avatar of Apollo. This exclusive honor provokes the hatred of the god of possession who sends frenzied bacchantes against the hero. The Bassarids tear apart the body of Orpheus, whose limbs (melē) the Muses gather to bury at Leibethra, in their native Pieria. The legend as told by Eratosthenes adds that Orpheus’ lyre, with its nine chords corresponding to the nine Muses, created by Hermes and inherited from Apollo, was transformed into a constellation.6 In such a musical context, it is not only probable that the text played with the derived meaning of melos, which from “limb” comes back to us as “musical phrase” and consequently as “sung melody”. But it is also likely that the act of dispersion and subsequent recovery of the torn-off limbs evokes, 5

6

Aristoph. Frogs 1030-1036 = Orphica 547 I T Bernabé. On the broad meaning of teletē as a generally initiatory ritual practice, cf. Burkert (1987) 9-11; for the more specific meaning of initiation rites to mysteries in the Orphic context, cf. Morand (2001) 140-146. Aeschyl. Bassarai TrGF pp. 138-139 Radt = Eratosth. Catast. 24 = Orphica 536 T and 1033 T Bernabé; other texts are included in Graf (1987) 85-86, who adds that, in Attic iconography, the scene of Orpheus’ sparagmos by the women of Thrace (and not by Maenads) is represented as early as 480: cf. LIMC, Orpheus 32-51; for the complex relationship between Orpheus of legend and Apollo and Dionysus, cf. Detienne (1989) 124-132.

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by an interposed metaphor, the different representations of the collection of membra disjecta in the same poetic corpus; this is further enforced by the fact that such a collection is often associated with the heroization of the poet and placed under the authority of his name: thus, Homer, Theognis, Orpheus.7 The melodic and poetic powers of Orpheus’ voice are associated with the ritual practices of mystery cults. The short mythographic biography of Orpheus handed down to us by Diodorus of Sicily is highly significant in that respect. The story is introduced in connection with Heracles’ participation in the Eleusinian Mysteries (designated as teletē), under the direction of Musaeus, the son of Orpheus; this biographic summary emphasizes immediately the Thracian hero’s skill in singing, in poetry, and in general cultural education. It is specifically by the musical qualities of his poems that Orpheus came not only to fill mortals with wonder but also to enchant plants and animals. As was later the case for Solon, if not for Herodotus, a voyage in Egypt permitted him to perfect his education in the field of theological narrative (theologiai) and initiation rituals (teletai) as well as in the field of poems (poiēmata) and melodies (melōdiai). Orpheus exercised this art of musical enchantment not only during the expedition of the Argonauts, but above all in his descent into Hades to entrance Persephone, in a feat comparable to that of Dionysus when he tried to bring back his mother Semele from the Underworld.8 Without taking into consideration any shamanic practice that would imply that Orpheus (himself in a state of trance) was able to bring out of Hades only the soul of one of the dead, or any position as a guru that would make him the leader of an initiation group,9 it is the chorus in Seneca’s Medea that emphasize once again the enchantment that Orpheus’ music provokes; the chorus members describe the charms that melodies of the lyre, played by the son of the Muse, have over the birds, the forest, and the elements before the hero’s head, separated from his rent limbs, floats down the waters of the Hebrus.10 That allusion to Or7 8

See parallels indicated by Nagy (2001) 151-155. Diod. Sic. 4.25.1-4 and 5.64.3-4 = Orphica 48 IV T, 713 II T, 984 T and 519 T Bernabé. See Hdt. 2.81 = Orphica 650 T Bernabé (orgia/orphika), with commentary by Graf (1974) 92-94; see also Aristoph. Frogs 1032 = Orphica 510 T Bernabé (teletai, cf. supra note 5) and Eur. Rhesus 943 = Orphica 511 T Bernabé (mustēria aporrēta). 9 While Graf (1987) 95-100, accounts for different interpretations tending to attribute to Orpheus a shamanic function, Bremmer (1991) 23-27, attempts to compare him to a guru figure. 10 Sen. Med. 625-632 = Orphica 958 II T Bernabé.

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pheus’ head in Imperial Latin literature is already attested to in Classical Attic iconography. For there is the famous red-figure hydria of Basel, on which is represented a bearded man with a crown, nearly nude and leaning on two lances; he holds his right hand toward the head of a young man who looks back at him and who is surrounded by different figures of the Muses. But there is also the Dunedin hydria, where it is Apollo himself, holding in his hand the lyre and laurel branches and flanked by two Muses, who seems to exchange a look with the head of the young Orpheus resting on the ground.11 Iconographically represented, his symbolic death reduces the founder of poetic practices linked to initiation rites to his essential expression: the sound of a vocal melody dependent on a look, a look that is doubtlessly indicative of an authoritative gesture.

Orpheus and Cosmo-Theogony in Epic Diction Is this to say that the heroicized figure of Orpheus corresponds to a master of melodic poetry and refers to the poetic practices of the musical and oral tradition? What is his poetic authority in this case? It is iconography once again that gives us the best illustration of the fundamental paradox that characterizes the poetic tradition attributed to Orpheus, and thus to the voice of authority of the orphic discourse. The frieze of a red-figure bowl at Cambridge gives us this illustration in an echo of a musical scene in which two young girls are represented, one dancing and the other holding a lyre. The other side of the frieze depicts an interaction between two men, one seated, the other standing and stretching his right hand before him; because of the laurel branch he holds in his right hand, we can identify the standing young man as the god Apollo or as his mortal representative rather than as the pedagogue of the seated ephēbos. In the center of the scene is the head of Orpheus, lying on the ground. The head is singing while the seated youth appears to be transcribing the words coming out of the heroicized poet’s mouth on a double wax tablet; the god or priest guides with his right hand the writing motion of the young man on the diptych. The presence of 11 Red-figure hydria Antikenmuseum Basel B 481, ca. 480 = LIMC Orpheus 68; Dunedin hydria, Otago Museum E 48.266 (ARV2 1174) = LIMC Orpheus 69; other iconographic documents in Schmidt (1972); see the iconographic dossier given by Faraone (2005) 68-70. As for texts, the Stories of Conon, FGrHist 26 F 1, 45 = Orphica 1061 T Bernabé, provide the primary evidence for the heroization of the head of Orpheus; other mythographic summaries place it on the island of Lesbos: cf. Graf (1987) 92-93.

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Apollo or of his priest confers upon the voice of Orpheus an oracular significance, perhaps in the practice of necromancy.12 Is this an example of “oral dictated text”, according to Albert Lord’s hypothesis on the written transcription of the poems belonging to the oral tradition attributed to Homer? Whatever it may be, the authorial voice of Orpheus is twofold here, through the practice of written transcription and through the (oral) authority of the god of oracles. To a certain extent, the paradox of a writing of the spoken orphic word is picked up by Plato. In a well-known passage of the Republic, Plato, speaking through Glaucon, denounces charlatans and seers (agurtai kai manteis) as itinerants who, in the interest of money, allege the divine power inspiring the sacrificial practices and the incantations they offer; integrated into festival ceremonies, these practices would have the power to “cure” an injustice or a family curse, or even to harm an enemy by calling upon certain divinities and by magic charms (epagogais kai katadesmois). Basing their argument on certain verses from the Iliad that show to what extent the gods are susceptible to the supplications and offerings of mortals who wish to sway them, these charlatans do not hesitate to cite a collection of papyrus rolls whose authorship they attribute to Musaeus and to Orpheus, “descendants of the Moon and of the Muses”. From these they draw sacrificial formulas, which they address to individuals as well as to entire civic communities; they claim to free and to purify (luseis kai katharmoi) them of injustices in daily life as well as in the afterlife in which these orphic seers intervene through what they call initiations (teletai).13 Practitioners of initiation rites, these traveling priests who claim to represent the authority of Orpheus would not hesitate then to transmit into writing and to document in books a record of the vocal and ritual efficacy of incantations! Until recently, nothing attributed to the adherents of Orpheus in the 4th century had been transmitted to us from these books and thus from these written traces of speeches. What we discover through several citations, most from late antiquity, is “orphic theology”, three different versions of which Damascus, Plato’s commentator, seems to know: the version described by the peripatetic philosopher Eudemus, the version corresponding to the “sacred discourses” (hieroi logoi) in 24 rhapsodies, and the version said to be of Hieronymus and Hellanicus. While the first 12 Red-figure cup (ARV 2 1401, 1) = LIMC Orpheus 70 = Apollo 872. Referring to two Mesopotamian documents written in cuneiform and to several Greek magic texts invoking Apollo through a skull or head, Faraone (2005) 71-83, hypothesizes that these are scenes of necromancy. 13 Paraphrase of the famous passage from Pl. Rep. 364b-365a = Orphica 573 I-II F Bernabé, citing notably Hom. Il. 1.497-501.

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can be traced back to a cosmo-theogony of the Classical age, the two others are later.14

Between “Narrative” and “Speech”: Homeric Diction From the second version, which probably dates to the beginning of the second century A.D., the church father Eusebius of Cesaraea cites, through Porphyrius, a long passage centered around the figure of Zeus. Interpreted by their commentator as the creator of the world and thus the incarnation of cosmic intelligence, the Zeus of these “orphic verses” (ta Orpheos) is presented in dactylic hexameters in Homeric diction;15 the first lines of the poem read as follows: Zeus was born first, Zeus the wielder of brilliant lightening is the last; Zeus is the beginning, Zeus is the middle, from Zeus has sprung all things. Zeus is born male, Zeus is the immortal fiancée. Zeus is the foundation of the earth and of the starry sky. Zeus is king, Zeus alone is the original creator of all beings. He is born the sole sovereign, the sole daimon, the powerful ruler of the universe; It is on his body alone that all these things turn: Fire, water, earth, air, night, day, and Metis, first generator, and many-charmed Eros.

From the point of view of the enunciation of orphic discourse, we can start on a purely instrumental basis with the distinction proposed by Emile Benveniste between “story” or “narrative” (in third-person/he, there and in the past) and “speech” or “discourse” (in first/second person/I/you, here and in the present); the distinction between the “enuncive” and the “enunciative” will thus be operative. To begin, a few remarks on the construction of these simple verses. If, on a lexical level, the poem attributed to Orpheus evokes the traditional formula of epic poetry, its syntax is surprising because it quickly abandons the aorist tense of narrative to assume the assertive mode, admittedly in the third person, but in the present tense nonetheless. The narrative mode is reserved solely for the initial moment of the birth of a Zeus who is also the first being to come into existence. The Homeric epithet “wielder of brilliant lightening” (argikeraunos), used also in melic 14 Dam. de princ. 123-124 (III, pp. 159-162 Westerink) = Orphica 20 I F, 75 F and 90 T Bernabé; cf. Brisson (1995) 2875-2915. 15 Euseb. Pr. Ev. 3.8.2 (= Porphyrius fr. 354 Smith) = Orphica 243 F Bernabé. Cf. West (1983) 218-220 and 239-241.

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poetry, qualifies Zeus from the first line of the first epiclesis; however, this qualification assures in addition the immediate transition to the descriptive mode of “narrative”, and at the same time to the cosmological aspect of the god: born first, Zeus is also ultimate. As such, it is through him that all things are created (tetuktai, in a perfect form that implies the permanent state stemming from a process); it is thus that he is born as both male and at the same time as the immortal bride (the unaugmented Homeric form geneto, picked up on by the form epleto, imperfect in form, present in sense). Firstborn, Zeus is simultaneously at the origin of all things as the initiator of a lineage (arkhigenethlos, a specifically orphic epithet) and the powerful ruler (megas arkhos) of all things.16 Without presenting an exhaustive discursive analysis of the beginning of this poem, we can at least remark that the aoidos-rhapsode, anonymous author of these hexameters, places the different aspects of Homeric diction in the service of the founding principle of orphic theology: through interposed acts of cosmogonic creation and through superposed genealogical relations, all is in all. It is thus in Zeus that the cosmos, of which the god is the receptacle and the re-creator, is completed in its genesis and its organization. In terms of the formulaic diction based essentially on noun-epithet pairs that correspond to a metrical colon, the orphic poet certainly seems to draw largely on the tradition known to us through epic poems attributed to Homer; in addition, the theogonic and didactic tradition with which we are familiar through the poems of Hesiod and the hymnic tradition of the Homeric proems are far from unknown to him. This use of diction, Homeric in inspiration, in the broadest sense of the term, is reinforced by the syntactic recourse to the lexis eiromene that marks the articulation of the verses in the same poetic tradition, coupled with a frequent use of asyndeton. The process of paratactic progression is used notably in the Homeric Hymns in order to enumerate the epicleseis of the divinity to whom the aoidos dedicates his song of praise. In the orphic poem, it allows for an accumulation of qualities attributed to Zeus while avoiding a hierarchization of them; the parataxis in asyndeton thus concerns in essence the physical, organic and cosmological qualities of the ruler god. In addition to its Homeric lexical diction, the hymnic process of asyndeton is reoriented in the orphic poem; coupled with the absence of a final direct invocation to the god, it separates rhapsodic composition from the traditional form of the hymn. Contrary to the reading offered, this fragment of a hieros logos does not belong to the traditional genre of 16 Arkhigenethlos designates Rhea, the mother of Zeus in the Orphic Hymn 14.8, whereas arkhos is a Homeric term used notably in the Iliad.

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the hymn (neither Homeric nor cletic).17 However, the asyndeton that marks the first verses of this orphic rhapsody corresponds to its theological content: it coincides with the accumulation of many qualities in a single divinity. Moreover, formally speaking, it emphasizes the reiteration of the name of Zeus not only at the beginning of the same verses (five times) but also after the caesura (four times). While affirming the oneness of Zeus, this twofold process of repetition evokes the incantatory aspect that one can find in several Orphic hymns through analogous enunciative processes; accompanied by various burnt offerings, these hymns are presented as offerings to the god concerned.18 Thus, through interposed parataxis and asyndeton, in accordance with the enunciative process that structures these hymnic songs attributed to Orpheus with their incantatory pragmatics, orphic cosmo-theogony makes use of Homeric diction (with its aspects of oral tradition) in order to adapt it to the orphic doctrine. Thus it is as if the discursive genre of the orphic cosmogonical poem had developed in a cosmological, if not philosophical sense, some of these syntactical aspects of a “narrative” hexametric and hymnic tradition as well as the equivalences and equations of which Zeus seems already to be the object in traditional Greek theology. The poetic tradition was placed under the authority of an Orpheus who acts as an aoidos. A rhapsode systematizes these rhetorical procedures in order to emphasize the specificities of a (very) particular cosmogonic process as well as to endow it with a particularly captivating invocatory pragmatic. It is there that one can find the melodic and enchanting aspects that the biographical legend attributes to the voice of Orpheus.

Procedures of Poetic Enunciation Moreover, if we pass quickly from “narrative” to “speech”, the development of the rhapsodic poem representing an orphic cosmology and cosmo-theogony in Homeric diction seems to have been punctuated by

17 For the structure and the procedures particular to the form of the cultic hymn and to the specific form of the proem or Homeric hymn, see the examples and references to other important studies which I have given in 1995 (= 2005). 18 Cf. Rudhart (1991) 267-274 and (2008) 177-250 (a vast study of the structure, lexicon, and formulaic language of the Orphic Hymns) as well as HopmanGovers (2001); see also Morand (2001) 58-76 (40-58 concerning structure) and 101-137, for titles that refer to offerings which correspond in general to fumigations and burnt sacrifices.

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invocatory movements; the hymnic address to the divinity suggests the return to enunciative rhetorical procedures. Let us start with the beginning of the rhapsodic Hieroi logoi. In addition to a probable “signature” to which we will return, the poem opens with an invocation to Phoebus Apollo; in this initial appeal, the ruler of mortals and immortals is immediately associated with golden-winged Helios.19 Lord, son of Leto, far-reaching archer, mighty Phoebus, you who see all, who reign over mortals and immortals, Helios, you who rise up on golden wings, this is the twelfth oracle that I hear from your mouth through your words; you, skilled archer, that I might hold you witness.

Dealing with prophetic speech, this address to the god of oracles is not without a reference to the appeals to the authority of the Muses in the initial scenes of poetic inspiration, a convention of the epic tradition. The speaker assumes here the simple position of a listener of divine and oracular words which, through a gesture of verbal deixis (tende omphen: “this prophetic voice”), correspond to the poem being recited. Instead of directly attributing to his own verse the force of a prophetic testimony, as Pindar often does, the orphic rhapsode relies on the verbal authority of the god; the archer Apollo becomes the source of inspiration and the witness to the present poem, which reproduces, for the twelfth time, the oracular words of the god. Just as at the end of the proem to Hesiod’s Works and Days for Zeus, the poetic I intervenes only at the conclusion of his address to Apollo-Helios also as the subject of a verb in the potential mood; this indicates the subordination of the poetrhapsode’s voice to that of the god.20 An oracular voice, a voice of authorial affirmation, a poetic voice guaranteed by the god – these orphic verses are part of an entirely oral tradition of poetry. This can also be seen in another orphic rhapsody in epic diction. Set in the context of an oracular sanctuary of the primordial goddess, the anonymous poet, rhapsode and I-speaker, appeals directly to the divinity concerned, in this case Night. It is indeed Nyx who, in her sanctuary, gives Zeus the necessary indications for his demiurgic activity. Likewise, 19 Orphica 102 F Bernabé; cf. West (1983) 6-7. 20 For the creator of the poem or its executor as a witness, cf. Pind. Olymp. 4.1-3, Olymp. 6.19-21, fr. 94, 38-39 Maehler, etc; other passages in Nünlist, 1998: 80-82; for the poet as a prophet of the Muses, see the famous initial strophe of one of Pindar’s Paeans, fr. 52f. 1-6 Maehler (in the context of an address to the god of Delphi) as well as Bacchylides 8.3. Cf. Hes. WD 10, with the commentary I gave in (1996) 174-176 (= 2005: 80-83).

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the speaker and singer asks Night to “show” (phraze) him how to compose this new beginning (arkhē)!21 Passing from “story”/“narrative” to “discourse”/“speech” in the hic et nunc of the enunciation, the orphic rhapsode asks the goddess to put at her disposal the voice which she just recently used to describe Zeus’ creative activity; it is therefore confirmed by the voice of Night that the rhapsodic song will express the coincidence between the unity and multiplicity that are the basis of the recreation of the universe. Proclus, who cites this passage, has no doubt as to whom we should attribute these verses: they are by the “theologian”, that is to say Orpheus.

Hermeneutic and Initiatory Erudition in an Orphic Commentary However, it happens that we now have a commentary of a far more ancient version of this orphic cosmo-theogony in Homeric diction that comes to us from the Derveni Papyrus. We will recall that this papyrus roll was found in the tomb of a fairly well-off citizen soldier of Macedonia. Placed near the remains of the dead and objects intended to accompany him in the afterlife, it was originally meant to be burned with the cadaver on the pyre. Half-burnt, it gives us the fragments of a commentary written around 330 that speaks to the evidence of a written practice. The verses in question come from a cosmo-theogonic poem explicitly attributed to Orpheus and dates almost certainly to the middle of the 4th century BC.22 Among the verses commented upon in the text of the papyrus there is, on the one hand, a verse corresponding to the second hexameter in the extract of the rhapsodic version we discussed; the quoted verse deals with the function assumed by Zeus as the creator of all things. This verse undoubtedly belongs to a version of the 4th century BC, for in the Laws, in a passage concerning the gods’ role as guardians of justice in the ideal city, Plato alludes to an “ancient saying” (palaios logos) that also presents the god as “holding the beginning, middle, and end of all that exists”. The scholiast who gives the exegesis of this famous passage from the Laws specifies that this logos, which equates the god with the demi21 Orphica 237, 1-3 F Bernabé; cf. West (1983) 234-239. 22 We can find information concerning the bibliography of the archaeological circumstances of the discovery and dating of the document in Bernabé (2002) 91-93, in Betegh (2004) 56-68, and in Kouremenos, Parássoglou & Tsantsanoglou (2006) 1-9.

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urge, is in fact orphic: it is an orphikos logos.23 On the other hand, in order to establish the orphic equivalence between Zeus and the ensemble of beings that the god’s intelligence organizes and over which it rules, the Derveni commentator mentions the fifth verse of the rhapsodic version referenced; with a variation, it corresponds to the eighth hexameter line of the version cited in the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise and attributed to Eudemos: “Zeus the king, Zeus the leader of all things, Zeus, the wielder of brilliant lightening”.24

Commentary and the Authority of the Poem Corresponding in part to the later rhapsodic version, the verses cited and commented upon by the Derveni author are thus taken from a cosmotheogonic poem in epic diction. Often attributed to Orpheus, this poem presented the different phases of the creation of the cosmos and its precreation by Zeus in an order that did not follow the line of time recounted. In spite of the state of the half-destroyed papyrus, we can still pick out the following cosmo-theogonic moments in the temporal order of the narration: Zeus succeeds Cronus; Zeus receives from Night and from Cronus the oracles about his future as ruler on Olympus; Zeus absorbs the “sacred thing” (aidoion), likely the sexual organ of Ouranos, transformed into the Sun, who, as we will see, springs forth from the Ether; from this “first-born” sovereign swallowed by Zeus are (re)born the gods and goddesses, rivers and springs, and also the earth, the sky, the river Ocean and the moon, that is to say, all that exists. Reiterating the original act of cosmogonic creation in the opposite sense, this second demiurgic act is what prompts the citation of the verses in praise of Zeus mentioned earlier; it presents the sovereign of all things as the first and last. It is then that the ruler of creation, himself associated with Moira, if not with Aphrodite-Ourania, can reunite with his own mother Rhea, probably associated with Gaia as well as with Meter and Hera by the poem itself! The state of the papyrus unfortunately deprives us of the final stages – if there are any – of the creation of the world through the 23 PDerveni col. XVII, 12 = Orphica 14, 2 F Bernabé; cf. Pl. Laws 715e = Orphica 31 III F Bernabé and scholion to Pl. Laws 715e (p. 317 Greene) = Orphica 31 IV F Bernabé. 24 PDerveni col. XIX, 10 = Orphica 14, 4 F Bernabé, who, based on elements taken from the Derveni commentary, succeeds in reconstructing four verses; cf. Pseudo-Aristotle, De mundo 401a25 = Orphica 31 I F Bernabé; cf. Brisson (1995) 2881.

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genealogy of the gods. Thus, there is no mention of the Titans, nor is there any reference to Dionysus in the text as it stands now.25 Neither the Homeric diction nor the qualifications and functions of Zeus that the fragments of these verses cited and commented upon suggest present traits different from those actually offered by the vast discursive tradition of cosmo-genealogical Greek poetry; their dactylic rhythm implies a psalmodic recitation by a rhapsode.26 The specificity of what we perceive of the commented poem resides instead mainly in its content. What is particularly distinctive is the “sacred thing” swallowed by Zeus; this aidoion is probably associated with the organ of the Sky and with the Sun, and it plays almost certainly the same role as Eros-Phanes, the golden-winged luminous one, born first out of the primordial egg in other versions of orphic cosmo-theogony. Transferred from Cronus to Zeus, this absorption leads to two narrative and theological acts that form the specificity of orphic cosmological thought: the recreation of the universe and the erasing of generations in the confusion of genealogical relations. Through temporal overlapping and through incest, these two narrative processes allow for a blurring of the distinctions of the demiurgic and genealogical processes in the unity of a single divine figure, the beginning and end of all things.27

Interpretative Procedures Reserved for the Initiated To the eyes and ears of the reader/listener of the mid-4th century, these verses from this cosmogonic and genealogic narrative attributed to Orpheus are assumed to belong to the domain of the ainigma. Indeed, the commentator of these hexameter verses in epic diction calls them “enigmatic” (ainigmatōdeis). It is therefore useful to examine the interpretative procedures and the enunciative modalities of a written hermeneutic 25 These different stages of poetic cosmo-theogony commented upon in the papyrus have been recently reconstructed by Bernabé (2002) 102-123; see also Betegh (2004) 92-139, as well as, in a far too normalized reconstruction, Jourdan (2003) XVIII-XXIV. 26 On this subject, see West (1983) 74-75 and 96-104; Betegh (2004) 136-138, develops a series of arguments against the hymnic hypothesis in spite of the term hu]mnon that can be restored to col. VII, 2 (cf. also II, 8); cf. Kouremenos, Parássoglou & Tsantsanoglou, (2001) 171. 27 On the figure of Phanes-Protogonos-Eros, cf. Calame (1991) 231-237; on the double meaning of aidoion in the poem itself, see Brisson (2003) and Betegh (2004) 111-122; on the process of the recreation of the cosmos in a single unit, see notably Calame (1997) 66-74, and Bernabé (2002) 114-118.

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voice, which, in making Orpheus the author of these verses, remains entirely anonymous. According to the commentator (who generally expresses himself in an entirely assertive mode) when the poet says “(Zeus) took in his hands (the force of his father)”, he “intimates” (ainizetai). This mode of expression in enigmatic terms is, for example, that of the man who – according to the dream told by Herodotus – addressed Hipparchus in dactylic hexameter the day before his death in the Panathenaea; the young tyrant’s error in comprehending these verses proved fatal despite the warnings given by his dreams. Likewise, such interpreters are already present in the heroic world of the Iliad .28 Similarly, the hexameter verse that designates Zeus as the head, the middle and thus the cause of all things created is described as “enigmatic”; this orphic verse belongs, as we recall, to the hieros logos already mentioned in Plato’s Laws, in a dialogue more or less contemporary with the Derveni text. According to the commentator who focuses his attention on the term kephalē (“chief”), in this verse (epos) Orpheus speaks not only in hidden words (ainizetai) but he also “indicates” (sēmainei). This same mode of indication is attributed, for example, in a famous phrase of Heraclitus, to the Delphic oracle whose function it is to “signify”; it is also this semiotic mode that Herodotus assigns to his own historiographical inquiry when, in his prologue, he endows his logos with a quasi-judicial function in regard to the causes of the Persian Wars. According to the Derveni commentator, the poet Orpheus also “signifies” (sēmainei) (that the things present are the issue of existing things) when he tells (legei), in the four hexameters cited (“in these verses”: en tois epesi to[isde]), how the gods as well as the elements were born of the “first-born sovereign, the venerable one”, the unique principle.29 Moreover, since a cosmo-theogonic term can take on a double meaning, the simple “say” or “tell” (legein) of the poem in epic diction becomes a “make understand”, just as in the example of the now famous adjective aidoios characterizing the one who first sprung up in the ether 28 PDerveni col. IX, 10; cf. Hdt. 5.56.1-2 and Hom. Il. 1.63. In the following phrase, whose text is extremely fragmentary, the commentator appears to strongly affirm that he has made evident what was not readily apparent: cf. Kouremenos, Parássaglou & Tsantsanoglou (2006) 181. On the first Greek usage of deciphering the “enigmatic”, see Pucci (1996): 17-29 and Ford (2002) 71-82. 29 PDerveni col. XVII, 11-13 and col. XVI, 1-7 (for the use of the form sēmainei, see also col. XXV, 13, in relation to gignōskein); cf. Heraclitus fr. 22 B 93 DielsKranz and Hdt. 1.5.3; on the commented verses, cf. supra note 23.

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and who is eventually absorbed by Zeus: “venerable”, which can also refer to the pudendum of Ouranos which is associated with the Sun. To introduce the double interpretation of this polysemic term and to justify its word-for-word interpretation, the commentator does not hesitate to state that “Orpheus proceeds by enigma about reality in the entire poem”; in this perspective, moreover, by “speaking”, the Orpheus author “reveals” (dēloi).30 The quasi-oracular procedure attributed to the poem, conforming implicitly to the legendary tradition of the prophetic qualities of the voice of the heroicized Orpheus, is definitively summarized even at the beginning of the commentary. For the interpreter states there that, as a prelude to his exegesis, the entirety of the poem is ainigmatodes and that Orpheus (?) “did not wish to recount debatable enigmas, but great things in enigmas”; conclusion: the poem’s author relates a sacred discourse (hiero[log]eitai) in the verses that are particularly distinct (or particularly recognizable). The key to a poem that appears at first to be a hieros logos is given insofar as the commentator finishes by paraphrasing the famous verses that advise the profane to close their ears. This poetic injunction could constitute the first verse of the cosmo-theogonic hexameter poem attributed to Orpheus and mark its beginning as a sort of seal or password; it is in any case what modern editors of the Orphica acknowledge when they place this line, in its double formulation to which we will return, at the head of the collection of fragments attributed to Orpheus.31 The anonymous poetic voice that expresses itself in what is probably the opening of the classical cosmo-theogonic poem has thus become, for the Derveni commentator, the voice of Orpheus. We can then understand from this why the Derveni commentator often restates that a poem written in an enigmatic manner, such as the one that he repeatedly attributes to Orpheus, would not be addressed to those who “do not know” (generally ou gignōskontes). This term contrasts to the “wise” (xunetoisi) to whom the previously cited verse is addressed, which, in an affirmation of the poet’s voice in the first person, may open the cosmo-theogonic poem; however “Orpheus” is not the 30 PDerveni col. XIII, 1-5; on the question posed by the reference to the aidoion, see Calame (1997) 66-72, Bernabé (2002) 104-107 and 111-112, as well as Brisson (2003), with a nuanced view of the question expressed by Betegh (2004) 111-117. 31 PDerveni VII, 3-11, in the new text presented and commented by Tsantsanoglou (1997) 95 and 117-128, and now with commentary by Kouremenos, Parássoglou & Tsantsanoglou (2006) 171-174; this verse is reconstructed and edited as Orphica 3 F (cf. 2 T) by reference to the double lines 1a and 1b F Bernabé: cf. infra note 44.

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only poet to do this, as both Pindar and Bacchylides also claim that their own words are meant for the same “wise men”.32 Whatever the case may be, the Derveni author takes up in the third-person mode and written mode the enunciative process conveyed by the poet’s voice in the first person mode; it corresponds to that of the orphic rhapsode. In addition to the double meaning attributed to the lines of the poem explained to and reserved for the initiated, the writing processes of citation as well as the discursive and interpretative modes of the anonymous author are not very far from those of the practitioners of Alexandrian scholarship. In parallel with the edition of classical texts collected in the Ptolemaic library, the Alexandrian philologists recorded in writing notes that were hypomnēmata, true commentaries on archaic and classical poems whose importance was beginning to escape their readers because of the historical shift in the social and cultural paradigm; these poems were then archived in libraries and read instead of being the objects of a “performance”.33 Following the model of Alexandrian literary philology, the verses commented upon in the Derveni Papyrus are presented as actual lemmas; they are often followed by a hoti (“because”) formula that explains why the poetic expression should or should not be understood to have a certain meaning. Similarly, in the case of the hexameter on Zeus’ sovereignty, the god is king because he corresponds to a unique principle of creative power over the plurality of existing things. A mention earlier in the poem of the river Ocean in a verse now lost to us receives the following commentary: “this verse (epos) was falsely composed; it is not evident to the majority, but transparent (eudēlon) for those who have the right knowledge, because Ocean is the air and because the air is Zeus”. From this, we learn that those who do not know (ou gignōskontes) are content with the appearances maintained by the customary language used by Orpheus to “signify” (sēmainei) his own opinion; because of his qualification, they continue to consider Ocean a river. Thus, only those who possess knowledge have access to the second meaning revealed in the commentary itself; the specific significance is taken in general from the physical conception of the world developed by various “pre-

32 PDerveni IX, 2, XII, 5, XVIII, 5, XX, 2-3 and 8, XXII, 2 and 5, XXVI, 8; cf. Orphica 1a F Bernabé (cf. infra note 44), Pind. Olymp. 6.83-85 and Bacchylides 3.85 (garuo as well). 33 On the primary sense of hupomnēma as a “written note”, see Pl. Phaedr. 249c and Polit. 295c. On the subject of commentary as a scholarly genre in the Hellenistic period, see Pfeiffer (1968) 212-227.

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Socratic”34 thinkers. What is essential here is not so much the explicit mention of Heraclitus in one of the first columns of the commentary. He is apparently considered to be a muthologos or an astrologos and cited by the commentator for an aphorism that shows the role played by the Erinyes in the control and maintenance of the order of the cosmos, notably through Helios.35 What is striking, however, is the probable eclecticism of an interpreter who puts forth in his explanation of orphic cosmo-theogonic creation different processes taken from physical conceptions, and more specifically atomic conceptions, of the world. In this context and because the interpretation itself provides no authorial evidence, it is completely pointless to apply the modern concept of authorship to the Derveni commentary; it is useless to attempt to attribute to it an author whose name would happen to coincide with that of a wellknown philosopher.36

Between Physical Principles and Divine Forces Besides the various and futile attempts to give to the Derveni author a name, Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, Euthyphro or Leucippus have been evoked in turn by modern commentators as possible sources of inspiration for the Derveni interpreter. Actually, his discourse seems marked essentially by a diffused atomism, coupled with a return to a cosmological conception close to that of Empedocles. The processes of the creation and recreation of the cosmos are more or less regularly compared to the processes of the separation and aggregation of particles, but these cosmogonic processes are animated by divine forces such as Harmonia, Peitho, Aphrodite and, naturally, Zeus. Such is also the case, for example, in the movement of sprouting or rising forth, which, in its orphic creation, animates the cosmos. In men34 PDerveni XIX, 10-15 and XXIII, 1-10; for a reconstruction of the verses concerning Ocean, see Bernabé (2002) 119-120, and Kouremenos, Parássoglou & Tsantsanoglou (2006 ) 256-260; for explanations relevant to the speculation of classical physicians, see in particular the references given by West (1983) 80-81, and by Laks (1997) 127-134. 35 PDerveni IV, 5-9, citing Heraclitus frr. 22 B 3 and 94 Diels-Kranz; cf. Sider (1997) 129-144 (who reads hiero]logoi; bibliography for this citation on p. 130 n. 5), and Tsantsanoglou (1997) 96-109 (who supplies mutho]logoi), as well as Kouremenos, Parássoglou & Tsantsanoglou (2006) 153-157. 36 The futile attempts of modern philologists to attribute an author are enumerated by Betegh (2004) 64-65 and 373-380, and commented on by Kouremenos, Parássoglou & Tsantsanoglou (2006) 58-59.

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tioning it under the name of “Orpheus” would reveal (deloi) that, in the context of reciprocal attraction between elements or basic physical qualities such as cold, the particles in movement in the air are drawn by affinity to couple with one another: […] nor the cold to the cold. And when he says “by jumping”, he makes clear that divided up into small pieces they were moving in the air and were jumping, and by jumping they were set together in relation to one another. And they went on jumping until each one came to its fellow. Heavenly Aphrodite and Zeus (and to aphrodise and to jump) and Persuasion and Harmony are established as name for the same god (…). For, when the things that are now were mixed with one another, it was called Aphrodite. And Persuasion, because the things that are yielded to one another.

Playing with the etymology of the term thornei, which can refer to a substantive (“spurt” or “ejaculation”) or to a verb (“it springs forth” or “it couples”), the initial rising forth is first compared to the physical movement of basic elements divided into atomic particles; in return, by an assimilation between the verb thornusthai and the verb aphrodisiazein, it is related to the action of Aphrodite Ourania and Zeus, themselves associated with Peitho and Harmonia, consorts of the goddess of love. Persuasion becomes the force that causes beings to yield to one another, and Harmony the power that adapts them to one another.37 From the enunciative point of view, the explication is introduced as a general assertion by a hoti that, in the procedure mentioned, refers this one-truth to the revelation through Orpheus’ voice that “speaks” (leg[ōn] dēloi hoti…): “through an outpouring”. Through the intervention of Aphrodite, this past surge of particles in the air is passed on to the present of “existing things” and to their mingling in a generalized sexual union. The entire argument is encompassed by a ring structure that can be found in other explanations. With its pragmatic import, this succession insures for the commentary itself a rhapsodic rhythm that almost certainly recalls that of the poem. The interpretative relationship between the theological cosmogony of the rhapsodic poem attributed to Orpheus and its anonymous commentary in terms of “pre-Socratic” physics is thus assured by a subtle dialectical movement; it combines purely material processes with the interventions of divine forces. In the hermeneutic line already percepti37 PDerveni XXI, 1-12 (transl. by Laks & Most, 1997, 19); on this cosmic movement, cf. Calame (1997) 70-74 (with note 7, as well as Laks & Most, 1997, 21 note 53, on the form and the meaning of thornei), and Bernabé (2002) 118-119, with Burkert’s (2005) 51-60 comparative remarks, and the extended commentary of Kouremenos, Parássoglou & Tsantsanoglou (2006) 243-252.

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ble in the Homeric poems and established by Plato’s Cratylus, the etymological procedures naturally offer a pathway to this exegesis through the significance that even the form of the words suggests.38 However, the specificity of the interpretative mode adopted by the Derveni commentator resides in the return to divine powers. “Ocean is the air and the air is Zeus”, he affirms in the aforementioned explication concerning those who have the necessary knowledge to grasp the second sense of the cosmo-theogonic poem.39 Once more, hermeneutic discourse leads to the affirmation of a principle that is theological rather than physical. What is important for the “Orpheus” rhapsode as well as for his commentator is the establishment of the reign of the unique demiurgic and divine principle that is Zeus. To this extent, the authority of an interpretation in terms simultaneously physical and theological can be none other than that of one adept in Orphism.40 The author of Derveni is certainly an orpheotelestēs.

The Initiatory Itinerary of a Written Hermeneutic Practice It is as though the commentator were striving to rethink a theological idea in terms of physics, which he tries to reinforce by means of a mixed exegesis. It is in this context of a hermeneutic discursive practice assumed by one adept in Orphism that the allusion to initiatory rites at the end of the affirmation of Zeus’ power is most pertinent. In a probable comparison with those who, by their lack of proper knowledge, are incapable of grasping the meaning of the cosmo-theogonical poem, and through a strong enunciative intervention, those who carry out civic rites by listening to spoken words without understanding them, are both denounced. To see, to understand, and to learn in the execution of the ritual are not possible without prior knowledge, specifically knowledge from vision (hōs eidotes, eidēsein, etc.):41 38 The analogies between the Derveni commentator’s etymologizing procedures and those listed by Plato in the Cratylus have been revealed notably by Kahn (1997) 60-63. Regarding the combination of physical explanations and references to divine figures, see Laks (1997) as well as Betegh (2004) 224-227. 39 PDerveni XXIII, 1-3 (cf. supra note 34). 40 Contrary to what is argued, for example, by Kouremenos, Parássoglou & Tsantsanoglou, 2006: 45-58, who review the different theses advanced on the subject, only to conclude that “the Derveni author is not Orphic or even antiOrphic” (p. 52). 41 PDerveni XX, 1-12 (transl. by Laks & Most 1997, 18-19); on this passage, see references given by Calame (1997) 77-78.

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[Concerning] those men who, while performing holy rites in the cities (epitelesantes ta hiera), have seen them, I wonder (thaumazo) less that they do not understand (since it is not possible to hear and at the same time to learn the meaning of the words). But all those (who hope to acquire knowledge) from someone who makes a craft of holy rites deserve to be wondered at and pitied (…). Before performing the holy rites, hoping that they will know, but after having performed them, they go away deprived of hope…

We can better understand from this why the anonymous commentator of this poēsis ainigmatōdēs, whose creation and diction are attributed to Orpheus, is in fact introduced in the papyrus by a series of preceding remarks, unfortunately contested by its modern readers, on the execution of ritual actions; these ritual acts are accomplished by mystics desiring to reconcile themselves with the Eumenides, who are themselves associated with the soul.42 Whether there exists in these mutilated lines an allusion to the initiates in the context of Eleusinian-type mysteries, to oracular practices, or to specifically Orphic ritual actions, a reference is immediately made to those who come neither to learn nor to know and who are consequently mistrustful. On the enunciative level, the commentary’s speaker seems to include in this instance his authorial I in a collective we. If the form parimen is understood in this sense, this enunciative “we” is contrasted with every “they” corresponding to the individuals who do not possess the knowledge necessary to understand the ritual acts they carry out or the oracular responses they seek. This indicates that, from the extra-discursive point of view, the anonymous commentator presents himself as a member of such a group of initiates; these are the keepers of the knowledge necessary for deciphering effectively the ritual practices and cosmo-theogonic verses placed under Orpheus’ authority.43 To this extent, the introduction to the exegesis of the rhapsodic poem attributed to Orpheus assumes the function of the two formulas mentioned previously that seem to mark, as a seal that is simultaneously

42 These remarks cover cols. II-VI of the PDerveni; see in particular V, 5-13, as well as the commentary by Tsantsanoglou (1997) 96, 117, and then that of Kouremenos, Parássoglou & Tsantsanoglou (2006) 144-171. 43 PDerveni V, 3; for Most (1997) 129, this enunciative “we” refers to a group of professionals who are contrasted with the priests of civic cults as well as with the individuals who present themselves as experts in sacred rites, see also Betegh (2004) 82, despite the commentary of Kouremenos, Parássoglou & Tsantsanoglou (2006) 53-54 and 161-162, who interpret the form parimen as an infinitive, equivalent to parienai. The Theogony of Hesiod starts with a collective “we”: cf. Pucci (2007) 35-36.

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authorial and initiatory, the beginning of the different versions of orphic cosmo-theogony: I will sing for those who understand, shut the doors, you who are profane

or: I will speak to those whom it is permitted, shut the doors, you who are profane.44

The cult gesture thus responds to the same didactic insistence on understanding as the discursive practice the commentary of the cosmotheogonic poem attributed to Orpheus represents. As I have attempted to demonstrate elsewhere,45 the Derveni commentary, both scholarly and theological in nature, can be considered a sort of intellectual initiatory itinerary; enunciated in a chiefly assertive mode and anonymously, it is proposed to one who will be an adept of Orpheus in the future. As a discursive practice, it is probable that it was read before or in connection with certain ritual gestures that it describes. Following in its sequence the circular fulfillment of Zeus’ demiurgic activity recounted in the poem, this exegetic discourse completes the return to a unity proposed in different ways to those adept in movements claiming to follow Orpheus, the poet and founding bard. This is achieved with the same rhapsodic meter as in epic poetry, but in the poem’s passage from oral tradition to the practice of writing and reading. To this extent it is possible to see in the figure of Orpheus claimed by the orphic commentator of Derveni not only a representative of a voice possessing particular melodic and oracular qualities, but also a figure emblematic of the genre of cosmo-theogonic orphic poetry, in its different rhapsodic versions. Such is often the case in the figure of “Homer” cited by classical authors less as the author of the Iliad or the Odyssey than as the representative of the genre of epic poetry handed down to the rhapsodic tradition.46 Through the discursive processes particular to its scholarly commentary, the text of the Derveni Papyrus is presented paradoxically as a discourse articulated in cultic practices. In this respect it is endowed with a 44 Orphica 1 a and b F as well as 3 F and 101 F Bernabé; cf. PDerveni VII, 9-10 and supra note 31, with the remarks of West (1983) 82-84, and those of Burkert (2005) 49-51. 45 Calame (1997) 77-80; see also Obbink (1997) 40-47, and Laks (1997) 138-140. To the extent that the parallel established with initiation itineraries proposed by gold leaves wrongly attributed to Orphism lacks relevance, Most (1997) 125134, undoubtedly goes too far when he sees in the Derveni commentary an “eschatological theory” in the form of “soteriological physics”. 46 See my proposal on the subject of the significance of the name and figure of Homer referring to epic poetry as genre in Calame (2004) 26-31.

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ritual efficacy; this efficiency comes from the cosmogonic and initiatory intellectual itinerary that the text seems to propose to those adept enough to be invited to read it. Stemming from a written practice and certainly intended less for oral recitation than for reading (“ritual reading?”), the exegetic text of the Derveni Papyrus nonetheless corresponds, with its rhapsodic organization, to a discourse endowed with the markers of poetic effectiveness and of an initiatory purpose. Its ritual usage is apparently twofold: the discourse serves to initiate and to integrate new adherents into a group of Orphic practitioners before accompanying them as a text in the funeral ritual, the other rite of passage. Intended to reveal the second meaning of the cosmo-theogonic orphic poem spoken by a voice of inspired poetic authority, the scholarly explication itself is used in this twofold initiatory function that is both instructive and ritual in nature.

Orpheus and the Authority of Written-Oral Text This paradox of written practices used to serve the enchanting powers of a particularly effective initiatory poetic voice can already be seen in the first direct attestations we have of Classical orphism. While the melody of Orpheus’ Thracian cithara accompanies the Asiatic elegy which gives rhythm to the Argonauts’ oars in Euripides’ Hypsipyle, Theseus, in a famous passage of the Hippolytus, accuses his son, guilty of worshipping Artemis exclusively, of orphic sectarianism: “Glorify yourself then, and make a show of your meatless diet; with Orpheus as your master engage in bacchanals, honoring the vapors of many burning books”.47 From the end of the Classical era, Orpheus’ poetic and initiatory authority was associated with writings for which one could express as much disdain as Plato would fifty years later. A similar contrast can be found in Euripides’ Alcestis. While Admetus, wishing to be able to snatch his wife out of Hades, expresses his desire to exploit the melodious voice (glōssa kai melos) of Orpheus in order to charm Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, the chorus with song (humnoisi), later in the play, makes a distinction between the sovereign power of Necessity and the ineffectiveness of “the Thracian tablets set

47 Cf. Eur. Hippol. 948-954 (=Orphica 627 T Bernabé) as well as Eur. Hyps. fr. 752g.8-14 Kannicht (= Orphica 1007 T Bernabé); cf. also fr. 759a.1614-1623 Kannicht (= Orphica 1009 T Bernabé).

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down (kategrapsen) by the voice (gērus) of Orpheus”.48 Whether its effect is positive, as Admetus imagines, or negative, as is the case for the chorus who evokes by analogy the ineffectiveness of the drugs given by Apollo to the disciples of Asclepius, the melodious and enchanting songs of Orpheus have in common the fact that they are written on wooden tablets whose origin recalls the homeland of the poet and singer. The voice of Orpheus is, by definition, written down. This is also demonstrated by the famous Apulian amphora attributed to the Ganymede painter. On this image, practically contemporary with the Derveni Papyrus, Orpheus, singing and accompanying himself on a large cithara, directs his gaze toward an old man seated beneath an aediculum, a reminder of the scene’s funerary character. Like the citizen buried at Derveni, this old man, listening to the song of Orpheus, is holding a roll of papyrus in his right hand!49 Misgivings expressed by Euripides or by Plato in the Phaedrus with regard to writing notwithstanding, no image could better express the power of the voice attributed, in the context of Orphism, to the generic authority of Orpheus through the medium of words transcribed with the help of a written alphabet. Even when transposed into writing and commented on in a practice of written scholarship, the voice of Orpheus retains all of the incantatory authority of its oral expression.*

48 Eur. Alc. 357-362 (= Orphica 980 T Bernabé) and 962-971 (= Orphica 812 T Bernabé); see also Calame (2002) 397-400. 49 Apulian amphora attributed to the Ganymede painter, Antikenmuseum Basel inv. S 40 (= LIMC Orpheus 20). * Translated into English by L. Schwartzman. An earlier version of this contribution has been published in Spanish as “El discurso órfico: prácticas de escritura oral”, in: A. Bernabé and F. Casadesús (eds.), Orfeo y la tradición órfica. Un reencuentro I, Madrid, 2008, 811-866.

Remembering the Gastēr Egbert J. Bakker Yale University In discussing the self-reflexive, metapoetic, and intertextual aspects of Odysseus’ return, and hence the poetics of the Odyssey itself, it is impossible not to retrace many of the suggestive steps taken in this area by Pietro Pucci. I will do so in this contribution, following Pucci’s lead in an effort to integrate two areas which he has explored extensively: on the one hand the meaning and metapoetic signification of gastēr (“belly”, “stomach”) in the Odyssey; and on the other, the Iliadic character of Odyssey 22 and the description of the killing of the suitors.1 Both concepts, gastēr and intertextual features of the Mnēstērophonia, I will argue, are related in that the former signifies the desire or the urge to attain the latter. In other words, the gastēr is the principle that urges Odysseus toward the completion of his nostos.

Bellies and Beggars Pucci observes that gastēr in the Odyssey is applicable only when Odysseus is disguised as a beggar and he aligns this with a social distinction: opposed to the heroic notion of thumos “heart”, “spirit”, (of which in Pucci’s system gastēr is both a “synonym” and an antonym), gastēr cannot be applied to figures of high social status:2 even the suitors, who of all the poem’s characters most pathologically indulge in the needs of the belly, are never characterized in terms of gastēr. We can map this limited distribution of gastēr onto the poem’s narrative progression. Odysseus does not use gastēr of himself anywhere in the story of the Wanderings;3 nor is the term used from the moment on1 2 3

Pucci (1987) 157-187 and 127-154, respectively. Pucci (1987) 179, 182. The only occurrence of the word is in the phrase describing the hunger of the Companions on Thrinakia before the fateful decision is made to slaughter the sacred cows: ἔτειρε δὲ γαστέρα λιμός, Od. 12.332 (cf. Od. 4.369).

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ward at which Odysseus sheds his disguise and goes on to kill the suitors and regain his possessions. Gastēr, in other words, is confined to the transitional period between the wanderings of Odysseus in the world ‘beyond’ and the killing of the suitors and the hero’s reintegration as the king of Ithaca. This is a time of disguise, during which Odysseus is dependent on the help of others. It is also a time in which an elementary survival instinct can make a place for desire and longing, desire first to get home, and, once there, to take revenge on the suitors. In terms of the dynamics and construction of epic fame, a subject in which the Odyssey takes a keen interest, this period falls between a time when kleos is unattainable or even dangerous and a time when Odysseus comes to be reintegrated in the network of epic kleos. Numerous elements in the story of the Wanderings point to a temporary suspension of the hero’s conventional epic status. We only have to mention Odysseus’ futile self-presentation to the Cyclops as an associate of Agamemnon (9.259-265), his equally futile stance against Scylla, facing the monster in full heroic panoply (12.228-230), and, most importantly for the poem, his failed attempt to turn his encounter with the Cyclops into a source of kleos, when he urges his opponent to tell others about the blinding of his eye by Odysseus king of Ithaca (9.502-505): the taunt leads to the Cyclops’ prayer to his father Poseidon and the wrath of the god, which will keep Odysseus away from the channels of epic for many years to come. By contrast, Odysseus’ memorable revenge on the collective suitors in his megaron will soon make the rounds of the royal courts, just as did the failed nostos of Agamemnon. In this connection, Phemios, the bard at Odysseus’ court, has a simple but powerful argument as he pleads for his life when Odysseus is about to include him in the massacre: killing a poet creates problems in the future (22.345-346), presumably since one disconnects oneself from the kleos the poet could have produced.4

Gastēr and Thumos Odysseus’ beggar period, then, is wedged between events taking place outside the reach of epic (only the wanderer’s first-person narrative can provide evidence for them) and events with full epic connectivity. Pucci’s discussion of gastēr exposes the parodist and intertextual potential of this interstitial period when considered against the background of

4

Goldhill (1991) 59.

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“standard” heroic epic. Gastēr, as Pucci shows, comes to function as a mock epic equivalent of thumos. The semantics of gastēr begins to be developed in the first occurrence of the term, in a simile that pointedly alludes to an unambiguously heroic simile in the Iliad.5 The simile illustrates the scene in which Odysseus, naked and hungry, comes out of his lair-like sleeping place to approach Nausicaa and her maidservants: βῆ δ᾿ ἴμεν ὥς τε λέων ὀρεσίτροφος, ἀλκὶ πεποιθώς, ὅς τ᾿ εἶσ᾿ ὑόμενος καὶ ἀήμενος, ἐν δέ οἱ ὄσσε δαίεται· αὐτὰρ ὁ βουσὶ μετέρχεται ἢ ὀΐεσσιν ἠὲ μετ᾿ ἀγροτέρας ἐλάφους· κ έλεται δέ ἑ γαστὴρ

He went similar to a lion, mountain-bred and confident in his might, who goes his way in rain and wind with eyes flashing; he goes among a herd of cattle or of sheep, or among the deer of the fields. His gastēr commands him. (Od. 6.130134)

The Iliadic simile pertains to the Lycian hero Sarpedon at the beginning of the battle around the Greek camp: βῆ ῥ᾿ ἴμεν ὥς τε λέων ὀρεσίτροφος, ὅς τ᾿ ἐπιδευὴς δηρὸν ἔῃ κρειῶν, κέλεται δέ ἑ θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ

He went similar to a lion, mountain-bred, who for a long time has been in need of meat. His manly thumos commands him. (Il. 12.299-300)

Both lions are equally hungry, and the Odyssean lion is described in heroic terms (ἀλκὶ πεποιθώς, ἐν δέ οἱ ὄσσε δαίεται); yet it is the gastēr that urges him on, rather than the heroic thumos. The Odyssey, in Pucci’s words, “bemusedly frames the heroic code”, creating irony by naturalizing the image of the lion: the savagery implicit in the representation of the hero is exposed by the mention of the food-processing organ. In a second suggestive case, equally discussed in depth by Pucci,6 both terms are contrasted in one and the same context. In Book 18 the beggar Irus enters the stage, a man who excels by his gasteri margēi, “wanton, raving belly” (Od. 18.2): he challenges his newly arrived competitor, the hero in disguise, and the leading suitor Antinous quickly sees possibilities for crude entertainment. A fight is arranged between the two beggars. The prize will be one of the gasteres, filled with fat and blood, which the suitors have prepared for their meal. Odysseus answers as follows to the proposal: 5 6

Pucci (1987) 157-161. Pucci (1987) 161-162.

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Egbert J. Bakker ὦ φίλοι, οὔ πως ἔστι νεωτέρῳ ἀνδρὶ μάχεσθαι ἄνδρα γέροντα δύῃ ἀρημένον· ἀλλά με γαστὴρ ὀτρύνει κακοεργός, ἵνα πληγῇσι δαμείω.

My friends, there is no way for an old man worn out by misery to fight with a younger man; but the gastēr spurs me on, the evil-doer, in order that I be subdued by blows. (Od. 18.52-54)

Odysseus goes on to express fear lest someone among the spectators will want to hit him, and so tip the balance in the fight. To which Telemachus, who at this point has of course already recognized his father, replies as follows: ξεῖν᾿, εἴ σ᾿ ὀτρύνει κραδίη καὶ θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ τοῦτον ἀλέξασθαι, τῶν δ᾿ ἄλλων μή τιν᾿ Ἀχαιῶν δείδιθ᾿, ἐπεὶ πλεόνεσσι μαχήσεται ὅς κέ σε θείνῃ.

Stranger, if your heart and manly thumos spurs you on to defend yourself against this man, do not fear any other of the Achaeans, since he will fight with many, the man who will hit you. (Od. 18.61-63)

Telemachus picks up the gastēr of his father’s speech and changes it into thumos; the change is a matter of personal communication between father and son (and us); it sets up the gastēr as an outward appearance, the verbal means by which a disguise is enacted, hiding within it a very different substance, just as does the gastēr that serves as prize for the fight of the beggars. In the special code between Odysseus and Telemachus, the gastēr comes to stand in very pointed contrast to the thumos agēnor; for the suitors, on the other hand, the two are merely formulaic synonyms.

Gastēr and Menos But there is more to gastēr than that it typifies the hero in disguise. Its obvious notional connection with food points up further ironies and contrasts. The Iliadic lion simile cited earlier is significant, in that the hero compared to the lion, the Lycian champion Sarpedon, goes on to deliver his famous speech on heroic life and the heroic code (Il. 12.310328).7 The hero enjoys godlike honor, timē, in his community and has the best place at the feast and receives the best pieces of meat. These privileges have to be earned with heroic fighting among the foremost fighters, the promakhoi; they are also compensation for the constant risk of death in the battle that the hero runs. And when heroes dine to7

On this passage, see Pucci (1998) 49-68; on the symbolic significance of food, see also Griffin (1980) 14-17; on food and feasting in Homer, Rundin (1996).

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gether, the meal (called dais in epic parlance) is a proportional distribution equivalent to the division of spoils: the portion one receives is proportionate to one’s ranking in the competitive community of heroic peers.8 Food, especially meat, in other words, is symbolic capital rather than mere nutrition fulfilling a biological need. There are two, diametrically opposite, deviations in the Iliad from this heroic norm. The one is Achilles, who spurns food—whether as heroic capital or as biological sustenance—in his extreme mourning over Patroclus. The other is Odysseus, who is accused by Agamemnon (Il. 4.343-348) of not earning his share in the heroic dais with proportionate martial accomplishments, and who tends to conceive of food in a utilitarian, unheroic way.9 The two sides collide head on in Book 19.10 After the reconciliation with Agamemnon, Achilles rejects any proposal to celebrate the reconciliation formally and wants to start the battle right away, without the delay caused by a communal meal (19.146-153). Odysseus objects that going into the battle without food is bad policy and urges Achilles to allow the people to have a meal (19.160-172). When Achilles refuses a second time, Odysseus addresses his mourning directly by bringing in the gastēr: γαστέρι δ᾿ οὔ πως ἔστι νέκυν πενθῆσαι ᾿Αχαιούς λίην γὰρ πολλοὶ καὶ ἐπήτριμοι ἤματα πάντα πίπτουσιν· πότε κέν τις ἀναπνεύσειε πόνοιο; ἀλλὰ χρὴ τὸν μὲν καταθάπτειν ὅς κε θάνῃσι νηλέα θυμὸν ἔχοντας ἐπ’ ἤματι δακρύσαντας· ὅσσοι δ’ ἂν πολέμοιο περὶ στυγεροῖο λίπωνται μεμνῆσθαι πόσιος καὶ ἐδητύος, ὄφρ’ ἔτι μᾶλλον ἀνδράσι δυσμενέεσσι μαχώμεθα νωλεμὲς αἰεὶ

With the gastēr there is no way for the Achaeans to mourn a corpse. Too many, in dense numbers, each day fall: when can one get relief from this heavy toil? No, we must bury them as they die without pity in our spirit, mourning them for a day. And as for those of us who are left alive from this hateful war, we must remain mindful of drink and eating, so that even more we will fight the men of the enemy, unceasingly again and again. (Il. 19.225-231)

Odysseus crudely reduces the dead hero and his mourners to their physical realities: a collective of eaters and a corpse, one out of the many 8 Saïd (1979) 19-21; see also Rundin (1996). 9 On Odysseus in the Iliad, see Clay (1999). 10 Again extensively discussed by Pucci (1987) 165-172.

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that are collected after each day’s battle. The gastēr and its continuous physical needs are bluntly stressed, and the heroic code is reduced to what is for us an athlete’s diet. Odysseus’ vision reverses the heroic order of fighting before food and strips food of all its heroic symbolics.11 The gastēr, then, is more than a beggarly disguise for the hero in a transitional phase between folktale and epic. Odysseus in the Iliad, who is in the middle of the epic arena, is shown to stand beside mainstream heroism. In his advice to Achilles and the army to take food before the fighting, he deconstructs the heroic code, thus foreshadowing the Odyssey’s emphasis on the biological necessity of food and the problems inherent in heroic feasting.12 Odysseus also counters standard heroic psychology, which takes thumos for granted. A man, Odysseus says (Il. 19.162-166), can have all the thumos in the world and still be weak in his knees for lack of food. For food is the basis of a warrior’s menos, the epic word for energy, vigor: ἀλλὰ πάσασθαι ἄνωχθι θοῇς ἐπὶ νηυσὶν ᾿Αχαιοὺς σίτου καὶ οἴνοιο, τὸ γὰρ μένος ἐστι καὶ ἀλκή.

But order the Achaeans to taste by the swift ships of bread and wine, for that is menos and strength. (Il. 19.160-161)

In heroic epic, menos comes into the thumos (e.g., μένος δέ οἱ ἔμβαλε θυμῷ, “and he threw menos in his thumos”, Il. 16.529) or the two are presented as one complex concept (e.g., ὄτρυνε μένος καὶ θυμὸν ἑκάστου “he spurred on the menos and thumos of each”). Odysseus locates menos and the quintessentially heroic concept of alkē “valor, might” in something as mundane as bread, thus reminding Achilles, and the other Achaeans, that heroism has a simple practical and biological basis. The acknowledgment of the importance of food as the basis of menos leads to a further understanding of gastēr. In words addressed to Eumaeus the swineherd, Odysseus explicitly presents the gastēr as being in a state of menos itself: γαστέρα δ᾿ οὔ πως ἔστιν ἀποκρύψαι μεμαυῖαν, οὐλομένην, ἣ πολλὰ κάκ ᾿ ἀνθρώποισι δίδωσι, τῆς ἕνεκεν καὶ νῆες ἐΰζυγοι ὁπλίζονται πόντον ἐπ ᾿ ἀτρύγετον, κακὰ δυσμενέεσσι φέρουσαι

There is no way to hide the gastēr, full of menos as it is, accursed thing, which gives many evils to humans, 11 This is not to say that Achilles also departs from the heroic code; his extreme eagerness to fight turns battle into the hunt of wild animals. See Grethlein (2005). 12 Bakker (2006) 12-13.

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she on account of whom well-benched ships are prepared for the barren sea, carrying evils to enemies. (Od. 17.286-289)

Odysseus’ first line reads as an allusion to his remark on gastēr to Achilles. The two visions are complementary. In his exhortation to Achilles to let the army eat, Odysseus presents the gastēr as what sustains the continuation of what was already going on, the battle in the Trojan plain. Here, the gastēr is presented as the driving force behind new activity. Memauia used to characterize the gastēr is the feminine participle of the perfect verb memona, memaōs, which is frequently used for heroes in a state of battle frenzy, typically complemented by an infinitive denoting violent action (e.g., διαρραῖσαι/ διαπραθέειν μεμαῶτες “being eager to destroy/sack”. A further remarkable feature is the way in which the syntax of the first two lines of the Iliad is evoked, with gastera being placed, like mēnin, at the beginning of the line, both words being modified by the participle oulomenēn, “accursed”, at the beginning of the next line, followed by a relative clause specifying the evils resulting from the central concept. This is not a concept typifying only beggars; it lies at the root of risky voyages, perhaps even of navigation itself. And as Pucci notes (1987, 176), such dangerous expeditions with hostile intent may include even the Trojan expedition itself. The Odyssey seems to deconstruct mechanisms and assumptions of the Iliad: what in heroic poetry is ascribed to a yearning for kleos is shown in the Odyssey from a reverse angleʊthe urge to satisfy greed or need.

Remembering the Gastēr The link between gastēr and menos can be further developed when we observe that memona, the quintessential menos-verb, is from the standpoint of historical-comparative linguistics identical with Latin memini, “I remember”.13 And in one important passage the human gastēr is explicitly linked with “memory”, in the form of the aorist verb mnēsasthai, whose root mnē- is an ablaut variant of men-/mon-: ἀλλ᾿ ἐμὲ μὲν δορπῆσαι ἐάσατε κηδόμενόν περ· οὐ γάρ τι στυγερῇ ἐπὶ γαστέρι κύντερον ἄλλο ἔπλετο, ἥ τ᾿ ἐκέλευσεν ἕο μνήσασθαι ἀνάγκῃ καὶ μάλα τειρόμενον καὶ ἐνὶ φρεσὶ πένθος ἔχοντα, ὡς καὶ ἐγὼ πένθος μὲν ἔχω φρεσίν, ἡ δὲ μάλ᾿ αἰεὶ ἐσθέμεναι κέλεται καὶ πινέμεν, ἐκ δέ με πάντων 13 This section on memory in Homer extensively draws on Bakker (2008).

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But let me now have my meal, afflicted as I am; for there is nothing else that is more shameful than the hateful gastēr, she who orders one to “remember” her by sheer necessity, no matter how worn out one is or how much sorrow one has in one’s phrenes, just as I too have sorrow in my phrenes, but she urges me always to eat and drink, and makes me forget all that I suffered, and urges that she be filled. (Od. 7.215-221)

This is what Odysseus says in the megaron of Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians, in response to the king’s suspicion that the stranger might be a god. Being “reminded” of the gastēr and its needs is what it means to be human. But what does it mean to “remember” in Homer? Questions of memory are never trivial in epic, the song of memory, especially not in the Odyssey with its interest in metapoetic narrativity. In addition, the passage also talks about forgetting, an equally charged concept in the poem. It is not immediately obvious that verbs for “remembering”—for us a mental, cognitive faculty—are semantically related to menos and memona, which denote vigorous physical dispositions. Yet mnēsasthai has a no less strong affinity with battle words like alkē as has menos, as appears from such common formulas as ἀνέρες ἐστε, φίλοι, μνήσασθε δὲ θούριδος ἀλκῆς “be men, my friends, and ‘remember’ furious strength”, ἀλλὰ μνησώμεθα χάρμης, “but let us ‘remember’ battle”, and μνήσαντο δὲ χάρμης, “they ‘remembered’ battle”. This “remembering” is not retrieval from memory, but the reaching of a certain vigorous disposition. The act of remembering is performative: “remembering” battle is to deliver battle, “remembering” strength is to be strong.14 At the same time, this remembering is acting on the impulse of something: the genitive object of the verb denotes the source from which one draws menos. To “remember”, especially when this action is denoted with the performative aorist mnē-sasthai, is to absorb the menos of something so as to embody it. Outside the Iliadic battle (where a lot of “remembering” takes place) typical cases of the transfer of menos in the act of remembering include sons “remembering” (the menos of) their father, as in the case of Telemachus: τῷ δ᾿ ἐνὶ θυμῷ θῆκε μ ένος καὶ θάρσος, ὑπέμνησέν τέ ἑ πατρὸς μᾶλλον ἔτ᾿ ἢ τὸ πάροιθεν. ὁ δὲ φρεσὶν ᾗσι νοήσας θάμβησεν κατὰ θυμόν· ὀΐσατο γὰρ θεὸν εἶναι.

14 Bakker (2005) 139-145.

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And to him in his thumos she [Athena] placed menos and courage, and reminded him of his father even more than before; and he in his phrenes he saw and understood, and was amazed in his thumos: for he understood that this was a god. (Od. 1.320-323)

The “reminding” (ὑπέμνησεν) that takes place is not an activation of the memory of his father (whom he has never known), but an infusion of paternal menos, administered by Athena. The shot is not just physical, like adrenalin, but also what we would call mental or intellectual: Telemachus is now seeing (noēsas) that it was Athena who talked to him. The injection of menos has sharpened his noos. Another typical case is the “remembering” of food, which, as Odysseus emphasized, is an important source of menos. In his speech to Achilles in the Iliad Odysseus urges, as we saw, to be “mindful of drink and food” (μεμνῆσθαι πόσιος καὶ ἐδητύος); here is what Odysseus says to his companions on Circe’s island when he returns to the camp with the giant stag he caught: ἀλλ᾿ ἄγετ᾿, ὄφρ᾿ ἐν νηῒ θοῇ βρῶσίς τε πόσις τε, μνησόμεθα βρώμης μηδὲ τρυχώμεθα λιμῷ.

Well, as long as in the swift ship there is food and drink, let us “remember” (take our menos from/draw on the menos of) food and not be wasted by hunger. (Od. 10.176-177)

And the formulaic exhortation to sit down to eat, metrically equivalent to the battle-cry (mnēsōmetha kharmēs) is mnēsōmetha dorpou/daitos “let us ‘remember’ the meal” (Od. 20.246; Il. 24.601). No such exhortation is needed for the gastēr itself, of course. In enforcing its own “remembrance”, it does two things. Not only does it cry out for the menos that inheres in the food it needs; it also fills its bearer with menos. The man whose gastēr cries out, whose primary impulse is his empty stomach, is not only a needy beggar, but can also be a man (a hero?) ready for serious action. As Odysseus’ words indicate, he forgets his sufferings, past and present, and becomes focused exclusively on his present need for action. This is a heroic experience. It happens to Hector, not through an empty stomach, but through a divine injection of menos (in Zeus’ words to Iris after he has woken up from his sleep with Hera): ῞Εκτορα δ᾿ ὀτρύνῃσι μάχην ἐς Φοῖβος ᾿Απόλλων αὖτις δ᾿ ἐμπνεύσῃσι μένος, λελάθῃ δ᾿ ὀδυνάων αἳ νῦν μιν τείρουσι κ ατὰ φρένας

and so that he exhorts Hector into the battle, Phoebus Apollo, and blows again menos into him and makes him forget the shots of pain

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that are now afflicting him in his phrenes. (Il. 15.59-61)

Forgetfulness resulting from the menos that comes with “remembering” is also a—in fact, the quintessential—poetic experience. In this regard, we are reminded of two memorable passages in the opening Hymn of the Hesiodic Theogony: τὰς ἐν Πιερίῃ Κρονίδῃ τέκε πατρὶ μιγεῖσα Μνημοσύνη, γουνοῖσιν ᾿Ελευθῆρος μεδέουσα, λησμοσύνην τε κακῶν ἄμπαυμά τε μερμηράων

These in Pieria she bore to Cronus’ son laying with the Father, Mnemosyne, who rules the high grounds of Eleuther, forgetfulness of evils and relief from sorrows. (Hes. Theog. 53-55) αὐτὰρ ἀοιδὸς Μουσάων θεράπων κλεῖα προτέρων ἀνθρώπων ὑμνήσει μάκαράς τε θεοὺς οἳ ῎Ολυμπον ἔχουσιν, αἶψ᾿ ὅ γε δυσφροσυνέων ἐ πιλήθεται οὐδέ τι κηδέων μέμνηται· ταχέως δὲ παρέτραπε δῶρα θεάων.

But the Singer, servant of the Muses, the fame of earlier men he shall hymn and the blessed gods who hold Olympos, and forthright one forgets one’s misery and is not aware of one’s cares: the gifts of the gods have turned these things away. (Hes. Theog. 99-103)

The inspired poet and his rapt audience have in common with heroes that the menos they derive from the song, which contains the heroic deeds of the past, ousts the sorrows they have in the present. The poet remembers because he draws on the divine menos of the Muses. And through that divine intervention, he will draw on the inspired menos of the great men of the past. We see, then, that in spite of its negative connotations, the gastēr takes part in networks of association that align it with heroism and poetry.15 Again Odysseus’ characterizations of the human gastēr, in particular his own, provide a vision of heroism and human agency that is typical for a poem that is interested in exploring the ambiguities in such central epic concepts as kleos, poetry, and truth. The gastēr typifies Odysseus’ Iliadic identity and his Odyssean disguise, and so comes to denote both hero and beggar, both self and other. In this regard we may wonder whether in the double remem15 We may go one step further if we assume, with Katz and Volk (2000), that Hesiod’s gastēr, as mentioned in the abusive address of the Muses in the Dichterweihe (Hes. Theog. 26: ποιμένες ἄγραυλοι, κάκ᾽ ἐλέγχεα, γαστέρες οἶον), is associated with poetic inspiration.

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brance in the crucial phrase ἥ τ᾿ ἐκέλευσεν ἕο μνήσασθαι ἀνάγκῃ, the reflexive personal pronoun ἕο is not deliberately ambiguous: “remember oneself” no less than “remember itself”. This fusion is the natural consequence of the conception of remembrance in epic I have proposed: the difference between the gastēr and its bearer falls away, since the rememberer comes to embody that which he draws his menos from. The unity of man (anēr) and gastēr is acted out in a remarkable simile which marks the end of Odysseus’ gastēr stage; the simile illustrates the state of restless sleeplessness which Odysseus is in when he ponders, deep inside of him, the destruction of the suitors on the day before the massacre: ὡς δ᾿ ὅτε γαστέρ᾿ ἀνὴρ πολέος πυρὸς αἰθομένοιο, ἐμπλείην κνίσης τε καὶ αἵματος, ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα αἰόλλῃ, μάλα δ᾿ ὦκα λιλαίεται ὀπτηθῆναι, ὣς ἄρ᾿ ὅ γ᾿ ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα ἑλίσσετο μερμηρίζων,

Just as when a man in the blaze of a big fire tosses around a gastēr filled with fat and blood, around and around, and he is [it is] eager to be grilled quickly – just so then he writhed around and around as he was pondering. (Od. 20.25-28)

The simile begins syntactically as if the man, anēr, is the point of comparison, but when the image is further developed, it becomes clear that Odysseus similarly is compared to the paunch on the grill. In fact, he is both; the man is eager to finish the cooking and enjoy the inside of the gastēr, just as Odysseus is burning with desire to drop his disguise and reap the fruits of his inner scheming. The gastēr is eager to be cooked, so that its delectable inside can be enjoyed. The subject of lilaietai (‘is eager’) is ambiguous, applying both to the anēr and to his gastēr. And the outside paunch, which contains the delectable food, is writhing on the grill, just as Odysseus is tossing himself around in his bed.16

Odysseus and Achilles After the last instantiation of the gastēr theme, as the narrative approaches the fulfillment of the beggar’s burning desire, indications of the goal be16 A theme convergent with that of the energy deriving from the (empty) gastēr is Odysseus’ self-presentation in the liar stories as a disinherited bastard son (14.200-210), as a second son who will not obtain wealth through inheritance (19.184), and in particular the fictive name Aithon, the “Burning One” (19.183), signifying unfulfilled desire and need for adventurous action, as shown by Levaniouk (2000) 25-51; (2010).

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gin to appear, oblique and indirect at first, overt and direct when the massacre gets underway. The queen communicates her dilemma to the beggar: should she stay in the house and guard its possessions, or should she follow the man who is “best of the Achaeans” (Akhaiōn hos tis aristos, 19.528)? An anonymous suitor refers to the beggar in a speech to Telemachus as “a mere burden of the field” (autos akhthos arourēs, 20.379), recalling Achilles’ self-reference at Il. 19.104. And the suitor Eurymachus recalls Achilles’ exhortation to the final massacre in uttering alla mnēsōmetha kharmēs “but let us ‘remember’ battle” (Od. 22.73), ironically exhorting to battle the side that will be massacred. The last two allusions are not just to the Iliad, but to points in the Iliad at approximately the same place in the progression of the composition. The Odyssey’s final battle is looking at the Iliad’s. Odysseus’ homecoming is not only a return to a desired geographical location, but also a return to the networks of epic out of the anonymity and disconnectedness he was forced to undergo. He not only sheds his disguise as beggar, but also his Iliadic persona, being more heroic than before his Wanderings and competing directly with the Iliad’s “best of the Achaeans”. The allusions become more elaborate and explicit when the fighting gets underway. When Odysseus has won the bow contest, killed Antinous with his first arrow, and revealed himself as Odysseus, Eurymachus, the other ringleader of the suitors, tries to make a deal: he pledges that everything that has been eaten in Odysseus’ megaron will be repaid, each suitor bringing in a restitution worth twenty oxen, and on top of that bronze and gold. Odysseus answers as follows: Εὐρύμαχ᾿, οὐδ ᾿ εἴ μοι πατρώϊα πάντ᾿ ἀποδοῖτε, ὅσσα τε νῦν ὔμμ᾿ ἐστὶ καὶ εἴ ποθεν ἄλλ᾿ ἐπιθεῖτε, οὐδέ κεν ὣς ἔτι χεῖρας ἐμὰς λήξαιμι φόνοιο πρὶν πᾶσαν μνηστῆρας ὑπερβασίην ἀποτῖσαι.

Eurymachus, not if you suitors gave me all your ancestral wealth in return, all that is now yours and even if you somehow added more wealth to it, not even so would I stop my hands from the slaughter, not until the suitors have paid for all their transgression. (Od. 22.61-64)

This response is distinctly Achillean in its uncompromising refusal even to make a settlement that would have yielded him great profit. Odysseus is here certainly not acting on the impulse of, or in the interest of, his gastēr. As Seth Schein has seen, the response recalls Achilles’ own words in his response in the Iliad – to no one other than Odysseus himself,

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who has offered him the highly lucrative terms on which Agamemnon offers to settle their dispute:17 οὐδ᾿ εἴ μοι δεκάκις τε καὶ εἰκοσάκις τόσα δοίη ὅσα τέ οἱ νῦν ἔστι, καὶ εἴ ποθεν ἄλλα γένοιτο

Not if he gave me ten times, even twenty times as much, all that is now his, and even if more wealth would somehow come to him. (Il. 9.379-380)

Odysseus the gastēr-man, the crafty, practical man of mētis, would have accepted the deal, and become very wealthy; but by now the needy, gain-seeking impulses of mētis have given way to the implacable, destructive forces of heroic wrath. The references during the battle are to Achilles’ river fight. Particularly striking is the formula τύπτεν/τύπτον ἐπιστροφάδην· τῶν δὲ στόνος ὄρνυτ᾽ ἀεικὴς (‘He/they struck left and right, and of them the groan rose, unseemly’) at Il. 21.20/Od. 22.308 followed by pleas for life by Leodes at Od. 22.312 and Lycaon at Il. 21.74: γουνοῦμαί σ’ Ὀδυσεῦ/Ἀχιλεῦ· σὺ δέ μ᾽ αἴδεο καὶ μ᾽ ἐλέησον (‘I beseech you, Odysseus/Achilles, and you, show consideration and have mercy on me’), all of which has been extensively discussed by Pucci.18 The references are to actions performed by Achilles in total disregard for the gastēr and its needs. Likewise, Odysseus is killing, not for gain, nor even for fame, but out of murderous rage. The killing sprees of both heroes occur at about the same stage in the monumental compositions devoted to each, which sets up their respective nostoi in the starkest contrast: Achilles returns to the battle in order to die, Odysseus delivers the battle of his life in order to start a new life. The lion that Odysseus becomes in a simile marking the end of the fighting could not be more different from the lion Odysseus is at the beginning of his interstitial beggar period: εὗρεν ἔπειτ᾿ ᾿Οδυσῆα μετὰ κταμένοισι νέκυσσιν, αἵματι καὶ λύθρῳ πεπαλαγμένον ὥς τε λέοντα, ὅς ῥά τε βεβρωκὼς βοὸς ἔρχεται ἀγραύλοιο· πᾶν δ ᾿ ἄρα οἱ στῆθός τε παρήϊά τ ᾿ ἀμφοτέρωθεν αἵματόεντα πέλει, δεινὸς δ’ εἰς ὦπα ἰδέσθαι· ὣς ᾿Οδυσεὺς πεπάλακτο πόδας καὶ χεῖρας ὕπερθεν.

Thereupon she [Eurycleia] found Odysseus among the dead corpses, spattered and defiled with blood and gore, as a lion who has feasted on a bull from the field and walks away from the slaughter. All his breast and his cheeks on either side are covered with blood; he is fearsome to look in the 17 Schein (1999) 352-354. 18 Pucci (1987) 127-138.

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face: Thus Odysseus was spattered and defiled, his legs and his arms above. (Od. 22.402-406)

This lion is neither needy nor hungry; he does not care about his gastēr, as did the lion that came out of the bush to meet with Nausicaa and her maidservants. This lion returns from a killing spree, without his life being at stake, and lust for blood has eclipsed all his need for food. A key element in Pucci’s intertextual reading of the Homeric poems is that the process of allusion is not a one-way street: for him the poems refer to each other. Perhaps we can see in Achilles’ return to food and his exhortation to Priam νῦν δὲ μνησώμεθα δόρπου (“and let us now ‘remember’ the meal”: Il. 24.602), an allusion to the Odyssey and its eating hero. If that is the case, then Odysseus’ epic success is complete. Not only has he remembered the gastēr and what was hiding within, a real hero’s thumos; he has also, through his poem, done what he was unable to do in person: set an example for Achilles.

Achilles Polytropos and Odysseus as Suitor: Iliad 9.307-429 Phillip Mitsis New York University ὁ Ἀχιλλεὺς οὐ πολύτροπος τῷ Ὁμήρῳ πεποίηται;

Hippias Minor 364e5-6

For those of us fortunate enough to be students of Pietro Pucci and, therefore, happy participants in his endlessly fruitful, inventive, and profound readings of texts, it is well-nigh impossible to forget his general strictures against foundational conceptions of truth and his explorations of how any locus of truth, writ large, is always absent and recoverable only by way of inscription in a textual discourse that attempts both to disguise and efface its difference from truth. By the same token, anyone seriously attempting to come to grips with more particular questions of truth in the poetry of the Homeric epics must now do so in the wake of his pioneering work on the nature of epic intertextuality. One of the hallmarks of Pucci’s writings on epic, it seems to me, has been precisely his ability to bring together in such mutually illuminating ways his two abiding concerns about intertextualty and truth. Thus, given the occasion, I thought it might be appropriate to try to follow out some features of the language of the Iliad that seem to lend further support to one of the conclusions that he makes at the end of his remarkable series of readings in Odysseus Polutropos: “. . . the epic texts entertain an endless dialogue and conversation on all the topics of archaic Greek thought. To begin with the notion of truth in relation to the language of poetry, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Hesiod eavesdrop on each other, the Odyssey teasing slightly the notion of kleos in the Iliad, the Odyssey providing the foil for Hesiod’s attack on the poets, gasteres oion, mere bellies”.1 My reading will be a supplementary one, in so far as it starts from the Iliad and seeks to show how one of its most exemplary passages

1

Pucci (1987) 242.

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resonates with the kind of intertextual dialogue2 that Pucci so well describes. At the same time, it turns out that this intertextuality—perhaps not surprisingly, given the signposts that he has provided for all of us—is implicated in both masking and unraveling the passage’s own seeming claims to truth. The passage I have in mind is Achilles’ famous response to Odysseus in the “Embassy Scene” of Iliad 9.307-429. In looking at the language of this great speech, we have good reason, I suggest, for taking to heart Pucci’s arguments about the intertextual triangulation of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Hesiod. Leslie Collins3 has already demonstrated with great precision and sophistication our passage’s concern with Hesiodic notions of the gift-devouring basileus whose power is mainly verbally based and who is a trickster with words. My focus, therefore, will be primarily on its corresponding stance with respect to central features of the Odyssey, thus highlighting the other main axis of the relation outlined by Pucci. At the same time, the epic dialogue and “eavesdropping” that can be discerned in this passage inevitably raise some further, perhaps undecidable questions about the nature and scope of Achilles’ truthfulness in the Embassy and, indeed, about the poetics of the Iliad generally. A good many of these questions are not particularly new, perhaps, since they go back, at least in spirit, to Plato’s Hippias Minor. But because the Socrates of that dialogue is typically thought to be posing his questions about the truthfulness of Achilles in merely a glib or playful way, critics have often missed the deadly seriousness of the problem that Plato actually raises for our overall understanding of the passage and of the poem’s protagonist. But before turning to these larger questions about truth, it first might be useful to get at least some initial bearings on the nature and extent of our passage’s intertextual relations with the Odyssey. It is probably fair to say that there has been a certain tendency, when examining how the epic texts triangulate and keep an eye on each other, to view the relation of the Homeric epics themselves through the lens of their great protagonists and their contrasting identities. Take, for instance, Achilles’ powerful opening declaration to Odysseus that the man who hides one thing in his thoughts and says another is as hateful to him as the gates of Hades (9.312-313):

2

3

See Austin (1991) 229 for a discussion of Pucci’s notion of intertextuality in relation to Nagy’s view of the kind of poetic teleology that emerges in the diachronic process of cross-referencing that occurs between the two epic traditions of performance. Cf. Nagy (2003) 9-11. Collins (1988) 89 ff.

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ἐχθρὸς γάρ μοι κεῖνος ὁμῶς Ἀΐδαο πύλῃσιν ὅς χ᾽ ἕτερον μὲν κεύθῃ ἐνὶ φρεσίν, ἄλλο δὲ εἴπῃ.

For as I detest the gates of Hades, I detest the man, who hides one thing in the depths of his thoughts, and speaks forth another.4

Jenny Strauss Clay, for example, speaks for many critics, I imagine, when she sees reflected in this pronouncement a natural tension “between Achilles’ self-proclaimed simplicity and the polymēchaniēi of Odysseus”,5 and likewise suggests that Achilles is justly suspicious of Odysseus for being less than honest in his report of Agamemnon’s overture; indeed, for many critics Achilles’ suspicions are thoroughly justified since Odysseus has omitted the four lines of the offer most likely to offend (158-161). Oliver Taplin,6 moreover, thinks that, in addition to a selfreferential gesture on the part of Achilles to his own ethical commitments to truthful speech, there may also be a submerged reference to Agamemnon, who in Achilles’ mind is a deceptive cheat (cf. 9.375376). But whether the referent is Odysseus or Agamemnon or Achilles or all three, most critics seem confident in the reliability of Achilles’ declaration and in the ethical distance it puts between Odysseus and himself. Of course, Odysseus has omitted much more than Agamemnon’s demand that Achilles recognize who is the more kingly (160); he has also made no mention of Agamemnon’s so-called apology (115 ff). But I would like to put aside the question of whether epic conventions of reported speech would allow for such a mention and also whether or not this would further strengthen the force of the contrast between our two epic protagonists. Instead, I would like to draw attention to a moment in the Odyssey when Odysseus, just like Achilles, claims to find someone hateful like the gates of Hades, in this case the man who yielding to want, tells deceitful tales, apatēlia (14.156-157): ἐχθρὸς γάρ μοι κεῖνος ὁμῶς Ἀΐδαο πύλῃσι γίγνεται, ὃς πενίῃ εἴκων ἀπατήλια βάζει.

For as I detest the gates of Hades, I detest that man who under constraint of poverty babbles beguiling falsehoods.

Odysseus is here speaking to Eumaeus and before embarking on his elaborately deceitful Cretan tale (14.199 ff.) he makes a prediction about the vengeance soon to be wreaked upon the suitors. In keeping with the 4 5 6

All translations are from Lattimore with slight modifications to capture the possible quotational force of the passages in Greek. Clay (19972) 104. Taplin (1992) 70-71.

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complex overlapping relation between lies and truth associated with Odysseus, we are confronted in this passage with an Odysseus who clearly seems willing to tell deceitful tales to ward off want and who, disguised as a beggar, declares to Eumaeus that he finds hateful those who out of need tell deceitful tales, which he, however, will presently do; but first, swearing by Zeus and his own table and hearth that all will come to pass as he says, πάντα τελείεται ὡς ἀγορεύω (14.160),7 he truthfully claims that Odysseus is returning to take vengeance on the suitors, only to be disbelieved by Eumaeus who, for his part, takes this claim about Odysseus’ return to be false and believes, in any case, that the beggar must be lying because he is in fact motivated by need. At first glance, we might be inclined to conclude that if, indeed, the singular use of this expression at significant junctures in both epics were functioning as any kind of cross-reference, we again might have a case of the clever, polytropic Odyssey teasing the solemnly self-proclaimed truthfulness of Achilles and his seeming rebuke to Odysseus in the Iliad. After all, what could be more straightforwardly paradoxical and Odyssean than a liar claiming that he hates deceit? Yet, there seems to be no immediate or manifest poetic reason for the Odyssey to be making any particular reference to Achilles and to the Iliad at this point in its narrative. Conversely, by alluding to Odysseus’ own disguised prediction of the destruction of the suitors, there might be, I would argue, a discernable poetic strategy and palpable gain for the Iliad. We will perhaps be in a better position to begin to see some elements of such a poetic strategy after looking at two further hapax legomena that similarly occur at the beginning of Achilles’ speech. I begin with one that scholars have long found puzzling, the reference Achilles makes to Briseis at 9.336 as his alochon thumarea: ἄλλα δ᾽ ἀριστήεσσι δίδου γέρα καὶ βασιλεῦσι, τοῖσι μὲν ἔμπεδα κεῖται, ἐμεῦ δ᾽ ἀπὸ μούνου Ἀχαιῶν εἵλετ᾽, ἔχει δ᾽ ἄλοχον θυμαρέα· τῇ παριαύων τερπέσθω.

All the other prizes of honor he gave the great men and the princes are held fast by them, but from me alone of all the Achaians he has taken and keeps the wife fitted to my heart. Let him lie beside her and enjoy her.

Given the obvious fact that Briseis is not his wife and that he later says that he wishes that Artemis had slain her with an arrow (19.59-60), commentators have been troubled by this description of Briseis as a wife 7

As does Achilles in Il. 9.310: καὶ ὡς τετελεσμένον ἔσται.

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fitted to Achilles’ heart. Some of the older commentaries attempted to eliminate the problem by punctuating with a stop after εἵλετ᾽, thus rendering “He”, i.e. Agamemnon, “has a wife fitted to his heart, let him enjoy her”. This is obviously rather desperate since it requires an implausible reference either to Clytemnestra or to some nameless wife in Agamemnon’s camp. More important, Achilles then goes on at length stressing his emotional attachment to Briseis, even though she is spearwon, and making parallels between the care and love he has for her ἐκ θυμοῦ and the love that both Menelaus has for Helen and that the Atreidai in general have for their wives (9.337-343): τί δὲ δεῖ πολεμιζέμεναι Τρώεσσιν Ἀργείους; τί δὲ λαὸν ἀνήγαγεν ἐνθάδ᾽ ἀγείρας Ἀτρεῖδης; ἦ οὐχ Ἑλένης ἕνεκ᾽ ἠϋκόμοιο; ἦ μοῦνοι φιλέουσ᾽ ἀλόχους μερόπων ἀνθρώπων Ἀτρεῖδαι; ἐπεὶ ὅς τις ἀνὴρ ἀγαθὸς καὶ ἐχέφρων8 τὴν αὐτοῦ φιλέει καὶ κήδεται, ὡς καὶ ἐγὼ τὴν ἐκ θυμοῦ φίλεον δουρικτητήν περ ἐοῦσαν.

Yet why must the Argives fight with the Trojans? And why was it the son of Atreus assembled and led here these people? Was it not for the sake of lovely-haired Helen? Are the sons of Atreus alone among mortal men the ones who love their wives? Since any who is a good man, and careful, loves her who is his own and cares for her, even as I now loved this one from my heart, though it was my spear that won her.

Hainsworth’s trouble over this passage is, I think, unintentionally revealing. In arguing that Achilles is obsessed only with his own humiliation, he makes the claim that “(n)ever up to this point, nor afterwards, does anyone suggest that Agamemnon has wounded Akhilleus in his family honor. Adultery was beyond compensation—Penelope’s suitors died for less”.9 But of course, such a wound is exactly what Achilles seems to be 8

9

Hapax in the Iliad, ἐχέφρων is used seven times in the Odyssey to describe Penelope and once for Odysseus, by Athena, on his return to Ithaca in connection with his testing of Penelope (13.332). In Hesiod, it is used once at Theogony 88 to describe sensible kings. Presumably, its use here is in line with these two latter passages, though, given this particular context, some very faint association with ἐχέφρων Πηνελόπεια might also be in play. More significant, however, this is merely one in a series of examples where we find expressions with a strong Odyssean pedigree being used in the Iliad only here in Achilles’ speech. These have been collected by Sean Signore and are the subject of a forthcoming study. Hainsworth (1993) 106-107. Cf. Il. 19.297-299 for Briseis’ lament for Patroclus and the claim that he was going to give her in marriage to Achilles.

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suggesting and epic diction could not be more precise, in so far as it is spelled out to Odysseus in terms quintessentially Odyssean. The phrase ἄλοχον θυμαρέα occurs only one other time in Homeric epic, it being hapax as well in the Odyssey, and that occurrence is in a passage that is often taken to be one of the crowning and paradigmatic visions of marital attachment in all of Western literature. In response to Penelope throwing her arms about his neck, kissing him, and tearfully recounting how the tokens of the bed have now convinced her of his identity, Odysseus at last embraces the wife fitted to his heart and gives himself over to his desire for tears (23.231-232): ὣς φάτο, τῷ δ᾽ ἔτι μᾶλλον ὑφ᾽ ἵμερον ὦρσε γόοιο· κλαῖε δ᾽ ἔχων ἄλοχον θυμαρέα, κεδνὰ ἰδυῖαν.

She spoke, and still more roused in him the passion for weeping. He wept as he held the wife fitted to his heart whose thoughts were virtuous.

The Iliad, by making reference to this moment in the Odyssey, I suggest, draws a parallel between the positions of Achilles and Odysseus. It is a parallel, however, that also has more sinister implications, since, as Hainsworth notes, Penelope’s suitors died for less of a potential slight to Odysseus’ ἄλοχον θυμαρέα. The second hapax I would like to draw attention to occurs as Achilles is prefacing his declaration of ἐχθρὸς γάρ μοι κεῖνος ὁμῶς Ἀΐδαο πύλῃσι—which in the Odyssey, we have seen, introduces Odysseus’ own prediction of the slaughter of the suitors--with the claim that he must speak his μῦθος forthrightly or without showing care (Il. 9.309310): χρὴ μὲν δὴ τὸν μῦθον ἀπηλεγέως ἀποειπεῖν, ᾗ περ δὴ φρονέω τε καὶ ὡς τετελεσμένον ἔσται.

I must speak forthrightly the way I think and the way it will be accomplished.

Richard Martin, in his detailed study of Achilles’ speech in Iliad 9, tends to let expressions such as apēlegeōs fall under the radar since they qualify as neither syntagmatic nor paradigmatic formulae, and hence, do not exhibit what he finds most idiosyncratic about Achilles’ speech, i.e. its use of expressions elsewhere associated with the speech of gods or with the diegesis of the narrator.10 But I worry that such categories might not be sufficiently fine-grained to capture a significant feature of epic crossreferencing. Hainsworth, for his part, observes that ἀπηλεγέως 10 Martin (1989) 166-170.

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ἀποειπεῖν “is an under-represented formula to which the epic should have had frequent recourse”.11 It might be interesting to speculate about why the Iliad is so sparing in its use of this expression, but we should perhaps first observe that it is also hapax in the Odyssey, and in the passage where Telemachus tells the stunned suitors that should they fail to depart straightaway, he will call on Zeus to destroy them within his halls without recompense (Od. 1.372-380): ἠῶθεν δ᾽ ἀγορήνδε καθεζώμεσθα κιόντες πάντες, ἵν᾽ ὕμιν μῦθον ἀπηλεγέως ἀποείπω, ἐξιέναι μεγάρων· ἄλλας δ᾽ ἀλεγύνετε δαῖτας, ὑμὰ κτήματ᾽ ἔδοντες, ἀμειβόμενοι κατὰ οἴκους. εἰ δ᾽ ὕμιν δοκέει τόδε λωίτερον καὶ ἄμεινον ἔμμεναι, ἀνδρὸς ἑνὸς βίοτον νήποινον ὀλέσθαι, κείρετ᾽· ἐγὼ δὲ θεοὺς ἐπιβώσομαι αἰὲν ἐόντας, αἴ κέ ποθι Ζεὺς δῷσι παλίντιτα ἔργα γενέσθαι· νήποινοί κεν ἔπειτα δόμων ἔντοσθεν ὄλοισθε.

Then tomorrow let us all go to the place of assembly, and hold a session, where I will speak forthrightly, that you go out of my palace and do your feasting elsewhere, eating up your own possessions, taking turns, household by household. But if you decide it is more profitable and better to go on, eating up one man’s livelihood, without payment, then spoil my house. I will cry out to the gods everlasting in the hope that Zeus might somehow grant a reversal of fortunes. Then you may perish in this house with no payment given.

So far, I have drawn attention to some expressions at the beginning of Achilles’ speech that are used uniquely in both epics and that are embedded in thematic contexts in the Odyssey that either predict or involve the death of the suitors. Taken together, these intertextual references, I would argue, begin to suggest a wider pattern that comes to be reinforced in the course of Achilles’ speech and that indicates the concern of the Iliad, in the shared diction of the Odyssey, to paint Odysseus and the rest of the Greeks as being in a position similar to that of the suitors in the Odyssey-- the underlying implication being, perhaps, that they too deserve to be killed for their outrage. Now, of course, I am hardly claiming that when Achilles uses the phrase alochon thumarea he, the character, is directly alluding to the events and diction of Odyssey 23. But I think that these intertextual cross-references provide evidence of a recoverable poetic rationale on the part of the Iliad that represents the hero of the Odyssey as having come with gifts to Achilles in the ironic 11 Hainsworth (1993) 103.

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position of a suitor or worse—and one who is trying to save his own skin along with the lives of his fellow transgressors. Viewed in this light, it should come as little surprise, therefore, that Achilles’ response to the offer conveyed by Odysseus is one that is also couched in language that parallels at both a dictional and thematic level the manner in which a suitor’s offer of gifts by way of recompense is treated in the Odyssey. At Iliad 9.378-382, Achilles says: ἐχθρὰ δέ μοι τοῦ δῶρα, τίω δέ μιν ἐν καρὸς αἴσῃ. οὐδ᾽ εἴ μοι δεκάκις τε καὶ εἰκοσάκις τόσα δοίη ὅσσά τέ οἱ νῦν ἔστι, καὶ εἴ ποθεν ἄλλα γένοιτο, οὐδ᾽ ὅσ᾽ ἐς Ὀρχομενὸν ποτινίσεται, οὐδ᾽ ὅσα Θήβας Αἰγυπτίας,12 ὅθι πλεῖστα δόμοις ἐν κτήματα κεῖται

I hate his gifts. I hold him light as the strip of a splinter. Not if he gave me ten times as much, and twenty times over as much as he possesses now, and if more could come to him from elsewhere, or gave all that is brought in to Orchomenos, all that is brought in to Thebes of Egypt, where the greatest possessions lie up in the houses

Seth Schein13 has pointed out the correspondences in language between Achilles’ response and Odysseus’ own to Eurymachus when the latter attempts to save himself and the remaining suitors with a promise of restitution at Odyssey 22.61-64: Εὐρύμαχ᾽, οὐδ᾽ εἴ μοι πατρώϊα πάντ᾽ ἀποδοῖτε, ὅσσα τε νῦν ὔμμ᾽ ἐστὶ καὶ εἴ ποθεν ἄλλ᾽ ἐπιθεῖτε, οὐδέ κεν ὣς ἔτι χεῖρας ἐμὰς λήξαιμι φόνοιο πρὶν πᾶσαν μνηστῆρας ὑπερβασίην ἀποτῖσαι.

Eurymachus, if you gave me all your fathers possessions, as much as you possess now, and if you could add more from elsewhere, even so, I would not stay my hands from the slaughter until I had taken revenge for all the suitors’ transgressions.

Odysseus says that he would not stay his hands from slaughtering all the suitors and seeing them pay the price for their transgression even if they should give him their entire patrimony and add some more from elsewhere. Schein suggests that Odysseus is here mirroring Achilles in acting in accord with μῆνις and not on the impulses of his γαστήρ and his desire for κέρδος. Similarly, he further notes the polytropic cleverness of the Odyssey in alluding to Achilles’ own words to Odysseus in Iliad 9. 12 Only here in the Iliad, eleven times in the Odyssey. 13 Schein (1999) 352 ff. with the discussion of Bakker (this volume) 48 ff.

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But, as we have seen, there may also be a particular point for the Iliadic tradition to be characterizing the Achaeans’ offer of gifts in the person of Odysseus as being like those of a suitor who must pay for his ὑπερβασίην. Thus, it is also the case, I would suggest, that Achilles is represented as mirroring the protagonist of the Odyssey in his refusing gifts for the insult and “wound to his family honor” that he too has endured because of the Greeks’ transgressions toward his ἄλοχον θυμαρέα. When Patroclus comes in Book 16 to plead for help for the Greeks who are being slaughtered beside the ships, Achilles asks him whether he is lamenting for how they are being destroyed beside the hollow ships on account of their own transgression, ὑπερβασίης (17-18): ἦε σύ γ᾽ Ἀργείων ὀλοφύρεαι, ὡς ὀλέκονται νηυσὶν ἔπι γλαφυρῇσιν ὑπερβασίης ἕνεκα σφῆς;

Or is it the Argives you are mourning over, and how they are dying against the hollow ships by reason of their own transgression?

Achilles thus characterizes the wrong he has suffered at the hands of the Argives with a word relatively rare in the Iliad, but used frequently for the suitors in the Odyssey, as in our passage above (Od. 22.64) and in the formula τίσασθαι μνηστῆρας ὑπερβασίης (punishing the suitors for their transgression).14 So far, we have seen in Achilles’ response to Odysseus an emerging pattern of potential allusions suggesting that Achilles is being depicted in a position with respect to his fellow Greeks that corresponds to the one between Odysseus and the suitors. One can go through Achilles’ speech in the Embassy systematically, I think, and find many other suggestive links to the language of the Odyssey and to its specific concerns,15 but I doubt that merely piling these up would be entirely convincing in its own right. This is because, on its own, the mere repetition of an expression fails to provide sufficient evidence from which to infer that an allusion is taking place between Homeric contexts; rather, as Tony Edwards has persuasively argued, postulating allusions between two texts begins to appear much more plausible when certain bits of diction are picked up and become associated with higher-level themes and with formal 14 Cf. Od. 3.206; 22.168 for Melanthius. 15 For instance, the fact that Odysseus eats three times during the course of the brief events of the Embassy and begins his important speech to Achilles by commenting ham-handedly on the relative quality of the feast offered by Agamemnon and Achilles might be dismissed as merely an accidental artifact of epic conventions of hospitality, of couse, but it also seems to offer a nice, teasing jab by the Iliad at preoccupations of the Odyssey and its hero’s γαστήρ; cf. Il. 4.343-348; 19.225-233.

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structures of narration that are held in common.16 In the case of Odysseus’ refusal of compensation and his killing of Eurymachus, for instance, one might indeed be justified, if we assume the priority of the Iliad, in seeing cross-references to a μῆνις and a kind of βίη that is “distinctly Achillean”.17 But coming to understand what counts as being distinctly Achillean or Odyssean becomes more difficult to sort out, I would argue, once we try to factor in the full variety and extent of the mutual cross-referencing that occurs between the two Homeric epics. Why, for instance, is Odysseus’ killing of a suitor offering gifts distinctly Achillean, we might wonder, when Achilles himself initially chokes back his anger at the loss of his ἄλοχον θυμαρέα and, in exchange for the promise of gifts, refrains from personally killing the one who is threatening to take her? Or in Book 9, when in an apparent turnaround, he now refuses an offer of gifts, is he still being Achillean, or is he really being newly Odyssean, or, indeed, as many have argued, has he become some new type of figure who has transcended the normal bounds of heroic behavior altogether? I will be turning to some of these larger questions in a moment, but for now, I want to continue following out some consequences of my more limited claim that there appears to be evidence for a plausible poetic rationale on the part of our Iliad for associating Achilles’ refusal of gifts at this point in its narrative with Odysseus’ own refusal of compensation for the insults to his ἄλοχον θυμαρέα. Scholars have tended to assume the anteriority of our Iliadic text and, as a consequence, have typically read the kinds of cross-references we have been noting in one particular direction. But it strikes me as important to take Pucci’s claims of a mutual and ongoing dialogue seriously, especially since, in this particular case, we are able to perceive a certain blurring that occurs in both epics between the figures of Odysseus and Achilles at higher levels of both thematic and narrative structure. Indeed, it is precisely when we look at Achilles’ speech in the Embassy and its specific dictional elements from the perspective of the Iliad’s larger thematic structures that it becomes hard not to notice how much Achilles himself is in a position, at least at this point in the narrative in Book 9, that corresponds to what we may tend to associate with Odysseus in the Odyssey. Achilles has suffered insults at the hands of his friends and transgression against his ἄλοχον θυμαρέα, but instead of immediately killing Agamemnon—who, in a sense, is structurally equivalent to his wife’s head suitor or worse—he chokes back his anger in a

16 Edwards (1985) 7. 17 Bakker (this volume) 48.

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kind of familiar Odyssean μερμηρίζειν scene at the behest of Athena.18 He then tearfully calls out to his mother, who functions as a special divine protector, and beseeches her to arrange through Zeus for the slaughter of all his former friends whom he now regards as bitter enemies because of their transgression (1.364-412). We might even say that in this respect, Achilles is being more “distinctly Odyssean” than Odysseus, since he manages to have his enemies punished by Zeus solely through his words and a passivity that, in many respects, surpass the metis and passive endurance of Odysseus. Thus, at the level of both diction and narrative,19 I would suggest, we begin to see something striking in Achilles’ response to Odysseus in Iliad 9—something, I think, that starts to blur the almost metaphysical contrasts that many critics have believed that the two epics are trying to maintain between the characters of Achilles and Odysseus. Since Nagy’s pioneering work, Achilles’ reply to Odysseus in the Embassy has been one of the passages that has played a key role in establishing a kind of categorical opposition between Achilles and Odysseus as representatives of two competing heroic strategies. Tony Edwards, for instance, in his marvelous book about the ideologies of heroism in the two epics has argued that Achilles, as a πρόμος ἀνήρ, is characterized by his ability to fight in the front ranks in defense of his comrades, ultimately at the cost of his own life;20 and in terms of his character, Achilles 18 In the Odyssey, Athena stands by Odysseus, who refuses gifts, and helps him to kill the suitors, ensuring that he survives. In the Iliad, she stops Achilles (at Hera’s behest, to be sure) from killing Agamemnon and urges Achilles to accept gifts as recompense for the insult he has suffered. He seemingly then ignores this agreement and beseeches his mother to ask Zeus to kill all of the Greeks, but the intent of Athena’s intervention is to help ensure the survival of the Iliad’s corresponding group of “suitors”. So too, because of the goddess’ intervention, Achilles receives gifts, but is ultimately set on a path to his death; Odysseus, on the other hand, refuses gifts, but is rewarded with life. Clay claims that Athena’s wrath in the Odyssey “is deflected from Odysseus and transformed into righteous indignation against the suitors” (238). Be that as it may, Athena’s intervention in the Iliad leads to Achilles’ eventual destruction and to the survival of the “suitors” of Briseis. Thus, when Athena’s actions in both the Iliad and Odyssey are compared in this particular light, it becomes more difficult to draw any reassuring or consistent conclusions about the gods’ overall concern for justice in either epic. 19 In a forthcoming book on Homer, Mark Buchan explores the fragility of Homeric identities using Lacanian psychoanalytic categories of desire and self. I am indebted to his discussion throughout this paper and in particular to his discussion of Iliad 9. My own account addresses more limited questions of poetic representation. 20 Edwards (1985) 16.

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is marked at a thematic level, and also to some extent by the formalized elements from which these thematic levels are composed, by violence (βίη), intense emotional reaction, and occasional inarticulateness. Odysseus, on the other hand, is characterized by his endurance and an ability to postpone his desires, to be adaptable, and to conserve his power until it can be utilized to its greatest effect by means of μῆτις.21 These distinctions between Achilles and Odysseus are supported in turn and deepened by a further critical opposition, that between Achilles as being truthful and a man of ἁπλοῦς μῦθος, or “simple discourse”, and an Odysseus who is ψευδής and the quintessential polytropic man. As we have seen, moreover, this latter difference can be extended to the epics themselves and their competing poetic strategies, with the polytropic Odyssey, for instance, in Edward’s and Schein’s22 more benign view of their relationship, appropriating the values of the Iliad and making them more comprehensive, or in Pucci’s view, with the Odyssey taking a more agonistic and ludic perspective on the lofty heroic values of Achilles and the Iliad. While I would not be so foolhardy as to claim that these powerful traditions of interpretation and the contrasts that they offer between the epic protagonists necessarily ride on the interpretation of this one speech by Achilles to Odysseus, I think it is no exaggeration to say that this is a passage that critics have returned to again and again to bolster the notion of Achilles’ essential simplicity and truthfulness, and by extension, the undeviating nobility, candor, and probity of the Iliad and its poetic discourse. Such a view is reflected in a long tradition of interpretation that goes back to the so-called Greek enlightenment, of course, and it is probably no coincidence that in the Hippias Minor, Plato concentrates on this very speech to motivate a discussion about the nature of truthtelling and lies and to weigh up the relative abilities of both Achilles and Odysseus to speak the truth and also, like sophists, to fashion lies that are like truth. So I want to now turn to my second general question. Given the kinds of intertextual blurring that we have been seeing between the particular diction and more formal thematic structures of the two poems in the representation of their two protagonists, how are we to regard the tension that critics, like Clay, have postulated in this passage “between Achilles’ self-proclaimed simplicity and the polymēchaniēi of Odysseus” and, therefore, between their respective claims, as it were, “to hate like the gates of Hades those who hide one thing in their heart and say another”? If their two textual identities begin to bleed into each other in 21 Edwards (1985) 91. 22 Cf. Edwards (1985) and Bakker (this volume).

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multiform ways, can we hope to maintain such a stark metaphysical distinction between the respective simplicity and complexity of their characters and the truth and falsity of their utterances? I am going to bracket for our purposes—not that they ultimately might not be relevant--the long-standing disagreements among analysts, unitarians, oralists, neo-analysts etc. on the larger question of how what Achilles says in the Embassy is compatible with what he says on the next day in Books 11 and 16. There he seems to be claiming that he is still waiting for the Greeks to come in supplication and that he would be putting the Trojans to flight if only Agamemnon had treated him kindly; moreover he also says to Patroclus that he hopes that Patroclus’ actions on the battlefield will lead to compensation in gifts and to the return of Briseis (11.609-10; 16.69-73, 84-86). Going back at least as far as Cedric Whitman, there has been an influential tradition of scholarship that upholds the artistic unity of the poem and the central importance of the Embassy by arguing that any seeming contradictions on this score by Achilles are only apparent, resulting from changes in the Achaean’s circumstances or in the intensity of his anger, or perhaps from the failure of Agamemnon’s offer to meet Achilles’ precise expectations, etc.23 The reason the Embassy and Achilles’ great speech are so centrally important for an overall interpretation of the poem, again beginning with Whitman’s magisterial reading, is because Achilles there comes to realize and give voice to a series of powerful psychological and ethical truths that, on the one hand, are hard-won and individual, yet, at the same time, comprise the most timeless and universal of any of those expressed in the poem. Indeed, in Martin’s analysis, the truths enunciated by Achilles in this passage are even marked in the conventions of epic diction as coming from the poet’s own voice, since in his view, Achilles’ language embodies specific conventions used elsewhere only in narrative diegesis and in the speech of the gods. Even if this picture of Homer identifying himself completely with the voice of Achilles has been dismissed by some scholars as a species of dubious “romantic subjectivity . . . alien to the Homeric manner”,24 many of these same scholars would insist that by rejecting the material compensation offered by Agamemnon, Achilles in any case comes to view himself as being deeply at odds with the social conventions and mores of traditional Homeric society in a way that is given unique expression in the poem; moreover, as he comes to realize the nature and cost of his isolation, it is claimed, we witness him also progressively coming to reify essential values of the human spirit because 23 See the recent useful summary by Wilson (2002) 4 ff. 24 Griffin (1995) 52.

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of this special sensitivity and his developing self-consciousness. Pucci himself has been sympathetic to this sort of reading, I think, since he describes a kind of existential rhetoric in this passage that is manifested in Achilles’ subjective voice—a subjective voice that fathoms the idea of returning home and living in peace, which of course is impossible for Achilles in the poem, but that endows his voice with “unexpected singularity and novelty—or what we call self-consciousness”.25 Indeed, for many, this new self-consciousness has a particular content—some might say a particularly trans-historical or modern one—that allows Achilles, in the words of one critic “to enter a transcendent, universal community premised on pity and the equality of all before death”.26 On this line of criticism, we are urged, in effect, to see a kind of rupture at the very heart of heroic discourse27 and Achilles becomes, by extension, the embodiment of the simple, artless truth-teller who opposes himself to the duplicity and hypocrisy of the social game, and whose truth-telling creates a unique distance between his values and those of traditional culture--a sham culture that he rejects as he himself undergoes an isolated and profound existential experience that offers him and us a window into the true nature of the heroic self. As a consequence, for such critics, we might say, this speech by Achilles gives us a glimpse at an unbridgeable divide between the actual social world of the poem’s protagonists and a utopian world in which there could be a language expressing and giving meaning to Achilles’ moral selfconsciousness—a possible world, that is, where the openness and utter transparency of language and communication would replace the duplicitous language and moral hypocrisy of the social world. So, for instance, when Achilles says to Odysseus, in lines 312-313 of our passage that “hateful to him as the gates of Hades is the one who hides (keuthei) one thing in his thoughts and says another”, we should perhaps hear a faint echo of Thetis’ soothing words to her weeping son in Book 1.362-363: “Τέκνον, τί κλαίεις; τί δέ σε φρένας ἵκετο πένθος; ἐξαύδα, μὴ κεῦθε νόῳ, ἵνα εἴδομεν ἄμφω”.

“Why then, child, do you lament? What sorrow has come to your heart now? Speak out, do not hide it in your mind, so we shall both know”.

This same expression with a slight variation occurs between goddess and son again in Book 18, when Thetis comes to inquire why Achilles is 25 Pucci (1998) 187. 26 Saxonhouse (1988) 32. 27 See Buchan (forthcoming).

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weeping, since Zeus is bringing to pass all he had wished for in destroying all the Achaeans by their ships (73-77). “τέκνον τί κλαίεις; τί δέ σε φρένας ἵκετο πένθος; ἐξαύδα, μὴ κεῦθε· τὰ μὲν δή τοι τετέλεσται ἐκ Διός, ὡς ἄρα δὴ πρίν γ᾽ εὔχεο χεῖρας ἀνασχὼν πάντας ἐπὶ πρύμνῃσιν ἀλήμεναι υἷας Ἀχαιῶν σεῦ ἐπιδευομένους, παθέειν τ᾽ ἀεκήλια ἔργα”.

“Why then, child, do you lament? What sorrow has come to your heart now? Speak out, do not hide it. These things are brought to accomplishment through Zeus: in the way that you lifted your hands and prayed for, that all the sons of the Achaeans be pinned on their grounded vessels by reasons of your loss, and suffer things that are shameful”.

In Book 16, the formula is repeated by Achilles when he asks Patroclus to tell him the source of his weeping, which again is the slaughter of the Greeks (17-19): “ἦε σύ γ᾽ Ἀργείων ὀλοφύρεαι, ὡς ὀλέκονται νηυσὶν ἔπι γλαφυρῇσιν ὑπερβασίης ἕνεκα σφῆς; ἐξαύδα, μὴ κεῦθε νόῳ, ἵνα εἴδομεν ἄμφω”. “Or is it the Argives that you are mourning over, and how they are dying against the hollow ships by reason of their own transgression? Speak out, do not hide it in your mind, so we shall both know”.

Grace Ledbetter has written persuasively about the relation of these passages and their particular tonalities at a thematic and aesthetic level,28 but it may be worth pausing a bit over this formula further, which is spoken in the poem only by Achilles or by those speaking to Achilles.29 It takes for its focalized context a paradigm for self-evident speech of the sort that mirrors the relation Achilles has with his mother, a goddess. Nothing is hidden between them and, in fact, their modes of communication are so intimate and direct that when Thetis asks Achilles to tell her the reason for his tears, his answer is almost superfluous, since she already knows the content of his mind. In effect, we are given a utopian glimpse of a divine way of communicating thoughts and desires that is characterized, as it were, by its utter immediacy and presence, and hence, its unimpeachable truth. At the same time, however, in all of these instances of immediate, transparent communication, the source of πένθος and the content of the utterance that comes to be openly expressed remains inextricably con28 Ledbetter (1993) 486 ff. 29 Cramer (1973) offers an insightful analysis of this expression and its notion of κεύθει.

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nected to a wish that Achilles himself keeps hidden from every other mortal in the poem. It is a wish, moreover, whose precise content is shared by Achilles only with his mother—his wish for the destruction of all his fellow Greeks. Thus, when Achilles declares that hateful to him is the one who hides (κεύθει) one thing in his mind and says another, we should remember that at this point in the Iliad’s narrative, Zeus has been fulfilling Achilles’ own hidden request to his mother in Book 1 that all of the Greeks be slaughtered (1.408-410):30 “αἴ κέν πως ἐθέλῃσιν ἐπὶ Τρώεσσιν ἀρῆξαι, τοὺς δὲ κατὰ πρύμνας τε καὶ ἀμφ᾿ ἅλα ἔλσαι Ἀχαιοὺς κτεινομένους, ἵνα πάντες ἐπαύρωνται βασιλῆος”.

“if perhaps he might be willing to help the Trojans, and pin the Achaeans back against the ships and the water, dying, so that thus they may all have profit of their own king”.

To be sure, Thetis conveys her son’s request to Zeus (1.509-510) in considerably more moderate terms and both Hera’s suspicions of Zeus’ intent (1.559) and Zeus’ own plans to give honor to Achilles (2.4) only encompass the idea of killing many, and not all, of the Greeks (ὀλέσεις δὲ πολέας ἐπὶ νηυσὶν Ἀχαιῶν, 1.559 = 2.4). However, it is perhaps worth noting the correspondence not only between Achilles’ and Odysseus’ wish for the destruction of all those who have wronged them,31 but also that both Achilles and Odysseus seem to deny that they will hide one thing in their thoughts and say another in narrative and dictional contexts that are being inflected by their respective murderous desires. The question arises, therefore, why is it then that critics take Achilles to be an artless teller of truth and Odysseus a liar; and, moreover, why is the Iliad taken to be simple and lofty and the Odyssey so cleverly polytropic, given that in the Embassy, Achilles makes his noble declaration 30 Buchan (forthcoming) links Achilles’ wish to what Lacan calls “a consciousness of the other that can only be satisfied by Hegelian murder”. Pucci (1998, 203 ff.) takes Achilles’ wish to be hyperbolic and analyzes how the magnificent pathos that engenders it makes us blind to its perversity, destructiveness, and splendid brutality. At Il. 1.240 ff., Achilles predicts that, when he leaves the battlefield, many Achaeans will die at Hector’s hands. Thus, the Greeks are indeed aware that he expects this loss of life to occur. But they are not aware that their deaths would not just be a collateral effect of his anger at Agamemnon, but instead, actively desired on his part and caused by his enlisting Zeus’ aid to satisfy a direct desire for their destruction. Cf. Il. 1.422. 31 Od. 22.65-67 continuing from Od. 22.61-64 (see p. 58 above: νῦν ὑμῖν παράκειται ἐναντίον ἠὲ μάχεσθαι / ἢ φεύγειν, ὅς κεν θάνατον καὶ κῆρας ἀλύξῃ· / ἀλλά τιν᾽ οὐ φεύξεσθαι ὀΐομαι αἰπὺν ὄλεθρον. Cf. Od. 22.72-73; Il.

18.76.

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about truth to Odysseus as he keeps hidden his own active wish for the death of all the Greeks, and given that his response is couched by the poet in a language that alludes to Odysseus’ own annihilation of the suitors, thus seeming to suggest that Odysseus and the rest of the Greeks are worthy of a similar fate? By asking this question, of course, I am taking a cue from Plato’s discussion of the truthfulness of Achilles and Odysseus in the Hippias Minor. There, these kinds of worries get played out against a background of Platonic inquiry about what counts as a δύναμις or power and about questions exploring the psychic simplicity and complexity of the virtuous and the vicious. Socrates observes that Achilles clearly says something false to Odysseus in his response to him, since he says he is going to sail home, without in any way having prepared to sail home; and, of course, we never see Achilles make any subsequent attempts to sail home, so his actions would seem to belie his words. Accordingly, Socrates insists, we have every reason to take this as compelling evidence that he is lying. Moreover, Achilles immediately contradicts himself at Iliad 9.644 ff. by telling Ajax that he will stay until the slaughter of the Greeks reaches his ships. Socrates concludes that Achilles must therefore be a better liar than Odysseus, since after beginning his speech by reviling liars, he blatantly says something false to Odysseus, all the while maintaining the appearance of a simple truth-teller. We might think perhaps, that Socrates’ arguments are merely tendentious and arbitrary, and scholars have typically followed Hippias in claiming that, in the course of the Embassy, Achilles is moved to change his mind about sailing home because of his εὔνοια (371e1) or his emotional impulses to kindness. Thus, for example, it has been argued that Achilles’ need for emotional ties and for feelings of trusty comradeship after his humiliation by Agamemnon are the reasons for his changes of mind32 or, perhaps, they are the result of his newly won recognition of the importance of pity and a growing acknowledgement of the common humanity he shares with his comrades. Socrates, of course, shows impatience with these kinds of arguments, claiming that someone who is the son of Thetis and has been tutored by Chiron (371d1-2) could not really be flip-flopping in this way without design. Nonetheless, if Achilles really is unintentionally lying to Odysseus, Socrates concludes, at least he should not get the palm for being the one who has the greatest power for telling the truth, since he obviously cannot know where the truth lies when he lies unintentionally. On the contrary, it clearly is the intentional liar who must have a firm grasp of the truth. 32 See, e.g. Zanker (1994) 90 ff.

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Whatever we may think of Socrates’ methods of literary criticism and philosophical argument, I think his is a question worth raising: why is it that at the very moment Achilles is manifestly saying something false to Odysseus, critics have not only supplied him with the intention of telling the truth, but they have gone so far as to take him to be a paradigm of Homeric truth-telling, often on the basis of this very passage? To be sure, we may be hesitant to follow Socrates who summarily concludes that Achilles must be a better sophist than Odysseus since he is able to brazenly lie both in front of the whole army and then to his comrades--all the while retaining the appearance of a simple truth-teller. But I think it is worth asking how the deeper psychological and ethical truths that critics have found in these passages are meant to co-exist with the fact that Achilles does indeed utter a falsehood to Odysseus, whether intentional or not. How is it, that is, that Achilles’ claim to be going home is both false and yet plays such a crucial role in what critics have taken to be the most sublime psychological and ethical truths of the poem? Moreover, if we move to deeper levels of the poem’s narrative, we face the disturbing question of how such truths can co-exist with Achilles’ hidden homicidal wish to his mother for the destruction of his fellows.33 Surely, we might think, such a jarring and unstable textual juxtaposition of the “splendid brutality” of Achilles’ desires and his supposed vision of a transcendent, universal community premised on pity and the equality of all before death should be deeply unsettling to us-even more unsettling, perhaps, if we remember Pucci’s claims about how we are able to gain pleasure and solace through our willing complicity with its perverse and destructive terms. Socrates’ arguments about Achilles typically provoke suspicion, no doubt, because he often moves quickly between notions of saying something false and telling a lie, and while these two notions often overlap, it is not especially hard to pull them apart. So it may be worth making a few rough distinctions for the purposes of our discussion—and I say rough because it is extremely easy to think of counter-examples and there is a large contemporary philosophical literature devoted to trying to clarify the relations between two basic elements that we might think necessary, though perhaps not sufficient, for something to count as a lie. Usually, we might think, lying requires both saying something false and intending to deceive. So for instance, thinking that it is raining, I might say to you: “You should take your raincoat, since it is pouring outside”. However, if it turns out that I am mistaken and it is not raining, I may have uttered a falsehood, but it is not exactly clear that I have intended 33 I am indebted on this point to discussions with Mark Buchan.

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to deceive you, so we might find it difficult to consider what I have said to be a lie. It certainly seems to be of a different order, say, than my knowing that it is not raining and then telling you it is because I think that if you were to go out wearing a particular raincoat, it would cause you embarrassment. In different contexts, of course, questions about how we capture the notion of lying are more problematic because our intuitions often can be pulled in different directions about the relative importance of one’s intention to deceive as opposed to the falsity of what one actually asserts. Knowing that Pucci has never been taken by my Anglo-American style of checking intuitions through an extended series of banal examples, I will move to something presumably richer and that will perhaps strike some less frivolous chords, given his youth in the Resistenza. So, for example, in The Wall,34 the story that made Sartre’s name before the war, a prisoner, Pablo Ibbieta has been captured by the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War and awaits execution. His tormentors try to extract from him the whereabouts of his comrade, Ramon Gris, who is in hiding with his cousins. Intending to send them on a wild goose chase, he tells them that Gris is hiding in a cemetery, believing this to be false. His intention is clearly to deceive. But in an ironic twist worthy or, perhaps, unworthy of Maupassant, Gris turns out to be hiding in the cemetery and is arrested. When Ibbieta finds this out, he begins to laugh, presumably at the absurdity of life. For Sartre, of course, the question is mostly a moral one and centers on whether or not the prisoner should view himself as being responsible for the outcome of his actions. But it also raises a puzzle about lying. Some might be inclined to say, in such a case, that the prisoner has indeed lied to his interrogators, although the statement he made to them was actually true and he failed to deceive them about the whereabouts of Gris. This is because, even though he failed to deceive them, he clearly intended to lie to his captors in saying something that he believed to be false. If we agree that the prisoner lied in this case, it is because we assume that one’s intention to deceive is both a necessary and sufficient condition of one’s lying. This, I think, may have been Sartre’s view of the matter. The prisoner did the right thing – he lied – and the fact that the external world can frustrate our intentions in absurd ways is not our responsibility, but only something that we can laugh at. There is a strong Stoic streak in this line of argument, since on such a view, the outward success of an intention is not a necessary condition for picking out the nature of a particular action: the prisoner has lied because he intended to, whether or not he was successful in saying something false and deceiving 34 Cf. Siegler (1966) 128-136.

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the guards. However, at the same time, depending on our views about assertion and the relations among intentions, actions, and their success, we might be inclined to disagree with Sartre, and say that the prisoner has really failed to lie, since regardless of his intentions, he has neither uttered something false nor managed to deceive the guards. We might be uneasy, that is, of unhinging the notion of lying from actually saying something false, as opposed to merely intending to say something false. Returning now to the question of Achilles and whether he is lying to Odysseus, I hope we are now in a somewhat better position to see why our intuitions are so easily pulled in different directions by the kinds of arguments that Socrates and Hippias offer. Each side might agree, for instance, that Achilles says something false, yet still disagree about whether he is intending to deceive, and hence can be said to be lying. Or both sides might come to agree that he is saying something true, yet disagree about whether he is lying depending on whether they think he is actually intending to deceive. Socrates, for his part, appeals to Achilles’ behavior as a test, while Hippias and his modern defenders fill in for Achilles noble and benign intentions and tend to turn a blind eye to the truth or falsity of what he actually says. Since Achilles’ words and actions seem to speak against him with respect to his claiming that he will sail home, perhaps we should ask then, are we given any reasons in the narrative to think that Achilles’ intentions are benign and kindly toward the Greeks? And what criteria does the poem hold out to us for judging his intentions, apart, of course, from his opening declaration about hating those who hide one thing in their mind, yet say another, for as Socrates points out, one might expect even the most deceitful and polytropic of sophists to claim to hate lying. We could look at this question from many perspectives from within the text, no doubt, but if we start at just the most basic level of the focalized context of Achilles’ dealings in the social world, he is certainly never viewed or treated as being some sort of special truth-teller by his fellow warriors. Agamemnon’s immediate response to Achilles’ suggestion that he give up Chryses’ daughter and wait for recompense until Troy is sacked, for instance, is to think that Achilles is trying to trick and deceive him (κλέπτε νόωι; 1.132). Of course, these are the suspicions and insults of an antagonist, but none of his fellow warriors elsewhere appears to regard him, in any case, as an innocent prophet of a utopian vision. By the same token, I remain unconvinced by Martin’s view that Achilles’ speech and his questions about the value of life and fighting take on the aura of a divine and truthful λόγος that we can identify with the narrative voice of the poem. It is true, of course, that we see Achilles singing immediately before the arrival of the embassy, but apart from the

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fact that such a view fails to account for the kinds of intertextual and intratextual dimensions of Achilles’ speech that we have been seeing, it also overlooks the nature and extent of the distance that is systematically created in the text between the narrator and Achilles. As is often pointed out, when Achilles narrates the events of the quarrel to his mother in Book 1, for instance, his account is sufficiently different in important ways from the narrator’s to strongly suggest an attempt to create a divide between the voice of Achilles and that of the narrator. In fact, I would argue, the particular divide that is opened up in this passage sets in motion the most crucial division in the subsequent narrative of the poem itself and goes a good way toward explaining why it is so difficult to fathom with any conviction Achilles’ intentions in Iliad 9. As Achilles retells the events of the quarrel in his own voice (1.364 ff.), he twists and amplifies his actions in many subtly manipulative ways, but most crucially, he fails to tell his mother about his urge to draw his sword and kill Agamemnon outright and, even more important from the perspective of the narrative, he makes no mention whatsoever of the intervention of Athena and the fact that she urges him to withdraw and await three times as many gifts as a solution to his quarrel with Agamemnon. Pucci has argued that Homer is complicit in urging us to overlook Achilles’ rhetorical and self-aggrandizing rephrasing of the events in order to produce a more edifying image of him for an audience likely to be unsympathetic to the nature of his political actions and his outbursts at Agamemnon.35 While this is perhaps true, it is also important to notice, though, how from this moment on, the text offers us an unstable double perspective from which to view Achilles’ speech and actions. On the one hand, we can follow out the train of the narrative and move from Athena’s promise of gifts directly to the Embassy, and there be struck, as are his fellow warriors and the majority of modern critics, by his refusal of the gifts and his expressed desire to go home.36 Or, we can view his subsequent speech and actions from the perspective of his hidden wish for the destruction of all the Greeks. What Achilles asks Thetis for in Book 1—seemingly disregarding the divine solution already offered by Athena and Hera—is that all the Greeks be penned up against 35 Pucci (1998) 203. 36 Sammons (2008) 353-357 offers the most sophisticated and compelling recent account of this strain of the narrative, giving an interesting metapoetic account of what Donlon described as Agamemnon’s “gift attack”. I find Donlon’s arguments problematic in the light of the reactions of the other Greeks to Agamemnon’s admittedly exorbitant catalogue. Sammons gives us a way of seeing its rhetorical and metapoetic force at one narrative level, but the problem of Achilles’ wish to his mother still remains.

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their ships and slaughtered for his benefit. He does not ask her, and by extension Zeus, for compensatory gifts or to be given a safe voyage home. What he wishes for, instead, is utter revenge for the humiliation he has suffered by Agamemnon and from those who have acquiesced to his power; and what he demands by a kind of twisted theological argument that Pucci has analyzed so well, is to be repaid by Zeus for the shortness of his life with the slaughter of all of his fellow warriors. So, we might say, then, that when we turn to Achilles’ speeches in the Embassy, we face two competing questions and two competing narratives, with conflicting indications about how to decide between them. His fellow warriors, followed by the majority of critics, wonder how many gifts are enough to compensate Achilles; and his surprising and seemingly novel—and even, perhaps unintelligible—answer37 is that no quantity of gifts suffices. But at the same time, we, the extratextual audience, have been made privy to a second, secret question and are therefore provoked to wonder how many deaths will suffice for Achilles. As this question plays out in the narrative, it turns out to contain a further seeming paradox: no number of Greek deaths will satisfy Achilles’ splendidly brutal and destructive wish for compensation from Zeus for the shortness of his life, except for the one he neither wants nor envisions, the death of Patroclus.38 Accordingly, if we return to our question about Achilles’ truthfulness in Iliad 9, we seem to be faced with the kind of double bind that Pucci has alerted us to so often in Greek epic and dramatic texts. As Achilles chides those who hide one thing in their minds and say another, we have been given reason by the text to suspect that he himself is doing just that. Certainly, if we turn to the speeches and events of the Embassy in a Socratic spirit, it is hard not to notice that its final result is exactly in keeping with Achilles’ wish to his mother. What Achilles wants from Thetis and Zeus is for all the Greeks to be penned up by the 37 Here, of course, it is useful to keep in mind the classic paper by Adam Parry (1956). 38 See Buchan (forthcoming) for this formulation. In this light, we should notice the ironic, cruel, and paradoxical nature of Thetis’ inquiry at 18.73 ff. when she asks Achilles why he is weeping inasmuch as Zeus has given him all that he desires by slaughtering the Achaeans. Achilles, to be sure, ironically gets what he has wished for from Zeus, the death of yet another Greek; unfortunately, however, Achilles failed to exempt his friend from his totalizing wish to his mother for the annihilation of all the Greeks—a wish that similarly turns out to spoil his shocking fantasy of going off together with Patroclus in triumph, the two alone, with everyone else, both Greek and Trojan alike, having been killed (16.97-100). It is interesting that the scholiasts seemed to have been disturbed only by the potentially erotic nuances of these lines.

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ships and slaughtered; and at the end of the Embassy, what Achilles says to Ajax is that he will wait by his ships while the Greeks are penned up and slaughtered (9.653). Now we might, following Hippias, and trusting in Achilles’ simplicity and his εὔνοια or benevolence, ascribe to him a series of more benign intentions in his different responses to the speakers in the Embassy; and these might explain in a more ethically palatable way his ultimate decision to stay by his ships as the fighting reaches them. Whitman, for instance, viewed the Embassy as the place where Achilles comes to learn how to make ethical decisions, and there may perhaps be some species of moral Bildungstheorie that can fully account for Achilles’ striking changes of mind, if that is what they actually are. But in the spirit of Socrates, I want to suggest that as we listen to Achilles speaking in the Embassy, we should do so remembering as well what this son of a goddess and student of Chiron might just have hidden in his thoughts all along: the murderous destruction of his fellow Greeks by Zeus. Here I can only offer the briefest and crudest of outlines of such a further Socratic reading, but if we begin from where Achilles ends at the conclusion of the Embassy and work our way backwards, it becomes easier to see how problematic it is to ascribe to Achilles anything like a rising moral or emotional trajectory. About Achilles’ speech to Ajax, I think one can be exceedingly brief. Achilles merely tells Ajax that he will do what dovetails nicely with what he has asked for from his mother. Critics like Lloyd-Jones have claimed that Achilles is moved to stay by his ships because of some special war-buddy connection to Ajax or because of friendly feelings of pity, since this is what Ajax himself has appealed to.39 Achilles himself says, however, that he is still enraged, and that seems to be the view of Ajax as well, who regards Achilles as just being ἄγριος, or savage (9.629); and he calls him savage even though he is under the mistaken impression that Achilles’ anger is aimed only at Agamemnon (7.229-730) and not at the rest of the Greeks as well. So regarding Achilles’ decision to remain by the ships, there seems to be little that contradicts a Socratic reading of his motives and action. His newly professed claim that he will wait by the ships is in lockstep with his hidden wish for the death of the Greeks, and if he has managed in addition to convey to an extratextual audience of critics warm emotions of pity, then this would only seem to further speak, at least if we follow Socrates, to a talent for sophistic deception. By the same token, Achilles’ response to Phoenix’s magnificent mythological exemplum and moving discourses of pity and friendship amounts to little more than the sentiment of “either you are for me or 39 This view has perhaps been influenced by the emendation in Il. 9.645.

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against me” with the veiled threat that Phoenix should not συγχεῖ, vex or confuse, his mind with further lamentation for the Greeks. By showing any pity, Phoenix is in danger, Achilles warns, of becoming hateful to him. Accordingly, Phoenix wisely decides to stay with Achilles and not return. So, in effect, what happens in the Embassy at this point is that Agamemnon has sent three of his soldiers on a mission, and one defects when he faces the stark political decision given to him by Achilles.40 But it is hard to see any basis for ascribing to Achilles any benign intentions toward the Greeks or any palpable indications of some newly won moral consciousness in this encounter either. Consequently, if such a Socratic reading of Achilles’ intentions and actions in response to the final two speakers of the Embassy is correct, it clearly makes suspect any general Bildungstheorie in connection with Achilles’ decision to remain by his ships. We are now in a position to return to Achilles and to his response to Odysseus for a few final summary observations. As he publicly entertains the notion of going home to Odysseus,41 not one of Achilles’ actions, as opposed to his words, deviates in the slightest from the secret plan of annihilation that he has wished for and that he believes is being granted to him by Zeus. We should not find this surprising, however, since throughout the Iliad, Achilles is marked by the terrifying brutality both of his desires and of his consciousness of others. All of this, moreover, is entirely of a piece with his hidden wish. So, for example, when in Book 18 (120 ff.) his anger has turned against the Trojans, we are offered a further instance of this peculiar and cruel tonality in Achilles’ consciousness when he says—again to his mother—that he accepts that his life will be shortened, but that he wants to gain noble κλέος and set the wives and mothers of the Dardanians to wipe away their tears with both hands amid ceaseless lamentation. Pucci has shown the kind of perverse economy that is at work in this passage and that allows Achilles to identify his kleos with the tears of Trojan wives and mothers.42 We might notice as well, how Achilles’ dark wish to his mother receives a final extreme and brutal inflection at 21.133-135. As he flings Lycaon’s body 40 On this point, see the discussion of Buchan (forthcoming) along with the potential intertextual links here to Od. 9.87-102. 41 It is perhaps worth noting that Achilles’ claim to be sailing home in the Embassy is addressed in the first instance to Odysseus and, among other things, certainly speaks to the central preoccupation of Odysseus in the Odyssey— indeed, it is an Odyssean preoccupation that can be made to look ridiculous in the Iliad as when, for instance, Odysseus reports to Agamemnon (9.682) that Achilles is going home, even though we have just witnessed Achilles telling Ajax that he will remain by the ships until the fighting reaches them. 42 Pucci (1998) 220.

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into the river he says that all the Trojans must pay for the death of Patroclus and for the slaughter of the Achaeans by the ships—omitting or forgetting, perhaps, his own complicity in the very slaughter that he had wished for: “ἀλλὰ καὶ ὧς ὀλέεσθε κακὸν μόρον, εἰς ὅ κε πάντες τίσετε Πατρόκλοιο φόνον καὶ λοιγὸν Ἀχαιῶν, οὓς ἐπὶ νηυσὶ θοῇσιν ἐπέφνετε νόσφιν ἐμεῖο”.

“And yet even so, die all an evil death, till all of you pay for the death of Patroklos and the slaughter of the Achaeans whom you killed beside the running ships, when I was not with them”.

By offering us a dual perspective from which to view Achilles, the poem continually confronts us with an unbridgeable gap and a series of unsettling decisions. In light of his hidden wish and his actions, we can view Achilles, in the spirit of Socrates, as an accomplished liar who intentionally omits mentioning his own complicity in the events that he helps to orchestrate. Or we can ascribe to him, like Hippias, a series of benevolent intentions that at best, as in the passage above, require attributing to him a healthy amount of Nietzschean self-deception. It is this dichotomy, I think, that brings us to one of the most basic questions that our passage and indeed, the poem as a whole confront us with. As we look at Achilles’ response to Odysseus, with its reputed hallmarks of simple truth and its lofty ethical vision, we have seen how it starts to come apart in a whirl of intertextual contiguities and how it begins to suffer a blurring of its supporting ontological categories through a kind of osmosis between its truth and its falsity, between its two protagonists, and, indeed, between the ethical aspirations of the two epics themselves. We might, of course, try to salvage the lofty ethical nobility, the compelling emotional self-absorption, and the heroic simplicity of Achilles’ ἁπλοῦς μῦθος, but we do so at the cost of viewing Achilles as merely deceiving himself, rather than others, and somehow being forgetful of the deepest urges that mark him in the text. Moreover, as Socrates points out, to the extent that we view Achilles as a benign or well-intentioned speaker of falsehoods and merely at the mercy of changing emotions, he forfeits any claim to be a knower of truths. Thus, as Achilles speaks, the poem offers us a twin perspective from which to view him as either hiding deception or self-deception in his thoughts, and we can decide to reject or to be complicit in the perverse economy by which Achilles’ vision of “a transcendent, universal community premised on pity and the equality of all before death” is itself based merely on self-deception or in a cunning sophistic deception—and whether of one sort or the other, both

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kinds of deception turn out to be ultimately in the service of Achilles’ own murderous desires. Achilles himself is not marked in the Iliad as being πολύτροπος. But as we follow out the narrative of his μῆνις and its hidden registers and results, the poem opens up a reading of his words and actions that blends into Odysseus’ own polytropic words and actions, and indeed, Odysseus’ own particular μῆνις at the suitors. In the same way that one might view the tale of Odysseus’ slaughter of the suitors as the song of his μῆνις, the hidden perspective that the Iliad affords us on Achilles’ words and actions allows us to similarly witness a figure who disguises, either from others or himself, his intent to utterly destroy those who have transgressed against him. With this notion of Achilles polytropos we perhaps have reached a final textual impasse, and in such cases, it sometimes proves helpful to reach for an exemplum or an anecdote, or in this case, both. In my first year of reading texts with Pietro Pucci, I went to try out some halfformed ideas on him when I first stumbled across Socrates’ arguments about the truthfulness of Achilles. As closely as I can recall, his response to me was something to this effect: “Well, of course you know that Plato understands very well that the language of both Achilles and Odysseus is undecidable. The truth and falsehood that Plato speaks about and that excite you so much are deeply contiguous. This is not because Homer agrees with Plato, that a master of truth is also a master of deception, but that Homer cannot control the difference that marks his text. But as we all know, it is only through this difference and deferral that truth as presence can be thought of”. At the time, I had very little clue what he meant. I hope now, however, if I am not too far off the mark, that after all these many years that response can stand as a summation of what this paper has been attempting to say.43

43 An earlier version of this paper was given at the “Why Like Lies?” conference at Cornell (April, 2009). I am grateful to the audience on that occasion for helpful advice. It is a pleasure to record here as well earlier debts to Charles Fuqua and to Gordon Kirkwood, and more recent ones to Ben Sammons, Sean Signore, David Konstan, Mark Buchan, Patricia Kirkwood, and Gregory Nagy. It is usual for authors to claim all responsibility for any remaining errors, but in this case such a conceit would be misleading. For the past fifteen years I have been reading Homer once a week with my good friend George Grimbilas, a fellow student of Pietro Pucci, and there is nothing in this paper, for better or worse, that is not an outcome of our mutual discussions. My final debt, of course, is to Pietro Pucci who for thirty-five years has patiently tried to show me how the study of poetic texts can be made intellectually exciting and psychically worthwhile.

Hector’s Inaction (Iliad 5.471-492) Philippe Rousseau University of Lille Apollo has stopped Diomedes’ murderous dash and transported Aeneas to his temple, leaving him in the holy care of his sister and his mother (Iliad 5.442-448). He then makes a simulacrum of the wounded Trojan, as a stake for the battle that breaks out between the two sides (449-453), and invites Ares to neutralize Diomedes (454-459). Under the appearance of a Thracian leader, the god of war rallies the soldiers, “sons of Priam”, exhorting them to react and to save the wounded Aeneas from the enemy (461-469). His words are heard (470). Sarpedon addresses Hector and accuses him of not fighting as he should. His rebuke is bitter and almost abusive (472-492): “Ἕκτορ πῇ δή τοι μένος οἴχεται, ὃ πρὶν ἔχεσκες; φῆς που ἄτερ λαῶν πόλιν ἑξέμεν ἠδ᾽ ἐπικούρων οἶος σὺν γαμβροῖσι κασιγνήτοισί τε σοῖσι. τῶν νῦν οὔ τιν᾽ ἐγὼ ἰδέειν δύναμ᾽ οὐδὲ νοῆσαι, ἀλλὰ καταπτώσσουσι κύνες ὣς ἀμφὶ λέοντα· ἡμεῖς δὲ μαχόμεσθ᾽ οἵ πέρ τ᾽ ἐπίκουροι ἔνειμεν. καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼν ἐπίκουρος ἐὼν μάλα τηλόθεν ἥκω· τηλοῦ γὰρ Λυκίη, Ξάνθῳ ἔπι δινήεντι, ἔνθ᾽ ἄλοχόν τε φίλην ἔλιπον καὶ νήπιον υἱόν, κὰδ δὲ κτήματα πολλά, τά τ’ ἔλδεται ὅς κ᾽ ἐπιδευής. ἀλλὰ καὶ ὧς Λυκίους ὀτρύνω καὶ μέμον᾽ αὐτὸς ἀνδρὶ μαχήσασθαι· ἀτὰρ οὔ τί μοι ἐνθάδε τοῖον οἷόν κ᾽ ἠὲ φέροιεν Ἀχαιοὶ ἤ κεν ἄγοιεν· τύνη δ᾽ ἕστηκας, ἀτὰρ οὐδ᾽ ἄλλοισι κελεύεις λαοῖσιν μενέμεν καὶ ἀμυνέμεναι ὤρεσσι. μή πως ὡς ἀψῖσι λίνου ἁλόντε πανάγρου ἀνδράσι δυσμενέεσσιν ἕλωρ καὶ κύρμα γένησθε· οἳ δὲ τάχ᾽ ἐκπέρσουσ᾽ εὖ ναιομένην πόλιν ὑμήν. σοὶ δὲ χρὴ τάδε πάντα μέλειν νύκτάς τε καὶ ἦμαρ ἀρχοὺς λισσομένῳ τηλεκλειτῶν ἐπικούρων νωλεμέως ἐχέμεν, κρατερὴν δ᾽ ἀποθέσθαι ἐνιπήν”.

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“Hector, what has become of your bravery? You said you could hold that city alone, with only your relatives to help you, but now I can’t see any one of them— they skulk back like dogs before a lion while your good allies do all the fighting. I am one of their lords from a distant land— yes, it is far to Lycia by Xanthus’ streams, where I left my wife and my baby boy, a splendid fortune and envious neighbors— and now I’ve encouraged my Lycian hordes to enter battle, though we’ve nothing here those Danaans might be taking as booty, while you stand still and can’t even rally your own men to fight in defense of their families. Ah, you’ll all be like fishes in a net when your enemies get their hands on you and plunder your prosperous capital! You should worry about this night and day and beg the lords of your glorious allies to stand steadfast, then no one would blame you”.

This passage from the Book 5 has long been a puzzle to scholars. There are indeed some troubling features and seemingly inconsequential constructions in some parts of the narrative: the care provided to Aeneas by Leto and Artemis in the temple; the simulacrum that Apollo placed on the battlefield while Aeneas reappears in person a few lines later; the uncanny double effect created by Ares’ exhortation to the sons of Priam; Sarpedon’s rebuke to Hector; and, finally, the absence of any true motivation for this latter scene. All these strange features might very well be linked together. Let us take only two of them into consideration in order to understand their meaning. Nineteenth-century scholars noticed that the Lycian prince’s diatribe came immediately after that of the god of war, and that the effect it had on Hector was not very different from the effect produced by Ares’ earlier speech.1 These scholars emphasized that the diatribe served no particular purpose, was unmotivated, and that its lengthy and detailed presentation did not bring anything essential to the situation, but, to the 1

See the summary of Giseke’s argument in Hentze (18822) 72 ff. “Daß diese Rede nach den Worten des Gottes, deren Wirkung man erwartet, nicht nur zwecklos, sondern, wie sie ganz unmmotiviert eintritt, mit ihrer breiten für die Situation nichts Wesentliches bringenden Ausführung in hohem Maße störend wirkt, ist unbedingt zugegeben”. Hentze mentions the wide consensus of the philologists in favor of the athetēsis.

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contrary, upset the economy of the narrative. Therefore, they saw it as an interpolation and decided in favor of the athetēsis of lines 471 to 492. This demonstration was part of a larger thesis about Sarpedon in which Giseke showed that the presence of “Lycians from the south” was a late addition to the Iliad and the legend of Troy, and therefore supported the correlative athetēsis of the famous duel between Tlepolemus and Sarpedon (5.628-698). The Analysts have often taken this position, with some variants. Wilamowitz, for instance, assumes that Sarpedon’s intervention makes no sense in this context, that his reproaches to Hector are unfounded, and that the scene serves no purpose.2 Von der Mühll speaks also of a doubling and mentions some “secondary” characteristics in the passage, for instance, that Sarpedon is an invention of the “poet B” of the Iliad. But he suggests the reasons that might have pushed “poet B” to evoke the Lycians in this scene. One of these reasons deserves our attention: Hector’s absence in the Diomēdeia had surprised “B”, just as his absence from the first part of Book 5 surprises us today. The scene with Sarpedon helps the poet to sort out this difficulty by having his character utter the rebukes he himself addresses to the narrative.3 This comment is intriguing, but it does not explain the inaction of the Trojan leader during the first part of the battle. The division of the different layers of the poem obstructs the interpretation of the perceived difficulty and, by reifying it, hides an enigma that is essential for the understanding of its meaning. The systematic analysis of the technique of composition of Greek archaic poems in the last century, along with Milman Parry, Albert B. Lord, and their disciples’ demonstration that our Iliad is the product of an oral poetic tradition whose characteristics can be understood only if we acknowledge that it obeys the rules of “composition in performance”, has changed the way we appreciate the difficulties pointed out by the philological scholarship of the nineteenth century, and apparently 2

3

(1920) 281 n. 2: “Diese Episode ist in dem Zusammenhange geradezu sinnlos, denn es war weder Grund den Hektor zu schelten, noch wird damit etwas erreicht. Sie steht nicht einmal zu dem Tlepolemoskampf in Beziehung. Sie erinnert an die Scheltrede des Glaukos Ρ 140 und ist wohl erst nach dieser oder mit dieser verfertigt, immerhin nicht mit bloß geborgten Versen und Gedanken”. Von der Mühll (1952) 99: “Hektors Abwesenheit in der Diomedie war diesem Dichter offenbar aufgefallen, wie si auch uns in der bisherigen Partie wundert. Dem hilft er durch die Sarpedonszene ab, in der er seinen Sarpedon das sagen läßt, was er selber gegenüber der Erzählung auf den Herzen hat, nämlich daß Hektor, der Ἕκτωρ, der doch bekanntlich der hauptsächliche Schützer Troias sei, nichts leiste. So bringt er ihn in Aktion”.

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favored the until then less held position of the Unitarians.4 But this real progress does not always avoid some misunderstandings, because it can imply a new reification, and by isolating conventions and methods—for instance, typical scenes or schemes—it can often flatten the richly meaningful ruggedness of poetic construction. The episode we are analyzing is a good example of such a danger. What should we do with this doubling noticed and criticized by the Analysts? Should we just ignore it and note that the concatenation of divine and human actions belongs specifically to the Homeric manner?5 Fenik,6 and Kirk7 later, both emphasize the recurrent narrative schemes for the description of battles to which Ares’ exhortation to Priam’s son and Sarpedon’s diatribe belong. They pertinently and precisely list the typical themes in both discourses, thus clarifying their composition. Yet, the question of the justification and signification of the particular form that the concatenation of divine and human rhēseis takes, and of the content and purpose of Sarpedon’s words, remains unanswered. We need to take into consideration the sequence of the three utterances, before Sarpedon verbally attacks Hector, from Apollo to Ares and then from Ares to the sons of Priam. They form a sequence, but in an intentionally skewed fashion, different from the ternary sequence in Book 2, where we find the mission granted by Hera to Athena, then by Athena to Odysseus, before the latter achieves among men the task required by the goddess.8 In Book 5, the link seems to get lost between Ares and Sarpedon. One could have expected that after Ares’ exhortation, one of its recipients, Hector for instance, would have spoken to rally the warriors around Aeneas’ body. This did not happen. The mortal who follows up on the intervention of the god is not one of Priam’s sons, but rather an unexpected character, and Hector is the recipient of the diatribe. Surprise and discontinuity are clear, and no doubt desired. The sense of “doubling” is the proof of it. Yet the concatenation of speeches is not broken. Its connections remain mostly by means of the same recurrent theme, the extreme danger that menaces the Trojans. From the beginning of the Book, this danger is embodied by Diomedes, who dared injure a goddess and provoke Apollo. His exploits seem to promise, on the one hand, to the Achaeans, the victory announced by Agamemnon’s 4 5 6 7 8

Bollack (1975) (= 1997, 29-59); see Rousseau (2001) 121-125. Reucher (1983) 124 ff. (1968) 49. (1990) 109, ad 5.471. Il. 2.155-206.

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dream, and, on the other hand, to the Trojans, their well-deserved ruin both for having broken the sworn truce and because of Pandarus’ treason. It is against Diomedes that Apollo has incited Ares, but Ares acted indirectly, in the guise of a Thracian ally of Troy, and fulfilled his mission by confronting Priam’s sons. Therefore, Diomedes does not seem to be part of it. But the menace to the city and its gates is at the very heart of Ares’ exhortation,9 made more gripping by the condition of Aeneas, who is wounded by Diomedes who, in turn, wants to seize his weapons. The same menace is at the bottom of Sarpedon’s diatribe against Hector. The theme is generously developed here. Diomedes’ figure shades off, without completely disappearing (the lion, in the singular, before whom Priam’s sons skulk back in the simile in line 476, must refer to the hero in a Book where the first part is dominated by his aristeia). The imminent fall of Troy takes form, with the consequences it will have for the members of the community (487-489). The gradation of pathos in the treatment of this theme from Apollo’s call to Ares, to Sarpedon’s diatribe, is obvious. It takes into account the distance that separates gods’ knowledge from mortals’ experience. It exposes to the public the gravity of the Trojans’ situation when the god stops Diomedes’ assault, and prepares a decisive reversal in the battle; it is like an object offered to the audience to reflect upon. The coherence of the sequence of the different harangues can be seen through other formal characteristics. We just noticed the persistence of the double figure of Diomedes’ dangerousness and the precariousness of the city’s well-being. Sarpedon’s questioning of Hector’s brothers’ and in-laws’ desertion (475-476) echoes Ares’ exhortation.10 The sarcasms11 of the Lycian increase the reproach contained in the words of the god, and develop a figure suggested by the guise the god adopts when speaking to the Trojan lords. It is as a Thracian, that is as an ally, just like Sarpedon, that he questions the inaction of the sons of Priam (465, ἐς τί ἔτι ... ἐάσετε) under the assault of the Achaeans led by Diomedes. The contrast between the aggressiveness of the allies and the passivity (or the cowardice) of the sons of Priam is thematized and widely developed by the Lycian who derives from it the central argu5.466. ἦ εἰς ὅ κεν ἀμφὶ πύλῃς εὖ ποιητῇσι μάχωνται ... The rhēsis is built in an almond shape around the metonymic evocation of the sack of the city (the gates). Aeneas’ injury (467-468) illustrates the massacre of the army (465), and the final exhortation to take action (469) parallels the initial questioning of the passivity shown by Priam’s sons (464-465). 10 Kirk (1990) 108, ad 463-464: “The god addresses Priam’s sons in particular, perhaps as prelude to Sarpedon’s rebuke to Hektor which follows”. 11 See Martin’s analysis (1989) 73. 9

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ment of his harangue, and a powerful leverage to unsettle his interlocutor (478: καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼν, 485: τύνη δ᾽). This contrast between the two groups is further exemplified by the contrast of his attitude and that of Hector, towards whom everything converges. The Trojan’s former swagger allows for a rhetorical transition from the generic admonishments of Ares to the specific invective of Sarpedon, with Hector’s behavior as the sole recipient of blame. Under such conditions, it is easy to accept that the mention of the first captain of Troy in the god’s exhortation, thanks to a comparison with Aeneas (467: ὃν ἶσον ἐτίομεν Ἕκτορι δίῳ), prepares and announces the following scene and the rhēsis. Therefore, there is coherence and progression in the concatenation of the three exhortations, and the athetēseis applied to the latter are certainly unjustified. Yet, as we saw previously, they are based on a wellfounded observation. Sarpedon’s diatribe is introduced and built in such a way that it both explains a theme born and developed in a minor key in the two previous speeches, and yet surprises the audience by calling its attention to a detail of the narrative. The rupture both emphasizes and raises questions. So the “double” figure is not in fact double. The apparent redundancy comes neither from an accident nor from clumsiness. The accumulation of “atypical” elements in what precedes12 might strengthen the poetic effect sought by the succession and gradation of the three speeches, while delaying the description of their consequences on the development of the action. The sequence “divine mandate, divine exhortation (under mortal guise), human rebuke”, in its ternary structure, follows a narrative scheme attested elsewhere in the Iliad. It announces the importance of a turning point in the plot. Apollo’s arresting actions, followed by Ares’, and finally by Hector’s and the Trojans’ against Diomedes, and the victorious breakthrough of the Achaeans, prepare the way for a decisive reversal of the outcome of the battle. The “doubling up” grants this moment of the narrative the appropriate dramatic effect. Pandarus’ murder, Aeneas’ wounding—given what Aeneas signifies in the Iliad—and Aphrodite’s sidelining, seems to insure the Achaeans of the punishment of the perjurers and the imminent fall of the city, as announced in the misleading dream of Agamemnon. The initial reversal of fortune in the battle shows how deceitful such hopes were, compared to Zeus’ master plan. The name Diomedes itself, “Zeus’ intention”, in the thematic context of the poem, reminds us that no matter how extraordinary his deeds are, and how “just” the cause they serve, his attempts

12 Kirk (1990) 107, ad 445-448 and 449-450.

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will unavoidably fail.13 At this point in the narrative, we can assume that the simulacrum of Aeneas fabricated by Apollo to change the course of the battle is yet another sign offered to the audience to indicate that the mortals involved in the fight are mistaken as to the sense of their history. But the “doubling up” plays another role. Its supposed awkwardness calls our attention to an essential characteristic of this episode: the prominence of Hector in the forefront of the battle. Von der Mühll, among others, has subtly imagined the intention behind the re-writing of the scene. Stung to the quick by Sarpedon’s words, Hector leaps from his chariot, rallies his routed soldiers and urges them back into the battle. The Trojans turn around, face their enemies and stop them without yet pushing them back (493-498). From this moment until his return to Troy as instructed by Helenus,14 his brother, the narrative shows Hector always in the forefront of the battle. Therefore, Sarpedon’s diatribe is understood as having provoked this result. The Analysts criticized its rhetoric and found arguments to reconstruct the genesis of the poem. Recent commentaries insist on typical elements used by the poet referring, as Wilamowitz already had, to other occurrences of what Fenik defined as a “rebuke-pattern”, in particular to Glaucus’ unjustified reproaches in Il. 17.140-168. But if we set aside Von der Mühll’s skewed reasoning derived from his conception of the Iliad’s genesis, scholars have not questioned the reasons behind such a poetic scheme. The blame is expressed twice, first by the god addressing a group, then by the Lycian with a deliberate reduction to one individual. The motif is clearly emphasized. Yet, it is not enough to notice that it belongs to the narrator’s tools; we must understand why he chose this particular one, and what to make of his choice. Sarpedon’s diatribe, unlike that of Ares, ignores Aeneas’ wounding; but he emphasizes the paradoxical contrast between the pugnacity of Troy’s allies and the absence of those who should have been first to defend it, Priam’s sons, and foremost, Hector; this contrast is all the more scandalous as the city seems about to fall. To characterize the attitude of his interlocutor, Sarpedon uses a verb whose thematic implications have been exposed in the episode of Agamemnon’s “review of the troups”, ἕστηκας (485). But Agamemnon scolded those who were hanging back: “You stand around dazed like so many fawns all tired out from a long run on the plain who stay stock-still in blank stupidity. I say you stand there helpless today and do not fight”.15 He then addressed Odysseus 13 On this interpretation of the plot of the Iliad, see Rousseau (2001). 14 Il. 6.118. 15 Il. 4.243-246. The rest of the diatribe offers an interesting parallel to the description of the Trojans in Ares’ and Sarpedon’s speeches.

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and the Athenians, and Diomedes when he saw them “standing still” while he spoke to the soldiers.16 The comparison of the two passages can be very illuminating. The behavior for which the Lycian reproaches the Trojan leader is the reverse of that of Agamemnon as reported by the narrator (4.223 ff.), and similar to what the latter accuses the leaders of, whom he sees standing still on their chariots. The distinction Sarpedon makes between Hector and his brothers and in-laws might be nothing more than a rhetorical trope in order to avoid accusing Hector of hiding like a coward. The parallel with Agamemnon confirms the importance of language in Sarpedon’s diatribe, a point made by Richard Martin.17 Since the nineteenth century, the position of the critics has been to consider that the reproaches made to the Trojan leader are no more justified here than in other passages where the same motif is used; it seems, therefore, an arbitrary invention of the poem in order to solve a technical problem. The narrative would have had little interest in Hector’s activity after the war resumed and called for a typical scheme to justify the belated entrance of the most important Trojan warrior. But if we take seriously Sarpedon’s words, we must accept that the poem retrospectively clarifies an aspect of its construction in previous episodes. Von der Mühll’s suggestion, that Sarpedon addresses to his interlocutor the criticism that the “poet B” would have liked to make to his predecessor, was clever and subtle, even if weakened by its application. If, as we tried to show, there is no solid argument against the authenticity of the intervention of the Lycian, and if the meaning of the text gets lost or weakened when we take into account Giseke’s athetēsis, we must ask ourselves why the poet called attention to the almost complete silence18 of the narrative about Hector’s behavior; the text qualifies the silence of the narrator by the inaction, or, as the comparison with the Epipolēsis would suggest, the state of “wait and see” in which the hero had remained. This is an attitude the narrator connects with the setbacks of the Trojans. The uniqueness of the construction of the scene is not the consequence of some accident in the history of the genesis of the Iliad, nor of the mere compositional features of archaic epic poetry; rather it constitutes an enigma offered to the shrewdness of the audience. 16 Il. 4.328, 329, 342, 366 and 367. Compare also the use of καταπτώσσουσι in Sarpedon’s speech (5.476) with the use of the same verb or the simple πτώσσεις in the epipolesis (4.224, 340, 371). 17 Martin (1989) 73. 18 Hector is mentioned in passing in the description of the first moments of the battle (4.505).

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It might be helpful to make one more observation before trying to propose an answer to that question. Hector is not sparing of his words on the battlefield. Book 3 gave him ample occasion to speak, as will the following Books. The Diomēdeia constitutes an exception. We, the audience, do not hear the voice of the Trojan leader before he exhorts his warriors when he leaves the battle to go to Troy following his brother Helenus’ request (6.110-115). The poet recalls in some places that Hector speaks to the Trojans and urges them to fight (5.496; 6.105), or that he charges bellowing (5.591), but he does not give him the floor. Unlike the parallel scene in Book 17, Hector, in Book 5, does not answer Sarpedon’s diatribe, and the text indicates that he still fails to answer the same Sarpedon when, wounded by Tlepolemus, the Lycian begs him not to let him fall into the hands of the Achaeans (5.689). How can we explain the withdrawal and the silence of the best warrior of Troy? There is one reason inscribed in the logic of the narrative of the first battle of the Iliad. We should probably consider that Hector did not understand or accept the circumstances of the breaking of the truce, with the consequences it implied for the perjurers. We remember how important his role was in negotiating the treaty, arranging the taking of the oath, and organizing the trial-duel between Paris and Menelaus. When broken by Sarpedon’s intervention, the silence of the narrative reveals itself as the expression of the inaction of the hero. It is remarkable that Hector should not answer his critic, but rather takes immediate action in order to counteract the blame he received and accepted. It is only later when visiting Troy, when, he sees Helen the Argive in Paris’ chamber, that Hector understands why the war has started again: he then realizes that Troy’s destiny is set, and, by going back to the battle with Paris, he fully assumes responsibility for the war and its outcome.19 Sarpedon’s criticism has succeeded. Hector has acted. But, why? He had not been reassured about the conditions of the battle, of which Sarpedon said nothing. So, what arguments had convinced him? The narrator does not mention anything. We could imagine that there are two. First of all there is the questioning of his honor as warrior. It is one of the fundamental qualities of his personality often noticed by interpreters. His answer to Andromache in the farewell scene seems to echo the Lycian’s reproaches. It is also what will ultimately bring him, his city, and his people to a complete disaster. The second argument, the strongest one in the construction of the rhesis, is the evocation of the 19 For this interpretation, see Rousseau (2001) 147-148; (2003) 37-40.

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menace for Troy and the fate of its women and young children, of Andromache and Astyanax, once the city falls. Both reasons are articulated in Sarpedon’s parainesis. Both provoke Hector’s reaction. But these two reasons can also be contradictory. The conversation between the couple in Book 6 shows it first, as does the discussion that opposes Hector and Polydamas in Books 12 and 18, and the final decision to confront Achilles at the beginning of Book 22, in spite of his family’s supplication. Hector threw himself into the battle to protect his city and his people. Thus, pushed by Sarpedon, he stepped into a situation that would lead him to assume responsibility for the double treason of Paris and Pandarus. It is interesting to see that, at an important crux of the plot and through the mouth of one of its characters, the poem emphasizes that Hector did not come to his decision without some hesitation. It is also interesting to see that the character whose intervention is of such significance shares, through a trope that has more to do with poetic invention than the contingencies of history and geography, a “Lycian” identity with the archer whose arrow signaled that the truce had been violated, and is, with Helen, the only child of Zeus in Troy.

Epic Space Revisited: Narrative and Intertext in the Episode between Diomedes and Glaucus (Il. 6.119-236) Christos Tsagalis Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Lessing’s dictum that literature is a temporal art1 and the obvious but misleading imbalance of time and space in narrative have been partly responsible for the cornucopia of studies dealing with the former and the frugality of those examining the latter.2 It was not until the late twentieth century that this disparity began to disappear, since it was realised that space is a far more complicated narrative realm and that both background settings and more profound aspects of narrative space are of seminal importance for understanding literature as a whole.3 Foucault, for example, almost prophesized that in contrast to the nineteenth century obsession with history, “the present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space”.4 Although literary critics were not ready to endorse such concepts as the pathbreaking Bakhtinian ‘chronotopes’ (i.e. timespaces), echoing Einstein’s theory of relativity and deemed for a long time rather eccentric for literary exploitation, the recognition of the paramount role of space, now on an almost equal par with time, opened a new window into the world of narrative art. Nowadays, spatial metaphors belong to the narrative lingo and comprise an essential underpinning of contemporary approaches to literature. In fact, certain scholars have ‘returned’ to Bakhtin’s theory about the constitutive and interactive function of space and time, even by reversing Bakhtinian chronotopoi into topochronoi, thus emphasizing the need of “a topochronic narrative 1 2

3 4

Lessing (1974) [1766] 102-115. Zoran (1984) 310 rightly argues that “[t]he difficulty apparently lies in one basic difference between space and time in narrative. One may speak of time in terms of the correlation between the structuring of the text and that of the world, whereas it is impossible to speak about space in such terms”. See e.g. Smitten and Daghistany (1981) on spatial forms in narrative. Foucault (1986) 22 (the French essay appeared as early as 1967).

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poetics, one that foregrounds topos in an effort to restore an interactive analysis of time with space in narrative discourse”.5 Despite a slow start, classical scholars are becoming more and more interested in the study of space in ancient literary texts, especially since narratology made its magisterial entrance in the world of classical literature in the late 1980s. Although this is not the place to offer a survey of the growing interest in studying space, I would like to dwell for a moment on certain methodological matters, especially with respect to Archaic Greek epic. By combining Chatman’s6 and Ryan’s7 models of spatial analysis and adding the level of intertext, I will adopt the following triple classification between: (a) story space, i.e. the scenery or setting as the base-level spatial form with its various framed and framing spaces; (b) embedded story space as the space constructed by internal narrators; (c) intertextual space as the space reconstructed through the possible interconnections between the story and/or embedded story space of a given songtradition with other song-traditions. These distinct levels of spatial organization correspond to distinct levels of narrative interaction: story space denotes the immediate spatial environment where the action takes place and is perceived only by the external narrator and his audience; embedded story space refers to the ‘invisible’ places mentioned or described by one or more internal narrators and is accessible to both the external narrator and the characters (internal narrators-internal narratees) of a given episode or scene; intertextual space, which refers to an almost extra-narrative space and is retrieved by exploring the process of the creation of story and/or embedded story space, leaves its traces on the aforementioned levels of narrative space that have become traditionalized by successive performances. In fact, intertextual space is built upon a chronotopic exploitation of total space, namely of space that “the text presupposes, or provides indirectly but does not ‘show’”.8 The complex of space (a general topography of Troy on the one hand, and basic geographical patterns like Greece-Aegean-Troy and Troy in the north– Lycia in the south) must have been so fixed in the mind of ancient audiences that they formed some sort of mental chart, thus making detailed geographical descriptions unnecessary. Total space (existing beyond the boundaries of the actually presented space) and the complex of space (on both the story and discourse levels) were so closely linked in the con5 6 7 8

Friedman (2005) 194; see also Soja (1989); Grossberg (1996) 169-188. For a comprehensive treatment of space, see most recently Günzel (2010). Chatman (1978). Ryan (2003). Zoran (1984) 329.

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sciouness of listeners,9 that they also created a chronotopic intertext or what I call intertextual space, an extra-narrative holistic space perceived only by audiences, which comprises a reconstructed totum: a juncture in which various patterns from all registers and notional places intersect.

Story Space By the term story space I designate the place where the episode of the meeting between Diomedes and Glaucus occurs, which is denoted by the introductory (6.119-122), intermediary (212-214), and terminal (232-236) lines framing the speech exchanges between the two heroes. This particular story space is the battlefield, a military space per se where the war and, therefore, a significant part of the plot takes place. Story space in the Iliad can be subdivided into areas of mortal and immortal activity. The former consists of the following internal settings: (a) the battlefield; (b) the city of Troy (comprising the palace and the walls); (c) the Achaean camp. The latter contains the various places where divine action (when gods do not interfere with humans) occurs: (a) primarily Olympus; (b) the land of the Aethiopes; (c) mount Ida; (d) the mount in Samothrace; (e) Hephaestus’ palace in Lemnos; (f) the wall of Heracles; (g) the hill of Kallikolone.10 With the exception of Hephaestus’ palace in Lemnos, where the scene with Thetis in Il. 18 takes place, all the other locations function as entrance-points from which the gods pass into the world of mortals. The twofold classification of Iliadic space on the basis of human and divine activity is combined with the aforementioned tripartite organization of mortal space, in which the battlefield constitutes a sort of intermediate story space, while the city of Troy and the Achaean camp stand for terminal or marginal spaces, where the enemy only seldom enters. These two distinct levels of spatial organization are connected mainly when gods appear in the battlefield, the central location of the action in the epic. This is a rather closed form of space, which is basically left to the imagination of the audience to reconstruct and visualize. Contrary to the Odyssey, where the notion of landscape has long been anticipated, the Iliad refrains from offering any sort of description of any 9

See Zoran (1984) 331-330: “The best example of chronotopic connection between total space and the complex of space occurs in the epics; in fact, the connection is so close that it almost annuls the differentiation between them. The voyages of Odysseus encompass all the areas of the world fixed in the conscience of its contemporary reader, the early Greek”. 10 See Hellwig (1964) 29-30.

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setting,11 with the exception of the similes that are a completely different matter altogether.12 The various features of the natural environment, such as the sea, the mountains, the trees and the rivers are treated as specific points and never form a coherent setting. They are ‘summoned’ in the narrative, only when they have a clear function in the plot13 and they possess a rather concrete nature, more or less like other objects “such as the weapons, the warriors, and the ships and huts of the Achaeans”.14 Such a symmetrical organization of space entails inherent difficulties for the Iliadic tradition, since there is a lack of another form of setting, where the non-military activities between the two armies should take place, like oath-exchange and, in our case, the friendly meeting between Diomedes and Glaucus. In order to overcome such ‘staging’15 problems, the Iliad creates special conditions for the carrying out of these scenes between the two armies. To this end, the Iliad creates an internal space within the battlefield, a space that is not delineated by specific landscape markers and, as a result, is not narratively autonomous. It is denoted, in semiotic terms, by the following series of signs, which represent a reversal of a corresponding chain of features pertaining to a formal duel: instead of moving aggressively one against the other, the two adversaries stop and stand at close distance; they do not resort to the typical exchange of taunt-speeches, but speak in a friendly manner; they do not throw their spears or arrows, but exchange weapons; they dismount their chariots and shake hands.16 This process of adaptation, by which features from a given type-scene are transferred to another, which in this case is its direct opposite, is enhanced even more through a zooming 11 Occasional references to Olympus are rather marginal and do not undermine the above statement. 12 See Elliger (1975) 29, who rightly argues that although there are many references to nature in the similes, they do not constitute a given landscape, not only because the similes belong to a different register and have not much to do with the actual plot, but also because the description of elements of nature contained in them hardly designates a coherent whole, a landscape in the strict sense of the word. 13 As, for example, to ‘site’ characters: a hero is standing in the Scaean gates, Achilles and Hector pass from the washing-places in Il. 22, while the wild figtree (ἐρινεός) in the plain is always mentioned with respect to an imminent danger or change of doom. This strategy has been called epic adumbration (see Curtius 1953, 186, 200), and corresponds to the Greek term τοπογραφία and the Roman positus locorum or situs terrarum. See also Fitter (1995) 32-33. 14 Elliger (1975) 30. See also Bowra (19612) 132 ff.; Vivante (1970) 16. 15 I am deliberately using the term ‘staging’ with its theater-oriented overtones; see Hellwig’s (1964, 28) Schauplatz designating the Trojan plain. 16 See Maronitis (1999) 63-64.

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technique that is equally employed in formal duels: the main narrator turns the attention of his audience to a specific pair of warriors who are narratively ‘isolated’ within the battlefield. Such a technique results in the creation of an internal stage, a smaller story space where the ensuing episode will take place. Given that no spatial indicators as markers of setting are employed, the Iliad sets up an empty space for the listeners in the form of camera position.17 The main narrator’s lens is suddenly focused on a single spot in the battlefield, an almost undescribable or ineffable stationary point. The audience is guided to a place that is both already present (since it forms part of the battlefield) and absent (in the sense that it is deprived of topography) and is subsequently encouraged to visualize on their own the specific scene. Following Ryan’s model of reconstructing maps of fictional worlds, we can see that the literary cartography of the place where the encounter between the two heroes takes place is what discourse analysts have felicitously called a map, where “space is represented panoramically from a perspective ranging from the disembodied god’s-eye point of view of pure vertical projection, to the oblique view of an observer situated on an elevated point”.18 In light of the complete absence of typical spatial indicators, it is worth investigating the process of tacit instruction to the listeners to re-create space, by capitalizing on certain mental strategies employed in visual imaging. Examined against this background, certain deictic terms referring to distance may in fact be cues offered to the audience for a suggested mapping of the given scene, all the more since such hints encompass, so to speak, built-in mental models of narrative structure.19 After the introduction of the two heroes in typical epic manner (Il. 6.119: Γλαῦκος δ᾽ Ἱππολόχοιο πάϊς καὶ Τυδέος υἱός), space is roughly indicated by the line ἐς μέσον ἀμφοτέρων συνίτην μεμαῶτε μάχεσθαι (Il. 6.120), which allows the narrator to ‘separate’ Glaucus and Diomedes from the rest of the two armies and zoom his narrative lens on them.20 This very same line is also attested two more times in the Iliad (20.159, 23.814), always anticipating an impending duel that is going to

17 See Fludernik (1996) 192-201. 18 Ryan (2003) 218. 19 Along these lines, Richardson (2006) 51, following Esrock (1994), has convincingly argued that the Iliad exploits at length the human eye’s “natural attraction to bright patches in the visual field [coined ‘radiant ignition’], as when Homer helps us image a field of armed warriors by describing the light reflecting off their bronze helmets”. 20 See scholia on Il. 6.120 (Erbse): ὡς διεστώτων καὶ ἀναπαυομένων (as if they were standing apart and resting).

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take place between foot-soldiers (πεζῆι);21 let us therefore compare all three passages: Γλαῦκος δ᾽ Ἱππολόχοιο πάϊς καὶ Τυδέος υἱός ἐς μέσον ἀμφοτέρων συνίτην μεμαῶτε μάχεσθαι. οἳ δ᾽ ὅτε δὴ σχεδὸν ἦσαν ἐπ᾽ ἀλλήλοισιν ἰόντες, τὸν πρότερος προσέειπε βοὴν ἀγαθὸς Διομήδης· (Il. 6.119-122)

Now Glaukos, sprung from Hippolochos, and the son of Tydeus came together in the space between the two armies, battle-bent. Now as these advancing came to one place and encountered, first to speak was Diomedes of the great war cry: 22 … δύο δ᾽ ἀνέρες ἔξοχ᾽ ἄριστοι ἐς μέσον ἀμφοτέρων συνίτην μεμαῶτε μάχεσθαι, Αἰνείας τ᾽ Ἀγχισιάδης καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. (Il. 20.158-160) ……………………………………………………………………. οἳ δ᾽ ὅτε δὴ σχεδὸν ἦσαν ἐπ᾽ ἀλλήλοισιν ἰόντες, τὸν πρότερος προσέειπε ποδάρκης δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς· (Il. 20.176-177)

… Two men far greater than all the others were coming to encounter, furious to fight with each other, Aineias, the son of Anchises, and brilliant Achilleus. ……………………………………………………………….… Now as these in their advance had come close to each other first of the two to speak was swift-footed brilliant Achilleus: ὣς ἔφατ᾽· ὦρτο δ᾽ ἔπειτα μέγας Τελαμώνιος Αἴας, ἂν δ᾽ ἄρα Τυδείδης ὦρτο κρατερὸς Διομήδης. οἳ δ᾽ ἐπεὶ οὖν ἑκάτερθεν ὁμίλου θωρήχθησαν, ἐς μέσον ἀμφοτέρων συνίτην μεμαῶτε μάχεσθαι (Il. 23.811-814)

So he spoke, and there rose up huge Telamonian Aias, and next the son of Tydeus rose up, strong Diomedes. When these were in their armour on either side of the assembly, they came together in the middle space, furious for the combat.

The formulaic material employed in all the aforementioned cases includes a two-step process: (a) the introduction of the two warriors in stark epic manner by means of patronymics and/or typical epithets accompanying their names; (b) a designation of space in two phases, including their coming at close distance or separating themselves from other bystanders and standing in the middle of both armies. With respect to the first step, although the constant use of patronymics is a general characteristic of epic diction, their use before such 21 On this important point, cf. Il. 6.232-236. 22 All translations (including spelling of proper names) are from Lattimore (1951).

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scenes may also, on a secondary level, entail claims to authority and prestige: the warriors approach each other in majestic grandeur, figuratively carrying with themselves legitimization23 and status stemming from their genealogical pedigree, which is here fossilized in formulaically appropriate patronymics.24 To make a long story short, patronymics may be seen, in this context, as a mechanism testifying to the heroes’ esteem and stature,25 a projection of their past to the present of the epic performance. As far as the second step is concerned, the Homeric narrator has a twofold goal: first, he tries to bring the two heroes together at a close distance, and then he attempts to isolate them from the rest of the armies by creating a symmetrical space, i.e. by making them stand in the middle between the two armies surrounding them. The formulaic line οἳ δ᾽ ὅτε δὴ σχεδὸν ἦσαν ἐπ᾽ ἀλλήλοισιν ἰόντες verbalizes the narrator’s first aim in terms of a temporal clause, which subordinates this first phase to the second, which is also formulaically expressed (ἐς μέσον ἀμφοτέρων συνίτην μεμαῶτε μάχεσθαι). In this light, and given that the formula οἳ δ᾽ ὅτε δὴ σχεδὸν ἦσαν ἐπ᾽ ἀλλήλοισιν ἰόντες is attested 12 times in the Iliad, always before the formula τὸν πρότερος προσέειπε + epithet + proper-name nominative of one of the two heroes, it is clear that both its shaping and content fit a military context, as the two protagonists are narratively isolated from the rest of the two armies and approach each other ready for combat. When we apply these findings to the meeting between Diomedes and Glaucus, it becomes clear that: (a) the Iliadic tradition designates the story space for the friendly encounter between the two heroes through the typical means of epic diction, namely by employing formulas pertaining to a formal duel; (b) the emphasis given on the creation of symmetrical space by making the two heroes stand in the middle is consonant with the cognitive aesthetics of reception, i.e. the interrelation between literary imagery and readerly imagination, and in particular with the human mind’s tendency to create visual fields on the basis of analogy and symmetry.26 In particular, by adopting a panoramic perspective, the external narrator engages the audience in creating on their own the space where the first part of the episode takes place. The phrase “now as these advancing came to one place and encountered” invites the audience to visualize the mutual approach of the two heroes side23 See Grethlein (2006) 63-84. 24 The use of what Kirk (1962) 164-166 has called abbreviated style epitomizes the heroes’ grandeur and stature in pure epic terms. 25 See Scodel (1992) 76. 26 See Kosslyn and Koenig (1992).

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ways, as if standing outside and above. This, according to Ryan’s terminology, map strategy makes full use of certain modes of perspectivetaking (like the adverbial and verbal expressions denoting motion27 and mutual approach)28 and turns the initial zooming of the narrative lens on a particular spot on the battlefield to an angling of the singer’s narrative camera. After the exchange of speeches by the two warriors, Diomedes, having realized that he is related to Glaucus, “drove his spear into the prospering earth” (Il. 6.213: ἔγχος μὲν κατέπηξεν ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρηι). The formula ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρηι, which is attested (together with its allomorphs) 14 times in the Iliad, evokes, through the traditional referentiality of the expression,29 the brief postponement of military activity: in Il. 3.89-91 Hector repeats the core of Paris’ previous speech (Il. 3.68-70) and suggests to both Greeks and Trojans to “lay aside on the bountiful earth their splendid armour / while he himself in the middle and warlike Menelaos / fight alone for the sake of Helen and all her possessions”; in Il. 3.195 Priam asks Helen, who is standing next to him on the walls of Troy, to identify the Achaean hero (Odysseus) whose armor “lies piled on the prospering earth …”. In this light,30 it may be plausibly argued that - this time - the narrator ‘usurps’ formulaic diction attested in character-speech aiming at extending its functional use. He does not employ, as he did before, the technique of contextual adaptation of formulaic material, but that of intensification: in the meeting between Diomedes and Glaucus, the placement of the weapons on the ground is a prelude to the ensuing disarmament of the two heroes (Il. 6.232-236). The postponement of warfare has here become cancellation and annulment, as the traditional referentiality of a formula has been pushed to its most extreme limits. The placement of Diomedes’ spear on the ground as a prelude to the final disarmament of the two heroes and their mutual exchange of 27 συνίτην and ἐπ᾽ ἀλλήλοισιν ἰόντες. 28 ἐς μέσον and σχεδὸν ἦσαν. 29 On traditional referentiality, see Foley (1991) 24; Danek (2002) 3-19; Tsagalis (2008) 188, 205. 30 The use of the expression ἐν μέσσωι by both Paris and Hector shows that all three contexts (temporary postponement of military activity for the preparation of a duel of great importance, formal duels, and friendly encounters such as that between Diomedes and Glaucus) share the same formulaic diction and, more importantly, that the first and the third have been shaped on the basis of the second. Since the formal duel is the default mode of close encounters in a military epic like the Iliad, it is possible that it has bestowed its diction to other scenes, which were shaped, in pure Parryan terms, according to the principle of formulaic economy.

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weapons builds on the standard Iliadic representation of the actual combat between warriors, who throw and shoot spears and arrows at each other and make fall on the ground the body of the defeated hero, who thus meets his doom.31 By driving his spear into the ground, Diomedes reverts the typical use of a weapon and displays his friendly feelings towards Glaucus: when weapons are placed on the ground, then words become gentle and soothing (μειλιχίοισι),32 and the potential conflict turns into an amicable and cordial meeting. Seen from this angle, the placement of Diomedes’ spear on the ground may also be a disguised hint of Hector’s placing of his helmet, the symbol of his military might that terrifies baby Astyanax, on the ground (Il. 6.473) in his ensuing meeting with Andromache on the walls. The expression καὶ τὴν μὲν κατέθηκεν ἐπὶ χθονὶ παμφανόωσαν (“and let it in all its shining upon the ground”) reproduces the syntax of line 6.213 (ἔγχος μὲν κατέπηξεν ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρηι: “he drove his spear deep into the prospering earth”) describing Diomedes’ placement of his spear on the ground. Viewed from this vantage point, the narrator’s reference to the ‘muchnourishing’ earth (6.213: χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρηι) exploits the formulaic military substratum of the scene, paving the way for the emotionally loaded meeting between Andromache and Hector. Given the rather fixed parameters of such scenes, it is worth investigating how consideration of space is important for exploring the gradual shift of focus within the limited setting of this encounter. In the beginning of the episode, when the narrator described the two heroes moving forward and standing in the middle of the two armies, he was adopting a lateral view,33 i.e. he was looking at the two heroes from the side or an elevated point; conversely, when the heroes start speaking and are looking at each other, the position of the narrator (and of course the visual imaging of the listeners) is that of face-to-face view, since space shifts according to the focalization presented in each case.34 This spatial re31 See the following remarks on the falling of the leaves on the ground (ἔραζε) as a compressed metonymy for death. 32 Given that, as Martin (1989, 16) has suggested “a muthos focuses on what the speaker says and how he or she says it, but epos consistently applies to what the addressee hears”, the Iliad covertly indicates that Diomedes’ speech conveys authority and power and is, therefore, persuasive. On μειλίχιος, see Ebbott (2010) 239-258. 33 On laterality as one of many possible relationships between located and reference objects (or figure versus ground in theoretical jargon), see Herman (2002) 274-277. 34 This face-to-face visual imaging and mental organization of space is also at work in the meeting between Hector and Andromache, especially when the

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organization of the scene according to continuous shifts taken by the narrator’s eye is also reflected by means of some, seemingly unimportant, topographical hints, like Diomedes’ stabbing his spear into the soil. According to the formulaic analysis presented above, the narrator employed formulaic diction attested in character-speech and extended its use in order to pave the way for the friendly exchange of weapons between the two warriors at the end of the scene. Seen from the vantage point of the shift of space, the technique of formulaic intensification builds upon another mental strategy called tour, which “represents space dynamically from a perspective internal to the territory to be surveyed”.35 This time, members of the audience would have placed themselves right behind the two heroes, they would have created visual images of them looking at each other face-to-face and would have mentally seen, through the eyes of Glaucus, Diomedes driving his spear on the ground. This ever-changing presentation of story space indexes modes of perspectivetaking that make full use both of mental charts regularly employed by audiences, and also of traditional diction – the path to the evocation and activation of such charts within the medium of epic song. The designation of story space acquires, towards the end of the episode, an unexpected trope: the two heroes dismount their horses, shake hands and exchange oaths of friendship (Il. 6.232-233): ὣς ἄρα φωνήσαντε, καθ᾽ ἵππων ἀΐξαντε, χεῖράς τ᾽ ἀλλήλων λαβέτην καὶ πιστώσαντο.

So they spoke, and both springing down from behind their horses gripped each other’s hands and exchanged the promise of friendship.

The use of the expression καθ᾽ ἵππων ἀΐξαντε, which always refers to chariots,36 has caused much trouble to Homeric scholars, since it stands in stark contrast to the beginning of the entire scene, where Diomedes and Glaucus are standing as foot-soldiers one against the other. Although it is almost impossible to deal with such problems in a definite manner, one can speculate that the Iliad has shaped the end of this episode by conflating a typical scene of gift-exchange37 and reconciliation between Trojan hero places his shining helmet on the ground. On the importance of light (shining helmet) for the mental reactivation of spatial forms, see above. 35 Ryan (2003) 218. 36 Cf. Il. 11.423; Il. 17.460; Il. 20.401. Kirk (1990) 190, ad 6.232 notes: “That they were in chariots is not suggested by the introduction to their encounter in 119-121”. 37 The unequal exchange of gifts has generated considerable discussion among scholars: the scholia offer a variety of explanations stretching from the removal of the wits of Glaucus by Zeus to the suggestion that this outrageous imbalance

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two warriors with one of fighting, in which the two adversaries would have dismounted their chariots to engage in close combat, as is highly likely given the military context of Il. 11.423, 17.460 (cf. 17.470 and 480) and Il. 20.401, where the same expression is used. After all it is frequently the case that the borrowing of diction from one scene and its transfer to another is only partial and imperfect, often resulting in thematical fissures.

Embedded Story Space The term embedded story space designates the space evoked by the various embedded narratives of the two protagonists of this episode: the simile of the leaves and the stories of Lycurgus and Bellerophon.38 Since the simile of the leaves entails a comment on fate and the cycle of life and death in terms of an ongoing change, it may be also seen

aimed at pleasing a Greek or pro-Greek audience; Aristotle (NE 1136b 9-14) thought that Diomedes is not unjust, while other ancient scholars (sch. A, μετατιθέασί τινες ἄλλοσε ταύτην τὴν σύστασιν) relocated this scene. Craig (1967) 243-245 and Walcot (1969) 12-13 suggest that Glaucus accepts the unequal exchange as the price for his life; Calder (1978) 34-35 argues that the unequal exchange of gifts is a by-product of the poet’s effort to interpret the episode of Diomedes and Glaucus with its many arcane points; Donlan (1989) 115 suggests that Glaucus is expected to receive fewer gifts because he is a lesser warrior; Martin (1989) 286-289, following Maftei (1976) 52, believes that Diomedes has invented the xenia element in this episode in order to win the ‘flyting’ contest and manipulate the exchange of armor; Traill (1989) 301-305 has rightly suggested that Zeus tries to compensate Diomedes for his failure to win a great duel and kill a preeminent figure during his aristeia in Il. 5; Kirk (1990) 171 maintains that the odd end of the episode may have been the poet’s intention, if he wanted to mark in a stark manner the transition to the Hector episode occupying the rest of Il. 6; Parks (1990) 77-79 argues that verbal duels often turn into guest-friendships, as is the case in Beowulf, when the hero meets with the Danish coastguard; Scodel (1992) 76 accentuates the strangeness of the whole episode and argues that “Zeus here acts, without clear motive, on the mind of a character who has, exceptionally and perhaps uniqely, no previous inclination at all to act as Zeus causes him to act”. 38 When the narrator gives the floor to Diomedes and Glaucus, the two heroes become storytellers who cue the audience “to transport themselves from the spatiotemporal parameters of the current interaction to those defining the storyworld” (Herman 2002, 271). This deictic shift is of paramount importance for framed narratives such as those to be narrated by Diomedes and Glaucus.

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as a movement between two imaginary spaces, the ground (χαμάδις)39 and the forest (ὕλη);40 given that the leaves stand, within the symbolic decoding of the simile, for humans, it may be argued that the ground and the forest represent death and life respectively. Mortals fall at the moment of their death and, what is more important, the movement of their falling is also connected with birth, aging, and generation.41 In the words of Purves, “[l]ike the seasonal recycling of leaves to the ground, the motif of falling creates its own self-perpetuating structure within the narrative logic of the poem. So, all the way through from Echepolus to Rhigmus42 or from Sarpedon to Patroclus, one fall generates another in the Iliad until the final cumulative fall of Hector”.43

The play of space within the symbolic framework of the simile may be reflecting a concept inherent in the notion of the world as perceived by Homeric heroes: like leaves, menʊand of course Homeric men, i.e. heroesʊhrive within their proper space, the forest, i.e. the heroic society, and correspondingly perish when separated from it,44 i.e. they fall to the ground.45 39 The alliterative effect of the phrase χαμάδις χέει (Il. 6.147) that is used for the leaves is reminiscent of the death-oriented alliterative expression χύντο χαμαὶ χολάδες (Il. 4.526). 40 This secondary but complementary function of the simile of the leaves may be traced to another typical simile that is systematically used in the Iliad with respect to the death of the heroes: warriors are like tall trees, which fall to the ground at the moment of their death (cf. Simoisies in Il. 4.473-489 and the sons of Diocles in Il. 5.541-560); on this topic, see Tsagalis (2004) 179-192. 41 Purves (2006) 179-209. 42 Echepolus (Il. 4.462) and Rhigmus (Il. 20.487) are the first and last minor Homeric warriors to “fall” in the poem. 43 (2006) 186. 44 The falling of the leaves is also employed in fr. 204.124-128 of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, symbolizing the end of the semi-divine status of the heroes and a radical change in the world; see D’Alfonso (2008) 10. 45 This interpretation is further supported by the fact that when falling (on the ground) is used with reference to the immortals, space signifies an entrancepoint to human time and temporality. In other words, divine intervention in the form of epiphany turns spatial markers into temporal ones. To this end, it is important to observe that in the Iliad, Zeus is the one god who underscores in stark manner the gods’ spatial separation from human time by never descending lower than the peaks of Mount Ida. As Purves (2006) 195 n. 51 observes: “The one exception is telling: Zeus lets tears of blood drop towards the ground (ἔραζε) in sorrow at Sarpedon’s death (16.459)”. On falling, see also Burgess (2010) 211-224, who discusses the death of Astyanax.

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Given that the insistence of both Diomedes and Glaucus on their genealogical pedigrees is a way to acquire authority and legitimization,46 the extended embedded story space delineated by them may be seen as an effort to designate their proper historical space. Genealogies are both time and space maps, since they allow the organization of collective memory into temporal and spatial terms and help communities reconsider their identity and shape it in social terms.47 Seen from the vantage point of historical awareness, the suspension between expectation (Erwartung) and experience (Erfahrung), which is based, in the simile of the leaves on the unpredictability of fate, and in the genealogies on control of the past, points to the discrepancy between the contingencies of fate and the regular and steady flow of tradition.48 The embedded narratives of Diomedes and Glaucus map out a mythical geography extending from Thrace to Corinth, then to Lycia and finally to Aetolia. In particular, the mythological paradigm employed by Diomedes refers to Lycurgus and takes place on mount Nyseion (Νυσήϊον) in Thrace, while the first part of Bellerophon’s story occurs in horse-pasturing Argos and the second part in far-away Lycia,49 while Diomedes’ reference to the hospitality offered by Oeneus to Bellerophon is placed at Calydon in Aetolia. The placement of the mythological paradigm of Lycurgus in mount Nyseion (Νυσήϊον) in Thrace stems both from the studied alliteration of this word with the epic form of Dionysus’ name (Διωνύσοιο) that is mentioned in the previous verse (6.132), and from the general staging of the meeting between Diomedes and Glaucus. Thrace, which (like Phrygia) represents one of the most typical areas from where the cult of Dionysus was diffused in Greece, points to an otherness symbolizing danger and peril, since it constituted for the Greeks a powerful metonymy for the unknown, the unexplored, and the irrational. My argument is that in cases like this, space must be perceived in terms of cultural topography rather than geographical accuracy. In the story of Lycurgus, the notion of otherness is emphasized even further, by means of the landscape: the internal setting where the persecution of Dionysus and his maenads by Lycurgus takes place is that of the mountain, of untamed and wild nature, far away from the civilized world of the city. The embedded story of Lycurgus sheds light on a peripheral, marginalized and inhospi46 On the paradigmatic fucntion of genealogies, see Alden (2000) 153-178, who rightly states that “Glaucus is saved by his genealogy from fighting with Diomedes”. 47 On genealogies as time-maps, see Zerubavel (2003). 48 See Grethlein (2006) 42-105. 49 In the larger sense of north-eastern Peloponnese.

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table world,50 from which the haunted god is saved by plunging into the sea, in the welcoming lap of Thetis. Seen from this angle, embedded story space delineated in the paradigm offered by Diomedes is in stark contrast to the story space of the entire scene: the absence of landscape markers in the narrator-text has given its place to specific markers in character-text; these markers pertain both to the Greeks’ Geschichtsbild of cultural geography and to a metonymical polarity between mountain and sea.51 The embedded story narrated by Glaucus is divided into two parts, the former taking place in North-Western Peloponnese,52 the latter in Lycia. These two distinct parts are organized around the figure of Bellerophon, who functions as the lynchpin between these three different mythical lays that seem to have been imperfectly conflated: the first refers to a king who decided to exile from his kingdom a young hero, who could potentially become a threat to his throne; the second is a variant of the well known story of Potiphar’s wife:53 the wife of the king falls in love with a younger man, who in some versions, is a potential usurper of the throne, and who becomes systematically slandered by the queen after rejecting her love offers; the third lay refers to the contests and dangers a hero must overcome in order to be allowed to marry the king’s daughter. The multiple explanations of Bellerophon’s exile from Argos (according to reasons pertaining to both the first and the second lays), as well as his reward upon his arrival in Lycia, indicate that all three lays have been imperfectly merged into the Iliadic version. The final punishment of Bellerophon is a strong antiphonal echo of the punishment of Lycurgus, both being expressed in formulaically similar manner: Il. 6.140: ἐπεὶ ἀθανάτοισιν ἀπήχθετο πᾶσι θεοῖσιν - Il. 6.200: καὶ κεῖνος ἀπήχθετο πᾶσι θεοῖσιν.54 50 On the opposition between city and countryside, see Rosen & Sluiter (2006). 51 For the leap into the sea as a metaphor for a transition into another condition, see Nagy (1990a) 223-262. 52 Ephyre is situated near Corinth, so the term Argos is employed here in the sense of a wider area. 53 The Near-Eastern elements in the story of Bellerophon are numerous (Chimaera, the motif of Potiphar’s wife, the letter of Proetus to Iobates, king of Lycia, inscribed on the πίναξ πτυκτός, the erring fate of Bellerophon); see Strömberg (1961) 1-15; Peppermüller (1962) 5-21; West (1997) 365-367. 54 The word καί in Il. 6.200 has caused both trouble and speculation: some scholars take it as a direct comparison between Lycurgus and Bellerophon, while others maintain that the two paradigms have been ‘excerpted’ from an earlier catalogue-poem. For all the relevant bibliography, see Scodel (1992) 78 n. 13, who rightly argues that “the point lies in the contrast between the two [Lycurgus and Bellerophon]”(78), since in the former example the favor of the gods is

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The designation of embedded story space in the first part of Bellerophon’s story is done by means of the typologically established opening of an embedded tale: ἔστι πόλις Ἐφύρη μυχῶι Ἄργεος ἱπποβότοιο (Il. 6.152).55 As soon as specific geographical parameters have been given, a genealogy follows starting from Sisyphus, continuing with Glaucus (the grandfather of Iliadic Glaucus), and then with his son Bellerophon, who is characterized as favored by the gods in terms of beauty and manhood.56 The designation of space, which is done by means of place names, is invigorated by Bellerophon’s pedigree, and especially by the designation of Sisyphus the Aeolian (Il. 6.154: Σίσυφος Αἰολίδης) as his great-grandfather, since Sisyphus is always placed in Corinth according to the mythographical tradition. The mention of Proetus recalls one of the three royal families of Argos,57 the Proetids/Anaxagorids from whom Sthenelus descends (the other two are the Melampodids and the Biantids from whom come Euryalus and Diomedes). In Glaucus’ embedded narrative, Argos is more or less the domestic space of the palace of Proetus, from which Bellerophon is exiled. In the second part, space is designated through a series of changes: first the dangerous countryside of Lycia (after a brief scene of xenia in the palace of the Lycian king who deliberately remains unnamed) where Bellerophon fights against Chimaera,58 the Solymoi, the symbol of untamed, savage female nature, the Amazons, and an ambush organized against him by the king of Lycia himself with a group of

55

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58

presented as subject to human control, while in the latter divine favor in the beginning of the story with Bellerophon’s πομπή in Lycia and divine anger at the end with the hero’s wandering are left unexplained. See Webster (1958) 186; Gaisser (1969) 157-158; Murray (1907) 197-199 postulated a relation between the stories of Lycurgus and Bellerophon going back to the cyclic epic Corinthiaca. See Mackie (1996) 68-69, who rightly draws attention to Il. 2.811, 11.710, 13.382, where the expression ‘there is a city’ is employed, and argues that “the line beginning with ἔστι marks a transition to a new setting and the start of a new episode […] The examples show that the phrase ἔστι δέ τις (‘There is a…) functions as a narrative marker, equivalent to the camera’s shift to a new frame in cinematic narrative”. Il. 6.156-157: τῶι δὲ θεοὶ κάλλός τε καὶ ἠνορέην ἐρατεινήν / ὤπασαν. Notice that Bellerophon has to obey Proetus’ will to leave the city, given the power of the king (Il. 6.158: ἐπεὶ πολύ φέρτερος ἦεν). For the motif ‘he is [by far] mightier’ that is attested 27 times in the Iliad, see Kelly (2007) 173-174. On the possible link between Chimaera and the place-names of Lycia, see Kirk (1990) 182-183; between Chimaera and population movements, see Bryce (2006) 148-149.

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elite warriors;59 then, upon Bellerophon’s victory and subsequent marriage to the king’s daughter, Bellerophon moves to friendly space, the best τέμενος offered to him by the people of Lycia;60 last, but certainly not least, Bellerophon is, without any explanation on the part of Glaucus, who narrates the story, found wandering alone in the field of Aleion.61 Seen from this angle, the two parts of the story of Bellerophon constitute a much more intense, but also bipolar organization of embedded story space: on the one hand, the historical/mythical geography of mainland Greece and Lycia, and on the other, the systematic interplay between friendly and enemy space that continuously alternate: Proetus’ palace - Lycian countryside - fertile temenos - Aleion field. With Diomedes’ final story we are brought back to the civilized world of the palace, though not this time in Argos, but in the city of Calydon in Aetolia, in the palace of Diomedes’ grandfather Oeneus, who is also known to the Iliadic tradition by means of the famous mythological example of Meleager. The transferring of the action to the palace positively accentuates the theme of xenia offered to Bellerophon by Oeneus, and highlights the importance of the gifts of hospitality (ξεινήϊα), which foreshadow the exchange of gifts between Diomedes and Glaucus at the end of the episode. In the light of the previous examination both in terms of geographical locations and internal narrative settings, I would like to draw some general conclusions with respect to the rich embedded story space covered by the speeches of the two protagonists: (a) embedded story space is clearly different from story space, since it is not located in the area around Troy; (b) embedded story space is multileveled, since it covers a number of different locations and various settings; (c) the geographical locations of Diomedes’ speech seem to delineate a vertical axis, from North (Thrace) to South (Aetolian Calydon), while those of Glaucus a horizontal one, from West (Peloponnese) to East (Lycia); (d) both Diomedes’ and Glaucus’ tales connote a shift of narrative settings on the 59 The use of the preposition ἀντί by both Diomedes (Il. 6.127: ἀντιόωσιν) and Glaucus (Il. 6.160: Ἄντεια, Il. 6.186: ἀντιανείρας) is intriguing. Note also that both place names, Nyseion and Aleion, are acoustically exploited, by means of interpretive alliterations (Διώνυσος-Νυσήϊον, Ἀλήϊον-ἀλᾶτο). 60 See Karavites (1992) 134-135, who rightly draws attention to the fact that (a) a τέμενος does not always belong to the king but also to other preeminent citizens, and (b) the owner of the land may be the people as a collective entity. 61 On the wandering of Bellerophon and the motif of the ‘suffering of the Erring’, see White (1982) 119-127; D’Alfonso (2008) 1-21, who offers extensive material on its oriental provenance.

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basis of polar opposites, which have to do, in contrast to story space, with specific landscape markers: mountain-sea (Lycurgus) / Proetus’ palace-travel-Lycian king’s palace-countryside of Lycia-temenos-Aleion field (Bellerophon) / palace of Oeneus (Bellerophon).

Merging Spaces The staging of the entire Diomedes and Glaucus meeting is organized on the basis of the interaction between story space and embedded story space, which allows for the intersection of two basic themes of the entire episode: the relation between gods and men and hospitality. Despite the fact that the mythological exemplum narrated by Diomedes focuses on the predictability and rationalization of divine-human interaction by implying that divine penalties are incurred by mortals for their disrespect towards the gods, whereas those of Glaucus on the unpredictability of divine favor and anger, both have as common denominator the motif of xenia (hospitality), which is a prerequisite for the establishment of longterm relations and whose violation results in divine punishment. Given that the motif of xenia62 is covertly linked to the place where hospitality will occur, the sophisticated interaction between story space and embedded story space in the episode between Diomedes and Glaucus results in their narrative merging and caters to the paradox of a friendly encounter in the field of combat. In particular, the limited story space is expanded by the extended embedded story space to such a degree, that the former merges or is even absorbed by the latter, so that the entire scene can end as a xenia, through exchange of gifts, and not as a formal duel. The meeting between Diomedes and Glaucus in Iliad 6 marks the transformation of the primary military space of the battlefield into the vicarious, secondary space of a xenia. Hospitality is consistently presented as a prerequisite for creating and solidifying long-term relations in the Iliad: Antenor reminds the Trojan elders that he had once offered hospitality to Menelaus and Odysseus in his house in Troy (3.207); Lycaon tries in vain to save his life by reminding Achilles that in the past they had shared a common table (21.76). In fact, as Mackie has rightly argued,63 the Trojans consistently employ, in contrast to the Achaeans who use

62 On xenia and philotes (within the framework of the making of agreements in the Iliad) and their relation to Near Eastern concepts of ‘brotherhood’ or ‘fraternity’, see Karavites (1992) 47-55. 63 (1996) 94-97.

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the language of neikos, the language of xenia and supplication, both entailing the, admittedly futile, suspension of hostilities.

Intertextual Space By the term intertextual space I designate space which is both off-stage and extratextual, since it is reconstructed through the interaction between the Iliadic and other epic traditions, which - in this case - belong to Archaic Greek epic as well as Near-Eastern sources.64 Glaucus’ Lycian origin points directly to the thorny issue concerning the historical context of the Trojan War and its Iliadic representation. To this extent, one of the most prominent places to begin our investigation is the famous Catalogue of Ships in Iliad 2, and especially its second part, the Catalogue of the Trojans and their Allies. What is surprising is that the Lycians ‘are squeezed’ into the very last slot of the Catalogue, this impressive epic time and space map. This extremely brief (Il. 2.876877) reference is very much at odds with the the importance of the Lycians in the Iliad, especially of their two leaders mentioned in the compressed item devoted to them in the Catalogue,65 Sarpedon and Glaucus. The Iliadic tradition has reserved for these two heroes a clearly favorable treatment within the multitude of warriors fighting in the battlefield: Glaucus features preeminently with Diomedes in their meeting in Iliad 6, and he is called “leader of the Lycians” (Λυκίων ἀγός) in Il. 7.13 and 17.140;66 Sarpedon rebukes Hector (Il. 5.472-492) for Trojan cowardice in contrast to Lycian bravery, fights against Tlepolemus (Il. 5.628-698), and looms large in the Patrocleia (Il. 16.419-683), where he is killed by Patroclus and his body is carried to far-away Lycia by Hypnos and Thanatos. At times, the two Lycian leaders act together: in Il. 12.101104, Sarpedon, together with Glaucus and Asteropaeus, is in charge of 64 A fascinating example of possible Near-Eastern influence on the Bellerophon tale, even in its abbreviated version narrated by Glaucus in the Iliad, is that of “a wooden folding tablet with panels prepared for writing in wax and with ivory hinges for neat closing”, which was found in a shipwreck in Ulu Burun (modern Turkey). The link to Bellerophon’s πίναξ πτυκτός (Il. 6.169) carrying ominous signs (Il. 6.169: σήματα λυγρά) is more than tempting. See Bass, Pulak et al. (1989) 10 fig. 19; Bass (1987) 731; Payton (1991) 99-110; Mellink (1995) 41; Mylonas-Shear (1998) 187-189. 65 Catalogues may be seen as an epic database of time and space; on catalogues as indexes, see Tsagalis (2010) 323-347. 66 On Glaucus’ speech (Il. 17.142-168) and the rebuke to Hector, see Moulton (1981) 1-8 and Rousseau (this volume) 77-86.

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the entire contingent of Trojan allies; in Il. 12.310-471 when they assail the Achaean wall, Glaucus is wounded while Sarpedon gives courage to the Lycians and fights against Teucer and Ajax. The discrepancy between this marginal and rather degraded mention of the Lycians in the Catalogue and their imposing presence in the Iliadic plot (by means of the interrelated chain of deaths of Sarpedon – Patroclus – Hector) must be interpreted on the basis of the potential divergence between the historical context of the Trojan War and its epic dramatization by the Iliadic tradition. The large distance separating Lycia in south-western Anatolia and Troy in the north-western part was dramatically exploited by the Iliad, which turned it into a major argument of Lycian military rhetoric, according to which the Trojans who fight for their own country are constantly portrayed as cowards, whereas the Lycians who have come from a far-away land are brave and daring.67 Given that this argument is constantly expressed by preeminent Lycians, such as Sarpedon (Il. 5.472492),68 it underlines the crucial role the Lycians play in the war as described by the Iliad, and stands in stark contrast to their placement in the Catalogue. The accentuated downgrading of the Lycians in the Catalogue either reflects a Bronze Age historical context pointing to a rather weak Lycian presence in the Trojan War or, alternatively, results from the fusion of different historical realities and corresponding Greek perceptions of the Lycians in the Bronze Age and the Archaic period. Whether we opt for the first or the second of the abovementioned explanations, it is clear that the way the Lycians are presented in the Iliadic plot bears the recognizable imprint of the Greek epic tradition.69 In this light, it is worth exploring how the Iliad has upgraded and significantly dramatized their role and importance.

67 Aceti (2008) 20-21 rightly maintains that the typical detail of the distance separating Lycia from Troy and echoing geographical knowledge is consistently accentuated by the Iliadic tradition and eventually turned into a motif creating pathos and contributing to the ethos of Sarpedon in Il. 5.471-492. Interestingly enough, Achilles uses a variant of the same motif, in Il. 1.150-160 when he declares that he has nothing against the Trojans but is participating in the war for the sake of Agamemnon and Menelaus, and in Il. 19.324-325, when he declares that he is fighting against the Trojans in a foreign land for the sake of accursed Helen. 68 See also Glaucus’ rebuke to Hector for abandoning Sarpedon in Il. 17.140-182. 69 Jenniges (1998) 123.

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Recent research has advocated two interpretive scenarios: according to Bryce,70 who relies heavily on a piece of information in Herodotus 1.147 concerning the submission and dependence of certain Ionians on Lycian leaders tracing their origin back to Homeric Glaucus, some Lycian leaders may have influenced Homer in order to emphasize the Lycian presence in the Trojan War saga as reflected in the Iliad. Unfortunately, this theory has considerable shortcomings: (a) it takes for granted the existence of Homer or, at least, of some Ionian singer, who is the poet of our Iliad, and, more significantly, on whose poetic genius the entire Iliadic tradition with its various lays is based; (b) it requires that this poet is - for some obscure reason - so much interested in the Lycian aristocracy of his time, that he is willing to adapt the content of his epic to their taste and promote their national, nonGreek, consciousness; (c) it entails that the Lycian aristocracy is able to comprehend an epic poem in Greek, which means that it is not only bilingual but also trained in a form of artificial language, an amalgam of Greek dialects, the Homeric Kunstsprache; (d) it necessitates that the Lycian aristocracy has a keen interest in the way its ancestors were presented in an epic tradition of paramount importance for the cultural tradition of its past enemies (the Mycenaean Greeks) and present subordinates (the Ionian Greeks). This brief enumeration of deficiencies renders Bryce’s theory highly unlikely. According to another theory,71 the poet of the Iliad heavily depends, with respect to his knowledge of Lycian heroes, on a lost Greek epic on Lycia,72 which has been composed before the end of the 8th century BC by a Greek poet in honor of a Lycian king, who had under his control the region around the river Xanthos in south-western Anatolia. According to this scenario, Homer, or some bard, who sang the Iliad in the palace of some noble family in the region of Xanthos in Lycia, introduced the Lycian contingent into the poem and highlighted the importance of the Lycians in the epic so as to honor his host. This theory attempts to deal effectively with the non sequitur of early Lycian bilingualism and create a link between two Hellenophon epic traditions, an Ionian and a Lycian one. Unfortunately, there are serious problems 70 (2006) 146. 71 Malten (1944) 1-12; Heubeck (1974) 166, (1984) 188-189; Frei (1978) 819827; Hiller (1993) 107-115. 72 Nilsson (1933) 263 has even postulated a Greek epic narrating a war against the Lycians; he argued that this epic has influenced the Iliad, which incorporated and adapted to its subject matter such material.

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with this scenario, one of which is based on the fact that strong contacts between Lycia and the Greek world did not happen before the fourth century BC and that it was then that Greek poets and musicians started visiting royal courts of powerful local kings. Given this date, we need to postulate a very late (i.e. after the fourth century BC) introduction of Sarpedon and the Lycians into the Iliad, an account that most Homerists would find unconvincing.73 Moreover, the central objection I have raised concerning the theory of Bryce applies equally to Frei’s claims: why did the powerful king of the Xanthos region or the Lycian aristocracy at large assign the composition of an epic poem about its past to a Greek? To put it differently, why must the poet of the Iliad or the Iliadic tradition be aware of an epic in Greek concerning the Lycian heroes of the past? Is it possible that the intertextual space we are trying to delineate must be conceived more flexibly as a space involving a larger Greek oral tradition about the Trojan War on the one hand, and an analogous Lycian epic tradition in the Lycian language about the great Bronze Age Lycian heroes? It seems much more likely that during the shaping of the Iliadic tradition, various elements pertaining to a Lycian epic tradition, which were no doubt well known to Ionian Greeks, were accommodated to the Iliad after the necessary process of Hellenization of names and places.74 After all, the existence of a cultural koine presupposing “a process of mutual borrowing or diffusion”75 had already existed in the case of Near Eastern cultures, and common patterns of diffusion may have been established. I think that it is much more likely that the Greek epic tradition did not depend on some unattested Greek epic poem about the Lycians but on widely circulating oral traditions about the Lycian past or at least mythical lays diffused in the region of Ionia. If this theory holds true, then the imposing Lycian presence in Greek epic, a presence surpassing the importance of all other Trojan allies, may be, to some extent, mirroring the fame these heroes have acquired through the 73 See Aceti (2008) 165-167 and 177-178 on the theory of a Lycian saga (with possible Persian influence) concerning a contest for the throne between Isandrus and Hippolochus, sons of Bellerophon. According to Aceti (2008) 227230, the Lycian element in the Iliad is externally explained through historical ties to the Troad, and internally through the role of Sarpedon, as an effective opponent of Patroclus, since Hector, Paris and Aeneas had a different role to play in the poem. 74 I am rather skeptical about the possibility of an early Hellenization of Lycia; on a theory concerning an Ephyrian (Corinthian) colonization of the Xanthos valley in the Mycenaen period, see Hadzis (1997) 1-14. 75 Rutherford (2009) 19.

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diffusion and oral circulation of their own Lycian traditions. After all, their own traditions would have accentuated the role and significance of its own heroes and places.76 The innovative contribution of the Iliadic tradition to this Lycian background consists both in the selection and adaptation of material pertaining to Lycian heroes to the epic’s plot and in the dramatization of their role. It is likely that Sarpedon’s upgrading from a Lycian prince into a principal figure of the Iliad, in the sense that his death is directly linked to the return of Achilles in the battlefield and the death of Hector, is the work of the tradition represented by our Iliad. Despite the fact that we do not possess any material directly stemming from a Lycian poetic tradition which renders the aforementioned argument rather speculative, we are still entitled to argue that character elaboration and their turning into chief epic heroes of a Greek song tradition dealing with the Trojan War is the work of the Iliadic tradition: among them Glaucus and Sarpedon stand out from the multitude of second or third rank warriors fighting at the Trojans’ side.

The Luwian Wilusiad and Lycian Epic77 One of the most impressive findings of the last decades in the field of Near-Eastern studies is the so-called ‘Luwian Wilusiad’, a lost epic dating to the middle of the 2nd millenium BC, dealing with some conflict taking place in Anatolia, probably between the Luwians and the Hittites. The text at hand is part of a list of cultic-ritual songs from the city of Istanuwa, which were found at Boğazköy of modern Turkey. This theory is, unfortunately, based solely on a single verse: ahࡩ hࡩ =ata=ta alati || aWIenta Wilušati when they came from steeped Wilusa

76 This is not to say that Homer’s special interest in the Lycians does not reflect historical realities of this period (Mellink 1995, 41), but that historical realities had been shaped through Lycian oral traditions, just as Mycenaean historical realities have been poetically shaped by means of archaic Greek epic. 77 Lycian belongs to the Luwian branch of Anatolian languages and most of its speakers are located in south-eastern Anatolia. There is no written record of this language before the 5th c. BC; of the 150 survivng inscriptions, dated between the 5th-4th c., the most interesting ones are the Xanthos inscription and the trilingual (Lycian, Greek, and Armenian) inscription of the Letoon. On the Letoon stele, see Kalinka TAM I, TAM II, 1-3; Laroche (1979); Bryce 19781979, (1986) 48-49.

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Calvert Watkins78 has plausibly argued that this is the beginning of a Luwian epic lay dealing with Wilusa, the Homeric steeped Wilios.79 In fact, the expession alati Wilusati is directly linked to the well known Homeric formula Ἴλιος αἰπεινή80 and the ‘when they came from’ expression may be representing a typical beginning of an epic poem, in the manner of the Cyclic Aethiopis (fr. 1.1 Bernabé = fr. 1.1 Davies: ὣς οἵ γ᾽ ἀμφίεπον τάφον Ἕκτορος· ἦλθε δ᾽ Ἀμαζών)81 and the Old Welsh epic lay of the Gododdin (gwyr a aeth Gatraeth).82 The poetics of these two half lines are fully consonant with Indo-European poetic syntax: (a) the adjective alati (steep) is dislocated from the noun it modifies (Wilušati) so that it can encircle the verb; (b) adjective and noun are placed just before a metrical boundary, towards the completion of the first and second half lines respectively; (c) the two half lines include an end-rhyme in the manner of RV 4.53.7cd.83 If the theory suggested by Watkins is correct, then it is likely that there was a Luwian epic lay concerning the relations between Wilusa and Hattusa, the capital of the Hittite empire. This is not an unreasonable scenario but it has led scholars to rather ungrounded explanations. Historical interpretations84 have tried to explain Pandarus’ ‘double’ identity as reflecting a more general perplexity stemming from an incomplete conflation between older and more recent traditions linked to a southward movement of a population group coming from the northeast.85 In this light, the Iliadic tradition may have been reflecting the existence of a small pocket of Lukka people near Troy (in Zeleia), who later moved towards Lycia and were associated with the Lycians. Later on, when ‘original’ Lycians like Sarpedon and Glaucus were introduced in the Trojan saga, they ‘dragged’ with them the Trojan-Lycian Pan78 (1995) 146. 79 Eichner (1993) supports Watkins’ argument but Bryce (1988) treats it with skepticism. 80 Cf. Il. 9.419, 9.686; 13.773; 15.71 (Ἴλιον αἰπύ), 15.215, 15.558; 17.328. 81 “Thus they performed the burial of Hector. Then came the Amazon …”. Cf. also Il. 3.189: ἤματι τῷ, ὅτε τ᾽ ἦλθον Ἀμαζόνες ἀντιάνειραι (“on that day when the Amazon women came, men’s equals”). 82 “The men who went to Catraeth …” 83 See Watkins (1995) 146. 84 On the use of peoples and places in both Homeric epics with respect to determining their relative chronology, see Dickie (1995) 29-56. This kind of approach is not relevant to my research. 85 See Strabo 12.4.6. Bryce (2006) 137 argues that this population movement may have happened around the end of the Bronze Age (in the manner of the Leleges, who also moved to the south-east corner of Caria).

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darus, whose incoherent86 identity in the Iliad - involving a stronger and older Zeleian and a more recent and weaker Lycian connection - mirrors the dynamic nature and function of oral song. The conflation of various lays led into a new form of symbiosis, in which the adaptation of older material to later beliefs and practices is only partial, leaving ruptures on the surface of epic texture. It is likely that Greek oral tradition knew, probably from as early as the Late Bronze Age, the ancestors of the Lycians, the Lukka people, who were dispersed in a vast area of western Anatolia and had become for the Greeks a by-word for other Luwian-speaking populations.87 Despite its appeal, this theory is ungrounded for a number of reasons: (a) it has been based on the argument that Lukka appears first in a list of western Anatolian states that formed the so-called Assuwian Confederacy, an alliance stretching from Lycia in the south to the Troad in the north. This list though, which has come down to us through the Hittite annals of Tudh޳ alija I (c. 1420-1400 BC), mentions not Lukka but the [‘country of Artu]cca’;88 (b) The Luwian language is so widespread in the second millennium BC that any special connection with the Lycians is clearly biased, as Lycian is only one dialect of Luwian, next to hieroglyph Luwian that was continued, after the Assyrian conquest of the Hittite successor states, by Pisidian, cuneiform Luwian, and Milyan. As to the famous archer Pandarus, who is said to come from distant Lycia,89 although he has been presented as the leader of the Trojans coming from Troy’s neighboring city of Zeleia,90 the question that needs to be explored is whether his role in the plot is conditioned by his ambiguous identity. Pandarus features as the leader of the contingent from Zeleia in Il. 2.824-827, where it is explicitly stated that he was in charge of the Trojans who live in Zeleia, a city next to the Aisepos river, below the foot 86 Pandarus is not presented as belonging to the Lycian army in the Trojan Catalogue of Allies nor is he anywhere in the Iliad linked to the Lycians par excellence, Sarpedon and Glaucus. 87 See Il. 12.330 where the expression “vast nation” (μέγα ἔθνος) designating the Lycians is more apt for their Lukka ancestors rather than the limited region of historical Lycia. Expressions like κτήματα πολλά (Il. 5.481), Λυκίης εὐρείης (Il. 6.173) should be interpreted along the same lines. See Jenniges (1998) 140; Aceti (2008) 170-171. 88 See Frei (1993) 87-97; Neue Pauly s.v. ‘Pandarus’ 432-434 [F.S. and Re. N.] and ‘Lycii, Lycia’ 916-920 [Ma. Zi]. 89 Il. 5.105. 90 Il. 2.824-827.

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of Mount Ida. He is designated as the son of Lycaon and as owner of a bow given to him by Apollo. In 4.100-103, Athena stirs Pandarus to break the truce and be the first offender by shooting an arrow against Menelaus. She explicitly tells him that he should pray to the archer-god, Apollo the Lycian, promising to offer him a great sacrifice of lambs upon his return to sacred Zeleia. Pandarus follows her advice and after praying to Apollo (4.119-121) shoots an arrow and wounds Menelaus. As a result, the truce is broken, the Trojans being considered the offenders, and fighting resumes. In Il. 5.102-105, Pandarus who has wounded Diomedes, attempts to encourage the Trojans and explicitly says that it was Apollo who brought him to Troy from Lycia. Last, in 5.171-178 Aeneas praises Pandarus by reminding him that he is the best archer in Lycia and they subsequently decide to attack Diomedes. A careful examination of these passages shows that Pandarus is not associated with Lycia in general but only when his excellence as an archer is emphasized. Bryce91 argues that Apollo’s epithet Λυκηγενής (4.101, 4.119) means ‘wolf-born’ or ‘light-born’ and that contrary to what the scholia say (ad Il. 4.101b1 [T]: ἐν Λυκίᾳ γενομένῳ), if it was associated with Lycia, it should have been Λυκιηγενής.92 I would like to express my disagreement with this approach, since the false association is well at work on a poetic level in both the figure of Pandarus and Lycia. In other words, the connection between Apollo the archer-god (see Book 1),93 Lycian excellence in archery,94 the Apolline origin of Pandarus’ own bow (minutely described in Il. 4.105-111),95 and the fact that Pandarus was sent by Apollo the Lycian and archer-god to Troy (5.104105), constitute a whole nexus of associations pointing to one conclusion: the Iliadic tradition, through a series of historically inaccurate but poetically effective associations, made Pandarus come from Lycia when his skill as an archer was accentuated. In this light, and although it is likely that in early Greek poetic memory the Lukka people and the Lycians were associated, at least on the grounds of the acoustical similarity of their

91 (1990-1991) 144-145. 92 See also Kirk (1985) 340 ad 4.101. 93 See also Bacch. Epin. 12.147-148; Soph. OT 203; Eur. fr. 700 (TrGF 5.2 [Kannicht]). 94 See e.g. Hdt. 7.77.6: Μιλύαι δὲ αἰχμάς τε βραχέας εἶχον καὶ εἵματα ἐνεπεπορπέατο· εἶχον δὲ αὐτῶν τόξα μετεξέτεροι Λύκια, περὶ δὲ τῇσι κεφαλῇσι ἐκ διφθερέων πεποιημένας κυνέας. 95 The same is the case with the description of the actual shot of Pandarus in 5.116-126.

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names,96 Pandarus’ ‘double’ identity in the Iliad can be effectively explained internally, i.e. with respect to the plot of this epic and the Trojan War saga at large.97 The wider intertext underlying the meeting between Diomedes and Glaucus is directly relevant to a process of acculturation by means of which Greek epic tradition, and in our case the tradition of the Iliad, appropriated older traditions of Near-Eastern origin. Seen from this vantage point, the picture of the far-away Lycia constitutes what I would like to call in Derridean idiom transcendental space: the dominant identity of the Lycians, as construed by the Iliad, relies on an ultimate referent at the heart of a mythical geography, which is portrayed as absolute and irreducible, stable, timeless and transparent, although it stands for a distorted picture of a more complex, and rather evasive, historical reality. The importance of transcendental space can be also seen in the fusion of various lays pertaining to the non-Trojan-oriented epic persona of Diomedes: (a) a weak Aetolian lay based on the origin of his father Tydeus; (b) a stronger Argolic lay mirrored in the Catalogue of Ships and related to Diomedes’ involvement in the Trojan War; (c) a very rich Theban lay going back to the Theban epic tradition and reflecting his participation in the expedition of the Epigoni who sacked Thebes.98 Of these three lays, which determine equivalent embedded story spaces, the last one corresponds to what I have coined earlier on as transcendental space, i.e. the authoritative and dominant part of Diomedes’ epic past as seen by the Iliadic tradition. One could even argue that the designation of Diomedes not by his name but by his patronymic (Τυδείδης), may be reflecting the impact of this transcendental viewpoint,

96 Let us not forget that proper- and place-names of eastern origin were gradually but systematically hellenized to such an extent that they continued to be used in their new form, even when the Greeks acquired a more profound knowledge of their neighbors and were aware that the true name of the Lycians was Τρεμίλαι (TrmѺ mili) and their land Τρεμίλη (TrmѺ mis); see Hecateus FGrHist 1 F 10 (in Steph. s.v. Τρεμίλη); Hdt. 1.173. 97 According to Bryce (1986) 41 and Jenniges (1998) 140, the Iliad offers a picture of Lycia and Lycians combining features pertaining to their proto-Lycian Lukka ancestors at the end of the 2nd millenium on the one hand, and their typically Lycian descendants, ‘permanently’ placed in south-western Anatolia after the 8th century, on the other. For a recent overview of the whole matter, with respect to the Lycians, see Aceti (2008) 167-172; on the various names used for Lycia and its inhabitants, see Bryce (1992) 129; Frei (1993); Mellink (1995) 34. 98 On the theme of divine favor around which the Iliadic tradition organizes all lays pertaining to Diomedes’ heroic saga, see Alden (2000) 112-152. On Diomedes, see also Andersen (1978).

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which pertains to the city of Thebes, in front of whose walls Tydeus had died in the first unsuccessful expedition of the Seven.99 Seen from this angle, the genealogical insistence of Diomedes and Glaucus, their use of mythological paradigms and, last but not least, the simile of the leaves, are all based on different levels of space, around which the meeting of the two heroes evolves, extending from the smallest scale story space of the battlefield to the larger embedded story space of Greek and Anatolian myth, and then to the wider historical space between Greece and Lycia. The Iliadic tradition has, once more, managed to accommodate to its plot two heroes who did not belong to the central core of the Trojan War tradition and even to create the narrative circumstances for their reorganizing and evaluating their past. By turning Diomedes’ fighting skills into a quasi-philosophical Problematik concerning the relations between men and gods on the one hand, and by bridging Glaucus’ Lycian identity with the Greek past, the Iliad invites its audience to reevaluate its own place with respect to the past. In this light, the rather confusing epic geography of the two warriors is narratively mapped out, not as a hodological chart but as a functionally coherent whole that should be, according to Aristotle, εὐσύνοπτον and, for this very reason, εὐμνημόνευτον.100

99 See Higbie (1995) 10, who suggests that Tydeus’ name evokes another song: “A patronymic may also connect a man with the adventures and accomplishments of his father or grandfather—thus we are reminded that Diomedes is the son of the man who attacked Thebes, when Diomedes is given the patronymic Τυδεΐδης / Τυδέος υἱός by the poet, who may also be hinting that he can sing other stories in addition to his current one”; see also Ebbott (2010) 239-258; Turkeltaub (this volume) 129-152. 100 See Poet. 7.1450b34 –1451a6; Purves (2002), (2010) 24-64; see also Grossberg (1996) 169-188.

Idealism in the Odyssey and the Meaning of mounos in Odyssey 16 Simon Goldhill University of Cambridge Every reader of ancient literature will eventually come across that surprising moment where a familiar word seems to be used in a way that seems quite out of line with its semantic range elsewhere in extant Greek. At such points in a text, if you look in a standard commentary, you will often find a note which just says “But here only it means…”, as if that were a straightforward business. The dictionary is much the same, unfortunately, and Liddell-Scott-Jones is happy to give a new subheading for one use of a term. It is always possible that our knowledge is severely limited by the hazards of survival: the limit of the semantic range of a term is one of the hardest elements to judge from our precarious linguistic sample. But as Thucydides famously noted of Athens during the terrible plague of the Peloponnesian war (III. 82), under the pressure of social conditions the meaning of words can become twisted into a shocking new ethical understanding of the world. When words are twisted into new senses, we should also be willing to look for the underlying ideological pressures, which can distort usage. This brief paper is an attempt to understand one such weird usage of just one word in the Odyssey, but I want to use it as a test case for seeing how such moments can open a vista on to the deepest ideological issues of a text. I hope it will prove a fitting gift for Pietro Pucci, a small return for many years of friendship and sharing of ideas: he has contributed so much to our understanding of the Odyssey, of course, but I also hope my philological pursuit of a semantic hiccough in the text of the Odyssey will appeal to his wonderful sense of how language works. My overall concern, as my title indicates, is with idealism, and before I turn to the text of Homer in detail, I want to offer a few words of background on this term, especially with regard to the Odyssey. The Odyssey holds a special place in the history of realism. There is a long literary tradition that starts with Odysseus in Ithaca, runs through Hesiod’s Works and Days, Aristophanes’ comedies towards Theocritean pas-

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toral and eventually into the modern novel. This tradition, as the story goes, gives us a picture of Greek life, which revels in the everyday, the less than grand, Greek life on the land. Moses Finley wrote The World of Odysseus and firmly not the World of Achilles. It is the Odyssey, which is repeatedly taken to give us access to archaic social norms.1 Now it isn’t very difficult to point out that the places Odysseus visits on his travels, or the appearances of gods who turn into birds, or the transformations of Odysseus’ body, are less easy to fit into a simple model of realism. But the best modern criticism sees these elements too as part of what Charles Segal memorably called Odysseus’ “return to humanity in the broadest terms”.2 That is, the worlds described by Odysseus in the Apologoi give us negative, transgressive images of the normal world of men, images through which we are to understand the normal. So the relationship of Odysseus with Penelope is juxtaposed to his dangerous and different encounters with Circe, Calypso and Nausicaa.3 Or, from another angle, the values and nature of the farming world of Ithaca are comprehended by contrast with the luxury of the Phaeacians where the crops grow all year round unfailingly in rotation, and with the Golden Age island of the Cyclops where crops emerge by themselves from the soil, and with the wild, unharvested seas and islands of the other monsters encountered by Odysseus on his travels.4 Since the imagination of a society depends on projecting images of the other, images of transgression, the bold, structuring contrasts of human and animal and divine in the Odyssey all become ways of understanding man’s place in the order of things. What this extended notion of the Odyssey’s realism therefore introduces, however, is also a heightened recognition of the ideological force of the epic. The Odyssey does not simply describe archaic values or archaic society but is a prescriptive text, full of normative ruses and feints. That is why the Odyssey remains such an important teaching text throughout Greek history and such a fundamental text for the promotion of Greek culture. And much contemporary work on the Odyssey has been engaged with exploring this fascinating tension between the normative and the realistic in the epic. To what degree does the text reflect or represent Greek social norms? To what degree does it encode ideological tensions within those norms? To what degree does the text 1 2 3 4

Finley (1956); Morris (1985); Morris and Powell (1997). Segal (1962) 20. See e.g. Foley (1978), (2001); Katz (1981), (1991); Felson (1994); Cohen (1995); Doherty (1995); Zeitlin (1996). Vidal-Naquet (1981); see also Redfield (1975); Dougherty (2001).

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project an idealized image of the possibilities of Greek social order?5 This paper is intended as a contribution to that debate. I am fascinated in particular by the image of the family that the Odyssey creates, and the contribution of the epic thereby to the values of the patriarchal household, which remain such a force in Greek social thinking throughout history. With that much background, let us turn to the word in question, which comes from Odyssey 16, where Odysseus is in disguise in the hut of Eumaeus – one of the high points for those who see the Odyssey as a realist text, of course. Odysseus questions Telemachus about the current situation, and wonders whether Telemachus is hated by the dēmos, whether he has brothers to help him, and so forth. Telemachus replies that his relationship with the dēmos is fine, and he hasn’t had any quarrels with his siblings. He continues with an explanation (γάρ), which glosses his previous remarks (16.117-120): ὧδε γὰρ ἡμετέρην γενεὴν μούνωσε Κρονίων· μοῦνον Λαέρτην Ἀρκείσιος υἱὸν ἔτικτε, μοῦνον δ᾽ αὖτ᾽ Ὀδυσῆα πατὴρ τέκεν· αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς μοῦνον ἔμ᾽ ἐν μεγάροισι τεκὼν λίπεν οὐδ᾽ ἀπόνητο.

For in this way Zeus has made us a family of singles. A single son, Laertes, was born to Arcesius. A single son in turn, Odysseus, he fathered. And Odysseus had a single son, me, whom he left in his halls, and did not enjoy.

Telemachus explains that Zeus has made only sons the rule in his family. My clumsy translation is offered to emphasize that the three lines each begin with mounon – a very emphatic repetition indeed: Alone Laertes, alone Odysseus, alone me. This genealogy is an explanatory gloss on the word that worries me: mounōse in line 117. None of the standard editions comments on this verb, and it is not hard to see what it must mean (as we say): it must mean that Zeus has created a three-fold genealogy of single sons. He has ‘singlified’ the geneē. The trouble is that mounoō is a not uncommon word in later Greek and it occurs also in two other places in Homer, and it never means anything like the sense which all the translations, including mine, give it here. As one might expect from the root of the term, it means “to leave alone”, “to desert”, or, in the passive with an object in the genitive, “to be deprived of”. Let us look at the two Homeric uses first. The first example is from Odysseus’ questioning of Eumaeus, as the disguised master asks the 5

See Murnaghan (1987); Goldhill (1991); Segal (1994); Haubold (2000); Graziosi and Haubold (2005).

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trusty servant about his past and wonders how he became a slave (Od. 15.386-387): ᾗ ἔνι ναιετάασκε πατὴρ καὶ πότνια μήτηρ, ἦ σέ γε μουνωθέντα παρ᾽ οἴεσιν ἢ παρὰ βουσὶν

Or did hostile men grab you into their ships, when you were left alone with the sheep or oxen?

The child, isolated with the flocks, is imagined as easy prey for pirates. The sense of the term mounōthenta is quite straightforward: “left alone”. The second example is from the Iliad and is equally clear. Menelaus tells Ajax that he has heard a shout from Odysseus and he is worried that he has been isolated on the battlefield, and is therefore in danger (Il. 11.466-471): ἀμφί μ᾽ Ὀδυσσῆος ταλασίφρονος ἵκετ᾽ ἀϋτὴ τῷ ἰκέλη ὡς εἴ ἑ βιῴατο μοῦνον ἐόντα Τρῶες ἀποτμήξαντες ἐνὶ κρατερῇ ὑσμίνῃ. ἀλλ᾽ ἴομεν καθ᾽ ὅμιλον· ἀλεξέμεναι γὰρ ἄμεινον. δείδω μή τι πάθῃσιν ἐνὶ Τρώεσσι μονωθεὶς ἐσθλὸς ἐών, μεγάλη δὲ ποθὴ Δαναοῖσι γένηται.

The voice of enduring Odysseus came to me, sounding as if the Trojans have cut him off in harsh battle, and are pressing him now that he is alone. Let us go through the throng; it is better to protect him. I fear he may suffer something from the Trojans, if he is deserted.

Mounon in 467 picked up by monōtheis in 470: “alone”, “deserted”: he is threatened by the Trojans. This pattern of usage is paralleled repeatedly in Herodotus and in Greek tragedy – that is, both in fifth-century verse and in fifth-century prose. Admetus, for example, is described as “left alone” by Alcestis in exactly such language (Eur. Alc. 296: κοὐκ ἂν μουνωθεὶς σῆς δάμαρτος ἔστενες, Eur. Alc. 380: σοῦ μονούμενος); the Danaids ask their father, Danaus, not to leave them alone (monos) because a “deserted woman is nothing”, γυνὴ μονωθεῖσ᾽ οὐδέν (Aesch. Suppl. 749). So Herodotus talks of the Assyrians being “deserted by their allies” (μεμουνωμένοι συμμάχων 1.102 – the same phrase occurs at 6.15, and the same circumstances with the same verb at 7.138). In Thucydides 6.101.6, Lamachus dies when he crosses a ditch and is isolated (μονωθείς) in battle with the Syracusans. Many other similar examples could be given. So when Telemachus is describing what Zeus has done to the family of Arcesius, his use of mouno – is distinctly odd – hence my deliberately odd translation ‘singlified’. It should mean something like Zeus has deserted this family (though that would make no sense). A repetition has taken place to explain exactly what

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repetition has taken place to explain exactly what Telemachus is trying to say. Without the explanation, the verb would be wholly baffling. Now, it is clear that the two other examples of mounoō in Homer refer to situations of danger and vulnerability – the child about to be kidnapped; Odysseus threatened by Trojan soldiers. The examples chosen from Euripides, Aeschylus, Herodotus and Thucydides also indicated threat or despair. This underlines what is an important philological distinction in Homer which has not been noticed by the philologists, but which will help us see the ideological issues that explain Telemachus’ strange language. There are two basic words translated “alone” in Homeric Greek, oios and mounos. The Lexikon des frühgrieschischen Epos states that they are synonyms. I want to suggest that they are not. In fact, almost every occasion where mounos is used in Homer is a moment of threat. Let us look at the cases, epic by epic. In the Odyssey, the commonest use of mounos is to express the fear of fighting one man, alone, against many (or, on one occasion, Odysseus and Telemachus, “a pair alone”, μούνω Od. 16.239): it occurs 8 times in this sense (3.217; 16.105; 16.239; 20.30; 20.40; 22.38; 22.107; 22.133): although this last case imagines Odysseus returning either alone or with a full retinue, the context is the impending fight with the suitors. In the same sense, Odysseus cannot resist the crew when Eurylochus suggests eating the cattle of the Sun because he is mounos and they are many (12.297). Telemachus is left alone and in danger from the suitors (11.68); Eurycleia is terrified that Telemachus will travel to look for his father mounos, alone – and thus in danger (2.365) and indeed the returning Telemachus is wept over by Eumaeus as a father weeps for his only child, returned after danger (16.19). Odysseus alone on a desert island path, desperately looking for guidance and food for his men, is mounos – alone and in peril (10.157), as the lonely traveler (7.204) is the exemplary case of being in danger from divine interference. There are only two cases where the context requires the sense “only” and where any implication of impending peril is not immediately obvious. First, at 4.496 Nestor says that the Old Man of the sea explained that “only two” (δύο μοῦνοι) princes died on their journey home from Troy. The contrast is with the “many (πολλοί) who died and many (πολλοί) who were spared” (495), and so the sense of “only these two” is emphatic. But each of these two cases turns out to be then the extended story of a man made vulnerable and destroyed – Ajax on the rock in the sea (499-511), and Agamemnon at the feast of Aegisthus (512-537). Second, at 23.227 Penelope explains to Odysseus who knows about their marital bed: ἀλλ᾽ οἶοι σύ τ᾽ ἐγώ τε καὶ ἀμφίπολος

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μία μούνη, “But only you and I and one slave-girl alone…”. The combination of oioi “only” and mounē “alone” suggests a parallel sense, as the Lexikon des frühgrieschischen Epos demands. But it should not be forgotten how perilous the protection of the bedroom has proved, and in particular how difficult Penelope’s relationship with her maidservants has been. It was a maidservant who revealed her trick of un-picking Laertes’ shroud at night, and it has been the maidservants who have provided the image of corrupt sexuality within the house. The single maidservant is the “only” other person to know about the bed, and that singleness is a fine image of the precarious safety of the marital-bond, as symbolized by knowledge of the marital bed. In the Odyssey, then, mounos regularly implies an individual under threat, where being alone means to be without support or to be in danger. The two cases where the sense “only” (as opposed to “alone”) is clearly emphasized, are scenes first of vulnerable destruction and second of precarious safety. The examples of mounos in the Iliad have a similar range – with some fascinating cases where the semantic nuance of the term has not been fully appreciated by translators or commentators. The threat of being isolated on the battlefield is predominant: Il. 4.388; 11.406; 12.411; 17.94; 17.472; 20.188; 22.456. The image of the beloved only child recurs (9.482), as does the pathos of the only child now slaughtered in war (14.492). Poseidon recalls how he and Apollo were forced to live apart from the gods (μοῦνοι νῶϊ θεῶν) for a year as slave workers for Laomedon at Troy (21.443) – “suffering evil”. In the Doloneia episode, Diomedes does not wish to go on the night expedition mounos, and explains in a grammatically strained passage that a single man cannot plan properly but two can plan together (10.225). This is in contrast with Dolon (as the scholia noted long ago) who does go out mounos and who is also a single son (10.317) with five sisters. Dolon, of course, goes on to suffer the grim fate of the isolated warrior at the hands of Diomedes and Odysseus – this night narrative plays out the implications inherent in the threat of being mounos and the safety of mutual support. The implication of the mounos man being in danger gives a precision to one repeatedly misunderstood passage. In the Assembly of Book 2 of the Iliad, everyone sits in their seats, only for Thersites, the aischistos Greek at Troy (Dolon too was not good looking [10.316]),6 to remain standing and give his famous railing attack on Agamemnon (2.211-212): Ἄλλοι μέν ῥ᾽ ἕζοντο, ἐρήτυθεν δὲ καθ᾽ ἕδρας· 6

On Thersites, see Thalmann (1988); Rosen (2007) 67-120; Barker (2009) 5661.

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Θερσίτης δ᾽ ἔτι μοῦνος ἀμετροεπὴς ἐκολῴα,

The others sat, and were fixed to their seats. but Thersites alone, uncontrolled of speech, began a row…

Alloi men / Thersitēs de is the normal syntactical expression to distinguish one man from the crowd. Sometimes we have alloi men pantes, alla… What is not paralleled, however, is the addition of the word mounos to such an expression. This is usually and weakly translated “everyone except for Thersites…”. What it indicates, however, is that Thersites is taking a particular stand without companions: he is putting his neck above the parapet – as the rest of the scene goes on precisely to demonstrate, not least when Thersites is beaten by Odysseus to the general pleasure of the collective of the army. This use of mounos does not distinguish Thersites numerically as it were, but in status and position of risk and weakness. As a warrior in a battle is threatened by being mounos, so here Thersites in the battle of words is deserted, without friends, and in danger. The remaining four uses of mounos in the Iliad are particularly interesting. At 15.611, a passage athetized by the Hellenistic scholar Aristarchus, we are told that Zeus honours and gives glory to Hector, Ζεύς, ὅς μιν πλεόνεσσι μετ᾽ ἀνδράσι μοῦνον ἐόντα, which is usually translated as Zeus honoured Hector alone amid the crowd of warriors: e.g. Zeus “had selected him from that great crowd of men for signal honour” (E.V. Rieu). The reasons the scholia record for the athetēsis need not detain us, but there remains a slight worry about the participle eonta, it seems to me. If the phrase means “honoured Hector alone” the participle is quite redundant. If it means, “although Hector was amid many men, Zeus honoured him alone”, the word order is strange, since μοῦνον ἐόντα, is a common line ending, where it always elsewhere has the strong sense “seeing as he was alone”, “because he was alone”, or “when he was alone” (see e.g. Il. 11.467; 15.611; 20.188; Od. 10.157; 12.297; 16.105; 22.107; cf. μοῦνος ἐών Od. 3.217; 20.30; 20.40; 23.38). The passage continues, however, μινυνθάδιος γὰρ ἔμελλεν / ἔσσεσθ᾽· ἤδη γάρ οἱ ἐπόρνυε μόρσιμον ἦμαρ / Παλλὰς Ἀθηναίη ὑπὸ Πηλεΐδαο βίηφιν, “For he was destined to be short-lived. For already Pallas Athene prepared his day of fate at the forceful hands of Achilles”. Hector is destined to die alone, deserted by the gods, and the honour of Zeus here is explicitly because (γάρ) of his necessary vulnerability and swiftly approaching end. I wonder if two separate ideas have not been collapsed together in 15.611: on the one hand, Zeus is singling out Hector for honour; on the other, we are being reminded of his fate to come which is precisely to become isolated and helpless on the battlefield. The

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honour and the fate are integrally co-mingled in Hector’s tragedy, and the awkward Greek perhaps draws on two implications of mounos together: both “singled out” and “dangerously isolated”. Achilles uses the word mounos twice in his famous speech to the embassy of Odysseus in Book 9. At 340-341 he asks bitterly whether the Atreidai alone of mortals love their wives: ἦ μοῦνοι φιλέουσ᾽ ἀλόχους μερόπων ἀνθρώπων…. Here the sense of “only” is strongly marked. He also aggressively points out that Agamamenon has taken away the gifts of honour from him alone of the Greeks (335-336): ἐμεῦ δ᾽ ἀπὸ μούνου Ἀχαιῶν εἵλετ᾽. The partitive genitive Ἀχαιῶν makes the sense of mounou clear. But this is the only occasion that Achilles is described by anyone as mounos. Modern critics have repeatedly stressed the marginalized, lonely, solitary status of Achilles, but the word mounos and its cognates are nowhere (else) applied to him, though he is on occasion oios (e.g. 24.456), and is brave enough to fight oios (Il. 20.26), as is Ajax (Il. 13.75). Achilles, the greatest hero, is not in danger when alone. But here, when he wishes to express his sense of being a victim, he sees himself as singled out by Agamemnon. This is also the only occasion that mounos appears in the genitive in Homer. Modern critics have analyzed how this speech seems to use language differently from the rest of the poem. Using the word mounos of himself seems to express something of Achilles’ sense of victim-hood. The most striking and strange use of mounos comes in the description of Achilles’ quarters in Il. 24.453-454: θύρην δ᾽ ἔχε μοῦνος ἐπιβλὴς / εἰλάτινος, “A single pine beam held the door fast”. The beam is called mounos, “single” – and, of course, such usage can be paralleled from later Greek sources, though monos is predominantly used of people. But it is worth noting that the scholia gloss mounos here with macros, “long” – a very surprising semantic gloss, as if mounos doesn’t seem to capture the right sense, or isn’t satisfactorily expressive. As with the single maidservant guarding the secrets of Odysseus’ bed-chamber, perhaps there is a sense of the vulnerability of the boundary between the inside and the outside of Achilles’ quarters (especially in Book 24, now, with the godled arrival of Priam). The beam is all that holds the door. But otherwise this is the only occasion in Homer that mounos is used of an inanimate object. There are over thirty uses of mounos in the Homeric epics, then. In the vast majority of these cases mounos expresses not merely the state of being alone or single, but also a sense of threat or danger. In short, mounos is a bad thing to be in the Homeric poems. This pattern of use for mounos is in striking contrast to oios, which is regularly used to distinguish one person amid a crowd (the only one

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with a spear; the only Achaean who…). So Helen is the only Trojan to spot Odysseus in disguise (Od. 4.250). Or it is used to express a marked sense of aloneness: hence Achilles on his own in his tent at night is oios (and not mounos) [Il. 24.456]. Oios can also be used in tense or threatening situations, of course. Penelope goes forth to the hall full of suitors “not oie but with two maidservants” (Od. 1.331; 18.207), just as Telemachus goes to the Assembly “ouk oios but with a pair of dogs” (Od. 2.11); paradigmatically, Hector is begged by his mother not to fight Achilles oios (Il. 22.39). This seems to suggest that, for the Homeric epics, where oios can be used for any state of singleness, mounos usually connotes a sense of being threatened or in danger.7 It will be noted that I have included each example of being a “single son” in the list of threatening situations invoked by the word mounos. Here, the Lexikon des frühgrieschischen Epos is precise. It points out that the Hesiodic use of the word mounogenes, “without siblings”, or “single child” is necessarily an expression “with connotations of disadvantage”. It is a bad thing in the Homeric world to be mounogenes. Indeed, every example of mounos applied to a child in the Iliad and Odyssey is when a child is specifically at risk or just been pathetically killed – the grim result of danger that Telemachus knows all too well from the suitors. The continuity of the oikos is a constant ideological demand in Greek culture. It is essential that the family continues, that the property is passed down from father to son, that the patrilineal line is maintained. For a father to die childless or for a son to die before his father is a frequently deprecated disaster in Homeric epic and beyond. Michael Lynn-George in particular has explored well the role of the father in the Iliad, and the bond between Odysseus and Telemachus is fundamental to the Odyssey’s normative thrust as well as its narrative of revenge, as several critics have pointed out.8 The worry about having only one child is that the family’s continuity is always at risk. Hesiod’s Works and Days expresses the counter-side to this worry. If a man has two sons, then a different set of problems comes into play. Should the property be split to give both sons a patrimony? Then the property may become too small to support a family. The options of Church or Army – a traditional British solution for second and third sons – are not available in the ancient Greek world. The potential for 7

8

In the Homeric Hymns, Eileithuia is isolated from the other gods (μούνη Hom. Hymn to Apollo 97). In the Hom. Hymn to Hermes mounos is used twice, first in the sense of separate, isolated (the bull is μοῦνος ἀπ᾽ ἄλλων 193); second adverbally in the sense of “not only one” (284) οὔ χ᾽ ἕνα μοῦνον. Cf. Od. 23.227 μία μούνη. The Hom. Hymn to Hermes has often been thought to be late. Lynn-George (1988). See also in general Strauss (1993).

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conflict between brothers at the point of inheritance is the motivating principle not just for the Works and Days but also for tragedies like the Seven against Thebes or the Phoenissae. The tension between the danger of having one son and the danger of having several sons is integral to the political dynamics of the Greek oikos and a foundational problem in the necessity of inheritance. It is not by chance then that the heavily marked discussion of the singleness of the Odyssean genealogy takes place in Book 16 precisely in the context of a discussion over the threat to the continuity of the household and its pattern of inheritance, as represented by the predatory suitors and the turmoil of Telemachus’ endangered position as son and heir. That Zeus has made the family a repeated line of single children is to show that the family line, as at this point in its history, has always been both at risk and perfect. That is, it has always been under threat by the fragility which a single son represents and the Odyssey dramatizes; and perfect because it has managed to pass on the property without diminution over four generations. The late and much lamented Keith Hopkins would have loved to point out here that in the ancient world most families simply did not manage to continue over four generations and that the percentage chance of a family actually surviving through four generations of single sons is miniscule.9 The pattern, which this family line represents, can be contrasted with multiple models that the Odyssey also offers. Aegyptius, the first Ithacan to speak in the Assembly of Book 2, has four sons: one was eaten by the Cyclops; one was a suitor, and two worked the paternal estate (Od. 2.17-24; it is typical of the Odyssey that the introduction to the speaker in the Assembly, who will play no further significant role in the epic, is thus thematically pointed, as Telemachus rises to speak on behalf of his patrimony). Nestor in Book 3 feasts with his many sons and daughters in law, though each has their own house to sleep in, except the young Peisistratus, who is still at home (3.395-402). Menelaus has a son with a slave and a daughter, who are both getting married at the beginning of Book 4, as well a daughter with Helen (4.3-14). And so forth. Against this profusion, the Odyssean ‘singlified’ generation stands out – and it is meant to. But the idealism of the Odyssean oikos becomes even more vivid and problematic in the final scenes of the epic. The house of Laertes is ranged against the suitors’ families who are seeking revenge for the slaughtered princes. Athena in the shape of Mentor is with them. Odysseus rejoices to see her and addresses Telemachus (24.506-509): “Now is 9

Hopkins (1983) for the theory.

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the moment when you will learn this from your own experience of battle: when men fight and where the valor of men is tested (ἵνα τε κρίνονται ἄριστοι), do not disgrace (καταισχύνειν) the race of your fathers (πατέρων γένος), who in the past have been most distinguished in the whole world for strength and manliness”. Battle is where men’s arete is tested, and Telemachus is encouraged to live up to the example of his family-line, and not disgrace his fathers. The young man replies immediately and tersely (24.511-512): “You will see if you wish, dear father (πάτερ φίλε), that I will not disgrace (καταισχύνοντα) your family (τεὸν γένος) in my courage in any way, as you declare”. Telemachus picks up the normative terms of his father and returns them: his speech as much as his actions fulfils the imperative of the patriarchal family for the son to grow up to be like his father, and for the heroic child to compete with his heroic father. Laertes then speaks and underlines this point (24.514-515): “What a day is this, dear gods! I rejoice greatly. My son and grandson are competing in valor (ἀρετῆς πέρι)”. Athena promptly encourages Laertes – called significantly “the son of Arcesius” (24.517) to pray to Athena and Zeus and to throw his spear. He does both, and his first cast kills Eupeithes. It is the grandfather who begins the battle and opens the competition in military valour. This extended dialogue does two things. First, it makes sure we recognize that valour is established within the frame of an agonistic paternal tradition. At one level this is a commonplace of the Iliad: Diomedes is taunted by Athena for not living up to his father’s renown (Il. 5.800813); few men are better than their fathers, many worse. One founding factor in Achilles’ story is the oracle that Thetis’ child will be greater than his father. But here, in this epic of familial success, the genos itself provides the grounding for the judgment of the heroes’ masculinity. But more importantly to my mind, this scene also constructs an extraordinary and profoundly idealistic image of the patriarchal household. Laertes, the old man who nearly died when he heard the false tale of his son’s continued wandering, will now throw the first spear of the battle and kill an opponent. Odysseus will pursue his enemies like an eagle, together with Telemachus, who has proved his manhood with the bow scene and the battle in the hall. All three generations are at the point of manhood together. There is a competition in excellence but no disastrous conflict or tension between the generations, no struggle over inheritance or position. Elsewhere, I have written how this scene proffers an idealized model of the passing on of inheritance, material and familial, without the death of the father.10 Now we can also see how this im10 Goldhill (1991) 20.

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age responds to the dangers inherent in the ‘singlified’ generation of the family. Each son is a man, and none is, any longer, quite so mounos, as all together the genos faces down its enemies. This is a quite extraordinary image of the family. There is also a particular idealised temporality at this moment in the epic. When Odysseus was with Calypso, he was offered immortality by the goddess. He rejects it, specifically to return to Penelope and the oikos where immortality is the temporal continuity of the family over the generations. Tellingly, Calypso and Odysseus, despite seven years of (forced) sex and despite the frequent assumption that “the seed of a divinity is never in vain”, do not have any child – while the return to Telemachus is as important in the Odyssey as the return to Penelope. The preservation of the precarious family line in the safety and maturity of Telemachus stands against the static non-productive world of Calypso’s island. The contact of divinity and human brings a clash of timeframes, of idea(l)s of time. So, paradigmatically, Eos succeeds in winning immortality for Tithonus, her human lover, but without the corollary of agelessness, Tithonus withers into an immortal husk (eventually to become a cicada).11 The frequent reminder of agelessness and age in the Odyssey (rather than the brief mention of Tithonus) cues this clash of temporalities. As Odysseus says in ready recognition to Calypso, how can Penelope compare to her, “she is mortal, you are divine and ageless” (5.218). He continues, “But even so I want and I hope each and every day (ἤματα πάντα) to go home and see my day of return”. The desire “each and every day” to go to the oikos, and see the day of return, are connected to the rejection of the ageless and divine in a linked system of thought about human time.12 But the image of Laertes, Odysseus and Telemachus, each at a moment of hebē at the same time, each fighting manfully, seems to collapse the expected pattern of aging and transition. It is as if some divine time has entered the house of Laertes. This is what I mean by an idealization of temporality. Yet this epic does not end on a note of unadorned triumphalism. The Odyssey finds its close with the gods restraining Odysseus and Telemachus, and with the forging of a god-ordered truce. And, above all, we know that Odysseus will once again leave his house to travel to a place which does not know the sea in order to plant his oar, and sacri11 On Tithonus, see King (1989) in response to Segal (1981) 22-29. 12 There is not yet enough work on Homeric temporalities. Ford (1992) and Grethlein (2006) have important things to say about historical consciousness in Homer; Bergren (1983b) on narratological aspects of time; Graziosi and Haubold (2005) 121-149 on cosmic time; suggestive remarks already in Austin (1975) 85-89.

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fice to Poseidon, before he can really return home. “We have not yet come to the end of our many troubles”, as Odysseus says to Penelope as soon as they get into bed (23.248-255). Penelope, Telemachus and Laertes will again be waiting for the return of the absent father. It is only on this one day that this precarious and brilliant scene of familial collectivity can be performed. It seems to me that this sense of impending departure and uncertain future is important for thinking through the place of the idealistic image of the oikos I have been discussing. I would like to suggest that this idealism – the fantasy of perfection, the precarious knife-edge along which this oikos walks to survive – is only one voice in the Odyssey. And this is my first conclusion. That idealism is only one voice among the different strands of the Odyssey’s normative discourse. There is an idealized image of the male line offered here, with successful single sons without conflict, working together, over four generations – but it is an idealized image all too aware of its own precariousness. It is set in contrast with more brutal constraints elsewhere expressed in the poem. And this leads to my second conclusion. The word mounōse in Odyssey 16 opens a vista on to that precarious idealism. The distortion of sense that translation requires here marks the tension in the representation of the family: how should we think about so precarious a fertility? Is the Odyssean family pattern an ideal in the sense of a model for us to aspire to fulfill, or an ideal in the sense of an impossible dream? As Greek families continued to worry over the centuries: how many children is enough? How many is too many? The semantic hiccough of the verb is testimony to an ideological tension, which emphasizes how complex the normative discourse of the Odyssey is – and why that makes it so productive a text for both the ancient Greeks and for us to think with.13

13 It is a pleasure to be able to dedicate this brief token of respect and friendship to Pietro Pucci, and to thank Johannes Haubold and Barbara Graziosi with whom I discussed it.

Reading the Epic Past: The Iliad on Heroic Epic Daniel Turkeltaub Millsaps College The Iliad offers a far less overtly fertile field for examining poetic selfconception than does the Odyssey or either of Hesiod’s extant works. In place of the complex discussion enacted through the interplay between Phemius, Demodocus, the Sirens, and their audiences, the Iliad has only Thamyris, whose story is told in an analeptic digression (Iliad 2.5946001), and Achilles, who, though not primarily a poet, sings the “fames of men” (κλέα ἀνδρῶν, 9.189) while he delights his heart. Scholars do not usually distinguish between his music and words, but the narrator takes care to locate Achilles’ pleasure specifically in the lyre rather than in the content of his song.2 Beautiful in form and sound, this spoil of war gives pleasure (τερπόμενον/ἔτερπεν, 9.186/189) that substitutes for the pleasure Agamemnon took from him when he abducted Briseis (τερπέσθω, 9.337) and, along with her, Achilles’ hope for the same glory his song bestows upon past heroes. The narrator says nothing about Achilles’ attitude towards the content of his song. Does Achilles enjoy recounting heroic exploits or does he pique his pain with a song too immediate to his own situation, much like the song of Phemius pains Penelope, that of Demodocus pains Odysseus, and Phrynichus’ Fall of Miletus pained the Athenians? Nor does the narrator describe what Patroclus thinks as he listens. Silence opens the effect of epic song. This ambiguous Achilles, who sees himself in relation—but what relation? how does he understand the “fames of men” he sings?—to heroic epic, is a fitting recipient of the legates who will implore him to return to the war. 1 2

Unless otherwise indicated, all subsequent references will be to Monro and Allen’s Iliad. τὸν δ’ εὗρον φρένα τερπόμενον φόρμιγγι λιγείῃ (they found him delighting his mind in the clear-toned lyre, 9.186) and τῇ ὅ γε θυμὸν ἔτερπεν, ἄειδε δ’ ἄρα κλέα ἀνδρῶν (in this [lyre] he delighted his heart; he was singing the fames of men, 9.189).

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Much excellent work has been done on the lyre of Achilles, that is, metonymically speaking, epic’s compositional process and the pleasure it claims as its telos. Far less attention has been paid, again speaking metonymically, to the mindset with which Achilles and Patroclus hear the fames of men. We know from authors as varied as Xenophanes, Aristophanes, Plato, Plutarch, and Dio Chrysostom that Homer’s audiences, from as early as we can determine anything about them, looked to him as an authority on religious, historical, and ethical matters; Howie (1995) argues that the Iliad deliberately presents itself as a series of moral paradigms mirroring those with which its characters instruct each other. Rather then address this controversial question directly,3 we will consider the process of seeking instruction from epic, because its audience certainly did so, and did so by considering its heroes to be imitable models.4 For the Iliad does not sit a primitive, mute object for the likes of Solon, Pindar, even the Odyssey to criticize for poetic naïveté. It engages actively in the discussion, responding to the traditional pretensions of epic’s moral authority with a sophisticated critique. Where the Odyssey discusses epic largely through depicting performances in its story, the Iliad engages its external audience in the discussion directly. Every work of art elicits the emergence of meaning in the minds of its audience from their particular cultural experiences, specifically their exposure to other works of art. This is particularly true of an archaic Greek epic, much of whose traditional subjects, formulaic language and narrative patterns, analepses and prolepses beyond its temporal parameters, blendings of epichoric and panhellenic elements, and other factors inherent to its oral nature only aquire significance from keying its audience’s prior enculturation into oral epic tradition. While this understanding of epic has been profitably used to advance our knowledge of Homeric language, narrative structure, and myth,5 it has been underutilized as a mechanism for assessing how our Iliad responds to and comments upon its own poetic tradition. For this endeavor, we must recon3

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Before Howie, cf. Nagy (1996) 137; see also Sheppard (1920) and Jaeger (1945) 35-51. The classic argument for the opposing view is presented by Auerbach (1953) 3-23. More recently, see Heath (1987) 38-47 and Ford (1992) 49-56, whose argument I accept that poets recognized that their work would be looked to for moral instruction even if this was not its primary purpose. Strasburger (1972) 5-15 provides an interesting discussion decrying the pervasiveness with which slavish imitation of Homer and Homeric characters dominated Greek and Roman thought. This notion provides the foundation for oral and neoanalytical approaches to Homer, on which see in particular Foley (1991) and Kullmann (1960) respectively.

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sider the references to the past in patronymics, genealogies, object histories, ‘digressions,’ and so forth that situate the Iliad’s primary narrative within a mythic chronology. Many, even most of these characters and events would have already been familiar to the audience from a variety sources, including other epic performances. Torres-Guerra (1995, 32-34) demonstrates that the Iliad often depends upon such knowledge. But the sheer multiplicity of sources, the transience of oral performance, differences between traditions, and the fluidity that individual epics had before they attained textuality generally prevented such references from constituting ‘literary allusion’.6 The Iliad evolved as a series of performances conversing with entire, multiform mythic traditions rather than as a discrete text capable of citing other discrete texts.7 What the Iliad therefore references when it looks outside its own temporal parameters are not independent poetic artifacts but ideated constructs that every performance rebuilds in the minds of its audience from the knowledge of myth each has garnered from other sources, including other epic performances. Constructing these personalized ideated contexts amalgamates previous sources and subsumes them into the Iliadic performance as presumed antecedents in its own epic tradition. The actual genres of the sources are irrelevant to the process,8 nor does it matter whether a particular element is ‘inherited’, ‘adapted’, or ‘invented’.9 Only the homogenized construct matters 6 7

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The textuality of our Iliad and Odyssey nonetheless does allow for ‘literary allusion,’ as Pucci (1987) has proven. Orality and textuality are not exclusive. Cf. Nagy (1979) 42-43. The cyclic canon is probably a Hellenistic construction, but the concept of a ‘cycle’ of oral performances recounting the history of the world from its inception may be Indo-European, and it is into this tradition, already well-developed, that the Iliad keys. For a recent discussion of these issues in light of the relevant bibliography, see Burgess (2001) especially 7-44 and 147. The ability of Homeric epic to incorporate other genres facilitates the process. On this, see Martin (1984), (1989) 12-42, and Slatkin (1987). Distinguishing elements into these categories as a means of better understanding the compositional process, popularized by Willcock (1964), seems rather outdated and the criteria for determination—whether other attestations exist (rejected by Braswell 1971, 16), how well an element fits its Iliadic context, and how relevant a detail seems to its core myth—are unreliable, subjective, and, even then, attest only to a sort of ‘invention’ whose identification in oral poetry is tautological in light of Andersen’s (1990) argument that oral performance presupposes the recreation of the past in accordance with the needs of the present and Nagy’s (1996) 113-146 counter-arguments based on ‘myth’. Moreover, it seems unlikely that Homer invents entire myths (Burgess 2001, 48-49). This is not to say, however, that Homer does not threaten to deviate from tra-

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because it is this construct and not the geneses of its individual components that pertains to the Iliadic performance and which, therefore, the Iliad presents as the poetic tradition from which it depends. For Iliadic inventions, inclusion among familiar elements retroactively generates an unfamiliar tradition, even if it is in truth only prior performances of the Iliad. Because the overwhelming majority of the references that comprise this ideated tradition are analeptic, I will refer to this construct as the ‘epic past,’ by which I mean both a past that is epic and an epic that is past. A performance of the Iliad erases all distinction between the two. Because the progenitors of the Iliadic heroes are themselves heroes who belong to the epic past, the process by which they hand down their heroic bloodlines and ethos to the heroes of the Iliad also mediates the Iliad’s inheritance of its own nature from its ideated epic tradition. After all, the heroes would not be heroes without heroic or divine ancestors, and the Iliad would not be heroic epic without its heroes. This dependence of the present on the past pervades the formulaic system that forms the Iliad’s poetic fabric. The simplex formula Ἀχαιοί (‘Achaeans’), for instance, has as its most common adonic variant υἷες Ἀχαιῶν (‘sons of the Achaeans’). Of the fifty-three times this phrase appears, all but once the Achaeans are directly engaged in an action that involves, whether positively or negatively, the military functioning of the Männerbund.10 The comparable but far less common and perhaps more intimate formula κοῦροι Ἀχαιῶν (‘sons of the Achaeans’) has a similar tenor, but occurs in situations where the military nature of the group is stressed by its absence or abruption.11 In this fashion, the Iliad maps its own poetic ditional frameworks (on which, see Morrison 1992) nor that he does not depart from the ethos and style of his tradition (on which, see Griffin 1977). 10 The occurrences of υἷες Ἀχαιῶν can be grouped by the following immediate contexts: distributing geras—1.162, 1.276, 1.368, 1.392, 16.56, 18.444; vaunting or having their mettle exhorted or tested—2.72, 2.83, 2.129, 2.193, 2.195, 7.403, 9.30, 9.40, 9.50, 9.695, 13.220, 14.106, 15.675; excelling in military counsel or justice—1.237, 2.370, 9.670; functioning collectively in a markedly military capacity—2.234, 2.253, 2.281, 4.114, 6.255, 9.403, 10.49, 12.56, 13.146, 13.172, 13.367, 14.421, 16.698, 17.645, 19.206, 20.317, 21.376, 21.544, 22.156, 22.369, 24.495; as a source of pity spurred by feelings of camaraderie—1.240, 2.722, 9.247, 11.656, 11.800, 16.42, 18.76, 18.200; eating specifically to keep up their strength—19.156. The only instance that does not seem to have a direct military application occurs in the dubious Doloneia when Diomedes tells Nestor to send a younger ‘son of the Achaeans’ to awaken the leaders (10.165): οὔ νυ καὶ ἄλλοι ἔασι νεώτεροι υἷες Ἀχαιῶν. 11 1.473 (singing the paean at the return of Briseis to appease Apollo), 2.562 (in reference to Diomedes’ troops at home), 3.82 (Agamemnon commands the army not to shoot Apollo), 3.183 (Priam marvels at the size of the army as it sits

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ancestry onto the historical, and specifically genealogical, ancestry of its heroes. The archetypical mediator of this inheritance is Nestor, who extends from the epic past into the Iliad’s present. He claims this role when he first appears and tries to heal the discord that arises from the division of physical and political power between Achilles and Agamemnon. Such discord violates the traditional order, and Nestor, because of the wisdom his preternatural age affords him, considers it his duty to restore proper social operations.12 Dickson (1995, 25-38) has demonstrated that the atypically lush character sketch introducing Nestor (1.247-252) presents him as an epic poet, an intrinsic analog and parallel to the Homeric narrator.13 Nestor also shares a voice that “pours from his tongue sweeter than honey” (1.249)—Eustathius interprets the verse perfectly: “such as [the honey] from the Muses’ beehive” (1.151.15)—with Hesiodic kings blessed by the Muse so that their voices issue proper judgments that mollify discord (Theogony 83-87). By transmitting the heroic ethos from the epic past to his audience, Nestor unifies the functions of poet as purveyor of memory and king as moral arbiter. Through this unification, Homer acknowledges that the epic past, and so epic itself, is traditionally considered a source of ethical wisdom. The epic past’s edificatory function derives from the social demand that men act ‘heroically’ in accordance with precedents set by earlier generations or else disgrace their families by failing to live up to the examples set by their fathers. One’s ancestors, particularly male ancestors, thus play an important role in calibrating heroic expectations, as the frequent use of genealogies when heroes flyte or otherwise assert their cre-

waiting for the duel between Paris and Menelaus), 14.505 (in reference to the Achaeans returning home), 17.758 (young Achaeans flee before Hector and Aeneas), 22.391 (Achilles wants the Achaeans to sing a paean as they drag Hector’s body back to their camp). 12 Segal (1971a) 91-92 notes that Nestor serves as mediator throughout. Martin (1989) 80-81 locates his preeminence as an authoritative speaker in his “ability to remember and remind”. Dickson (1995) 131-132 identifies this function as typical of old men who speak ‘according to portion’ (κατὰ μοῖραν), a formula denoting the approval of council spoken “in harmony with the voice of tradition”. Cf. Nagy (1979) 40. Falkner (1989) 24-25 notes that, while many preindustrial cultures use the elderly as “reconcilers, arbiters, and maintainers of the traditions”, in Homer their role is neither so positive nor exclusive. 13 Cf. Martin (1989) 101-109. Introductory sketches “pigeonhole the character in moral terms” (Richardson 1990, 38-39).

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dentials attests.14 Each generation educates its successors by serving as models for emulation: sons seek to imitate the good behavior described for them in stories about their forefathers; fathers give their sons instructions that presuppose their own adherence to the standards they set; Odysseus and Hector strive to be worthy models for Telemachus and Astyanax to imitate. Even when the fathers’ exploits are not mentioned, their names alone evoke their deeds as part of the epic past. Because using imitation to teach ethics requires that previous generations be worthy of emulation, accounts of the epic past claim moral authority by depicting the heroes they describe as more ‘heroic’ or important than their audience.15 Thus Nestor says that he fought alongside heroes against whom ‘no one of earth-dwelling mortals now could fight’ (ἂν οὔ τις τῶν οἳ νῦν βροτοί εἰσιν ἐπιχθόνιοι μαχέοιτο, 1.271-272) in order to prove himself qualified to advise the Achaean leaders. His subtext is clear: you should imitate your predecessors because they were better than you; not only am I one of them, but that the others heeded my advice means that I am more than capable of counseling you lesser men.16 Statements such as this one depict each generation as weaker, less heroic, and further from the gods and the wondrous than the one before it.17 This is precisely the same relationship Homer establishes between his characters and his own audience when he says, using much the same language as Nestor, that Diomedes lifted a huge rock “that not even two men could carry, such as men are now, but he hefted it easily even by himself” (ὃ οὐ δύο γ’ ἄνδρε φέροιεν οἷοι νῦν βροτοί εἰσ’, 5.302-304). More than poetic superfluities, such verses explicate an otherwise im14 Crotty (1994) 25-41 identifies filial aidōs as the force driving this educational process. Also see Redfield (1975) 110, Finlay (1980), and Slatkin (1987) 265267. 15 Willcock (1964) 142 argues that a paradigm’s subject is always superior to its addressee. Examples set by one’s superiors have pedagogical value even when not in stories about the past or about mortals; see Held (1987) 255-257 and Howie (1995) 142. The parable of the Beseechments that Phoenix uses to persuade Achilles (9.497-512), for instance, holds the gods up as models; Achilles uses himself and Patroclus as models to convince Lycaon to accept death (21.99-113). 16 Nestor bases his authority not just on his age but also his deeds (Falkner 1989, 31), that is, on his exploits in the epic past. He uses the same rhetoric and objectives throughout (Austin 1966, 301-303, Pedrick 1983, 65-66, and Liñares 1999). 17 See Kullmann (1956) 94 and Strasburger (1972) 28-29. Dickson (1995) 208 n. 36 adds that the presented might of prior generations is directly proportional to the degree to which access to them is restricted to narrative; cf. Ford (1992) 98-99.

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plicit contrast that lies at the heart of heroic epic, a contrast reenacted at each performance simply by the decision to efface the present with a commemoration of the past. It is in large part through this contrast between present and past that epic circumscribes itself as distinct from such contiguous genres as epinician, which awards kleos to contemporary champions relative to their heroic predecessors,18 and history, which glorifies the present (or recent past) and rationalizes the distant past accessed through epic in accordance with contemporary experience.19 For the Iliadic heroes, the past that previous generations inhabit is markedly epic in nature.20 The general absence of the heroes’ progenitors contributes to the epic distance that separates the past from the present. Achilles cannot consult Peleus as Telemachus does ‘Mentor’ and Menelaus; no father returns home to save the day. Where Laertes works his orchard waiting to resume his heroic mantle, the Iliad has Priam, an anti-Laertes (and anti-Nestor) to whom we will return later. Because, other than Nestor, the fathers of the Achaean heroes exist in the Iliad only through spoken memories; when the sons seek to emulate their fathers, they can only look to stories, to the kleos that forms the epic past. And because for the Iliad’s heroes this past is ‘epic’ and for its audience it is an ideation of epic tradition, when the heroes try to learn from the kleos of their fathers, they actually engage in what is essentially a process of ‘reading’ epic, by which I mean only the attempt to reach a rational understanding of the ethical implications of a narrative. As the heroes ‘read’ the epic past, they serve as metapoetic corollaries for Homer’s own audiences as they ‘read’ the Iliad for edification. Though the general principle that Homeric characters direct their audience’s responses with their own is well accepted,21 attempts to correlate Iliadic characters reading analeptic references with the Iliadic audience reading the Iliad have stirred controversy.22 We will consider other justifications for the parallel 18 Nagy (1990b) 192-214. 19 Strasburger (1972) analyzes the effect of Homer on historiography more generally and, hence, the relationship between epic and historiography. See in particular 13-25 for the particular points raised here. 20 (2001) 407. Cf. Crotty (1991) 26: “the warrior’s hesitation about the value of the past [genealogies] implies an ambivalence toward epic poetry as such”. 21 Macleod (2001) 296-297; Pucci (2002a) 17-34. 22 Macleod (2001) 298-300 argues that for Homer “his subject-matter was history” that aims in part to inform; Jaeger (1945) 40-41 argues the same for myth. Martin’s (1984) identification of the paradeigmata of Nestor and Phoenix as paraenetic poetry suggests the possibility of a correlation, a connection Howie (1995) supports with structural and rhetorical parallels between the paradeigmata

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later, but for now it should suffice that the construction of the epic past at least diminishes the generic difference between the Iliad and the stories its characters tell about the past. Let us consider an example. None of the Achaeans at Troy is so closely associated with his father in mythic tradition as Antilochus, whose self-sacrifice to rescue his father seems to have figured prominently in the Aethiopic tradition and perhaps was the subject of its own lay.23 Though Burgess (1997) has raised reasonable doubts about the neoanalytical theory that the death of Antilochus underlies that of Patroclus,24 Homer, as he does with many extra-Iliadic episodes, nonetheless does craft a scene that reworks its basic structural and thematic elements (8.80-111). Here Diomedes replaces Antilochus, survives, transfers Nestor into his own chariot, and exhorts him to drive against the enemy so that he may confront Hector with the old man at his side.25 Refracted through the audience’s familiarity with the death of Antilochus, the scene characterizes Diomedes as a pious son of epic tradition willing to die to preserve the memories of past heroes embodied in his ‘father’ so that their legacy may drive him to greater deeds in the present. A syntagmatic equivalence to which we will return later is thereby suggested between the quest for glory and Antilochus’ self-sacrifice for his father. The episode crystallizes the devotion to his heroic ancestry, and particularly to his father’s legacy, that characterizes Diomedes throughout and Homeric narrative. Nagy (1996) 133, following Martin (1989), writes “by quoting mythos, as in a mythological exemplum, Homeric poetry shows how the mythos of poetry itself can be applied”. Ford (1992) 51-52 and 57-63 denies any such connection on the grounds that Homer has no clear moralistic pretensions and the divine autopsy of the Muses distinguishes the account of the Iliad from the embedded analeptic narratives of its mortals. 23 The possibility is posited by Reinhardt (1961) 353 and Fenik (1964) 32 n. 6. 24 This classic neoanalytical argument is defended most recently by Kullmann (2005) against the revisions West (2003) proposes. 25 Lynn-George (1988) 209-229 provides an interesting analysis of such echoes. On this particular scene, see Schadewaldt (1944) 163, Whitman (1958) 166, and most recently Kullmann (2005) 22-24. Page (1963) 23-24 scorns this connection along with the rest of Neoanalysis as fanciful, but his broad opposition would preclude all resonance between epics. Erbse (1993) offers a more thoughtful response, concluding that it is far more logical to suppose that the Iliad here serves as the model for the Aethiopis. But such arguments about priority treat epics as texts created in a single authorial act without a mythic tradition behind them. If we consider, as Pucci (1987) 17-19 argues we should, the texts of archaic Greek epics as the last stage—however that stage was reached—of a long oral tradition, questions of anteriority vanish: the scenes evolve side-byside. The likelihood, actually, is that both scenes attest to a ‘son-dies-for-father’ motif that predates both Antilochus and Diomedes.

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the Iliad (Andersen 1978). Diomedes first appears in the brief catalogue of gerontes (elders, 2.404) who assemble in Agamemnon’s tent. The term gerontes identifies these men as leaders and champions, as bastions of the inherited heroic ethos.26 He is the only geron identified by patronymic (2.406) rather than by name. The appelation threatens to efface his very identity because his patronymic only acquires significance from the audience’s foreknowledge of the epic past. From the moment he enters, Diomedes is therefore above all else the son of the mightiest hero of the Thebaid tradition. Devotion to his ancestral legacy leads him to exchange gifts with Glaucus rather than fight, to have as his closest companions Sthenelus and Euryalus, whose fathers (Capaneus and Mecisteus, 2.563566) attacked Thebes alongside Tydeus, and to pass over his own triumph at Thebes (which he never mentions) in favor of basing his right to speak among the ‘elders’ despite his youth on his noble ancestry, and particularly on his father’s burial-mound at Thebes (14.110-127).27 Politically, Tydeus’ death leaves Diomedes the chief of the Argolid and of his clan, and so their rightful representative. The grave both valorizes the son who inherits his father’s legacy of heroism culminating in a glorious death and also reasserts that Tydeus now exists only through the communal memory epic preserves. Diomedes, in fact, only knows his father through stories as a figure of oral memory, since he was too young when Tydeus died to remember him (6.222-223). When Diomedes mentions his father, he therefore references not a person but a series of linguistic signifiers that duplicate the effect of the burial-mound in reasserting the absence of their referent, doubly so as the memories are not properly Diomedes’. This deferral creates space for Diomedes among the ‘elders’; Antilochus, whose noble father remains present, is noticeably missing from the group. Yet the same deferral of the referent through which kleos creates space for the next generation of heroes also complicates the process of learning heroic behavior from reading the epic past, as Agamemnon’s exhortation of Diomedes at the end of the Epipolēsis demonstrates (4.376-398). Like Diomedes, Agamemnon too knows only stories about Tydeus (4.374-375), which he weaves together in rhapsodic fashion to 26 For the etymological derivation of geras (honor-prize) from geras (old age) / geron (old man), see Benveniste (1969) 47-49 and Falkner (1989) 26-27. 27 The bT scholiast on 14.113 notes the oddity of Diomedes extolling his own virtue based on his father’s when Agamemnon uses the comparison with Tydeus to belittle Diomedes (4.370-400). Higbie (2002) contends from the scholia that 14.114, which mentions Tydeus’ burial at Thebes, might have been particular to a Theban rendition of the poem, but Torres-Guerra (1995, 38-40) defends the verse as standard.

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create a behavioral paradigm for his audience to emulate.28 After upbraiding Diomedes for not rushing into battle as his father preferred to do (4.370-375), Agamemnon recounts how Tydeus once came to Mycenae asking for aid and, after being rejected, embarked on a solitary embassy to Thebes, challenged the Thebans to athletic contests, and defeated every opponent. While returning home he was ambushed by fifty Thebans and killed all but one, whom he sent back to Thebes in obedience to a divine portent. Agamemnon’s reading of the tale—‘such was Tydeus the Aetolian; but he bore a son worse (χέρεια) than him in battle, better (ἀμείνω) in council’ (4.399-400)—encourages Diomedes to emulate his father. It succeeds in eliciting aidōs (4.402), both shame of inferiority and reverence for Tydeus, and so persuades Diomedes to do as encouraged, but Sthenelus immediately objects on the grounds that Agamemnon deliberately lies about his subject so as to reach a fallacious reading (4.404): ‘Agamemnon, do not lie (μὴ ψεύδε’) when you know (ἐπιστάμενος) how to speak what is obvious (σάφα)’. The Seven, he retorts, far from temperate and god-fearing as Agamemnon represents Tydeus, died because of their atasthalia (4.409). In Homer, atasthalia is always a failure to control one’s passions or appetites that leads to transgressions of known behavioral parameters, hybristic acts, and usually the destruction of the offending individual.29 The Epigoni, Sthenelus concludes, and not their fathers deserve time (honor, 4.410) because it was they who conquered Thebes through their self-control and obedience to the gods—Sthenelus here usurps from Agamemnon the phrase θεῶν τεράεσσι πιθήσας (‘obeying the portents of the gods’, 4.398; cf. 4.408)—even though the city had improved its defenses and they themselves led a smaller army. Sthenelus’ criticism has been all but erased from scholarly eyes by the vituperation with which Diomedes rebukes him, but the concerns he raises about this use of the epic past warrant fuller attention, particularly in light of how differently Athena characterizes Tydeus in her account of the same events (5.802-808). According to Agamemnon, Tydeus first went to Mycenae ‘without war…a guest (ξεῖνος)’ (4.376-377), and by repeating ξεῖνος (4.387) Agamemnon insinuates that he sustained 28 Torres-Guerra (1995) 33 construes the phrase ὡς φάσαν οἵ μιν ἴδοντο … περὶ δ’ ἄλλων φασὶ γενέσθαι (‘so say those who saw him … they say he excelled others’, 4.374-375) as alluding to an epic Thebaid from which the audience would know his story. Here, the objection of Ford (see above, n. 23) that such stories are not ‘epic’ because they lack the autopsy the Muses provide only partially applies, since Agamemnon claims that his sources were eye-witnesses. 29 See, for instance, Il. 11.695, 13.634, 22.104, 22.418; Od. 1.7, 1.34, 10.437, 12.300, 16.86, 17.588, 18.57, 19.88, 20.170, 22.314, and 24.458.

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this pacificity while visiting Thebes. His remarkable courage in braving the enemy city alone (4.388)—a model Diomedes should emulate—casts the Thebans rather than Tydeus as potential transgressors of xenia. Athena’s account emphasizes instead the overweening aggression that compelled Tydeus to provoke conflict with the Thebans in defiance of her own repeated injunctions; the term ξεῖνος is conspicuously absent from her account. The infinitive in Agamemnon’s ἀλλ’ ὅ γ᾽ ἀεθλεύειν προκαλίζετο, πάντα δ᾽ ἐνίκα (‘but he issued a challenge to compete and defeated them all’, 4.389) mutes the threat normally connoted by the verb προκαλίζεσθαι /προκαλεῖσθαι. Elsewhere Homer only uses this verb for challenges to tests of manhood, usually mortal combat,30 but Agamemnon uses it instead for a general invitation to athletic competition. The direct object in Athena’s slightly different κούρους Καδμείων προκαλίζετο, πάντα δ’ ἐνίκα (‘he challenged the sons of the Cadmeans and defeated them all’, 5. 807), on other hand, concentrates on the hostility of Tydeus’. Its similarity to κοῦροι Ἀχαιῶν (‘sons of the Achaeans’) underscores the general belligerence of the scene but distances the Thebans from any polemic intent.31 An audience unfamiliar with the story—and the embassy may be an Iliadic invention (Andersen 1978, pp. 36-38)—could not determine from Athena’s account that the challenge was to athletic contests rather than to the sort of mortal duel Paris and Hector instigate in Books 3 and 7. The ambush with which Agamemnon completes his tale, further depicting Tydeus as a pious victim of Cadmean aggression, has no place in Athena’s account. Her goal of goading Diomedes to greater ferocity cannot encompass a reactive and self-restrained Tydeus. Because the two stories never contradict each other in their facts, the irresolvable discrepancy in their characterizations of Tydeus cannot be attributed to the ambivalence of kleos as both fallible mortal fame and fame guaranteed by divine autopsy.32 Rather, both storytellers select the beginning, ending, and contents of their narratives to include only what information furthers their purposes. Athena’s account is just as partial, manipulative, and deceptive as Aga-

30 Cf. Il. 7.39, 7.50, 7.150, 7.218, 7.285, 13.809, and Od. 18.20. In Od. 8.227228 an archery contest with Apollo becomes fatal for the mortal challenger. Only in Od. 8.142, when Euryalus urges Laodamas to challenge Odysseus to athletic competition, does Homer use προκαλεῖσθαι when death is not a distinct possibility, but the verb even here retains its threatening tone. On athletic contests as surrogates for martial ones, see Dickie (1984) 242. 31 See p. 132 above. 32 Pucci (1980a) has demonstrated that the two senses of this word remain in tension throughout Homer.

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memnon’s; despite her divine autopsy, her Tydeus remains entirely fictional even if nothing in her story is untrue. What angers Sthenelus, it seems, is that Agamemnon tries to pass off a biased and baseless assertion as induced from an impartial (hence, “so those who saw him say” in 4.374) account of the past. Moreover, in presenting this ‘lie’ as true when he knows it is not, Agamemnon deliberately robs the Epigoni of the timē Sthenelus believes they deserve. The complaint is informed by the definition of timē Benveniste33 offers: timē is honor (or dishonor) determined by divine destiny as a form of (positive or negative) recompense manifested in either respect or material goods that can be bestowed by either gods or humans. Because the timē of the Epigoni is a divinely determined reward for obeying the gods, Agamemnon’s disparagement of them in favor of the Seven threatens to offend or even usurp divine prerogative by reassigning the time that the gods have already granted. Agamemnon therefore repeats, albeit in a reduced form, his outrage in taking Briseis from Achilles and arousing his mēnis (fury), a term that as Leonard Muellner (1996) has demonstrated possesses a similarly cosmic scope. Yet the complaint also targets a more immediate and pervasive problem. That such tales enable themselves to continue exalting past heroes as worthy of emulation by deprecating or disregarding whatever their audiences accomplish renders any attempt to rival the glory represented an endlessly iterative and ultimately futile venture. And, given that Agamemnon censors his story in order to present an appropriate model, it must also be asked whether it is even possible to emulate his fictionalized Tydeus without reproducing the fatal atasthalia Agamemnon omits. If it is not, then any attempt to imitate an epic paradigm is not simply vain but dangerous. An audience without objective knowledge could never know what the storyteller has left out, and, since the epic paradigm is by definition a memory, complete and objective knowledge is difficult if not impossible to obtain. These problems call into question both the process by which the Iliadic heroes inherit their heroic ethos as well as the veracity and pedagogic value of epic poetry itself. Diomedes, as has often been recognized, demonstrates his devotion to the traditional hierarchical system when he rebukes Sthenelus in favor of Agamemnon, but more interesting for our concerns is that he does not actually refute anything Sthenelus says. Rather, he simply does not seem to care that Agamemnon ‘lies’ and deprives the Epigoni of their time because he is concerned here not with timē but kudos (glory of victory, 4.415). As long as Agamemnon exhorts the Achaeans to fight more 33 (1969) 50-55.

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bravely so that they will earn kudos for both him and themselves, Diomedes will find no fault with however he constructs the epic past. A second mode of reading epic paradigms is herein posited: Diomedes ignores the inherent fictitiousness of the tale to embrace it wholeheartedly as a vehicle of traditional heroic ethics (4.412-418). His ‘hermeneutic’, if it can thus be called, harmonizes well with the respect he displays for Agamemnon. The son of Tydeus may not save Nestor for another four Books, but he is already his guardian, following his advice to uphold the authority of the scepter-bearing king (1.277-281) and championing the epic tradition that mediates the inheritance of the heroic ethos. Diomedes’ closely ensuing aristeia constitutes his attempt to heed Agamemnon by emulating the Tydeus he depicts. Book 5 draws the connection at the outset and reasserts it periodically throughout: Athena initiates the aristeia in the first verse when she gives Diomedes ‘the son of Tydeus’ (Τυδεΐδῃ) strength and courage similar to the aid Agamemnon said she gave Tydeus (cf. 4.390); Diomedes later asks Athena to help him as she once did his father (5.115-117); she obliges by imbuing him with ‘energy paternal (μένος πατρώϊον) and unshaking, such as shield-wielding, horse-driving Tydeus had’ (5.125-126). She later returns to reprove him for his inferiority to his father, at which point she retells the same myth Agamemnon did to provide a (different) paradigm for Diomedes to emulate, as we have already seen.34 The degree to which Diomedes succeeds or fails relative to the criteria he himself sets therefore constitutes a commentary on the respective modes of reading epic that he and Sthenelus propose. Of principle importance are whether striving to emulate Tydeus helps Diomedes win his desired kudos and whether he can do so without repeating the atasthalia that destroyed the Seven. In addressing the first question, Benveniste35 again helps establish a responsible methodology when he defines kudos as a divine indication or visible talisman that the gods may bestow upon the inevitable victor of a battle. Because not all triumphs entail kudos, we must refrain from attributing it to Diomedes unless the Iliad does so explicitly. Athena directs Homer’s audience to assess the aristeia in terms of kudos as soon as 34 I have here selected only the most blatant connections. Torres-Guerra (1995) 59-61 adduces more subtle parallels between Diomedes in his aristeia and Tydeus in both Agamemnon’s speech and the surviving fragments of the cyclic Thebaid. Andersen (1978) 48-49 also notes an intimate connection between the passages, though he concentrates more on Athena as actor than Diomedes. Questions about the authenticity of Book 5 and its thematic relevance to the rest of the Iliad have been met by Erbse (1961) and Andersen (1978) 14-30. 35 (1969) 56-67.

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Diomedes kills his first opponent and she convinces Ares to withdraw so that they can wait to see ‘to which side Zeus extends kudos’ (5.33). The opening verses have already foretold the answer: imitating Tydeus will win Diomedes kleos (5.3), but there is no mention of kudos. Its proximity, as Diomedes shines like a star (4.4-8) and is ‘conspicuous’ (ἔκδηλος, 5.2) among all the Achaeans, only accentuates its absence not only from the aristeia’s introduction but from its entirety.36 Diomedes’ only brush with kudos comes when he confronts Aeneas and Pandarus, though even here it is nothing more than a possibility imagined by mortals who do not even agree about the conditions for achieving it. Diomedes meets the standards Aeneas sets, that he defeat his two opponents (5.224-225), but he falls short of his own, higher standards, by which he needs to kill them (5.260-261). No god gives Diomedes kudos, and the silence of the omniscient narrator leaves a void that calls into question whether kudos was ever even possible. The question remains unresolved until Book 8. Immediately after rescuing Nestor, an event that we have seen characterizes the young hero as the pious scion of epic tradition, Diomedes, with the mouthpiece of heroic legacy driving his chariot, is on the cusp of achieving his goal by sacking Troy when Zeus ends his assault with a thunderbolt hurled before his chariot—a unique event in Homer—that threatens him with the death of Capaneus, who was struck by lightening when he refused to desist from scaling the walls of Thebes. Nestor thus speaks with wisdom from the epic past when he convinces Diomedes to yield ‘for now Zeus the son of Cronus gives kudos to Hector for this day’ (8.135-136; cf. 8.176, 216). The matter has been resolved. For all his exploits, imitating Tydeus fails to earn Diomedes kudos. The allusion to Capaneus frames his attempt by returning the audience to the debate that catalyzed the aristeia and in particular to the argument of Sthenelus, the son of the man whose death Diomedes almost shares. The legacy of the Seven is, after all, one of failure and glorious death, a paradigm for attaining kleos, not kudos. Even still, three times Diomedes considers ignoring the sign and continuing his assault, and each time Zeus thunders (8.167-171). At this point the narrator averts his eye, leaving Diomedes on the brink of committing the atasthalia that doomed Capaneus. Circumstances have made it impossible for Diomedes to imitate the Tydeus Agamemnon described while still following his reading. To continue fighting in the forefront Diomedes would have to deviate from his model by disobeying a divine portent. In so doing, he would complete the tale Agamem36 Pucci (1998) 204-214 discusses the economy of kudos as it pertains to kleos in the Iliad, and notes on this passage (212) that here Diomedes’ kleos verges on kudos.

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non left unfinished by reenacting the atasthalia and corresponding death of Capaneus, the member of the Seven who was surely in the forefront of Sthenelus’ mind. Imitating Agamemnon’s Tydeus has in fact already led Diomedes to overstep his proper bounds. He wounds Aphrodite even before Athena tells him about a Tydeus who disregarded the gods and he wounds Ares afterwards. That he commits these acts of atasthalia under Athena’s instructions does not exculpate him. As Alden37 points out in her discussion of the aristeia, faithfulness to one god never excuses outrages committed against another nor protects the culprit from retribution. Rather, imitating Tydeus leaves Diomedes without recourse: he must either disobey Athena or assault Ares and Aphrodite. Even if his obedience to Athena did excuse these attacks, his attempt to kill Aeneas despite Apollo’s protection constitutes a third outrage, one that Athena specifically forbade. But, spurred on by the same ‘paternal energy’ (5.125) that compelled Tydeus to ignore Athena, Diomedes contravenes a similar divine injunction and behaves in a manner that both the narrator (‘he charged like a god (δαίμονι ἶσος),’ 5.438) and Apollo (5.440442) characterize as an act of atasthalia; Apollo later confirms Aphrodite’s statement (5.362) that Diomedes would challenge even Zeus (5.457). The tension between these outrages and Diomedes’ normal reverence for the gods—he explains to Athena that he yielded to Ares because of her prohibitions (5.818-824) and later asks Glaucus whether he is a god to ensure that he does not attack one (6.128-129, 141)—underscores just how ineluctable his attempts to emulate his father’s legendary battlefury have made atasthalia.38 Unlike in Agamemnon’s story, in the reality of the Iliad the two cannot be separated. On this point, at least, Athena has proven more honest than Agamemnon: her Tydeus only wins glory because his ‘mighty spirit’ (θυμὸν…καρτερὸν, 5.806) led him to disobey her injunction against provoking the Thebans. Once again the aristeia forecasts at its beginning what it later enacts.39 Its first simile conveys the ferocity with which Diomedes attacks both his allies and ene37 (2000) 123-128. 38 See Andersen (1978) 58-73 and 85-87, who offers the most complete discussion of what he calls the Frommigkeitsproblematik of Diomedes’ attacks on the gods and concludes that Diomedes preserves his piety. The aristeia for Andersen is comical and the attack on Apollo expresses the distance between human and god. For a similar reading, see Gaisser (1969). Erbse (1961) 158-162 and Alden (2000) 123 characterize Diomedes as a tool of Athena, but do not believe that this absolves him of responsibility. 39 By Pedrick’s (1983) 61-62 analysis, Agamemnon’s speech deviates structurally from the norm in a fashion that undermines its authority. An audience attuned to the patterns may very well have predicted trouble for Diomedes even before the aristeia began.

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mies indiscriminately (5.85-86) by comparing him to a flooding river that destroys all human endeavors (5.87-92). That the narrator only uses his patronymic here identifies the archetype of Diomedes’ double-edged fury as the famous berserker rage that led his father to destroy himself. Diomedes’ aristeia proves cogent the concerns that Sthenelus’ tirade raises about the viability and dangers of trying to emulate an ethical model from a medium whose generic, to say nothing of its authorial, perspective fictionalizes the past. Such subjectivity suggests that the disagreement over whether the Seven were ‘superior’ (ἀμείνονες, 4.405; cf. 4.400) to their sons results from a difference in evaluative rubric rather than any objective truth. Rather than measure superiority by the raw physical strength and valor heroic epic traditionally celebrates—a rubric that explains why the Seven figure more prominently in epic tradition than the Epigoni—Sthenelus believes that the measure of a warrior is his effectiveness in the overall campaign. Against this standard, the selfdestructive power of the Seven actually diminishes their greatness by hindering success. His complaint taps into a current that flows underneath and opposite the dominant epic principle of generational degradation: the physical attenuation of successive generations is balanced by sociopolitical development such that the maturation of humanity parallels the maturation of the individual from young warrior to aged councilor.40 In Hesiod’s ‘Myth of Ages,’ for instance, as the generations—the heroes notwithstanding—fall further from the bliss of the Golden Age their social structures become more complex and they themselves become less inherently self-destructive, more reverent to the gods, and better suited to enduring a world where food must be earned through toil. The decreasing value of their representative metals coordinates with an unspoken, inverse progression towards greater utility for the wars and agriculture in which people start to engage.41 Which trajectory receives attention is a result of genre-determined focalization. Thucydides, positing a similar evolutionary model, concludes that political disorganization 40 Dickson (1995) 10-20 thus delineates a character typology based on age: young men are physically strong, while old men excel in speech and council. Anthropological research has demonstrated that many cultures have their elderly eschew personal, production-centered competitiveness to prioritize community (Falkner 1989, 25). 41 Plato may have written Republic 3.21.415a with this reading of the metals in mind. Clay (2003) 81-95 offers an excellent overview of the relevant scholarship on the myth in light of these two movements before presenting her own theory. Vidal-Naquet (1970) 1282-1283 notes that Polyphemus exists in a ‘Golden Age’ state that Hesiod characterizes (indirectly) as cannibalistic through the rule of Cronus.

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and isolation prevented any large coalition of Greek forces from forming before the Trojan War (1.3.4). The Iliad too evinces this countercurrent42 but deemphasizes it in accordance with its epic agenda of extolling the past. Most explicit are the statements of both Iris and Priam that they, concurring with Thucydides, have never seen a host greater than the one now besieging Troy (2.799-801 and 3.188-190). Perhaps no such coalition had hitherto been assembled because choosing a leader based on political power rather than personal strength or stake in the campaign seems to mark a shift in military philosophy from the previous assaults on Thebes and Troy, which the Iliad presents as led by the mightiest fighters redressing wrongs that diminished their political status.43 Furthering this presentation of the past is the frequency with which Nestor overlooks complications arising from the intricate social environment the heroes of the Iliad inhabit, complications that render his advice ineffective or even detrimental.44 His inadequacy can be as blatant as in the chariot race, where his strategy brings his son victory over Menelaus but arouses the defeated man to an ire that Antilochus only mollifies by offering to abdicate his prize—an action unthinkable by the traditional heroic ethos, as evidenced by the central feud between Achilles and Agamemnon—or it can be as subtle as Nestor’s instructions that the Achaeans should postpone despoiling corpses so that they may kill more enemies (6.67-72). This advice seems innocuous enough until the narrative returns to the battle after a brief interlude (6.119) and immediately recounts the encounter between Glaucus and Diomedes. The latter’s devotion to their familial alliance leads to a sequence of actions punctilious in its violation to the counsel Nestor just gave. After the lengthy conversation in which they discover their association, they take the time to cease fighting, remove their sets of armor, exchange them, don their new sets, and in the end leave each other unharmed. Obeying Nestor would have led Diomedes to violate one of the most sacred of societal bonds, but the epic narrator preserves his complimentary characterization of the old man by deemphasizing the correlation between the two scenes with an inter42 Strasburger (1972) 29. 43 The Iliad knows Adrastus well (2.572, 14.121, 23.347), but suppresses his involvement in the attack on Thebes. 44 Thus Segal (1971a) 97-99 qualifies Nestor as “unable to see the quarrel in other than the conventional terms of the ‘honor’ due to the ‘scepter-bearing king,’ and he will naturally pass over Achilles’ radical gesture of rejecting the scepter”, though he adds that Nestor does not approve of Agamemnon’s action. Falkner (1989) 32 notes that it is a general trend among the aged councilors in the Iliad to offer ineffective advice.

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posed glimpse at the Trojan side (6.73-118) long enough to distract attention from the problem but not so long as to eradicate it. Restoring these two scenes to their proper chronological contiguity reveals the subtle power epic narrators wield in focalizing stories so as to mask any problems pursuant to heroic ethos or action. Yet this very power threatens to deconstruct the kleos that forms the core of epic. The flyting between Tlepolemus and Sarpedon (5.633-654) encapsulates many issues crucial to the Diomedean arc of Books 4 through 8. The speech wherein Tlepolemus taunts Sarpedon combines motifs that were first introduced by Agamemnon and Sthenelus before the aristeia of Diomedes; a tale from the epic past is called a ‘lie’ (ψευδόμενοι … φασι, 5.635), the current generation’s inferiority to the prior one is both asserted explicitly—‘people wither away’ (6.643)—and demonstrated through the epic account of a father (Heracles) whom ‘they say’ (φασι, 6.638) was great but who was not personally known by either interlocutor, and a contrast is drawn (albeit implicitly) between a small force that successfully sacks a city and a larger army that fails. Homer’s audience knows these themes from the prior discussion, and the argument that Sarpedon is not Zeus’ son has already been disproven by the introduction of the interlocutors as ‘the son and grandson of cloud-gathering Zeus’ (5.631). The interest here resides in Sarpedon’s response, which modifies the basic tactic Sthenelus employed. Sarpedon too devalues the disparaging narrative as a false reconstruction of the past, but instead of introducing a failure of the protagonist extrinsic to the story, he reassigns significance to the victory, asserting that it was not Heracles’ power but ‘the foolishness (ἀφραδίῃσιν) of Laomedon’ (5.649) that destroyed Troy. Not only does Sarpedon’s victory over Tlepolemus in the ensuing duel both confirm and symbolically validate his refutation, but his argument also coheres with the discourse of its immediate context. Because, as Diomedes’ aristeia demonstrates, overweening power is inseparable from atasthalia and because epic inherently defers its referent through both semiosis and focalization, no epic account of a victory can be accepted as unequivocal evidence of the victor’s greatness rather than of his foe’s atasthalia. The question then arises: were the heroes of the past actually superior in any way to the heroes of the present or could even their physical prowess be an epic fabrication? This challenge to the epic past becomes essential to the Iliad the moment it chooses as its central figure the hero whose defining mythic attribute is the destiny to be superior to his father.45 Even if Achilles is the ‘exception that proves the rule’ of genera45 Segal (1971a) 92 thus identifies Achilles as a throwback to the generation Nestor describes in his Centauromachy (1.260-273). Superiority to his father is the central attribute of his mythology (Slatkin 1992).

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tional degradation, it is nonetheless this exception that lies at the heart of the Iliad giving it its ethical shape. Yet evidence not focalized through some epic mediator is scarce, both because the traditional epic perspective dominates the poem and because without that perspective there is little reason to discuss past heroes. The victory of the Epigoni perhaps serves, and it is telling that the only character who ever mentions it is Sthenelus, but perhaps more revealing is Priam’s amazement at Agamemnon in the Teichoscopia. He not only marvels at the unprecedented size of his army but also exclaims that he has never before seen anyone so καλός (‘noble’, 3.169) or γεραρός (3.170), a term whose transparent etymological relation to both geras (honor-prize) and geron (elder) locates its connotation within the semantic range of the traditional heroic ethos: ‘heroic in demeanor’ may be perhaps the closest English rendering in this context.46 His statement is alarming coming from someone who in his younger days witnessed the very siege that Tlepolemus cites as proof of Heracles’ greatness, but his praise should be understood as sincere because whatever hyperbole it contains serves to extol Agamemnon for the Iliad’s audience rather than bear any rhetorical force in his conversation with Helen.47 This alternate view of the past, which breaks the monopoly of the traditional epic perspective, cannot be disregarded because Priam no less than Nestor is an old man who extends from the past into the present and fought heroically in his younger days. He too is first introduced as a speaker, though not as an epic poet or disciple of the Muses. Instead of looking at the past with an epic eye, Priam is a speaker of peaceful discourse whose voice Iris characterizes when he is first introduced as out of place in the Iliad’s martial context (2.796-797): ‘Old man (γέρον), always your speeches (μῦθοι) are dear but unjudged (ἄκριτοι), as though it were peacetime; but inescapable war has stirred’. The phrase μῦθοι ... ἄκριτοι is oxymoronic here. It characterizes Priam’s rhetoric as efficacious but not martial.48 His discordant language coheres with his recollections that past heroes were not superior to present ones. Without this perception, Priam never mines the epic past for behavioral paradigms nor, without such paradigms, does he promulgate the traditional heroic ethos. The Iliad captures the principal difference between Priam and Nestor when it juxtaposes their propositions for a truce to bury the 46 See Kirk (1985) 289. 47 On the distinction between the ‘key function’ (function for the audience) and ‘argument function’ (function for the characters) of narrative elements, particularly analeptic digressions, and the importance of the former, see in particular Andersen (1987) and de Jong (1997). 48 Martin (1989) 111-112.

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dead. Nestor plans to use the peace to build walls—walls that, it so happens, scarcely retard the Trojan attack and offend the gods—so that the Achaeans can continue the siege (7.327-343); Priam preempts Nestor’s plan with terms for a permanent peace—albeit offering grossly inadequate concessions—and requests a temporary truce only because the Achaeans refuse his proposal (7.368-378). Priam’s alien ethos is epitomized in Menelaus’ assessment that he ‘looks both ahead (πρόσσω) [to the past] and behind (ὀπίσσω) [at the future]’ (3.109-110) in order to ensure the best outcome for both Achaeans and Trojans. This form of wisdom is exceedingly rare, mentioned only three times in the Iliad and once in the Odyssey, but it always adjoins an explicit attempt to safeguard the community at the expense of personal glory.49 Those who lack this wisdom, it seems, fix their metaphorical gaze ‘forwards’ into the past that is epic tradition, where they see only the kleos of dead heroes. Perceiving there the inevitability of death, they believe their best option is to earn their own kleos by emulating the paradigms of heroic behavior epic presents to them.50 But those who also look ‘behind’ themselves at the possible future perceive more there than just death and try to safeguard what life they see. It is in this way that the Iliad contrasts Priam with Hector at the climactic duel. The father, recognizing that his son is no match for Achilles, begs him to flee inside the walls so that he can survive and continue protecting the Trojans (22.56-58). The son, after considering the many deaths he has already caused through his atasthalia in ignoring Poulydamas (who, like Priam, also looks ‘ahead and behind’ [18.250]) and is so called precisely because of the warning Hector ignores, and after considering the disgrace he thinks he would incur by fleeing and the kleos he would earn whether he defeats Achilles or dies in the attempt, steels himself to stand and fight and die (22.104-110; cf. 6.441-465). 49 Il. 18.250 (Poulydamas) and Od. 24.452 (Halitherses). Agamemnon lacks this wisdom because he ignores his men’s safety (1.343-344). Kirk (1985) 278 argues against Nicanor (see schdia ad loc.) that ὁ γέρων (3.109) indicates old men generally. Following Kirk, Dickson (1995) 16-17 and 106-108 assigns the trait to the ‘old man’ character type. Even if Kirk is correct, Menelaus still induces his point from Priam, as the details he includes indicate. His induction might be generally true, but it is not universally true. Nestor lacks this wisdom. For the danger of focusing too intently on character-type, see Whitman (1958) 153-165. 50 Kullmann (2001) 407 writes “in general they [the Iliadic heroes] perceive the past as something burdensome that has determined in advance the direction that their destiny will take…thus the present event is not experienced in the present and as a fact; it becomes a confirmation of something that has already announced itself in the past, and a sign of the future”.

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The Iliad plays out the opposition between the two ideologies for its audience in proper epic fashion, through a paradigmatic story about the epic past, for, considered in context, the views that Nestor and Priam have of the past become the choice Achilles faces between kleos and nostos (return home).51 The debate seems rigged by the epic medium, whose very formulaic language validates itself with a narrative perspective focalized through the traditional heroic ethos that Nestor propounds.52 But the Iliad is not so simple. It is not a slave to the formulaic language it inherits from epic tradition. We have already seen that it raises doubts about the authenticity of the epic past, doubts that in turn call into question the authenticity of the heroic ethos itself. When we turn to the fathers from whom the heroes ostensibly inherit this ethos, we find that the sons’ compulsion to earn glory always fighting bravely in front of the front ranks, even in the face of certain death, actually opposes what their fathers want for them. The motif of the father who tries to prevent his son, particularly his youngest son, from fighting53 and the prevalence of patronymics and similes that present warriors as young animals under the care of their parents saturate the battle-scenes with the 51 Thus it is also the distinction Pucci (1987) 127-154 articulates between Achilles and Odysseus, and between the ethos of the Iliad and that of the Odyssey. If Frame (1978) 81-115 is correct that Nestor was originally a resurrection deity, his role as conduit to the epic past is both deeply oxymoronic and oddly appropriate. 52 De Jong’s (2004) 41-99 discussion of the distinction between Homeric poet and the primary narrator/focalizer is particularly useful. As Whitman (1958) 166 says with elegant succinctness, “in its simple outlines, the great tradition of the epic lives in Nestor”. Though the Homeric narrator generally refrains from injecting overt moral evaluations into his narrative, his descriptions nonetheless valorize actions that accord with traditional heroic virtues. Exceptions to his façade of objectivity tend to mark instances where characters are overcome by what could be identified as atasthalia. Often such evaluations occur in contexts where an imbedded focalizer is possible, and in such cases it is difficult to determine whose the assessment is. Also see Jaeger (1945) 40-43; Gaunt (1976); Richardson (1990) 158-166; Howie (1995) 154-162. For this perspective as engrained in formulaic epic language, see in particular Parry (1956), Nagy (1979) 1-4; Lynn-George (1988) 93-122. 53 Il. 2.831-834 (=11.329-332) and 11.717-719. Also see 5.22-24, 5.148-151, 6.46-50, 7.109, 7.275, 10.378-381, 11.131-135, 13.663-670, 21.74-96. In 9.403, 13.172, 22.156 (with variant in 24.495) the formula πρὶν ἐλθεῖν υἷας Ἀχαιῶν (‘before the sons of the Achaeans came’) distinguishes warrior time with the prior space. The explicit disruption of the father-son relationship by war dominates the contexts of each scene except 13.172. It is present there in the form of a patronymic, but the wife and father-in-law receive greater emphasis.

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tears of bereaved parents.54 Fathers surviving from the epic past are all but universally presented as waiting pitifully, wracked by senescence, for sons who will never return home.55 Nor can the fathers’ concern for their sons be reduced solely to their need for a caretaker in their old age; the most prominent such statements are used to persuade Achilles by stirring his filial affection.56 This function does not invalidate the fathers’ fear of isolation, but it does suggest that their desire for their sons to return home is primarily rooted in their emotional bond rather than their need for a guardian. Hector knows that he will be long dead before his hopes for Astyanax can be realized, yet he still prays not that his son will earn kleos but rather that he will be considered ‘better’ (ἀμείνων, 6.479) than his father ‘when he returns home safely from war’ (ἐκ πολέμου ἀνιόντα, 6.480) bringing the spoils of his slain enemy back to his happy mother (6.479-481). His hope is typical. Fathers who send their sons to war do want them to fight bravely, but, more importantly, they want them to return home. Ares risks the vengeance of Zeus to avenge his son, Zeus nearly violates the fate of the world to save his, and Priam, in an act singled out as the single bravest in the Iliad by the awe it inspires in Achilles (24.518-521; cf. 631-632), ventures into the Achaean camp and humiliates himself supplicating his son’s killer in order to retrieve his corpse. That death is inevitable does not change or invalidate the fathers’ desires to postpone it for as long as possible. Even Tydeus, that paragon of epic heroism, shares the same wish. According to what was a well-known myth,57 when Athena withdraws her gift of immortality at the sight of Tydeus eating Melanippus’ head, Tydeus asks her to immortalize Diomedes instead. Torres-Guerra58 suggests that the Iliad may have this very incident in mind when Athena 54 Lynn-George (1996). 55 This running theme culminates in Priam’s supplication of Achilles; see Crotty (1994) 81-82 and Macleod (2001) 308-309. Falkner (1989) 27-30 includes the premature loss of one’s son alongside other woes of old age. 56 9.495, 19.334-337, 24.488-489. 57 One scholion on Il. 5.126 attributes it to Pherecydes (FGrHist 3 fr. 97), another to the cyclic poets. Ibycus (fr. 294) and Pindar (Nem. 10.7-9) call Diomedes immortal, and the BD scholion on Nem. 10.12b (Drachmann) reports that Euripides told the story in Meleager (fr. 537 Kannicht). It is also attested in Libanius Progymnasmata R. 4.997. Beazley (1947) reviews the ancient sources for this myth and of the death of Tydeus more generally in arguing that the “Rosi Krater”, a mid-fifth century red-figure of which only pictures remain, and a fragmentary bell-krater in New York (12.229.14) that dates from a few decades later, both depict Athena escorting ‘Immortality’ (Ἀθανασία) away from a wounded Tydeus. Also see Torres-Guerra (1995) 59. 58 (1995) 61.

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restores Diomedes’ vigor by instilling him with ‘paternal energy’ (μένος πατρώϊον, 5.125). Because the myth presents immortality as contingent upon avoiding atasthalia, Tydeus’ request presupposes a desire for his son to behave differently than he himself did. Nestor too reveals that the fathers did not necessarily endorse the ethos attributed to them: though elsewhere he attempts and recommends monomachia, he warns his own men against breaking ranks because, he says, it was only by maintaining their formations that ‘the previous generations’ (οἱ πρότεροι, 4.308) won their victories. Agamemnon praises Nestor for this counsel only to exhort Diomedes not seventy verses later to emulate the Tydeus of his epic narrative, who, ‘as they say’ (ὡς φάσαν, 4.374), preferred ‘to fight the enemy far in front of his dear companions’ (4.373). Hector may claim that he ‘learned’ (μάθον, 6.444) always to fight in the front ranks risking death to earn kleos for himself and for his father (6.444-446, cf. 8.285), but he certainly did not learn this from the father who begs him not to throw away his life for glory.59 Despite what they themselves may believe, the Iliadic heroes do not learn how to behave from their actual fathers. They learn from the epic past, from memories and stories that replace their fathers and forefathers with doppelgangers designed to promote a heroic ethos60 that may very well be nothing more than an epic invention through which the genre validates itself by glorifying the past over the present. There is then something sinister about the use of paradigms as a method of promulgating this ethos. We have already seen that if Diomedes were not so naturally predisposed to self-restraint, imitating the Tydeus Agamemnon describes would lead to his death without helping him achieve his goals. Nestor’s account of his own aristeia as a young man (11.655-803) induces the wrong hero to step forth, and the bitter death Patroclus consequently suffers contrasts sharply with the unmitigated triumph of Nestor’s paradigm (Pedrick 1983). Most sinister, though, is Phoenix, whose troubled relationship with his own father and consequent sterility, to say nothing of his apparent defection from the Myrmidons, bodes ill for his attempt to act as a surrogate father to Achilles. Whether or not he knows that Achilles is destined to die if he reenters the battle, Phoe59 Could the lesson be inadvertant? MacCary (1982) 192-216 argues that sons deliberately seek a glorius death to avoid suffering the decrepitude of their fathers. Crotty (1994) 35-69 argues that sons redirect their filial aidos and pity towards their comrades, leaving them torn between their fear of suffering disgrace in their fathers’ or comrades’ eyes and helping them out of pity. 60 Crotty (1994) 40-41 similarly concludes that memories of the fathers are plastic and molded by the speaker of a paradigm to further his own ends and satisfy the emotional needs of his addressee.

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nix nonetheless encourages his ‘son’ to follow a course of action that causes the death of the hero in the myth he offers as a paradigm, a death he conveniently omits from his account. What then of Homer’s own narrative? Do the Muses not obviate these concerns by guaranteeing its objectivity? Pietro Pucci (1979) concludes that the Odyssey conceives of the Iliadic Muses as Sirens who lure to their deaths whoever places naive trust in their promises of unbiased and pleasurable knowledge. His conclusion pertains just as well to the Iliad. The Homeric narrator prays to the Muses because they are goddesses, are ‘present’ (πάρεστε), and ‘know/have seen everything’ (ἴστέ τε πάντα, 2.485), whereas he, being mortal, only hears kleos and ‘knows/has seen nothing’ (οὐδέ τε ἴδμεν, 2.486). What the Muses offer, then, is not just truth, but a complete knowledge of the past accessible only through personal autopsy. But divine autopsy assures a narrative’s factuality—presuming the speaker does not deliberately lie—not, as Athena proves, its objectivity. As the Muses help the poet isolate his subject within the ineffable totality of the event and the event within the even more incomprehensible continuum of myth, they function as focalizing agents who transform event into epic.61 If the resulting narrative seems unbiased and pellucid, this appearance cannot be trusted because the complete effects of focalization can only be discerned through outside, objective knowledge of the referent, and such knowledge is impossible because the referent no longer exists. In this way the Iliad aligns itself with Hesiod in his commentary on epic poetry.62 We are simply bellies, mere consumers unable to distinguish between when the Muses speak the truth (that is, what actually happened) and when they, like Agamemnon, tell ‘lies’ (ψεύδεα, Theogony 27; cf. Iliad 4.404) that we, lacking the proximity of Sthenelus, cannot distinguish from the truth. There is, then, truth to be found in epic—a lie indistinguishable from the truth must be verisimilar—but the audience must recognize that both the epic Muse and her poet justify and sustain their own existence by aggrandizing and fictionalizing the past. The Iliad thus suggests to its audience that, if they insist upon looking for ethical guidance to the songs of epic poets, including Homer himself, they must beware and pertain to a hermeneutic higher than emulation.

61 Ford (1992) 72-82. 62 On Hesiod’s views of the deferral of the poetic referent and the relationship between the Muse and poet, see Pucci (1977) 8-16 in particular.

The Meaning of homoios (ὁμοῖος) in Theogony 27 and Elsewhere Gregory Nagy Harvard University 01)

ποιμένες ἄγραυλοι, κάκ᾿ ἐλέγχεα, γαστέρες οἶον, ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα, ἴδμεν δ᾿, εὖτ᾿ ἐθέλωμεν, ἀληθέα γηρύσασθαι.

Shepherds camping in the fields, base objects of reproach, mere bellies! We know how to say many deceptive things looking like genuine things, but we also know how, whenever we wish it, to proclaim things that are true. Hesiodic Theogony 26–28

According to the Hesiodic Theogony, these words are spoken by the Muses themselves to Hesiod, whom they encounter while he is tending sheep in the foothills of Mount Helicon. In translating pseudea ... etumoisin homoia (ψεύδεα ... ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα) as ‘deceptive things [pseudea] looking like genuine [etuma] things’ at verse 27 of the Theogony, I am in agreement with a wide range of interpreters who have studied this verse, including Pietro Pucci, who translates the relevant wording this way: ‘lies that look like truths’1 and ‘menzogne simili alla realtà’.2 It has been argued, however, that the adjective homoios (ὁμοῖος), as used here and elsewhere in Hesiodic and Homeric diction, should be translated not as ‘looking like’ or ‘similar to’ or ‘resembling’ but only as ‘equivalent to’ or ‘equal to [in some respect]’.3 According to this argument, ὁμοῖος [homoios] seldom - if ever - denotes resemblance, much less resemblance so close as to be deceptive”.4 Re-examining the etymology and the con1 2 3

4

Pucci (1977) 9. Pucci (2007) 27. Heiden (2007), following Leclerc (1993) 212–16. Heiden (2007, 154 n. 4) gives a list of those who have translated ‘looking like’ or ‘similar to’ or ‘resembling’, including Nagy (1990) 45. See also Nagy (2009) 276. Heiden (2007) 155 n. 7.

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texts of this adjective in both Homeric and Hesiodic diction, I counterargue that the translation of homoios (ὁμοῖος) as ‘looking like’ or ‘similar to’ or ‘resembling’ is valid. First, I consider the etymology. From the standpoint of Indo-European linguistics, the Greek adjective homoios (ὁμοῖος) derives from a prototypical form *somo-, with the meaning ‘same as’.5 The English adjective same is derived from this same prototypical form. Another derivative is the Latin adjective similis, meaning ‘same as’ or ‘similar to’. In the usage of both Latin similis and Greek homoios (ὁμοῖος), the same semantic principle applies: for X to be similar to Y is for it to be the same as Y in some respect, which is Z. Here I am agreeing with Pucci when he says that ὁμοῖος can suggest both similarity and identity.6 Further, for X to be the same as Y is for it to be one with Y in respect to Z. That is because the Indo-European root *som- of *somo- ‘same as’ means ‘one’, as we see in such forms as the Latin adverb semel ‘one time’. And the idea of ‘one’ in words like English same has to do with an act of comparing. When we compare things, what is the ‘same as’ something else in some respect becomes ‘one with’ that something in that respect, as we see in the usage of Latin similis. What is similis ‘similar’ to something else in some respect is ‘one with’ that something in that respect. Similarly in the case of the Greek adjective homoios (ὁμοῖος), it refers to something that is ‘one with’ and therefore ‘the same as’ something else in some respect. And, as we will see later, if something else is not the same, then it is alloios (ἀλλοῖος) ‘a different kind’, which is the opposite of homoios (ὁμοῖος) or ‘the same kind’. As we will also see later, the extension -ios (-ιος) of the two adjectives homoios (ὁμοῖος) ‘the same kind’ and alloios (ἀλλοῖος) ‘a different kind’ is parallel to the extension -ios (-ιος) of the adjectives hoios (oἷος) ‘what kind’ and toios (τοῖος) ‘that kind’. Next, I consider the contexts of homoios (ὁμοῖος) in Homeric and Hesiodic diction. I start with a basic observation. When homoios (ὁμοῖος) as an adjective describing a noun X is combined with the dative case of a noun Y, then X is ‘the same as’ Y with respect to Z. Another way to say it is that X is ‘equal to’ Y with respect to Z. And the ‘Z’ can be indicated in any one of three different ways: an accusative of respect, an epexegetical infinitive, or a prepositional phrase.7 Here are three examples that match these three different ways (numbers 02, 03, and 04): 5 6 7

Chantraine (2009) s.v. ὁμός. Pucci (1977) 9. Heiden (2007 154 n. 4 explicitly disagrees with this statement of Pucci. See also Pucci (2007) 63, 68-69. These three categories have been noted by Heiden (2007) 156.

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02)

ἔνθ’ οὔ τίς ποτε μῆτιν ὁμοιωθήμεναι ἄντην ἤθελ’, ἐπεὶ μάλα πολλὸν ἐνίκα δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς

Back then, there was nobody who would set himself up as equal to [homoios] him [= Odysseus] in craft, no, nobody would be willing to do so, since radiant Odysseus was so much better. Odyssey 3.120-121 03)

τῷ δ’ οὔ πώ τις ὁμοῖος ἐπιχθόνιος γένετ’ ἀνὴρ κοσμῆσαι ἵππους τε καὶ ἀνέρας ἀσπιδιώτας·

Never before had there been a mortal man who was equal to [homoios] him [= Menestheus] in marshalling the horse-drawn chariot teams and the shield-bearing warriors. Iliad 2.553-554 04)

ὦ φίλοι Ἀργείων ὅς τ’ ἔξοχος ὅς τε μεσήεις ὅς τε χερειότερος, ἐπεὶ οὔ πω πάντες ὁμοῖοι ἀνέρες ἐν πολέμῳ, νῦν ἔπλετο ἔργον ἅπασι·

My dear friends! You who are top-rank, and you who are middle-rank, and you who are of lower rank - I say this because it has never yet happened that all men are equal [homoioi] men in war - now is the time when everybody has work to do. Iliad 12.269-271

As we see from each of the three examples I have just quoted, each occurrence of homoios, which I translated each time as ‘equal’, has to do with an act of comparing, where X is compared to Y in respect to Z. And, in each of these examples, the point that is being made is that someone is superior to all others, who therefore cannot be that someone’s equal. Claims of superiority can be contested, however, as we see in the following three examples (numbers 05, 06, and 07): 05)

στυγέῃ δὲ καὶ ἄλλος ἶσον ἐμοὶ φάσθαι καὶ ὁμοιωθήμεναι ἄντην.

... so that any one else will draw back from saying that he is equal to [isos] me [=Agamemnon] and from making himself equal to [homoios] me face to face. Iliad 1.186-187

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Here we see Agamemnon in the act of showing off his political power to Achilles and threatening to show off that same power, which is based on his social status, to anyone else who dares to challenge him. The adjective isos here, which means ‘equal’, is synonymous with homoios, which I translate also as ‘equal’ here. The point being made by the figure of Agamemnon is that nobody is his equal, not even Achilles. To put it another way, we can say that Agamemnon is claiming that nobody is his peer, that he is peerless. But this claim of Agamemnon can be contested, as we see from the next example, featuring words spoken by the figure of Nestor: 06)

μήτε σὺ Πηλείδη θέλ’ ἐριζέμεναι βασιλῆϊ ἀντιβίην, ἐπεὶ οὔ ποθ’ ὁ μοίης ἔμμορε τιμῆς σκηπτοῦχος βασιλεύς, ᾧ τε Ζεὺς κῦδος ἔδωκεν. εἰ δὲ σὺ καρτερός ἐσσι θεὰ δέ σε γείνατο μήτηρ, ἀλλ’ ὅ γε φέρτερός ἐστιν ἐπεὶ πλεόνεσσιν ἀνάσσει.

Don’t you, son of Peleus, be quarrelling with the king, force against force, since it is never an equal [homoiē] thing, I mean, the rank inherited by a king holding the scepter, to whom Zeus has given a luminous sign of sovereignty. Even if you [= Achilles] are as mighty as you are, born of a goddess, nevertheless, he [= Agamemnon] is superior in status, since he rules over more subjects. Iliad 1.277-281

By implication, Nestor here is recognizing that Agamemnon is actually inferior to Achilles in warfare, even though he is superior in social status. So Agamemnon is not peerless, as he claims to be. Achilles himself questions Agamemnon’s claim to be peerless, laying claim to his own social status as a peer of Agamemnon: 07)

ἀλλὰ τόδ’ αἰνὸν ἄχος κραδίην καὶ θυμὸν ἱκάνει, ὁππότε δὴ τὸν ὁμοῖον ἀνὴρ ἐθέλῃσιν ἀμέρσαι καὶ γέρας ἂψ ἀφελέσθαι, ὅ τε κράτεϊ προβεβήκῃ·

But I have this terrible sorrow that has come over my heart and spirit, seeing as I do that the man [= Agamemnon] is trying to deprive a man who is equal to [homoios] him and to take away the prize of this man [= Achilles], just because he [= Agamemnon] is ahead in power. Iliad 16.52-54

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In the last example, equality in respect to social status is seen as an acceptable alternative to inferiority. Equality in most other respects, however, is merely a foil for the superiority of whatever or whoever is being highlighted. Here are two examples featuring the word homoios (numbers 08 and 09): 08)

τάων οὔ τις ὁμοῖα νοήματα Πηνελοπείῃ ᾔδη·

Of all these women, not one knew thoughts equal to [homoia] the thoughts that Penelope knew. Odyssey 2.121-122 09)

Ζεὺς δὲ πατὴρ τρίτον ἄλλο γένος μερόπων ἀνθρώπων χάλκειον ποίησ’, οὐκ ἀργυρέῳ οὐδὲν ὁμοῖον.

Then Zeus the father made a third generation of radiant humans, making it a bronze one, not at all equal to [homoion] the silver one [that came before]. Hesiodic Works and Days 143-144

In the first of these two examples, Penelope is incontestably superior to the other women, and, in the second, the bronze generation is incontestably inferior to the silver. Continuing my survey of examples where the adjective homoios is used in comparisons, I now turn to a distinct subset of examples that will be basic for my argumentation. In the examples that belong to this subset, the act of comparing by way of the word homoios takes the form of a simile. When X is said to be homoios to Y within the framework of a simile, the comparison allows for translating not only as ‘X is equal to Y’ but also as ‘X is similar to Y’ or as ‘X resembles Y’ or even as ‘X looks like Y’. That is because, as we will now see, the making of a simile is primarily the making of a visual comparison. And what I have just said applies not only to homoios (ὁμοῖος) but also to other words used in the making of similes, such as isos (ἴσος) ‘equal to’ and enalinkios (ἐναλίγκιος) ‘looking like’. Before I show examples of homoios (ὁμοῖος) used in similes, I propose to show two comparable examples of isos (ἴσος) ‘equal to’. I take these two examples from a study of mine that centers on the making of similes by way of this adjective isos in sacred contexts where a comparison is being made between a human and a divinity. The sacred context in both examples is a ritual. Specifically, it is a wedding. In the context of such a ritual, the comparison between the human and the

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divinity is visualized as a fusion of identities between the two.8 In the first example, the gambros ‘bridegroom’ is envisioned as isos Areui (ἶσος Ἄρευι) ‘equal to Ares’: 10)

γάμβρος ἔρχεται ἶσος Ἄρευι, ἄνδρος μεγάλω πόλυ μέζων.

Here comes the bridegroom, equal to [isos] Ares, bigger than a big man, much bigger. Sappho F 111.5-6

In the second example, the bridegroom is envisioned more generally as isos theoisin (ἴσος θέοισιν) ‘equal to the gods’: 11)

φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θέοισιν ἔμμεν’ ὤνηρ ὄττις ...

He appears [phainetai] to me, that one, to be equal to [isos] the gods, that man who ... Sappho F 31.1-2

In this second example, the envisioning is expressed by the word phainetai (φαίνεται) ‘he appears’. Appearances become realities here, since phainetai means not only ‘he appears’ but also ‘he is manifested in an epiphany’, and this epiphany is felt as real.9 Just as the bridegroom can be equated with the god Ares in the wedding songs of Sappho, the bride can be equated with the goddess Aphrodite.10 Relevant to the second of these two equations is the Greek word that we translate as ‘bride’ - which is numphe in Homeric usage and numpha in the poetic dialect of Lesbos, as in Sappho F 116. In my earlier study, I made the following relevant observations about numphe/ numpha: “This word, as we can see from its Homeric usage, means not only ‘bride’ but also ‘goddess’ - in the sense of a local goddess as worshipped in the rituals of a given locale. And, as we can see from the wedding songs of Sappho, the numphe is perceived as both a bride and a goddess at the actual moment of the wedding. Similarly, the bridegroom is perceived as a god at that same moment. These perceptions are mythologized in the description of Hector and Andromache at the moment of their wedding in Song 44 of Sappho: the wedded couple are called 8 Nagy (2007) 28-29. 9 Nagy (2007) 28, with further references. 10 Nagy (2007) 27-28.

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i]keloi theoi[s (line 21) and theoeikeloi (line 34), and both these words mean ‘looking like the gods’.11 This idea of ‘looking like the gods’ in the context of a ritual is evident in the Homeric usages of homoios (ὁμοῖος) in situations where a hero emerges from a ritual bath in a sacred basin called the asaminthos. Here are the relevant passages (numbers 12 and 13): 12)

ἔκ ῥ’ ἀσαμίνθου βῆ δέμας ἀθανάτοισιν ὁμοῖος·

He [= Telemachus] emerged from the asaminthos, looking like [homoios] the immortals in size. Odyssey 3.468 13)

ἔκ ῥ’ ἀσαμίνθου βῆ δέμας ἀθανάτοισιν ὁμοῖος·

He [= Odysseus] emerged from the asaminthos, looking like [homoios] the immortals in size. Odyssey 23.163

And here is a parallel usage of the word enalinkios (ἐναλίγκιος) ‘looking like’: 14)

ἐκ δ’ ἀσαμίνθου βῆ· θαύμαζε δέ μιν φίλος υἱός, ὡς ἴδεν ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσ’ ἐναλίγκιον ἄντην

And he [= Odysseus] emerged from the asaminthos. His dear son [= Telemachus] marveled at him, when he saw him, face to face, looking like [enalinkios] the immortal gods. Odyssey 24.370-371

In the example that we have just seen (number 14), the visual aspect of the simile is made explicit with the phrasing ὡς ἴδεν ... ἄντην ‘when he [= Telemachus] saw him [= Odysseus], face to face’. In this example, then, Odysseus is quite literally ‘looking like’ the gods, as expressed by the adjective enalinkios. In the next example, it is the adjective homoios that expresses the idea that Odysseus is ‘looking like’ the gods when Telemachus sees him, face to face. In this case, the divine looks of Odysseus are caused not by a ritual bath in the asaminthos but by direct physical contact with the goddess Athena herself:

11 Nagy (2007) 28.

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15)

ἦ, καὶ χρυσείῃ ῥάβδῳ ἐπεμάσσατ’ Ἀθήνη. φᾶρος μέν οἱ πρῶτον ἐϋπλυνὲς ἠδὲ χιτῶνα θῆκ’ ἀμφὶ στήθεσφι, δέμας δ’ ὤφελλε καὶ ἥβην. ἂψ δὲ μελαγχροιὴς γένετο, γναθμοὶ δ’ ἐτάνυσθεν,

175

κυάνεαι δ’ ἐγένοντο ἐθειράδες ἀμφὶ γένειον. ἡ μὲν ἄρ’ ὣς ἔρξασα πάλιν κίεν· αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς ἤϊεν ἐς κλισίην. θάμβησε δέ μιν φίλος υἱός, ταρβήσας δ’ ἑτέρωσε βάλ’ ὄμματα, μὴ θεὸς εἴη, καί μιν φωνήσας ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα·

180

“ἀλλοῖός μοι, ξεῖνε, φάνης νέον ἠὲ πάροιθεν, ἄλλα δὲ εἵματ’ ἔχεις καί τοι χρὼς οὐκέθ’ ὁμοῖος. ἦ μάλα τις θεός ἐσσι, τοὶ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν· ἀλλ’ ἵληθ’, ἵνα τοι κεχαρισμένα δώομεν ἱρὰ ἠδὲ χρύσεα δῶρα, τετυγμένα· φείδεο δ’ ἡμέων”.

185

τὸν δ’ ἠμείβετ’ ἔπειτα πολύτλας δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς· “οὔ τίς τοι θεός εἰμι· τί μ’ ἀθανάτοισιν ἐΐσκεις; ἀλλὰ πατὴρ τεός εἰμι, τοῦ εἵνεκα σὺ στεναχίζων πάσχεις ἄλγεα πολλά, βίας ὑποδέγμενος ἀνδρῶν”. ὣς ἄρα φωνήσας υἱὸν κύσε, κὰδ δὲ παρειῶν

190

δάκρυον ἧκε χαμᾶζε· πάρος δ’ ἔχε νωλεμὲς αἰεί. Τηλέμαχος δ’, – οὐ γάρ πω ἐπείθετο ὃν πατέρ’ εἶναι, – ἐξαῦτίς μιν ἔπεσσιν ἀμειβόμενος προσέειπεν· “οὐ σύ γ’ Ὀδυσσεύς ἐσσι πατὴρ ἐμός, ἀλλά με δαίμων θέλγει, ὄφρ’ ἔτι μᾶλλον ὀδυρόμενος στεναχίζω.

195

οὐ γάρ πως ἂν θνητὸς ἀνὴρ τάδε μηχανόῳτο ᾧ αὐτοῦ γε νόῳ, ὅτε μὴ θεὸς αὐτὸς ἐπελθὼν ῥηϊδίως ἐθέλων θείη νέον ἠδὲ γέροντα. ἦ γάρ τοι νέον ἦσθα γέρων καὶ ἀεικέα ἕσσο· νῦν δὲ θεοῖσιν ἔοικας, οἳ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσι”.

200

τὸν δ’ ἀπαμειβόμενος προσέφη πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεύς· “Τηλέμαχ’, οὔ σε ἔ οικε φίλον πατέρ’ ἔνδον ἐόντα οὔτε τι θαυμάζειν περιώσιον οὔτ’ ἀγάασθαι· οὐ μὲν γάρ τοι ἔτ’ ἄλλος ἐλεύσεται ἐνθάδ’ Ὀδυσσεύς, ἀλλ’ ὅδ’ ἐγὼ τοιόσδε, παθὼν κακά, πολλὰ δ’ ἀληθείς,

205

ἤλυθον εἰκοστῷ ἔτεϊ ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν. αὐτάρ τοι τόδε ἔργον Ἀθηναίης ἀγελείης, ἥ τέ με τοῖον ἔθηκεν ὅπως ἐθέλει, δύναται γάρ, ἄλλοτε μὲν πτωχῷ ἐναλίγκιον, ἄλλοτε δ’ αὖτε ἀνδρὶ νέῳ καὶ καλὰ περὶ χροῒ εἵματ’ ἔχοντι.

210

ῥηΐδιον δὲ θεοῖσι, τοὶ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν, ἠμὲν κυδῆναι θνητὸν βροτὸν ἠδὲ κακῶσαι”.

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So spoke Athena, and she touched him [= Odysseus] with her golden wand. First she made his mantle and his tunic to be cleanly washed, she made it be that way, what he was wearing over his chest, and she augmented his size and his youthfulness. His tan complexion came back, and his jaws got firmed up,

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and dark again became the beard around his chin. Then she [= Athena], having done her work, went back where she came from, while Odysseus headed for the shelter. His dear son [= Telemachus] marveled at him, and, in his amazement, he [= Telemachus] cast his gaze away from him, in another direction, fearing that he [= Odysseus] might be a god. And he [= Telemachus] addressed him [= Odysseus], speaking winged words:

180

“As a different kind of person [alloios], stranger, have you appeared [phainesthai] to me just now, different than before. You have different clothes and your complexion is no longer the same kind [homoios]. You must be some god, one of those gods who hold the wide sky. So be gracious, in order that we may give you pleasing sacrifices and golden gifts of good workmanship. Have mercy on us”.

185

And he [= Telemachus] was answered then by the one who suffered many things, the radiant Odysseus: “I am not some god. Why do you liken [eïskein] me to the immortals? But I am your father, for whom you mourn and suffer many pains, enduring the violent acts of men”. Having said these things, he kissed his son and let fall from his cheeks

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a tear, letting it fall to the ground. Until then he had persisted in showing no sign of pity. And Telemachus, since he was not yet convinced that he [= Odysseus] was his father, once again addressed him with words in reply: “You are not Odysseus my father. Instead, some superhuman force is enchanting me, and it makes me weep and mourn even more.

195

I say this because no mortal man could craft these things that are happening to me, no mortal could do these things by way of his own devising, unless a god comes in person and, if he so wishes, easily makes someone a young man or makes him an old man.

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Why, just a little while ago you were an old man wearing unseemly clothes, but now you look like [= perfect of eïskein] the gods who hold the wide sky”.

200

He was answered by Odysseus, the one with many kinds of craft, who addressed him thus: “Telemachus, it does not seem right [= perfect of eïskein] for you to be amazed at your father who is right here inside [the shelter], for you to be amazed too much or to feel overwhelmed. There will never again be some different [allos] person who comes here, some different Odysseus, but here I am such [toiosde] as I am. I have had many bad things happen to me. I have been detoured in many different ways.

205

But now I am here, having come back in the twentieth year to the land of my ancestors. I tell you, this was the work of Athena, the giver of prizes, who has made me be such [toios] as she wants me to be, for she has the power. One moment, she has made me to be looking like [enalinkios] a beggar, and then, the next moment, like a young man who has beautiful clothes covering his complexion.

210

It is easy for the gods, who hold the wide sky, to make a mortal man become exalted with radiance or to debase him. Odyssey 16.172-212

In this example (number 15), we see that Odysseus no longer looks the same when his complexion is changed by the goddess. His complexion is no longer homoios (ὁμοῖος) ‘the same kind’ (verse 182). That is why he no longer looks the same. Now he looks different. He is now a different kind of person. At the beginning of this essay, I noted that alloios (ἀλλοῖος) ‘a different kind’ is the opposite of homoios (ὁμοῖος) ‘the same kind’. In the example I have just quoted, we see this meaning of alloios ‘a different kind’ in action (verse 181). I also noted that the extension -ios (-ιος) of the adjectives homoios (ὁμοῖος) ‘the same kind’ and alloios (ἀλλοῖος) ‘a different kind’ is parallel to the extension -ios (-ιος) of the adjectives hoios (oἷος) ‘what kind’ and toios (τοῖος) ‘that kind’. In the example I have just quoted, we also see this meaning of toios ‘that kind’ in action (verses 205, 208). In this same example (number 15), Odysseus looks like an old man or looks like a young man, whatever a divinity may wish (verse 198). But when he looks like a young man for Telemachus to see, his son needs to avert his eyes because he sees what he sees (verse 179). What he sees is that Odysseus at that moment looks not only like a

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young man but also like a divinity. When Odysseus asks his son, ‘Why do you liken [eïskein] me to the immortals’ (verse 187), Telemachus can rightly answer: ‘but now you look like [= perfect of eïskein] the gods who hold the wide sky’ (verse 200). And, in terms of the ritual transformation of Odysseus by way of a sacred bath in an asaminthos or by way of a sacred contact with the wand of the goddess Athena herself, this mortal not only looks like one of the gods but he actually becomes a god in the ritual moment marked by the similes that liken him to the god. I offer at this point this general formulation: for a mortal to appear like an immortal to other mortals is to become a divinity in a ritual moment of epiphany - as marked by the similes that make mortals equal to divinities in that ritual moment. Similarly, when the divine Muses so wish, words that appear to be true can really be true: 01)

ποιμένες ἄγραυλοι, κάκ᾿ ἐλέγχεα, γαστέρες οἶον, ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα, ἴδμεν δ᾿, εὖτ᾿ ἐθέλωμεν, ἀληθέα γηρύσασθαι.

Shepherds camping in the fields, base objects of reproach, mere bellies! We know how to say many deceptive things looking like [homoia] genuine things, but we also know how, whenever we wish it, to proclaim things that are true. Hesiodic Theogony 26–28

In this example, what is deceptive is not that some things are ‘looking like’ other things. Rather, what is deceptive is that pseudea ‘deceptive things’ can look like real things. And even these deceptive things that look like real things can still be equal to real things, the same as real things. As we saw earlier, for example, Odysseus is really ‘equal to the immortals’ when he looks like an immortal in ritual contexts. If Telemachus is deceived by the looks of Odysseus in such contexts, then the deception is in the eyes of the uninitiated beholder who cannot yet distinguish between what is deceptive and what is real. Similarly in the Hesiodic Theogony, the figure of Hesiod has been such an uninitiated beholder before his poetic initiation into the art of the Muses. After his initiation, however, he can now envision what is real even when he beholds things that can be deceptive.12 12 On the theme of Hesiod’s poetic initiation, I have more to say, with further references, in Nagy (2009).

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The same principle holds whenever Odysseus utters words to be envisioned only by those who have already been initiated into the art of the Muses of poetry: 16)

ἴσκε ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγων ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα

He made likenesses [eïskein], saying many deceptive things looking like [homoia] genuine things. Odyssey 19.203

In this example as well, what is deceptive is not that some things are ‘looking like’ other things. Rather, what is deceptive is that pseudea ‘deceptive things’ look like real things. And, once again, even these deceptive things that look like real things can still be equal to real things - the same as real things as seen by those who are initiated into the art of the Muses.13 The art of the Muses is the art of poetic imagination, which can make even deceptive things look like real things, be equal to real things, be the same as real things. Such is the art that is borrowed by the alluring figure of Helen when she makes her voice identical to the voice of any wife of any Homeric hero: φωνὴν ἴσκουσ’ ἀλόχοισιν ‘she was making her voice like [eïskein] the voices of their wives’ (Odyssey 4.279). Her voice, borrowed from the poetry of the Muses, has the power of conjuring the voices of the wives themselves. And, by extension, her poetic voice has the power of conjuring the very images of the wives. True, Helen means to deceive, but her deceptive words in this narrative frame are the same as the real words of Homeric poetry in the overall narrative frame of that poetry - real words that activate visions of the real things of Homeric poetry. These real things are whatever is real for this poetry, which is figured as true. For Homeric poetry, whatever is divinely true can contain deceptions and still be true. A salient example of such deception contained within the overall framework of divine truth is the moment when the goddess Aphrodite appears in an epiphany to the young hero Anchises, looking like a young girl:

13 My interpretation of Odyssey 9.203 follows my analysis in Nagy (1990) 44, 274. I consider my current translation, however, to be an improvement on the one I offered in that analysis: ‘He spoke, assimilating many falsehoods to make them look like genuine things’.

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17)

παρθένῳ ἀδμήτῃ μέγεθος καὶ εἶδος ὁμοίη μή μιν ταρβήσειεν ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖσι νόησας.

Like a virgin unwed, in size and in looks [eidos], that is what she [= Aphrodite] was looking like [homoie]. She did not want him to get alarmed when he with his own eyes perceived her. Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 82-83

Later on in the same narrative, when Aphrodite reveals herself as a goddess to Anchises, she says: 18)

καὶ φράσαι εἴ τοι ὁμοίη ἐγὼν ἰνδάλλομαι εἶναι οἵην δή με τὸ πρῶτον ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖσι νόησας;

And now you should take note whether I look like [indallesthai] the same kind of person [homoie] as the kind of person [hoie] you first saw when with your own eyes you perceived me. Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 178-179

In response, Anchises claims that he knew all along that the beautiful young girl was Aphrodite: 19)

αὐτίκα σ’ ὡς τὰ πρῶτα θεὰ ἴδον ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ἔγνων ὡς θεὸς ἦσθα·

The moment I saw you, goddess, with my own eyes I just knew that you were a goddess. Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 185-186

Whether or not Anchises knew all along that the girl was Aphrodite, it is all in the eyes of the mortal viewer, the sameness or the difference. But the divine vision, either way, is true in the long run, and this truth is mediated by the poetic art of the Muses. Despite the seemingly easy equivalence of immortals and mortals in these last three examples, the fundamental difference between them remains a fatally serious difficulty, as we see elsewhere in the ominous words of Apollo when the god warns the reckless hero Diomedes: 20)

φράζεο Τυδεΐδη καὶ χάζεο, μηδὲ θεοῖσιν ἶσ’ ἔθελε φρονέειν, ἐπεὶ οὔ ποτε φῦλον ὁμοῖον ἀθανάτων τε θεῶν χαμαὶ ἐρχομένων τ’ ἀνθρώπων

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Take note, son of Tydeus, and draw back. Do not try, with regard to the gods, to think thoughts equal [isa] to their thoughts, since our kind and your kind are not at all the same [homoion], I mean, the lineage of the immortal gods and the lineage of humans who walk the earth. Iliad 5.440-442

I bring this essay to a close by showing three more examples of similes activated by the adjective homoios: 21)

βῆ δ’ ἴμεν ἐς θάλαμον πολυδαίδαλον, ᾧ ἔνι κούρη κοιμᾶτ’ ἀθανάτῃσι φυὴν καὶ ε ἶδος ὁμοίη

She [= the goddess Athena] came into the private chamber, with its many adornments, where the girl [= Nausikaa] was sleeping. Like the immortal goddesses, in shape and in looks [eidos], she [= Nausicaa] was looking like [homoie] them. Odyssey 6.15-16 22)

λευκότεροι χιόνος, θείειν δ’ ἀνέμοισιν ὁμοῖοι

And they [= the horses of Rhesus] were whiter than snow, and they were like [homoioi] the winds, the way they ran. Iliad 10.437 23)

αἳ δὲ βάτην τρήρωσι πελειάσιν ἴθμαθ’ ὁμοῖαι

And they [= the goddesses Hera and Athena] went along, like [homoiai] tremulous doves, the way they went. Iliad 5.778

All three examples show the power of poetic visualization, even though only the first of the three is explicit in expressing the use of eyesight in the visualization. In a simile, when something is like something else, the likeness does not have to be a permanent resemblance that links one noun visually with another noun. The likeness can be a momentary resemblance between any overall visualization and any other overall visualization. For example, it is not that Hera and Athena always look like tremulous doves.14 But there are moments when they can be envisioned that way. One such moment is when you see them in motion, when you see them fluttering like tremulous doves. 14 With reference to this example as well as to others I have already analyzed, my interpretation differs from that of Heiden (2007).

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In conclusion, I propose to say more generally what I said earlier with specific reference to Odyssey 16.172-212 (number 15 in my repertory of examples). When anyone in Homeric narrative is deceived by the looks of something or someone, such deception is in the eyes of the uninitiated beholder who cannot distinguish between what is deceptive and what is real. Similarly in the Hesiodic Theogony, as I have argued, the figure of Hesiod is such an uninitiated beholder before his poetic initiation into the art of the Muses. After his initiation, as I have also argued, Hesiod can envision what is real even when he beholds those things that may be deceptive. In translating pseudea ... etumoisin homoia (ψεύδεα ... ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα) as ‘deceptive things [pseudea] looking like [homoia] genuine [etuma] things’ at verse 27 of the Theogony, I highlight the idea that whatever things look like etuma ‘genuine things’ in one given localized poetic version could look like pseudea ‘deceptive things’ in a rival localized poetic version; each locale could have its own poetic version, and all such local versions show relative truth values - in comparison to the absolutized truth that is signaled by the word alēthea ‘true things’ at verse 28.15

15 Nagy (1990) 44-46; at p. 44 I compare the use of pseudea ‘deceptive things’ in the Homeric Odyssey with reference to localized poetic versions of a “Cretan Odyssey” as narrated by the disguised Odysseus in the form of “Cretan lies”.

Hesiod, Th. 117 and 128: Formula and the Text’s Temporality Pierre Judet de La Combe École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris In his readings of Homer, Hesiod and the Greek tragedians, Pietro Pucci teaches us to follow two paths simultaneously: the one which presents itself as the semantic content of a text as it is produced by its statements (the “dit,”); and the way in which it is said and expressed in language (the “dire”), with the variances and tensions arising when these two moments or these two aspects of language activity fail to coincide. On the one hand, we have a representation which can be assembled and structured along hierarchical lines into a doctrine, when the text has a theoretical or totalizing aim like Hesiod’s; we see this for example in the Theogony where the opposition between immortals and mortals, Olympian and chthonic divinities, Sky and Tartarus, Earth and Night, etc. is clearly delineated; and on the other hand, we have an activity that destabilizes and challenges the representation and the dichotomies on which it is based. On the one hand, a spatial dimension of the text as a system of meaning, on the other the temporality of the “dire,” which is both the condition of meaning and, if we know how to read it, the symptom of its inauthenticity, of its secondary nature which appears to be a precarious construct as opposed to the original foundation of the activity of language itself; language is in fact indifferent, neutral with regard to the semantic oppositions it engenders. Reading brings us to a stage before meaning that opens up a proliferation of meanings. If the author in question, like Hesiod, is not naïve; if, as Pucci’s interpretation suggests, he already knows how to communicate the porosity of the true and the false, and their essential non-contradiction, since both are products of language, then we are all the more justified in our pursuit of this enterprise. The author invites us to follow him through his brilliant variations, in his disengagement from any fixed assertion. Above all, he invites us to read every statement as being by nature diachronic (Pucci would say intertextual), not as a more or less appropriate and coherent notation of an actual external or mental state, but rather as a reprise, a

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diversion of an earlier textual given. The text derives its unity not from its representation but from this movement, which creates its style. Pucci’s books Hesiod and the Language of Poetry1 and Inno alle Muse (Esiodo, Teogonia 1-115)2 open up for us the extraordinary fruitfulness of this dual approach. One question that arises is whether what we call meaning should be considered purely a product of the statement and its clear delineations, with the risk for it to get contradicted by its enunciation; or if meaning is not in this very movement, if we should not think of it as being directed and determined rather than neutral or neutralizing. Is variance open or rather constructive, over and above the sometimes contradictory representations through which the text passes? Does the activity of the “dire”, that is often deemed more important than the “dit” when the two terms are contrasted,3 not produce a “dit” of another sort than the sum of the statements or their integration into a coherent whole: the possibility of which the text sometimes forbids us to consider, when its discontinuity places too many obstacles to such an integration? Does it not produce a content, or a truth intended by the text? The content is audible only if our attention, instead of becoming fascinated by the local and partial content of the sentences, is focused on the modes, accidents and regularities of expression in the text as a whole in its successive effects. According to this kind of reading, the text can say something through its construction without it being the object of an explicit statement, and without the absence of such a statement necessarily discrediting the idea of a possible content. The question is central for philology, for it leads to different decisions regarding the letter of the text, and the different ways in which we debate these critical decisions ʊ when for example, we have to decide whether to retain two statements that contradict each other within a few lines. In the name of supporting the idea that a text should provide a clear representation, should we eliminate one of the two statements, or should we try at all costs to analyze it in search of a semantic coherence? If on the other hand we retain the contradiction or the incompatibility, is it in the name of accepting the surprising semiotic variance of a text, or because a definite meaning, other than the one we first discovered, emerges by way of this logical shift? Lines 117 and 128 of the Theogony put forward two assertions that, if taken at face value, are incompatible. The first statement attributes to 1 2 3

(1977). (2007). Here we find, transposed, Schopenhauer’s opposition between will and representation, with primacy given to the first term.

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Earth, the second divinity to be born after Chaos, the predicate “the ever immovable seat of all / the immortals” (pantōn hēdos asphales aiei / athanatōn).4 The second, in a slightly different formulation, apparently attributes the same quality to Sky, whom Earth is said to have begotten “so that he would be the ever immovable seat for the blessed gods” (ophr’eiē makaressi theois hēdos asphales aiei). Since this is the first presentation of the original deities, the discrepancy can seem incongruous: in an opening passage where Hesiod asserts a precise theogonic thesis that contrasts sharply, for example, with Homer’s, who has all the creatures derive from Ocean and not from the initial pair Chaos-Earth (Il. 24.201, 246, 302), we would expect him to be clear and in control of what he says. The most radical way to deal with the incongruity has been the athetēsis of line 128. The argument, which can rely on no variance or contradiction within the textual tradition, is thus a simple matter of common sense: Admonente Heynio versum uncis notavi. Alienum illum hoc esse, qui proxime praecedentem legerit, statim arbitrabitur.5 D.J. Van Lennep, unwilling to suppress a text established by the tradition, proposes another remedy: to make Earth, and not Sky, the subject of the clause. If Earth begets Sky, so that it will cover her, it is to stabilize her and thus make her indeed a fixed residence for the gods, thanks to the roof or the enclosure provided by Sky: facit enim sane tectum vel septum, quo firmius vel tutius sit domicilium.6 Recently, Most has adopted this syntactical solution: 4

5

6

The translation of hēdos as “assise” (literally “seat”) by Mazon (1928), emphasizes the cosmological function of Earth, as a basis or foundation. But this does not correspond to the Homeric usage of the formula, always applied to Olympus (see below), where it clearly pertains to the place inhabited by the gods (see Schwabl 1959, 30-36). As for “séjour” (abode), used by Mazon in his translation of the corresponding passages in the Iliad, or “demeure” (dwelling place), these words have a temporal meaning that is not found in hēdos, which signifies “siège” (seat), as a specific place where one sits, or more broadly, as a place where one resides. Wolf (1783) ad loc. Solmsen considers this possibility: his apparatus notes fort. recte after the mention of the athetēsis by Heyne (Hesiodi Theogonia, Opera et Dies, Scutum, Oxford, 1970). (1843) ad loc. Welcker (1865, 113) adopts the same interpretation. This representation is the basis of Clay’s analysis of the passage: although she clearly makes Sky the subject of the verb, she sees in his begetting the means by which Earth strengthens her own attributes: “by parthenogenesis, Earth produces Uranus, the Heaven, to cover or enclose her in all directions, as if she somehow required such delimitation in order to possess the localization and solidity that characterize her”, (2003) 16. The analysis is fundamental, because it is certainly after the birth of Sky and the declaration of his two functions that the component parts of Earth, with the mountains and the sea, can be born. The text,

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“so that she would be the ever immovable seat for the blessed gods”.7 Before launching into an interpretation, we should note that the construction of the sentence is formulaic and seems to exclude the possibility of making Earth, and not Sky, the subject. The final clause (“so that…”, ophr’) repeats an initial one (hina…), in which Sky is clearly the subject, according to Homeric usage, with the same metrical distribution of conjunctions. In Homer, the subject does not change from one clause to another. We read here [egeinato..] / Ouranon asteroenth’, hina min peri panta kaluptoi, / ophr’ eiē makaressi theois hēdos asphales aiei (“[she bore…] starry Sky… to cover her on every side, / so that he would be the ever immovable seat for the blessed gods”), exactly as we read in Il. 15.3132. (Zeus is addressing Hera): tōn s’autis mnēso, hin’ apollēxēis apataōn, / ophra idēi ēn toi khraismēi philotēs te kai eunē (“I will remind you of all this, so you will give up / your deceptions, so that you will see if your lovemaking in bed will help you”). So too, Il. 3.163-166 repeat a final clause (with an interpolated phrase between the two clauses): ophr’ idei…/ hos…, with a continuity of the subject. In our text we must indeed read a change, from line 117 to 128, in the attribution of the position of the “ever immovable seat for the blessed gods”, from Earth to Sky. The text does not note a representation; it offers a path. An indication of the need to question this passage is already provided by Hesiod himself, in his initial characterization of Sky. Earth begets him “equal to herself” (ison heoutēi, 126).8 Sky is both her double and a different creature. It is thus possible that an essential attribute of Earth is transferred to her first son. But what are the consequences? We have at our disposal two ways of responding to this question: we can consider first the formulaic use underlying Hesiod’s text, and second the unfolding of his text. Just as “seat of the immortals/gods” is a formula which in Homer is never attributed to Earth or to Sky, but always to Olympus (Il. 5.360, 5.367, 8.456, without the epithet asphales, Od. 6.42, with the epithet), and since Homer’s text, like Hesiod’s, reveals through the complexity of usage some reflection on the question, which was no doubt difficult for the singers themselves, of the relation between Sky as the gods’ rightful place (cf. Il. 6.108, 6.128 etc), and Olympus,9 it

7 8 9

however, reaches this result after a paradoxical variation on the attribute of solidity. (2006). A marked, not formulaic expression, whereas the rest of the sentence goes back to traditional elements. See West (1966) 194 ad 118-119, who seems to be aware of this difficulty, or vagueness in the tradition, between heaven and Olympus (on earth), when he minimizes the incompatibility of the two usages: “The answer to it is perhaps

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seems clear that the poet of the Theogony, in changing the attribution of the formula, is not content to construct a theo-cosmogonical representation, but also indicates how he relates to a heritage that he already finds problematic and that he re-interprets. He indicates also the meaning that his narrative assumes, as it is composed of elements borrowed from tradition and transformed. His use of the formula is diachronic in two ways:10 there is an external diachrony, in the text’s relationship to the linguistic material it has at its disposal, with the shifts it effects when it offers a non-standard usage of the formula (related to Earth) followed by a usage closer to the standard (when the residence becomes Sky, the traditional home of the gods, like Olympus);11 then there is a diachrony within the text, through repetition. In the lines separating these two uses, Olympus, which we would expect to be the “gods’ home”, is indeed mentioned, and situated in the theogonic process. To better understand the significance and meaning of this work on inherited material, it is worth quoting this whole passage of the Theogony (116 -132): In truth, first of all Chasm came to be, and then broad-breasted Earth, the ever immovable seat of all the immortals who possess snowy Olympus’ peak and murky Tartarus in the depths of the broad-pathed earth, and Eros, who is the most beautiful among the immortal gods, the limb-melter – he overpowers the mind and the thoughtful counsel of all the gods and of all human beings in their breasts.

that, after all, the gods do have homes both on earth and in heaven, and their Olympian city may be thought of as in either realm”. But it is less a question of reconciling the two statements in even a vague representation that reflects the tradition, than of understanding a change in the text. 10 I refer to the idea of a double historicity in the text, as the account of an earlier historical given, and as an internal temporal unfolding, that I put forward with Wismann (2004) 215 ff. A second type of historicity, which leaves open the possibility of re-interpretation and of a correction of earlier statements, contributes to defining the first one, namely the nature of the relationship to the linguistic given as it is reworked. Here, reformulated to take account of the internal temporality of the discourse, we find the two directions of philological interpretation defined by Schleiermacher, depending on whether the interpretation is “grammatical” (concerned with codes that pre-exist the text) or “technical” (how the text works on these codes). 11 A similar contrast, with a standard usage following a non-standard one, appears in lines 32 and 37. The triad of eras, present-future-past (ta t’ eonta ta t’ essomena pro t’ eonta) is first given in a truncated form, without the present, creating a questioning, then is repeated in its usual form. We still need to investigate this diachronic relationship in repetition, between a non-conformist usage and a more or less standard use of formulae, as a way of constructing meaning based on expectations associated with the use of formula.

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From Chasm, Erebos and black Night came to be; and then Aether and Day came forth from Night, who conceived and bore them after mingling in love with Erebos. Earth first of all bore starry Sky, equal to herself, to cover her on every side, so that he12 would be the ever immovable seat for the blessed gods; and she bore the high mountains, the graceful haunts of the goddesses, Nymphs who dwell on the wooded mountains. And she also bore the barren sea seething with its swell, Pontus, without delightful love. (Most, 13)

The context of the formula hēdos asphales changes considerably from one passage to the other. Several purely factual observations offer some elements of interpretation. In one case (117), the predicate “immovable seat”, linked to the non-Homeric but probably ‘ritual’ epithet “broadbreasted”,13 is asserted as an essential characteristic of Earth in a complex presentation contained in a sentence of more than three lines, with enjambments (lines 116 ff., 117 ff.) and a long relative clause (“ever immovable seat of all the immortals who possess…”) associating two contrary aspects of Earth, the high sunny part of Olympus and the low, dark part of Tartarus;14 the stable quality of the gods’ abode must thus, somehow or other, be semantically related with this polarity (see below). This development, matching the three lines devoted to Eros who is also defined by a long relative clause, contrasts sharply with the presentation of 12 This is a modification of Glenn Most’s translation (‘she’) for line 128. 13 See West, ad loc. 14 I shall not get into the somewhat delicate discussion of the status of Tartarus, the third primordial deity: is it nominative or accusative, depending, like karē niphoentos Olumpou, on hoi ekhousi? In this case one might say that the gods, who surround the reigning Zeus or the ousted Cronus, occupy the two extremes of Earth. The fact that we have a neuter plural, the presence of the particle te, the placement of Tartarus “in the depths of the earth” (mukhōi khthonos), in contrast to “snowy Olympus’ peak” lead us, I think, to opt for the second hypothesis. Earth, confronted with Chaos, whose traits are taken over by Tartarus (cf. especially line 740, with the “great chasm”, khasma mega), is split, presenting two contrasting aspects, light and full vs. foggy and hollow. Earth has herself a component that is close to that of Chaos, whom she opposes. Thus we end up ( and this is an additional argument) with an organization of the text in triads (Schwabl) after the incomplete line dedicated to Chaos: three lines for Earth (plus the end of line 116), three lines for Eros, and then three lines for the descendants of Chaos; Schwabl notes that we have another triad with the birth of Sky, which ends with the mention of the “immovable seat for the blessed gods”, as a kind of reminder of the line that opens the triads (line 117); but the following part of the text (two lines for the mountains, two lines for Pontus, with an incomplete line, as for Chaos) that continues the genealogy, does not follow this pattern.

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Chaos, who is simply named, with no determiner, as if the name alone were clear and needed no predicates. In the other case (128), the formula, inserted in a line without enjambment, with the no doubt significant variant “of all …/ the immortals” vs. “for the blessed gods”, is not developed, but used as it is, without further details. But that does not mean that the syntax is less complex. In line 117, the quality of “seat” is simply stated; Earth’s association with this function is presented as natural, a given, intrinsic to the creature being born (even if, according to the formulaic usage, this is not strictly the case and comes as a surprise). In line 128, on the other hand, the association is not asserted, but designated as a goal (“so that he would be the ever immovable seat”). It is the result of Earth’s intent and action, related to another aim (“in order to”), namely that Sky will cover all. Here we are in the order of a complex narrative and no longer in a description with the assertion of an essential predicate and its detailed analysis. Besides, the presentation of Sky and the projects of Earth when she gives birth to him bear witness to the internal temporality of the text, insofar as it takes account of its unfolding cumulative and interpretative effects. Indeed, we note that the reference to the descendants of Chaos (Night, Darkness and their children Ether and Day), situated between the two passages, clarifies and directs the presentation of Sky and of what he should be. He is, first of all, nocturnal, as a “starry” sky.15 Then, the role assigned to him “to cover her [Earth] on every side” (peri panta kaluptoi), also has nocturnal connotations. The presence of the dark lineage of Chaos before Earth begets Sky allows us to better understand the formulation of line 127. It provides one more argument for preferring the reading peri panta kaluptoi, given by the manuscripts, to peri pasan eergoi (“so that he might enclose her totally”), sometimes chosen by editors, which is attested in some manuscripts of Cornutus (§ 17) and in scholium T on Il. 12.5. The verb “to cover on every side” (perikaluptein), in the sense of “to hide” is linked to the darkness of a vapor and to death in the Iliad (cf. 17.243, “this cloud of war is darkened on all things”; cf. 5.506 ff. for the night with which Ares covers the field of battle, amphi de nukta / thourios Arēs ekalupse). Line 127 is not content with spatializing the link between Earth and Sky; in a formal geometry, it makes clear the nature of the superimposition of the two parents. Sky integrates elements of Chaos’ pedigree, which, as we know, is kept strictly separate from Earth’s ancestry throughout the poem, since there

15 As Pucci (2007) 129 reminds us, the epithet asteroeis is reserved for Sky in Hesiod.

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is no sexual union between the two lineages.16 But this separation is analyzed by the text. It is not only distance and contrast, but also dynamism. It nourishes the integrative power of Earth, who can include in her fecundity features of the other pole, because she is the original deity of the gods who are endowed with a history, and who provide the content of the Theogony, while the creatures born of Chaos are the subject of no story apart from that of their birth. Earth is positive,17 in the sense that she produces immortal beings who are or have been responsible for the world. For that, she is not opposed to the other lineage in a binary way, but welcomes their potentialities by changing them. Thus in the text, Sky could only be born after Night, Darkness and their lineage. Earth begets a god, who on the one hand is her equal, and could thus be in his turn the “ever immovable seat of all the immortals”, and who on the other hand recalls the first creature that Earth opposes after her birth. The opening that is linked to the very nature of Chaos as a chasm finds a stable form once it has been measured according to the exact dimensions of Earth. After this point, the text makes the link between Sky and Night explicit. In the account of Sky’s coupling with Earth, it is the night that he associates with his physical hold (176 ff.): “And great Sky came, bringing night with him; and spreading himself out around Earth / in his desire for love he lay outstretched in all directions”. To procreate the lineage of “the blessed gods”, whose dwelling place he is supposed to provide, Sky used the alternation between day and night, that in the text was produced just before his birth. As a total enveloping of Earth, this act of sexual union, decisive for the story of the gods, fulfils in a brief, momentary fashion the first of Sky’s permanent functions directed by Earth in our passage: to hide her totally. Again, the textual diachrony alters the full significance of the statements. The first time he is presented (127), Sky is to be endowed with a function that will define him forever. This function, when we go on to the narration of his story, becomes an event in the alternation between day and night, with an important detail: for the story of the coupling, night is ‘brought’ by Sky. He is master of the event, and remains so, since he is the one who brings the night; he has,

16 With the one paradox of the double birth of the Moirai (Fates), first born of Night (217), then of Zeus and Themis (904), descendants of Earth. The repetition indicates a symbolic integration into the definitive and total order of the reigning Zeus of an element that is at first foreign to him, but that is decisive. The order of Zeus involves the fate of mortals, just as the Moirai have determined it. 17 While Night produces differences or destruction, but not things.

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at least in part, integrated her.18 But the coupling, interrupted by the castration, is only one of the possible modes by which his permanent function can be realized. It is decisive, but inconsequential. This coupling is indeed the reason why Earth created Sky, but it happens in an inappropriate way. By preventing the birth of the children he conceives with Earth, he cannot be “the ever immovable seat of the gods”, since because of him the gods cannot see daylight. He fulfills, inappropriately, his first function but not the second. My two observations – on the one hand the essential, analytical and static nature of Earth as the “immovable seat” compared with the temporal nature of her project concerning Sky, and on the other hand, the use of nocturnal elements to describe Sky, and then later his story – can be interpreted together. Between the two passages, we find, with Chaos and his lineage, the creation of time in its visible aspects according to the alternation between Night and Day, associated with the physical opposition of Darkness with the celestial fire of Ether.19 Sky will not permanently accomplish the dual function assigned to him by Earth but with the help of time. As the celestial vault supporting the gods, he will not only serve as a fixed point for the alternation of darkness and light, of night and day, but above all he can only achieve this in the course of a process that requires the succession of days and years. What Sky at first refuses, by refusing to allow the birth of his children, is time and the risks it entails.20 The castration, an event situated in time and irreversi18 Night remains a stranger to him, since her house is on the opposite side from Sky, far beneath Earth (744). 19 The series of the second children of Night (212-232), by parthenogenesis and not by union, will give a negative content to time, as a power of limitation, destruction and conflict (and for the children of Eris the two human forms of conflict – war and legal quarrels). It is striking that the temporal schema created here, that will provide material for the theogonic narrative, repeats the essential traits of the life of mortals (with the Moirai, different aspects of death, the punishing Keres). Thus the narrative of the gods is paradoxically oriented according to the perspective of human finality: it is present reality that should be clarified, taking into account our mortal condition, by setting it into a divine framework that gives it its meaning. 20 One of the major differences between the theogonic narrative and the text of Genesis, as interpreted by de Launay (to whom I owe the formulation of the opposition between the semantic and the semiotic), is that in the Bible time is not created. Its power, however, is an organizing principle in the narrative of Genesis, but it is not the repetitive, closed (day/night) time of theogony, where decisive events unfolding from an origin explicitly defined at the beginning keep repeating themselves (in the similarity of divine crises and their resolutions), but it is open to history, to human events and to their unforeseen consequences. See Launay (2010).

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ble, obliges him also to be temporal. He will only be “immovable,” definitively fixed, if he first yields to this new situation and it is only after many struggles that the gods can be called “blessed”. The triad of lines describing the lineage of Chaos (123-125) open the narrative; they provide the temporal framework of the theogony. In this context, how can we interpret the variance surrounding the “immovable home of the gods”? The difference we have outlined between a spatial perspective, with the birth of Earth, and a temporal perspective, with that of Sky, provide elements for a solution. The spatiality of Earth, with its size (“broad-breasted”) and its stability, needs a foundation. In the course of the text her birth is an event that contrasts with the earlier birth of Chaos, later described as a dynamic void, unstable and without any spatial form, traversed by whirlwinds (742).21 The necessity of this event, as a required stage in the progression of the theogony, is established by the detailed analysis of Earth defined as “seat of the gods”. As noted previously,22 if we choose the most plausible option, the syntactic construction that makes the neuter Tartara not a nominative but an accusative depending on “all the immortals who possess…”, pantōn…/ athanatōn hoi ekhousi,23 then Earth is constituted around a polarity. She offers a solid place for two kinds of gods, both those who occupy Olympus and those who occupy Tartarus, namely both the Olympians gathered around Zeus and the Titans confined to Tartarus after their defeat. We thus understand the presence of the determiner “all (the immortals)”, that contrasts with the “blessed gods”, indicating only the Olympians in line 128. The first appearance of Earth in the theogonic narrative defines her by what she will be at the end of the narrative, after Zeus’ victory. Her first presentation in the text shows her as what she is to be in the present, in the spatial separation henceforth fixed between the actual places of divine generations (just as Eros, born after her, is shown through its present power over gods and men). The separation of the gods, after the story of their struggles, clarifies the meaning of the physical polarity that defines Earth: Earth’s places are filled, inhabited and thus for ever functional; nothing, no divine war can 21 We might be justified in turning to a much later passage to better understand the nature of Chaos. I think it can be shown that the description of Tartarus, after the Titanomachy, does belong to the text of the Theogony. An analysis of all the vignettes composing this section would show that this passage, often excluded from the text, is in fact authentic, or rather functional in the poem: the order of the descriptions repeats exactly, in a spatial mode, the succession of theogonic episodes. 22 See in particular Schwabl (n. 1 above). 23 Cf. n. 10.

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disturb them. The gods, in their contrasting ways, control the earth, which thus assures the stability that she is supposed to represent in opposition to Chaos. Theogony and cosmogony cannot thus be distinguished. The physical story is realized through the specific actions of the gods.24 It would be a mistake to say that the text has no cosmogonic significance, as a reflection on the totality of things, that it displays only an interest in the mythical, focused on the opposition between Zeus and the preceding generation, according to Schwabl’s view that we should read Hesiod for himself and not as anticipating of the Presocratic philosophers. In Hesiod the two perspectives are linked. Space is not a neutral frame, existing prior to divine events, but is a result of them. It is probably because Hesiod conforms to this principle, linking theogony and cosmogony as inseparable, that he gives a long description of Tartarus, with clearly cosmological formulations (as in the “sources and limits of all things”, 738, 809), only after the story of the Titans’ defeat. At first Earth is essentially opposed to Chaos. By choosing the variant of the formula that includes the epithet “immovable” (cf. Od. 6.42),25 by using the epithet “broad-breasted”, by multiplying spatial notations, with the “heights” of Olympus, and in contrast, the “hollow” of Earth, Hesiod clearly associates the stability of Earth to the polarity of the extremes that delimit her; one counterbalances the other. Earth in her totality is not the seat of the gods (that would be inappropriate), but in her extremities, which, because of their permanent contrast, distinguish her from the shapeless chasm of Chaos. In contrast to Chaos, she is not only full and bright with the snow of Olympus, but in a determined and stabilized relationship, she integrates the dark aspect of the chaotic void, which becomes a hollow in her lower regions.26 The logic that sustains this integration is essentially monistic in the sense that we would call dialectical today: there is a common element in these opposites that defines both their opposition and their solidarity. The evolution of things is not the unfolding of a conflict between two opposing principles 24 Schelling (1802-1803, French translation by Sulzer-Pernet 1999, 39) would say that we are in the symbolic order, where the universal (the world) and the specific (the individual actions of the gods) are inseparable, one signifying the other in a reciprocal relationship, while in the order of the schema (of the general rule) or of allegory, one of the terms signifies the other (for the schema, a rule signifies the object one constructs; for allegory, a specific object signifies a universal concept). 25 Whatever the historical relation between the two texts may be. 26 Cf. Vernant (2007) 1971: “Gaïa is not only the opposite, the positive response to dark Chaos; she is also his match”. Tartarus reproduces the original gaping chasm, against which Earth is placed, by situating it.

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of equal power, Chaos and Earth, but the story of their connection, one pole surpassing the other and creating the irreversible, because it is constructed both against and with it. Thus, as in the epic tradition, it is because of Olympus that Earth is the seat of the gods (and not, for example, in her median area where men live), but Hesiod, re-interpreting the formulae that we find in the Iliad and the Odyssey, adds that it is possible only if we situate the usual home of the reigning gods in tension with the home below, the whole functioning in the original opposition between Chaos and Earth. A cosmogony such as that proposed by Homer, that would have creatures arising from Ocean, would probably not be able to reach that conclusion.27 But these victorious gods still have to be produced. In line 128, they are defined as “blessed” in their “immovable seat” that is, according to this line, the sky. These terms echo28 the description of Olympus that we read in Od. 6.41-46, where the happiness of the gods is linked to the stability and indifference of the shining mountain in the face of the violent changes wrought by foul weather.29 But here it is not a question of Olympus at all.30 These traits are transferred to Sky by the same logic we encounter in the analysis of Earth. Just as in lines 117 ff. Earth was characterized by the function that was to be hers at the end of the theogony, with the opposition between Olympus and Tartarus as the gods’ habitat, so Sky is here defined by his final role. The “seat” is therefore distinctive, it does not concern all the gods but only the Olympians. In the end it is they who are the true gods, in the happiness that contrasts them radically from humans and separates them from the earth. The happiness particular to the gods consists of occupying the place that completes the 27 In the Iliad, this cosmogony is ironic; it appears in the false speeches of Hera. The Homeric poem apparently claims to tell in its totality the story of heroes without referring to a theo-cosmogonic deduction such as Hesiod’s. The story of human exploits, and of their divine implications in the present of the narrative, suffice, according to the Iliad, to make the story intelligible. There is an implicit conflict between the two epic forms. 28 Again, the historical relationship between these two texts cannot be defined. 29 “So grey-eyed Athene spoke and went away from her / to Olympos, where the abode of the gods stands firm and unmoving / forever, they say, and is not shaken with winds, nor spattered / with rains, nor does snow pile ever there, but the shining bright air / stretches cloudless away, and the white light glances upon it. / And there, and all their days, the blessed gods take their pleasure”. 30 Note that Olympus is absent from this first genealogy of Earth, who, right after Sky, bears the “high mountains” (129 ff.). Their description, as hilly places covered with forests that shelter the Nymphs, excludes Olympus and its light, which is not considered here because its usual function is filled by Sky.

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constitution of an ordered world. This world will be definitively ordered only when divine actions have stabilized the physical order of things, which is still threatened from time to time by conflicts between the gods (as we see in the struggles between Zeus and the Titans, and then Zeus and Typhoeus), and when they have ensured the political stability of the world under Zeus’ governance – in the proem, in the first detailed description of the god, he is said to be “king in the sky…” (71). This reign endures, and ensures the continual happiness of the gods, because it links two complementary elements; on the one hand, constraint, that prevents or punishes deviations: “holding the thunder and the blazing thunderbolt himself, since he gained victory in supremacy over his father Cronus” (72 ff.); and on the other hand, the soundness and balance of the distribution of powers, that suppresses discord between the gods: “and he distributed well all things alike to the immortals and devised their honors” (73 ff.). This order, proposed in the proem, will be produced by the narrative. The aim of the text of the Theogony, and especially its decisive episode, the Titanomachy, is condensed in line 128. The remoteness of the gods, in a place born of Earth and yet celestial, not terrestrial (earth being, like the sea, the place of human activity), is illustrated in the details of the narrative, whose effect will be the eternal happiness of the Olympians under Zeus’ reign. The struggle for power is clearly described later in the Theogony as a struggle for the sky (820): “Then, when Zeus had driven the Titans from the sky…”. Olympus is not at stake, it is not common to the two adversaries, but designates one of the camps: it is from here that Zeus and his brothers fight (633, cf. 391), while the Titans are based on another mountain, Othrys (632). In the account of the battle, sky and Olympus are clearly distinguished, as parts of the world equally afflicted by violence (679, 680), sky having the advantage of being the place looking down on the battle and the two adversaries (685 ff.): “and the noise of both sides reached the starry sky as they shouted encouragement”. But at this point neither of them can be considered “immovable”. At the turning point of the battle, when Zeus strikes the decisive blows that will force the Titans’ front line to retreat, before their rout under the stones hurled by the Hundred-Handers, the narrative says that the god advances “at the same time from the sky and from Olympus” (689). There is no confusion here, but rather the sign that the blows will strike home and assure Zeus of the possession of the sky, and thus of power.31 31 On the conformity of the Titanomachy with the narrative schema of the battles in the Iliad (with first, the balance between the two forces, then the decisive

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To make sense, the narrative of the conquest of power, which includes a brief upheaval of the world, shaken by the violence of war, must be preceded by a presentation of the universal stakes of the struggle, namely the domination of a world constructed as an ordered totality that, like the power it holds, will be permanent. This is what our passage achieves. The perspective is, as in line 117 ff., both theo- and cosmogonic, but this time with primacy given to the theogonic frame, since if Earth contains since birth the stability necessary for order to exist, she cannot realize this order except by her own act, a splitting that marks the beginning of her fertility; genealogy becomes the driving force of the presentation; it produces space and its structure. Geometry and equilibrium are the result of an act. Earth must not only produce a multiplicity of gods, as she will do through her union with Sky, but also produce the power that will not only fertilize her, but will ensure that the gods enjoy long life and superiority over all other creatures. To attain this goal, she proceeds to a splitting of herself that will create both a new identity (cf. “equal to herself”) and a difference, since as we have seen, her first son takes on some elements of Chaos. The boundless nature of Chaos will thus be both repeated and contained. The result will be the foundation of a divinity that on the one hand covers her by conforming to her measure, and on the other, as a distant place allowing the alternation between day and night, that will be the stable and representable equivalent of the lower chasm. The castration, preventing any reconciliation (spatial and sexual alike) between Sky and Earth, will establish an upper chasm, which in the end concerns only the victorious gods, while the lower chasm of Tartarus remains bottomless, like the initial Chaos. By begetting Sky, Earth, a stable authority, transfers her own capacity to oppose Chaos to the being who from on high fixes for ever the universe where stories of the gods take place (the creatures relegated to Tartarus being henceforth without history, beyond representable space). From a strictly cosmological and descriptive point of view, the two chasms, lower and upper, can be conceived and represented together, in a spatial relationship that is quantifiable. Thus in line 720 it is said at the opening of the description that Tartarus is the place “as far down beneath the earth as the sky is above the earth”. But from the point of view of the production of creatures, of their genesis, these two poles cannot be posited simultaneously. One follows the other, for their meanings are not identical. The lower chasm comes first, as the immediate result of the opposition of Earth and Chaos, while the upper one, individual blow that breaks the enemy line, and finally the collective rush of the victors), see Blaise-Rousseau (1996) 213-233.

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which closes the construction of the universe, comes second, as a child of Earth, the only creature capable of producing stability and of placing a limit on night and the proliferation of things. The attribute of “ever immovable seat of all the immortals” is transferred from the principle that brings stability, Earth, to the product of that principle, Sky. The transfer emphasizes the difference that we are simultaneously led to think of as identity. The same thing is stated twice (the gods have a stable dwelling place), but with a difference that we should examine. The difference is important on the semantic level, since Sky and Earth cannot be mistaken for each other, their fusion has been halted by the castration and corresponds to a moment of disorder: the cosmic tumult wrought by Zeus’ violence in the Titanomachy is in fact compared to this primordial union (702 ff.). But beyond this difference, the proximity of the two usages in the unfolding of the text makes this repetition a clue to a permanence through variation. It indicates the limits of the narrative, the space in which it will unfold and that it will fill. It is in fact the first procreation that, through the relationship of identity and difference that it produces between the two creatures, creates the possibility of an articulated and finalized theogonic narrative. The transfer of the formula indicates the completion of the history of things and of the gods, with the happiness that the divine beings finally enjoy ruling over a world that is definitively structured. The very beginning of the genealogy that Earth produces (127 ff.) thus anticipates the orientation of this narrative. If we return to the opposition referred to in the introduction of this analysis between the “dit” and the “dire”, the difference between the two assertions about the seat of the gods (in accordance with the semantic dimension of the “dit”) finds its meaning and justification through the semiotic complexity of the “dire”, which creates a double surprise in relation to the common usages of the formula, and through internal variation, in the striking repetition and the tension it creates. The formula, which implies by its very nature as traditional form, repetition, is not a tool, nor the expression of an “essential idea”,32 but an interpretandum, that, by its compressed nature, identical despite the plurality of its possible uses, allows the performers to attach an array of problems and questions to it. The text requires us to recall what we find in other texts, and to what it originally posited. Starting from the traditional assimilation of “seat of the gods”/“Olympus” and from the fluctuation, in the tradition, between the sky and Olympus as the proper place of the gods, Hesiod, through the precision of the “dire”, uses the 32 Cf. Parry’s definition of the Homeric formula, that illustrates a simply denotative conception of language, and is inconsistent with the complexity of uses of the expressive element, the formula, that he was the first to point out.

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semantic gap between the two divergent uses he proposes – a gap he does not erase, nor neutralize, but rather makes obvious – as a means to capture the profound logic, both theogonic and cosmogonic, that has in fact produced the possibility of the traditional use of the formula and that allows his audience to better conceive of the world as Homer among other poets describes it with his use of the epic formula. Meaning lies in the gap between the two uses, in the listener’s need to imagine the path from one to the other not as arbitrary, but as a means by which the text constructs a figure of its object, that is the idea of a coherent world. In this form, myth does not say things, it does not produce a knowledge of beings, but it says how we should hear what has been said earlier about the world and its divine agents. The text says nothing new about this world, which is already familiar, since it has been shaped by the earlier theogonic tradition and adopted by the epic and other symbolic forms. Myth, when it claims to be systematic as it does here, is mythology, an analysis of mythic discourse by means of discourse. It is second to other texts that it repeats by interpreting them. To do this, myth uses surprises to provoke its own interpretation and discussion. Its coherence is not based on the continuity of what is said, but in the historical relationship with what precedes it and with itself. This refined semiotic machinery seems to be designed not for a structured representation, at the level of statements, of the totality of what is, but rather for the presentation of the means of conceiving, through the narrative, its divergences and repetitions, the advent of this totality, which is moreover already well known. Language and its instruments are thus strongly valorized in their own right, beyond their denotative meaning.33 Obviously we are not defining the shape of meaning in all texts. Our analysis addresses the question of genre, for it would not hold for the cosmogonic poems that meet the theoretical requirements of conceptual systematization, such as those of Parmenides or Empedocles, who propose theses on being conceived as knowable entity and then as the object of an explicit discourse. These texts, whose subject matter is often close to that of the Theogony, abide by a different obligation than the one Hesiod sets for himself: to deliver a clear representation of the totality of what is. They strive towards a synthesis of the statements, in a closed system that reveals a coherent representation of what can be known. The Theogony, for its part, does not aim for such a synthesis of knowledge at the level of statements, of 33 It is when we neglect this importance of language, as a theme for this kind of poetry, when we cling to the idea that words convey or produce representations that we make Hesiod a precursor of the Presocratic philosophers.

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the “dit”, but invites us to imagine the possibility of depicting an orderly totality in a non-referential, non-denotative mode. For this text, following its semiotic complexity by respecting its deviances, using the specific semantic contradictions as grounds for interpretation with the idea that a symbolic unity can thereby be constructed, amounts to entering into the movement that such a project develops to reach its goal. This kind of reading does not dismantle the coherence of the text, but clarifies it. On the other hand, for works pursuing a theoretical agenda, such a reading would be deconstructive and critical.34

34 The translation used for Hesiod is that of Most (2006), with the exception of Theogony 128, where there is a slight but important modification. For the Iliad and the Odyssey I have used the translations of Lattimore (1951) and (1965) respectively.

Pylades and Orestes in Pindar’s Eleventh Pythian: The Uses of Friendship Thomas Hubbard University of Texas at Austin Foremost among the many things that Pietro Pucci taught me was the importance of interpreting the overlooked detail, the point of inconcinnity, the swerve from the linear logical progression. One constant that never swerved from the line, however, is Pietro’s friendship and gentlemanly respect, which has always abided since the brief period over 20 years ago when he was a mentor and colleague to me as a youthful literary scholar at Cornell, about to move into a lifetime at a very different institution very far away. Pietro’s xenia and generosity helped make my two years at Cornell among the happiest and most productive periods in my life, so it gratifies me to be able to include this paignion as a tribute to our friendship, although I will leave it to readers to interpret the allegory. The relevance of the myth of Pindar’s Pyth. 11 to the ode’s encomiastic program has long been a crux: in Farnell’s words, “it is quite unpardonable; so wilful and amazing is the irrelevance of the greater part of it, an irrelevance which no commentator’s learning or penetration can explain or excuse”.1 As with many Pindaric odes, critics have sought a connection between the subject-matter of the myth and the household of the victorious athlete, but the Oresteia myth seems ill-suited to an ode meant to praise a given family’s virtues.2 Some, such as David Young, have thus taken the myth as an adversative example, equating the house of Atreus with the ‘tyrants’ referenced in 53 and contrasting them with the ‘mean estate’ (52: τὰ μέσα), a simple life to which Pindar exhorts the victor.3 However, Thrasydaeus’ of Thebes family were 1 2 3

Farnell (1930) 1.147. See Finglass (2007) 37-47 for a fuller review of previous attempts at interpretation. Young (1968) 19-21. Indeed, he goes so far as to claim that moderation is “the life traditional to Thrasydaios’ family”.

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Olympic chariot victors (46-48), a contest open only to the wealthiest aristocrats (rather like yacht-racing at a fashionable Caribbean resort today);4 by no stretch of the imagination would most Greeks consider them examples of the ‘mean estate’. Nor is ‘tyranny’ the most prominent feature in this myth, either as related by Pindar or his predecessors.5 In one of the best treatments of this poem’s myth, Rory Egan has demonstrated that Orestes is intended as a positive paradigm with both Theban (cf. Nem. 11.33-37) and Delphic connections (familiar from tragedy);6 nevertheless, neither aspect of Orestes is focalized here, even though Pindar is quite ready to make explicit such connections with heroes in other odes (cf. Neoptolemus’ Delphic connections in Nem. 7 and Paean 6).7 None of these arguments gives us a clear understanding of why Pindar emphasizes Orestes’ status as a ‘Laconian xenos’ (16 – his first and only naming) or why the poet makes a point of yoking Theban Iolaus with the Spartan Dioscuri as twin exempla at the poem’s end (vv. 59-64).8 I have argued elsewhere that major poems may have had a panHellenic audience from the earliest days, disseminated through networks of inter-state xenia for the purpose of re-performance before multiple audiences.9 Olymp. 6 and Nem. 9 are particularly clear cases of epinician odes that praise two separate states and thus appear intended for performance in both: the former makes it clear that the victor’s family is 4 5

6

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9

For the most recent in a long series of studies treating this issue, see Golden (2008) 6-23. On this point see Most (1985) 18-19, who asks whether a more appropriate myth illustrating tyrannical behavior might not be found. Most himself (1985, 23-25) also favors an adversative interpretation of the myth, but he constructs it differently: the healthy house of Thrasydaeus, where Apollo has intervened in a beneficent way, vs. the unhealthy house of Atreus, where Apollo’s agency is visibly lacking, at least in Pindar’s telling of the myth. Egan (1983) 191-200. Robbins (1986) 4, observes that not even Agamemnon is truly a negative paradigm in the myth of the poem; only Clytemnestra acts tyrannically and unjustly. However, Gentili (1995) lix, sees Agamemnon and Clytemnestra both as personifying tyranny, because their actions arouse phthonos, deprecated in both vv. 25-30 and 50-55. See my remarks on the motif of habrotēs (34) in n. 26 below. Consider the xenia of Theban Heracles and Aeginetan Telamon in Isthm. 6.2756 or the Asopid twins Thebe and Aegina in Isthm. 8.15-18. Pindar was never shy of playing up Theban connections: see Hubbard (1991a). Young (1968) 21-22 downplays any Spartan element in the poem by claiming that Iolaus and the Dioscuri are merely linked as athletes. But it is clearly Iolaus’ loyalty to Heracles that is emphasized here. Hubbard (2003).

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from Arcadia, although he now lives in Syracuse, and the latter hints at a double performance in its opening lines (Nem. 9.1-2) as well as its allusions to Sicyonian myth.10 Both odes were written for key lieutenants of Hieron of Syracuse; I have argued that these and other odes must be seen as part of Hieron’s campaign to attract settlers from the Peloponnese (see Diod. Sic. 11.49.1).11 Given the examples of other odes meant for performance at more than one place, could the family of Thrasydaeus have had close connections with Sparta and hoped to see the ode performed there as well as at Thebes? Maurice Bowra long ago argued for a Spartan connection to this poem. However, Bowra assumed the connection was more a matter of Pindar’s own hatred of Athenian meddling in Boeotia and his enthusiasm for Thebes’ Aegeid ties with Amyclae (see Pyth. 5.72-76 and Isthm. 7.12-15).12 The Swiss scholar Georges Méautis went so far as to title his 1962 book Pindare le dorien.13 However, so far as we know, Pindar never wrote any poems for Sparta, a state with a long history of importing foreign poets; indeed, Pindar did write at least three splendid dithyrambs in praise of Sparta’s rival Athens (frr. 74a-76 S.-M.), and was even proxenos of that more free-spirited state (Isocr. Antidosis 166).14 I think it more likely that it was the aristocratic family of the victor that had Spartan interests and expressed a wish to see Sparta, as well as Thebes, honored in this poem. Thrasydaeus’ father Pythonicus was an Olympic chariot victor, among other distinctions, suggesting that he was both a wealthy land-owning aristocrat and a man with ambitions for distinction both in Thebes and internationally. Whether Thebes chose a policy of Spartan alignment, Athenian alignment, or neutrality was doubtless the central political issue among Thebans during the entire 10 On Nem. 9, see Hubbard (1992) 80-92. 11 Hubbard (1992) 80, 107-108. 12 Bowra (1936) 133-40; Burton (1962) 65-66, also emphasizes Aegeid ties, but not Athenian meddling, since he insists on the 474 date. Bornemann (1884) cast doubts on whether these statements really pertain to Pindar personally, or to Thebes as a whole. For the latter, see the concept of the ‘first-person indefinite’ discusssed by Young (1968) 58-59 (cf. Hubbard [1985] 145-48). 13 Méautis (1962) 268, may have waxed a little too enthusiastic when proclaiming, “l’union d’Iolaos et des Dioscures est le symbole de l’union de Thèbes et de Sparte en un même idéal, une même conception de vie spécifiquement dorienne”. 14 For the complexity of Pindar’s relationship with Athens, see Hubbard (2001). Bowra (1936) 136-40 and (1964) 294-296, went too far in thinking that Pindar eagerly anticipated the downfall of Athenian imperial hybris by likening it to Clytemnestra in this poem or Bellerophon in Isthm. 7.43-48.

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inter-war period of the fifth-century.15 It is inconceivable that Pindar could include such visible references to Spartan heroes in his ode for a Theban victor unless Pythonicus, the elder of the family, at the very least favored a Spartan alliance and wanted to be publicly known for doing so, both in Thebes and Sparta. Given that Pythonicus had shown an earlier interest in travelling to the Peloponnese to make a big show at the Olympic games in Sparta’s backyard, it is not unlikely that he enjoyed strong ties of hospitality with noble families in both Elis and Laconia. He was likely one of many Theban aristocrats with such ties, which led to Thebes’ eventually adopting a pro-Spartan alignment. That the Spartan horsey set also liked Thebes is suggested by the story Thucydides (5.49-50) tells of the 420 Olympic games, from which the Spartans had been banned; the influential and well-connected Lichas of Sparta, a man notable for his xenia to foreigners visiting Sparta (Xen., Mem. 1.2.61; Plut., Cim. 10.5), defied the ban by entering his (ultimately victorious) chariot team as a Boeotian.16 Exactly what was going on between Thebes and Sparta at the time of this celebratory poem depends upon which of the two possible dates mentioned by the scholiast we prefer: the Pythian victor lists apparently recorded two separate victories for Thrasydaeus, in 474 and 454 BC. Bowra cogently argued for the later date on the grounds that Sparta was hostile to Thebes in the 470s, having proposed to expel it from the Amphictyonic Council (Plutarch, Themist. 20), whereas in the 450s Athens was the great enemy, and Sparta at least an occasional ally (certainly at the Battle of Tanagra in 457).17 In favor of the earlier dating others have insisted upon Pindar’s proclamation that this is the family’s third victory (vv. 13-14) and reckoned that the family must have had two panHellenic victories already before Thrasydaeus’ first victory.18 However, I argued in 1990 that the surrounding context (vv. 9-12 and 15-16) focus very specifically on Phocis and Delphi, suggesting that it is the family’s third Pythian victory that is at issue in vv. 13-14, in which case the later 454 victory is more likely;19 it is also uncertain whether Pythonicus’ name is ipso facto proof of a Pythian victory by his own father, since the name could also be explained as an aspirational wish for the male child 15 For a survey of Theban history during this period, see Demand (1982) 27-40, synthesizing the material in Thuc. 1.107-113 and Diod. Sic. 11.79.4-11.83.4, who probably drew on Ephorus as well as Thucydides. 16 On Lichas’ character as a member of the ‘international aristocracy’, see Hornblower (2004) 278-81. 17 Bowra (1936) 135-36. 18 Von der Mühll (1958) 143-44; Young (1968) 2 n. 2; Robbins (1986) 4-6. 19 Hubbard (1990) 350 n. 22.

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of this prominent family. The most recent intervention on the issue of date is that of Finglass’ 2007 commentary, which argues that this poem must celebrate a boy’s victory (necessarily that of 474) because mention of the victor’s living father is so prominent (vv. 43-48); but mention of a father or his past victories is not a feature only of odes for boy victors, as I demonstrate in my forthcoming review of Finglass’ book.20 Thrasydaeus is nowhere in the poem referred to as young, nor is it inconceivable that a man in his thirties (which he would have been in 454) would be able to win a pan-Hellenic victory in the footrace.21 The real reason for calling so much attention to Pythonicus’ Olympic chariot victory is precisely because it is Pythonicus, as the family elder, who is most likely to be prominent in Theban politics and whose name is most likely to be known to xenoi in Sparta and elsewhere. Some of those who favor the 474 date, such as Gentili and Robbins, associate the gnomic rejection of ‘tyranny’ in v. 53 (μέμοφμ᾽ αἶσαν τυραννίδων) with criticism of the ‘tyrannical’ government the Thebans later blamed for Thebes’ Medism in 480-79 (see Thuc. 3.62.3-4); others, like Rauchenstein and Wilamowitz, less plausibly regarded the passage as Pindar’s apology to his fellow Thebans for having associated so closely with the Sicilian tyrants in 476.22 However, none of them can 20 Finglass (2007) 2-4 and Hubbard (2009). Only one passage names the father, and although it does suggest that the father is the one who commissioned the poem, it is quite possible that he would still be alive and the head of the family when Thrasydaeus was in his mid-30s. We find similar passages asserting that a son’s victory credits his father in numerous odes for adult victors (Olymp. 5.8, Olymp. 7.17-19, Olymp. 14.21-22, Nem. 11.11, Isthm. 1.34-40, Isthm. 8.1-4); the father looms even larger as a figure in Pindar’s two odes for the adult Thrasybulus (Pyth. 6, Isthm. 2). What we do not find in Pyth. 11 that is commonplace in most odes for boy victors is praise of the trainer. Pfeijffer (1998) 36-37, observes that most odes for boy victors are marked with this or some other feature emphasizing the victor’s youth. Finglass devotes considerable effort to trying to make sense of the scholia’s confused statements on the date, which he can only do at the expense of emendation; but the scholia clearly had no inside information beyond the ambiguous victory list. 21 Some (e.g. Farnell [1930] 2.221 and Burton [1962] 60) have attempted to deny that the victors of 474 and 454 could have been the same Thrasydaeus of Thebes. But as Robbins (1986) 9-10 n. 27, observes, citing the late Victor Matthews, the 1964 Olympic gold medalist in the 400m run was in his thirties; that most short-distance runners today are much younger merely reflects the lack of post-collegiate programs to maintain short-distance runners at their peak levels of performance. 22 Gentili (1979) and Robbins (1986) 5; Rauchenstein (1847) and Wilamowitz (1922) 262-63. See Young (1968) 7 n. 1 for other scholars subscribing to this latter view, which has since fallen out of fashion.

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explain how the Spartan emphasis of the poem is relevant in the 470s.23 In contrast, it is quite easy to reconcile with the 454 date: Sparta had been a recent ally (at Tanagra) and appeared to be Thebes’ best hope for regaining its traditional position as hegemon of the Boeotian league, which had come to be dominated by Athens since the Theban defeat at Oenophyta.24 Also key to consideration of the poem’s date is its relationship to Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy, firmly dated to 458. The most detailed examination of the close verbal and thematic links between these two works remains that of Düring, who concludes that Pindar composed Pyth. 11 under the strong impression Aeschylus’ masterpiece left on him.25 This is far more likely than that Aeschylus would scatter throughout his much lengthier account multiple allusions to a Theban ode of Pindar that dates to sixteen years earlier. Pindar’s emphasis on Cassandra’s destruction along with Agamemnon (19-22, 33), a detail that seems otherwise inessential for his highly compressed account, becomes understandable as a reaction to the impressive visual spectacle of the silent Trojan woman who stands immobile for nearly 300 lines in Aeschylus’ play, finally bursting out into a raving prophetic vision of bloodshed and murder, flashing before us horrifying images of the unseen events that are about to transpire within the house (Ag. 1072-1177). Similarly, the elaboration of Iphigenia’s death as a primary cause of the murders (2223) suggests the influence of the Agamemnon’s splendid lyric narrative of the scene in the magnificent parodos (Ag. 184-246), setting the issue before us as background to the events that follow. Whatever his attitude toward Athenian policy at the time, Pindar was a brilliant enough poet to recognize sublime lyric storytelling in the work of a fellow poet, close to his own age, recently deceased.26 That Pindar and Aeschylus had 23 Indeed, Burton (1962) 66, who insists on the 474 date out of deference to the Rauchenstein-Wilamowitz interpretation, is forced to observe: “Pindar shows a remarkable detachment from the relations between Thebes and Sparta in the decade after the Persian Wars”. 24 For a review of Thebes’ history during the 450s, and especially its dealings with Sparta, see Demand (1982) 31-35. 25 Düring (1943). Hubbard (1990) calls attention to the motif of popular grumblings, emphasized at several points in Agamemnon, reflected in the cryptic language of Pyth. 11.26-30. Herington (1984) argues apropos of Pyth. 11.22-25 that lyric poets like Pindar would not otherwise be interested in characters’ motivations, unless influenced by drama, but this is refuted by Finglass (2007) 12-14. 26 One other possible, but less certain case where the actual performance of Aeschylus’ trilogy might have made an impression on Pindar was with Clytemnestra’s seduction of Agamemnon to tread the carpets as Priam would have done

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known each other personally for decades is likely, given Pindar’s education at Athens, his early dithyrambs for Athens, and his status as the city’s proxenos at Thebes.27 In one important detail, of course, Pindar does not follow Aeschylus, but consciously goes back to Stesichorus, who placed the household of Agamemnon in Sparta. This was no mere fantasy of Stesichorus, but was well-grounded in Spartan tradition,28 where the cult of Apollo was also strong (hence, Orestes’ Delphic connections). Stesichorus’ Oresteia was possibly even commissioned by the Spartans (or their Tarentine colonists), who felt slighted by the dominant Homeric tradition assigning Agamemnon to the Argolid and wished to create a counter-tradition with equal authority in pan-Hellenic song.29 The quarrel between Sparta and Tegea over the bones of Orestes (Hdt. 1.67-68) suggests just how strongly the Spartans felt about their ownership of the entire house of Atreus. Aeschylus’ emphasis on Argos, rather than Mycenae, as the seat of Agamemnon has generally been credited to the recent (461 BC) Athenian alliance with the Argives (cf. Thuc. 1.102.4), to which several passages in the Eumenides call attention (Eum. 286-291, 669-673, 762774).30 Given Athens’ recent conflicts with Thebes in the 450s and Sparta’s traditional rivalry with Argos, it seems entirely natural that Pindar would have to follow the Spartan version of the myth in this poem, commissioned by a prominent Theban family. Ever the diplomat, however, Pindar tells his story in a way that otherwise pays tribute to the spectacular final work of his late fellow-poet.

27 28

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30

(Ag. 935-74): this may be reflected in Pindar’s emphasis on the motif of ‘luxuriance’ (34: ἁβρότατος) which Agamemnon appropriates for himself at the same time he despoils the Trojans (cf. Ag. 919: ἅβρυνε). With only a slight distinction in the quantity of one vowel, some in the audience might hear ἁβρότατος as the superlative form of the adjective habros, in which case the word actually would apply to Agamemnon. On this theme as one obsessing archaic poetry generally, see Kurke (1992). See Finley (1955) 3. For the evidence of Spartan cult of both Agamemnon and Cassandra, who is given special attention in Pindar’s otherwise spare narrative (Pyth. 11.19-20, 33), see Pavese (1975) 248. See Bowra (1934) and Neschke (1986) 298-301. Pavese (1975) 248-49, suggests that passages such as Il. 9.149-153 and Od. 4.514, may reflect traces of a conflicting Spartan tradition current even during the period of epic formation. For this theory, see the excellent discussion of Podlecki (1966) 82-83. So far as I can determine, the first detailed exposition of this theory was that of K. O. Müller (1833) 121-23. It was most influentially endorsed by Wilamowitz (1914a) 190.

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In assessing Pindar’s manipulation of the myth, we should focus on the initial point by which the myth is connected to the surrounding encomiastic program: the first character mentioned is not Orestes or Clytemnestra, but Orestes’ boon companion Pylades, who so suddenly emerges out of 899 lines of muteness in the Choephoroi to give Orestes encouragement and Delphic confirmation at the critical moment, in what must be the shortest speaking role in Greek tragedy (900-902). Here too, Pindar makes him a representative of the land of Delphi, which has just touched the victor Thrasydaeus with the god’s approbation (Pyth. 11.12-16): . . . for the sake of the contest at Cirrha, In which Thrasydaeus has evoked people’s memory By casting the third crown upon his ancestral hearth, Winning a victory in the rich fields of Pylades, The host (xenos) of Laconian Orestes.

Pylades is specifically called the xenos of Laconian Orestes. When Pindar returns to this same point in the myth in ring-form (34-36), Pylades is not mentioned, but instead his father Strophius, also called a xenos.31 William Slater is one of the few critics to have noted this repeated motif of xenia in connection with Orestes’ refuge in Phocis: he interprets it as a hint at Thrasydaeus’ enjoyment of Delphic xenia,32 but the role of the Delphic oracle, so powerful in Aeschylus’ trilogy, is downplayed in Pindar’s mythological narrative, which does not mention either Delphi or Apollo once. In the 450s, Phocis and Sparta were not friendly, since Sparta had just aided its ethnic cousins in Doris against the Phocians (Thuc. 1.107; Diod. Sic. 11.79). I would instead re-direct our attention to the links of xenia between Thebes (like Phocis a central Greek state) and Sparta (here emphasized as the home of Orestes). 31 On the general ring-structure here, see Burton (1962) 64-65, Young (1968) 4, and Slater (1979) 63-65. For the most detailed discussion of structured repetition in this poem, see Most (1985) 19-22, 28-29. It is curious that none of them note that the myth’s ring form goes far beyond the beginning and end with Strophius’ house. Two name pairs repeat themselves in symmetrical order: xenos Pylades-Orestes (15-16), Cassandra-Agamemnon (20), AgamemnonCassandra (31-33), Orestes-Pylades’ father xenos Strophius (34-35). In each case, the character at the core of the family tragedy is put second in the first grouping of the pair, but first in its iteration. Note also the pairs ArsinoaClytemnestra (17) and Clytemnestra-Aegisthus (37). In all three cases, the most important agents (at least in the Aeschylean version) are located in the inside of the ring, typically the more emphatic position in ring-composition, while the accompanying character occupies the outside. 32 Slater (1979) 66-68.

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During the period that Spartan troops were present in Boeotia in 457 and negotiations led to the Spartans joining Thebans at the Battle of Tanagra, aristocratic Theban families like that of Pythonicus and Thrasydaeus doubtless entertained Spartan leaders and emissaries with all the courtesies of aristocratic xenia. By 454, when the dysfunctional democratic government Athens encouraged in Thebes after its victory at Oenophyta had crumbled or was in the process of doing so (see Aristotle, Politics 5.3 1302b27-30),33 Theban aristocrats might have wished both to remind their Spartan friends of those hospitality relationships and advertise to their fellow Thebans the possibility that those connections could bring Spartan help back to Thebes as a counterweight to Athenian influence in the region; thereby Thebes might hope to re-establish its traditional hegemony over the other Boeotian states.34 In an essay first published in 1932, Louis Gernet examined myths and legends of foreign fosterage, including Orestes’ sojourn with Strophius.35 Gernet saw in such cases evidence of a common historical practice among the Greek aristocracy, often connected with the presence of matrilineal relatives in other Greek city-states. However, such transnational marriages were themselves reflections of a much broader and more fundamental phenomenon, namely the practice of xenia relations among aristocrats of various city-states, what Gabriel Herman has called “ritualised friendship”. For Herman, the stories and historical practices of foreign fosterage reflect a xenia obligation.36 This was certainly the case with Strophius and Agamemnon, inherited in turn by Pylades and Orestes, and the focus of attention for Pindar’s narration of the Oresteia myth. We need not speculate about Thrasydaeus’ family having engaged in any specific act of fosterage: the significant point for purposes of the Pindaric ode is that Spartans have enjoyed xenia in the past and should honor the obligations of mutual help that such xenia encodes. The hypothesis of a Spartan audience also explains Pindar’s otherwise obscure gnomic assertion about preferring the ‘mean’ (50-54): I would love only god-given goods, desiring what is possible at my age. 33 Demand (1982) 34-37, argues that Thebes returned to a moderate oligarchy not long after Oenophyta and remained one for most of the decade of Athenian domination in Boeotia (457-447). 34 Sparta had certainly shown willingness to aid the Thebans in that endeavor when they still had troops in Boeotia (Diod. Sic. 11.81). For a defense of Diodorus’ credibility on this issue and the likelihood that he derived his information from Ephorus, see Demand (1982) 31-34. 35 Gernet (1955) 19-28. 36 Herman (1987) 22-26.

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Since of political things (τῶν γὰρ ἀνὰ πόλιν) I find the middle condition (τὰ μέσα) to flourish with more abiding prosperity, I find fault with the lot of tyrannies (αἶσαν τυραννίδων). I have put effort into forms of excellence I can share with others (ξυναῖσι δ᾽ ἀμφ᾽ ἀρεταῖς τέταμαι); that way the envious (φθονεροί) are warded off.

As Elroy Bundy once stated, “Beginnings, middles, and ends: the meaning of literature resides in its transitions; for it is these which establish the relation between subject and object in the idea”.37 The connection of this transitional statement with the myth and victor’s family (whose catalogue of victories we just finished in 42-50) have been the focus of critical controversy about this ode. A fairly conventional view was summed up by my own youthful and naïve remark in 1985, influenced by David Young: “The praise of ‘mean circumstances’ in P. 11.52 is certainly a reflection upon the modest prosperity of Thrasydaeus and his family . . . and an attempt to contrast it with the foil of greed and corruption (the ‘lot of tyrants’ of v. 53) embodied in the myth of the Pelopidae”.38 However, this confuses our modern political terminology (‘middle class’) with the very different meaning of τὰ μέσα in the context of Theban politics of the 450s, where it would suggest ‘the moderate constitution’, which throughout ancient political thought was aristocracy/oligarchy, half-way between the extremes of monarchy/tyranny (αἶσαν τυραννίδων in v. 53) and democracy (the ‘envious men’ of v. 54), a political system of which Pindar and the Thebans were never fond.39 As Thucydides 3.62.3 tells us, Thebans later excused the state’s Medism by claiming that it was the policy of a ‘tyrannical’ regime (whether truthfully or not is irrelevant);40 it is important to note that v.

37 Bundy (1972) 59 n. 58. 38 Hubbard (1985) 146, drawing upon Young (1968) 6-21. This is cited as “the dominant modern interpretation” by Finglass (2007) 41-42. 39 Pindar himself makes it clear that he too subscribes to the traditional threefold system of constitutional classification (Pyth. 2.86-88): In every form of law (νόμον), the man who is straight in speech excels: In a tyranny (παρὰ τυραννίδι), whenever the greedy, intemperate mob (λάβρος στρατός) guards the city, and whenever the wise (οἱ σοφοί) do so. By calling the intermediate term (aristocracy/oligarchy) ‘the wise,’ Pindar articulates a clear preference that he expects to share with his audience. For the connection of this passage with τὰ μέσα in Pyth. 11.50-54, see Burton (1962) 72-73. Pindar elsewhere describes the poor judgment of the majority in equally unflattering terms: cf. Pyth. 8.73-76 and Nem. 7.23-25. 40 Finglass (2007) 39 n. 50, contests the reality of such a tyranny. We should note that Thucydides’ more precise wording is ἐγγυτάτω δὲ τυράννου, δυναστεία

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53 specifies the ‘lot of tyrannies’, not of ‘tyrants.’ Aristotle (Politics 5.3 1302b27-30) tells us that Thebes’ experiment with democracy after defeat by Athens at Oenophyta was unpopular and did not last. To most educated and affluent Thebans in 454 (the original target audience for the ode), the state’s traditional moderate (i.e. broad, rather than narrow) oligarchy would indeed seem to represent τὰ μέσα in contrast to these two less desirable alternatives.41 In Thucydides, the Thebans themselves call their preferred mode of governance oligarchia isonomos (a mixed oligarchy with limited franchise, but ‘equal rights before the law’, at least for those with full franchise).42 This was a system with which Spartans could identify: their own state was unquestionably oligarchical, but with strict isonomia among Spartiates, who considered themselves homoioi in principle, whatever differences in actual wealth they may have had. Lycurgus’ reforms aimed at promoting equality through common meals with simple food, simple dress, sharing possessions, and aversion to extravagant self-display.43 A Spartan audience may therefore have heard Pindar’s statement about τὰ μέσα somewhat differently from Thebans, with more attention to overtones of moderation in personal lifestyle. Of course, ancient lawgivers like Solon and Lycurgus mingled regulation of personal lifestyle with their other ‘constitutional’ reforms, so Pindar left his wording of vv. 5253 sufficiently flexible to accommodate both interpretations (the intermediate constitution and a moderate lifestyle).44

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ὀλίγων ἀνδρῶν, which is not exactly the same thing as a genuine tyranny, so much as a narrow oligarchy dominated by a few families. This was in fact the most common interpretation of the phrase prior to Young. See the references in Young (1968) 13 n. 3. On the meaning of this phrase, see Demand (1982) 16. For more general discussions of political isonomia, which is not in itself to be equated with democracy, see Vlastos (1953) and (1964), and Ostwald (1969) 96-160. For key primary texts, see Thuc. 1.6.4 (who calls the Spartans ἰσοδίαιτοι); Xen. Lac. 2.5-6, 5.1-6.4, Ages. 5.2-3, 8.6-9.5; Arist. Pol. 2.5 1263a34-40, 1263b40-42; Plut. Lyc. 8-10, Lac. Apo. 216F. See also n. 50 below. While this egalitarian ideal doubtless became complicated by the inequalities of wealth that accrued over several generations, its power as an ideological principle was certainly still manifest in Pindar’s time. See the discussions of Rawson (1969) 17176, Powell (1988) 100-102, 222, Hodkinson (1994) 185-87, Cartledge (2001) 73-74, Cartledge (2002) 134-135, Birgalias (2002) 251. For Pindar’s consciously intended ambiguity here, see Gentili (1995) 664. Aristotle’s extensive discussion of τὰ μέσα in Politics 4.11 makes it clear that it refers to both moderate constitutions and lifestyle; he associates these with the ‘middle class’, but is careful to designate the latter as οἱ σοφοί, never with the neuter plural.

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Thrasydaeus and Pythonicus clearly had at least two audiences and two goals in mind when commissioning Pyth. 11, as is implied in a little understood passage. After his aporetic break-off from the myth (38-40), Pindar returns to praise of the son and father by proclaiming (41-45): Muse, it is your task, if you agreed to lend your voice for pay in silver, to stir it up at a different time in a different place (ἄλλοτ᾽ ἄλλᾳ) either now (τό γέ νυν) for the father Pythonicus or for Thrasydaeus, both of whose (τῶν) glory and celebration are flaming bright.

Méautis, influenced by Wilamowitz’ 474 dating and interpretation, took ἄλλοτ᾽ ἄλλᾳ as a reference to Pindar’s recent return from Sicily, where his Muse had been out for hire.45 But the grammar of the sentence requires that Pindar refers to compensated performances for Pythonicus or Thrasydaeus (or both), both of whose glory is treated as the present topic (τό γέ νυν); moreover, it asserts that these compensated performances should occur “in different times at different places.”46 Performance before the internal Theban audience was of course primary: after Thebes’ dysfunctional and short-lived democracy, aristocratic families like this one were anxious to rehabilitate their reputation for good governance, yet distance themselves from the aristocrats responsible for Thebes’ disgrace a generation earlier (hence the ‘lot of tyrants’ and the words about fleeing αἰνὰν ὕβριν [‘dread arrogance’] in vv. 55-56).47 They wanted to present oligarchy with a friendly face that would reconcile those classes that might otherwise be attracted to democracy. After all, the Delphic god had just vouchsafed them a Pythian victory as a sign of divine election.48

45 Méautis (1962) 267. 46 If they notice it at all, commentators take the point differently: for instance, Gildersleeve (1885) 361, thinks Pindar speaks of praising father and son alternately, but their glory is so intertwined (as implied by the τῶν in v. 45) as to be inseparable. Finglass (2007) 114, takes it merely of the “variety of themes in the epinician”. 47 Young (1968) 9-17, demonstrates that the ‘first-person general’ here includes both Pindar and his Theban audience, indeed all men within the same community of values. 48 Pindar very clearly links athletic victory with divine election, particularly by the god in whose honor the games are held: see Pyth. 5.117, Nem. 1.1-9, 6.2527, and Isthm. 4.1-5 for his most direct assertions. The connection is also evident in his wishes for future athletic success: see my discussion and references in Hubbard (1995) 35-41. The idea of divine election may be an outgrowth of selection by a dead hero, in whose honor the earliest games may have been held:

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However, they also wanted to send a message to a second audience, consisting of their Spartan friends: ties of xenia bind leading families of the two states, and Thebes now has a political system more consonant with what Sparta preferred among its allies. And although Olympic chariot victors, this family did not aspire to tyrannical ambitions (53) or practice dread hybris (55-56), but pursued τὰ μέσα, also favored among their Spartan friends. Most important to them of all possessions and more important than life or death itself was leaving to posterity a good name (56-58). This sentiment seems calculated to appeal to Spartan tastes, for which leaving good reputation to one’s family was paramount, as illustrated in the many anecdotes about Spartan mothers (‘come back with your shield or on it’).49 Xenophon shows his ideal Spartan, Agesilaus, declaring that one would become ‘most renowned both living and dead’ through neither chariot victories nor statues, but one’s good deeds and ‘memorials of the soul’ (τῆς ψυχῆς μνημεῖα).50 The relationship between Sparta and Thebes is emphatically foregrounded by the poem’s close (59-64) with the twin paradigms of Theban Iolaus and the Spartan Dioscuri.51 All three are heroes known especially for friendship, just like Orestes and Pylades in the poem’s myth. Iolaus was the boon companion and helper of Heracles, according to some accounts even his erōmenos.52 Moreover, as the patron and defender of the Heracleidae, he was a Theban hero to whom Dorians owed a considerable debt.53 For their part, the Dioscuri were also symbols of perfect friendship, the divine Polydeuces giving up half his immortality to share with his less fortunate brother (as related in Pindar’s

49 50

51

52 53

see Meuli (1975) 2.881-906 for the seminal articulation of this theory, based on comparative ethnographic evidence. Plut. Lac. Apo. 240F-242B. Xen. Ages. 9.6-7, 11.7. See Plut. Reg. et Imp. Apo. 191D and Lac. Apo. 215A for a slightly different version of the same incident described in Xen. Ages. 11.7. Pindar also juxtaposes Iolaus and the Dioscuri in Isthm. 1.16 (in another Theban ode) and in Isthm. 5.32-33 (where they are connected with Argive Perseus in a priamel of heroes). On the links between them, see Bernardini (1993) 424-426. See Sergent (1987) 143-152. Iolaus’ role in this story, best known from Euripides’ later Heracleidae, was certainly familiar to Pindar (cf. Pyth. 9.79-83); see also Pherecydes, 3F84 FGrHist. For the return of the Heracleidae to the Peloponnese, see Apollodorus, Bibl. 2.8.2-5. Herodotus (6.52, 7.204, 8.131) informs us that both houses of the Spartan kings traced their lineage back to the Heracleidae. See Calame (1987) 175-177 for the development of this legend, largely in the late 6th and early 5th century.

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Nem. 10). Moreover, they had a cult presence in Boeotia,54 even as Ino Leucothea, one of the two Cadmeid sisters, had a prominent cult and oracle in South Laconia.55 The same principle of ring-composition we observed in the myth also operates with the heroines and heroes that frame the poem’s beginning and end: the Theban sisters Semele and Ino (1-2), both of whom became goddesses (cf. Olymp. 2.25-30) correspond to the Spartan brothers of shared divinity (61-64). This double pairing frames the two most important family-members of Heracles, himself a hero of dual nationality: in v. 3, his mother Alcmena (originally from the Peloponnese), and in vv. 59-61, his beloved nephew Iolaus (who helps the Heracleidae return to the Peloponnese). As usual in the work of Pindar, his complex poetry speaks implicitly, inviting its multiple audiences to decode a unique ‘semionarrative’ language woven out of heroes, cults, places, states, and men.56

54 Schachter (1981) 1.196-97. 55 See Farnell (1921) 36-37 and 404-5 n. 17k for the ancient sources, the most conspicuous of which is Paus. 3.26.1. 56 See Calame (2003) 27-34 for an exposition of this approach, drawn from Greimassian semiotics, with application to Greek texts, and my remarks in Hubbard (2007). My thanks to Rory Egan for stimulating me to rethink this poem and to Chris Cones for her advice and assistance in preparing this manuscript.

DRAMA

Aeschylus, Suppliants 112-150 Vittorio Citti University of Trento The first five strophes, which in the parodos of the Suppliants follow after the anapaestic passage, constitute an invocation to the gods who protect the city where the suppliant women of the Chorus have arrived, that is to Zeus “the Savior” and to the gods who protect their people, so that that they would save them from the impertinent violence of the cousins who wish to marry them; they hope that Zeus will assent to their aspiration and that the god will protect them at the moment of despair; thus the sixth strophe takes the following form in the MS: τοιαῦτα πάθεα μέλεα θρεομένα λέγων λιγέα βαρέα δακρυοπετῆ, ἰὴ ἰή, 115 ἰηλέμοισιν ἐμπρέπη θρεομένη μέλη· ζῶσα γόοις με τιμῶ.

Mmg ζώσατο οἷς με τιμᾷ

Already Canter and Portus corrected 112 λέγων to λέγω, and that correction was accepted by successive editors from Stanley to Pauw and Heath. Later, nevertheless, Bothe objected, “λέγω perfrigide”, and conjectured λεχῶν, which he intended “tales aerumnas ob matrimonia”,1 while Enger introduced “δ’ ἐγώ”, which elicited a certain success, since it was accepted by Dindorf and then by Hermann and Weil.2 At 115, ἐμπρέπη, which was preserved in the Aldine edition, though obviously absurd, was already corrected by Tournebus to ἐμπρεπῆ; at this point I find in Canter the correction ἐμπρεπῆ, which was accepted subse1

2

Canter (1580) 304; Stanley (1663) 568; Pauw (1745) 1070; Heath (1762) 141; Schütz (1794) 136 and 256; (1808) 156 and 253; Bothe (1805) 234 and 683; nevertheless λέχος in tragic language is used as a metonymy for indicating the wife, not yet the matrimonial institution, cf. Citti 179, 137 ff., also for the synonym λέκτρον. Enger (1836) 72; Dindorf (1841) 582; Hermann (1852) I 6, II 8; Weil (1886) 15.

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quently by Stanley, Pauw, and Schütz,3 while Headlam suggested returning to ἐμπρεπῆ, taking it not as a neuter plural but as an accusative singular agreeing with με4; and Meffert corrected it to ἐμπρεπής, a nominative agreeing with the speaking subject, determined by a causal dative as in Cho. 18 Ἠλέκτραν δοκῶ / στείχειν ... πένθει λυγρῷ / πρέπουσαν and Soph. El. 1187 ὁρῶν σε πολλοῖς ἐμπρέπουσαν ἄλγεσιν.5 Porson, considering it a gloss on 112 μέλεα θρεομένα, expunged the θρεομένη μέλη of 115, which lacks a correspondence in the antistrophe and would pose the necessity of assuming a lacuna there: this hypothesis, also very similar in relation to dialect, has been subsequently accepted by everyone.6 In the twentieth century, λέγω and ἐμπρεπῆ were endorsed by Wilamowitz, Murray 1937 and 1955, and Page; nevertheless Wilamowitz places a period after δακρυοπετῆ,7 the others after ἐμπρεπῆ: regarding this matter, the discussion is taken up by Friis Johansen and Whittle, who favor the second solution for a number of considerations: first of all, they believe that ἰηλέμοισιν and γόοις could hardly co-exist in the same phrase, unless one of the two forms were to be taken as an adjective, which does not seem possible; nor would the syntax be simplified, by considering ἐμπρεπῆ as adverbial, as Wilamowitz wants, and not even by making it agree with με, as Headlam suggested,8 while the correction to ἐμπρεπής “would remove this anomaly, but only at the cost of enfeebling the opposition to ζῶσα”; finally, “if the second sentence starts with ἰὴ ἰή, then ζῶσα does not receive the same strong emphasis that it gets if it is the first word in that 3 4 5

6

7

8

Tournebus (1552) 184; Robortello (1552) 231 instead attempted ἐμπρέποι. Headlam (1904) 241: he referred to a comparison with Cho. 12, 18 and Soph. El. 1887 (so he updates the citation Sandin 2005, cf. infra). Meffert (1961) 11: “Ita, quoniam vulgo ὄλβῳ aliisque bonis ἐμπρεπής aliquis dicitur, exsisti oxymoron. Dictum vero putes cum amaritudine quadam et εἰρωνείᾳ”. Porson (1806) 183. The marginal variant of M ζώσατο οἷς με τιμᾷ would also deserve some reflection: if it was a mistake of the division that took place in the reading of the capital majuscule it would not deserve to be indicated, but perhaps relevant is what has taken place in a manuscript copied from an exemplar in minuscule: that manuscript then probably had variations that might have depended on the uncertainty of the scribe who made the transliteration. Wilamowitz (1914b) 339, who made ἐμπρεπῆ depend on τιμῶ: “non ad με pertinet, sed ad verbum, ‘in modum qui naeniae conveniat (ἰή ἰή) viva me condecoro lamentis’”. Friis Johansen-Whittle (1980) [hereafter cited as FJW] 98. In this case the adjective, according to the analogy with those parallels, “should distinguish the Chorus qua mourner, not qua mourned”.

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sentence, and that it clearly ought to have”. Concerning then the relationship of the neuter plural in 111, FJW observe that πάθεα μέλεα must mean “miserable sufferings”, according to a syntagmatic structure common in tragedy,9 and that if the phrase ends after ἐμπρεπῆ, it follows that λιγέα βαρέα δακρυοπετῆ and ἐμπρεπῆ have the same syntactic function in relation to πάθεα. They continue with this analysis, proposing three possibilities: “(a) all the neut. plurs. are to be taken together as dependent on λέγω, and possibly on θρεομένα as well; (b) πάθεα μέλεα depends on θρεομένα, the rest on λέγω; (c) πάθεα μέλεα depends on λέγω, the rest on θρεομένα”; they conclude that of the three possibilities “(a), with all neut. plurs. dependent on both θρεομένα and λέγω, is the most probable, (b) is untenable, and (c) is possible but precarious. The strings of asyndetic adjs. found in threnetic contexts in Aeschylus are usually uninterrupted (cf. Pers. 941-942, 990. Sept. 78, 850), but not always: cf. Ch. 425-426 πρικτόπληκτα πολυπάλακτα δ᾽ ἦν ἰδεῖν ἐπασσυτεροτριβῆ τὰ χερὸς ὀρέγματα”.10 This very detailed analysis shows the editorial care of the commentators, who would have perhaps been able to reach a definitive solution immediately by highlighting the convincing evidence showing the tendency of the poet to accumulate adjectives referring to a single term; in any case, there is no doubt that this is the way the matter stands, also because we all know that this text was meant for an aural-oral transmission, in which the proposed distinction proposed by the authors of the great commentary would have not been as easy as it is for us, who read the printed text and patiently note the possible alternatives of agreement and the exegeses that follow. West accepts Meffert’s postulation of ἐμπρεπής. But the fact that there is πρέπειν with the dative in the passages proposed by Meffert, which West records in the apparatus, does not compel one in any way to correct ἐμπρεπῆ to ἐμπρεπής: the use of a locus similis to support a conjecture should not be applied when that conjecture is not necessary in the first place;11 on the other hand the same parallels with Aeschylus and Sophocles are called to mind by Sandin (2005) 102 now going back to Headlam’s proposal, in which ἐμπρεπῆ agrees with με and we may They refer to Eur. Hipp. 363 πάθεα μέλεα θρεομέναις, 830, HF 1180, [Soph.] Tr. 1117, Ph. 1734, and again Aesch. Sept. 963 μελεοπαθής and Soph. Ant. 979 μελέαν πάθαν: the recurrence of the syntagm would exclude (and actually it does exclude) that μέλεα could be taken as ‘carmina’. 10 FJW (1980) 98 ff. 11 In this way the oxymoron appreciated by Meffert is lost, but one recovers an accumulation of adjectives that is no less expressive, cf. supra. I was happy to discover that ἐμπρεπῆ is now read even by Sommerstein (2008). 9

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also adduce Aesch. Cho. 10 ff. τίς ποθ’ ἥδ’ ὁμήγυρις / στείχει ... φάρεσιν μελαγχίμοις / πρέπουσα. All of this simply indicates that Aeschylus loves to go back and revive his own expressions with structures that recall in some way the formularity of epic, as Carlitria Bordigoni has demonstrated in a doctoral thesis written at Trento, still unfortunately unpublished;12 but this also means that oral poetry often allows freedom of variation as has been widely demonstrated, and above all that the writings of the fifth century do not allow for anything but structural analogies, which do not grant the certainty of a textual reconstruction, as Meffert would have liked. As for the proposal of Headlam, it would be useful to consider that after the series of accusative neuter plurals in 111 ff., in the oral-aural relation that was established in the theater, it was probably normal for the audience to connect ἐμπρεπῆ with what precedes it rather than what follows. Though the refrain that follows and the antistrophe do not foreground problems for the constitution of the text, perhaps at most for its exegesis, they have nonetheless created doubts regarding the text itself.13 Friis Johansen and Whittle have reasonably observed that at 121 the reading σινδονία of the first scribe of Mediceus does not allow one to conjecture σινδονίᾳ with Kiehl,14 even though σινδών is a fine linen cloth and the meaning of “with a veil of thin linen cloth”, would not be acceptable in this context;15 even more so, they set up a complex analysis regarding the meaning of θεοῖς δ’ ἐναγέα τέλεα πελομένων καλῶς / ἐπίδρομ’, ὁπόθι θάνατος ἀπῇ: the widely accepted meaning suggested by the scholion at verse 122, θεοῖς δ’ ἐναγέα· ὅπου δὲ θάνατος ἀπῇ ἐκεῖ τῶν ἀνθρώπων εὐπραγούντων τιμαὶ τοῖς θεοῖς ἐπιτρέχουσιν 12 Bordigoni (2006); for elements of formularity in Aeschylus, after Sideras (1971), acute observations are to be read in Marchiori (1999). 13 For the constitution of the text, one should consider as substantially accepted the corrections of Boissonade (1825) εὖ, γᾶ, κοννεῖς for the εὐακοννεῖς of 119 and εὐγακόννις of 130; ἐπιδρόμὡπόθι has instead been correctly divided by Hermann on the basis of the scholion, and in the same way that ὅπῃ has always been substituted by the variant, witnessed by the scholion, ἀπῇ; for all of this it is sufficient to refer to the apparatus of West. 14 I am unable to identify the collocation of this conjecture that I find cited in FJW; Young (1974) 118 proposes again, apparently autonomously, σινδονίᾳ; the observation of FJW works anyway, because the reference to Aesch. 153 N. (=153 R.) is not cogent. 15 “Σιδονίᾳ is much richer in associations and extends, instead of merely echoing, the emphasis on the exquisiteness of the material”; the same authors add, no less reasonably, that “it is not easy to see why the diorthotes should have corrected σινδονία into σιδονίᾳ if he did not regard it as a pure error on the part in the scribe”, cf. FJW 108 and ff.

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(‘abundantly flow the expiatory offerings to the gods, if good is the fortune, when death is distant’) would entail a difficulty regarding the use of ἐναγέα as an adjective.16 The general sense of the context is not in doubt, if among other things one compares Aesch. Sept. 76 γένεσθε δ᾽ ἀλκή· ξυνὰ δ’ ἐλπίζω λέγειν / πόλις γὰρ εὖ πράσσουσα δαίμονας τίει but most of all there is no connection with the preceding strophe and the rest of the antistrophe (112-116 and 125-127), and also it is not clear how the general idea may be referred to the Danaids,17 and finally, above all, “ἐναγής normally means ‘polluted’ or ‘liable to pollution’ […] and evidence for non-pejorative usage is late, cf. Σ Soph. OT 656 [ἐναγῆ φίλον γράφε ἐναγῆ φίλων·] ἐναγὲς δὲ τὸ σεβάσμιον καὶ ἁγνόν [ἄγος γὰρ τὸ ἱερὸν σέβας ὅθεν καὶ τὸ ἄγη μ’ ἔχει] also Hsch. E 2587 ἐναγίσματα·ὁλοκαυτώματα […]. The inherent ambivalence of the word ἄγος, attested in its equation with ἅγνισμα, θυσία in Soph. fr. 689 […], does not justify imputing an eccentric and intolerably ambiguous use of ἐναγής (‘heilig,’ Wilamowitz AI 32) to Aeschylus here”. From this observation stems a long discussion that rejects “the unsubstantiated reinterpretations of ἐναγέα τέλεα as ‘sacrificial rites in expiation’ (Tucker), ‘sacrifices in satisfaction of vows’ (Weir Smith), or, more precisly, ‘sacra vel vota, quibus neglectis ἄγος contrahitur’ (Italie, s.v. ἐναγής)” in so far as it “introduce[s] ambiguity, and with it ideas ostentatiously lacking in contextual relevance”; it therefore rejects the attempt “to emend ἐναγέα (ME) to ἀναγέα (Boissonade), which assumes an easy corruption […]: sc. ‘but unpolluted rites run freely towards the gods when things are well …’. This would connect well enough with 112-116 and 125-127 if it can be assumed that the Chorus’ selfmourning involves an ἄγος (see below), but unfortunately ἀναγής = ‘pure’ is exceedingly poorly attested […]. Accordingly, this expedient fails and the traditional interpretation must be abandoned”. Therefore, for Friis Johansen and Whittle, ἐναγέα must be considered sound, it can not be taken to mean ἁγνά, and it probably alludes to the funeral songs. After rejecting further attempts at emendation,18 the commentators arrive at two possible exegeses: either “But then things are well, wherever death is absent, the ceremonies run towards the gods with a pollution in them’ i.e. dirges sung for themselves by people not in danger of death constitute a pollution and offence towards the gods”, or “‘But rites in16 FJW (1980) 109 ff.: “ ... though the explanation of ἐναγέα as a subst. is generally, and correctly, disregarded in favour of giving the word its normal adjectival function and making τέλεα the substantive”. 17 Also the Danaids, once saved from the threat that hangs over them and received in Argos, could make generous offerings to the gods. 18 Meineke, as cited in FJW; Jurenka (1900) 187.

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volving pollution are rash in the gods’ eyes (or offensive to the gods) when things are well…’; i.e., funeral laments … are premature when there is in fact no prospect of death”. From this, one concludes that ἐναγέα τέλεα may be substantially equivalent to ἐναγίσματα: which means that the substance of the second part of the scholion would be correct, though inserted in an improper context, and even if we do not have a testimony for that use of ἐναγής, it would still be plausible in relation to the use of ἐναγίζειν and its derivatives to indicate the offerings to the dead. Nevertheless, they still observe again that θεοῖς is collocated too emphatically for an ethical dative, while ἐπίδρομος in the sense of “rushed, hasty” is found for the first time only in Pausan. 9.21.6 and 33.3. The conclusion therefore is problematic: “as each of the above two interpretations involves at least one serious difficulty, neither can be accepted with confidence; it remains likely, however, that the sentence displays the Chorus’ awareness that their dirges are uncalled for, if not dangerous”. Verdenius objects that for ἐναγέα: “FJW do not arrive at a definite interpretation of 123-124 because they stick to the idea that ἐναγέα must have the pejorative meaning of ‘involving pollution’”, that goes back to the interpretation commonly accepted, and shared by Italie, while Sandin, though considering this proposal, ends up favoring the correction ἀναγέα, “pure”, “uncontaminated” of Boissonade: “if the word ἀναγής is poorly attested in this sense, it nevertheless conveys too good a meaning in this context to be completely dismissed. With ἀναγέα, the passage becomes […] an ironic and ambiguous reference to the future killing of the Danaids’ husbands”.19 With all due respect to the colleagues who have tried to illuminate this text, for which I am afraid I may have not given an adequate account, I wonder if the fact that the documented occurrences of ἐναγής take place too late for the meaning that Italie attributes to it, taking ἐναγέα τέλεα for ‘sacra vel vota, quibus neglectis ἄγος contrahitur’, should be an insurmountable obstacle, above all in the case of a poet who has created more than 1,500 terms that, according to our current knowledge, are coinages, and that in many cases still reoccur again, according to our current knowledge, only many centuries after Aeschylus.20 In the end, Friis Johansen and Whittle also, like Sandin, are not able to avoid resorting to terms 19 FJW (1980) 109 ff.; Verdenius (1985) 298; Sandin (2005) 107 ff. 20 Citti (1994) 24 n. 13 (Ἀσιαγενής), 26 n. 22 (ἱπποβάτης), and 24 (πολυθρέμμων), etc.; there (p. 8 ff.) one also observes the same term of ‘hurried’, which is clearly precarious; on the other hand, the meaning ‘hurried’ for the neologism ἐπίδρομος is easily deducible from the root and would have not meant a particular straining, not for the poet who would have coined it nor for the audience that would have had to understand it in that context.

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documented centuries after the Suppliants, and the dissatisfaction of the first two with the third (i.e. Friis and Whittle with Sandin) at the conclusion of their great commentary, compels me to be less radical in the conclusions to be drawn. West (1990), cleaning up the punctuation, has confronted the meaning of these verses, taking ἐναγέα τέλεα as “offices or ceremonies that are subject to supernatural displeasure because of pollution or some other religious fault”, and according to him the chorus would be aware of the threat posed by the impious matrimonies; ἐπίδρομος on the other hand “means ‘subject to incursion’ (Il. 6.434: ἔνθα μάλιστα / ἀμβατός ἐστι πόλις καὶ ἐπίδρομον ἔπλετο τεῖχος)”. To admit this meaning of ἐναγέα τέλεα” nevertheless, he is forced to understand πελομένων καλῶς as “‘just as things seem to be going well’, or less likely, ‘if things turn out well’”. But what could a text like this mean: “if the rites were contaminated, if the things are going well, if death does not arrive, they are exposed to punishment by the gods”.21 For this reason I believe that the meaning deriving from the text established by West would be sufficiently clear for verses 122-124: “abundantly flow the expiatory offerings to the gods, if good is the fortune, when death is distant”, and that future editors should reproduce it without variation, with the exegetical clarifications that I have put forth. The seventh strophe, with the refrain that accompanies it, occurs in this way in the manuscript: 135

140

πλάτα μὲν οὖν λινορραφής τε δόμος ἅλα στέγων δορὸς ἀχίματόν μ’ ἔπεμπε συνπνοιαῖς · οὐδὲ μέμφομαι· τελευτᾶς δ’ ἐν χρόνῳ πατὴρ ὁ παντόπτας πρευμενεῖς κτίσειεν. σπέρμα σεμνᾶς μέγα ματρός, εὐνὰς ἀνδρῶν, ἒ ἔ, ἄγαμον ἀδάμαντον ἐκφυγεῖν.

At verse 134 Weil proposed τ’ εὖ δόμος, “antistrophae causa”, but his scansion of the verse, not founded on any MS or even necessary,22 was 21 It cannot mean other than ‘vulnerable to invasion by the gods’: West is right that the expression is “original but not obscure” (as referring to Sept. 274 εὖ ξυντυχόντων), but it seems to me that the context would be generated by the whole phrase, though it is true that “not even the gods can counter death”; cf. West (1990) 134. 22 Cf. Weil (1966) 17; he scans these verses πλάτα μὲν οὖν λινορραφής τ’ / εὖ δόμος ἅλα στέγων δορὸς vs. θέλουσα δ’ αὖ θέλουσαν - / γνά μ’ ἐπιδέτω

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soon abandoned, and with it, the related conjecture, which West recorded in the apparatus merely for the sake of being comprehensive; Tucker, who writes τε δόμος, notes the proposal of Weil and adds in the apparatus: “si necesse foret, posses τ’ ἔντονος”; that the necessity does not exist is proven by the fact that the meaning does not register the lack of anything23 and therefore the manuscript text will need to be maintained. Therefore for 134 and following, λινορραφής τε δόμος, the transmitted text, was questioned for the first time by Friis Johansen in 1959, and again in the article and the commentary published by him with Whittle:24 according to them, “the lack of quantitative balance between the long nominal phrase λινορραφής ... δόμος and the bare πλάτα coordinate with it is highly unusual but hardly sufficient of itself to make the phrase suspect […]; there is, however, a serious difficulty over the syntax δορός. (1) If it is attributed to δόμος […] the wordorder is abnormal, the separation of an attributive genitive from its substantive by an attributive participle with an object being apparently unrecorded and uparalleled at least in Aeschylus. (2) If δορός is construed with στέγων, δόμος and δόρυ will have to denote different things, which leads to insurmountable difficulties; nor is στέγειν attested with a gen. of separation (3) If δορός is construed with ἀχείματον and interpreted as ‘war’ (Schütz), ἀχείματον is given a metaphorical sense that is intolerable in a description of actual seafaring”. They suppose then that something has happened to disturb the original syntax of the phrase; they reject the λινορραφοῦς of Dindorf because “λινορραφής is in itself impeccable”, δοραῖς of Newman and θοαῖς of Jurenka because paleographically improbable and ἁλιστεγής of the first edition of Friis Johansen because this conjecture would not place the two coordinating elements in equilibrium; ἁλιστεγής is not attested, and its assonance with “λινορραφής” would be anomalous and inelegant”. For these reasons, “it would be preferable to put a comma after δόμος and continue with ἅλα στέγον δόρυ”. Consideration must be given with respect to the way in which the hypothesized corruption would have come about. Griffith, reviewing the commentary of Friis Johansen and Whittle, finds this line of reasoning “neat, but improbable”, and thinks that δορός is an attributive genitive, which does not separate. Sandin agrees with this Διὸς κόρα in the antistrophe, recalling that “Heimsoeth tentaverat καὶ δόμος, etiam infelicius Dindorf λινορραφοῦς τε δρόμος”. 23 Tucker (1889) 34, who in the commentary evokes the ἔντονοι, of which Plat. Leg. 945c speaks, that “are probably some such ξύνδεσμος as this before us”. West soberly observes in his own apparatus, “debuit τε τόνος”.

24 Friis Johansen (1966) 46; FJW (1975) 9; FJW (1980) 114 ff.: for brevity, I cite predominantly from this commentary.

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remark and concludes by suggesting taking δορός in the sense of “wood of the ship”, a metaphor for ship, and translates “the flaxen-stitched house, keeping the sea out of the hull”, by defining the expression “something confused […] but not impossible for Aeschylus”.25 Perhaps, through careful consideration, it is not worth risking the correction of a complicated image that may be original, and is better to keep the transmitted text, as problematic as it may be.26 At 136 the correction ἀχείματόν for ἀχίματόν goes back to Arsenius of Monembasia, and so in the following verse, separating σὺν πνοαῖς instead of συνπνοιαῖς of the manuscript goes back to Porson; later on, τελευτὰς for τελευτᾶς was the proposal of Musgrave27: these operations are obvious and generally accepted; at 140, πρευμενεῖς of the MS was corrected to πρευμενής by Tournebus who referred it to Zeus, πατὴρ ὁ παντόπτας, and in this form has been accepted by some editors,28 though soon enough this conjecture was abandoned. In conclusion, the text of West will not need to be modified in this strophe, and the same is true for the refrain, in which the desiderative character of the infinitive was already clear in the scholion: ἐκφυγεῖν· λείπει τὸ δοίη.29 The corresponding antistrophe has posed problems starting with 146: the girls of the chorus hope that, because she desires it (θέλουσα), the holy daughter of Zeus will turn her eyes to them who themselves desire it (θέλουσαν, in the singular, refers to each one of the girls of the chorus), θέλουσα δ᾽ αὖ θέλουσαν ἁγνά

145 μ᾽ ἐπιδέτω Διὸς κόρα

ἔχουσα σέμν᾽ ἐνώπι᾽ ἀσφαλές, παντὶ δὲ σθένος διωγμοῖσι δ᾽ ἀσφαλέας ἀδμήτας ἀδμήτα 150 ῥύσιος γενέσθω. 25 Griffith (1986) 332 (significantly Sandin calls it ‘neat, even a little too neat). Sandin (2005) 109 ff. The interpreation of Sandin, “that keeps the sea away from the ship”, on the other hand, was already in Untersteiner (1935) 64; as I observed, the fact that this commentary was destined for school use prevented its circulation in the most appropriate circles. 26 Also Sommerstein (2008) keeps ἅλα στέγων δορός, “that keeps out the sea”. 27 In the printed tradition, though, it begins with Wellauer (1823) 199: “τελευτὰς dedi, maxime propter sequens πρευμενεῖς”. 28 Cf. Vettori (1557) 312; Canter (1580) 305. 29 For the insertion of παντάρχας done by Hermann in 140 (“indicio versus antistrophici addidi παντάρχας”), cf. below. By now obvious and universally accepted is the correction ἀδάματον of Bothe for ἀδάμαντον offered by the MS in 143.

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At verse 147 the second hand of M has παντὶ δὲ σθένουσι, which already Portus corrected to παντὶ δὲ σθένει, in a marginal note destined to go long ignored;30 in the preceding verse, the expression ἔχουσα σέμν᾽ ἐνώπι᾽ ἀσφαλές has long constituted a great problem: Stanley translated retinens venerandum vultum secure, taking ἐνώπια for “face” and ἀσφαλές in an adverbial sense; he corrected to ἀσφαλίας the following ἀσφαλέας of παντὶ δὲ σθένουσι διωγμοῖσι δ᾽ ἀσφαλέας, translated with some approximation a gravibus persecutionibus secure, and annotated: “Forte: παντὶ δὲ σθένουσι, διωγμοῖσι δ᾽ ἀσφαλίας] Canterus πάντα δὲ σθένη. Forte πάντα δὲ σθένουσι, διωγμοῖσι δ᾽ ἀσφαλίας”.31 Pauw proposes παντὶ δὲ σθένει διωγμοῖσι δ᾽ ἀσφαλίας, ἀδμῆτος ἀδμήτα ῥύσιος γενέσθω, omni vero robore securitatisque viis indomitae indomita liberatrix esto, adding as an alternative “legi etiam posset ἀδμῆτος ἀδμήτᾳ, a recto ἀδμῆτος, sed id minus arridet mihi,” while Heath first commented on ἀσφαλές, writing “malim ἀσφαλως, quod et in esemplaribus suis legisse videtur vetus Scholiastes”,32 then on the following verses, observing that “neque metrorum satis constat ratio neque constructionis, ita utrisque consuli posse existimo: παντὶ δὲ σθένει διωγμοῖς trochaicus dimeter acatalectus, ἀσφαλίσασ᾽, ἀδμῆτος ἀδμήτα choriambicus dimeter hypercatalectus, ῥύσιος γενέσθω,” referring to the text of Stanley and to the remark of Pauw, and adding on his own the conjecture, ἀσφαλίσασ(α), “making us safe”.33 Schütz understood, as did Stanley, σέμν᾽ ἐνώπι(α) as vultusque graves in me (praesidii causa) immotos dirigat, and includes ἀσφαλίας in the first edition and παντὶ δὲ σθένουσι, while in the second edition he has παντὶ δὲ σθένει and the proposal made by Heath, ἀσφαλίσασ’.34 Hermann intervenes, by even replacing the prob30 I am indebted for this indication to the apparatus of West, that should also be rectified regarding the attribution to Canter (1580) 305, who reproduces the reading of the MS παντὶ δὲ σθένουσι. 31 Stanley (1663) 568 ff., 846. Checking (Canter) 1580 and the Novarum lectionum libri VIII makes me doubt that πάντα δὲ σθένη is found in Canter. 32 This is not true: the scholion reads μ’ ἐπιδέτω [...] ἀσφαλές] ἀσφαλῶς ἐπιδέτω με, but this simply means that in the interpretation of the scholiast ἀσφαλές (which he read in the text in front of him, and this confirms the reading of Mediceus) has adverbial value, as in verse 91. The scholion explains again: πίπτει δ᾽ ἀσφαλὲς] ἀσφαλῶς ἀποβαίνει. The merit of having introduced in the erudite tradition the right correction παντὶ δὲ σθένει goes to Pauw, who did not know Portus. 33 Pauw (1745) 1071; Heath (1762) 142. 34 Schütz (1794) 136 and 256; Schütz (1808) 156 ff. and 253; analagously Bothe (1805) prints σέμν᾽ ἔχουσ᾽ ἐνώπι᾽ ἀσφαλές and translates “vultis venerandis immobiliter in me directis”. In the same year the second edition of Schütz appeared, Müller (1808), whose work I have not seen, made an arduous attempt

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lematic ἀσφαλές with Ἄρτεμις, and annotating apodictically: “oculis aberrans scriba codicis primitivi ἀσφαλές posuerat ubi Ἄρτεμις debebat”.35 No one has accepted this proposal except for Wecklein, yet the reference to Hesychius ε 3469 ἐνώπια· τὰ κατ᾽ ἀντικρὺ τοῦ πυλῶνος φαινόμενα μέρη, ἃ καὶ διεκόσμουν ἕνεκα τῶν παριόντων and the comparison with π 3604 προνώπια· τὰ ἔμπροσθεν τῶν πυλῶν, καθάπερ ἐνώπια τὰ ἔνδον, ὅπου αἱ εἰκόνες τίθενται have introduced the interpretation of the term ἐνώπια in an architectonic sense: no longer the face of the goddess, but “the façade” of the temples, a probable synecdoche for the temples themselves, in relation to which ἔχουσα lent itself to having the precise meaning of possessing them: a meaning that Hermann certainly considered but did not express. Finally, regarding verses 146 and following, he restored παντὶ δὲ σθένει, by attributing it to Heath, and proposed διωγμοῖς ἐμοῖσιν ἀσχαλῶσα, “appalled by my persecutions” in place of διωγμοῖσι δ᾽ ἀσφαλέας.36 The unique proposal of Weil, who corrected ἔχουσα to ἔχουσαν, should refer therefore to με: “scripsi ἔχουσαν, and σεμνὰ ἐνώπια expono venerandam quam prae se ferunt ramorum speciem”, by adding “Schol. ἐνώπια dici putat oculos, alii templum Dianae quod in scaena conspici volunt”.37 Certainly the interpretation of ἐνώπια in reference to the face of the goddess goes back at least to Stanley, but there is no scholion that would explain the term in this way. Apart from this mistake, the correction ἔχουσαν has no justification, if ἔχουσα can be reasonably referred to ἁγνά [...] Διὸς κόρα, as seems to be the case. It is useless to complicate a text that is already sufficiently complicated. Later Wecklein accepted, as we saw, Hermann’s proposal Ἄρτεμις and conjectured ἀλκαθοῦσ’ for ἀσφαλέας, referring for comparison to Bekk. to identify a temple that really existed in Athens, dedicated to Hecate or to Artemis, to which ἐνώπια would allude. The memory of this exegesis was soon lost, even though Vürtheim (1928) 88 and ff., and Untersteiner (1935) 66 devoted some effort to rejecting it. 35 Hermann (1852) I 7, II 10. 36 Hermann (1852) II “et scripsi, ut sententia postulabat, διωγμοῖς ἐμοῖσιν ἀσχαλῶσα”. But the opinion to be demonstrated, and the response would have not allowed this interpretation, if Hermann had not inserted by force παντάρχας in 140. Hermann modified here the antistrophe in what according to him should have been the sense of the phrase, and consequently he has intervened in the strophe. 37 Weil (1866) 18, then Paley (18703) 17 = Paley (18794) 19 agreed that “ἐνώπια are properly the front walls of a temple or court, against which statues were placed”, and Wilamowitz, restored, against Hermann, διωγμοῖσι δ᾽, accepted ἀσφαλῶς, and suggested taking ἀσφαλέας in the sense of ὥστε μὴ σφάλλεσθαι ὑπὸ τῶν διωκόντων.

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Anecd. p. 383: ἀλκάθω καὶ ἀλκάθειν Σοφοκλῆς καὶ Αἰσχύλος. σημαίνει δὲ τὸ βοηθεῖν. More importantly, he justified the use of the accusative plural ἀδμῆτας as depending on ῥύσιος γενέσθω: “the acc. is from ῥύσιος γενέσθω as if dependent on ῥυσάσθω, compare ἔξαρνον εἶναι with accusative and πολλὰ συνίστορα (στέγην) Ag. 1075”.38 Later on, Vürtheim, in commenting on the ancient theory that claimed to identify in a temple that existed historically the σέμν᾽ ἐνώπι(α), mentioned here by Aeschylus, advanced an observation which will need to be taken into account: namely, that of an antithesis between the unviolated goddess, who lives serenely in her own temples, without being threatened by any human being, and the miserable condition of the Danaids, wanderers of the world exposed to the appetites of boorish enemies. Precisely this contrast should have imposed upon Artemis the duty to come to their aid παντὶ σθένει. A few years later Untersteiner correctly evaluated the observation of Vürtheim, and offered a contribution that is not negligible for the comprehension of the construction ῥύσιος γενέσθω with the accusative, referring, among other things, to Cho. 23 χοὰς προπομπός = χοὰς προπομποῦσα.39 This was followed by the appearance of two editions by Murray who in 1937 has proposed for 146 ἀσφαλέα and for 148 has restored the ἀσχαλῶσ(α) of Hermann, and in 1955 has returned for the second passage to the reading of the manuscript, marking it with a crux. Page marked it with a crux †ἐνώπι᾽ ἀσφαλές, and has gone back to ἀσχαλῶσ(α), which he has restored from Pauw ἀδμῆτος ἀδμήτᾳ. Friis Johansen and Whittle begin their analysis referring to the Homeric occurrences of “ἐνώπι᾽: elsewhere in poetry this substantive occurs for certain only in the epic formula πρὸς ἐνώπια: Il. 8.435, 13.261, Od. 4.42, 22.121”; among the various values indicated by the scholiasts for these places and adopted by the modern commentators of Homer, considering also the passages of Hesychius mentioned by Hermann, the one that best suits the context indicates the wall of the façade or the façade itself; “If the word here means a part of a building, ‘front walls’ or ‘façade’ is the most likely meaning; it will stand for ‘temple,’ as pars pro toto, which is in itself somewhat peculiar”. This line of reasoning seems to work, but at this point an unforeseen problem arises. The commentary in fact goes on: “But the question why the possession of a temple should be mentioned as something characteristic of Artemis is still more 38 Wecklein (1902) 39 ff. The reference to Bekker should today be taken as Syn. B 982 C. 39 Vürtheim (1928) 89 ff.; Untersteiner (1935) 66 ff. For Cho. 23 cf. also Untersteiner (2002) 169 (who recalls because of similar constructions also Cho. 155, Sept. 163 ff., Pers. 981, Ag. 1090 ff.) and Citti (2006) 29-32.

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embarrassing: many gods have temples. It is therefore no wonder that numerous attempts have been made at identifying the ἐνώπια with a particular building either in Athens (and so visible to the audience) or in Argos (and so supposedly visible to the Chorus) or with a structure on the stage itself, such as an altar”. The objection appears to me to be clearly unfounded: it is not necessary for the possession of the ancient temple to be an exclusive characteristic of Artemis, even though the criticism of those who wish to identify a particular building is in my opinion correct. Perhaps, Artemis should aid the Danaids because she is a virgin and therefore the natural protector of those who wish to preserve their virginity,40 but here the mention of the ancient temple should be understood in turn with regard to the miserable condition of the Danaids who are persecuted far from their homeland or building of protection. Precisely because the goddess inhabits the ancient temples safely (ἀσφαλές), she will have to show compassion for the unlucky ones and intervene with παντὶ σθένει, with all of her power, to aid them: once again, the observation of Vürtheim helps to understand the text, justifying the contested ἀσφαλές, accusative neuter with adverbial value, which the scholiast correctly interpreted as ἀσφαλῶς, not because he read the adverb in the text that he was commenting on, as Heath thought, but because it is normal that in order to explain a little-used term one may employ a more common expression. This is what commentators have always done, and this is how they continue to treat it. By understanding ἐνώπια in this way, one avoids the objection of Friis Johansen and Whittle, who at the end of their long analysis suggest that we understand the term as “face”: even though they admit that this meaning is not attested, they conclude that it should be approved because it eliminates that “useless temple” that no one knows how to handle;41they reject in 146 ἀσφαλές, because it could not be an internal object of ἔχουσα or of ἐπιδέτω, both transitive verbs that have an external object, and Heath’s correction ἀσφαλῶς would not be acceptable because it could have never been substituted for the much more difficult ἀσφαλές (here they are clearly right), and they prefer Headlam’s ἀσφαλέα, a neuter plural in the sense of “immovable’ or “steady”, agreeing with ἐνώπια. Friis Johansen and Whittle appreciate this solu40 Once again the possibility of understanding the place reflects this point of view, cf. Garvie (1969) 2006, xvii-xix, which remains for me a firm point. See recently for this passage Sommerstein (2008). 41 “Against the weakness that ἐνώπια is not, or at least not certainly, attested with the meaning ‘countenance’ must be set the gain obtaining a meaning which is apposite to the context and thus getting rid of the wretched temple about which one does not know what to do” (FJW 1980, 122).

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tion because “it normalizes the syntax, is paleographically close, and goes some way to account for the corrupt ἀσφαλέας in 148”.42 Finally they aptly justify παντὶ ... σθένει as “a phrase used in military contexts”43 and they confront the issue of διωγμοῖσι δ᾽ ἀσφαλέας, contesting both the solution of Wilamowitz (διωγμοῖς ἀσφαλέας, metrically acceptable and interpreted ὥστε μὴ σφάλλεσθαι ὑπὸ τῶν διωκόντων) and διωγμοῖς ἀσχαλῶσ’, recently adopted by Page on the basis of a proposal made by Hermann.44 The first would present the inconvenience of the rare construction of σφάλλεσθαι with the instrumental dative, the second presents a verb with a dative that should mean “being hostile to” or “taking action against” rather than “being vexed at something that has happened to oneself”, and having the value of ἀσχαλᾶν or ἀσχάλλειν with a dative in PV 764 γαμεῖ γάμον τοιοῦτον ᾧ ποτ’ ἀσχαλεῖ and in other places. Finally, neither of the two conjectures take into account the δ’, which in the position in which it is found defies syntactic explanation and could therefore be part of the original text rather than a later intrusion.45 All of these reasons for suspicion render the passage extremely difficult, and the editors have therefore marked it with cruces † δ’ ἀσφαλέας †. In the face of this difficulty, the commentary of Verdenius appears balanced, since he confirms the intuition of FJW that ἐνώπια is pars pro toto, and therefore ‘temple’ works; he also criticizes the fact that they have put the difficulty aside for later; he too recalls in this regard Vürtheim, particularly concerning the deduction that takes “the occupation of a temple as a foil to the insecurity of the Danaids”, proving therefore its functionality; with respect to ἀσφαλές in the adverbial sense, he refers to Homer Il. 15.713, and observes that it “expresses the occasion at which they hope to remain safe: Il. 13.713 οὐ γάρ σφι σταδίῃ ὑσμίνῃ μίμνε φίλον κῆρ, Thuc. 2.20 ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἐσβολῇ, K-G I 445-6”, and fi42 The fact that there is absolutely no example of synizesis of -εα in Aeschylus would create some difficulty, but “given that ἀσφαλές is indefensible, it will most likely have replaced some rather unusual form of the same word”. 43 The following are examples of the linguistic use and considerations on how the corruption in σθένος or σθένουσι could have come about, forms attested respectively by the first and second hands of the manuscript. 44 Cf. above for both proposals. 45 Finally, to complicate the situation further, FJW (1980) 125 observe that “it is likely that ἀσφαλέας represents a dittography of ἀσφαλές (-έα?) in 147: if so, the criterion of paleographical probability has much less weight.” Maybe one should consider each problematic point as a problem in itself: if it allows a meaning, it is not prudent to intervene on the basis of a plausible hypothesis formulated regarding another passage, even when the two are undoubtedly correlated.

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nally suggests that “the addition of δ’ in M can be easily explained as an attempt to eliminate the hiatus between διωγμοῖσι and ἀσφαλέας”.46 The edition of West is a balanced attempt and, as usual, is profoundly aware of the fact that it brings order to an array of thorny problems. In my view, it is almost completely acceptable: perhaps at 148 by reading διωγμοῖς ἀσχαλῶσ(α), it might reflect the most economical solution suggested recently by Verdenius. Sandin returns to the question of ἐνώπια and observes that “the meaning ‘temple’ has, contrary to the vulgate opinion, little or no support from the extant appearances of the noun, which elsewhere only occurs in the Homeric formula ἐνώπια παμφανόωντα”; concerning ἀσφαλές, he considers it in all probability to be corrupt, rejecting the examples of adverbial use offered by Verdenius, and between the ἀσφαλῶς of Heath, ἀσφαλῆ of Sidgwick, and ἀσφαλής of Young47 he chooses the last one, since he considers it “the most economical”; regarding this, he observes that it is “often used in official treatises of alliance”, and is a fine-tuning, while he considers desperate the expression †διωγμοῖσι δ᾽ ἀσφαλέας†, agreeing with FJW. Finally he deals with the unmetrical ἀδμήτας ἀδμήτα of 149: “the juxtaposition of thematic and athematic forms has parallels in Euripides in the formula δάκρυα δάκρυσι […]; FJW and West have adopted de Pauw’s ἀδμῆτος, but Westphal’s solution, the acc. pl. of the third declension, is easier […] the change from singular (θέλουσαν ... μ’) to plural is of no consequence at all,” and this last consideration, I believe, can be easily accepted, even though Sandin himself does not maintain it elsewhere.48 A conclusion regarding a segment of text that is so tormented can only be cautiously proposed. I believe that the criterion of not changing what has reasonable probability of being kept should prevail. Summarizing what has been said up to now, I believe that the reading σέμν’ ἐνώπι’ can be reasonably maintained, with the sense of “templa veneranda”, and that with good probability the adverbial ἀσφαλές could be preserved; the corrections παντὶ δὲ σθένει, διωγμοῖς ἀσφαλέας and ἀδμῆτας ἀδμήτα are the least costly, and allow us to recover an acceptable text; finally it seems uncontroversial that ῥύσιος γενέσθω could support the accusative ἀδμῆτας.49 Therefore I propose the following text: 46 Verdenius (1985) 304. 47 Cf. Sidgwick (1902); Young (1974) 218 (“possessing in security august facades”: if the neuter adverbial usage is possible, this correction is useless). 48 Sandin (2005) 66, regarding Suppl. 40 ἐπικεκλομέναι, cf. Citti (2007) 144. 49 Sommerstein (2008) has ἔχουσα σέμν᾽ ἐνώπι᾽ ἀσφαλῆ, but translates pertinently “she who dwells behind august, secure temple facades”, and notes “the

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θέλουσα δ’ αὖ θέλουσαν ἁγνά μ᾽ ἐπιδέτω Διὸς κόρα ἔχουσα σέμν’ ἐνώπι’ ἀσφαλές, παντὶ δὲ σθένει διωγμοῖς ἀσφαλέας ἀδμῆτας ἀδμήτα ῥύσιος γενέσθω.

point is: Artemis’ virginity is safe from all attack; ours is not; therefore let her protect us”; therefore in 148 he accepts Hermann’s conjecture ἀσχαλῶσα from the text of West.

Sons of the Shield: Paternal Arms in Epic and Tragedy Barbara Goff University of Reading While Hephaestus’ armor for Achilles in the Iliad offers to place the hero at the centre of the known cosmos, the armor that Achilles loses on the body of Patroclus describes a different ideal (17.194-197): ...but he [Patroclus] put on the immortal arms of Achilles son of Peleus, which the gods, sons of Ouranos, gave to his dear father; and he gave them to his own son when he grew old...

Peleus receives his arms from the deities as a token of and reward for his excellence, and he transmits this guarantee to his son via the gift of the armor.1 Descending via the male line, heroic identity depends on paternity and simultaneously confirms it, and here, the terms of the equation are filled out by the arms, which link the generations in their downward movement. But the transmission is not often untroubled; the paternal gear is lost, as here when Hector takes it from the body of Patroclus, or the sons die before they have had a chance to become fathers and transmit the armor onwards.2 And indeed the last line of the quotation above continues, of Achilles, “but the son did not grow old in his father’s armor”. It is no surprise, of course, to find that the Iliad both states and dismantles an ideal here, since such a recursive movement is at the heart 1

2

Translations of the Greek are mine. On the transmission of inherited excellence as a driving consideration within much of Greek literature see Rose (1992). Edwards (1991) 61 suggests that the Homeric epic invented the story of Peleus’ transmission of the arms; see also (1991) 156 on an alternative tradition which has Thetis as the source of the original as well as the replacement panoply. Davies (2007), with reference to folk-tale motifs, emphasises the role of the mother in arming. Arms go to the conqueror also in Book 6.418 (from Andromache’s father to Achilles, who honourably burns them on the funeral pyre) and in Book 7.146 (from Areithous to Lycurgus). In 7.82 and 17.39-40 Trojans plan to take arms from various victims and dedicate them or give them as gifts.

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of its poetic and cultural strategies.3 In this paper I shall concentrate on other moments, in the Odyssey and tragedy, when the transmission of paternal arms is at stake, to investigate both the ideal and its compromises. The arms of Odysseus’ family almost invariably give rise to scenes of oedipal tension, which work to confirm Odysseus’ identity as father; in Ajax and Philoctetes the contested transmission of Achilles’ arms detracts from paternal identity by permitting the construction of numerous alternative fathers. The paper ends with the shield of Hector in Trojan Women, which feminizes heroic paternity. I am guided here especially by Pucci’s indispensable book on Oedipus Tyrannus, which explores the poststructuralist premise that the father, understood as origin and guarantee, is a fiction that can only be maintained by the complementary fiction of a language that is transparent and unequivocal. Scrutinizing the texts of epic and tragedy, Pucci’s work as a whole can be seen to track the desire that constructs equations between father and son, as between logos and ergon, while unpicking its dependence on a language that refuses to underwrite them. Family and language both dissolve into the unfocused anxiety that is what presses us to produce texts.4 So the arms that move between father and son contribute to the discourse of paternity by operating as signs of an equivalence and identity that they cannot always sustain.5 Although paternal arms speak of identity transmitted from father and son, the relationship underpinned by each transmission is shown to be troubled, and the father yields to the fabrication. If the Iliad is aware of the limitations to the ideal, the Odyssey is, perhaps predictably, more ready to entertain it. The arms of the father play a crucial part in the resolution of the epic’s narrative, restoring Odysseus to his proper paternal and indeed patriarchal role. In Odyssey 3

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5

Paternal transmission or seizure by conquest are not the Iliad’s only models. Paternal transmission is legible in 10.270, 14.11, and 15.534; the staff in 2.100108 is transmitted down the paternal line more securely, however, than any arms. Transmission between companions or between guest-friends is highlighted at 7.136-149 in a narrative recounted by Nestor; arms from Ares go to Areithous, thence to his conqueror Lycurgus, thence when Lycurgus ages to his companion Ereuthalion. In 10.265-269 the helmet is transmitted as a gift of xenia, guest-friendship, before being handed down from father to son, and in 11.19-20, Agamemnon’s breastplate is a gift of xenia. To acknowledge a debt to Pucci’s poststructuralist analyses, while a pleasure, is also perhaps a dissonant gesture of filiation in the context of his repeated fabrications of the father. Despite this incipient contradiction, I am delighted at this opportunity to honour the generous encouragement that Pietro has long afforded my work. On the discourse of paternity, see Pucci (1992) 3-9.

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19, Odysseus and Telemachus, who are by now mutually recognized, cooperate in removing the weapons from the hall, in an enterprise that foreshadows their even more warlike cooperation later on.6 When searching for an excuse to cover the removal of the arms, Odysseus suggests the explanation that the arms have been spoiled by the smoke and are “no longer like /those which once Odysseus left when he went to Troy” (19.7-8). The arms are thus explicitly connected to the regrettable absence of the father. In his relay of this excuse to Eurycleia Telemachus, whose speech after the return of Odysseus is almost always characterized by opacities,7 embellishes the script and includes the note that he “was still a child” (nepios, 19.19) while the arms were becoming darkened with smoke.8 His self-deprecating stance, however, does not stop him setting his father Odysseus, in the disguise of the beggar, to work helping to move the arms, in which task they are eventually joined by Athena (19.33). This divine encounter allows Odysseus to correct the balance between father and son by telling him not to ask questions, but to go to bed instead (19.41-44).9 Telemachus is packed away, like the arms, so that Odysseus can meet with Penelope. The paternal arms here validate the father somewhat at the expense of the son. At the end of Book 19, Penelope decides on the contest of the bow, but the bow itself does not appear until the opening of Book 21. It was a gift from Iphitus, who had met Odysseus when the latter was still a boy, sent “by his father and the other old men” ... “on an errand that the whole people laid on him” (21.17, 21.21) in order to negotiate the return of 300 stolen sheep. Odysseus’ juvenile success is implicitly contrasted with the failure of Iphitus, who is killed by Heracles while a guest in his household. Before his death, he presents Odysseus with the bow, which he received himself from his father the great archer Eurytus, “who left it to his son when he died in his high hall” (21.33). Charged with the weight of correct relations between father and son, the bow is linked also to relations within and among communities. For Iphitus, his 6

7

8 9

Much commentary occupies itself with this scene’s relation to that in 16.281289. Scodel (1998) offers an extensive recent treatment, although her concerns are very different from mine. Thalmann (1998) 206-223 gives a good account of the contradictory representations of Telemachus in poem and in criticism; see also Felson-Rubin (1994) chapter 4. Hoffer (1995) illustrates the difficulties attendant on reading Telemachus’ speeches naturalistically. See Rutherford (1992) 136 for other places where Telemachus describes himself thus. Rutherford (1992) 137 notes that the invisible presence of Athene allows Odysseus to show off his greater experience.

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relationship with his father is correct but that with his host is not; Odysseus takes up the bow with his family and his community both in disarray, but the weapon from the past promises restoration in the future.10 When the contest gets underway, however, the bow appears to threaten the father-son relationship quite radically. Such is the tension in the hall that the players cannot behave themselves properly: Penelope insults the suitors even as she promises to marry one of them (21.68-70); Eumaeus the swineherd and Philoetus the oxherd weep as they put the bow before the suitors; Antinoos, reprimanding them, pretends to a consideration and a modesty that are alien to him, all the while plotting an underhand success (21.85-97). Similarly strained, Telemachus twice describes himself as nēpios, foolish and childlike, while trying to adopt the authoritative pose of the kyrios who could give his mother away in marriage (21.102-110). He is also willing to attempt the bow, success with which would qualify him to take up his father’s glorious prizes, but would also enable him to retain his mother in the house, because she would not marry another (21.115-117). The extraordinary hints of incest and patricide here make more troubling the next scene, in which Telemachus very nearly does string the bow.11 Three times he fails, but, the narrative voice tells us, “pulling the bow for the fourth time, he would have strung it” (21.128). Odysseus, however, stops him with a gesture,12 and Telemachus withdraws, berating himself, as so often, for his inadequacy (21.131-135). The ambiguity of this moment is well recognized in the criticism; Odysseus succeeds and is succeeded in the same gesture, supplied with a rightful heir even as he reacquires his own property, and while the paternal line is confirmed by Telemachus’ prowess, the son is prevented from threatening the father by his own 10 Several commentators remark on the resonances of this transmission for Odysseus’ next moves, in terms of violations of hospitality and righteous revenge. See e.g. Morrison (2003) 162; Grethlein (2008) 42-43. Jones (1998) 194 notes the ring composition of the description of the bow’s transmission; see also on structure de Jong (2001) 507-508. That the chronology of Heracles may be confused in this narrative need not concern us; see Grethlein with bibliography. 11 Whether or not this scene hints at oedipal tensions is an issue that divides commentators. On such conflict overall in epic, see Wöhrle (1999). Such hints are downplayed by e.g. Hoffer (1995) 523-524. Rutherford (1992) 62 suggests that Telemachus’ restraint, self-discipline and artful concealment show him as his father’s true heir; cf. e.g. Segal (2001) 55-56. Goldhill (1991) 20 notes that epic characteristically represses the signs of generational conflict; cf. Strauss (1993) 14 on the Iliad’s discreet hints at father-son tension. 12 See Russo’s commentary (1993) 163 on the transhistorical significance of the raised eyebrow.

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excellence.13 As a product of familial transmission, marked also with an ambiguous history of violence and negotiation, the bow is well positioned to mediate such contradictory demands. The ideal of relationship between father and son is constructed partly via correct access to transmitted weapons. Here in the Odyssey the son must acquire access to them, but on the quite stringent terms dictated by the father. Telemachus is again caught in this double bind, a son competent enough to be a credit but not competent enough to be a threat, when he arms the four defenders of the house from the weapons already removed from the hall – but omits to close the door to the storeroom. The suitors can then arm themselves too, by sending in Melanthius (22.154-156). One piece of equipment that is significant here is the shield that Melanthius carries off (22.183-186): in the other hand an old broad shield, spoiled with mildew, belonging to the hero Laertes, which he carried when young. For a long time it had been lying there, and the seams of the straps were gone.

What Odysseus pretended had happened to the weapons in the hall has in fact happened to Laertes’ shield; it has decayed in the absence of the father.14 Laertes is an absent father because he has withdrawn from the house, and he will later be met in a state of decay similar to that of his shield.15 Another absent father, however, is Odysseus himself, who is saved from having to appear as a son to Laertes by the old man’s palpable feebleness, embodied here in the rot of his shield.16 The shield, which clearly compromises heroic paternity, is thus embroiled in the father-son dynamics of Odysseus’ return on at least two levels. The arms, bow and shield that feature in the successful return of Odysseus imply certain relationships between father and son, in which the ideal of preservation and transmission is legible. In each case the weapons are also a focus of some tension, whereby father and son are in competition for the heroic identity granted by the arms, and this combination of transmission and tension can be seen to underwrite the figure

13 See e.g. Goldhill (1986) 148-151; Thalmann (1998) 206-233; Murnaghan (2002) 138. 14 Grethlein (2008) does not mention this shield, although it might be germane to his argument about memory. 15 Jones (1988) 206 notes that Laertes will be rejuvenated by the return of Odysseus. 16 See e.g. Thalmann (1998) 210-211 on Odysseus and Laertes from this perspective.

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of the father.17 The varied forms of transmission in the Iliad ostensibly avoid oedipal tension, but the crucial arms, those made for Achilles by Hephaestus, may perhaps be seen to circumvent the question of heroic paternity by being commissioned by the mother and fashioned by a lame cuckold.18 This is not, of course, the place to engage at length with the eloquent equipment, but we can perhaps follow traces of Achilles’ arms as they move into the later genre of tragedy. According to the Little Iliad, Neoptolemus eventually obtained his father’s arms, but two of the dramas of Sophocles consider their wayward trajectory before this.19 In both Philoctetes and Ajax, Achilles’ weapons have not descended to his son Neoptolemus, but have diverged from a paternal transmission, and both plays consequently examine other constructions of the father. Both plays also posit another transmission, of other weapons, as a gesture of healing, which may or may not succeed. In Philoctetes, Neoptolemus tells Philoctetes, as part of the false background story set up by Odysseus, that he did not inherit his father’s arms, and that this is what fuels his rancor against the Atreidai (58-65).20 Although this is ostensibly part of the deception, it is very plausible; 21 tradition awards the arms to Odysseus as the result of the contest with Ajax and the Little Iliad suggests that Neoptolemus does not acquire them until long after Ajax’s death. Since the heroic weapons are alienable, and do not necessarily transfer smoothly to the son, the son is also left without clear signs of his identity, and must construct a father-figure

17 The effect is of course doubled in Laertes’ famous speech at 24.513-515, when he rejoices at his son and grandson vying for renown. 18 Much later, Aeneas similarly receives new armour from his mother, with the blessing of a father who is helpfully dead and willing to concede the title of pater. 19 In Euripides’ Andromache, Neoptolemus does not seem to possess his father’s weapons, because he has to seize armour from the walls of the temple at Delphi where he meets his death at the hands of Orestes’ assassins. A different deprivation makes Iolaus seize weaponry from the temple wall in Euripides’ Children of Heracles. 20 See Michelakis (2002) 164 for an account of this deceptive speech as a foreshadowing of the play itself. 21 The web of deception that envelops the play may be approached partly via Pucci’s investigation of Oedipus, in which the father is understood as the guarantor of meaning and, in his absence, language drifts (1992, 66). Several critics note that it is impossible to tell when Neoptolemus stops deceiving; see e.g. Winnington-Ingram (1980) 283-284, Blundell (1989) 195. For Calder (1971), Neoptolemus is permanently a villain.

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from the resources before him.22 Odysseus offers first to move into the vacant paternal position, invoking Achilles as he does so (four times in the first scene alone: 4, 50, 57, 96), and many critics understand the play in terms of a battle among different and mutually contradictory fathers – Achilles, Odysseus, Philoctetes, Heracles, not to mention the other dead Greek heroes that occupy the 50 lines of roll call following Neoptolemus’ initial deception – for the allegiance of the younger man. However, distinctions among the fathers may not be as clear-cut as appears at first, since Philoctetes, alone on an island, in rags and armed with a great bow, is himself a version of Odysseus,23 and since Heracles, who apparently resolves the impossible choice between following Achilles and following Philoctetes, may also be Odysseus in disguise.24 Despite this plurality of father figures, the text often insists on the primacy of the paternal physis, ‘nature’, derived from Achilles (79, 88, 904, 1284, 1310), and Rose (1992) 321, for instance, suggests that the ideology of physis means that Neoptolemus’ final choice of Philoctetes merely confirms the nobility conferred by Achilles. From another perspective, however, one may argue that Neoptolemus challenges the primacy of physis by choosing a cultural father, the crippled Philoctetes, over the ultimately unproductive paradigm offered by the natural father Achilles.25 In the same way, the paternal arms of Achilles are replaced by another weapon and another means of transmission, when Neoptolemus acquires from Philoctetes the bow of Heracles. Passing from the older to the younger warrior, the bow may be said to construct a relationship of paternity between Philoctetes and Neoptolemus, over against the cor-

22 On fathers, see e.g. Whitby (1996) 39, and Roisman (2005) 89-105. The chorus also bid for the paternal position by regularly calling Neoptolemus ‘child’ or ‘son’ (e.g. 201, 210). 23 See Segal (1981) 353, 359; Whitby (1996) 38. 24 On the possibility that Heracles is Odysseus in disguise, see Errandonea (1955) and (1956), and Roisman (2005) 109-111. Rose (1992) 232 n. 101 dismisses it out of hand. 25 In relation to Oedipus, Pucci discusses the differences between the genitor (biological) and the pater (cultural) (e.g. 1992, 9, 81). Ideally, of course, these coalesce, but an element of fabrication is usually involved. In Philoctetes, Achilles’ physis legitimises Neoptolemus’ refusal of Odyssean deceit, but Neoptolemus can be seen to betray the heroic heritage when he finally agrees to take Philoctetes home instead of to Troy. Alternatively we can see Achilles’ example underwriting the decision to quit. On physis and paternity, see Roisman (2005) 88-91. Blundell’s (1989) chapter on Philoctetes concentrates on physis but is less interested in paternity. On Achilles at the sack of Troy, see 226 below.

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rupt paternity offered by Odysseus.26 This paternity is, crucially, chosen, rather than imposed by physis, and we may argue that it gives way in turn to a relationship of philia, friendship, between men who are more like equals than like father and son.27 Thus Heracles instructs them to go to Troy as two lions, eliding any difference of age or experience (1436), and assimilating the relationship between Philoctetes and Neoptolemus to that between Philoctetes and himself. The bow of Odysseus in the Odyssey fulfills the epic promise of resolution by an insistence on the paternal line and patriarchal power, over against any potential selfassertion from Telemachus; the bow of Heracles can be seen to replace the vertical paternal line with the possibility of alternative, more horizontal, associations.28 Despite this loosening of familial imperatives, however, we may conclude that paternal physis remains a threat to Neoptolemus; Heracles’ warnings to respect the gods, at the sack of Troy (1440-1443), may suggest the Achillean atrocities that Neoptolemus commits against Priam, Astyanax, and Polyxena. The transmission of paternal arms is the crux too of Sophocles’ Ajax. In this play, Achilles’ weapons, instead of moving smoothly down the generations, instituted strife among the Greeks after his death and eventually ruined the warrior hailed as the next best (Il. 2.768, Aj. 13391410). Wrenched from Achilles by death, the arms are then wrenched from a proper course of transmission, and are made instead the object of a democratic process of judgment. This anomalous procedure is further compromised, for Ajax, by corruption (445-449, 1135); the perverted process deprives him of the weapons several times over. We cannot know if the contest was rigged or not,29 but in any case, such a contest undermines the vertical transmission of excellence, signified by paternal arms, with the possibility of less hierarchical horizontal relationships. In Philoctetes this was an outcome that could be welcomed, but not by Ajax here. Even though Achilles is not, of course, father to Ajax, the play contrives that the dis26 Philoctetes consistently addresses Neoptolemus as ‘child’ or ‘son’; notable exceptions occur at 910 and 923, when Neoptolemus, correctly accused of betrayal, is ‘man’ or ‘stranger’. Storey (2006), who corrects Roisman on this issue, himself seems to downplay the force of 910. See e.g. Reinhardt (1979) 164165 on Odysseus’ paternity. 27 See e.g. Kosak (1991) 93. 28 Roisman (2005) 109 suggests instead that Heracles is like Philoctetes’ father. Other critics, such as Reinhardt (1979), Segal (1981), Blundell (1989), Pucci (2003) downplay the paternal relation in favour of the relation of philia, friendship, or in the case of Belfiore (2000) 63-80, xenia, guest-friendship. 29 See Kirkwood (1994) 72.

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ruption of the arms’ transmission reflects on Ajax’s identities as son and father, neither of which, it seems, can now be sustained.30 Ajax’s attempt to repair such identities, by means of further arms, exposes their continued vulnerabilities. Once Ajax is aware of the appalling humiliation he has suffered, his thoughts quickly turn to his father Telamon, and his dread of facing his father is underlined subsequently by Teucer’s own expectation that he will be found guilty of fratricide (462-472, 1008-1021).31 Far from guaranteeing his son’s heroic identity by his paternity, the example of Telamon’s glorious career leaves Ajax unmanned and incapable. Ajax’s only recourse in the face of imagined paternal anger is suicide; and yet in reaction to this dangerous paternal relation Ajax wants to install himself more fully as father to Eurysaces. The way that he tries to do this is via the shield.32 To Tecmessa’s impassioned plea (485-524) that he not die, but continue to live to protect his family, Ajax makes little response except insofar as he then asks for his son. Tecmessa has sent Eurysaces away to protect him, which even Ajax notes was a correct move, but now Ajax is impatient to see him (530-540). To approach Ajax in his ghastly blood-caked state is a test, and one that Eurysaces must not fail. Ajax commands Tecmessa, or perhaps the servant, to “lift him up” (545), as if he is a very small boy, but continues with the statement that ταρβήσει γὰρ οὔ, / νεοσφαγῆ τοῦτόν γε προσλεύσσων φόνον, “he will not fear / seeing this newly slaughtered bloodshed” (545-546). Once this confidence in Eurysaces has been expressed, however, it is undermined; Eurysaces will not fear εἴπερ δικαίως ἔστ’ ἐμὸς τὰ πατρόθεν “if he is really mine on the father’s side” (547). Paternity is articulated as a conditional, a question open to doubt and demanding of proof; and Ajax’s despairing attitude towards his exigent father suggests perhaps that paternity can never be proved enough. Even once the test of Eurysaces is set up, it does not suffice, but is immediately overlaid with another requirement; it is necessary “to horsetame him in the savage customs of the father” (548-549). All commentators note how difficult this expression is, since νόμοι, here translated customs, are normally a sign of civili-

30 Michelakis writes that “Ajax talks of Achilles’ weapons as if they were his, as if they were stolen from Achilles’ natural heir” (2002, 146). 31 Critics readily acknowledge Telamon’s noxious effects on both his sons; see e.g. Strauss (1993) 80; Tyrrell and Brown (1991) 65-72. 32 Michelakis (2002) 146 points out that Achilles’ arms are replaced by Hector’s sword as well as by Ajax’s shield, but I concentrate on the shield, because the sword is not the object of another process of paternal transmission.

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sation and thus anything but ὠμοί, savage.33 In the next line, the process is re-described; the son must be horsetamed (πωλοδαμνεῖν) but also must be made like the father in physis, κἀξομοιοῦσθαι φύσιν (549). This requirement suggests that the identification between father and son is not self-evident, not simply to be handed down with paternal weapons, but to be acquired by a process of labour; and it has already become clear that the comparable identity between Ajax and Telamon is a vulnerable achievement, readily threatened. Any projection of identity between Ajax and Eurysaces is further undermined by Ajax’s next utterance, his wish that Eurysaces be the same as his father, but with better fortune: πατρὸς εὐτυχέστερος, / τὰ δ’ ἄλλ᾽ ὅμοιος (550-551). Ajax’s speech continues in a series of contradictory fantasies about Eurysaces’ filial relations. Even though confronted with the bloodspattered figure of his father, the son is said to be oblivious to all the troubles around him (552-553). Not only this, but even while he is to be broken into his father’s savage ways, he will also somehow manage to live “fed on light breezes, nurturing [his] young soul, a joy to [his] mother” (558-559). Identity with the father will win out insofar as Eurysaces must eventually show οἷος ἐξ οἵου ’τράφης, “who you are and from whom sired”, but since he will do this πατρὸς / ... ἐν ἐχθροῖς, “among the father’s enemies”, (557), which is exactly where he is in such peril now, the likelihood of this demonstration seems to fade away the harder we look at it. Of the paternal enemies, Ajax states that “no one of the Greeks will outrage you with hateful insults” (560-561), but the reason for his confidence is that Teucer will look after his son, taking on the paternal role that Ajax is implicitly abandoning at the very moment that he charges Eurysaces to be like him (562-563). Having set himself up as a contradictory, and indeed perhaps impossible, model, for Eurysaces, Ajax then writes himself out of the script and has Teucer convey his son back to his own paternal home with Telamon and Eriboea (568-569). In this task the chorus, here addressed as aspistēres, “bearers of the shield”, are to assist (565-566). Eurysaces, meanwhile, is to take on Ajax’s role as gēroboskos of Ajax’s parents, to care for them in old age, so that the paternal function proliferates, divided among several males young and old (570). Planning to die, Ajax disposes of his son, and analogously he disposes of his arms; but unlike those of Achilles, these arms are not alienable, and will not be awarded in a doubtful democratic contest, but will be buried with him (572-573, 577). Only one item of his heroic equip33 The paradox of taming into wildness is explored by Garvie ad loc. and Hesk (2003) 69-73 among others. On this speech, see also Goldhill (1986) 186-187 with bibliography, (1990) 117-118.

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ment will pass to his son, namely the shield which throughout the Iliad was the sign of his unalienable identity (e.g. 7.219, 11.485, 17.238). Ajax attempts to heal the rift in the relay of weapons, and the identities that they underpin, by successfully transmitting to his son his heroic shield. Since the shield is unbroken (arrhēkton, 576), it is eminently suitable for this task, and becomes even more so when we recall that arrhēkton describes Ajax himself in Pindar Isthm. 6, where Heracles hopes to Telamon for a son who is as “unbroken” as the lionskin he himself wears.34 Inasmuch as Ajax himself is no longer invulnerable, however, the word cannot successfully mend the breach in identity, and it is not easy to see how the shield will manage to do so.35 The scene reproduces, with major differences, the famous meeting in Iliad 6 among Hector, Andromache and Astyanax. While many commentators concentrate on the different relations between the two marital couples, the father-son nexus is also in play, mediated by weapons.36 In the Iliad, the son cries and is comforted by the removal of the scary paternal helmet (6.466-760). He is to grow up like his father, as a prince at Troy, but acknowledged as superior to his father: “and then let someone say ‘This man is far better than his father’ / as he comes from battle; let him kill a mighty enemy / and carry the bloody weapons; and may his mother rejoice in her heart” (6.478-481).37 The son in Ajax is not to cry, and is to grow up the same as his father. The epic father can here imagine his absence with more equanimity than the tragic father, who prolongs himself by the gift of the shield rather than removing himself via his helmet. Both fathers, however, indulge in contradictory fantasies with regards to their sons, the one dreaming of the son’s success even while acknowledging that Troy will be defeated, and the other imagining a version of himself that is identical in every way, except for the most important.38

34 See Jebb (2004) xviii. 35 For Segal, the shield, in its evocation of succession from father to son, “binds even Ajax to the rhythms of life and death” and speaks of community and its obligations, in opposition to the sword (1981, 116). This interpretation seems to me one that Ajax would decisively reject. 36 On the Iliadic scene in its relation to Ajax, see e.g. Reinhardt (1979) 21-22, Goldhill (1986) 186-187 (with bibliography). Some commentators, e.g. Winnington-Ingram (1980) 16, also discuss the sons. 37 Perhaps Hector has already acknowledged the superiority of his son by submitting to him in the matter of the helmet. 38 Commentators readily indict Ajax for seeing in his son only fantasies of himself; see e.g. Winnington-Ingram (1980) 31, Blundell (1989) 79.

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Why the shield seems to Ajax to be equipped to pull off the difficult task of healing is because Eurysaces is named after it (574).39 Such an act of naming should render the relationships among father, son and shield unequivocal and transparent, but the moment of transmission shows this cannot be so; the shield must discharge the contradictory imperatives of being both an indivisible part of the father and also alienable to the son. Moreover, via the name, the shield has already helped to construct the relationship between father and son, which is under scrutiny in this scene and which the shield must now retrieve and seal. The issue of naming, which closes Ajax’s long address to Eurysaces, is broached by Ajax with regards to himself in the first calm utterance that he delivers after his initial emotional dialogue with the chorus. At this juncture, the hollowness of the gesture of naming is fully exposed, so that the naming of Eurysaces after the shield comes as an ironic coda rather than an account of the successful relations among father, son and weapon. After Ajax comes from the tent out on to the stage, his first appeal is to the sailors of the chorus as his friends (349-350), whom he then asks to kill him (361). The relationship established with them is thus quickly converted to an impossible demand on them, which is the dynamic of his other relationships with Teucer, Tecmessa and Eurysaces also. When the chorus refuse to do as he asks, he ceases to engage with them directly, but gives voice to a series of rhetorical questions and apostrophes, addressing first Odysseus, as his enemy along with the Atreidai (373, 380), then Zeus (387), and finally the non-human darkness, sea, caves, pastures, and river Scamander (394, 412-418). Throughout these exchanges he persistently refers to himself in the third person: “Do you see the bold man, the stout-hearted one, fearless among enemies?” (364365); “You will no longer see this man, a man like no other of the army that Troy saw coming from Greece” (421-425). In a vain attempt to sustain his previous heroic identity, Ajax speaks of himself as the Greeks ought to have spoken in the contest of weapons. He is aware of the impossibility of the task, as he shows at 422-423, “I shall speak a big word” or “I shall boast”, using of himself a phrase that is usually derogatory.40 It is in this context that Ajax speaks of his name (430-441). His name, presumably given him by Telamon,41 has proved accurate, as he 39 Given that τελαμών can denote the strap of a shield, in being named after the shield he is also named after his grandfather. 40 Jebb calls it half-apologetic, but also epic in tone (2004) 73. In some epic contexts, such as Odyssey 22.288, ‘to talk big’ is extremely dangerous. At Ajax 386 the chorus counsels Ajax not to ‘talk big’ when he is threatening Odysseus, albeit in the latter’s absence. 41 Halleran (1992) 358 assumes that the giver of the name is Telamon.

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will shortly ensure of Eurysaces’ name, by his gift of the shield. Yet the name has been proved in a fashion unforeseen and unmanageable, revealing to him his identity as one who laments or is lamented, rather than reinforcing any element of a warrior identity.42 Since his name is thus the object of a separate act of understanding, the very discovery of the name’s accuracy contributes to his inability to sustain his identity; he falls from the singular into the plural, noting that he can say “aiai” twice or three times, and the word “aiai” is itself doubled rather than representing heroic singularity.43 It is in this context of the failed name that he nonetheless seeks at the end of the scene to bind up son, shield and name in mutual reinforcement. The nexus of paternity, heroic identity, and transmitted paternal weapons remains repeatedly potent, endeavouring to retrieve an epic fantasy despite the numerous problems that it encounters in tragedy. The Philoctetes arguably replaces the father of physis, Achilles, by the cultural father Philoctetes, rejecting the inheritance of Achilles’ shield for the gift of Heracles’ bow. The Ajax articulates even more doubts about the nature of paternity, and does not allow a second weapon to heal the loss of Achilles’ arms; Ajax’s attempts to unite father, son, and weapon expose the fragility of the relationship and dissolve into a multiplicity of paternal figures. In other tragedies the paternal weapons fare no better. In Euripides’ Heracles Mainomenos Heracles plans to leave his club to one of his sons (470-471), but ends up murdering the son with the club instead (991-994). In Iphigenia in Tauris, the final clinching token for the reunion between the siblings is Oenomaus’ spear, hanging in Iphigenia’s chambers in Mycenae (823-826), prompting the speculation that no males of the family were able to inherit it because the lines of filiation are so troubled, and prompting too the thought that it would be appropriate even for a female of that terrifying family to have a weapon in her bedroom. Establishing the recognition between Orestes and Iphigenia, the spear assists to integrate them back into their shared family while querying to what extent they can ever be part of a civilized community. The final instance of paternal arms that I wish to discuss has already been multiply foreshadowed by the Iliad, Odyssey, and Sophoclean dramas. When in Euripides’ Trojan Women the dead boy Astyanax is brought in on his father’s shield, the scene looks back to the moment in Iliad 6 where Hector dreams of Astyanax’s future, bringing home the 42 Pindar (Isthm. 5) derives Ajax’s name from aietos, eagle, which would obviously be a more appropriate act of heroic paternal naming; see Jebb (2004) 74. 43 Aj. 433 is, however, suspected by several editors including Lloyd-Jones and Wilson. On the accuracy of the epic name, see Pucci (1987) 65, with reference to Nagy (1979) 69-83.

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bloodied weapons and lauded as better than his father. If we consider this scene in the light of the other paternal arms examined here, it yields further ironies from an already disturbing tableau. Astyanax brings home not his enemy’s but his father’s shield, preventing the transmission of arms to the enemy that otherwise would have taken place; without his burial, as we hear from Talthybius, the shield would have gone away with Neoptolemus (1136-1142). Astyanax thus fulfils the epic imperative of inheriting the paternal shield, and the Spartan imperative to be ‘with it or on it’.44 Transmission is at the heart of Hecuba’s funeral speech, which describes Astyanax in terms both of the inheritance of royal power and prerogatives (1168-1170) and in terms of physical resemblance to his father (1178). Transmission of goods and identity between father and son is thus successfully completed by the well-rounded shield (ἀμφίτορνον 1156), but only because this circle is the empty sign of absence rather than describing the fullness of heroic identity.45 That the shield resonates with the paternal transmission which we have been investigating is perhaps indicated by the mention of Odysseus’ arms in 1225, arms which as we have seen are instrumental in arranging correct relations between father and son, but which are here rejected. Yet the completed circuit of heroic masculine identity is ironic in context, not only because the men involved are dead, but also because all the surroundings of the funeral ceremony are feminized. It is a woman who has organized the transmission of the shield from father to son; Andromache intervened in the shield’s journey to ensure that it ended here rather than accompanying Neoptolemus home, to hang as a sign of his triumph over his enemy (1136-1142). Hecuba receives the shield, with its melancholy burden, from Talthybius, and her ensuing rhesis blends ceremonial funeral speech with feminine lamentation.46 The achievements of the glorious dead are celebrated, but in imaginary prospect rather than retrospect (1168-1170, 1209-1211, 1218-1220). While it is no surprise that this drama places women centre-stage, the shield itself can be seen to undergo a process of feminization. In Hecuba’s speech the address to the corpse of Astyanax becomes conflated with that to the shield itself, which is described bodily, in terms of the marks it bears of Hector’s physical presence and sweat. Sweat dripped off Hector’s chin and fell on the shield when he was enduring toils (ponous, 1198). While ponos is the Homeric word for the toils of 44 Plutarch, Sayings of Spartan Women 241.16. 45 It thus also perhaps engages with the paradox of Amphiaraus’ heroically blank shield at Seven 591-592. 46 Talthybius has, in turn, performed the women’s actions of washing the body (1150-1152).

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war, it is also regularly connected in tragedy to the labours of childbirth.47 If we can consider the circular shield as partly assimilated to a womb-like space, there is an intensification of the metaphor at 1222 when the shield is addressed as a “mother” of trophies.48 This mother “dying, does not die” (1223). Although Hector’s shield thus recaptures the Iliadic ideal of the paternal weapon that by outliving the father, guarantees his identity in his son, it does so only by way of a detour through the feminine. As Euripidean drama stretches epic to the limit, the paternal figure and his arms give way to the mother.

47 Cf. Eur. Med. 1030, Supp. 920 and 1135, Tr. 760, Phoen. 30, Rh. 980; cf. Aesch. Eum. 59, Supp. 51, Xen. Mem. 2.2.5. 48 Lee (1976) 269 considers the metaphor “common in poetry”, but it is perhaps thrown into sharper relief by the context of Hecuba’s ‘motherhood’ of Astyanax (1229, 1251). Notable recent treatments of the scene include Poole (1976) 230, Segal (1993) 30, Dyson and Lee (2000).

Echoes from Mount Cithaeron Oliver Taplin University of Oxford Pietro Pucci has long been confronting the sphinx, fascinated by the enigmas, both ancient and modern, of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus. I share this pre-occupation with him, and have recently found myself recurrently nagged by the quasi-riddling motif of Mount Cithaeron, and its bearing on the play’s almost excessively “endless” ending.1 Does all the emphasis on this location in the past of Oedipus’ life story not entail that it also has a place in the future? Is he not to return there at the end? Oedipus himself clearly sees a “head-biting-tail” circle that should take him back to the mountain. The pattern that he should end where he was meant to die at his beginning is explicit in the last invocation of Cithaeron – in the text of the play as we have it, that is. After telling Creon how he envisages the future for the various members of his incestuous family, Oedipus urges (1449-1454): ἐμοῦ δὲ μήποτ᾽ ἀξιωθήτω τόδε πατρῷον ἄστυ ζῶντος οἰκητοῦ τυχεῖν· ἀλλ' ἔα με ναίειν ὄρεσιν, ἔνθα κλῄζεται οὑμὸς Κιθαιρὼν οὗτος, ὃν μήτηρ τέ μοι πατήρ τ᾽ ἐθέσθην ζῶντε κύριον τάφον, ἵν᾽ ἐξ ἐκείνων, οἵ μ᾽ ἀπωλλύτην, θάνω.

But as for me, / never make this city of my / ancestors have to harbour me / living in it, but allow me / to dwell upon the mountain here / which is known as mine, Cithaeron – / the region that my mother and / father both had designated, / when living, as my proper tomb; / then I’d die as they had willed it, / who tried to kill me when first born.2 1

2

See esp. his book Pucci (1992), and the articles Pucci (1988) and (1991). For my earlier attempts see Taplin (1978) esp. 45-46, and Taplin (1983) 166-174. In the 1978 book the interpretation I quoted from Colin Macleod has proved to be one cited in most discussions. Recent contributions of particular interest: Serra (1999), Rehm (2002) 221-235, esp. 224-227, and Budelmann (2006). I have used my own versions of Oedipus throughout; otherwise standard translations.

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As well as the haunting idea of the mountain as Oedipus’ κύριον τάφον there is another phrase here that has far-reaching resonances (although it does not seem to have attracted any special attention): ἔνθα κλῄζεται / οὑμὸς Κιθαιρὼν οὗτος. While the semantic range of κλῄζεται could extend all the way from “is celebrated as” to merely “is called”, the implication of οὑμός here seems to be that Cithaeron is well-known as his; that it might even be dubbed “Oedipus mountain”. Well known by whom? The usual suggestion is that the reference is internal to the play, harking back perhaps to the jubilant ode at 1086 ff. (see further below pp. 243-244).3 But, since that celebration has been falsified, is the implication not, rather, that the whole world links the mountain to Oedipus’ name? And “the whole world” would include Sophocles’ audience. That local association might have already been known in earlier versions of the story (unknown to us), or might only be inferred from the earlier references in the play to the mountain where the baby was meant to have been exposed.4 In this way οὑμὸς Κιθαιρὼν οὗτος sets up a kind of complicity between Oedipus and the audience of his tragedy, a shared awareness that Cithaeron is “proper” to him, that it reverberates with his name. Mount Cithaeron was (and is) a very real geophysical entity, far from only a figment of myth and poetry. It even has an honored place in Ancient History, as is traced in Herodotus, book 9. In fact, he gives rather a lot of detail about the maneuvers in the lead-up to the decisive land-battle at Plataea in 479 BC, and these involve a sequence of troopmovements in the northern foothills of Cithaeron.5 Mardonius and the Persian army had taken up position along the Theban bank of the river Asopos, just across, he says, from Erythrae and Hysiae and all the way to the Plataean territory (9.15).6 The small river Asopos runs west-east a few kilometers south of Thebes in between the city and the Cithaeron foothills, where these three smallish settlements were situated. Next the combined Greek army, coming from the Peloponnese, met up with the

3 4

5 6

Thus, for example Jebb (18932) ad loc. So we cannot tell whether, when Jocasta said back at 719 that Laius had his three-day-old baby thrown out εἰς ἄβατον ὄρος [“on an inaccessible mountain”], any of the audience might already know that this meant Cithaeron, even without its being named. Well documented in the commentary by Flower and Marincola (2002). Pindar refers to Plataea as πρὸ Κιθαιρῶνος [“in front of Cithaeron”] at Pythian 1.78 – as indeed it was, as seen from Thebes (not Thebes’ finest hour, of course).

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Athenian contingent at Eleusis,7 then moved on from there over Cithaeron, and took up position on the spurs of the mountain opposite the Persians (9.19). Before long they ventured down from the higher ground around Erythrae and “marched along the spurs of Cithaeron past Hysiae and into the Plataean territory” (9.25). There are another two weeks of skirmishes and maneuvers before Mardonius eventually commits his troops across the river, and the battle is joined at last. During all this there are quite a few more details of the exact topography of the northern slopes of Cithaeron around Plataea, enough to keep open-air historians busy ever since.8 What I am building up to is an incident back between the first and second Greek positions. A troupe of Persian cavalry under the leadership of the charismatic Masistius heads up the mountainside and attacks a sequence of Greek positions. After initial successes Masistius is killed by some (anonymous) Athenians, despite putting up brave resistance (9.22). The Persian crack cavalry fail to recover his corpse, and are forced to retreat back to Mardonius (9.23). There is serious mourning and hairshaving in the Persian camp (9.24.2-3): οἰμωγῇ τε χρεώμενοι ἀπλέτῳ· ἅπασαν γὰρ τὴν Βοιωτίην κατεῖχε ἠχὼ ὡς ἀνδρὸς ἀπολομένου μετά γε Μαρδόνιον λογιμωτάτου παρά τε Πέρσῃσι καὶ βασιλέϊ. [“…lamenting loudly; the sound of this was heard over all Boeotia, for a man was dead who, next to Mardonius, was most esteemed by all Persia and the king.”] This is major hyperbole – the whole of Boeotia is a huge area – but this use of ἠχώ is striking – it will re-echo. Cithaeron is standardly glossed as “the mountain in between Athens and Thebes”. More accurately it is the 30 kms length of high range, some 1400 meters at its highest, that forms the western half of the boundary between Attica and Boeotia (with Parnes to the east). And it is far from half way between Athens and Thebes. From the Athenian Acropolis on a clear day it is visible in the far distance to the NW; from Thebes it looms close by to the South. From Athens to Eleusis is 22kms by the Sacred Way; from there the tortuous road to Thebes heads NW across the southern ups-and-downs of Cithaeron; the highest pass, about 800 meters up, is 35 kms from Eleusis and 15 kms from Thebes. This is the road taken by the Greek army in 479; it was the road still taken by the bus to Delphi from Athens when I went on my first theoria there in the 1960s. 7 8

It is a great shame that the new (or, rather, fairly new) papyrus of the elegiac poem by Simonides celebrating Plataea peters out at this point on the march. Prominent among them, W. K. Pritchett: see the articles, ranging from 1957 to 1985, listed in the bibliography of Flower and Marincola (2002) 340-341.

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The uplands of the mountain are mostly harsh terrain, especially in winter; but there are mountain valleys and glens, which provide some crops and good summer pasturage. In secure times transhumant flocks from Attica, Boeotia and even Corinth would graze there – all three kinds of pottery have been found by survey archaeologists in the upland refuges.9 And in Sophocles’ OT the shepherd of King Laius of Thebes met his Corinthian colleague up there, giving their contact a touch of convincing realism (1134-1139): κάτοιδεν, ἦμος τὸν Κιθαιρῶνος τόπον ὁ μὲν διπλοῖσι ποιμνίοις, ἐγὼ δ᾽ ἑνὶ ἐπλησίαζον τῷδε τἀνδρὶ τρεῖς ὅλους ἐξ ἦρος εἰς ἀρκτοῦρον ἑκμήνους χρόνους· χειμῶνα δ᾽ ἤδη τἀμά τ᾽ εἰς ἔπαυλ᾽ ἐγὼ ἤλαυνον οὗτός τ᾽ ἐς τὰ Λαΐου σταθμά.

Surely he recalls how we two / used to graze our flocks together, / three years in succession, up there / round about Cithaeron, six months, / spring to autumn, he with double / flock, while I herded a single. / Then as winter was approaching, / I would drive my animals to / their own folds; and he would drive his / to the folds of Laius.

But there was much conflict between Athens and Thebes, especially in the fifth century, and much dispute over these very border territories. The strategic site of Eleutherae changed hands several times; and, of course, Plataea on the northern side maintained a special relationship with Athens, much to Theban irritation. Those settlements up along the northern flanks – Hysiae, Erythrae, Oenoe, Eleutherae– have not been definitively located,10 but it is striking how recurrent they are through the Herodotus narrative. They also reverberate, less predictably perhaps, in tragedy. From near the start of Euripides’ Antiope, for example, we have a fragment spoken by the old shepherd who has brought up the twin sons of Zeus and Antiope, Amphion, the intellectual and musician, and Zethus, the man of action. He prays for good fortune for himself and his master (fr. 179) ὃς Οἰνόης / σύγχορτα ναίει πεδία ταῖσδ’ Ἐλευθεραῖς [“who lives on the plain of Oinoe that joins its pastures with Eleutherae here”].11 And recall the shepherd-messenger in Bacchae 751-752 who tells how, when a group of men who spied on the 9 See Archaeological Reports 1989-1990. 10 It is widely accepted, though, that Eleutherae was where the substantial remains called “Gyphtokastro” still stand; see, e.g., Goette (2001) 317-318. 11 We also know that Hysiae was named in the play (fr. 180), but do not have any context for it. On Antiope and Eleutherae see further the Appendix below pp. 247-248.

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Theban bacchants were discovered, the maenads ran amok, and like enemy marauders descend on Ὑσιάς τ᾽ Ἐρυθράς θ᾽, αἳ Κιθαιρῶνος λέπας / νέρθεν κατῳκήκασιν… [“Hysiae and Erythrae, which are settled on the lower slopes of Cithaeron…”]. This leads to a crucial point about the mythological landscape of ancient Greece, a point that has not always been fully appreciated: that the topography of tragic myth is virtually the same as that of historical reality, viz. of the fifth century BC (and even to a large extent of today).12 Alongside all the difference of the setting of the heroic, epic world, these figures from the remote past inhabit the same unremote landscape. The setting of most of Greek myth is quite other from some lost or imaginary world (such as Camelot or Middle Earth or Ruritania): it is the same Greece as is known to the audience, either at first hand or by report. This identification, which bridges across gulfs of time and of sociology, is not only a matter of settlement-names – towns and villages – but also of rivers, coasts, plains, landmarks and, not least, mountains. Thus, to take a spectacular example, Clytemnestra’s beacons in Agamemnon, which, as a matter of fact, include the top of Cithaeron in their chain (l. 298), are lit on real, and mostly familiar, places, not merely fine-sounding names. The great majority of the audience in fifth-century Athens would surely have known Cithaeron at first hand, not just as a distant silhouette. There was military service up there, and frontier duties. The unfortunate Lamachus in Aristophanes’ Acharnians is summoned to march “to the passes in the snow” (1073-1075). And there will have been trade. Acharnians also recalls happier peacetime import-export relations with Boeotia (the eels of Lake Copais are especially missed!). Then, there will have been shepherding. And last, but far from least, there will have been overland travel to the north, above all to Delphi. The theoria-route over Cithaeron, through Boeotia, round the edge of Lake Copais, and then through the mountainous terrain of Phocis was so well-established that Herodotus even refers to it at one place as “the sacred way” – τὴν ἱρὴν ὁδόν (6.34). While there would, then, be some pleasant associations with Cithaeron, most would be less affectionate because of the persistent frontier troubles with Thebes. Another associated anxiety may have been a road between the Peloponnese and Thebes, without going through Eleusis – there has been no such road in modern times. Many historian-topographers agree that there was a route, which went from Corinth along the high ridges of the northern Megarid and so to 12 I hope to explore this large subject elsewhere.

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Cithaeron and Boeotia.13 It is realistic that the Corinthian shepherd in OT should be imagined as using this as a drove-road. This was, then, a way of by-passing Attica, so to speak; and was thus a possible back-door into Athenian territory from the north. It was probably the route taken by Archidamus on the first invasion of the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC Thucydides 2.18 is explicit that the Spartans came into Attica via Oenoe, “a walled town in the borderlands (ἐν μεθορίοις) of Attica and Boeotia”. However disputed territorially in classical times, Cithaeron was firmly and thoroughly Theban in the era of myth. The only Athenian story of the heroic age that I have been able to find located there is in Euripides’ Suppliants, where the bodies of the Seven, usually supposed to have been interred at Eleusis, are reported to have been buried “by the shadowy crag of Eleutherae” (757-759). But in Theban myth this mountain country is crowded. It is where Amphion and Zethus grew up before they went on to build Thebes a second time. It is also the usual setting for the massacre by Artemis and Apollo of all (or nearly all) of the children of Niobe and Amphion. Artemis is also a key-player in the story of Actaeon, grandson of Cadmus, who was hunting on Cithaeron when he saw the goddess bathing, and was torn to pieces by his own dogs for the privilege. When Pausanias explored this area, he saw “on the right as you come from Megara” a flat rock which they call the bed of Actaeon” (9.2-3). It was also on Cithaeron that, in some versions, Tiresias saw two snakes mating – or was it Athena naked? – and so became the pioneer transsexual. In the same passage Pausanias says: καθότι δὲ τοῦ Κιθαιρῶνος Πενθεῖ τῷ Ἐχίονος ἐγένετο ἡ συμφορὰ ἢ Οἰδίποδα ὅπῃ τεχθέντα ἐξέθεσαν, οἶδεν οὐδείς [“none knows where on the mountain the disaster befell Pentheus, son of Echion, nor where Oedipus was exposed at birth”]. Which brings us to Bacchae. In the prologue Dionysus soon informs us that he has driven the women of Thebes to the mountain (ὄρος, 33). But this is not any old Boeotian mountain – Helicon or Phocion or Messapion – it is explicitly and repeatedly Cithaeron, with its folds and its rocks and its pines.14 There they are enjoying their new, unroofed, unfettered life-style as maenads. At the end of the prologue Dionysus goes ἐς Κιθαιρῶνος πτυχάς [“to the glens of Cithaeron”, 62) 13 First intrepidly traced by Hammond (1954), it has become known as “the Road of the Towers”. For more recent field-work see Ober (1985) 120-129, Smith (2008) 84. 14 Buxton (1991) shows well how the evoked characteristics of the mountain change according to narrative context. See also Buxton (1992) – but Greek mythical mountains are real as well as “imaginary”.

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to participate in their dances. And so it is from Cithaeron that the shepherd-messenger arrives at 657 ff. We have already seen the passage where the women rampage through Hysiae and Erythrae before returning higher up. Returning from the same area, the messenger-attendant, who later narrates the death of Pentheus, tells (1043-1047) how they crossed the Asopos, and headed on to the λέπας Κιθαιρώνειον [“the Cithaeronian uplands”]. He evokes a pleasant landscape of streams and pine-glades, but it is soon to become defiled with blood and scattered body-parts. The whole place is filled with the screams of Pentheus and the jubilant hollering of the bacchants: ἦν δὲ πᾶσ᾽ ὁμοῦ βοή, / ὃ μὲν στενάζων ὅσον ἐτύγχαν᾽ ἐμπνέων, / αἳ δ᾽ ὠλόλυζον [“the whole place was filled with cries: he howled with any breath he had left in him, while they raised the ritual halloo”] (1131-1133). It becomes all cries, rather eerily similar to “all Boeotia” resounding in Herodotus. It is a constant misfortune that the final scenes of the play are in poor textual state; there are even some doubts about the authenticity of the ending in our text. But working with what we have, Bacchae concludes with the departures of Cadmus and Agaue, separately into exile. The very last anapaests, before the conventional choral tailpiece are delivered by Agaue (1381-1387):15 ἄγετ᾽ ὦ πομποί με κασιγνήτας ἵνα συμφυγάδας ληψόμεθ᾽ οἰκτράς. ἔλθοιμι δ᾽ ὅπου μήτε Κιθαιρὼν μιαρὸς μήτε Κιθαιρῶν᾽ ὄσσοισιν ἐγώ, μήθ᾽ ὅθι θύρσου μνῆμ᾽ ἀνάκειται· βάκχαις δ᾽ ἄλλαισι μέλοιεν.

Lead me, companions, where I shall take my pitiful sisters as fellow-exiles. May I come to somewhere where neither foul Cithaeron may see me, nor may I see Cithaeron in my sight, and where there shall be no reminder of the thyrsus. Let that be the concern of other bacchants.

Cithaeron, scene of the god’s triumph over Pentheus is for her μιαρός – she will have to trek an awfully long way before that mountain is finally out of sight. Interpreters of Bacchae have tended to turn their backs on the bitterness of these bleak closing lines, which are in effect a renunciation of Dionysus as well as of the maenadic mountain. Some even see the ending of Bacchae as upbeat and constructive, at least for the city of Thebes; but I must say that it strikes me as pretty grim, and conspicuously without compensatory uplift. 15 Dodds (1960) 240 concedes that these lines are too good to be the work of a late interpolator.

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There may possibly have been some more cheering material in the lost parts of Dionysus’ speech ἀπὸ μηχανῆς. There is no reason to think, however, that it made any allusion to Athens and Attica. This is worth registering, given that they are just over the other side of the mountain, and given that that would have been a handy way to lighten up the conclusion of the play. Think, after all, how easily Bacchae could have ended with Dionysus saying something like “Well, now that I have established my benign cult in Thebes, I shall set off, with my troupe of Bacchants, to bestow my blessings over on the other side of Cithaeron, in Athens”. He might even have set up choruses there: but there is no hint of any such thing. This should be something of a caveat against the Athenocentric, and often vicariously somewhat chauvinistic, approach that has been so prevalent in the interpretation of tragedy for the last 25 years. Cithaeron is part of the literal and mental mapping of the Athenian world, yet that does not necessarily mean that a tragedy which is set there is “all about” Athens. When it comes to any play set at Thebes, the Athenolaudatory approach tends to assert itself by saying that everyone knows that Thebes in tragedy is the polarized antitype of Athens, the city of darkness to set against the city of enlightenment.16 This is based on an unproven, yet self-confirming, methodology that assumes that all tragedies, wherever they are set, are “really about” Athens, and that, however, grim they may be, they are somehow latently favourable to the home-city. But I have yet to see a convincing argument why or how a play about Thebes is thereby necessarily a play about Athens, and in praise of Athens, even when there is no allusion, and even possibly an avoidance of allusion. The avoidance of any “leakage” of Athens into Cithaeron argues for the opposite. This applies to Bacchae: and the same goes for Sophocles’ OT.17 This raises interesting questions about another Cithaeron play, Euripides’ Antiope. This is a more complex case because it is generally believed that it did include explicitly, not just implicitly, Athenian material.18 If my train of argument below is right, then Antiope would be a striking example of a Cithaeron story that might have been claimed and appropriated for Athens but was, in fact, allowed to remain thoroughly Theban. 16 This claim goes back to a classic structuralist article by Froma Zeitlin (1990). Her subtle argument has tended to harden in the hands of others into rather glib dogma. 17 In fact, in the six surviving tragedies set at Thebes the only one with explicit reference to Athens is Euripides’ Heracles in the closing scenes. 18 These issues are explored in some detail in the Appendix, below pp. 247-248.

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There were many cult sites dotted around Mount Cithaeron, and they belonged to many gods besides Dionysus.19 He does, however, receive a cheerful local invocation in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazousae. In the middle of the second part of the play, the women of the chorus sing to a multiplicity of divinities, emphasizing the opportunity for music and dance (953-1000). Their final mesode and strophic pair are devoted to Dionysus and his accompanying nymphs, culminating in (995-1000): ἀμφὶ δὲ σοὶ κτυπεῖται Κιθαιρώνιος ἠχώ, μελάμφυλλά τ᾽ ὄρη δάσκια καὶ νάπαι πετρώδεις βρέμονται· κύκλῳ δὲ περὶ σὲ κισσός εὐπέταλος ἕλικι θάλλει.

Round about you the Cithaeronian echo is sounded in unison, and the dark-leaved mountain and the rocky glens reverberate; and flowering ivy twines all around you.

That “echo” again – and here preparing the way for Echo herself in the Andromeda-parody that will soon follow. I cannot help wondering, at the same time, whether there may have been a literal level to the Κιθαιρώνιος ἠχώ. As well as being poetically and symbolically reverberant, were there some well-known echo effects up there? If so, then Athenian “visitors” to the mountain would surely know of the phenomenon. In Sophocles’ OT there is another pairing of Dionysus and the nymphs on Cithaeron, though in a far more equivocal context. After the scene with the old Corinthian, who tells how he “found” the baby Oedipus there, Jocasta sees the truth, but Oedipus, with a new sense of urgent excitement, insists that he will search out his origins, however humble. The chorus sing a jubilant ode (1086 ff.) addressed to Cithaeron as Oedipus’ place of origin and nurse and mother, soon to be celebrated with festival. In the antistrophe they speculate that his father might have been a god – which one? Pan, an obvious candidate, or Apollo, or Hermes, or (1105-1109): εἴθ᾽ ὁ Βακχεῖος θεός ναίων ἐπ᾽ ἄκρων ὀρέων εὕρημα δέξατ᾽ ἔκ του Νυμφᾶν ἑλικωπίδων, αἷς πλεῖστα συμπαίζει. 19 At Euripides’ Phoenissae 24 it is said that the baby Oedipus was to have been exposed in the “meadow of Hera” on Cithaeron. There is no knowing whether this detail pre-existed Euripides.

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Or Dionysus, bacchant-god himself, / who takes his pleasures high in the upland,/ and was given you, a lucky find, / by some nymph with darkflashing eye – / his favourite companions for play.20

But this is all mistaken, of course (exemplifying one kind of gulf between comedy and tragedy): Cithaeron was his transitory preserver, not his place of origin. It is the old retainer of Laius, the shepherd who took the baby to the mountain, who supplies the final link in Oedipus’ reconstruction of his life-story, the first one in linear time. And, once he is blind, he himself sees the cartography of his life-journey all too clearly. He traces it at 1391ff. through four key places: Cithaeron, Corinth, the place where three roads meet, and finally back to Thebes, where he began. He reproaches the mountain (1391-1393): ἰὼ Κιθαιρών, τί μ᾽ ἐδέχου; τί μ᾽ οὐ λαβών ἔκτεινας εὐθύς, ὡς ἔδειξα μήποτε ἐμαυτὸν ἀνθρώποισιν ἔνθεν ἦ γεγώς;

O Cithaeron, why protect me? / O, why not crush and kill me then, / so I never would have shown to / the world the source from which I came?

The mountain itself is treated as a kind of player in Oedipus’ life-story, one which purposefully chooses to preserve him. I turn lastly to the first naming of Cithaeron in the OT, and to some even stranger phraseology. Tiresias has been stung by Oedipus’ accusations into a kind of invective against him, cast in largely enigmatic terms (408 ff.). He predicts that the curse of his parents will drive him from the land, and then embarks on what appears to be a four-line question (420-423, as transmitted): βοῆς δὲ τῆς σῆς ποῖος οὐκ ἔσται λιμήν, ποῖος Κιθαιρὼν οὐχὶ σύμφωνος τάχα, ὅταν καταίσθῃ τὸν ὑμέναιον, ὃν δόμοις ἄνορμον εἰσέπλευσας, εὐπλοίας τυχών;

Literally: What kind of harbour will there not be for your cry; what kind of Cithaeron will not soon call in unison, when you find out the weddingsong, the one without anchorage in your house, that you sailed into, after winning a fair voyage?

To say that there are mixed metaphors here would be an understatement! But this is the voice of a seer, a professional enigmatist: you do not expect lucidity from Tiresias, any more than from Cassandra. There seem to be three intertwined strands. One is the sea-voyage, which is 20 Wilamowitz’s ἑλικωπίδων must be the right emendation of the unmetrical Ἑλικωνιάδων in 1108.

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there in λιμήν and in 423. This comes back, interestingly, in choral form in 1207-1213, with the rather macabre metaphor of Jocasta’s womb as a capacious harbor, an image, which then shifts into the more conventional one of the arable field. Secondly there are human sounds that develop from the βοῆς of 420 into the ὑμέναιον of 422, or rather the other way round. The cryptic association seems to indicate that the joyful wedding-song that accompanied Oedipus’ progress to his marriagebed with Jocasta had an unheard second meaning, and that he will cry out in agony when he discovers what that was. Those cries will indeed be heard before the end of the play when Oedipus tells over the incestuous consequences of his marriage. And thirdly there is Cithaeron and its echoing voice. I do not feel totally sure that our text is flawless. ποῖος seems all right with the general term λιμήν in 420, but more peculiar with the particular named mountain in 421. And we could do with a dative to go with σύμφωνος. So I have got some time for πῶς σοι instead of ποῖος in 421 (suggested by G. Wolff): “how will Cithaeron not sound in unison with you, when you find out…?” Alternatively πᾶς σοι: “Will the whole of Cithaeron not sound in unison with you?” – as the whole area resounded in Herodotus and in Bacchae. But ποῖος Κιθαιρών is not impossible, and assuming it is sound I would take ποῖος … οὐ in both 420 and 421 to mean, in effect, “every” or “the whole of”. Oedipus’ cry will reach every harbor, that is, there will be none that will prove to be a refuge from the sound of his cries. Just as his marriage proves to be a false haven, so no harbour will prove insulated from his cries.21 And all of Cithaeron also, every crag and glen, will resonate in unison. Some recent authorities in textual criticism have not been happy with this, and have gone to town to make Tiresias sound more sensible. Thus, Hugh Lloyd-Jones22 claims that λιμήν is unacceptable as meaning generally a place that receives, and advocates βοῆς δὲ τῆς σῆς ποῖος οὐκ ἔσται ’λικών i.e. Ἑλικών with the first syllable prodelided – which would, as he admits, be very weird metrics. He claims that Helicon is “the one Greek word that it would be natural to find coupled here with Κιθαιρών”.23 But it is, on the contrary, intrusive and out of place to 21 Albio Cassio points out to me that some harbours were known as κωφός, dumb, (e.g. Thuc. 5.2.2, Xen. Hell. 2.43, Suda K 2310) suggesting perhaps that they were unusually protected from outside sounds. 22 Lloyd-Jones and Wilson (1990) 89-90. Helicon is also imported into his Loeb translation. 23 Why “natural”? It is true that Corinna told of a singing-match between Cithaeron and Helicon (fr. 1 = PMG 654), and that some such folk-tradition

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drag in another Boeotian mountain: the prophet knows that Cithaeron is uniquely the key mountain in Oedipus’ life-story. On this occasion Martin West manages to be even less poetically aware.24 He argues that line 421 is an interpolation, added by someone who did not understand the connection between λιμήν and βοῆς in 420. This person, he suggests, “added σύμφωνος, and because harbours seemed to lack close relevance to Oedipus, he added Cithaeron”. He thus deprives Tiresias of being the one to introduce the Cithaeron motif into the play, and attributes the highly poetic and effective idea of the mountain being σύμφωνος to some bungling pedant, who did not even have the ability to understand line 420. I hope that this chapter as a whole will have brought out why σύμφωνος is so powerfully the right word. Cithaeron is a resonant mountain par excellence. It echoed to the Persian laments for Masistius; it re-echoes with the shrieks of the children of Niobe, the baying of Actaeon’s hounds, the mingled discord of the bacchants and the death-cries of Pentheus. It will echo to the distorted, discordant marriage-song of Oedipus: the Κιθαιρώνιος ἠχώ will fill the whole mountain with his story, from the crying of a mutilated three-day-old baby to lamentations of the blind man. The clues that have reawakened my anxieties about the ending of the play are not so much Oedipus’ own pleas, although the fame of “my Cithaeron” is importunate (see above pp. 235-236), as the enigmatic future tenses of Tiresias. It might be claimed that his prophesy that the guilty man will “make his way towards a foreign land, / probing his footsteps with a stick” (445-446) need not be fulfilled before the end of the play25 – although all the other predictions in his speech at 449-460 are seen enacted within the tragedy. But the prediction that Cithaeron will “soon” (τάχα, 421) resonate with his cries of distress should not be lightly contradicted. All that prevents the embodiment of the answer to this riddle are the lines of Creon at 1438-1445 and at 1515-1523. Are those rather officious and unimpressive words enough to silence the echoes of “Oedipus Mountain”? I must try to confront that question another day.

may have pre-existed that. But the association of Helicon with the Muses is essential to that, and irrelevant to OT. 24 West (1978) 120. 25 It may be of interest that there is no reference whatsoever to a stick in the final scenes of the play.

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Appendix on Euripides’ Antiope and Eleutherae We have quite substantial fragments of Antiope, and it appears from these that it was a thoroughly Theban play, and, moreover, that it was generally auspicious for the future of the city. Most of its final disposition is preserved on a papyrus, first published in 1891: now fragment 223 in the excellent recent editions of Kannicht (2004) and of Collard (2004). Hermes appears ἀπὸ μηχανῆς just as Amphion and Zethus are about to kill the bad tyrant Lycus in their shepherd foster-father’s cottage (lines 96 ff.).26 He tells Lycus that he must step down, and that he should cast the ashes of his wife Dirce into the Theban stream that will take her name. Amphion and Zethus are to take over the rule and to build the celebrated seven-gated walls; they will have a future hero-cult. Nothing here about Athens. The play was set at Eleutherae (see above p. 238). There was a cult of Dionysus there, and the play evidently had a Dionysiac motif running through it. There is reference to a pillar (στῦλος) of the god festooned with ivy, possibly inside the shepherd’s hut (fr. 203). Queen Dirce arrived with a sub-chorus of Dionysiac worshipers. And a problematic papyrus fragment may rebuke her as unworthy of her Dionysiac outfit.27 The link with Athens, which is pretty universally taken for granted by scholars, is through the cult-title of Dionysus in the temple by the great city theatre, which was Eleuthereus: and it was said that the old statue there originally came from Eleutherae. That, admittedly, looks a pretty strong connection to Athens, and even to the theatre itself.28 But I am not so sure that this cult-title was current back in the fifth century. The festival was not named after it, and there is no attestation of it from classical times. The evidence comes from Pausanias and from an antiquarian scholion on Aristophanes.29 There is no evidence from what we know of Antiope to connect it with any Dionysus cult at Athens. It was, in fact, Froma Zeitlin, the original detractor of the tragic Thebes, who pointed out how significant it is that there is no reference to Dionysus in the play’s final dispensa26 In the numeration shared by both Kannicht and Collard (unfortunately their “larger font” line-numeration differs). 27 Fr.175, first published in 1980, assigned by some, including Kannicht (2004), to Euripides’ Antigone, and by others, including Collard (2004) and Taplin (1998) to Antiope. 28 The case is interestingly made by Connor (1989) 8-12. 29 Pausanias 1.38. 8-9; scholion on Acharnians 243, cf. Csapo-Slater (1995) 110. There is also a late inscription on the priest’s throne in the theatre.

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tion.30 She recognises that, were it not for the papyrus, it might have been very tempting to reconstruct that the play ended with the transfer of the rustic Dionysus cult at Eleutherae to the city cult-centre at Athens – “a true aition of the theatre itself”. But there is no trace of this: as she concedes, “the salutary path leads now to Thebes and not away from it”. She and others still attempt to salvage an Athenian presence in the play, however, by supposing that the chorus of Antiope consisted of old men of Athens. This is widely accepted, including by both Collard (2004) and Kannicht (2004). It rests on the fact that, according to Cicero, the chorus of Pacuvius’ Antiopa were “Attici”.31 This seems to me far from conclusive for Euripides, and it has to be set against a scholion on Hippolytus which says expressly that they were Theban: believers in an Athenian chorus have to emend that away. But what on earth were a bunch of elderly Athenians doing in these high pastures, in any case, a long way from Athens and not far from Thebes? Given that choruses in tragedy are so often local, the most likely identity would, it seems to me, be that they were shepherds from the area of Eleutherae. And their rusticity would be enough to explain why they do not identify Lycus directly when he arrives (fr. 223, 17-18).32

30 Zeitlin (1993) 179-182. 31 See Kannicht (2004) Testimonium vii b 2 on p. 278. 32 I delivered earlier versions of this paper at Columbia University and at the Seminar at “La Sapienza” in Rome. I am grateful to audience comments at both, especially to Nancy Worman, Helene Foley, Roberto Nicolai and Albio Cassio. I am also indebted to Florence Yoon for her help.

Notes on Tragic Rhetoric in Euripides’ Hecuba Jean Bollack University of Lille The following reflections are based on a collection of notes I compiled after seeing a performance of Hecuba that Bernard Sobel staged in 1988 at the Théâtre de Gennevilliers in Paris, in a translation by Nicole Loraux and François Rey (published in 1999 by Editions des Belles Lettres). Sobel used the German translation by Dietrich Ebener, published in East Berlin in 1975. I realized then that a great deal of work remained to be done, especially on the text. In the meantime -- more than twenty years -- my own understanding of the text has undergone some change. My reassessment is based on the two Oxford editions of Murray and Diggle, and on Méridier’s edition in the Budé collection. Matthiessen, whose name appears frequently in these pages, offers the most recent and substantial contribution to the discussion.

Odysseus versus Hecuba Euripides modified for the occasion the scene in which a disguised Odysseus comes to Troy as a spy: Helen describes the event to Telemachus in Odyssey 4.244-248. In the play Odysseus stands before Hecuba, who takes a rather improbable liking to him, a fact that has surprised the scholiasts. The impudent Helen has told Hecuba the story (243: see Méridier or Matthiessen). It is not so much that a special relationship has to be created between the two characters (parallel to the one which unites Agamemnon to Hecuba); it is more that a plot must be set up whereby the current victor is entirely dependent on the queen, having been saved by her gratuitously, by an act of generosity. Odysseus does indeed owe his rescue to her on this occasion, a fact he does not deny

Quotations of Euripides’ text follow the French version used by the author. They do not necessarily correspond to extant English translations (translator’s note).

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(248). He is thus also her slave, just as she is a slave at this moment in time. He justifies his position by declaring “I spoke so as not to die.” He designed his speeches as necessary and his words are always adapted to the situation. Now, he speaks just as effectively as when he was in distress, but he speaks as a leader. The definition of rhetoric remains universal, “invention in a wealth of arguments” (250: πολλῶν λόγων εὑρήμαθ᾽). Matthiessen interprets this definition as Odysseus diminishing the value of the arguments that had saved him in the past; but in fact it is quite the opposite: its positive effect here shows that those arguments were both appropriate and effective. Hecuba pleads with him to save Polyxena and she goes to great lengths to respond to the premises of this rhetoric (251-295). She does not lack for arguments against her adversaries. The story of Achilles’ desire for her daughter does not hold water. It is a ruse, a “sophisma” arising from the underworld. Achilles is acting from afar, from the realm of the dead, from an uncertain existence. Presenting a preposterous plan, he demands his due as if he were alive, and he provides the Greeks with the chance to reunite without their having to submit to the wishes of their leader Agamemnon, who is himself enslaved by a captive woman. We might recall Electra, who in Euripides’ play of the same name insults the dead Aegisthus as if he were alive, so that she can vent her vengeful feelings in just the same absurd and effective manner. She unburdens herself and she finds relief from her sufferings by spitting on a corpse, in the belief that it is her duty to kill Aegisthus a second time with her curses. Why shower the tomb of Peleus’ son with human blood (260 ff.)? If the victim has to be a beautiful woman, why not Helen, who is much more guilty than poor Polyxena (262-271)? This speech can have little impact, however; it remains “formal”, more rhetorical than Odyssean. Hecuba therefore moves to another more personal register, reminding her adversary of what he owes her, as in the preceding stichomythia, and of what he might now give her in exchange by agreeing to take on the role of defender in public. She takes no heed of the circumstances. Does she not know what Odysseus, coldly, is asking her to consider? (227 ff.) Orators speak only to convince people as best they can, with no regard for the truth: she knows this and deplores it bitterly (254-257). Does she speak to accuse him, without trying to convince anyone, knowing she is lost? Through the impotence of her rhetoric, Euripides displays the absence of choices, the physical impotence of a character. Odysseus still holds all the cards; if he gets the upper hand, it is because he does not need to persuade, nor even to refute. He knows how to appear merciless, and he takes advantage of the decision he has al-

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ready obtained from the army in favor of the emblematic figure of the hero, against whom Hecuba’s daughter is no match. He speaks, we might say, in the abstract, formulating a succession of facts that are both empty and irrefutable. Is not Achilles still the friend he once was (311 ff.)? Did he not die in combat to set an example for the Greeks (313316)? Then Odysseus, using a para-philosophical generalization, goes on to another subject: the tomb of the dead that Polyxena should honor. He speaks in the first person, but he is not talking about himself: “one is content with little in life, but one wants to be honored after death.” A new factor ends the list and it is perhaps the least acceptable: when it comes to suffering, the Trojans are not alone; the Greeks have their own share, when one thinks of all the families of the dead warriors, and the young brides. Odysseus has allowed Hecuba to speak, and now he strikes. He is relentless and thorough in his own speech, which is quite effective thanks to its amplification and reiteration; Hecuba’s speech, in contrast, is ineffective; she implores her audience in hope of moving them. Translators have focused on line 236; they were embarrassed that, according to Hecuba, Odysseus should respond, and first listen to what she asks of him. So Matthiessen corrects the text, adopting σὲ μὲν ἀμείβεσθαι. Murray noted for lines 236-237: nondum expediti (cruces in the Diggle edition for these words). Ebener reverses the positions: you must allow yourself to be spoken to (i.e. listen) and me to finish, for ἀκοῦσαι, understood as an agreement accorded to the questioner to σοὶ μὲν εἰρῆσθαι. If these interpreters have been misled, it is because they have misunderstood the procedures of the dialogue. Odysseus is supposed to speak, responding to the question; that is the condition of the contract, and Hecuba, who has asked the question, is supposed to listen to what he has to say. It is in short an “art de la conférence” (Montaigne). Hecuba, given her situation, decides right away to moderate her speech and to abandon any aggressiveness (234-236); then the one questioned should speak (in response to the question asked) and the questioner should listen – as it is the questioner who has chosen the subject by virtue of the question (237). The group in apposition (τοὺς ἐρωτῶντας τάδε) determines this symmetrical obligation, which is the responsibility of the questioner who is also expecting an answer; the demonstrative concerns the precise content, it indicates what will follow. How could the person who asks the questions not be interested in the answer? “The death of Polyxena is enough, there is no reason to add more deaths” (394 ff.) says Odysseus to Hecuba when she declares her desire to kill herself with her daughter. “And if only we did not have to add

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this death [to the others]” (395). Carnage is all around them. Matthiessen translates it rather freely; “if only this death were not necessary.” We should probably use the pluperfect: “and even this death we had not to have decided.” Now it is Odysseus himself who has made this decision. We should not ignore this difficulty, for on the contrary it leads us to the true meaning. The vow he has expressed is not definite. Odysseus presents the proposal from the Greek camp as a good way of trying to overcome a division of opinion, and Polyxena’s death is the price. He may regret having had to yield to a higher reason (the reasons of State); he is aware of this, and confides it coldly to his interlocutor: one does not kill needlessly. Agamemnon has voiced his opinion against the demand conveyed by the dazzling apparition of Achilles’ ghost; he thus remains true to his commitment to the bed of Cassandra, the Bacchant prophetess. The two sons of the Athenian Theseus, Acamas and Demophon, have risen up against him to support the other side – a more legitimate position: the hero should be honored, they must bring him the gift of fresh blood that he asked for, a union beyond the grave. The bedding of a woman should not take precedence over a warrior’s obligations. This rivalry perpetuates that of Book 1 of the Iliad. The choice of the assembled Athenians should convince the warriors (cf. Matthiessen, p. 71, on lines 127-129); nothing of the sort happens and opinions remain equally divided (130 ff.) It falls to Odysseus, the savior, to make the decision and to find a solution. A string of strangely assorted epithets, both distinctive and ambivalent, introduce the character. His rhetoric reveals its methods and its all-powerful influence: his intelligence understands all the intricacies of rhetoric, the appropriate as well as the unexpected; he is the smooth talker, his language enchants, he knows how to please the people; he covers all angles seriatim. It is thus he, Odysseus, who is able to tilt the scales in his favor. The decision follows his intervention; it is the result of his art. Scholars have often concluded that Euripides condemned Odysseus, that the presentation of the orator is negative and critical; they did not rule out the possibility that the poet had in mind the demagogues of his time – the early years of the Peloponnesian War. But in fact through Euripides’ theatrical perspective we see the Odysseus that we already know, more through the Iliad than through the Odyssey. He is the very personification of a superior political intelligence linked to the power of speech, as we see in a different way when he finds a solution in the second part of Sophocles’ Ajax.

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The argumentation emerges in the tale the women tell Hecuba in the Parodos. Odysseus has been able to avoid playing the Achilles card against the king and the commander (of the army), contrasting victory in battle to the King’s love affairs by recalling the wound of the loss of Briseis. In his speech he mentions only the Danaans. The Greeks should recognize themselves in their best incarnation, the emblematic Achilles, and not prefer a slave to him; their very honor is engaged, and they would renege on their own promises if they betrayed this figure. Odysseus defines the union as obligatory. The advice is political and perfectly suited to the situation. Every one is considered and included, no one excluded, not even Agamemnon. It is perfect, Odysseus at his best. Indeed, it is because of this decision that wins the support of all sides that Odysseus can claim that he was forced into a game of reciprocity that he deplores; this was Hecuba’s work. Yet she cannot claim it as her own, for Odysseus would have preferred to avoid death. He does not want to pile up the dead needlessly. The death of Polyxena does not count, it is a misfortune, and he has to sacrifice her in order to rebuild Greek unity. In fact, she is not dead, at least for the rhetorician. Therefore Hecuba cannot even follow her to her own death. Hecuba responds to this reminder of the circumstances of the vote; she refers to the ties that bind her to her daughter, beyond life, as an obligation. But Odysseus can reject this view; he chooses to take it as an order: “I am not aware of having any masters” (397). For him, there is no reason to plead for another death. The political situation is unique, and he thus speaks as he has to, as a free man. In conclusion, Odysseus suggests to Hecuba that she endure her fate, and he considers two contradictory possibilities that complement each other. If the Greeks are wrong in honoring distinguished men, then at worst they risk only the charge of being stupid, and they would be mistaken. The Barbarians take the opposite position and do not consider friends as friends. They will refuse to respect the glorious dead. Greece will know happiness with her dead. And the Trojans? They will have repudiated their heroes and will themselves live as slaves; it comes to the same nothingness. Their fate corresponds perfectly to their ideas. Cynicism is at its height and realism incorporates the imaginary. The sacrifice that the ghost of Achilles demands is used as a touchstone. The refusal that animates Hecuba’s entreaty reveals more than impiety; it expresses a kind of suicidal nihilism, a contempt for values that can only serve the Greeks’ cause. The coryphaeus defines Hecuba’s action as behavior caused by despair, and doomed to fail. In line 332, we prefer the variant πέφυκ᾽ ἀεὶ, less attested than the infinitive πεφυκέναι (the result perhaps of the

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reading πέφυκεν ἀεὶ, because of the coordination, τε with an indicative form, and on the other hand the difficulty of building a sentence with the infinitive (see Méridier, Diggle or Matthiessen). However, the thought is still problematic if we translate τολμᾷ as “endure” as in line 326 (the equivalent of τλῆναι); “what must not be” (ἃ μὴ χρή), would be “intolerable” (“indignités”, “indignities”, Méridier). With the implicit negation of the verb “to dare what should not be dared,” we are left with the definition of an unacceptable state, but enslavement leads naturally to an attempt at revolt, represented by Hecuba and condemned to failure by the violence she confronts in Odysseus. The adverb “always” recovers its meaning. There is no way to fight against enslavement. “Slavery is always such a sad thing: [the slave] dares to do what he should not, even though he is overcome by force.”

The Death of Polyxena: a Rhetorical Act Does Polyxena want to distinguish herself from her mother by refusing to beseech the enemy to spare her and to remind him of ties and obligations that are groundless? She analyzes the situation more dispassionately, and realizes that she can only maintain her dignity by loftily playing the card of a blessed death that will deliver her from bondage. She follows Odysseus’ logic, and the advice he gave her mother. How can a solution be found for such an absurd quarrel? She can find her only defense in death. She will accept it as if she had chosen it for its beauty, and thus transcended necessity. It is no more false than any other decision, and we should not see it merely as the cloak of pride and fame. The idea is more theatrical than rhetorical, bitter and extravagant, perhaps titillating. At the end of the first part of the drama, the spectator expects to see the execution scene. In her rhetoric, the two causalities are clearly distinguished: one must triumph over the other: “I shall follow you (freely) through necessity but at the same time (it is a second time) because I wish to die” (346-348). Her objectively powerless situation is transcended by the subjective power of freedom. She adds that her will is equally consubstantial, determined by her rank. Otherwise, if she had wanted to live at any price, she would have lost what makes a woman a woman of quality; here we see a person conscious of her social status. This is not heroism. She has no choice but to die, and so she refers to an “ideology.” Euripides illustrates this clearly. Obviously Polyxena does not define the philosophical concept of freedom, despite what Euripides thinks; in this story, she remains in control of an absurd but inescapable fate. It is as if

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Euripides wanted to stage a play without any real grounding. The gestures that accompany the horrible deed do not make it any less terrible. No example can compare to a mother’s rage or the desire to take one’s own life. Matthiessen, along with Ebener or Loraux-Rey (“this is how I entered life”) gives a temporal meaning to the word πρῶτον in line 350. We might join the scholiasts who prefer to read it as τὸ κεφάλαιον and agree that a sense of superiority is involved. The father-king “was for me the foundation of life.” Everything else agrees with this and depends on it (ἔπειτ᾽); in the following line, it is not “secondly” but “and afterwards”, that is: moreover and stemming from that. Contrary to Diggle and Matthiessen, who insert punctuation after line 354, we prefer an enjambment that suggests that her misfortune was that she was in fact, because of her beauty, mistress of the women of Ida (gathered around her); “admired” (without τε) here supplies the explanation of her misfortune and predicts the climax, (ἴση θεοῖσιν). Still a virgin, she sits above all other women. She is the height of femininity, which makes her live the paradox of a mortal goddess; “mortality” is specified and emphasized. Does she now feel her misfortune, death, as the strict opposite of her former state? Deification is unbearable. Hecuba clings to Polyxena. “Daughter, touch your mother, stretch out your hand, give it to me. No, do not leave me childless.” Then, addressing the captives: “I am dead, my dears” (438-440). In these lines we can read the stages of separation. The request and the pleas are in vain. All that remains is the last mournful cry, then nothing more. It is the moment of truth (441-443), not related to Paris or to Aphrodite but to Helen’s eyes. It is she, the Greek woman, who has robbed her of her daughter, she, her competitor in Troy. Some scholars believe these words do not belong in Hecuba’s mouth; they have been cut by Dindorf and Hartung (Hermann attributed them to the Chorus; see also the Diggle edition; Matthiessen defends their placement). It is a subtle thought. Hecuba appeals to the sister of the Dioscuri, the twin assistants of the law, children of Zeus like Helen. Hecuba would like to “see” her, to look into her eyes. For it is the beauty of those eyes that has destroyed the happiness of Troy, personified by Polyxena; and the power of love has rebelled against itself.

The Herald’s Narrative In the story of Polyxena’s death, line 490 is almost universally rejected by the critics (despite the scholia; damn., Nauck, then Murray, Méridier,

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Ebener, Diggle, Loraux-Rey, Matthiessen). We should reconsider this problem. We can understand the preceding line (489) as a clarification of the first of the two positions in the given alternatives, which continues in line 490. The second is only really stated in line 491. We should read: “or else they have acquired this needlessly false (μάτην ψευδῆ) opinion because they accepted that a race of gods exists” (489 ff.). The text continues: “while it is chance that oversees all that happens in the world of men” (491). Of the two almost synonymous adverbs, we can link ἄλλως to the infinitive (“acquired for nothing -- to no avail”) and attach μάτην to the adjective. The reasoning can be grasped as follows. We should not wonder if Zeus is all-seeing, like the sun, and could have allowed this to happen. If there is someone watching, it will be the power that arbitrarily controls the course of events, and if there is such a control, it derives from this original principle. For mortals, the god represents that power, but men have believed that divine beings exist, and once they have accepted this idea, they ascribe to these beings the responsibility for establishing order and running the world, however absurd that may seem. Thus Talthybius, as he introduces his narrative, is a well-informed messenger. No doubt modern readers have not been guided solely by the grammar, which requires some attention, but by their own hesitation in allowing the poet to say what he says and to play chance against beliefs. Matthiessen (2008, p. 135) offers a significant rebuttal to this analysis: “Despite the doubts expressed by Talthybius, it should be clear that Hecuba’s misfortunes that he laments are not the work of Τύχη (chance), but that the loss of Troy and all the ruling family, and thus of Hecuba as well, are the result of Zeus’ decision.” It is an assertion of faith, addressed to Euripides. What the poet has his character say is a view of things that, for the modern reader, no longer exists. In lines 513 ff., the clause “as far as you are concerned” (τοὐπί σ᾽) is linked to “childless” (ἄτεκνοι). Total loss is achieved only by this death, for Hecuba has lost forty-eight of the fifty children she had, plus one more. With the death of Polyxena, she is, through the last of her daughters, without descendants. She has a premonition of the death of Polydorus, even before his body is brought to her. We do not know if Helenus is alive, and Cassandra does not count. “You are dead, my daughter, you have been snatched, carried far away from your mother”(513). “As for me, I suffer my fate with you”: this is the most grievous separation. Hecuba has begged Odysseus to leave this daughter with her (275-278); she has then implored him to allow her to die in Polyxena’s place (383-388), and then with her (391-

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393). Her fate, with the death of Polyxena, follows its inevitable course. She will thus die one more time, and will be changed by it. We concur with Jacobs in cutting lines 555 ff. (Murray 1902, Méridier 1927, Diggle 1984, Matthiessen 2008). As is often the case, it eliminates a difficulty in the reading. An element of the story has been considered out of place or redundant. If we misread it, we run the risk of eliminating an essential point. With this line omitted, we move from the order given by Agamemnon (553 ff.) to what appears to be a suicide, with her consent and the approval of the crowd. Polyxena waits for the commander’s order to offer her body to the sword. Several references to the voice follow one another. First (a), Polyxena’s request (547-552 with ἑκοῦσα θνήισκω in line 548) which convinces the people; they applaud loudly (b). In tune with the people and guided by their approbation, the king gives his order to unchain the girl (c), he has spoken (εἶπεν). However, the young warriors who were holding her have already released her, at the time she expressed her wish (d); like the others, they were impressed by her resolve: “at the very moment that they heard her last words” (ὡς τάχιστ’ ἤκουσαν ὑστάτην ὄπα) (e). These are the words of Polyxena. “The last words” they have just heard are certainly not those of Agamemnon; ὑστάτην in line 555 has a much more precise meaning. They are the last words of the captive; they spring her from her captivity. The warriors rally immediately. This interval has not been taken into account; it was thought that the words should be added to the king’s approval (by including οὗπερ καὶ). Looking at it this way makes the sentence seem unintelligible and repetitive. Now the particle καὶ which stresses the relative is displaced. It reveals the coincidence between the words of Polyxena (a) and the verdict of authority (c). Everything is synchronic and yet distinct. By following Polyxena’s order, the warriors carry out Agamemnon’s; the order was merely the legal expression of a wish; the sovereign gesture of the victim has enthralled those in power. So the reaction is immediate, almost automatic, carried out in response to the “voice” they have heard, and “it was there that supreme power lay” (μέγιστον κράτος). There was no deviation. The demand for freedom generated a collective reaction, instantaneously. The repetition of the word is significant. The response to the official order (μεθεῖναι) is the execution; however, the execution was not the result of the order, but on the contrary came before it. Polyxena is free to act. She reveals her breasts. She does so in response to the words of her masters (the plural shows that the whole army is included in their reaction). She awaits the signal that the young men have not expected.

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She knows she has instigated the inevitable signal. She is in charge of the theatrical script; it will unfold according to her wishes and the power inherent in her action. The preverb (557) is significant; she perceives it, listening carefully. “When she had heard the word of her masters” (cf. LSJ, s.v. εἰσακούω, I. hearken, give ear to), she gets ready to have her throat cut as an action she has decided, almost as a perverted sexual act (570). There is now only one word, τόδ᾽ ἔπος, confusing the two reactions. The “masters” are her servants. To prepare for the act and to accomplish it herself, she has to be free. For her to be free, her executioners had to set her free. Figurative art can be used as a model for artifice. Polyxena sculpts her body, careful to appear to the crowd as a statue of a goddess, exposing and hiding herself, neither unclothed nor clothed (557-562). Nudity and modesty. It is a statue in accordance with a ritual. The elements are assembled and put together, and the composition is seen as such; it is that of the text, of the artifice that makes art. It is yet another rhetoric – descriptive, pictorial. Later in the text, Hecuba will find herself in the position of supplicant, on her knees before the king. She asks him to look at her from a distance, like a painter (ὡς γραφεύς, 807) trying to define contours. Her figure, present during the whole play, disappears and reappears; she changes into the image of woe, knowing how to enumerate its details before the gaze of the spectators. The visualization of a splendor defeated conjures up the form of its opposite. Language is very conscious of its power. The poet showed his audience that all is production, that things are made by these means, that they reveal their powers as imitative rather than creative. Of course, “pity for the daughter” (566: οἴκτωι κόρης) determines the two participles, linked by τε καί. However, the complement should be linked to each of these two contradictory movements separately, and not to their confrontation. It has been said that “the close association” (of οὐ θέλων and θέλων) “marks the wavering… between two resolutions”;1 that it is presented as a common factor. Since the sacrificer is acting against his will, he spares the girl; at the same time, he resolves to strike her so that she will not suffer, and kills her. Pity explains first the one and then the second move. The successive aspect is vital, first “not wanting to do it,” and then “wanting to.” The translation “torn between two contrary desires” erases this relationship. Pity leads, in a second phase, to the opposite decision. 1

Méridier (1927) 203 n. 1.

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The term διαρροαί in line 567 is not anatomical (“passage of her breath”, Méridier; “Weg”, Ebener; “Durchgang”, Matthiessen). It conjures up the flow of a physiological dynamism, which has its own function: the sacrificer, when cutting the throat, slices (τέμνει) streams of air. The blood that Polyxena breathes out (that is not referred to as such) is drawn out by a hydraulic force that originates in the body, spurring and feeding the “springs” (κρουνοί) that flow. It is as if the poet had created an intentional expiration that makes it seem natural and peaceful.

Hecuba Alone According to Méridier and Loraux-Rey, line 599 deals with the question of whether it is the family or one’s upbringing that “prevails” in developing an individual’s qualities (errors are perpetuated). It is obviously not the meaning of οἱ τεκόντες; there are two components, the initial origin or the later upbringing, the differences between good and bad. Diggle athetizes lines 599-602 (following Sakorraphos). He finds the debate irrelevant. Matthiessen defends them; he finds in them the spirit, spread by sophists like Socrates, that fits in with Euripides’ theater. A closer reading is in order. Hecuba concedes that her daughter’s noble behavior has diminished her pain (by dulling its intensity). She uses the example of farming, where the harvest depends more on the labor put into it and on external factors than on the nature of the soil; she thus questions the contrary opinion that individuals remain the same despite their experiences, just as they were at birth.2 How can one think this way in one case, and the opposite in the other? She draws the precise conclusion that each element plays its role, both nature and upbringing (δίδαξις). We do not find the one (aristocratic birth) without the other to complete it (see the expression on line 600, τὸ θρεφθῆναι καλῶς), the allocation of a share. Good can be taught; education is in fact the means by which we understand the distinction between good and evil. The knowledge of good, which is separate, implies the knowledge of evil, which we learn to avert and avoid. It is one and the same knowledge, via distinctionis; the same term is used twice on purpose: μάθηι 2

According to Diggle (1984), the manuscripts have the dative ἀνθρώποις in line 595; Matthiessen (2008) does not confirm this. Diggle (1984) chooses the nominative, as does Gottfried Hermann. Méridier (1927) adopts another correction by the same scholar: ἐν βροτοῖς. The dative, if that is correct, introduced a point of view (“in the eyes of men”) contrasted with the more objective reality of the fertility of the soil.

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(601); then μαθών (602). The delineation of good provides a path that allows us simultaneously to evaluate evil. With regard to Polyxena, Hecuba is her mother in every way, and her teacher perhaps to a lesser part; she feels the need to control this incident which for her has been a defeat, to free herself from the example that her daughter has offered her by re-interpreting both aspects with a generalized reasoning, that is more detached and independent. “These are the arrows that the mind lets fly for no good reason” (603: καὶ ταῦτα μὲν δὴ νοῦς ἐτόξευσεν μάτην).3 We might think that she pulls herself together thanks to these words and recovers her senses – that is the theatrical function of the exercise. The daughter’s heroism in acting on her own initiative becomes for the mother an object she controls, a reflection on the human condition. Polyxena has come out on top. Yes, and now Hecuba will act more freely, just as Polyxena did when she died. Interrupting the preparations for the burial, Hecuba tries to make up her mind (613); she describes her situation until her own language shatters into pieces (here Matthiessen follows Stevens, 1976; he emphasizes the pathos created by familiar expressions). But it is the style and the rhythm that are important. “How (πόθεν) can I perform (the rituals) in a suitable way (for masters)”; there should be punctuation before (ὡς μὲν …). In the following line (614), we usually distinguish two stages: “I do not have the power to do it: I must make do with what I have.” We might articulate it differently, by referring to her state: “I do not have the power, given my present condition.” If we understand it thus (“as best I can”), the explanation expresses merely her inability (Méridier, or Matthiessen p. 155: “what else can I do?”). In fact, this is a true reflection on her fate (παθεῖν), and on its consequences, which she illustrates by the thefts to which she is reduced: “what indeed are the conditions imposed on me?” This last resort speaks volumes: to provide the finery for the dead girl’s burial, she asks her women to steal the ornaments belonging to their new masters; these places now have all that she used to possess. The peroration that concludes the instructions for the funeral rites (619-628) is just as well developed and reasoned as the exordium. She evokes three times the past splendors, the house, then the person of Priam, the king, and the symmetrical presentation of herself as “mother

3

“But these are the arrows shot when my mind wanders” (Méridier 1927; also Loraux-Rey 1999) does not fit the meaning. Hecuba says that she hits the target, but it does not change her situation. She is telling the truth in absurdity.

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of her children”,4 in order to create a social contrast. It is not about people with riches and their disappearance; the accumulation of these terms, signifying an epitome of happiness does not have this function here. Physical existence is distinguished from a more abstract existence arising from wealth that is secondary, even alienated. Objective status is reflected in a representation of self among those who have these advantages. Wealth, gold, like children, form this external backdrop, separate from the individuals, indicating all that one uses “to make oneself a being” in the “suprastructure” of a noble mind. It is not the end of existence that constitutes ruin, but the loss of this second state, that does not survive the loss of social status. The city is in ashes, Priam has been slaughtered, along with his sons, but Hecuba is still alive, no less crushed than the dead. She can only escape destitution by seizing on the nothingness in her language, and by turning it into an instrument of power. “You, palace…, Priam…, oh how we have come to nothingness, robbed of our former pride!”(619 ff.). They had no other existence. Separation provides proof that their identity was as false as it was disastrous. With Hecuba the royal discourse adopts the most radical social critique, encompassing all their privileges. “After that” (εἶτα) there is no longer any reason to value any possession (623-625)5 if that alone constituted our “being”, and without it we are nothing. An aim, linked with our identity, collapses.6 4

5

6

Méridier (1927) 205 n. 1) takes τέκνων as a “cheville” (iteration was undesirable); it was difficult for the editors to accept the text of line 620 (see Matthiessen [2008] in the commentary). Priam had more possessions than anyone else and the most beautiful treasures (κάλλιστά τ᾽); he, with no illegitimate children, was also the richest in offspring (the famous fifty children). His aged wife was the legendary mother of all his children; that is her title. Diggle (1984), along with Bothe, takes πλουσίοις ἐν in line 624 as a corruption of πλουσίοισι. He finds it useful to have a dative complement to ὀγκούμεθα, to fit in with the participle κεκλημένος in the second term (625). The correction needs no comment (see also Matthiessen [2008]). The parallelism stresses the scene, the palace or the assembly. “After that, we shall puff ourselves up, one of us in his luxurious residence, the other for the renown he has attained among the citizens.” There is one Priam (or Agamemnon) of the palace and another of the assembly. The reading τάδ᾽ of the manuscript line 626 might mark an opposition: “the nothing is there” in wealth and prestige. They are life’s transferences. Editors follow the distinctio of Reiske in writing τάδ᾽ οὐδέν. The accent is misplaced (“now that – demonstrative meaning of τά –, is nothing”). The argument seems to demand a contrast, an opposition between false values and being; it is a nuance: “so we will not give a value to this nothing. It is for nothing (ἄλλως) that we take initiatives and think ourselves important”.

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Readers assume a form of existence almost cynically. Destitution would be so pure that it would exclude all ordinary human activity, all projects that care conceives and pursues (φροντίδων βουλεύματα) and all the trappings (and pomp) of power that speech possesses and that we draw from it (γλώσσης τε κόμποι). At the same time as Hecuba evokes its futility, she exploits it; she constructs this futility in order to take advantage of it. If finality is the nothing, and everything is “for nothing,” then nothing remains but an empty shell, the nakedness of a powerless existence. Solon’s motto will be obsolete, or will need to be reconsidered. We should not wait until the end of his life to judge whether a man has been fortunate and has been able to protect his wealth. The game is played out in an instant. It is pointless to wait for tomorrow if planning for the future makes no sense. By a process of reduction, the only good remaining is the absence of physical pain during one’s lifetime. Life itself is merely survival. Here again, like Polyxena earlier in the play, Hecuba shows clearly in the manipulation of her speeches that she is equal to all situations and above all to her own. She anticipates any conceivable analysis with the radical point of view she has developed. Royal duty helps her find “the last word”; she pulls herself together by means of her speech, to create herself as a being, and restores herself lucidly, with nothing, to an active position. The power she retains is a legacy of her social status: to create being with nothing. It is the radical effect of a “sophistic” and existential discourse. The drama is explained; the idea is developed in the drama and controls its staging. At first Hecuba struggled in vain against Odysseus. Then Polyxena triumphed by defying her mother and choosing to be put to death herself. It was a victory, but a symbolic one, sublimating the absurd, almost a game. Hecuba acts, she faces reality, she seizes on the example that her city offers and, moving on to her own action, she turns her attention to people as they are, and to their bodies as best she can – of Agamemnon, Cassandra’s husband; of Polymestor, the criminal. She will play the card of nothingness to the bitter end. Like her daughter, but in a different way, she explores what she can extract from the nothing to avenge herself. But that is quite another matter.

The Lady Vanishes: Helen and Her Phantom in Euripidean Drama Froma Zeitlin Princeton University I did not go to Troy; it was a phantom [eidōlon]. And who is this that fashions living bodies? [bleponta sōmata] Aether. Your ‘wife’ is a figment of the gods [theoponēta…lechē]. And which god fashioned it? Incredible. Hera; she made a substitute [diallagma], so that Paris would not have me. How could you be here and in Troy as well? The name [onoma] could be in many a place, but not the body [soma]. (Eur. Hel. 582-588)

Helen and her eidōlon, her phantom look alike, have a history – a troubled history, in which form distressingly, amusingly, or uncannily replicates content. For when it comes to the figure of Helen, although she is singular in the entire mythic tradition as the emblem and indisputable exemplar of incomparable beauty, the quality of singleness is emphatically not among her attributes. Quite the contrary; her mode of being in the world is predicated on multiplicity and proliferation. More precisely, in her person she is susceptible to doubling and division, in her stories to endless repetitions and replications. She is the daughter of two fathers, the immortal Zeus and the mortal Tyndareus. She is credited also with two mothers, the mortal Leda and the divine figure of Nemesis.1 She has two brothers (the Dioscouri, Castor and Pollux) and she is one of two sisters.2 She marries one brother (Menelaus), her sister, Clytemnestra weds another (Agamemnon). While both betray their husbands with a lover, Helen goes one step further and ends up with two husbands: Menelaus and Paris. When Paris is killed, she acquires yet another to make up the difference, but not before another contest between two rivals for 1 2

Bergren (1983a) 81-82, who observes that “this ambivalence is, in fact, the essence of her tradition.” Hesiod (176 M-W) records a tradition that Tyndareus had a third daughter, Timandre, who, like her sisters, left her husband for another man, but she has no story.

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her hand, (Deiphobus and Helenus) this time in Troy (e.g. Apoll. Ep. 5.9). Helen, it seems, can never be single – at least, for long. Another would-be partner is always standing in the wings, eager and willing to fill the empty position, as is the case in Euripides’ Helen, where she is confronted with her unwanted suitor, Theoclymenus, king of Egypt, and her only mode of escape from him with her disguised husband, who has had first to announce the news of his own demise, is the false promise of yet another second marriage. But in another, more drastic ontological sense, Helen is neither a single nor a unitary entity. Doubling extends to her own person in the form of an eidōlon, an exact replica of herself, made by the gods and sent to Troy in her stead, as other versions relate, while she herself remained elsewhere, either in Egypt, or in another tradition, in Sparta itself. The invention of the eidōlon theme is usually attributed to the sixthcentury poet, Stesichorus, who, as the story goes, slandered Helen in a first song and was blinded for his blasphemy. But being a wise poet, he recognized the error of his ill-speaking, kakēgoria, and to regain his sight, he initiated a new form of song, the palinode, which recanted the first one. It was not Helen who went “within the well-oared ships and came to the walls of Troy”, he claimed, but only a phantom, an eidōlon who took her place (Pl. Phdr. 243b).3 A palinode is, of course, itself a doublet in verse, functioning as one side of a diptych, or better still, it is like a mirror effect that returns a reversed image of the first. But to complicate matters further, a papyrus find of recent years seems to suggest that Stesichorus composed not one but two palinodes, the first refuting Homer, the second, critiquing Hesiod. If he had done so, and the evidence is far from secure, then he would have doubled his own double song, would have composed dittai palinōdiai.4 We are not done. Yet another fragmentary papyrus source doubles the poet’s invention of Helen’s eidōlon in claiming that it was Hesiod and not Stesichorus who originated the motif (Hes. fr. dub. 358 M-W (=Paraphrasis ad Lyc. 822).5 However one may evaluate this evidence, what matters in our context is the apparently irresistible urge (and often attendant confusion) to double and redouble anything about Helen: the stories about her, her personages, and even her authors. At any rate, our fullest extant development of the eidō3 4 5

Stesich. PMG 192. Other sources: Eur. El. 1278-1283; Pl. Rep. 9.586c; Isoc. Hel. Encom. 64, Conon, FrGrH 26 F 1.18, Paus. 3.19.11. Stesich. PMG 193. P.Oxy 2506 II CE, ed. Page, fr. 26 col.1=Chamaileon fr. 29 (Wehrli (9-56) [M-P3 1950]. For an excellent recent discussion of these issues, along with other relevant versions, see Bettini and Brillante (2002) 132-42. See also Austin (1994) 90117.

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lon theme belongs to Euripides, whose play, the Helen was performed in 412 BC, the text that will be a major focus of this essay with a sidelong glance at his Orestes (408 BC) at the end. If the manufacture of a stand-in eidōlon is a novelty in the story of Helen that may possibly be attributed to a particular poet at a particular date, the idea itself of fabricating an exact replica of a person as a double is not, particularly in the frame of rescue from a threatening situation. In the typology of the motif,6 the majority of cases concern a female deity, for whom Zeus, the cloud gatherer, fittingly substitutes an eidōlon or cloud image to protect her against a mortal’s sexual assault. For example, in Pindar, Pythian 2.21-48, Ixion attempts to seize Hera, but by Zeus’ clever contriving, unites with a cloud (Nephele) instead (cf. Schol. Phoen. 1185). In the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, we learn that Endymion (better known for his relations with Selene and his excessive drowsiness) also had similar designs on Hera and was treated to the same illusion in the form of an “eidōlon of a cloud” (fr. 260 M-W= fr. 148 Rzach). A variant of the myth of Iasion and Demeter, as reported by the historians, Hellanicus (FGrHist 4 F 23) and Conon (FGrHist 26 F1.21), replaces the familiar Hesiodic version of this union of god and mortal as a hieros gamos (a sacred marriage) in the cultivated fields and claims instead that Iasion “outraged an agalma or phasma of Demeter” and was struck with lightning for his hubris”. Finally, an important text is found in Hesiod’s Catalogue, in a context that links Helen and Iphigenia (here called Iphimede), in which an eidōlon takes the place of Iphigenia, who was rescued by Artemis at the last minute from the altar where she was “sacrificed” at the start of the expedition to Troy at Aulis “in recompense for the Argive woman, Helen.” (Hes. fr. 23a M-W). We will have reason to return to this pairing of Helen and Iphimede (Iphigenia) in the latter part of this essay, but it may be noted that I have omitted the well-known passage in the Iliad. In Book 5 (449-453), Aeneas is at grave risk in combat with Diomedes, when his mother, Aphrodite spies him and endeavors to protect him by hiding him under her white robes and removing him from the battle. But when she is wounded herself, Apollo takes over and “fashioned an eidōlon in the likeness of Aeneas himself and in armor like him, and the Achaeans and Trojans fought around this image”. At the end of Book 3, Aphrodite had similarly aimed to rescue Paris, her other protégé, not by an image substitute, but by simply enveloping him in a dense mist (381-382). Whether hiding Aeneas in her white robes or wrapping Paris in a dense 6

See Kannicht (1969) I.33 for a useful typology of the eidolon motif in Greek literature and myth.

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cloud, Aphrodite’s intervention links the more familiar typology of rescued female figures to the battlefield, but in reverse. Instead of the male god (Zeus) protecting females from sexual assault, the female goddess of erotic desire rescues her male favorites from the assaults of war, either by her own agency or when disabled, through the agency of her brother, Apollo. The case of Euripides’ Helen, however, is perhaps unique in this typology by assigning the power to create an actual eidōlon to a female deity, Hera. This is, first, because only here does a female intervene in the case of another female, and second, because, as mentioned above, she herself was doubled by her own eidōlon.7 In considering the status of the image in early Greek thought in broader terms, the eidōlon, according to Jean-Pierre Vernant’s numerous statements on this topic, cannot qualify as an independent “image” at all, in our sense of the term but rather is to be taken as a “double” or “phantom.” He observes that this term is used exclusively to designate three types of phenomena: the supernatural apparition or phasma, the dream, oneiros (onar), and the soul-phantom of the dead, psuchē. “In all three cases”, he continues, the eidōlon bears a full resemblance to the human being whose double it is” (the term is never used for epiphanies of the gods). “This is the case”, as we have seen, “with the eidōlon that Apollo makes ‘like to Aeneas himself’ (Aineiai ikelon)” in all respects (Il. 5.449-550). Likewise is “the dream (oneiros) sent by Zeus to Agamemnon, whose figure wholly resembled Nestor (anchista eōikei) in Il. 2.5758”, or “like the eidōlon that Athena fabricated in the Odyssey to appear in a dream before Penelope in the likeness of a woman, Iphthime: demas d’eikto gunaiki (Od. 4.796-797, 804, 824, 835)”. The best known instance in the third category “is the psychē of the dead Patroklos which appears before Achilles in his sleep in the form of an eidōlon; it is wholly like Patroklos, in size, beauty of eyes, and voice: pant’ eikuia; it resembled him marvelously: eikto theskelon autēi (Il. 23.65 and 107)”.8 Stesichorus’ eidōlon of Helen fits precisely into this definition, as does the one in Euripides’ Helen. And indeed the ‘appearing’ of Helen’s eidōlon is just as equivocal and disturbing as the archaic phantom of epic, in that it partakes of another aspect of existence and proves its uncanny nature as an insubstantial replica. As Vernant argues, “the eidōlon is an apparition. It cuts through the ordinary and common aspect of what manifests itself to the light of day and marks its difference by simultaneously being both more and less than the normal. It is more, because of the ‘divine’ nature 7

8

The ending of Euripides’ Electra (1280-1283), more normatively, assigns the making of the eidōlon to Zeus. The motive is also different than that of the Helen. Elsewhere, no author of the phantom is specifically named. Vernant (1990b) 233.

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by which it is sometimes explicitly described, and which indicates its ‘supernatural’ dimension. It is less, because its presence is the sign of an absence, an emptiness, which links it to those illusory reflections, those feeble and obscure images, which form on the dark surface of mirrors, when one gazes into them and sees oneself, knowing full well that the real person is not there and that this ‘self’ is merely a deception”.9 Vernant makes these distinctions in order to emphasize that the eidōlon does not participate in the “problematic of being and seeming” that in the wake of Parmenides and the sophists transforms the entire question of the image and more generally, of the perceived nature of visual experience. Even in the case of tragedy, he contends, the phantom “retains an idea of a nothing which is hidden behind appearances of solidity”, as, for example, when old men (or in one instance, a woman) refer to themselves as an eidōlon or skia or even just a dream in order to describe their reduced physical state and their loss of manly vigor. Rather than engaging “in the problematic of image and model”, the eidōlon is concerned with “the unreal producing an effect of reality”, a phantom that is taken for Being (or reality) itself.10 Vernant acknowledges the significance in the period before Plato, who, in his view, is the first theorist of the image, of the general progress of the plastic arts and other cognitive developments with respect to writing, visualized memory systems, and the changing function of poetry. Indeed, he notes, Plato’s theoretical position in correlating the mimetic status of the spoken word to the visual arts, is predicated on two major developments: Post-Parmenidean reflections and the new experience of the theater. The theater reanimates the past in the present on stage in reenacting myths of legendary figures of the heroic age. It creates a world that is both real and unreal. It requires impersonation, imitation, simulation, and, above all, the maintenance of theatrical illusion. As Vernant puts it: The dramatic spectacle is necessarily “conscious of its fictions – appearing as both its conditions of performance and its product”.11 In its emotional and cognitive effects on its spectators, theater becomes the site par excellence for a contest between the relative values of being and seeming in the rhetorical sphere, where ‘the effect of the real’ surpasses reality itself. Vernant is speaking of theater in general terms and not of its development as a genre in company with the other performative, rhetorical, and visual experiences in the city. It is Euripides, the last of the three 9 Vernant (1990b) 234. 10 Vernant (1990a) 37. 11 Vernant (1990a) 65-66.

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great tragic poets, who most absorbs and reflects these developments in demonstrating a remarkable consciousness of the shifts in the status of the image in this period of the late fifth century – the effects of the plastic arts in sculpture, architecture, and painting, the rise of scientific theorizing about optics and perspective, and the new rhetoric of the Sophists. To these we may add the contributions of the theater itself, especially through Euripides, in the growing interest in the implications of impersonation and role playing and on the more general properties of dramatic illusion-making that includes an ever more sophisticated interplay between the seen and the unseen, along with a rising interest in depicting a contrast between the self’s external appearance and inward conscience. It is no accident, perhaps, that Euripides is the most Dionysiac of all the poets, pervading his texts with a range of references to the god of the theatrical illusion, whether for literal or figurative uses, and crowning his career by bringing Dionysus himself on stage in the Bacchae to play an assortment of roles – god, actor, and stage director in powerful metatheatrical fashion – and to disturb our (and Pentheus’) visual fields of reference in assessing the boundaries between the real and the illusory. It is no accident either, I think, that it is Euripides who is the first to bring the figure of Helen directly on stage, not once but three times (in the Trojan Women, the Helen, and the Orestes), each time under a different light and with a different aim in mind, but always in the interest of shocking his audience into confronting an embodied Helen, whose elusive and illusory figure, from epic on, had crystallized into language, nomination, fancied etymology, metaphor and also metonymy (as for the origins of the entire Trojan war) and ideology. As the undisputed emblem of beauty incarnate and sexual allure, she has by now become a figurative sign, even close to an abstraction, always available as a site of projection of fantasies, a receptor of the overflow of reality. There is Helen, and there is “Helen”. As many are fond of commenting admiringly in respect to Homer’s artistry, Helen is never actually described in the Iliad. We see her only through the eyes of those who gaze at her, the old men of Troy, when she comes to the ramparts, and struck with thauma at the spectacle, they murmur: “Surely there is no blame on Trojans and strong-greaved Achaeans, if for a long time they suffer grief and pain for such a woman. Terrible is the likeness of her face to immortal goddesses” (Il. 3.154158). In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, she is not even a figure, only a series of disconnected images: “a dream of calm, the wind dying, the loveliness and luxury of much gold, the melting shafts of the eyes’ glances, the blossom that breaks the heart with eros, but also an Erinys to make

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brides weep” (Ag. 739-748), a Helen who ‘helens,’ that is, she ‘heleins’ or destroys ships, men, cities. And it is in this play as well that we hear of statues, dreams, and phasmata that haunt Menelaus once she has left for Troy (Ag. 415-422). But Helen as a figure to be represented in the theater, on stage? To reinforce, challenge, mystify, or demystify her iconicity? And what is at stake both for the history of the theater and the history of the image? This is the viewpoint from which I wish to examine Euripides’ Helen and at the end and more briefly, his still later play, the Orestes, both of which address questions of illusion and reality in the theater through a game involving the absence and presence of Helen. Both are plays that show a full consciousness of the theatrical medium, both are preoccupied with doubling the image of Helen, reinforced by other doubled figures, and both in different ways experiment with the limits of perception and figuration, in visual as in cognitive and ethical domains. The Helen comes as close as it can to a theory of the theater itself and makes explicit its modes of operations and its latent concerns. As many have remarked, it is a quasi-philosophical play, or rather a species of philosophical comedy, which offers a profound meditation on the ambivalent relations between illusion and reality, between word and referent. As Barbara Cassin has put it: “the play is an explicit mise en scène of language itself”, and owes much to sophistic, especially Gorgianic influence. Pietro Pucci’s elegant engagement with Cassin’s claims goes still further in unraveling the complexities of the mental (and psychological) dilemmas involving personhood and identity that Euripides deploys in this dramatic tour de force.12 The Orestes is also ruled by the effects of language. But the form of illusionism, of doxa, that rules the play from beginning to end emerges this time perhaps under the name of Dionysus, who lends the semantics of his maenads and madness to the configuration of the Erinyes, who now materialize only as internalized visions of Orestes’ fevered imagination in the wake of the murder of his mother. By the end of the play he and Pylades are explicitly described as bacchants (athyrsoi…bakchai) attacking a mountain whelp (1492-1493), when they seize Hermione, Helen’s daughter, who arrives in the palace, while they are in the midst of “killing” her mother (or so they think), but who miraculously disappears from under their hands, vanishing into the sky, transformed, we might say, into an eidōlon once more. But now to the Helen. I have already given the premises of the play, that only an eidōlon of Helen went to Troy (manufactured this time, as 12 Cassin (1995); Pucci (1997).

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remarked above, by Hera and not Zeus, in her pique at Aphrodite for having won the judgment of Paris) while the true Helen remained in Egypt, where she had been abducted by Hermes, and placed under the protection of Proteus, its good king. This Helen has remained for ten years in isolation, faithful to her husband and her ideals of purity, while her phantom double was present at the center of hostilities at Troy, where Greeks and Trojans fought with each other and fell in battle – for her sake. In Euripides’ play, the old king Proteus, her former protector, has died, and his impious son and heir, Theoclymenus, who is smitten by her beauty, is determined to impose a forcible marriage upon her. This new king has, in fact, vowed to slay all Greeks who come to his shores in order to keep Helen safe for himself. Menelaus, now that the war is over, is returning home with his crew along with the phantom Helen he imagines is his real wife whom he has rescued from Troy. Storm and shipwreck drive him to Egypt where he confronts the “real” Helen. In the complicated recognition scene (one that teems with words for vision, sight, perception, as well as with the language of similarity, resemblance, and identicality), the matter of her true identity is only resolved by the messenger’s eyewitness report of seeing the eidōlon reveal her status and function before disappearing again into the aithēr from which she came. The reunited couple plan their escape with a false story of Menelaus’ death and a false promise by Helen to marry Theoclymenus if she can first perform funeral rites by the sea for her “dead” husband. The success of their fictions depends upon the cooperation of the prophetess Theonoe, the virgin sister of the king, whose purity of mind stands in radical opposition to the mood of her violent brother, and this she does. But when at the end Greeks and Egyptians battle one another at sea in a miniature replay of the Trojan war, a final resolution requires the assistance of Helen’s brothers, the deified Dioscouri, who appear on stage as dei ex machina to ensure them safe passage home and a promise of a future apotheosis for their sister. This romantic play combines the themes of eros and thanatos with a philosophical testing of the categories of illusion and reality, of name (onoma) and fact (pragma), name (onoma) and body (sōma), mind and body, noesis and opsis, original and copy, truth and falsehood. Many have analyzed these effects and their implications.13 But the drama also does 13 In addition to the above, see, e.g., Solmsen (1934), Zuntz (1960), PippinBurnett (1960), Kannicht (1969), Segal (1971b), Novo Taragna, (1986), Downing (1990), Austin (1994), Fusillo (1998), Bettini and Brillante (2002). The continuing fascination with the play has resulted in two recent and substantial commentaries: Burian (2007), Allan (2008).

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more than play with language. It uses all the properties of the archaic eidōlon in the service of a new problematic about identity and selfhood in theatrical, aesthetic, and ethical terms. While the play vividly represents the typical aspects of the eidōlon – its phantasmatic qualities, its empty and insubstantial nature, the regret that follows upon the discovery of its existence, that a war was fought and men died, all for a deceptive simulacrum, this empnoun eidōlon, this “breathing phantom” that was taken for the real thing – it does so to stage, as theater does, the epistemological and even ontological questions about the world of visible phenomena and the autonomous status of the integral and integrated self. The very fact that the eidōlon is a double of the self engages to the full one of the most striking of all dramatic conventions, which is the habitual and characteristic use of the mechanisms of doubling and splitting in the interplay of characters, who may begin as opposites of one another, but who through the development of the plot change places and are revealed through repetitive words and actions as the hidden doubles of their adversaries (as, for example in the masterplot of the Bacchae in the relations of Pentheus and Dionysus) or, on the contrary, are possessed of unsuspected affinities (as in recognition scenes of long lost kin). That doubling takes place in the Helen in the play’s obsessive geminations and repetitions of scenes, motifs, figures, and above all, in the pairing of a brother and sister, the king, Theoclymenus and the priestess, Theonoe, the latter also serving as an interesting doublet of Helen herself. But the founding presumption of the play is that this doubling mechanism is located in a single and same person. In this new setting, the device of the eidōlon, far from assuring the exact replication of the self and its phantom, now advertises the rupture between the two. If the eidōlon is reduced to external appearances, it serves as a mere semblance that no longer matches the true identity of the person whose phantom it is. Hence its existence doubles the figure of Helen but at the same time subjects it to division. Euripides’ novel reorientation of the properties of the traditional eidōlon therefore serves to dramatize to the utmost degree a distinctive feature of his theater, which is his preoccupation with the dilemmas of a divided (and alienated) self. In Euripidean psychology, this self is caught in a double bind, like the love-struck Phaedra, for example, in the Hippolytus, who suffers from an irreparable discrepancy between inside and outside in her conflict between her passion for her stepson and her determination to resist it (“My hands are clean; my heart is not”), as between concern for public reputation and the demands of private feeling. But the premises of the Helen go still further in positing an actual double who is the opposite of the real self,

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who matches her in appearance in every physical, visible, detail, but not in ēthos. As Teucer, the first Greek to encounter this woman in Egypt, remarks: “You have a body, a sōma, like Helen’s (homoion) but you do not have the same phrenas or mind. Yours are different” (160-161). At the same time, it is impossible to escape the implications of a common name (onoma) and body (sōma) that Helen and her double share in this culture of exteriority, where honor and shame define the identity of the individual through the gaze of others. Hence the “real” Helen can only suffer in her own subjectivity. She is innocent but has an evil reputation and is made to bear the burden of faults that are not truly hers. She lives among barbarians, torn from her father’s land. By her misfortunes she is dead, yet in fact still lives. And if she ever does return home, she would be crushed by scandal, for who would ever believe that she is not the Helen who went to Troy?14 In short, how can Helen ever be dissociated from her image, her person from her name and reputation? For if the eidōlon vanishes into thin air, its properties do not disappear altogether. Indeed, in the second part of the play, as others have noted before me, the true Helen, in the service now of a good cause (namely, the validation of marriage and conjugal fidelity) must, in order to engineer her and Menelaus’ escape, inevitably repeat the deceptive tactics, the apatē, of the eidōlon and its manufacture (technē, skill) and show herself now a mistress of craft, mimesis, and illusion–the one who controls the very mechanisms to which she herself was so painfully subjected, going still further in manipulating the game of absence and presence in the fabrication of a false death and false funeral for her disguised husband, who is present on stage. As Steiner puts it: “Euripides begins to elide the differences between [the two], the truth and innocence of one, the fictive and guilty nature of the other”. For both “bodies…exercise beguiling powers,” express “similar sentiments”, and the play ends with “having Helen perform the very actions imputed to her double: departure from would-be husband, escape on board a ship with a stranger who abducts her from her home, flight and eventual ascent to divine realms that echoes the eidōlon’s earlier translation back into the air”.15 However critics may judge the ethics of Helen’s behavior, when she impersonates the eidōlon and resorts to her tactics, a further matter of interest is the fact that the archaic eidōlon is also pressed into service to contemplate the aesthetic questions of the day. The praise of beauty and excellence in lyric and sympotic poetry had long been a literary topos, 14 Paraphrase of Eur. Hel. 269-274; 285-289. 15 Steiner (2001) 54.

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as, for example, Sappho’s famous fragment 16, which, to demonstrate to kalliston, takes Helen, “who far surpassed all women in beauty” as proof of her contention. Euripides’ play, however, goes still further to interweave the question of beauty with three different strands of thought: mythic, philosophical, and aesthetic. There is the mythic beauty contest among the three goddesses in the Judgment of Paris that, as revisited in this play (e.g. 23-30), is the basis of all reflections on the fate of Helen throughout the tradition. At the same time, the subject of beauty, along with that of eros, has also become an important topic of ethical interest for the philosophical schools in the matter of abstract definition and value, one that will culminate in Plato’s insistence on its absolute priority and its equation with the good. Finally, beauty (kallos, morphē) is an issue that in the climate of the late fifth century was intimately bound up with aesthetic standards of art and representation. Downing observes how these issues are bound together in the play: Helen’s kallos and its effects become divided, or doubled, between her and the eidōlon (“image”): e.g., the eidōlon is the kallos that Paris takes away, 236-237; cf. also 260-261. The eidōlon both isolates and accentuates many of the aesthetic issues, which adhere to kallos. It is, as it were, pure apatē (cf. 704), and as such also engenders in purer form all the ethical ambivalences surrounding kallos…. And yet, of course, such an exchange and transfer of identities and attributes remains partial, because essentially incomplete. Kallos does not desert Helen simply because it also goes to the eidōlon. Rather, Helen herself retains and attracts many of the qualities of the eidōlon, including its beauty (and even its fiction, 262-263). The aesthetic perfection remains to confront the ethical perfection, which itself only fitfully flows into her from these other, tributary sources.16

In the Helen, the two systems of representation, the archaic in the form of the eidōlon and the more recent one in the matter of the plastic arts, coexist and even merge with one another in sharing the same semantic fields. The play refers to the eidōlon in conventional terms as an empty cloud image (nephelē, 75, 1219), a dokēsis (an apparition, a seeming, 35, 12), and even as a diallagma (a substitute, 585), but also as an agalma (a statue image, 705, 1219) and a mimēma (a copy, 875). “The emphasis upon its plastic manufacture (plasso) by the technai, the skill of Hera (3334, 583) foregrounds the status of the eidōlon as a mimetic work of art…. In keeping with the confusion of Helen and the eidōlon, Helen herself appears to Menelaus as an opsis (a vision, 557) and as a phasma (apparition, 569) and to Teucer as an imitation, mimēma (74)” and also as an

16 Downing (1990) 2.

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eikōn (image or portrait, 72, 77).17 The line between these two different orders of image is confused and interchangeable, especially evident in the curious phrase, nepheles agalma (705, 1219). The eidōlon therefore participates in a discourse, not just about seeming and being, but one that hints at the relations between the model and the copy. The curious phrase, nepheles agalma, the image/statue of a cloud (705, 1219) is a virtual oxymoron. Agalma, beyond its use to mean any object of pleasure and delight, refers to a precious object or material ornament, often but not exclusively in the case of dedications to the gods. The word will subsequently designate a divine cult image itself but it also comes to mean simply ‘statue’, as in our present context, a new usage first attested, in fact, for Euripides, both here and elsewhere in his work.18 Earlier in the play Helen too seems fully cognizant of her status as a fictional artwork that promotes her functional identity with the eidōlon: And so my life is monstrous, and the things that happen to me through Hera, or my beauty (kallos) is to blame. I wish that like an image, an agalma, I had been rubbed out and done again, made plain, without this loveliness (260-263).

It is not certain in this passage whether the reference is to sculpture or painting – the technique of erasure refers to painting, while agalma, as mentioned above, generally refers to statuary – although the practice of coloring statues is well-known. At any rate, what matters is Helen’s sense of herself as an objet d’art, a source of aesthetic wonder (and danger) that counters the uncanny quality of the supernatural eidōlon in the archaic sense with the technical properties of an artist’s mimetic skill. Deborah Steiner goes still further to suggest that either Helen “has been ‘contaminated’ by the properties of the modeled double, or, more tellingly, that the copy takes its cue from the imagistic and plastic character of the living protagonist”.19 A scholiast commenting on a late work, Aristeides (Orations 3.150) goes one step further toward articulating this connection between the eidōlon and a work of art in the version he gives of Stesichorus’ poem. When Paris and Helen arrived in Egypt, he says, and the good Proteus took her away from the wife-stealer, the king, out of compassion, gave Paris an eidōlon of her painted on a tablet (pinax) so that gazing at it, he would be consoled of his love. In this romanticized and indeed, partially inverted, reading, the phantom has turned into a portrait; the insubstan17 Downing (1990) 9-10. 18 Philipp (1968) 103-106. 19 Steiner (2001) 54.

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tial double into a tangible souvenir of erotic passion, always available to the lover's desiring embrace. The desire to make a portrait of the beloved, however, is attested much earlier, almost contemporary with Euripides’ own time. In Xenophon’s Symposium, which, like Plato’s dialogue of the same name, purports to record an actual event at which Socrates was present, Critoboulus, one of the guests, declares that he has such a “clear image (eidōlon) of his lover in his heart that had he the ability of a sculptor or painter, he could produce a likeness (homoion) of him from this eidōlon that would be quite as close as if he were looking at him in person” (Xen. Symp. 4.21-22). This assertion goes one step further than Gorgias’ contention in his Encomium of Helen that sight (opsis) affects the psyche, the soul of the viewer, stamping it (tupos) with its sensations of objects”. Viewing “inscribes (enegrapsen) in the mind the images of the things one sees”, “like the sculpting of statues and the production of images which afford the eyes divine delight” (Gorg. Enc. Hel. 11.17-19=D-K 288-94). In this reciprocity between subject and desire, between viewing and being viewed, Xenophon’s Critoboulus might turn artist, if he could, to reproduce from memory the tangible presence of the lover, the ravishing sight of whom has in turn been imprinted in him, as Gorgias had said, “like [that same] sculpting of statues and the production of images”.20 Even closer to the insistence in Euripides’ play on the split between external image and internal self is the concern of philosophers as to how artists might represent ethos in art, how to match the outside to the inside so as to produce a replica of the real human being. How can the aesthetics of form and skill go beyond visible appearance so as to manifest the ethical, the “real” dimensions of the subject? Once again, Xenophon can be summoned to represent a version of the dilemma, this time in the Memorabilia (3.10.1-14), where he records a visit of Socrates to three different craftsmen: a painter, (Parrhasius), a sculptor (Cleiton), and an armorer (Pistias). True to Socratic deviousness, the real object of his visit is to suggest the limits of mimesis. Thus the order of his visits traces an ascending hierarchy of value from painting, the most illusionis20 Vernant (1990a) uses this example to demonstrate the opposite (that the image is still marked with unreality). I disagree. The sense of the passage is that the lover could reproduce a likeness of the beloved by using an imaginary model, just as a painter or sculptor might use a live model. Aristotle, for example, in his treatise on memory (de Mem. 450b 11-20) likens “the image within us” to a painted panel, which may be treated both as a figure (zōon) and as a copy/likeness (eikōn). If a figure is regarded in itself, it is “an object of contemplation” (theōrēma) or a visual “image” (phantasma). But if it refers to something else, “then it is a sort of copy (hoion eikōn) and a reminder” (mnēmoneuma).

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tic and therefore most seductive of the arts, to sculpture and its threedimensional treatment of the human body, the one that “makes the statues look as if they were living,” and finally, to the armorer, where use value rather than aesthetic merit is what counts. This means that the best breastplate is one whose excellence does not reside in its beautiful appearance or in its mimetic fidelity to the body. For it would not provide comfort to the wearer, if it fit like a second skin. Rather it should follow the contours of the wearer but not be an exact facsimile of his form. For the painter and the sculptor, what Socrates queries is whether their work can go beyond the imitation of mere beautiful surfaces and objects “so as to reproduce the internal aspects and activities of the soul, its feeling and its character, since this is what produces a pleasure for the spectators” (3.10.8)”.21 Subsequently, Aristotle in the Poetics (1448a1, 1450a25, cf. Pol. 8.1340a33-35, 37-40) will evaluate artists (notably Zeuxis and Polygnotus) on the basis of their relative ability to produce ēthos, the quality of inner life, and we know too that the depiction of ēthos will be a matter of concern in the assessment of the visual arts from the fourth century on.22 Parrhasius, in Pliny’s and others accounts, was credited with being the first to introduce symmetria into painting, to “give liveliness to the face, elegance to the hair, and beauty to the mouth, and above all, was supreme in painting contour lines” (Plin. NH 35.67-72). His fame too for painting figures of women,23 might suggest a hidden link between this brief dialogue and the one that follows in which Socrates now goes to visit a courtesan, Theodote, “who was so beautiful that painters went to her to paint her, and she showed them as much of herself as possible”. Since her beauty is such that it cannot even be expressed, Socrates proposes that he and his informant pay a visit to see for himself, (Xen. Symp. 3.11.1), a visit we cannot stop now to share. But Socrates’ previous conversation with Parrhasius had taken a different turn. The philosopher’s desire is to lead the painter away from considering beauty as an aesthetic rather than a moral value and to conclude, with him, that the spectator takes greater pleasure in beholding the beautiful rather than the ugly, however mimetically accurate the second might be. Before this, he has Parrhasius acknowledge that “because it is not easy to find one person who is completely faultless in appearance, you take the most 21 I have discussed this passage elsewhere (1994) 192-93, with bibliography; see especially Rouveret (1989) 14-15; also Steiner (2001) 32-35. 22 See, e.g, Pollitt (1974) 194-199. 23 He was also noted, I should add, for painting a series of small pornographic paintings (or libidines) that later so pleased the emperor Tiberius (Athenian. 13.567b, Plut. de aud. poet. 3). See Rouveret (1989) 345.

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beautiful features from each of many models and thus make the whole body appear beautiful” (Xen. Mem. 3.10.2). Parrhasius is most noted, of course, for his famous contest of verisimilitude with his rival, Zeuxis, in their paintings of grapes (Zeuxis lost), but Zeuxis is credited with another feat that directly pertains to our subject. This anecdote (best known to us from Cicero, de inventione 2.1.1) concerns the people of Croton for whom Zeuxis created a painting of Helen at his request, so that “his mute image would contain within itself the prominent beauty of the feminine form,” [equally his specialty] …. To this end, he asked for the most beautiful virgins in the city to parade before him. Selecting five of them, he selected the best features from each of them”. If this anecdote has any historical merit (and it is not certain whether Zeuxis and Parrhasius were active at the time of Euripides or very shortly thereafter), depicting Helen has become the touchstone of the figurative art. It will take a seventeenth-century antiquarian and biographer, Giovanni Pietro Bellori, to reach the logical conclusion that since “all products of nature contain ‘defects and shortcomings’, Helen could only be a flawed product of nature, and therefore the Trojan War in reality must have been fought over a statue of a woman”.24 Bellori might be closer to the mark than he or we might have thought. For there is an important and traditional linkage between Helen and a statue, one that indeed is of archaic provenance, but which becomes of iconographical interest in the fifth century. I refer here to the Palladion, that magic talismanic statue of Athena, whose vicissitudes of displacement, mobility, contested ownership, and repeated thefts or abductions closely parallel those of the Helen herself. 25 The Palladion has a complex story, with many variants, which are too extensive to recount here. The best-known version, however, is the theft of the Palladion from Troy by Odysseus and Diomedes as a precondition for the fall of the city. Sophocles’ lost play, the Lacedaemonian Women refers to the tale and so does Hector in the pseudo-Euripidean Rhesus. Antisthenes the Sophist, in his treatise, Odysseus, allowed Odysseus to defend himself against sacrilege on the grounds that it had already been stolen from Greece by Paris. One tradition imports the Palladion into Troy as a gift from the gods, whether given to Dardanus from Athena or Zeus in various other locales (Samothrace, Sidon) or to Tros (where it falls from heaven) or to the next generation, in the figure of Ilus, or to Priam himself, after Heracles had sacked the city and Priam had rebuilt it. At the 24 Pacteau (1994) 22-23, quoting from “The Idea of the Painter, Sculpture and Architect, Superior to Nature by Selection from Natural Beauties”, c. 1672, in Panofsky (1968) 161. 25 For the evidence, see Woronoff (1973) 29-31 and Moret (1975) 87-90.

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same time, there is a strong tradition that locates it at Argos and makes it a Greek possession that is stolen and restored, and other Greek cities also claim an original ownership.26 Interestingly enough, to protect the authentic Palladion, possessors on some occasions made simulacra or lookalikes. Sometimes there are merely two seemingly identical ones, and sometimes the true Palladion is surrounded with numerous copies, which requires the viewer’s ability to recognize the authentic one among the counterfeits. The mark of its genuineness, at least in one instance, came from its capacity to shiver, like a living being, or to turn its head aside (Strab. Geog. 6.1.14). Michel Woronoff, who has studied the parallels between Helen and the Palladion in greater detail, suggests that in the story of Helen in Egypt, the substitution of the false Helen for the true one parallels the system of simulacra of the Palladion. Even more, Helen herself is sometimes involved in the theft of the Palladion at Troy or identified with it, sometimes depicted as holding it, and as earlier noted, there are fifthcentury representations marking the tradition that Paris stole the Palladion from Argos along with Helen, thereby redoubling the theft of a female figure. While the functions of Helen and the Palladion might appear at first glance to be opposite to one another, the latter guaranteeing the safety of the city, the former occasioning the reasons for its fall, Woronoff argues that as sacred apotropaic talismans, both carry a positive and a negative charge. Positive, as a guarantee of power and prosperity, negative as a source of envy that promotes theft, destruction, and death.27 At any rate, the connection of this agalma that is the Palladion and the eidōlon that is Helen’s double may be more than fortuitous in Euripides’ treatment of the Stesichorean theme in his theater. This possibility is enhanced by the fact that a parallel theme is the theft of the statue of the goddess Artemis among the Taurians by Orestes and Pylades at the behest of Apollo, treated by Euripides, of course, in his Iphigenia in Tauris, a play that is virtually the double of the Helen in structure and theme. The close correspondences in the iconography depicting Orestes and Pylades stealing the statue of Artemis with the help of Iphigenia and Diomedes and Odysseus stealing the Palladion with the help of Helen are close enough in more than one instance to cause confusion.28 Euripides further develops the parallels between Helen and Iphigenia in his absurdist and sensational drama, the Orestes. While limitations of 26 See Anderson (1997) 18-19 for references. 27 Woronoff (1973) 31-33. 28 Guépin (1968) 144. For the iconography, see Philippart (1925) and Moret (1975) 87-97.

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space preclude a sustained attention to the marvelous complexities of this play or even to develop parallels between the two tragedies in any actual detail, I would like, to conclude with a few remarks. Earlier, I alluded to the illusionist, even delusionist nature of the Orestes, this time under the sign of Dionysus and the hallucinating effects of Orestes’ delirious visions of the Erinyes in the aftermath of his murder of his mother. Deserted by Apollo, condemned to death by the tribunal of citizens in Argos, and feeling betrayed by Menelaus, who has just arrived with Helen on his way back from Troy to Sparta, Orestes, together with his sister and friend Pylades, determine to kill Helen and to take her daughter, Hermione, hostage as their means of revenge. Helen may be present on stage in her Homeric identity as the adulterous wife, but, like her innocent counterpart in the Helen, she is, in a sense, no more than just a name, a reputation, “an object of discourse and judgment”, the figure of feminine betrayal upon whom can be heaped all the blame and censure in her role as the cause of the Trojan war. Orestes can therefore hold her responsible for the chain of misfortunes in the house of Atreus that led from Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia, at the start of the expedition, to Clytemnestra’s revenge for this act in slaying her husband, and now, Orestes’ subsequent act of retaliation in matricide. The bizarre appearance of Helen in a plot that is not her own curiously merges two very disparate plot lines, Troy and Argos, and leads to Orestes’ plan, as it were, to change his own nomination from mētrophontes (“matricide”) to tes poluktonou phoneus (“the slayer of the one who has killed so many”) (1141). Instead of shame and death, he will, like a Homeric hero, win glory and renown in defending the honor of Greece. From the point of view of Orestes, we might read this play as evidence of a repetition compulsion that climaxes the career of this mimetic son, who, as the member of the second generation, is always compelled to kill his mother, not as an originary act, but in retaliation for and therefore in mimesis of her slaying of his father. Displacing his act now upon his mother’s sister as the imagined means of cancelling out his previous crime only proves to redouble the first one.29 Yet, as soon, as we take the figure of Helen as the central pivot of the play, then suddenly the proliferation of doubling and reenactments expand still further in this rewriting and overwriting of earlier texts in the dramatic repertory, while the unusual disturbances in the visual field that culminate in the mysterious disappearance of Helen into thin air, take on added significance. 29 For Orestes’ dilemma in the play, see Zeitlin (1980).

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The affinities between Helen and Clytemnestra are first marked by their genealogy, which is emphasized by the presence on stage of their common father, Tyndareus, by their marriage to brothers, by their adulterous indulgencies, and finally by Helen’s daughter, Hermione. She is the natural child of the first, but the adopted one of the second, (64-65, 109, 1184, 1340). Hermione literally acts as liaison between the two since upon her falls the duty to bring the signs of Helen’s devotion to Clytemnestra’s tomb. She is therefore a doublet of Electra as her fostersister. Her identification with her mother is split, herself as the parthenos or virgin, the other as the gunē woman and wife. But by the terms of the play, she also becomes the doublet of her mother. Like Helen, she is abducted, and both she and her mother face a sacrificially colored death at the hands of Orestes, Electra, and Pylades. Above all, Helen and Hermione between them share the identity of the missing figure, Iphigenia, the sister and the daughter, who was offered as a “real” sacrifice. Orestes is about to repeat not only the matricidal act he had earlier committed, but also his father’s act in sacrificing his daughter. Hermione’s unusual relationship to Clytemnestra as her foster-daughter recalls another tradition about Iphigenia that Pausanias reports and attributes to Stesichorus, among others (Paus. 2.22.6). In this version, Iphigenia was in reality the daughter of Helen and Theseus, but Helen, bearing the child in Argos on the way back to Sparta, gave her to Clytemnestra, who was already married, while she was not. Whatever we might make of this peculiar variant, it enhances the shadow of Iphigenia who is profiled behind Hermione and gives added resonance to Orestes’ vengeful desire to substitute Hermione’s abduction and death in recompense for his sister’s sacrifice on behalf of Menelaus’ quest to recover his lost wife. Still more significant in the present context are the parallels between Helen and Iphigenia, who in some versions was sacrificed and in others, dear to Euripides (mentioned or treated directly in three of his plays) that Iphigenia was not actually sacrificed and vanished into thin air, either with the miraculous substitute of a deer or by means of an eidōlon.30 This is a tradition already reported in a fragment of Hesiod’s Catalogue of Women (fr. 23a M-W), to which I earlier alluded, in a context that links Helen and Iphigenia (here called Iphimede). Iphimede they slaughtered, the well-greaved Achaeans, on the altar of Artemis of the sounding golden spindle, on that day when in ships they sailed for Troy 30 For an important discussion of the ambiguous relations between Helen and Iphigenia, see Lyons (1997) 135-168, especially, 157-162.

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to exact reparations for the fair-ankled Argeione (i.e., the Argive woman = Helen), an eidōlon (17-21).

And the text continues But herself the violet-tressed goddess easily saved and distilled sweet ambrosia over her head that her flesh might stay firm, And she made her deathless and ageless all her days…. 31

The curious placement of the word, eidōlon, as grammatically enjambed to Iphigenia, in close proximity to Helen, may account for the confusion of later commentators who attributed to Hesiod the invention of Helen’s eidōlon or, further, even two eidōla, one of Helen and one of Iphigenia/Iphimede. But the terms of Euripides’ play which has Helen disappear into the aithēr ʊaphantos, according to the frantic words of the Phrygian servant– stage her vanishing in the first instance as a replay of Iphigenia’s sacrifice. The two plotters, Orestes and Pylades, gain entrance to Helen’s chamber, like two Homeric lions. Once there, they withdraw their hidden spears, and Orestes pursues Helen, and drawing her neck back, on the point of striking her throat, as for sphagē (or sacrifice), and suddenly Helen is gone – whether, as the Phrygian says, by magic drugs (pharmakais) or the wizards’ arts (magōn technais), or, klopais theōn, the theft of the gods (Eur. Or. 1494-98). At the same time, the mode of this ‘real’ Helen’s disappearance reminds us even more closely of the eidōlon in the previous play, who vanished much in the same way. In the Helen, the eidōlon speaks for itself to explain matters and exonerate Helen before she returns to the upper air. In the Orestes, the ‘real’ Helen reappears ‘in person’, this time, on the theologeion, the elevated space on stage reserved for the gods, in company with Apollo, who ratifies her new status. “It was I”, he says, “who saved her from the sword, and snatched her away, at the behest of father Zeus. The reason is that since she is the daughter of Zeus, she must continue to live imperishable (zēn aphthiton, with a pun on zēn, to live, and the genitive of Zeus, as Zenos), and will be enthroned on high in the folds of air (en aitheros ptuchais) beside her brothers, Castor and Pollux, all three as savior deities for sailors” (Eur. Or. 1631-1637). Daughter of Tyndareus, as emphasized throughout the play, she ends as the daughter of Zeus. Her beauty (kallisteuma) was an instrument for the gods, who sent her to Troy for their own purposes (Or. 163931 See the discussion in Austin (1994) 107-110.

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1642). For men she remains, as she always does, a mere illusion, an unattainable figure whom all desire, whether to love or to hate, to cherish or to kill, but in all instances to try to steal and fail. Instead she will be fixed as a star in the heavenly firmament, which amounts to “crystallizing her into a perspective that always defines her character, as an idea of perfect and distant beauty... The disappearance of Helen”, as Mulliez observes, “marks the rupture of her function as an object as much for men as for gods and puts an end to her doubled figure, at least for the moment – her body, her name, and the discursive reality about her. She had only lent her appearance and her name, it seems, to the personage who is determined by the subjectivity of the negative discourse about her”.32 Her eidōlon was made of empty air; to air she returns, not to deceive but to guide sailors on their destinies, but in the hallucinatory atmosphere of the play, this effort to stabilize the image of Helen, caught between divine and human parentage, between innocence and guilt, between presence and absence, may only be yet another illusion, another phantom. She remains singular indeed, as the only daughter Zeus sires in his numerous matings with mortals, and singular in both embodying and escaping the status of feminine exemplar. Yet, as I suggested at the beginning of this essay, she is also never single. At the end of the Helen, the Dioscouri, as double dei ex machina, come to claim her, and as Apollo predicts at the end of the Orestes, she will forever shine as a star in the heavens, flanked by each of them on either side.33

32 Mulliez (1995) 6-7. 33 This piece had its origin, as did Pietro Pucci’s essay on the Helen (1997), in the same venue in Lausanne at the annual meeting of our Greek literature colloquium, Corhali, on the topic of the myths of Helen. It gives me great pleasure to recall that occasion, as well as the numerous other colloquia that followed, most recently at Princeton in 2009. Throughout the years, ever since I first met Pietro long ago, I have had enjoyed the privilege of a cherished friendship with an exceptional human being, whose personal warmth, professional dedication, and brilliant achievements are cause for profound admiration. I dedicate this essay to him with my most heartfelt sentiments.

“A Song to Match my Song”: Lyric Doubling in Euripides’ Helen Andrew L. Ford Princeton University Friedrich Solmsen opened new paths into the Helen in 1934 when he showed that certain details of the play’s language, notably the antithesis between onoma and pragma, reflected major intellectual debates of the day. While Solmsen focused on problems of cognition and perception that were being discussed by the sophists, subsequent studies have expanded the scope of issues addressed, finding references to Gorgianic skepticism about language and communication1 and Anaxagorean thinking about eidōla.2 From this more recent criticism new thematic concerns of the play have come into view, notably the nature of art, as in the repeated oppositions of copy to original, of mimēsis to reality.3 In this line, I propose that, alongside its metaphysical doubles (such as between seeming and being or name and thing) and metapoetic doubles (reality and illusion, truth and art), Helen puts in play a set of oppositions that center on mousikē. Poetry and song were, after all, also subjects of speculation and research in the fifth century, as in Herodotus’ inquiries into the history of song types or Democritus’ thesis that primitive man learned to sing by imitating the swan and nightingale.4 The purpose of this paper is to show how these issues surface in the lyric passages of Euripides’ play.5 I will focus on the parodos, since it is not much studied and in my view is often not well understood. I will also point more 1 2 3

4 5

Notably Downing (1990), Meltzer (1994), and Wright (2005) ch. 4, for whom the play is effectively a dramatization of On Not Being. Cf. Pippin Burnett (1960); Segal (1971b) 561, 608. As Zeitlin (1981) 203 observes, Helen remains in this play “the figure upon whom can be focused the poetic problems of imitation itself”. Cf. Pippin Burnett (1960) and Segal (1971b) esp. 612. See Ford (2002) 133-52 on Herodotus and 145-146, with n. 57 and (forthcoming) on Democritus (154 DK). Pucci (1997) 70-74, Barker (2007) and Murnaghan (forthcoming) have penetrating remarks on the lyric dynamics in the play.

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briefly to subsequent lyrics that raise the anthropological question of the origin of song and the related question of whether song originates in nature or in art. My argument will be that Euripides explores this topic by taking women’s lament as a prototypical lyric form and suggests that musical art arose when solo expressions of grief were echoed or “doubled” in various ways.6 A paradigmatic case of musical doubling is the parodos. It begins with an extraordinary invocation in which Helen prays to the Sirens to provide musical accompaniment to her lament, “a song to match my song” (173). As Paley long ago observed, “the wish of Helen, that the Sirens might come to her aid in singing is in a manner realized by the approach of the chorus who respond antithetically to her monody”.7 In providing, metrically and presumably musically, the “matching” (sunokha, 172)8 song Helen had called for, the chorus gives us the first of many lyric doubles in the play. This implication is underscored by the formal structure of the parodos, which is unique in extant Euripides: Euripides often composed parodoi to be sung di’ amoibaiōn, but Helen is the only example in which the lyrics are neatly divided between a strophe sung by the protagonist and an antistrophe by the chorus, a division that is reiterated in a second strophic pair (191-210 = 211-228).9 In its language and themes as well, the parodos explores how solo song can be augmented by being repeated or doubled by other voices, a theme that recurs in later lyrics. The first stasimon begins by invoking the nightingale to lead a lament, thus offering a natural prototype for Helen as leader of a mourning chorus; the great ode to the Mountain Mother gives a compatible image in the scene in which the grieving goddess is comforted by a divine chorus. 6

7

8 9

Downing (1990) 3 notes the appropriateness that, in this play about Helen as a double object, “the poet repeatedly delights in doubling of his language”. My reading brings out the musical aspects of what he identifies as an “almost obsessive ‘gemination’ which dominates both its structure and its theme”. LeVen (n.d.) also explores how “la multiplication verbale fait en effet écho au problème de la multiplication de la nature d’Hélène”. Paley (18744) ad 129. Cf. Barker (1984) 68 n. 37 and Pucci (1997) 53, 59, noting that the substitution of women for Sirens invites the audience to be aware of tragic conventions. sunokha at 172 suggests both “congruent with” and “rhythmically accompanying”: Willink (1990) 89, citing Bacch. 160 ff. Parodoi are shared between chorus and actors in [Aesch.] PV, Soph. El., Phil., OC; Euripides did so eight times (not counting Rhes.), beginning with Medea. Cf. Hose (1990) vol. 1, 96-100, vol. 2, 236-237; Kannicht (1969) vol. 2, 5960; pertinent remarks in Dale (1967) 75; Taplin (1977) 246-247, 473; Willink (1990) 77 n. 3; Burian (2007) 200.

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Taken together, the songs of Helen intimate a genealogy that traces song to the inarticulate grieving of abandoned women. Solitary cries of pain are converted into musical art when others come to share the mourner’s burden: a chorus gives articulation and shape to a soloist’s lament and creates the possibility of future repetitions, formal and controlled, in which ceremonial choirs of women elaborate that first cry into an art which can be repeated at regular intervals to please the gods. In referring to these modes of repetition as “doubling,” I acknowledge Pietro Pucci’s reading of Helen that insists that the conceptual oppositions in the play be deconstructed like Derridean supplements, uncanny doubles of which each is the source of the other. Pucci’s reading puts the integrity of any postulated “original” in doubt and so, having sought to bring out the musical discourse on the origins of song in Helen, I will return at the end to consider how his observations destabilize Euripides’ picture.

Parodos: Proode and Strophe A (164-178) The dramatic pretext for the parodos is Helen’s need to lament an unprecedented mass of troubles. Euripides starts the theme in the prologue by having her “recount the ills I have suffered” (22-23), including a husband compelled to go to war, many dead on her account, and an unjust reputation as an adulteress and the cause of war (41-55). These are added to in the first episode when Teucer informs her that her husband is rumored dead, her mother has hung herself in shame, and her brothers have died at their own hands. When Teucer departs, he leaves Helen alone on stage to give expression to her grief. Now that the deaths of kin are in view, lamentation requires a higher musical register than her earlier trimeters; but Helen’s sorrows are so vast that she does not know where to begin (164-166): ὦ μεγάλων ἀχέων καταβαλλομένα μέγαν οἶκτον ποῖον ἁμιλλαθῶ γόον ἢ τίνα μοῦσαν ἐπέλθω [δάκρυσιν ἢ θρήνοις ἢ πένθεσιν; αἰαῖ.]

164 166a

Oh to lay the foundation of a lament as great as my griefs are great what sort of lament can I muster, what Muse approach? [in tears or dirges or gestures of grief? Alas.]10 10 I follow Willink (1990) 79-80 in bracketing 166, a plausible pentameter but difficult to interpret; as he points out (79), “the appended disjunction is inconsistent with the commitment to threnody enunciated at 164-165”. The interpolation is a common topos, dubitation among alternative modes of grieving:

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ah ah!

The brief dactylic proode opens with a shapely hexameter announcing the theme of the forthcoming parodos: exceptional sufferings call for an exceptional lament. The need for proportion between the two is underscored in the paregmenon of megas, the first of numerous figures of repetition we will notice.11 The verb kataballesthai sitting in the middle of the line intimates, through its long history in lyric prooimia, that Helen is “laying the foundation” for a song.12 The implication is mildly provocative since Helen is alone and no musician is at hand.13 More specifically, the metaphor and the dactylic rhythm assimilate her cry to the kitharodic proem, considered one of the oldest forms of lyric in the fifth century.14 The effect of evoking it here is, as Willink (1990, 78) says, to add “a flavour of solemn ‘song-inception’ to the opening hexameter”. It also focuses attention on Helen’s forthcoming song, for the proem was an attention-getting moment in the kitharode’s art.15 Helen then begins the parodos proper with an elaborate lyric invocation; it is one of the most ornamented, complex, and paradoxical variations on the form.

11 12

13

14

15

cf. Hypsipyle’s thrēnos in Hyps. fr. 1.4.5-9 Bond (= 752h.5-9 TrGF) with Bond 1963: 78-9 and Antigone’s monody in Phoen. 1498-1503. On Hel. 166a, see Willink (1990) 79 n. 13. See Breitenbach (1934) 221 and 221-6 on paregmenon and polyptoton generally. Cf. Kannicht (1969) vol. 2, 65 pointing to Homeric (ἀνα)βάλλεσθαι (ἀναβολή) for beginning a song (e.g. Od. 8.266-7) and Pindar’s metaphorical use of the verbs in connection with “laying foundations” of song (e.g. Pyth. 1.3-4, Pyth. 7.1-3; cf. Pyth. 4.138). Allusion to old forms is blended with novelty: see Willink (1990) 78 n. 9 who suggests the prefix in Euripides’ kataballesthai may be a neologism, influenced by κατάρχεσθαι. Cf. Dale (1967) ad loc. Helen’s isolation is ironically underscored by hamillathō (165), which Dale (1967) 76 glosses, “as it were, ‘enter as my contribution to the contest’ ... from the notion of outdoing rival performances”. Burnett (1971) 77 rightly notes that Helen “begin[s] with a stylized prooimion”, though epinician is not the genre suggested. Not to epic recitative: non-epic touches in Helen’s language are the “Doric” καταβαλλομένα and ἀχέων pronounced without synizesis. On “laying foundations” as a kitharodic metaphor, see Kannicht (1969) vol. 2, 60 who compares Timotheos 788 PMG. On the prominence of the prooimion in kitharody, cf. [Plut.] Mus. 4.1132d-e and the comic verb amphianaktizein (“Begin with the lord”) for composing preludes (Cratinus 72 K-A; Aristoph. fr. 62 K-A), derived from the opening words of Terpander’s Orthian prooimion (697 PMG).

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The parodos is beset with deep problems of interpretation and responsion that I do not pretend to treat fully.16 It will be enough if we can follow what the stanza as a whole is saying; the only textual choice that my reading depends on is following the manuscript (L) and reading pempseie in the third person at verse 174b (“may she [Persephone] send”). With this exception (and with less major differences in 170 and 175), the text that follows is based on Allan (2008), with a minimal apparatus to signal some of the less certain spots: πτεροφόροι νεάνιδες, παρθένοι Χθονὸς κόραι, Σειρῆνες, εἴθ’ ἐμοῖς μόλοιτ’ ἔχουσαι Λίβυν λωτὸν ἢ σύριγγας αἰλίνοις κακοῖς· τοῖς ⟨δ’⟩ ἐμοῖσι σύνοχα δάκρυα, πάθεσι πάθεα, μέλεσι μέλεα, μουσεῖα θρηνήμασι ξυνωιδὰ πέμψειε Φερσέφασσα φόνια, χάριτας ἵν’ ἐπὶ δάκρυσι παρ’ ἐμέθεν ὑπὸ μέλαθρα νύχια παιᾶνα νέκυσιν ὀλομένοις λάβηι.

170

175

169 ἐμοῖς Aldina: ἐμοῖς γόοις L 170 ὁμιλοῖτ’ Willink 171a-b ἢ σύριγγας Tr3: ἢ σύριγγας ἢ φόρμιγγας L 172 ⟨δ’⟩ Willink 174b πέμψαιτε Bothe, alii 175 φόνια φόνια Tr3: φόνιον ἄχαριν Willink Winged girls, maiden daughters of Earth, Sirens, would that you would come, bringing 170 the Libyan lotus-flute or pan-pipes to my wails of woe; and would that tears to match [my tears], sufferings matching sufferings, songs matching songs, a deadly concert hall resounding with dirges, Persephone might send, so that she may have a thank-offering and in the halls of Night receive from me in tears a paean for those dead and gone.

175

16 Willink’s (1990) indispensible discussion finds the tradition “already seriously corrupt in antiquity” (81). I am indebted to Justina Gregory for discussing some of the textual problems in the parodos.

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Helen resolves her aporia by invoking divine aid, but her theme requires underworld divinities rather than Muses.17 The invocation begins as a cletic hymn: the Sirens are asked to “come” (moloit’, 170)18 to Egypt from the underworld, no doubt on their wings (167). They are to bring pipes instead of the lyres they usually bear in iconography, for lyres often accompanied happy song.19 This, the first lyric in Euripides’ “new” Helen (Ar. Thesm. 850), is to be a new kind of song to match a new extremity of suffering.20 Helen returns to the theme of the proode at verse 172 (where Willink’s insertion of de marks the change of focus). She wants the Sirens to copy her words and gestures exactly, stressing the closeness with which they are to match her actions in a very rare double paregmenon: pathesi pathea, melesi melea (173).21 The Sirens’ “song to match her song” will thus be a kind of double of Helen’s expression of grief and is presented as such in the rest of the strophe. There follows in 174 a difficult phrase, mouseia thrēnēmasi xunōida, which is both semantically and syntactically ambiguous. I have translated it as a fourth appositive to the tears, gestures, and songs (172-173) the Sirens are to bring; it proleptically characterizes their joint performance as a “concert hall resounding with dirges”. This reading gives mouseia its usual local meaning, a place for activities connected with the Muses, which is the sense the word has in a later lyric in the play (1108). The 17 In the literary tradition, Homer’s Sirens already figure as “infernal counterparts to the Muses”: see Ford (1992) 53-54 and Barker (2007) 9-11. Willink (1990) 79 is right that 165 may read either Mousa (“what Muse should I approach”) or mousa (“to what musical mode should I have recourse”; cf. IT. 181-182 and Bond 1963: 77). However, pace Allan, the relevance to what follows is lost if we rule out any reference to Muses. Cf. Kannicht (1969) vol. 2, 66. 18 Willink (1990) 87 with nn. 47-8 proposes homiloit’ (partly to respond to 182, a troubled passage itself, and partly to anchor the datives better). I disagree with his setting the Sirens’ performance in the Underworld (see below), but if homiloite be preferred, the sense of “coming” is still present in ekhousai, “bringing” or “carrying”. For a protagonist summoning a chorus to share in her lament, cf. Tro. 142-152 and IT 138-142. 19 Triclinius’ deletion of “or of lyres” in 171 on metrical grounds gives the sentence more point: Willink (1990) 1990: 87, with n. 49; pace Dale (1967) 78, ad 172 (who documents the Sirens’ association with tombs and lyres); cf. Kannicht (1969) vol. 2, 67. 20 Cf. LeVen (n.d.) “Dans cette ode, l’interrogation sur la manière de faire un thrène, l’invocation des Sirènes et la réflexion sur le statut de la répétition verbale sont les voix qu’utilisent Hélène et le choeur pour penser la proper identité d’Hélène”. 21 Breitenbach (1934) 225; on the text, Kannicht (1969) vol. 2, 116.

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paradoxical metaphor brings out the thought that Helen’s emotional outburst, when matched with the Sirens’ accompaniment, will resemble a formal musical presentation, the kind of thing that at Athens could have been presented in the Periclean Odeion. The metaphor caps a progression in the appositives in 172-174 that begin with mute, bodily expressions of grief—bursting out in tears, dumb self-defiling gestures— and rise to musical speech before ending in the image of a concert hall, a social institution for elaborating sound into art. At this point, what Helen had referred to as her cries of woe (ailinois, 171b) and perhaps laments (if L’s goois in 169 is not a gloss) is called a thrēnos, a formal dirge (174).22 I shall return to the opposition between natural and artistic expressions of sorrow, but first must note that a number of editors radically change the picture here by adopting the old emendation pempsaite (“may you [Sirens] emit”).23 The Sirens remain the subject and are asked to “send” or emit their song in the underworld for Persephone’s pleasure. On this reading, mouseia (174) is taken in predicative apposition to the Sirens and interpreted metonymically as “you singers”. Willink so argues, observing that “halls of songs” cannot be “sent”. He paraphrases: “and (I wish) that (as) mouseia in concert with my lamentation / (you) might emit/transmit dakrua, pathea, melea congruent with mine, / so that (also, where) Persephone … may tearfully receive from me / a paean to the dead in the halls of Night”.24 The chief defect with this scenario is that it ignores the theme of reciprocal exchange (kharis), which is strongly marked by the sequence pempseie (174)—kharitas (175)—labēi (178).25 With pempsaite and the Sirens performing in Hades, it is hard to see what reciprocity is due Persephone, and we are required to take kharitas weakly as “pleasure”. If on the other hand we retain pempseie, the theme of reciprocity fits well, as Dale explains: “‘where shall I go for Musical inspiration?’ and the answer is: The Sirens with their musical 22 On the opposition in lamentation between the goos, the emotional and uncontrolled wailing of female kin, and the thrēnos, which implies musically skilled aoidoi, see Barker (2007) 12-13 and Segal (1993a), analyzing Iliad 24, with Martin (2003). 23 E.g. Willink (1990) 89, followed by Kovacs in his Loeb edition (2002), Allan (2008). 24 Willink (1990) 89 n. 56; paraphrase on 85. Allan (2008) 171 also understands that the Sirens’ “corresponding music and song, performed in the underworld, will, she hopes, enable Persephone to hear her lament”. 25 Against emendations of kharitas such as Willink’s (1990) 90 phonion akharin, see Kannicht (1969) vol. 2, ad 176-8 and ad 173-6 defending φόνια as an epithet to mouseia.

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instruments could give it; if Persephone would send them I could make her the gift of a paean for the acceptance of the dead in her chambers of night”.26 Getting the direction of the song right is important because it allows us to appreciate the strong final conceit of the strophe, that in the underworld Helen’s dirge (thrēnēmasi, 174) will undergo a change in genre and become a paean (177).27 The term is deliberatively paradoxical, for paeans proverbially had no place in Hades. No one would direct a song of triumph or thanksgiving to Hades, nor even a paean praying for deliverance, for paeans were only sung in situations admitting of salvation or remedy; for death, a thrênos is the only response.28 Precisely because paeans were antithetical to dirges, troping a lament as an infernal paean is common in tragedy.29 Still, we may ask why the trope is used here. What kind of song does Helen envision, and for whom is it intended? To answer these questions we must take a detour and examine a very similar song from Aristophanes’ Birds, a short monody by Tereus that is also the first song in its play. This high-style stanza has been identified as influencing a later lyric in Helen,30 but it also casts a direct light on the first strophe of the parodos, for it is an invocation as well, and one that 26 Dale (1967) 76 ad 165. Kannicht (1969) vol. 2, 70 ad 176-8 speaks of a quid pro quo payment to Persephone. Willink (1990) 89 holds it in favor of pempsaite that the two verbs introduced by eithe are both second-person; but the change of subject in pempseie is prepared for by Willink’s d’ in 171, and the resulting chiasmus of subject and verb is appropriate (chiasmus being a form of reciprocation): the Sirens are to come, they are to be sent by Persephone. 27 The closest Euripidean parallel to Helen’s parodos is thus the exchange of astrophic songs between Iphigenia and the chorus in IT 123-235; note esp. 179-185 in which the chorus answers Iphigenia’s astrophic lament with the promise to shout out (ἐξαυδάσω, 181) “antiphonal songs” (ἀντιψάλμους ὠιδὰς ὕμνων, 179); they declare that this is the form of music that the dead cultivate and Hades performs, quite a different song from paeans (183-185: τὰν ἐν θρήνοισιν μοῦσαν / νέκυσι μελομέναν, τὰν ἐν μολπαῖς / ᾍδας ὑμνεῖ δίχα παιάνων). 28 Käppel (1992) 47; cf. Ford (2007) with further literature. Cf. Eur. IT 184-185: “the song that Hades sings, far from paeans” (τὰν ἐν μολπαῖς / ᾍδας ὑμνεῖ δίχα παιάνων) and Aesch. TrGF fr. 161 with Fraenkel (1950a) on Ag. 645 and Bond (1981) on HF 348. 29 Rutherford (2001) 115-126 finds such “ambiguity” typical of representations of the paean in tragedy; see esp. 48-50, and 118-120 for its paradoxical linkages with the chthonic sphere. 30 Fraenkel (1950b) 175-177 sees Hel. 1107-1113 as derived from Birds 209-215, so too Kannicht (1969) vol. 2, 281 n. 8; others allow for a possible common source: Silk (1980) 101, Pucci (1997) 71 n. 62. On Tereus’ monody, see Zimmermann (1985) vol. 1, 70-74, Barker (2004) 191-195 (arguing that it represents ‘New music’); Corbel-Morana (2004) is a valuably full study.

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pictures spontaneous lament finding a divine accompaniment. In addition, the Aristophanic lament also seems to change its genre as it enters another realm, thus anticipating Euripides’ theme of the transformation of grief by art.

The Hoopoe’s Song (Birds 209-222) As in Helen 167-178, the function of the first monody in Birds is to convene a chorus. Tereus, metamorphosed into a hoopoe, bids his mate, Procne, now a nightingale, to sing and summon the other birds (209222): Ἄγε σύννομέ μοι, παῦσαι μὲν ὕπνου, λῦσον δὲ νόμους ἱερῶν ὕμνων, οὓς διὰ θείου στόματος θρηνεῖς τὸν ἐμὸν καὶ σὸν πολύδακρυν Ἴτυν, ἐλελιζομένη διεροῖς μέλεσιν γένυος ξουθῆς. Καθαρὰ χωρεῖ διὰ φυλλοκόμου μίλακος ἠχὼ πρὸς Διὸς ἕδρας, ἵν’ ὁ χρυσοκόμας Φοῖβος ἀκούων τοῖς σοῖς ἐλέγοις ἀντιψάλλων ἐλεφαντόδετον φόρμιγγα θεῶν ἵστησι χορούς· διὰ δ’ ἀθανάτων στομάτων χωρεῖ ξύμφωνος ὁμοῦ θεία μακάρων ὀλολυγή.

210

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Come, my musical nest-mate, leave off sleep, and loose the strains of sacred song, lamenting through your godlike lips my son and yours, Itus many-teared, your trilling mouth aquiver in liquid song. Pure, its echo proceeds through leaf-tressed briony to the seat of Zeus, where golden-tressed Phoebus hears, and for your elegy provides accompaniment, plucking his lyre, ivory-inlaid, and setting up a chorus: through their immortal lips proceeds in perfect harmony the godlike cry (ololugē) of the blessed ones.

As a bird, Tereus calls not on a Muse but on his nest-mate, the nightingale. The substitution of animal for (divine) singer makes sense as part of a series of oppositions between nature and tekhnē in the lyric, a theme

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signaled by the punning first epithet sun-nomos (209). The nightingale is an animal that shares a nomós, a natural habitat, with her fellow bird; but Procne is also a singer who commands a musical mode, a nómos of sacred song (cf. nómous in 210).31 This nightingale embodies spontaneous, natural song; the fact that Procne was a mortal before metamorphosing into an animal (like Tereus, 75, 98, 114 ff.) may be thought to complicate the image, and will be considered in my conclusion. Here at any rate, her singing is presented as an instinctive act: she no sooner rises than sings, and every time she sings it is the same sad theme, “Itus of many a tear”. The trills from the bird’s throat are a “fluid”, inarticulate song (dierois melesin, 213);32 this is not human speech, but a ceaseless, almost compulsive repetition of syllables. Procne’s repetitive calling of her son’s name then undergoes an extraordinary sublimation to become a joyful choral celebration accompanied by Apollo’s lyre. In three distinct stages (each marked by a dia) the cry of sorrow from her “godlike mouth” (211) is transformed until it is echoed by “immortal mouths” on Olympus (220-221):33 (1) the bird’s throat is set aquiver like a plucked lyre-string (elelizomenē);34 (2) its echo, perhaps called “pure” because detached from its agonizing source, rises up through the leaves of its natural place (its nomós) and reaches heaven; (3a) there it is heard by Apollo as a nómos, a kind of song, the mournful elegos;35 (3b) Apollo adds musical accompaniment (anti-psallôn), and the song, artfully elaborated on an instrument that is itself a work of art (elephanto-deton), evokes a response from a divine chorus which shouts out

31 The same word-play underlies sunnomos used of the poet at Birds 678; cf. 736781 and Thesm. 947, 983. 32 Cf. Lucretius’ “liquid” calls of birds (liquidas avium voces) that were imitated in the first songs (DRN 5.1380). 33 Procne’s song “proceeds” (khorei dia phullokomou, 215) as Apollo’s song proceeds (dia ... khorei, 221). Pace the dismissive discussion by Silk (1980) 102, who treats such repetition as deplorable “prolixity”. 34 Corbel-Morana (2004) 228, 234-235, cites Pyth. 1.3-4: the lyre “when set quivering furnishes the up-beat for proemia that lead choruses” (ἁγησιχόρων ὁπόταν προοιμίων / ἀμβολὰς τεύχῃς ἐλελιζομένα). There may be in elelizomenē (213) a hint of elissein, “set astir”, and the cry eleleu, “alas, alas”; cf. Mastronarde (1994) on Phoen. 1514 and Corbel-Morana (2004) 236. 35 In 185 elegon is Triclinius’ replacement for thrênon; cf. alurois elegois at IT 146. elegos does not yet have a connection with the elegiac meter: see E. Bowie, “Elegy” in Brills New Pauly Online (2009). There is possibly also a reference to the repetitive nature of the elegos from its folk derivation from e e legein, “say, woe woe”.

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ololugē.36 The strophe ends by quoting the Olympian refrain, which may ring ambiguously: an ololugē is a climactic cry, often a ritual women’s shout to express joy or, less often, distress.37 Pain of course is absent from “the blessed ones” (222), and so we must imagine that whatever sense of loss inhered in the original cry has been cancelled from the “harmonious” and “godlike” ololugē that comes from their immortal lips. Two years later, the opening strophe of Helen exhibits a similar plot. With the difference that the tragic monodist directs her song downward to Hades, both songs show a solitary outpouring of sorrow being sublimated into a fundamentally different kind of song: the Sirens’ accompaniment is to transform Helen’s cries of woe (ailinois, 172b) into a formal dirge (thrēnos, 174), which then can enter another world and be changed again into a song greeted by a shout of joy (177). We can now return to the question of why Helen’s invocation ends with this provocative paean. Some commentators suggest that Helen’s song is offered to those who have died because of her as an act of restitution (kharis 176).38 But it is Persephone who is named as the recipient of the song (labēi, 178), not the dead. Focalisation is at issue here, and I think the dead are interested in the paean as a song that Persephone will sing to them as she entertains them in the halls of her father Night (as Willink well interprets nukhia).39 Helen imagines underworld symposia that mirror, and reverse, the earthly rite: if on earth one accompanied libations with paeans to “the heroes” and the chthonic deities, underworld heroes may use songs from above at their parties, and no song is more characteristic of the upper world than the dirge, that quintessential song of mortality.40 36 With the divine ololugē, Bremer (1993) 158 n. 68 aptly compares the swan-song at 770-784: this rises to produce thambos on Olympus, where the Graces and Muses “add a shout of joy” (ἐπωλόλυξαν, 783). 37 On ololugē, see Deubner (1941) 10-12 (a cry of admiration or triumphant jubilation) and Dunbar (1995) ad loc. 38 Segal (1993a) 60 speaks of Helen’s “song of thanksgiving” for the dead, but gratitude is not on her mind. Similarly, I do not agree with Käppel (1992) 4849 that Helen feels so guilty that she wishes to make the Trojan warriors undead through a “paean for the dead”. Willink (1990) 82 notes that at Aesch. Cho. 320-322 survivors’ laments (goos) are said to give kharis to the dead (χάριτες δ’ ὁμοίως / κέκληνται γόος εὐκλεὴς / † προσθοδόμοις Ἀτρείδαις), but rightly observes “gratifications for the dead” is obscure. 39 Willink (1990) 90; cf. 91 where Willink construes the dative nekusin olomenois as “for”, “offered to” (citing K-G 1.428). 40 See Rutherford (2001) 50-52 for the sympotic paean (sources at his n. 60). The kommos of Choephoroi expresses a transformation from dirge to sympotic paean, though only as a wish: “instead of thrēnoi by the tomb may the paian in the

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Helen thus invokes the Sirens’ accompaniment to magnify the reach of her song, and in the process to change her lament into an entertainment for the noble dead, who will add their ambiguous “Paean!”41

Parodos Antistrophe A: Echo and Responsion (179-190) As mentioned, Helen’s impossible prayer for accompaniment to her lament succeeds after a fashion when the Trojan women arrive and sing an antistrophe. The chorus’ bright, new-dithyrambic song (Kannicht ad 179-180) strikes a sharply different note from Helen’s, but they advert to their role as antiphonists in two ways. The first is their explanation that they have come from doing the laundry, waiting for the sun to dry “purple” garments (181). This detail is not much illuminated by referring to Hippolytus, in which a women’s chorus also arrives from washing (121-130). A more resonant parallel is a scene from Od. 6.85 ff. in which Nausicaa and her maids wash royal robes by the sea: while the laundry dries, the girls begin to sport (ἔπαιζον, 6.100) and Nausicaa leads them in a song and dance (τῇσι δὲ Ναυσικάα λευκώλενος ἤρχετο μολπῆς, 6.101). The princess becomes an impromptu choragus for her maids, as the poet makes clear by comparing her to Artemis leading joyful maidens’ choirs (Od. 6.102-9; cf. Hom. Hymn to Artemis 27.11-20).42 In a similar way, Helen’s wish for musical accompaniment leads to an improvised “choeur de jeunnes filles,” with the sorrowing queen as its leader.43 The chorus refer to the accompaniment they provide a second time in their insistence that the melancholy cry that drew them was only an indecipherable noise: a din (homados, 184), a scream (elaken, 185), wailing (aiagmasi, 186), groaning (stenousa, 186), a shout (anaboa, 190). royal halls usher in the newly mixed bowl of wine” (342-344: ἀντὶ δὲ θρήνων ἐπιτυμβιδίων / παιὼν μελάθροις ἐν βασιλείοις / νεοκρᾶτα φίλον κομίσειεν, trans. Rutherford 2001: 119 n. 7). 41 In nekusin olomenois (178, “the dead and departed”), the epithet is not pleonastic (cf. nekun olomenon in Phoen. 1295) but connotes (via Il. 1.2) the “heroic dead” of the Trojan war; the verb is associated with the Trojan war casualties at Helen 384-385 (in anadiplosis); cf. 232. 42 Cf. Burian (2007) 202 ad 179-90 and Ford (1992) 118-9 on the Nausicaa scene and its metapoetic aspects for the Odyssey. 43 The Sirens invoked by Helen also had a role as paradigms in maiden songs, see Calame (1977) vol. 2, 79 ff., esp. 81 n. 67. With Helen’s “winged young women, maidens…” (pterophoroi neanides / parthenoi, 167-8), cf. Stesichorus’ “gold-winged maiden” in his second palinode (khrusoptere parthene, 193 PMG), which may have been addressed to a Siren.

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Thoughtful and subtle as we have seen the first strophe to be, the chorus has heard it as an artless, impulsive outburst; it was an aluros elegos (185), “a song of grief not meet for the lyre”.44 The implication is that, without their intervention, Helen’s impulsive expression of emotion would remain purely artless.45 The choral subtext comes out in the antistrophe’s final image, comparing Helen’s cries to the screams of a nymph fleeing a sexual assault of Pan (186-190 Allan): αἰάγμασι στένουσα νύμφα τις, οἷα Ναῒς ὄρεσι φύγδα νόμον ἱεῖσα γοερόν, ὑπὸ δὲ πέτρινα γύαλα κλαγγαῖσι Πανὸς ἀναβοᾶι γάμους.

190

187 φύγδα Herwerden: φυγάδα L 188 νόμον Matthiae: γάμων L γύαλα Dindorf: μύαλα γ- L κλαγγαῖσι Murray: -ὰς L some Nymph crying woe, such as a Naiad in flight sends out to the mountains, a mournful strain, and in accompaniment to the screams the rocky recesses shout aloud the marriage of Pan.

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Isolated and far from help, the Naiad yet produces a kind of music, a mournful “strain” (nómon, on a probable emendation of the awkward gamōn in 188). My translation of what then happens (188-190) again ventures to differ from the prevalent view (Kannicht, Kovacs, Burian), according to which the Naiad shouts within (hupo) mountain caves. Reverting to an older reading (Reiske, Paley, Allen-Italie), I read a change of subject in v. 188, so that the rocky hollows (guala or mukhala) shout out in accompaniment to (taking hupo in tmesis with anaboa) the nymph’s cries; that is, they echo her.46 The unnamed nymph fleeing Pan may make us think of Echo, though it must be noted that she is an Oread rather than a Naiad in Hecuba (1110) and the story of Echo and

44 Translation by Dale. For aluros elegos (repeated at IT 146), cf. Aesch. Ag. 990992, Eum. 330-332, Soph. OC 1222, Eur. Alc. 447 (Phoen. 1028 is unclear). 45 Kannicht (1969) vol. 2, 58: “Das Parodos-amoibaion ist zunächst elementarer Ausbruch vehementer Klage und fassungslose Vergegenwärtigung des Ausmasses dieser sumphorai in der Form unreflektiert klagender Herzählung”. 46 See Kannicht (1969) vol. 2, 73-4. For tmesis of hupo- in verbs of musical accompaniment, cf. Hom. Il. 18.570, Od. 21.411, H. Hom. Herm. 502; aneboa is apt for resonating sounds, it is used of cymbals at Hel. 1309.

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Pan is not attested before the Hellenistic age.47 The music of Pan is in any case appropriately characterized as a plangent mountain echo: in the Hom. Hymn to Pan the mountain peaks “groan” an “echo” when he sings and dances with the nymphs.48 The antistrophe that “echoes” Helen’s strophe thus closes on an allusion to a cry of distress that finds an echo. The repetition that the rocks provide makes them into a kind of chorus in the wild, suggesting again a naturalized version of formal antiphony. We may see further a generic transformation in the scene: when the nymph’s cries of “Rape!” are echoed, they are heard (by us) as “the marriage of Pan” (90), as it were the refrain of an inartful, indeed an uncivilized humenaios. In its diction, themes, and staging, then, the first strophic pair of Helen shows the heroine transformed from solitary mourner into the leader of a maiden’s choir.49 When Helen began, as far as the audience knew, she had embarked on a solo aria, for Euripides was quite accustomed to inserting astrophic monodies before the parodos.50 But as her cries reverberate, like the Nightingale’s from its tree, they find a response from an unexpected quarter, like the Naiad crying to the mountain wastes. From these sonic doubles let us turn to verbal repetitions in the lyrics.

47 Andromeda, produced with Helen in 412, exploited echo for dramaturgical effect in the first scene in which Andromeda chants her distress in lyric antiphony with an echo from a cave (fr. 118 Kannicht, mocked in Ar. Thesmo. 1059 ff.). See Zeitlin (1996) 397. 48 Hymn. 19.14-21, esp. 16: κορυφὴν δὲ περιστένει οὔρεος ἠχώ, with which cf. στένουσα (“groaning”) in Hel. 186. At v. 18, Pan is compared to a nightingale that “gushes out a dirge in a gush”(θρῆνον ἐπιπροχέουσα χέει), where West’s Loeb retains the transmitted verbal echo, though for Halliday, Allen and Sikes “the repetition ἐπιπροχέουσα χέει is hardly tolerable”. On Pan here, see Borgeaud (1988) ch. 4 (“sexuality and music”) esp. 76-88, Pucci (1997), 54-55. 49 Foley (1992) 146, citing Calame (1977) vol. 1, 92, 127 and passim. Segal (1993b) 233, referring to Alcestis, Hippolytus and Hecuba aptly observes: “Euripides’ tragedies are in a sense songs of sorrow. ... also songs of the sorrows that would otherwise be hidden away, uncommemorated because they are endured in the privacy of a secret world where the larger part of Athenian women’s lives unfold”. 50 Euripides sets a monody before the chorus’ entry in Andromache, Hecuba, El., Tro., Andromeda, and Hyps. (1.iv = 752f-h.9), on which see Collard, Cropp, and Gibert (2004) 229-231.

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Anadiplosis and Doubled Speech In the second strophic pair Helen teaches the chorus to sing her new song. As Dale (1967, 80) puts it, “Helen summarizes Teucer’s information, and the chorus then repeats it back to her with sympathy”. Beyond this doubling of content, the chorus learns doubling of diction. The heroine begins the second strophe with a sort of echo, iô iô (191), and her song is strongly marked by figures of repetition, including paregmenon (dakrua dakrusi, 195), anadiplosis (emolen, emole, 195; aphanes aphanes, 207), and a Gorgianic multiplication of like-sounding epithets (δι’ ἐμὲ τὰν πολυκτόνον, / δι’ ἐμὸν ὄνομα πολύπονον, 197-198). When the chorus begins the second antistrophe, they seem to have learned to echo Helen’s style (211-214): αἰαῖ δαίμονος πολυστόνου / μοίρας τε σᾶς, γύναι. / αἰὼν δυσαίων τις / ἔλαχεν ἔλαχεν κτλ. Their opening cry, aiai (211), is a redoubled syllable like Helen’s iō iō (191); the epithet they give to describe her fate (daimonos polustonou, 211) seems inspired by Helen’s polu- compounds in 198-199 (and will be repeated again in Helen’s poluktonos Kupris, 238). Like Helen, they generate speech through repetitions of syllables and words: aiōn dusaiōn (213), elakhen elakhen (214). What is the reason for this doubling? Helen implied in her invocation that the Sirens’ accompaniment would enable her lament to reach the underworld. This is repetition as echo, as augmenting the reach of sound. But repetition is also appropriate as the characteristic mode of lament. Hence when Helen refers to her “wails of woe”, the use of ailinois in the plural (172b) suggests the typically repeated refrains of mourning songs, as in the Aeschylean call for the Linus lament, “say ‘alas for Linus, for Linus,’” (αἴλινον αἴλινον εἰπέ, Ag. 121), a repeated refrain that is itself repeated (at 139 and 159).51 Euripides evokes a poetic idea that lament is at root a repeated cry of the lost one’s name. Pindar supplies its aetiology in what seems to be a thrēnos when he traces dirgesinging to a number of Muses mourning their early dead sons; one goddess “sang the resounding Linus, alas for Linus” (ἀχέταν Λίνον αἴλινον ὕμνει, fr. 128c.6 S-M).52 The implication is that proper names, repeated over time, evolved into the refrains marking genres of lament such as “the Linus song”. The proper name in mourning becomes a refrain by dint of repetition, and further repetitions smooth the refrain into a

51 Cf. Soph. Aj. 627, Eur. Orest. 1395. See Fraenkel (1950a) ad Aesch. Ag. 121 and Bond (1981) 150 (ad HF 348). 52 Ford (2002) 15-16.

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common noun, no longer the name of a dead individual but a word that can (mis)name the genre of laments sung over other women’s sons. The same poetic logic underlies many representations of the song of the nightingale as an endless iteration of “Itus, Itus”, and may lie behind the epithet “Itus of many a tear” in Birds (212). To say Itus or ai Linon one time is to express pothos for what naming cannot bring back; but to say Itus Itus or ailinon ailinon can be to inaugurate a rite of recuperation, to try to extend the power of speech by doubling its stuff. The mourning nightingale herself appears in the next song of Helen. The first stasimon begins with another remarkable invocation as the chorus, in Helen’s absence, call on the nightingale to be their accompanist (sunergos, 1113) in a dirge (1107-1116): σὲ τὰν ἐναύλοις ὑπὸ δενδροκόμοις μουσεῖα καὶ θάκους ἐνίζουσαν ἀναβοάσω, τὰν ἀοιδοτάταν ὄρνιθα μελωιδὸν ἀηδόνα δακρυόεσσαν, ἔλθ’ ὦ διὰ ξουθᾶν γενύων ἐλελιζομένα θρήνων ἐμοὶ ξυνεργός, Ἑλένας μελέους πόνους τὸν Ἰλιάδων τ’ ἀειδούσαι δακρυόεντα πόνον Ἀχαιῶν ὑπὸ λόγχαις

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1115 πότμον Badham To you I call, who in tree-tressed bowers sit in your concert hall (mouseia) enthroned, you, most songful melodious bird, tearful nightingale, come, trilling through your tawny mouth as the fellow-worker of my dirge (thrēnōn), while I sing the painful travails of Helen and the tearful travail of Troy’s women beneath Achaean spears ...

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As in Birds, the nightingale’s song takes part both of nature and of art, an ambivalence expressed through calling its haunts its “halls of melody” (so Burian 258 translates mouseia kai thakous, 1108); the metaphor recalls both the ambiguity of Aristophanes’ sunnomos and the artful figure of mouseia in Helen’s parodos. This nightingale is prescribed a double theme by the chorus: the travails of Helen (Helenas meleas ponous, 1113) and the Trojan women’s travail (Iliadōn ponon, 1115). Editors have found such repetition “scarcely

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tolerable” (Dale),53 but it is unnecessary to correct repetitions in an ode that contains several others, especially when it prescribes a theme for mourning. The chorus begins its narrative with an anadiplosis, emolen, emole (1118), that echoes Helen’s earlier emolen, emole (195) and ends the stasimon by summing up Helen’s fate as “woes upon woes, and grievous ailinoi on top of disasters” (ἐπὶ δὲ πάθεα πάθεσι φέρεις †ἀθλίοις συμφοραῖς αἰλίνοις†, 1163-1164), another expression they seem to have learned from Helen herself (πάθεσι πάθεα, μέλεσι μέλεα, 173). It was suggested above that Euripides’ description of the nightingale “quivering in her tawny mouth” (1111) hearkens back to the Aristophanic Procne with “her tawny mouth set aquiver” (Birds 213-214). But of course Euripides also engages with a long history of the nightingale as a figure of mourning.54 In this tradition, tragic poets emphasize the repetitiveness of her song in figurative language. In Aeschylus a chorus compares the indecipherable cries of Cassandra to the “tuneless-tune” (nomon anomon) of the nightingale, insatiable of crying “as she groans Itus Itus” (Ἴτυν Ἴτυν στένουσ᾽, Ag. 1144),55 and Euripides spoke of the nightingale in Phaethon as “wailing sleeplessly in lamentation, Itus, Itus much-lamented” (fr. 773.25-26 TrGF: ὀρθρευομένα γόοις / Ἴτυν Ἴτυν πολύθρηνον). Sophocles varied the game in his “grief-stricken nightingale, wailing for Itus, always Itus” (El. 148-149: ἃ Ἴτυν αἰὲν Ἴτυν ὀλοφύρεται, / ὄρνις ἀτυζομένα); he momentarily suspends the iteration, but the interposed word, as Loraux noted, sounds an echo of the refrain aiai, “Alas, alas”.56 In the nightingale stasimon of Helen, it is notable that the word “singing” is broken up metrically (aei-dousa, 11141115) in such a way as to suggest the endlessness (“ever,” aei) of her song. Paregmenon and anadiplosis are widely used in late Euripidean lyric (a mannerism for which he was mocked in Frogs 1335-1336, 1352-1354).57 In Helen these figures are used to suggest lament reduced to its essentials. One could list other examples in Helen, along with other allusions to maidens’ choirs to show its persistent interest in ritual women’s cho-

53 Badham’s potmon is adopted by Kannicht, Diggle, Kovacs, and Allan; not by Dale. Cf. ponon / aponous in 1320-1. 54 Cf. Od. 19.517-523, Aesch. Ag. 1140-1149, Suppl. 58-67, Soph. El. 103-109, 140-152, 1074-1081, fr. 585. See Pucci (1997) 70-71. 55 Fraenkel (1950a) on Ag. 1144f. (vol. 3, 522 n.1, “duplication as a characteristic means of reproducing the sound of the voices of birds”). 56 Loraux (1990) 93. The second Itun scans as an iamb, as in Birds 213. 57 Breitenbach (1934) 214-221.

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ruses.58 Space permits only one final reference, in the hymn to the Mountain Mother that constitutes the second stasimon. This song celebrates a chorus (1345) composed of the Graces, the Muses, and Aphrodite to comfort Demeter. Theirs is clearly a primordial song and involves a number of musical aetiologies: Aphrodite “for the first time takes up the tambourines stretched with hide” (1346-1349), and Deo takes in her hands, presumably for the first time, the “deep rumbling” aulos (1349-1351).59 As in the parodos of Bacchae (120-134), an aition for the use of exotic instruments is appropriate in cult song.60 The ode has been read as itself an aetiology of song.61 All we hear about what was sung by this divine chorus is that they dispelled the sorrow of Deo with their cry alala (lupan allaxait’ alalai, 1344). Their song is again a repetition, and is received as such by the goddess: gelasen de thea ... terphtheis’ al-al-agmōi (1349-1352). Looking again at the parodos, we see that its musical form, diction, and themes combine to stage it as a primal mortal song of consolation. Accidentally and as if for the first time, the players enact the archetypal form of women’s lament.62 It is not logical of course that the parodos of Helen, unprecedented though her sorrows are, should be the first occasion of women’s lament. The Iliad had shown her at Troy “leading the lament” (exērkhe gooio, 24.761, etc.) for Trojan women who groan in response (epi de stenakhonto gunaikes, Il. 24.746); Pindar had shown goddesses inventing lament songs. Nonetheless, setting Helen in Egypt lends 58 Foley (1992), esp. 144-147 draws out the theme, as in the reference to Callisto and the daughter of Merops driven from Artemis’ chorus (381) and in picturing Helen’s return as her leading once again the girls’ choruses in Sparta (14651478). Foley notes the role cult dances play in proper transition to marriage, as when Persephone herself was snatched from a choir (1311-1312, on which Kannicht (1969) vol. 2, 341 notes how, “with Alexandrian attention to detail”, the poet justifies replacing the flower-gathering motif with a ring-dance, because paizein is used in the flower-gathering scene in H. Hom. Dem. 5, 425). See also Murnaghan (forthcoming). 59 For the aetiologies, Kannicht (1969) vol. 2, 330 with n. 12 and ad 1308-1309. The Mother had her characteristic castanets already in 1308-1310. 60 Comparing the enigmatic mode of expression in tumpana bursotenē (Helen 1347) with bursotonon kuklōma (Bacchae 124) suggests that the instrument had not yet been given a name so soon after its invention. Similar is khalkou audan khthonian (Hel. 1346) for bronze castanets; cf. schol. Pind. Isth. 7.1-3 for ēkheia, echoing bronze instruments, in rites of Demeter. 61 Pippin Burnet (1960) 115-6 for comedy; Downing (1990) 12 for “choral celebration”. 62 Kannicht (1969) vol. 2, 59 (the chorus “wird deshalb zwanglos zum Partner der Klage”).

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her first song a primordial air: nearby grows the lotus (183), from which Athena invented the aulos, the Libun lōton (170).63 One remembers that Egypt was thought to be the land of the oldest songs, indeed the place where all song originated, and originated in a dirge.64 In Egypt, there are no male aoidoi, the epic Muse is not invoked, and song arises by chance. In extremis, Helen goes back to the roots of song. The Egyptian songs of Helen thus suggest a genealogy of lament: isolated and stripped to its essentials, human lament arose from the solitary, inarticulate wailing of abandoned women grieving. These cries are brought into order by finding accompaniment—an echo in nature, a matching cry by women friends, responsion in a choral ode. In the parodos, a woman’s cries are integrated into a community when others come to echo them, and a form of musical art is discovered that can generate new laments, as in the first stasimon. In the first stasimon, the nightingale’s endless iterations are proposed as the natural paradigm for lament, as the second stasimon nominates Demeter’s chorus its divine model. Between them, humans forge songs to cope with loss, as Democritus held, and as Lucretius put it, “to imitate the liquid notes of birds / with mouth and lips came long before men learnt / to charm the ears by singing tuneful songs” (De rerum natura, 5.1379-81, tr. R. Melville). Helen weeping in Egypt is one evolutionary step beyond the nightingale in her tree. In nature the mechanism of repetition is the echo, in art it is the responding chorus, but both forms of doubling have the power to allow sounds of woe to reach another realm. In honoring Pietro Pucci, we cannot leave Euripides’ fantasy of music’s origins, built out of poetic imagination and current anthropology, without turning it upside down and seeing how it looks. Deconstruction is always suspicious of the relation of cause and effect, and in this case makes us ask if singing one’s sorrow is natural, like the nightingale’s instinctive outpouring of grief. Or do we think birds “sing” sad songs only because we do? For Pucci, such doubles operate so that the “original” is “determined in its attributes by the other, namely the copy or appear63 So Kannicht (1969) vol. 2, 68, noting that Athena Tritogeneia was honored around the Libyan Tritonis limēn (Hdt. 4.188-189). In Pindar (Pyth. 12.19-21) Athena helps Perseus kill the Gorgo (in Libya, Hel. 766-769) and imitates its shocking cry (eriklangkton goon) on her instrument (sun entesi). For Libyan lotus as a good material for flutes: Theoph. Hist. Plant 4.3.3-4. Duris of Samos (apud Athen. 618b-c) explains why the aulos is called Libyan by tracing the art to a Libyan nomad, Seirites, who is also credited with inventing aulos songs to the mother of the gods (mētrōa). On the aulos (usually associated with Phrygia) here, see Barker (1984) 224 n. 128, (2007) 18-20. 64 Hdt. 2.79; cf. Pl. Laws 657b; see Ford (2002) 151-152.

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ance”; the origin exists as a deferred effect of the copy, the eidōlon (1997, 46). If the invocation of the nightingale “represents music as a natural phenomenon, and the human song as repetition (copy?) of the natural one”, this picture comes to us itself as a song (1107-1015).65 It is the artifice of human song that allows birdsong to be natural. I find Pucci’s version of deconstruction valuable for its balance: it is not purely skeptical, not content to dispel metaphysical postulates, but follows the logic of its position to note that, if it is the copy that allows the original to be what it is (1997, 44) the original nonetheless remains available in some sense for contemplation. Pucci sees through illusions but doesn’t look past them. Still, he warns that such pairs can at best generate the effect of a true origin, and argues that Euripides is aware that doubling a lamenting voice is not the same as restoring a missing presence. As Pucci observes of the hymn to the great Mother, even if Deo is pleased with the new music, she nevertheless does not get back her daughter; Euripidean lament offers not a recovery of loss but art’s diverting power of replacement.66 Pucci is also right to say that repetitions that bring no gain threaten to become “a merely formalistic and musical connotation, a mere verbal, musical icon”.67 The futile iterations Euripides sees at the root of lyric seem to acknowledge this, but I have added that such doubling can create a transformative echo. Helen did not get her Sirens, but her song of sorrow has been transformed. It did not reach Hades, or heaven, but it did resound beyond Egypt for we hear it in an Attic mouseion. If we follow the otherworldly logic of her audacious invocation, Helen’s lament has passed on to become a tragic ode in an Athenian play.

65 Pucci (1997) 71. 66 Pucci (1980b) 218: “Aphrodite’s music replaces the finding of Persephone, for the great Mother receives the flute, not her daughter, in her arms (1350 ff.) and laughs. This point seems to me the clearest allusion to the diverting power of art and to its structure as replacement or compensation.” Cf. Pucci (1997) 7274, against redemptive readings, such as Zuntz (1960) 226-227. 67 Pucci (1997) 71, graciously referring in n. 63 to an early presentation of the present study; it is a pleasure to bring it out now as a token of thanks for Pietro’s teaching, colleagueship, and friendship.

Tyrants and Flatterers: Kolakeia in Aristophanes’ Knights and Wasps Anthony T. Edwards University of California, San Diego Introduction At lines 1030-1031 of Aristophanes’ Knights Sausageseller provides a surprisingly contradictory characterization of his master’s new Paphlagonian slave: κύνα Κέρβερον ἀνδραποδιστήν, / ὃς κέρκῳ σαίνων σ’, ὁπόταν δειπνῇς.... (“a hell hound slaver / who, wagging his tale at you whenever you eat,....”). For the same character to be described simultaneously as a slaver and a tail-wagger–a brownnoser, a lickspittle–is, of course, a bit of a paradox and so Aristophanes intended it to be. In fact Paphlagon–sc., the politician Cleon– is described in Knights as both a tyrant and a kolax, a slavish flatterer of Demos.1 These two figures, the tyrant and the flatterer, are closely associated but as opposite types, the latter functioning as the servile factotum and general apple-polisher for the former. Evidence for the kolax as a type character in Greek literature prior to the late fifth century is spotty, but in Athens of the 420’s he appears to have become suddenly very popular.2 Kolakeia featured prominently in Aristophanes’ Knights, performed in 424, his Wasps, performed two years later, and in Eupolis’ Kolakes of 421. But the presentation of the kolax in these plays, as is evident from the verses just quoted from Knights, appears problematical in two ways. First, Aristophanes and Eupolis malign as kolakes individuals, powerful and wealthy men in the city of Athens, who cannot possibly be described as kolakes in any literal 1 2

I discuss the association of the verb saino with the vocabulary of kolakeia in the appendix. The genealogy of the kolax as an inhabitant of the comic stage is covered by Ribbeck (1884), Lofberg (1920), Nesselrath (1985), Brown (1992), Damon (1997), Mesturini (2001), Tylawsky (2002), and Antonsen-Resch (2004). Millett (1989) provides the basic discussion of this figure from the perspective of Greek social history; see also Avezzù (1989), Nenci (1989), Bruit Zaidman (1995), Konstan (1996), and Fisher (2000).

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sense.3 What’s more, Aristophanes, at least, depicts these figures in contradictory fashion simultaneously as flattering dependents and as tyrannical patrons. Epicharmus (fr. 35) does not appear to have incorporated these two features in the earliest detailed example we have of the comic kolax nor are they characteristic of the flatterers populating the stages of Middle and New Comedy of the fourth century and later. It must, moreover, certainly seem counter-intuitive that this figure, the toady, a client to wealthy patrons, would resonate as an object of public ridicule at a historical conjuncture when, at the height of Athenian popular sovereignty, clientage was undoubtedly at its weakest as a social institution. But Aristophanes offers us, nevertheless, a politicized kolax and one subject to concurrent yet opposite predications as tyrant and flatterer.4 I shall argue that the development of democratic social relations in fifthcentury Athens, progressively destabilizing traditional hierarchy, produced an opening for the kolax to enter Athenian political discourse as part of an upper-class, conservative critique of post-Periclean democratic leaders.5 Once, however, this accusation of kolakeia is loosed within the polemics of political debate, any and all deferential language or appeal to the greater public interest soon falls under its shadow.

The Comic Kolax The sixth-century Samian poet Asius (fr. 14 West) provides the first example of a kolax, in this case through the compound knisokolax, presumably someone who performs the offices of a kolax in expectation of a share of sacrificial meat, perhaps a cousin of the more violent bōmolochos. The compound at any rate must attest to the currency of the simple form kolax at that time.6 Several notable traits of the kolax appear in this 3 4

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Napolitano ([2005] 51-53) argues that Alcibiades is presented as a rapacious kolax to Callias in Eupolis’ Kolakes. This paradoxical characterization of the kolax makes of this figure a counter part to the “enantiosēma,” a single signifier tied to two opposite and contradictory concepts. See, for example, Pucci’s ([1992] 20-37) illuminating analysis of the unstable boundary between tuchē and telos within Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus. I recognize that terms such as “conservative,” “upper-class,” “elite,” or “aristocratic” all carry connotations that may be inappropriate to Athens of the late fifth century. I use them somewhat loosely to refer to a historically significant group defined by family tradition, wealth, and ideological commitment. We owe this fragment from Asius to Athenaeus (125b-d), the source as well of almost all comic fragments referring to the kolax (6.235a ff.). Cf. Archil. fr. 24b

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early passage describing a gatecrasher at a wedding banquet: low origins, eagerness for a meal, dependence upon wealthy patrons, and a nonchalant indifference towards exclusionary social norms. Athenaeus (6.235f-36b), in the course of quoting two passages from Epicharmus (frr. 34 and 35), notes that he was the first to bring the kolax onto the comic stage. The remnants we possess from Epicharmus’ writing are in fact devoid of the conventional vocabulary of kolakeia, but fragment 35 presents a soliloquy by a professional dinner guest, a selfdescribed sundeipnos (cf. aeisitos in fr. 34), who certainly fits the profile of the kolax. This character mentions in his monologue the invitation to dinner, the charm and witticisms it is his responsibility to supply, his praise of the host, loading up on food and drink at his table, the ubiquitous risk for a man of low status of physical humiliation, and above all the impression that our speaker makes his living as a dinner guest. In these features we confront the essentials of the comic kolax. In this early text Epicharmus’ kolax dwells as well on the dark side of his existence– the enemies made through the obligatory defense of his host, the uncertain walk home through dark streets, sleeping on the floor, and a hangover the next morning.7 These passages from Epicharmus and Asius attest that the kolax was by the end of the sixth century a distinct and recognizable character on the Greek stage and in Greek poetry, which might reasonably be taken to imply that the kolax was therefore a fixture in the Greek polis on the eve of the classical age. In both, the social relationship of kolakeia is embedded in the opposition of rich and poor, providing food to the poor man in exchange (in Epicharmus’ fragment) for praise of the rich patron. The chorus of Eupolis’ Kolakes of 421 offers a speech (fr. 172 K-A) paralleling that from Epicharmus: ἀλλὰ δίαιταν ἣν ἔχουσ’ οἱ κόλακες πρὸς ὑμᾶς λέξομεν· ἀλλ’ ἀκούσαθ’ ὡς ἐσμὲν ἅπαντα κομψοὶ ἄνδρες· ὅτοισι πρῶτα μὲν παῖς ἀκόλουθός ἐστιν

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(West). The earliest certain attestation of the word kolax occurs in a fragment from Aeschylus (fr. 228c Mette: below p. 310). For kolakeia in the literature of the Archaic period, see Damon (1997) 23-36 and Tylawsky (2002), 7-16, whose definition of a kolax I find a little too broad. I would, moreover, consider Odysseus a better candidate than Irus for earliest exemplar of the kolax: cf. Pucci’s (1987, 173-187) analysis of the power of the gastēr, “belly,” over Odysseus’ behavior as he is forced to praise his hosts, tell them stories, and even to endure blows at the banquet. Cf. Euphantus FGrH 2A, 74, fr. 2.1-6 (= Ath. VI.251d). For the very different early development of the parasitos, see Bruit Zaidman (1995) and Nesselrath (1985) 88-121. See Nesselrath (1985) 94-95.

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Anthony T. Edwards ἀλλότριος τὰ πολλά, μικρὸν δέ τι κἀμὸν αὐτοῦ. ἱματίω δέ μοι δύ’ ἐστὸν χαρίεντε τούτω, οἷν μεταλαμβάνων ἀεὶ θάτερον ἐξελαύνω εἰς ἀγοράν. ἐκεῖ δ’ ἐπειδὰν κατίδω τιν’ ἄνδρα ἠλίθιον, πλουτοῦντα δ’, εὐθὺς περὶ τοῦτον εἰμί. κἄν τι τύχῃ λέγων ὁ πλούταξ, πάνυ τοῦτ’ ἐπαινῶ, καὶ καταπλήττομαι δοκῶν τοῖσι λόγοισι χαίρειν. εἶτ’ ἐπὶ δεῖπνον ἐρχόμεσθ’ ἄλλυδις ἄλλος ἡμῶν μᾶζαν ἐπ’ ἀλλόφυλον, οὗ δεῖ χαρίεντα πολλὰ τὸν κόλακ’ εὐθέως λέγειν, ἢ ’κφέρεται θύραζε. οἶδα δ’ Ἀκέστορ’ αὐτὸ τὸν στιγματίαν παθόντα· σκῶμμα γὰρ εἶπ’ ἀσελγές, εἶτ’ αὐτὸν ὁ παῖς θύραζε ἐξαγαγὼν ἔχοντα κλοιὸν παρέδωκεν Οἰνεῖ.

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But we’ll state before you now the profession we flatterers practice. Know that we are sharp guys in every way. First we have a slave in attendance– somebody else’s really, but somewhat mine too. I’ve got these two stylish cloaks and, wearing one, I head downtown. If I spot somebody there, a dummy but rich, I’m on him instantly. And if the fat cat says something, I praise it to the skies and pretend to be smitten with delight by his words. Then we go to dinner, each of us to a different place for someone else’s eats, where the flatterer straight off has to start with the one-liners or it’s out the door. I hear that this happened to Acestor–the freedman: he cracked a raunchy joke, and a slave dragged him out of the door in a wooden collar and tossed him in the ditch.

The speakers offer to set forth the profession or way of life (diaitan: 1) of the kolax.8 The salient points include the accoutrements of a gentleman; a stroll to the agora where the kolax selects his mark in the person of a rich fool; praise and astonishment for the sucker’s every word; dinner at which the kolax must supply as his part of the bargain a steady stream of flattering witticisms–though anything off-color can result in the bum’s rush. Although the kolax claims to be sharp, with-it (kompsos), still reference to Acestor as a stigmatias would appear to suggest low origins. The kolax must ape the appearance of his patron–presumably so as not to embarrass him when in his company9–but at its heart the relationship is a 8

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Protagoras is mentioned twice in the extent fragments to Kolakes (frr. 157, 158 K-A); see Storey’s ([2003] 184-188) discussion of his role. This speech from the parabasis seems from its content not to belong to a sophist but to an ordinary kolax (Tylawsky [2002] 47, Storey [2003] 190-193). Generally, see Tylawsky (2002) 43-57, Storey (2003) 179-197, and Napolitano (2005), esp. 60-64. Nesselrath ([1985] 95) overstates his case for the singularity of the passage. Cf. Alexis fr. 262 (K-A): κόλακος δὲ βίος μικρὸν χρόνον ἀνθεῖ / οὐδεὶς γὰρ χαίρει πολιοκροτάφῳ παρασίτῳ. (“The life of a kolax blooms but a moment. For no one takes pleasure in a grey-haired parasitos”) and Ameipsias fr. 9 (K-A),

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bald exchange of well-turned flattery for a meal with the trappings of wealth. Labeling Acestor as a stigmatias slanders him as at least a former slave, and clapping him in a cangue or pillory (kloios) before turning him over to Oeneus (explained by Storey [2003] ad loc. as referring to the barathron) is the behavior of a despotēs more than that of a patron. In any case once the fraud that the kolax is a gentleman and the rich man is his philos has been violated by an ill-considered joke, the patron, too, abandons all pretense and reasserts social distance through violent humiliation. This characterization of the life of the kolax would, moreover, appear to be fairly stable within the Greek comic tradition.10 Antiphanes (fr. 142 K-A), writing no later than the last third of the fourth century, presents a character who, though acknowledging the risk, practice, and toil required by all human endeavors, celebrates nevertheless the upside of the flatterer’s life in terms of laughs, play, luxury, and drink–second only to wealth itself. In a comedy by Nicolaus (fr. 1 K-A), composing perhaps as late as the second century, a parasitos delivers a diatribe blaming those inadequately schooled in the technē, exemplified by Tantalus, who is punished for his “unrestrained tongue” (akolaston...glōssan: 4) when he can’t endure the parrhēsia of his host (cf. Eupolis fr. 172.12-16 K-A, see above pp. 305-306), listing the physical and mental requirements for the job (27-29, 41-43), and giving examples of the parasite’s duties at the table–serving as the butt of jokes, turning the host’s faults into virtues, and protecting him from boors (31-39). In particular, the gulf of status and wealth separating the kolax from his patron and the reciprocity of food for praise and menial services spanning that gap continue to define the relationship. Within the evolution of this comic character the politicized kolakes of Aristophanes’ Knights and Wasps stand out as exceptional. 11 whose speaker attributes Socrates’ poor appearance to the fact that in spite of his poverty he has never played the kolax (οὐπώποτ’ ἔτλη κολακεῦσαι: 4). 10 See Tylawsky (2002) 44-45. Nesselrath ([1985] 96-97) and Antonsen-Resch ([2004] 7-8) both acknowledge this continuity of Eupolis’ kolakes with those of Middle and New Comedy even if they argue that a character type per se had not yet coalesced. 11 See Storey (2003) 192 and Nesselrath (1985) 97. Cf. Alexis fr. 121 (K-A), whose speaker distinguishes between the common parasite, who shows up in comedies, and the “grand parasite” (semnoparasitos), exemplified by satraps and generals; cf. Arnott (1996) 336-338. The evidence does not support a distinction in meaning between kolax and parasitos for the fifth and fourth centuries if after: see Nesselrath (1985) 88-121, Brown (1992) 98-106, and Mesturini (2001).

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Kolakeia: The Normative Model Aristotle on Kolakeia Kolakeia is a historical institution nurtured by hierarchy of status and wealth. It is an institution of clientage, reciprocal patronage and deference, that supplies to those at the top an opportunity to display their position through the acquisition of a retinue to follow them through the streets, eat at their table, and applaud their words, and offers those at the bottom an easy livelihood with the bonus of a fleeting taste of high living. Eupolis’ chorus refers to their activities as a diaita a “livelihood” or “way of life,” providing it with the status of a “technē”, as it is described in other texts.12 In exchange for the expertise required and the services provided, the kolax anticipates a payoff from his patron, at minimum a meal, that comprises his livelihood. This payoff in Aristotle’s discussion separates the kolax from the mere areskos and also marks the dividing line between a proper kaloskagathos and a banausic. Theophrastus defines the kolakeia so: τὴν δὲ κολακείαν ὑπολάβοι ἄν τις ὁμιλίαν αἰσχρὰν εἶναι, συμφέρουσαν δὲ τῷ κολακεύοντι (Char. 2.1.1-2: “...a disreputable relationship that is profitable to the flatterer”). This definition is not far from that offered by Aristotle at EN 1127a710, where he distinguishes within his taxonomy of moral qualities between two forms of the excess of philia, the areskos and the kolax: τοῦ δὲ συνηδύνοντος ὁ μὲν τοῦ ἡδὺς εἶναι στοχαζόμενος μὴ διά τι ἄλλο ἄρεσκος, ὁ δ’ ὅπως ὠφέλειά τις αὑτῷ γίνηται εἰς χρήματα καὶ ὅσα διὰ χρημάτων, κόλαξ·

12 For the technē of the kolax or parasitos see: Antidotus fr. 2 K-A; Antiphanes fr. 142.1-2 K-A; Isoc. ad Nic. 28.1-9, de Pace 4.1-4; Nicolaus fr. 1.1-4, 30 K-A; Pl. Sph. 222E5-223A1. Millett (1989) situates the activities of the kolax within the historical context of patron-client relationships defined by the criteria of: 1. a reciprocal exchange of goods/services; 2. a continuing personal relationship; 3. a relationship asymmetrical in terms of wealth and status; 4. a relationship dominated by the party of superior status. After surveying evidence for this institution in the Archaic period and down to the middle of the fifth century, Millett argues that during the period of the Athenian democracy (462-322 BC) such forms of dependency were “a minor social phenomenon, with minimal political and economic implications”. (36) See also Avezzù (1989), Konstan (1996) 8-11 and Fisher (2000), esp. 371-378. Within the democratic ideology of egalitarian relations among citizens, especially in the context of dining, kolakeia was viewed as a form of disgraceful dependency unsuited to a free citizen (Nenci [1989] and Fisher [2000]).

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The individual seeking to be pleasant for its own sake is areskos while the one so behaving for the sake of gain is a kolax.

A little earlier in the book (1125a1-2), enumerating the characteristics of the megalopsuchos, Aristotle observes that the ability to live with those who are not one’s friends is slavish (doulikon) and continues by way of illustration: διὸ καὶ πάντες οἱ κόλακες θητικοὶ καὶ οἱ ταπεινοὶ κόλακες. (“Therefore all kolakes are menials and the vulgar are kolakes”).13 In Rhetoric (1383b30-33), finally, discussing the characteristic marks of aneleutheria–a condition not so different from that of the thetikos or the tapeinos above–Aristotle generalizes: τὸ δ’ ἐπαινεῖν παρόντας κολακείας, καὶ τὸ τἀγαθὰ μὲν ὑπερεπαινεῖν τὰ δὲ φαῦλα συναλείφειν, καὶ τὸ ὑπεραλγεῖν ἀλγοῦντι παρόντα, καὶ τἆλλα πάντα ὅσα τοιαῦτα· κολακείας γὰρ σημεῖα.

Praising people to their faces is characteristic of kolakeia, and over-praising someone’s good qualities but glossing over their failings, and oversympathizing in person with someone in distress, and other things of this sort, these are all marks of kolakeia.

From these fourth-century philosophical accounts we learn that the kolax is an individual of inferior social standing who reaps some gain in exchange for primarily his lip service–offering praise and sympathy, unwarranted and undeserved–to his betters. Aristotle explains the appeal of kolakeia on the basis of philotimia (EN 1159a10-17; cf. Rhet. 1371a18-24, 1371b18-26): since being loved is similar to being honored, all naturally prefer being loved to loving. The kolax is a philos to excess, or at minimum pretends to be, and consequently, due to their natural desire for esteem, most people are philokolakes.14

Philos and Kolax As this passage from the Nicomachean Ethics suggests, the distinction between kolax and philos, a friend, though crucial is not always easy to make nor is it always beneficial to make. For a member of the profession to self-identify as a kolax would instantly diminish by that very admission the appeal of what he has to offer in word and deed as a kolax. This 13 Pl. Smp. 183A4-B3 characterizes kolakeia as slavish behavior. 14 Hermarchus (fr. 44 Krohn), comparing the relationship of the kolax and his patron to that between slave and master, analyzes how in spite of mutual disregard each is attracted to the other out of need for that which they mutually supply. See Duncan (2006) 106-108.

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fundamental of the profession accounts for the immediate humor of the speech of the comic kolax in which he sets forth the elements of his technē like any other professional. Similarly, calling a kolax a kolax demeans the kolax himself but it also detracts from the value of his services to his patron by openly questioning their intent and sincerity. So, “philos” might have been the preferred term, with “kolax” reserved as an insult.15 Even at that, however, a patron should know his kolakes from his friends. So, in a fragment of Aeschylus’ (228c), a speaker poses the question “how can one distinguish a kolax from a friend?” (πῶς ἄν τις διακρίνειε τὸν κόλακα τοῦ φίλου;). A conflict inherent to the institution of kolakeia underlies the speaker’s question: whereas a friend’s behavior should be motivated by an altruistic loyalty, a desire even to forego his own self-interest in order to defend the interests of his friend, the kolax only acts like a friend and does so only as long as it serves his own interests. The deception of a friend through flattering words is an unforgivable stab in the back. So, Theognis (850-851) calls down Zeus’ destruction on whoever would deceive a friend (hetairon) through his gentle wheedling (kotillon). Similarly, it is explained in a proverb attributed to Aesop (135) that ὁ φιλῶν πλήξει σε, ὁ δὲ μισῶν κολακεύσει σε (“a friend will smack you, but your enemy will flatter you”). The flatterer’s unfailing deference and praise is in no way a mark of friendship but in fact of hostility and disrespect. It takes a real friend to smack a man down when that’s what’s needed, a service that a kolax would never perform. As Clearchus (fr. 21.1-4 Wehrli) points out, a kolax never suffices for friendship since time always lays bare his false pretenses. A sententia of Antiphon the Sophist (fr. 65 D-K) calls attention as well to the inability of some to distinguish between friends and mere flattering con men: πολλοὶ δ’ ἔχοντες φίλους οὐ γινώσκουσιν, ἀλλ’ ἑταίρους ποιοῦνται θῶπας πλούτου καὶ τύχης κόλακας. (“Many, though they have friends, don’t recognize it; instead they take as comrades fawners of their wealth and flatterers of their fortune”). Those who are unable to recognize the friends they have turn instead to the covetous applause of frauds. In Eudemian Ethics (1221a5-8, 24-27, and 1223b29-34) Aristotle identifies friendship (philia) as the term of virtue, occupying the mean, and kolakeia as the vice of excess in respect to friendship. Whereas friendship aims at what is best (a sock in the jaw, for example, as per 15 In practical terms the distinction between philos and kolax is not always selfevident. See Xen. Mem. 2.9.1-10 with Millett’s ([1989] 32-33) discussion and Damon (1997) 35, who notes Archil. fr. 24b West. On philos and kolax generally, see Konstan (1996) 8-11 and Scholtz (2004) 274-279.

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Aesop), kolakeia aims only at pleasure.16 Again, at Rhetoric 1371a.23-24 Aristotle characterizes the kolax as an apparent friend and admirer: φαινόμενος γὰρ θαυμαστὴς καὶ φαινόμενος φίλος ὁ κόλαξ ἐστίν. In fact, the term apatē, ‘trickery’ or ‘deception,’ is closely associated with kolakeia (see below pp. 312-314).

Kolax and Tyrant Because kolakeia comprises a relationship in which an individual of low status and slender means seeks material benefits from someone of wealth and influence, tyrants are magnets for flatterers. In a passage from Politics (1292a10-38) illuminating through a comparison with tyrannies the nature of democracies in which the demos is sovereign, Aristotle generalizes that tyrants mistreat the better men (beltiones) in favor of flatterers (kolakes). In fact, it is their friends, judged generally most able to overthrow them, whom tyrants mistrust most, favoring instead kolakes, whose fortunes are dependent upon the patronage of the tyrant. Tyrants both need wicked men for their wicked deeds and enjoy being celebrated by obsequious toadies, so they have kolakes rather than friends since no dignified or independent man would stoop to this (Pol. 1313b29-1314a5).17 In Athenian political oratory of the 4th century, in fact, it becomes a conventional slander that one’s adversary is a kolax of Philip or one of the other kings or tyrants of the day. The prejudice of kolakeia against those interacting with such tyrants is strong enough that Isocrates feels called upon routinely to dispel this assumption in his letters to such rulers.18 Herodotus’ Otanes (Hdt. 3.80.16-23), in the debate over government that follows the assassination of the magi, anticipates Aristotle’s observation that a turannos despises the best men (aristois) and favors the worst (kakistois), but, he continues, what is most surprising is that if someone shows the turannos appropriate respect, he grows angry 16 The kolax aims to say what will be pleasant to his target: Arist. EE 1223b 2934, EN 1108a 23-30, 1127a 5-10, Rh. 1371a 18-24, 1371b 18-26; Dem. Phil. III.3.4-4.6, de Chers. 33.3-34.5; Diph. fr. 23 K-A; Epich. fr. 35 Kaibel; Eup. fr. 172 K-A; Pl. Sph. 222E5-223A1, Phdr. 240A9-B2, Grg. 464B3-465A4, 502B1-C8, 513D1-E7, R. 538B6-D4. 17 Cf. Demochares FGrHist 2A,75, fr. 3; Dem. contra Lep. 15.5-16.5; Duris FGrHist 2A, 76, fr. 30; Men. Kol. 87-94; Theopomp. FGrH 2B, 115, fr. 185; Xen. Cyr. 7.2.23.1-24.4. 18 Isoc.: ad Nic. 28.1-9, ad Dion. 4.1-3, ad Phil. 22.1-10, ad Antipat. 7.1-9; cf. Dem. Phil. III.65.4-6, de Cor. 296.1-8; Aeschin. contra Ctes. 60.9-62.7; Lys. contra Andoc. 6.4-7.8.

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because he hasn’t played the toady (therapeuetai), and if he plays the toady (therapeuei), the turannos grows angry over the flattery (thōpi).19 This contradictory reaction on the part of the turannos, which Otanes substitutes for monarchos at this point in his speech, betrays his simultaneous pleasure in hearing the flattering words of the thōps and suspicion of his speech for the very reason that it is flattery. Xenophon, in the dialogue he stages between the Syracusan tyrant Hiero and the epinician poet Simonides, sharpens this contradiction between the pleasure of flattery and its unreliability. When Simonides congratulates Hiero on the fact that he never has to hear anything but the sweetest of sounds, praise for whatever he says or does, Hiero snaps back asking why should a tyrant suppose that those who do not criticize him are content when he knows either that their silence signals ill intent for himself (Xen. Hiero 1.14.1-16.4) or that their praise is mere kolakeia likewise masking discontent. As Democritus (fr. 268 D-K) states “fear produces kolakeia, but it possesses no good will” (φόβος κολακείην μὲν ἐργάζεται, εὔνοιαν δὲ οὐκ ἔχει). The unchallenged power of the tyrant gives rise to an epistemological quandry in which the speech of the kolax undermines the reliability of speech as a whole and in which the ambiguities of silence are consequently more revealing than speech.20

Kolakeia and Apatē The relationship between kolax and patron appears to inhibit not only the possibility of true friendship but that of true discourse as well. As I’ve already noted, it is a condition of his profession that the kolax politely ignore the nature of his relationship to his patron. Aristophanes, however, appears to assume a deeper kinship of some sort between kolakeia and apatē, deception or trickery, at Knights 48 when he describes the behavior of Paphlagon so: ᾔκαλλ’, ἐθώπευ’, ἐκολάκευ’, ἐξηπάτα (“he was wagging, fawning, flattering, he was deceiving him utterly”). The final verb in the list, exēpata–“he was deceiving utterly”–probably 19 The relationship of therapeia to the vocabulary of kolakeia is inconsistent. Here Herodotus clearly associates therapeia with the thōps, the flatterer. Similarly, see Is. de Cir. 37.1-5; Theopomp. FGrH 2B,115, fr. 124.3-9; Hippias Erythr. FGrH 3B, 421, fr. 1.1-11. Isocrates and Plato, however, appear to be at pains in some contexts to distinguish therapeia as a legitimate activity from kolakeia, which they condemn: Isoc. Hel. 56.4-57.7, ad Nic. 28.1-9, Pl. Smp. 184B6-C7, Grg. 464B3-C7, 501C1-4, 513D1-7, and 521A1-B1. 20 See also Xen. Cyr. 7.2.23.1-24.4 for another example and cf. Diodotus on the effects of accusations of bribery (Thuc. 3.42.3).

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serves to sum up the preceding three, all of which refer to kolakeia.21 Eupolis’ kolax in his summary of his professional duties (Eupolis fr. 172.9-10, see above pp. 305-306) includes feigning admiration and wonderment at whatever his rich pigeon happens to say. As noted, moreover, Aristotle (Rhet. 1371a.18-24) explains that the kolax is an apparent (phainomenos) admirer and friend, specifying deception as an essential element of kolakeia.22 In [Andocides] 4 (16.1-9) the speaker attacks Alcibiades as a political kolax who dissimulates by means of his flattery the contempt he feels for the demos he deceives and manipulates.23 Aeschines (Against Ctesiphon 77), moreover, alleges that an outlandish claim made publicly by Demosthenes was a piece of deception by labeling it as kolakeia. Towards the end of the first speech of Acharnians’ parabasis (655-658), enumerating the poet’s services to Athens, the chorus concludes: Ἀλλ’ ὑμεῖς τοι μή ποτ’ ἀφῆσθ’· ὡς κωμῳδήσει τὰ δίκαια. Φησὶν δ’ ὑμᾶς πολλὰ διδάξειν ἀγάθ’, ὥστ’ εὐδαίμονας εἶναι, οὐ θωπεύων οὐδ’ ὑποτείνων μισθοὺς οὐδ’ ἐξαπατύλλων, οὐδὲ πανουργῶν οὐδὲ κατάρδων, ἀλλὰ τὰ βέλτιστα διδάσκων.

But don’t surrender him since he will say what’s just in his comedies. / He says he will teach you many noble things, to make you prosper, / not by flattering (thōpeuōn), or offering money, or trickery, / or swindling, or hosing you with praise, but by instructing you in what’s best.

Aristophanes contrasts the instruction in what is just and best that he offers to Athens with the thopeia offered by others. He goes on to gloss this flattery as, among other disreputable activities, deceiving (exapatullōn) the public.24 It is specifically apatē as an element of kolakeia, the deceptiveness enabling it to look like other than what it is, that makes kolakeia dangerous. The menace of deceptive flattery is well represented by Medea’s response (368-369) to the chorus’ sympathy for the order of immediate banishment she has just received from Creon: δοκεῖς γὰρ ἄν με τόνδε 21 This association of kolakeia and trickery is well attested within the lexicographical tradition: Poll., 122.1-2; Suid. Theta, 432-33, Kappa, 2304; Hsch. Alpha, 1908; Phot. Kappa 199.18, Alpha 600; Σ Hes. Op. 789; Σ Ar. Eq. 1031a.1. 22 Phoc. Sent. fr. 17 Diehls associates thōpeia (flattery) with hupokrisis (acting). 23 For arguments dating this speech to the Classical period, see Raubitschek (1948); Furley (1989); Heftner (1995) and (2001). 24 See Ach. 632-639 for the allies’ deception of the demos through their wellcalculated flattery. Regarding Acharnians 655-658, see below pp. 329-330. See further regarding the deceptiveness of the kolax Clearchus frr. 20.1-7 and 21.14 Wehrli.

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θωπεῦσαί ποτε / εἰ μή τι κερδαίνουσαν ἢ τεχνωμένην; (“Do you think I would ever flatter this man unless I were scheming or bound to profit in some way?”) Medea’s flattery, in this case her submissive stance towards the king, dissimulates the plot she has contrived to her advantage and to the ruin of her enemies.25 In the final sentences of Philippic IV (76.1-4) Demosthenes distinguishes his own speech, the truth, spoken frankly and with good intent, from the discourse of kolakeia, full of harm and deception and bringing money to its speaker while handing the city’s affairs over to its enemies. Here again the deceptions of the kolax disguise the harm he does to those whom he flatters. Antisthenes (fr. 83 Caizzi) suggests that kolakeia is damaging at any rate to an individual whose character is too weak to stand up to it: κακοὶ κολακευόμενοι κακώτεροι γίνονται (“The wicked, when they are flattered, become more wicked still.”). Anaxilas (fr. 32 K-A) likens the kolax, assuming the appearance of good character as he sits down to eat, to a worm boring into an ear of grain, shortly to hollow it out and move on to the next. As a defense against the deceit of the kolax, Democritus (fr. 115.1-2 D-K) proposes ἢν μὴ γνωρίζηις τοὺς ἐπαίνους, κολακεύεσθαι ἡγέο (“if you don’t recognize the praise, assume that you’re being flattered”). As I take it, in order to distinguish kolakeia from legitimate praise, it is necessary that the recipient evaluate all words of praise against his own knowledge of his virtues and achievements. Good advice, but the rub lies precisely in the fallibilities of self-knowledge and the powers of praise to overwhelm the mind’s capacity for self-criticism. There is no sure solution to Hiero’s conundrum of the relativizing effect of flattery on all forms of discourse, public and private, since, as Aristotle observes, most people are philokolakes out of self-love.

Kolakeia and Hierarchy As long as kolakeia operates within the normative social hierarchy, it serves to reinforce that pecking order rather than to threaten it. Aristotle finds the kolax objectionable due to his deviation from the ideal through his low birth, poverty, dependence on a patron, and above all the requirement that he speak what is pleasant to another rather than his own 25 Cf. Pi. P. 2.81-82 and Aesch. Pers. 111-14, where saino signals the fawning dissimulation that cloaks ate’s menace. See as well Antisthenes frr. 89 and 84b D-K. Regarding the menace of the kolax generally, see Nesselrath (1985) 8992.

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mind. While Aristotle may not endorse the institution of kolakeia, he does not condemn it either as long as the kolax is indeed a man of low status waiting on a better man and as long as the object of the flatterer’s blandishments does not mistake or substitute the kolax for a friend, one of the necessities of a good life.26 But there occur nevertheless situations in which kolakeia threatens to violate the perceived social hierarchy. Herodotus’ account in Book I of his history (1.30.1-18 and 33.1-5) of Solon’s visit to King Croesus of Lydia offers an illuminating example of such an episode. A few days after his arrival Croesus has Solon shown through his treasury primarily to permit his guest to gawk at his vast wealth and then poses to Solon, after acknowledging his reputation for wisdom (sophiē), the question of whom Solon considers most blest of all (pantōn...olbiōtaton). Without missing a beat, Solon answers “Tellus the Athenian”, and goes on to award second place to the Argive twins Cleobis and Biton. None of these was rich or powerful, and I think we are to infer that they weren’t world famous either. Following Solon’s performance Croesus dismisses him as of no account (oudenos logou). For our purposes Herodotus’ preface to Solon’s response is significant: the Athenian replied ouden hupothopeusas: “not flattering in the least”. Even though he is in the presence of one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the Mediterranean world, whose hospitality he has been enjoying for several days, and he has just been complimented himself for the fame that preceded him, Solon appears unable to suppress his parrhesia in the interest of offering the bit of polite flattery that the situation demands. Solon rejects any implicit obligation to tell Croesus what the king wants to hear and probably what he deserves to hear as a matter of common courtesy. Putting aside the overarching thematics of Herodotus’ history, we observe here that Solon, an aristocrat and man of prestige in his own town, refuses to knuckle under and play the toady just to gratify the mighty king of Lydia with a bit of gracious if insincere flattery. Because the Spartan nauarch Callicratidas (Xen. Hell. 1.6.6.1-8.2) is not in a position in his dealings with Cyrus the Younger (406 BC) to follow the example of Solon’s outspokenness, he consequently feels appropriate rage (achthestheis, orgistheis) that Greeks such as himself must flatter barbarians for the sake of money (ὅτι βαρβάρους κολακεύουσιν ἕνεκα ἀργυρίου). In this passage yet another Greek aristocrat equates enduring the demeaning haughtiness of an Asian potentate, especially in 26 As an example of kolakeia serving to reinforce legitimate hierarchy, note Plato’s use of thōpeuō to express the proper relationship of the law-abiding individual to the state at Cri. 51A4-C1.

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exchange for money, with playing the kolax.27 These episodes from Herodotus and Xenophon present situations in danger of erupting into conflict since one party is reluctant to show respect to a higher status figure on the grounds that to do so would require an unacceptable degree of self-abasement. Both Herodotus’ Solon and Callicratidas appear to subscribe to a code of conduct that precludes their adopting behavior towards an Asian potentate that they believe would be appropriately directed rather at them by low status individuals. The difficulty encountered by Solon and Callicratidas in negotiating relative status across cultural boundaries in these examples suggests that high social status in their own communities proscribed such displays of deference: for a Solon or Callicratidas it comprises an unresolvable contradiction to be both an aristocrat and a kolax. 28

How Pericles Led the Demos Solon fr. 34 (1-8), however, presents a striking counterpoint to these examples: οἱ δ’ ἐφ’ ἁρπαγῆισιν ἦλθον· ἐλπίδ’ εἶχον ἀφνεήν, κἀδόκ[ε௬]ο ν ἕκαστος αὐτῶν ὄλβον εὑρήσειν πολύν, καί με κωτίλλοντα λείως τραχὺν ἐκφανεῖν νόον. χαῦνα μὲν τότ’ ἐφράσαντο, νῦν δέ μοι χολούμενοι λοξὸν ὀφθαλμοῖς ὁρῶσι πάντες ὥστε δήϊον. οὐ χρεών· ἃ μὲν γὰρ εἶπα, σὺν θεοῖσιν ἤνυσα, ἄ⌊λλ⌋α δ’ οὐ μάτην ἔερδον, οὐδέ μοι τυραννίδος ἁ̣ν̣δάν̣ει βίηι τι[..].ε[ι]ν....

Some came after loot. They had rich expectations, / and each one anticipated that he would make a fortune, / and that I, though coaxing (kōtillonta) (sc. the demos) gently, would reveal a harsh resolve. / They weren’t thinking straight then, and now, in their rage, they view me with suspicion, like an enemy. / It didn’t have to be this way: with the help of the gods I completed what I promised, / but I was not proceeding falsely nor does it please me to ... with a tyrant’s power....

27 Decades after Callicratidas’ encounter with Cyrus the Younger, Greek commanders appear not to have been so touchy about the authority of kings: see Alexis fr. 121 (K-A) with Arnott’s ([1996] 336-338) introduction to the fragment and Theopompus FGrH 2B, 115, fr. 124. 28 Cf. Aesch., Ag. 1662-1665 and Pr. 936-944, Soph. El. 395-399, and Eur. Heracl. 983-985.

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The fragment would appear to comment on events following the appointment of Solon to write new laws for the Athenians, contrasting the greedy expectations of fellow aristocrats at the outset of his archonship with their disappointment in what Solon ultimately served up for them. Although the syntax of line 3 at best entails a zeugma with that of 2, I take the Athenian demos as the understood object of Solon’s actions. Kotillo is one of the verbs associated with the concept of kolakeia, and its use here entails the surprising reversal of a man of Solon’s standing in the community playing kolax to the demos. Solon’s social equals assume that his appeal to the demos is only an act, soon to be followed by further assaults on their position. Consequently they are outraged to discover that Solon’s pandering was genuine and that they are the ones who’ve been outmaneuvered and played for fools.29 In view of the passages examined above regarding the attraction of tyrants for kolakes, Solon’s acknowledgement of his own flattering of the demos complements his rejection of a tyranny for himself at the end of the passage. Of course, it would be just as contradictory for Solon to be both a flatterer and a tyrant as it would be for him or Callicratidas to be both an aristocrat and a flatterer. Close to two centuries later, however, at the height of the power of the Athenian democracy, the anonymous writer known as the Old Oligarch (1.18.4-14) complains about a situation anticipated by Solon’s perhaps guileless admission in the poem just quoted. Formerly only members of the upper class—those serving as general, trierarch, or ambassador—met with allies in their cities to adjudicate cases requiring Athenian intervention, but since those cases are now tried in Athens before demotic juries, the allies consequently honor the demos with their flattery (kolakeuein). The Old Oligarch’s aggravation is double: in the first place, that the demos should have become recipient of flattery at all; in the second, that the members of Athens’ elite families no longer enjoy the adulation that is their due.30 This passage from the Old Oligarch’s pamphlet attests to a reversal of the normative model of kolakeia that occurs under the democracy: those who were formerly the bestowers of kolakeia are now positioned as its recipients. The Old Oligarch’s testimony, however, does not complement exactly the passage quoted from Solon. Both present the unlikely circumstance of kolakeia directed 29 To the view I attribute here to Athenian aristocrats, cf. Theognis’ recommendation to use deceptive flattery against one’s enemies: 363-364, cf. 56-67, and the revenge he considers appropriate for those who deceive their hetairoi: 850853. Regarding kōtillō and kolakeia, see the appendix on the vocabulary of kolakeia below. 30 Cf. Ar. Ach. 632-39 regarding flattery of the demos by the allies.

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at the demos, but in the present passage it is foreigners, citizens from allied cities, who provide this demeaning service, not Athenian citizens let alone men of Solon’s rank. In his eulogy of Pericles (2.65.7.4-11.1), though, Thucydides appears to be sensitive to precisely this perception, that the great democratic leader managed the demos by means of pandering. We are told towards the end of this passage that Pericles’ successors, in their competition for preeminence, came to serve the pleasure of the demos (ἐτράποντο καθ’ ἡδονὰς τῷ δήμῳ) and thereby to surrender civic affairs to them, but that Pericles himself led the demos rather than being led by them and had no need to say what would please them (πρὸς ἡδονήν τι λέγειν) due to his reputation for personal integrity, being able even to speak against them (πρὸς ὀργήν τι ἀντειπεῖν). The pleasure of the demos establishes a politics of kolakeia even if the word itself does not enter into Thucydides’ vocabulary. So, Pericles was no kolax to the demos, telling them only what it pleased them to hear, but the fine line that Thucydides walks here and the perilous nature of democratic politics for politicians from these social elites are succinctly expressed in his phrase κατεῖχε τὸ πλῆθος ἐλευθέρως: “he reined in the commoners like a free man (eleutheros)”. That is, Pericles’ influence over the demos did not come at the cost of servile behavior, such as would characterize a kolax, but is unsuited to an eleutheros. So, what was a democracy in name in fact boiled down to rule by its leading man (λόγῳ μὲν δημοκρατία, ἔργῳ δὲ ὑπὸ τοῦ πρώτου ἀνδρὸς ἀρχή).31 Yet Pericles’ successors did not in Thucydides’ view evade what Solon (fr. 34) anticipates and the Old Oligarch complains about: the humiliation of flattering the demos. Although the traditional hierarchy of wealth and social status may have more or less remained in place, that of political power had undergone a complete reversal. This state of affairs threatened, at least from the perspective of the upper class, the stability of social identity.

31 I take the adverb ἐλευθέρως to modify the verb κατεῖχε rather than its object τὸ πλῆθος; see Rusten (1989) ad loc. Of course, “rule by the first man” as a concept comes dangerously close to the opposite of the kolax, the tyrant: see Ostwald (1986) 185-188 for this perception of Pericles. Scholtz ([2004] 265269), however, discusses Pericles’ use of the pandering “demophilia” topos.

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Kolakeia and Democratic Politics The Athenian Demos as Tyrant In what appears to be a critique of the Athenian democracy of the latter half of the fifth century, Aristotle (Pol. 1292a 10-38) likens to a tyranny those democracies in which the will of the demos, not the law, is sovereign. Unrestrained by law, the demos under such democracies becomes a collective monarch of the variety tyrant: as Aristotle compares the two, both demos and tyrant are despotic in their treatment of the better men (tōn beltionōn), the one’s decrees are analogous to the other’s commands, and the demagogue and the kolax parallel each other functionally (καὶ ὁ δημαγωγὸς καὶ ὁ κόλαξ οἱ αὐτοὶ καὶ ἀνάλογον).32 As Aristotle explains it, since the power of the law exercises no curb on its will, the demos is all-powerful, but these demagogue-kolakes control the judgment of the demos, whose trust they possess (τὸν μὲν δῆμον πάντων εἶναι κύριον, τῆς δὲ τοῦ δήμου δόξης τούτους· πείθεται γὰρ τὸ πλῆθος τούτοις). 33 This tyranny of the demos produces its own kolakes, who, as we have seen in Aristotle’s ethical works, characteristically seek to serve their own self-interest by telling patrons what they find pleasant to hear. The comparison of the demagogue to a kolax entails that his work for the demos is servile and demeaning, that their influence and prosperity result from fawning on the demos. It is, of course, already paradoxical from the perspective of the normative form of kolakeia that the demos should be the recipient of such adulation. Beyond that, Aristotle does not specify the social rank of these demagogue-kolakes, but as far as can be determined they tended to come from well-off if not the old, elite families.34 Aristotle’s characterization of the Athenian demos as a collective tyrant echoes the judgment of Athens’ non-democratic opponents, as recorded by Thucydides, that the city of Athens as a whole was making herself a tyrant among the cities of Greece, whom she intended to enslave. The hostile judgment of the Corinthians towards their adversary across the Saronic gulf (Thuc. 1.122.2-3, 1.124.3) is repeated in Thucydides’ text by Athenians as well, both Pericles (2.63.2) and Cleon 32 Cf. Pol. 1313b 29-1314a 5: Democracy tends to gravitate in the direction of tyranny, and since the demos desires to be a monarch, the kolax thrives under both forms of government: ἔστι γὰρ ὁ δημαγωγὸς τοῦ δήμου κόλαξ. (“For the demagogue is the kolax of the demos.”). 33 Cf. [Demetrius] Rhetor, de El. §294. 34 See Connor (1971) 151-168; Carter (1986) 119-125; Ostwald (1986) 202-203; Hornblower (20023) 144-148.

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(3.37.2.5-8), in not dissimilar terms. As far as the specific relationship of kolakeia goes, as we’ve seen, the Old Oligarch complains that the flattery formerly directed at the political elite by the allies is now allotted to the demos, suggesting that if Athens is a tyrant city, it is specifically the Athenian demos doing the tyrannizing, as Aristotle likewise claims. These passages, no doubt expressing an elite point of view, attest that the institution of kolakeia was employed by some of its critics as a metaphor or perhaps even a model for understanding the Athenian democracy of the last third of the 5th century. The most striking element of this way of speaking about democratic politics is the reversal of the normative hierarchy that repositions the demos, now a tyrant, as the object of kolakeia. The impropriety of this new arrangement clearly outrages the likes of the Old Oligarch, and Aristotle’s comparison of the demos to a tyrant, a type of leader inherently illegitimate, and of democratic politicians to his toadies brands the demos and its leaders with the opprobrium of such a comparison. The implication for members of Athens’ traditional elite who are engaged in the politics of the democracy is equally bad, that they are no better than a bunch of fawning lickspittles serving the city’s unscrubbed masses. Unless they can claim the stature of a Pericles, democratic leaders are by implication the political equivalents of the kolakes depicted by Eupolis or Asius. This eclipse of the best men by the demos within the reciprocal economy of kolakeia disrupts that institution’s traditional mode of operation by inverting and confusing statuses and their boundaries.

Politics as Kolakeia I have already suggested that democratic social relations disrupt the relationship of patronage and deference within which the institution of kolakeia arose.35 Forms of government based upon interactions among those who are at least potentially friends, i.e., composed of social equals– oligarchies, for example–can operate free of the corrosive influence of kolakeia, a relationship between individuals of unequal status. So, as we have seen, it is preeminently the tyrant, a monarch, who is beset by kolakes. Democracy, viewed not as a system based upon the political equality and interchangeability of all citizens but rather from a conservative, elite perspective as the elevation of the demos above all other statuses, likewise attracts kolakes out to benefit from the power of the rulers, the demos as tyrant. The deference required of the weaker partner within 35 The arguments of Millett (1989) 25-43 are compelling in this regard.

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such a hierarchized relationship entails, as Aristotle describes, a discourse aimed at the pleasure of the addressee rather than the truth. This is not the discourse of friendship, which can, at the appropriate moment, produce a sock in the jaw, but that of kolakeia. Such a discourse, adapted to the purposes of the weaker, who ministers to the pleasure of the stronger in order to acquire some benefit, as a matter of course avails itself of strategies of deception, and, as suggested by Knights 48, kolakeia is indeed closely associated with apatē. For the likes of Xenophon’s Hiero, the problem presented by kolakeia is the impossibility it creates of distinguishing between deceptive and non-deceptive language, between language that is and is not kolakeia. The kolax afflicts both the individual and the city at large and consequently poses a threat to each through his ruinous, self-interested deceptions. This threat is particularly acute since, as Aristotle points out, people desire to believe the pleasing words of the kolax out of the natural instinct of self-love. In this line, I think it is the case that kolakeia as a metaphor for democratic politics expresses the perspective of a conservative fraction of the Athenian upper class, traditional beneficiaries of the art of the kolax. The rise of the demos to a position of prominence appeared to this class to destabilize the hierarchy within which social identity was determined and fixed. To such members of Athens’ elite the need to please the demos would probably appear more distasteful than does the necessity of pleasing a king to Herodotus’ Solon or to a Callicratidas. They would, moreover, look with the same disapproval upon one of their own who seeks to win the favor of the demos as do Solon’s peers upon him in fr. 34. Thus, in my view it is the democracy’s transformation of the preexisting political hierarchy that enabled kolakeia, an institution in fact undermined by democratic social relations, to be introduced into political discourse as a critical metaphor for democratic politics, to describe the spectacle of upper class politicians competing to please the demos and win its approval–that is, conducting the city’s business within the assembly and courts–a phenomenon compared through this metaphor to shameful bowing and scraping before the illegitimate power of a tyrant.36

36 Cf. R. 563A2-B9 where Plato notes the reversal of hierarchy around flattery resulting from a regime of complete equality. See Henderson’s (1990) analysis of theater, courts, and assembly as sites of competitions to please the demos. Regarding upper class condescension towards the popular leaders of the last third of the fifth century, see Connor (1971) 151-192; Carter (1986) 99-130; Ostwald (1986) 209-229.

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Aristophanes’ Knights It is in this context of a normative form of kolakeia–an institution arising in the social hierarchy of the Archaic period and still viable in the Classical, but challenged by the transformed social relations of the Athenian democracy–that I turn to Aristophanes Knights and Wasps. Knights, performed in 424 BC, focuses upon the relationship between the sovereign Athenian demos and its leaders in the assembly. As the plot narrows in the second half of the play into a contest between Paphlagon and Sausageseller for influence over the apparently senile Mr. Demos, kolakeia emerges as a central metaphor for democratic politics. Within the destabilized relationships of the democratic city, however, the fawning of the kolax brings power as much as it signals dependency, and to be the object of kolakeia implies subjugation to conniving fawners just as much as it implies a position of preeminence and authority. Knights represents the democracy through the paradoxes of tyrannical slaves and dominated despots constructed around relationships of kolakeia.

Kolakeia in Knights To begin with the portrayal of the slave-politicians, in the opening line of exposition a slave states that he and the others are under the authority of a despotēs (40), using the normal term by which a slave identifies his owner and master.37 The speaker of these lines in fact appears to be identified within the drama not only as a slave to his despotēs, Demos, but specifically as the Athenian general, Demosthenes, and the slave whom he addresses is generally identified as a comic representation of the politician and general, Nicias. The Athenian state is thus allegorized as a household composed of a householder and master, the Athenian demos, and his slaves, the politicians Demosthenes, Nicias, and Cleon. The power that Demos exercises over his political servants is dramatized in the metaphor applied to them of animals being fattened up to be sacrificed and eaten at a public feast (1121-1140). In the only occurrence in the play of the word doulos, Demosthenes reports that his master has bought a new slave, δοῦλον βυρσοδέψην, Παφλαγόνα / πανουργότατον καὶ διαβολώτατόν τινα (44-45: “a slave, a tanner, some prosecuting, swindling Paphlagon”), who has gained power over the master through his flattery: ᾔκαλλ’, ἐθώπευ’, ἐκολάκευ’, ἐξηπάτα 37 See Tylawsky (2002) 19-23 for a general discussion of kolakeia in Knights.

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(48: “he was wagging, fawning, flattering, he was deceiving utterly”).38 This cluster of vocabulary related to kolakeia is followed by a catalogue of Paphlagon’s servile ministrations to Demos (jurors’ pay, food, flyswatting, oracles) in the course of which Demosthenes complains ἡμᾶς δ’ ἀπελαύνει κοὐκ ἐᾷ τὸν δεσπότην / ἄλλον θεραπεύειν (58-59: “he chases us away and won’t let anyone else pander to [therapeuein] the master”).39 The theme of flattery dominates most of the rest of the play as Paphlagon and Sausageseller vie to outdo each other first in pandering to the council (632-682) and then to the Athenian demos (i.e., our hero, Demos), seated in the Pnyx (749-751), in a series of competitions. In the first of these Sausageseller defeats Paphlagon before the boulē with a bargain on sardines and herbs. There then follow three contests (ἀγωνιεῖ: 688) before Demos himself: in the first the competitors strive to top each other in offers of food, clothing, and praise to Demos (691959). The character of this contest as flattery is signaled in two contexts. In the first Paphlagon labels the cushion that Sausageseller has provided to Demos as thōpeumatia (788) and later he responds to the garment that Sausageseller has given Demos: ἀλλ’ οὐχ ὑπερβαλεῖ με θωπείαις· (890: “but you won’t defeat me in flattery”). Next the rivals compete to provide Demos with the most favorable oracles (960-1099), in the course of which Sausageseller describes Paphlagon-Cleon in veiled language as κέρκῳ σαίνων σ’... (1030-1031: “wagging his tail at you...”), using vocabulary associated with the fawning of the kolax. The final contest, to feed Demos, is announced at 1100-1111, but while the competitors rush off to prepare, a dialogue between the chorus and Demos takes place in which the former takes the latter to task: θωπευόμενός τε χαί- / ρεις κἀξαπατώμενος (1116-1117: “you enjoy being flattered and deceived”). Following this, the final round resumes (1151-1264). In view of the initial characterization of Paphlagon as a kolax (48) in Demosthenes’ speech and the appearance of variants of the thōp- stem, there can be little doubt that the better part of the play, from 632 on, comprises a

38 To the use of ᾔκαλλ’ cf. αἰκάλλει at 211 and σαίνων at 1031 used of Cleon in a dog metaphor. Cf. the depiction of Cleon at Wasps 894-930 as the “dog of Cydathenaeum”. For the dog as a figure of the kolax, see: Arist. Phgn. 811b.3338; 813a.16-18, HA 488b.21; Aesop Fab. 222; Poll. 6.123.5; Stob. 3.14.12, 2223; Epict. Gnom., Sent. 42. 39 Regarding therapeuō as a synonym of kolakeuō, see above note 19. To the behavior attributed here to Paphlagon, cf. [And.] 4.16.1-9.

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competition in kolakeia, and that it is the politicians, Paphlagon-Cleon and Sausageseller, who perform this service for their master, Demos.40

Slaves as Tyrants These democratic politicians are characterized as slaves to their master, Demos, and consequently constrained to serve as his flatterers if they are to gain influence. Paradoxically, however, they are presented at the same time as the wielders of vast power in Athens and across the empire. When Sausageseller is recruited by Demosthenes and Nicias as a rival for Paphlagon, he is offered the grandiose title of “ruler of the host” (archelas: 164) with dominion over the council and the generals, and the agora, ports, and assembly; he will wield the power to imprison; and he will control the islands and trade from Caria to Carthage (164-174); he will become a “great man” (anēr megistos: 178); all these are the benefits of occupying the dēmagōgia (191). Later, in the course of the first contest between Paphlagon and Sausageseller the chorus promises their champion that he will be “greatest of the Greeks” (megistos Hēllenōn: 838) and that he alone will rule the city and the allies with a trident in his hand (836-840). In the second contest Demosthenes in effect labels Phaphlagon a tyrant by twisting his claim that he is represented by the lion (ἀντὶ τοῦ λέοντός εἰμί σοι: 1043) in an oracle into an assertion that he is an Antileon, the tyrant of the city Chalcis (see Sommerstein [1981] ad 1044).41 In an earlier passage (211-216) Demosthenes has interpreted an oracle to persuade Sausageseller of his lofty destiny, urging him that he must entice the demos ὑπογλυκαίνων ῥηματίοις μαγειρικοῖς (216: “cooking up sweet little words”). As is clear from the final contest, Aristophanes presents cooking throughout the play as a form of kolakeia. At Wasps 668 their rhēmatia (little words, ‘wordlets’) are specified as the means through which Philocleon’s flatterers rule him, and as I will discuss, Demos in Knights is deceived and manipulated through the flattery of the rhetors in the assembly (1115-1120, 1340-1345). As Knights depicts the Athenian democracy, the instability of hierarchy and social identity permits the demagogues dominating Athenian 40 Aristophanes does not suggest that Sausageseller is a slave, only a rascal from the agora. But the scene at 942-959 in which Demos attempts to repossess his ring from Paphlagon and bestow it upon Sausageseller, thereby making him his tamieus, as well as the contest itself between the two scoundrels make it clear that Sausageseller, if victorious, will be taken into Demos’ service as his next kolax-in-chief. 41 Regarding Cleon as a tyrant, see Edmunds (1987) 1-20.

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politics to be characterized simultaneously as slaves and virtual tyrants and kolakeia is the mechanism of this misalliance. The institution of kolakeia in its normative form does not provide to the kolax power over the patron whom he flatters. Because his powerlessness is in fact the reason for pursuing the life of a kolax, it is part of the flatterer’s nature. Only in the disordered world of democracy can kolakeia be mixed with the tyrannical power that is its opposite. Sausageseller sums up this paradox in the verses quoted at the outset: κύνα Κέρβερον ἀνδραποδιστήν, / ὃς κέρκῳ σαίνων σ’, ὁπόταν δειπνῇς.... (1031-1032:” a hell-hound slaver / who, wagging his tale at you whenever you eat,....”). Sausageseller characterizes Cleon as simultaneously a hell hound slaver and a fawning pet begging for a bit of dinner, both tyrant and kolax.

Demos as Tyrant and Slave The contradictory presentation of democratic politicians logically entails a complementary paradox in the conceptualization of the demos as both tyrant and slave. The overwhelming power of Demos is signaled in the first place through his status as despotēs within the play’s allegorical equation of household and city. This relationship is illustrated well by Demosthenes’ introduction of the master: Νῷν γάρ ἐστι δεσπότης / .... Δῆμος Πυκνίτης (40-42: “We’ve got a master....Demos of Pnyx”; cf. 19-20, 47, 53, 58, 960). This master is specifically Demos of the Pnyx, an identification likening the power of the Athenian demos over the city, and especially its politicians, to that of a master over his slaves. Later in the play, during the oracle competition, Paphlagon offers a prediction in which Demos will become king of the entire earth (πάσης γῆς βασιλεύεις: 1087). Similarly Paphlagon backs up his claim that Demos will rule all the Greeks (Ἑλλήνων ἄρξῃ πάντων: 797) with another oracle. As flattery, moreover, the oracles are in themselves a mark of Demos’ power and status.42 A final passage (1111-1120), however, makes of Demos a tyrant even as it undercuts the credibility of that claim: Ὦ Δῆμε, καλήν γ’ ἔχεις ἀρχήν, ὅτε πάντες ἄνθρωποι δεδίασί σ’ ὥσπερ ἄνδρα τύραννον. 42 See also 965-966. The passages at 960-961 and 1011-1013 imply the attractiveness to Demos of these flattering oracles and their power to influence his behavior.

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Anthony T. Edwards ἀλλ’ εὐπαράγωγος εἶ, θωπευόμενός τε χαίρεις κἀξαπατώμενος, πρὸς τόν τε λέγοντ’ ἀεὶ κέχηνας· ὁ νοῦς δέ σου παρὼν ἀποδημεῖ.

Demos, you possess a fair / dominion, since all / men fear you like / a tyrant. / But you are easily led astray / and you enjoy being flattered and / cheated / and whenever a politician speaks / you go slack-jawed: your mind / is present but on vacation.

Demos’ archē is such that all men fear him like a tyrant. As a turannos, it is not surprising that Demos is surrounded by flatterers. Yet following this polite, even obsequious, opening, the chorus proceeds in the passage to contradict its words by accusing Demos of being gullible and easily deceived due to the pleasure he takes in being flattered. It is not unexpected that a tyrant should be feared or that he should be flattered--in fact, according to the normative form of the institution it is precisely because he is feared that he must be flattered. But it is certainly a mark of weakness on a tyrant’s part if flattery can lead him astray (euparagōgos: 1115) deceive him (kaxapatōmenos: 1117), and leave him a slack-jawed fool (kechenas: 1119). This contradiction culminates in the paradox with which the strophe ends, parōn apodēmei (1120): “though present, your mind is absent”. As this passage suggests, in spite of his surpassing power, Demos is subservient to his own flatterers. For example, I’ve already noted Sausageseller’s amazement that he will be able to be regent over the demos (211-212), a prediction echoed when Demos formally puts himself in Sausageseller’s hands (Ἀγορακρίτῳ τοίνυν ἐμαυτὸν ἐπιτρέπω: 1259). When Sausagesseller introduces himself to Demos as a rival to Paphlagon, he likens Demos to a pais erōmenos (“a boy pursued by a lover”) who ignores the overtures of the good and noble and gives himself (sauton...didōs: 739-740) instead to vulgar craftsmen (736-740).43 Demos himself, finally, inaugurates the last of the competitions in kolakeia by promising that he will entrust the reins of the Pnyx to whoever of the two does him better service (ὁπότερος ἂν σφῷν νῦν με μᾶλλον εὖ ποῇ: 1108). The phrase ‘eu poēi’ (“treat well”) can refer to nothing other than 43 Cf. Theognis’ description (1326-1327) of the power of such an erōmenos over him, noting the occurrence of sainōn to suggest a reversal in this relationship to the normal hierarchy of kolakeia, and Pl. Smp. 183A4-B3. Scholtz (2004), 271279, traces this same reversal of normative democratic hierarchy in Knights through the imagery of erastēs/erōmenos to which he subordinates relationships of kolakeia and discusses this reversal and upheaval in terms of stasis at 279-286.

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the competitive kolakeia in which the rivals are engaging, and in return for it Demos offers himself in his political aspect as the Athenian assembly. Such an arrangement surely conflicts with the picture of Demos as monarch of Greece. He is just as much a slave to kolakeia.44 Knights stages the relationship between the demos and its leadership in the assembly through the institution of kolakiea, which functions therefore as a metaphor for the democratic politics that reversed the historical relationship between the demos and Athens’ social and economic elite. Yet, the normative hierarchy of kolakeia for the democracy appears destabilized and subject to reversal. Demos, the rightful despotēs, monarch and basileus of the Greeks, is subjugated by the ingratiating lies of his underlings, who usurp his power in the state and simultaneously reduce him to the status of their dependent. Within the allegory of kolakeia fashioned by Aristophanes those characters representing the values of Athens’ traditional elite, Demosthenes and Nicias, are left in their servile positions outside the fluctuating dialectic of kolax and despotēs, awaiting some improvement in their prospects. Demosthenes acknowledges this marginalized status when he assures Sausageseller (188-194) that education and good character are no longer political assets; rather the ignorant and repulsive are now the people’s choice.45 The susceptibility of Demos, moreover, to the blandishments and machinations of his kolakes, reversing the hierarchy of power and respect appropriate between a man and his flatterers, might suggest, again within the framework of the play’s allegory, that the demos innately lacks the capacity for such a leadership role in the state.

The Language of Kolakeia The rhetoric of kolakeia is introduced early in Knights when Demosthenes reports exactly what Paphlagon, once he had assessed the master’s character, said in order to gain control over him: ᾔκαλλ’, ἐθώπευ’, ἐκολάκευ’, ἐξηπάτα κοσκυλματίοις ἄκροισι, τοιαυτὶ λέγων· 44 Demos’ defense (1121-1130, 1141-1150), that he fattens up his apparent handlers only to strike them down at his pleasure, against the chorus’ rebuke of his irresponsible behavior (1111-1120) could suggest that he is not taken in by the flattery of the politicians. Yet this claim would appear to be falsified by his expressions of contrition in the face of Sausageseller’s account of precisely that behavior at the play’s denouement (1335-1383). See Scholtz (2004) 282 n. 62 on the problems posed by these passages. 45 Cf. Men. fr. 233.14-19 (Kock).

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Anthony T. Edwards “Ὦ Δῆμε, λοῦσαι πρῶτον ἐκδικάσας μίαν, ἐνθοῦ, ῥόφησον, ἔντραγ’, ἔχε τριώβολον. Βούλει παραθῶ σοι δόρπον;”

(48-52)

He was wagging, fawning, flattering, he was deceiving him utterly / with lofty scraps of leather, saying things like: / “Demos, go to the baths as soon as you’ve tried only one case / put it in your mouth, gulp, eat up, take three obols. / Do you want me to set your dinner out?”

The conflation here of food and political pay as kolakeia is complemented at the end of the play when Sausage seller recounts for the rejuvenated Demos the sort of flattery he used to fall for: Πρῶτον μέν, ὁπότ’ εἴποι τις ἐν τἠκκλησίᾳ· “Ὦ Δῆμ’, ἐραστής εἰμι σὸς φιλῶ τέ σε καὶ κήδομαί σου καὶ προβουλεύω μόνος”, τούτοις ὁπότε χρήσαιτό τις προοιμίοις, ἀνωρτάλιζες κἀκερουτίας.

(1340-1344)

First, whenever someone said in the assembly: / “Demos, I’m your lover, I’m devoted to you and care for you and alone frame your legislation”, whenever someone used these openings, you started strutting and tossing your horns.

These eroticized protestations of affection and loyalty in fact characterize the speech of Paphlagon throughout the play in his addresses to Demos.46 The shame expressed by Demos that he allowed himself to be deceived by such transparent hooey (1336-1364) identifies these appeals as precisely the kolakeia that has undermined the political process, deceiving (exapatōn: 1357) the demos and entangling the decision-making process in progressively more disgraceful appeals to self-interest and favoritism. Surprisingly, however, following the rejuvenation of Demos, both Sausageseller and the chorus nevertheless greets him with language redolent of kolakeia: Ὦ ταὶ λιπαραὶ καὶ ἰοστέφανοι καὶ ἀριζήλωτοι Ἀθῆναι, δείξατε τὸν τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἡμῖν καὶ τῆς γῆς τῆσδε μόναρχον. ..................................................................................................... Χαῖρ’, ὦ βασιλεῦ τῶν Ἑλλήνων· καί σοι ξυγχαίρομεν ἡμεῖς·

(1329-30, 1333)

46 Cf. 732, 764-768, 773, 790-791, 1037-1039. The erotic content of this mimicked appeal is ably set within its broader political and rhetorical context by Scholtz (2004) 265-271.

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O glistening, violet-crowned, and widely-envied Athens, / show us the monarch of Greece and of this land. / ....Hail, King of the Hellenes; we, too, join with you in rejoicing.

As Demos steps from the Propylaea, the chorus ornaments Athens with the adjectives liparai and iostephanai, epithets for the city which only the year before were mocked by Aristophanes in the parabasis of Acharnians (635-639) as deceiving pieces of flattery (exapatasthai: 633; thōpeuōmenos: 634; exapatōntes: 635; hupothōpeusas: 638). Following the magical rejuvenation of Demos, moreover, the chorus hails him in the course of some smarmy honorifics as “monarch of Hellas and this land” (τὸν τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἡμῖν καὶ τῆς γῆς τῆσδε μόναρχον: 1330) and “king of the Greeks” (ὦ βασιλεῦ τῶν Ἑλλήνων: 1333), echoing the high flattery bestowed by Paphlagon at 797 and 1087.47 These passages hint that even under the regime of the new, rejuvenated Demos, restored to the simple virtue of the age of Aristides and Miltiades, and even for the enemies of demagogic flattery, it is difficult to avoid the language that Aristophanes has branded as kolakeia. This point would appear to be driven home by the verbal parallel between Knights 1329-1330, just quoted, and the passage from the parabasis of Acharnians criticizing the demos for its abject credulity in the face of flattery. In fact, such a comparison with a passage from a parabasis calls attention to the fact that these words and those to follow, addressed to the character Demos within the dramatic boundaries of Knights, must simultaneously be addressed by way of exhortation to the Athenian demos assembled within the theater and watching the play. Do we encounter here the phenomenon identified by Xenophon’s Hiero, that once the discourse of kolakeia takes hold, it establishes its conventions as normative for all who wish to avoid the appearance of seditious opposition? In Acharnians’ parabasis (655-658), the same play whose testimony exposes the kolakeia of the use of liparai and iostephanai by Knights’ chorus, Aristophanes claims a place for his own discourse that is beyond the devastating influence of kolakeia: Ἀλλ’ ὑμεῖς τοι μή ποτ’ ἀφῆσθ’· ὡς κωμῳδήσει τὰ δίκαια. Φησὶν δ’ ὑμᾶς πολλὰ διδάξειν ἀγάθ’, ὥστ’ εὐδαίμονας εἶναι, οὐ θωπεύων οὐδ’ ὑποτείνων μισθοὺς οὐδ’ ἐξαπατύλλων, οὐδὲ πανουργῶν οὐδὲ κατάρδων, ἀλλὰ τὰ βέλτιστα διδάσκων.

But don’t surrender him since he will say what’s just in his comedies. / He says he will teach you many noble things to make you prosper, / not by

47 Sausageseller has also employed Paphlagon’s rhetoric of kolakeia earlier in the play: 733-740 and 1261-1263, e.g.

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flattering (thōpeuōn), or offering money, or trickery, / or swindling, or hosing you with praise, but by instructing you in what’s best.

The speaker declares that unlike his competitors Aristophanes propagates the just, the good, and the noble without resorting to flattery or deceit. After he has himself unleashed the charge of kolax against others engaged in civic discourse, Aristophanes wishes nevertheless to inhabit that same space reserved by Thucydides for Pericles, untainted by the accusation of kolakeia, but in expressing such a desire he must resort to that topos of Attic oratory labeled by Hesk (2000) the “rhetoric of anti-rhetoric”, or more precisely in this instance, the kolakeia of anti-kolakeia.48 This is a flattery made even more effective through camouflage provided by allegations that its audience permits itself to fall victim to the cheap praise and threadbare flattery of other speakers. Arguably this is the rhetorical technique employed by Sausageseller and, as I will suggest, Bdelycleon. Aristophanes must rely upon this commomplace since, once the accusation of kolakeia has been put in play, it soon places all political appeals under suspicion, even his own. Whether the political language that Aristophanes ridicules actually amounts to kolakeia–self-interested and deceitful manipulation of the public by means of telling it only what it wants to hear–or it simply represents the norm of respectful public address and argumentation from the public good is not at issue, therefore, so much as the effect of the accusation of kolakeia.

Aristophanes’ Wasps In the first half of Wasps (performed 422) Aristophanes analyzes–within the limited conventions of comic representation at any rate–the political power of the demos as it is expressed through the democratic courts. In particular, Aristophanes focuses upon issues of hierarchy: the resentment of the wealthy by these panels composed of the elderly poor and the manipulation of the demos by popular politicians, the demagogues (though Aristophanes does not use this term in Wasps). Within the oppositions of ruler and ruled, master and slave, and patron and kolax articulated in the debate between Philocleon and Bdelycleon over the juror’s life (Wasps 508-749), political identity and social status appear shifting and uncertain, disorganized by the politics of the democracy. 48 Hesk’s (2000) entire book is relevant to the uncertainty produced by this topos for civic discourse, but for Aristophanes and the rhetoric of kolakeia, see in particular 256-274 and 289-290. See as well Scholtz’s ([2004] 286-290) discussion of the contradictory resolution of the play.

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Philocleon as Archōn and Archōmenos The dispute between father and son opens with Bdelycleon asserting (515-517) that juror’s duty has made his father an unwitting slave (douleuōn: 517; cf. 602, 653, 681) to men before whom he all but prostrates himself, provoking Philocleon’s outraged objection that he in fact exercises a universal authority (ἄρχω τῶν ἁπάντων: 518). As Philocleon rolls out his case, he claims that his rule (archēs: 548) is equal to a king’s dominion (basileias: 549) and he wraps it up by comparing the authority (archēn) of the courts to that of Zeus (619-620; cf. 571, 575577). He chafes at the idea that such an arche could be considered douleia. In his response, however, Bdelycleon attributes the sovereignty expressed through archō/archē not to the Athenian demos, specifically in its role as jurors, but to the leaders chosen by the demos. Bdelycleon opens his offensive on his father’s arche with a piece of vulgar ridicule (603604), but proceeds to his main point in the midst of his exposition of imperial finances: the surplus revenue, after the jurors have been paid their pittance, goes to the self-styled defenders of the demos whom the demos, persuaded by their little speeches, elects to rule over themselves (σὺ γάρ, ὦ πάτερ, αὐτοὺς/ἄρχειν αἱρεῖ σαυτοῦ τούτοις τοῖς ῥηματίοις περιπεφθείς: 667-668).49 Bdelycleon hammers home the point again, demanding a little later (682-683) whether it is not great slavery (megalē douleia: 682) for Philocleon that these same demagogues hold magistracies (archais: 682) and their friends are on salary while the jurors are content if only an obol or two is tossed their way. Bdelycleon reintroduces at 692-695 this contrast between the embezzlement by those occupying elective archai and the beleaguered gullibility of the demos they are meant to serve. The benefits of the vast archē to which Philocleon lays claim, like a kingdom and rivaling Zeus’, are obstructed by the magistracies through which, according to Bdelycleon, the demos’ leaders interpose their own authority. Father and son in this debate present contradictory theories of power in the Athenian state. Notwithstanding the closure Aristophanes imposes upon the claim and counterclaim of the debate—the demos is sole sovereign of Athens and her de49 Cf. Aristotles’ analysis (already noted) of the relationship between the sovereign demos and the demagogues (Pol. 1292a 25-27): τὸν μὲν δῆμον πάντων εἶναι κύριον, τῆς δὲ τοῦ δήμου δόξης τούτους (“the demos is sovereign over all, and these men are sovereign over the judgment of the demos”). Plato’s analysis in Gorgias (463A-467A) of rhetoric as a form of kolakeia and the conflicting characterizations in that dialogue of the rhetor as a slave and as a tyrant are clearly relevant to Knights but nevertheless are beyond the scope of the present paper.

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pendent cities versus the demos is played for a chump by a manipulative political elite—these conflicting accounts remain incompatible and unresolved. Philocleon’s explanation of sovereign power in the state represents a historical inversion of authority within the city by awarding political power to the demos. Bdelycleon in turn inverts this orthodox political hierarchy of the democracy by installing a political elite over the demos, whom he consequently designates as slaves rather than sovereigns. We are left with two competing and incompatible accounts of the sources of power and how it is relayed.

Kolakeia in Wasps It is within this disturbed and ambiguous hierarchy of authority that kolakeia is deployed in Wasps. In the midst of his speech opening the agōn (546-575) Philocleon asks rhetorically “What flattery can a juror not hear in the courtroom?” (φέρ’ ἴδω, τί γὰρ οὐκ ἔστιν ἀκοῦσαι θώπευμ’ ἐνταῦθα δικαστῇ; 563). Preceding this exclamation (552-558), Philocleon has catalogued the debasing words and gestures offered by wealthy aristocrats (ἄνδρες μεγάλοι καὶ τετραπήχεις [“big men, six-footers”]: 553; τὴν χεῖρ’ ἁπαλὴν [“his smooth hand”]: 554): they are already at the court waiting on the arrival of the jurors; they insist on shaking their hands; they supplicate with a bow and trembling voice, addressing the jurors with a respectful ō patēr (father: 556). As the euthunai proceed, these outgoing administrators plea their poverty and their misfortunes, they humor the jurors with jokes, and if need be, they even bring their little children into court to win the jurors’ mercy and make shuddering appeals to Philocleon as to a god (564-575).50 In fact, in his peroration (620-630) Philocleon compares the emotional upheaval of the juries to the anger of Zeus: “...and when I flash lightening, the rich and snobbish (οἱ πλουτοῦντες / καὶ πάνυ σεμνοί: 625-626) cross themselves and shit” in a degrading display of fear.51 The words and behavior of the wealthy men coming before the court gloss the intent of thōpeum’ in 563 as the deferential, self-deprecating fawning of eager suppliants before their masters. In this context Philocleon celebrates the juror’s life as the most fortunate, happy, magnificent, and awe-inspiring (550-551; cf. 50 Regarding the flattery directed by defendants towards jurors, see Pl. Tht. 172D.9-173B1. The social significance of this extension of the hand to the jurors is illuminated by the Old Oligarch’s denunciation of precisely this degrading necessity (1.18). 51 See Sommerstein’s (1983) note ad 625 on ποππύζουσιν, which I have rendered with the anachronism “cross”.

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508-511). The psychological heart of Philocleon’s argument is found, however, in his description of the men awaiting the jurors outside the court: ὃς ἔμ’ οὐδ’ ἂν ζῶντ’ ᾔδειν, εἰ μὴ διὰ τὴν προτέραν ἀπόφυξιν (558)–such men would not even be aware of his existence had they not already appeared before him in court. Jury service brings not only his existence to the attention of these great, six-foot tall men, but reverses the traditional social hierarchy, forcing members of the social elite into the role of kolax to the demos.52 Kolakeia is even better attested in Wasps as a model for relations between the jurors and democratic politicians than it is for those between jurors and wealthy defendants. The theme appears early in the play as Sosias recounts his dream to Xanthias: he sees the politician Theorus with the head of a crow (korax) at whom Alcibiades points and notes, due to his speech defect, that he has the head of a kolax (40-46). Later, when Bdelycleon refuses to permit his father to leave for court, the chorus calls upon Theorus or “any other kolax” (419) for help.53 Finally, in his description of the deference shown for the jurors by both council and assembly, Philocleon refers to the politician Cleonymus, one of Aristophanes’ perennial butts, as Kolakōnumos (592). For Philocleon or the chorus of old jurors to refer overtly to the democratic politicians dedicated to defending their interests as kolakes is a piece of comic selfawareness that breaches the boundaries of character and dramatic context for a laugh. But Aristophanes nevertheless proposes at the same time that the politics of the democracy is one of kolakeia, of self-interested politicians telling the demos what it wants to hear in exchange for material rewards. Aristophanes indicates what precisely typifies the speech and behavior of these kolakes to the demos. Philocleon notes (590-602) as evidence of the jurors’ authority and prestige that the council and assembly repeatedly hand off big and important cases to the courts; that Euathlos and Cleonymus (Kolakōnumos: 592) promise they will never betray the jurors and they will fight for the masses; that it is impossible 52 Cf. Pl. R. 570E1-579B2. 53 MacDowell states in connection with line 45 that Theorus is kolax to Cleon, adducing lines 1033, 1220, and especially 1236-1237. Cf. Sommerstein ad 1236 and Fisher (2000) 373-78. These lines associate Theorus and Cleon but they are inconclusive for assigning Theorus the role of Cleon’s kolax. Although line 683 is decisive for the general claim that demagogues have kolakes, in line 419 (κεἴ τις ἄλλος προέστηκεν ἡμῶν κόλαξ [“and any other kolax watching over us”]), the pronoun ἡμῶν requires that as a class these kolakes are flatterers to the demos, which is evident as well from the statements attributed to them: see below. Regarding the phenomenon of deceitful and self-interested politicians manipulating the demos through flattery, see [And.] 4.16.1-9.

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for a speaker to move legislation in the assembly successfully without proposing to excuse jurors for the day after judging only one case (cf. Eq. 48-54); that Cleon himself never puts his bite on the jurors but protects them in his arms and shoos the flies away; and finally that Theorus blacks the jurors’ shoes for them. Unctuous protestations of loyalty and devotion, sweet deals for jurors at public expense, and menial services comprise the kolakeia directed by these politicians towards the masters of Philocleon’s grand archē. Nevertheless, these very politicians designated as the kolakes of the demos possess kolakes of their own in relationships that contradict rather than complement those just examined. In the agōn scene Bdelycleon explains at his father’s bidding the μεγάλη δουλεία (“great slavery:” 682) that he has alleged the jurors to be held in. There Bdelycleon demands whether it is not great slavery for the demos that these politicians (the “I-will-never-betray...” crowd: 666) control the state’s offices and their kolakes are on the public payroll (682-683).54 The “slavery” that Bdelycleon has in mind is comprised of the risk and toil supplied by the demos to acquire and keep the Athenian empire as measured against the paltry compensation they receive for their efforts while their leaders grow rich (655-679, 684-695, 698-713). The degradation of this arrangement is heightened, however, by the picture of this particular salaried kolax, an effeminate punk (μείρακιόν...κατάπυγον: 687) who arrogantly threatens the old men of the jury to be on time or forfeit their three obols although he is in no risk of losing his prosecutor’s fee or the bribe he will likely collect from the defendant (687-694).55 Bdelycleon notes as well that once the allies appreciate the impotence of the demos, they respond to the threats of the politicians with bribes of all kinds for them but without so much as a head of garlic for the demos (669-679). Neither kolakeia nor any of its synonyms appears in this preceding speech, but the democratic politicians clearly supplant the demos itself in the relationship of kolakeia between the demos and the allied cities about which the Old Oligarch complains (pp. 317-318 above). Moreover, by phrasing a response by Philocleon to Cleon (1232-1235) as a parody of a passage from Alcaeus thought to have been addressed to the Mytilenian tyrant Pittacus, Aristophanes suggests indirectly that Cleon has tyrannical designs (see Sommerstein and MacDowell ad loc.; cf. Knights 1043-1044, p. 324 above). The reconfigured hierarchy of democratic authority that Bdelycleon proposes makes Athens’ chief democratic politicians masters 54 See note 53 above regarding the relationship between Cleon and Theorus. 55 To this scene of the of the whipper-snapper bossing around the old jurors while accepting bribes as a public prosecutor, cf. the kolax at [And.] 4.16.1-9. See Carter (1986) 119-125.

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of the state with lower-level politicians and the allies as their kolakes. This model leaves the demos at the bottom of the pile, less even than kolakes and no better than slaves. This uncertainty over who occupies the position of kolax within this system complements and mirrors the uncertainty already demonstrated for archōn and archōmenos. The organization of kolakeia in Wasps may, however, be even more complex since it is possible to argue that Bdelycleon himself is inscribed within that relationship. For example, at 672679 Bdelycleon changes direction and concedes to his father that his dominion (archēs: 672) is in fact as vast as he has asserted but warns that Philocleon should enjoy more material benefit from it. This same ingratiating line of argumentation is pursued over the course of Bdelycleon’s subsequent speeches–that there is plenty of revenue from the empire to support the demos in the high style it deserves but it is instead being embezzled and hoarded by false leaders. In effect, Bdelycleon wins his father over from the likes of Cleon and Theorus, whom the old man considers his kolakes, by promising to deliver even more swag and loot from the empire than these current kolakes do. This argument is capped off with Bdelycleon’s protestations of his love for his father and his desire to provide him with whatever he wants (719-724, 736-472), paralleling the expressions of loyalty and protective impulses attributed to the democratic leaders. Bdelycleon, much as Sausageseller, appears to run up against the dilemma expressed by Xenophon’s Hiero: the effect of kolakeia is to put all speech, sincere and insincere, under suspicion–in this case, even Bdelycleon’s as he attempts to expose and discredit the ruinous democratic politics of kolakeia. The stance of Pericles is not an option for either politicians or comic poets in as much as an ascendant demos, like a tyrant or an aristocrat, expects to be addressed within the idiom of kolakeia. To speak otherwise risks the appearance of disrespect, haughtiness, or even treason.

Conclusion The legal and political institutions of the democracy along with its egalitarian ideology destabilized such hierarchical relationships among citizens as that of kolakeia. These changed political circumstances, in which individuals from the families of Athens’ upper class competed in public venues for the favor of the demos, comprised the historical conjuncture in which the label kolax entered political discourse. Men whose substantial influence over the demos appeared to conservative and perhaps quietist (apragmones) elements of Athens’ upper class to resemble the

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power of a tyrant were liable simultaneously to receive from this same elite faction the contemptuous label of kolax due to the deferential pandering through which they courted popular support–leaving them both hell-hound slavers and tail-wagging fawners. Thus, it is my contention, a term formerly applied exclusively to a type of lackey attached to a great household entered Athenian political discourse under the heightened political tensions of the 420s as a term of abuse for some of the most powerful politicians in the city, attesting along the way to a substantial dislocation of traditional social identities. The very circumstance of democratic social relations that led to the historical decline of the institution of kolakeia comprised the conditions of its incorporation into the Athenian political vocabulary. In the same way that this usage makes of the demagogue, or prostatēs tou dēmou, a virtual enantiosēma, the demos itself is forced into a similar dialectic of gullible tyrant and unwitting dupe. Either way, of course, this politics of kolakeia characterizes the demos as inherently unqualified for its role as sovereign. According to the account implicit in the analogy between kolakeia and the politics of the democracy, the demos, in effect, remains subservient, as it always has been, only now it answers to self-seeking rascals rather than to the kaloikagathoi as before. Once, moreover, kolax has been introduced as a term of abuse for politicians, with its implication of apatē and self-interested manipulation of public opinion, any respectful appeal to the demos must begin to appear as kolakeia regardless of the speaker’s intent. The charge of kolakeia, placing all deferential or public-spirited appeals under the shadow of calculated and self-interested pandering, leaves the demos in the position of Xenophon’s Hiero, unable to distinguish what is kolakeia from what is not and suspicious of those who say nothing for not joining in with the chorus of admirers. Although the politicians who serve the city might prefer to aspire to the status of a Pericles, who guided the demos like a free man, without recourse to kolakeia, the operation of kolakeia as a metaphor for democratic politics constrains them to decide between the stance of Herodotus’ Solon, rejecting conventions of political speech that might be mistaken as kolakeia even at the cost of all credibility, or else that of the Solon of fr. 34, who must wheedle and flatter in order to bring the demos along even at the cost of making enemies of his social and economic peers, now ready to condemn him as a would-be tyrant and an abject toady. The deceitful language of kolakeia, bemoaned by Hiero, destabilizes even the discourse of Aristophanes. In spite of his gambit in the parabasis of Acharnians, Aristophanes does not succeed in occupying the privileged position reserved by Thucydides for Pericles since, as we have seen, in Knights and

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Wasps the operation of kolakeia and apatē destabilizes even his own attack on the politics of kolakeia.56

Appendix: The Vocabulary of Kolakeia At Knights 48 Demosthenes describes the behavior of Demos’ new slave: ᾔκαλλ’, ἐθώπευ’, ἐκολάκευ’, ἐξηπάτα. The first three terms–to “wag one’s tail, fawn, flatter”–comprise rough synonyms frequently associated within the vocabulary of flattery in ancient Greek. Antiphon, for example, pairs up thops and kolax in the phrase θῶπας πλούτου καὶ τύχης κόλακας (Antipho Soph. fr. 56 D-K). Similarly, the two appear to be used as synonyms by Plato at Laws 762A1-4. See likewise R. 579A1-3, 579D9-E1, and Lg. 633C8-D4 as well as Arist., Phgn. 811b.35-38. The association of kolax and thōps as synonyms is also well established in the lexicographical and scholiastic traditions: Poll., Onom. 122.1-123.7; Diogenian., Paroem. 2.100.1-4; Adam., Phgn. 2.40.12-15; Hsch., Theta 1009, 1030, Sigma 51; Suid., Theta, 431-35; Et. Gud., Theta, 268.9-14; EM, 773.9. See Ribbeck (1884) 93, 95, 97, who provides an exhaustive survey of the vocabulary of kolakeia. The synonymy of aikallō and the two of kolax and thōps is supported by Hsch., Alpha 1906 and 1908; Σ Ar. ad Eq.48 and 211; Suid., Upsilon 176.1. See LSJ s.v.: “flatter, wheedle, fondle,” with the note that it is properly used of dogs. For independent occurrences with the meaning “to flatter”, see Ar. Eq 211 and Th. 869. See Ribbeck (1884) 94, 96. Sainō is equated with kolax at Aesop., Fab. 222; Ph. de Eb. II, fr. 1; Poll., Onom. 122.1-123.7; Diogenian., Paroem. 2.100.1-4; Adam., Phgn. 2.40.12-15; Hsch., Alpha 8812, 1906, Sigma 51, Pi 1847; Suid., Upsilon 176.1; Σ Ar. ad Eq. 1031a; Σ Eur., Andr. 603. As with aikallō, sainō is closely associated with the fawning of pet dogs when begging for food. See Ribbeck (1884) 97-98. Kōtillō, to “chatter, twitter” is also used with the meaning to “wheedle, cajole, beguile” (LSJ s.v.). It is equated with kolakeuō at Hsch., Kappa 4887-88; Σ Hes., Op. 374; Phot., Kappa, 199.18; Suid., Kappa 2304; Et. Gud., Kappa 358; EM, 551.55-58. See Ribbeck (1884) 96, 97.

56 I wish to express my gratitude to the astute and lively audience at Cornell University, where I delivered an earlier version of the paper and to Leslie L. Collins for her useful criticisms at several stages of preparing this final version.

Do Not Sit near Socrates (Aristophanes’ Frogs, 1482-1499) Stefano Jedrkiewicz Introduction: the Frogs Attempt to Save Athens In Aristophanes’ Frogs, a choral song (1482-1499) follows the formal, yet surprising and unexplained, award of the victory to ‘Aeschylus’ over his competitor ‘Euripides’ (1467-1481). This passage is usually understood as a retrospective explanation of sorts, making clear why ‘Aeschylus’ has deserved to win and to be taken back to life. The song thus would describe ‘Aeschylean’ poetry as highly beneficial both to the author and to his public, while ‘Euripidean’ poetry is universally obnoxious, like the Socratic babble to which it is apparently connected. Specifically, strophe 1482-1489 seems to detail the benefits that a supremely talented tragic poet will be able to confer on his fellow-citizens, its antistrophe (14911499), the damages caused by tragic poetry produced after a SocratoEuripidean model.1 By conclusively asserting the value of ‘good’ over ‘bad’ poetry, this song also contributes to the overall speech act that the author of the Frogs is now bringing to completion. The two competitors rested their respective claims to excellence both as craftsmen of tragedies and, by the same token, as political counselors. Pluto’s farewell speech sums up it up thus: “go then in a happy mood, Aeschylus, and save our city by means of your valuable pronouncements (gnōmai), and impart some instruction (paideia) to all those brainless guys, they are so many, etc.” (1500 ff.). The author of the Frogs has claimed a first-rate dramatic ability and, in the parabasis, issued some extraordinarily explicit political recommendations; moreover, he has described tragic poetry by the same phraseology

1

See e.g. Del Corno (1985) 246; Dover (1993) 20-22, 380-81; Sommerstein (1996) 294; Lada-Richards (1999) 221-225, 328-329 and passim (also identifying the strophe as a form of ritual makarismos [an utterance declaring the addressee’s beatitude] in favor of ‘Aeschylus’); Silk (2000) 366-367; Willi (2002) 21-22.

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that he used elsewhere to describe his own comical production2. If ‘Aeschylus’ has deserved the agonal victory in this comedy, so does Aristophanes in this competition. If ‘Aeschylus’, in his quality of winner of the agon represented on the comical stage, is becoming the savior of Athens in comical fiction, Aristophanes will prove the savior of Athens in political reality, provided, of course, that this play is given the first prize at the present Lenaean Festival.3 Tradition seems to attest that, in the context of the internal strife marking Athens’ last efforts to avoid defeat in the Peloponnesian War, such an authorial strategy achieved some outstanding results: a first prize in January 405 BC, followed by a second, exceptional staging in the following months, arguably decreed to take place at the Lenaean Festival of 404 BC; a widespread approval for the reconciliatory policies recommended by the parabasis (697-702), marked by the award of an olive crown; the adoption of a specific piece of legislation (presumably in autumn 405 BC) promoting the civic reconciliation the comedy had been calling for (the so-called Patrocleides Decree, recalling those citizens who had been declared atimoi); and eventually the realization of one of the Frogs’ conclusive and most dismal wishes, the violent death of the demagogue Cleophon. Whether additional developments such as the establishment of a brutal oligarchic regime in 403 BC were indeed intended by Aristophanes must remain an open question.4

Who is sitting near Socrates? Any reading of the song should take into account two textual markers. The first is purely negative, and hardly apparent at first sight: there is no nominal mention of either ‘Aeschylus’ or ‘Euripides’. In the strophe, the subject is initially an unspecified ‘individual’ (aner, 1482); in the antistrophe, made up by two nominal sentences, the subjects are the verbs ‘to chatter’ (lalein, 1492) and ‘to produce’ (poeisthai, 1498). This semantic blank space is compounded by the fact that this whole intermezzo is sung while the scene is temporarily void: ‘Euripides’ has just departed in a rage, ‘Aeschylus’ and Dionysus are being given a farewell snack in Pluto’s house. 2 3 4

See Silk (2000) 47-48. Cf. notably Gelzer (1970) 1492; Calame (2001) 137. According to the reconstruction by Sommerstein (1993) 462-466. For the (intended or not) longer-term political consequences of the Frogs, see also Arnott (1991) 20-21. Cf. also MacDowell (1995) 297-300.

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The second marker consists in the totally unexpected mention of ‘Socrates’, a persona who has so far been given no apparent role. In fact, the text focuses on some activities which are assumed to be typical of those sitting down with this character, and which are depicted as substantially hostile to genuine tragic poetry. The antistrophe seems therefore to target the spiritual affinity assumed to exist between this ‘Socrates’ and the defeated ‘Euripides’ who has just disappeared off stage5 and, presumably, their cooperation in producing abstruse and meaningless speeches, an otiose activity that renders impossible any valuable poetic production. This would be a variation on an age-honored comic topos, probably one of the oldest and most effective about Socrates,6 to the point that even subsequent (pro) Socratic literature seems to have reproduced it.7 In this context, the (real or presumed) ideological and stylistic similarity between Socratic and Euripidean discourses produces the specific allegation that none other than Socrates is the author (or co-author) of several Euripidean tragedies:8 even Aristophanes, in the first version of the Clouds, introduced Socrates as a ghost-writer of Euripides.9 The Frogs seems to assert that the ‘real’ Euripides was a “bad poet” because of Socrates’ bad influence on him in linguistic and conceptual matters.10 The antistrophe apparently finds fault with the very terms by which ‘Euripides’ has glorified his distinctive poetics in the Frogs: the verb lalein, ‘to chatter’ (1492), the substantive lēros (glittering but void speech, ‘trash’), and the adjectives semnos (‘magniloquent’) and skariphēsmos (a metaphor for ‘sketchy’ or ‘superficial’) qualifying the logos produced around Socra5

The most influential assertion of a general ideological connection between Euripides and Socrates has been produced by Nietzsche in his Geburt der Tragödie (§§ 12-13), where Euripides is defined as “der Dichter des aesthetischen Sokratismus”(“the poet of aesthetic Socratism”): Nietzsche (1980) 87. Snell (1953) 116-118 has located the Romantic background of this judgement in the influence of Herder and Schlegel. Cf. also Patzer (1994) 59-60, and Wildberg (2006), in particular 22-23 and 30-33. 6 Cf schol. Aristoph. Ran. 1491; D.L. 2.18, reproducing Teleclides, frr. 39-40 (CAF I p. 218) and Callias fr. 12 (CAF I p. 696); see the discussion by Patzer (1994) 51-56. Cf. also Dover (1993) 381 and Sommerstein (1996) 295, who also mentions Satyrus in P.Oxy. 1176 fr. 39 i.21-ii.22. 7 See Wildberg (2006) 26, with further references, on Aeschines and Plato’s younger brother Glaucon writing Socratic dialogues where Euripides appears as a persona. 8 Patzer (1994) 51-56. 9 D.L. 2.18 = Aristoph. nub. prior., fr. 376 (CAF I p.490); see Patzer (1994) 5758. 10 Cf. Dover (1993) 21; Patzer (1994) 58.

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tes.11 In fact, at 1004-1005 the chorus had addressed ‘Aeschylus’ in not very dissimilar terms, as “the first among the Greeks to make towers out of grandiloquent words and to ornate the tragic prattle” (... πρῶτος τῶν Ἑλλήνων πυργώσας ῥήματα σεμνὰ καὶ κοσμήσας τραγικὸν λῆρον);12 yet the specific vocabulary used by ‘Euripides’ in order to describe the epistemic results he claims to have achieved on his public is strongly reminiscent of the terminology that the Clouds had already applied to Socratic ‘scientific’ activities: phronein [‘to use one’s mind’], noein [‘to think’], deidenai [‘to gain knowledge’], logismos [‘reasoning’], and skepsis [‘investigation’].13 Could the average Athenian citizen attending the Lenaean Festival of 405 BC be expected to remember what had been uttered on stage during the representation of the Clouds eighteen years before (supposing that he had attended that performance at all), in order to instantly perceive ‘Euripides’ among those “sitting near Socrates”? At any rate, if he had still in mind the ‘democratic’ orientation that ‘Euripides’ had vaunted at 948-952 as the major feature of his universally accessible poetry, he might rather have felt surprised: what can such poetics have in common with the self-centered, snobbish, arcane disquisitions said to be proper to the Socratic camarilla? Readers at least may remark that something else is missing here besides the name of ‘Euripides’. To begin with, there is no trace of one major comical connotation elsewhere applied by Aristophanes to “intellectuals”, transforming them into “aerial” creatures so detached from reality as to float in the air and produce inconsistent and meaningless speeches. This individual device, producing the caricature of Socrates in the Clouds, is also applied to ‘Euripides’ in the Frogs,14 and is so effective that even Plato will use it in the Theaetetus (174a3-b1) to turn Thales, lost in astronomical contemplations, into a laughing-stock. Yet the Socrates mentioned in the Frogs does not receive any such qualification. This is a puzzling omission, for otherwise the functional connection of the unnamed ‘Euripides’ to this Socrates would have been made fully evident. But another element that might have established an additional link between the two personae is missing as well: the kind of grotesque 11 Cf. Frogs 917, 954, 1069. 12 Cf. also 902-904, 945, 961-963, which describe ‘Aeschylean’ poetics in analogous terms. 13 Frogs, 971-975; cf. 956-958. Cf. Clouds, 359, 360, 363. On phrontizein and related terms, see also Havelock (1972) 9-10, n. 24. On logismos and skepsis, see Perilli (1992) 31. 14 See Gelzer (1956) 68-69; Gelzer (1970) 1490; Zimmermann (1993) 273-275, with the remarks by Gelzer in the following discussion (284, 286).

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insults that ‘Aeschylus’ is soon to direct against ‘Euripides’ (1515-1523). Among these, bomolochos (‘scurrilous buffoon’: 1521) is the typical taunt that a comical author would hurl at his competitors. ‘Euripides’ is called a vulgar clown as Socrates had been in the Clouds, where ‘science’ consisted from the start in being suspended in the air, measuring how high a flea can jump, stealing mantles with the help of pseudo-mathematical instruments, and so on (143-179, 218 ff.). But there is nothing like that in the Frogs (and the sort of disparaging allusions made to Socrates in the Birds is lacking as well).15 The Socratic group too has a much less outrageous outlook than in the Clouds: it is neither a risible bunch of individuals caught in preposterous physical postures,16 nor a ridiculous sect celebrating its mysteries inside the phrontistērion.17 In the Frogs (908-910), ‘Euripides’ is insulted and called an alazōn; Socrates is spared this qualification, which had been generously awarded to him and his followers in the Clouds (102-104, 449, 1492), although it may have been appropriate to such an unrepentant impostor.18 Of course, what Socrates and his zealots do is utterly bad: empty talk, refusal of mousikē, rejection of “the greatest things of tragic craft”, waste of time, and loss of mind (cf. 1499: παραφρονοῦντος ἀνδρός).19 Yet this depiction is no deliberate caricature; on the contrary, it purports to somehow be a ‘realistic’ characterization (obviously with all the tongue-in-cheek qualifications that any such operation is likely to imply in Aristophanes).20 15 As an unkempt individual (1282, 1554) or as necromancer (with a pun on Socrates’ psychagōgia: 1555). 16 So as to ridicule Socratic research as such: see Whitehorne (2002) 33-34, with reference to Clouds 184-195. 17 As noted by Gelzer (1956) 67-70. 18 In other Aristophanic contexts ἀλαζών designates a man who claims “a respect which he does not deserve”, according to Aristot. EN 1127a20 ff., 17 ff.; see Dover (1968) 107-108; or “a credit for some professional expertise which is actually non-existent or useless”; see MacDowell (1990) 288. Cf. Frogs 280, “he was wildly exaggerating” (ἠλαζονεύεθ᾽). 19 To “refuse mousikē” might appear as coded wording for rejection of traditional music in favor of the so-called ‘New Music’, a symptom of the contemporary cultural revolution for which, according to Aristophanes, Euripides should take a specific responsibility; see e.g. 1309-1322, 1331-1363. On the formal aspects and semantic implications of the ‘New Music’, see Csapo (2004) 222-230. See also Wilson (2003) in general. 20 The lack of clownish features is equated with “realism” and “seriousness” by Stark (1953) 83-84; Gelzer (1956) 86; Heil (2000) 504; Brancacci (2004) 195. On the other hand, Wildberg (2006) 26 notes that, at this final stage of the play, “the audience is supposed to be roaring with laughter”. The metric (trochaic) structure of the song might have contributed to this apparently mixed effect: as noted by Sommerstein (1996) 294, it is the same as the previous choral

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So the question may be asked: is it really appropriate to identify the main referent in the antistrophe as an unnamed ‘Euripides’, or even as a presumed ‘Socrateuripides’? For an answer, one might need to consider a parallel question, which is suggested by the symmetrical structure of the song: is the referent in the strophe likely to be identified as ‘Aeschylus’? 21

For Whom Is the Beatitude? The strophe centers on the remarkable qualities for whose possession the subject of praise (the unspecified anēr of 1482, and the hode, ‘this one’, from 1485 onwards) is awarded beatitude. Is this man ‘Aeschylus’? If he is, he is suddenly given a different outlook. His distinctive faculties as a tragic author are never mentioned, although they must have caused his victory (sophia, the comprehensive term denoting poetic craft in the Frogs,22 does not appear here, although ‘Aeschylus’ will soon mention it once again in his concluding speech, at 1517). This unnamed agent raises admiration for his “well-trained understanding” (xunesis ēkribomenē, 1483) and his aptitude for “using properly his mind” (eu phronein, 1485) or for “being clever” (synetos einai, 1490). He therefore deserves to go home for the benefit of his relatives, friends and fellowcitizens (1487-1489). Yet none of this can identify a tragic poet as such. In late fifth-century language, xynesis has become a property potentially accessible to all human beings.23 The comment that such a property “can be recognized (as being active in his owner) in many ways” (such is the usual interpretation of the gnōmē πάρα δὲ πολλοῖσιν μαθεῖν, 1484) sounds a mere platitude. Both rivals have been credited with the possession of “intelligent minds producing subtle words” at 876-878 (λεπτολόγους ξυνετὰς φρένας: another connotation, incidentally, likely to blur their reciprocal opposition). Yet xynetos is a recurrent term in Euripides’ extant literary production,24 and in the Frogs ‘Euripides’ is made to address ‘Xynesis’ as one of his personal deities before entering the competition (892-894). Has the sudden victory over ‘Euripides’ conferred the qualification of a

21 22 23 24

song at 1370-1380, which had heaped comical praise on the inventiveness shown by the two competitors in proposing the “weighing match”. An interpretation going back at least to the scholion at 1471: “this was the happy sort of Aeschylus” (οὗ νῦν Αἰσχύλος ἔτυχε). See 780, 882, 1413. Cf. Battisti (1990) 10-12. See Sommerstein (1996) 294.

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‘real’ synetos onto ‘Aeschylus’ instead?25 If so, the same qualities would be made to justify victory for ‘Aeschylus’ and defeat for ‘Euripides’, which is more an incongruity than a paradox. But in fact the strophe provides no explanation at all of Dionysus’ sudden and unmotivated decision to award victory to ‘Aeschylus’ at the expense of ‘Euripides’.26 Moreover, why should the possession of xynesis render anybody ‘blessed’ (μακάριος)? The word, as Aristophanes uses it elsewhere, can just have the banal meaning of “most happy”.27 However, Pluto will soon address ‘Aeschylus’ as a hero emerging from Hades, and a triumphal procession will bring the hero back to Athens (1500 ff.). Is ‘Aeschylus’ called ‘blessed’ at 1482 in anticipation of the heroic status that will soon be conferred upon him? Yet heroic beatitude, according to the Greek ideas up to the end of fifth century BC, consists in being granted a blessed and deathless life in some peaceful and remote location, usually the ‘Isles of the Blessed’,28 rather than being resurrected on earth, least of all at such a troubled spot as present-day Athens (the dialogue between Dionysus and the ‘dead man’ brought on stage at 172-178 has left no doubts: no one would call that a boon). Moreover, how can such ‘going back home’ (the action specifically mentioned at 1486) be a genuine reward to a persona depicted from the start as having been constantly on bad terms with his fellow citizens, who so often lack honesty and as a whole can hardly understand his poetry (807-811)? Finally, for all the exceptional xynesis abruptly credited to him, ‘Aeschylus’ would be hard put to provide any authoritative and effective advice to a city which accepts “neither cloak nor coat”, as he has himself remarked (1459): in fact, when asked his opinion about how Athens might be led away from disaster, he was only able to formulate the same sort of comically absurd policy recommended by ‘Euripides’, substantially amounting to doing the exact contrary of whatever had been done so far.29 The chorus seems to anticipate the positive impact that this presence would exert within all social contexts (1487-1489), and, as the plot concludes, ‘Aeschylus’ must accept to implement the mission that Pluto formally confers to him 25 So Dover (1993) 20-22. Cf. Sommerstein (1996) 294. 26 This textual awkwardness is specially noticed by Silk (2000) 366 (“a sudden rush of words” following Dionysus’ totally arbitrary choice) and Willi (2002) 21 (the song as an ex post justification, denoting as positive whatever could be said of ‘Aeschylus’ and as negative whatever could be said of ‘Euripides’). 27 E.g. Knights, 186; Wasps, 1292. 28 Aristophanes apparently shares this view; see Wasps 640. 29 See 1453-1460 and 1463-1465. The text gives no absolute certitude as to which character actually says what: for an updated review of the question, see notably Sonnino (1999) 65-68 and Willi (2002) 67-72.

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(1500-1514). But, whatever the benefits for the Athenians, what sort of personal beatitude can the hero derive from such a ‘going home’?30 His final words (1517-1518: “in case I come back here [= to Hades]”) may even include the eventuality that, sooner or later, he would have enough of his second life.31 That is not to deny that the Frogs concludes with a metatheatrical pompē taking the heroic savior ‘Aeschylus’ out of the theater of Dionysus and back into Athens.32 Yet this does not preclude the possibility of understanding the strophe as a eulogy directed to a wholly different subject: the intelligent spectator.33 This is certainly not the first time that Aristophanes asserts his competence to deliver the message he deems most appropriate to the polis in the present circumstances. In the Frogs, the assertion is made in especially emphatic terms and produces exceptionally outspoken advice (see 686-705 and 718-737). But success always depends on the same condition: that the public, or at least the more competent part of it, may be able to understand, and eventually implement, what the author is recommending.34 Such competence has already been anticipated, although in an ironical tone: the chorus has assured the two competing tragedians that every spectator, holding his little book, is fully knowledgeable by now (1109 -1118). As the play comes to its end, the admonition is repeated in apparently more serious terms. In the strophe, Aristophanes casts this last message in the form of praise for any citizen who can prove 30 Dover (1993) 20-21 believes that the term xynesis carries “no political connotation” here and merely consists in the “understanding of what works in theater”. Yet the spreading of benefits (cf. ἐπ᾽ ἀγαθῷ, repeated twice at 14871489) among relatives, friends and fellow-citizens is an obviously ‘political’ operation. 31 Cf. Heiden (1991), who sees the casting of ‘Aeschylus’ in the role of Athens’ heroic soter as a substantially ironical operation. In particular, he argues (p.105) that politico-cultural salvation on the ‘Aeschylean’ model is described by Aristophanes in such a way as to undermine its credibility from the start (the same would be true for ‘Euripides’). For Sommerstein (1996) 295, the meaning is an opposite one: that ‘Aeschylus’ might come back from Hades is no more than a possibility, since he has by now become ‘immortal’ (but do immortals actually live among men?). 32 Cf. Lada-Richards (1999) 326-327. 33 My thanks to Giacomo Piva and Franca Perusino for suggesting this identification. 34 On the first aspect (the poet delivering a ‘serious’ message and exerting a didactic role), cf. e.g. Acharnians (655-656), Knights (510), Wasps (1043); on the second (the audience needing to hold the proper receptive competence), cf. principally Wasps (1051-1059 ff.) and Clouds (560-563).

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his cleverness as a spectator. In the antistrophe, he will soon blame anybody disproving it. Once the whole performance is over, it is the turn of the audience to go home. At this moment, the Athenian citizen (anēr, hode) who has made use of his cleverness while attending the plays emerges beatified (makarios) from this very place (authis), the theater (this is a Lenaean festival, with a predominantly indigenous audience). Xynesis is a quality that literary tradition predicates both of a competent poet and of a competent audience.35 The spectator who has acquired a genuine critical competence (presumably also thanks to his assiduous attendance of the dramatic agōnes) can thus be said to own “a well-exerted understanding” (xynesis ēkribomenē). This is the activity that renders him makarios. At its simplest, that just amounts to saying “blessed be the clever”. Yet the chorus has not merely asked the audience to deploy the critical acumen required in order to achieve a proper reception of the play: it has specifically described this operation in terms pertaining to the mystery rites.36 As soon as they come on stage, the initiated (oἱ μεμυημένοι: 318) making up the chorus intimate to the audience to attend the “holy rite” of comical representation with a pure heart and mind. They enjoin the spectators to prepare themselves for a well-articulated, deep-reaching message, shorn of vulgar and silly gags (354-358), comical in its form but deeply serious in its implications (cf. 389-390). Anyone unable to assume this attitude shall be expelled from the theater, as well as anyone intent at fomenting inner strife (stasis) or acting against the general interest (359 ff.). The competent spectator is therefore equated with the dedicated citizen; clever attendance at the dramatic performance becomes the other face of honest political behavior. The final result is described, in metaphorically (or parodically) religious terms, as producing salvation, a state of individual beatitude which one enjoys as a member of an initiated community37. If he intelligently receives the dramatic message, the citizen will become makarios both as a ‘cultural’ subject (he adopts the proper attitude demanded by Aristophanes’ comical production) and as a ‘political’ subject (he behaves in the interest of a pacified polis). The gnōmē that one can indeed acquire knowledge in multiple ways (πάρα δὲ πολλοῖσιν μαθεῖν) can now make sense. The benefits of being a clever spectator extend far beyond the premises of the theater. The 35 Sommerstein (1996) 294, following Battisti (1990) 11-12, notes that the term is given the latter meaning by Bacchylides (3.85) and Pindar (Ol. 2.85; Pyth.5.107). 36 Bowie (1993) 244-253. 37 On the strongly parodic implications of 354-358, see Ford (2002) 62-63.

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discerning member of the audience will take home the learning he has gained from attending the representation, and will share it with his fellow-citizens, his relatives, and his personal friends (possibly by way of either retelling or commenting on what he has just seen and heard). In this process, he will gain a well-deserved “reputation for thinking right”. This formula, εὖ φρονεῖν δοκήσας (1485), is identical to the one closing the parabasis of the Clouds (560-561): “if you derive pleasure from me and my inventions (i.e., for not giving you the usual vulgar comic stuff), you will enjoy the reputation of being clever (εὖ φρονεῖν δοκήσετε) for all time to come”. In other, and not really surprising, terms, the dramatic message can unveil all its cognitive implications exclusively to competent addressees. The Frogs goes one step further: such competence also includes the ability to share that message with others. The intelligent spectator goes home from the theater in order to diffuse all around whatever he has personally learned. His xynesis ēkribomenē, therefore, works as a tool both for individual reception and for the communal redistribution of the knowledge (mathein) imparted by either the tragic or the comic poet. All in all, then, the strophe is apt for describing how the dramatic institution can ideally achieve its most far-reaching effects within the context of the Athenian polis. The clever citizen is the one able to share what he has derived from having attended a given performance with his relations; he can activate all the communication circuits made available to him by personal friendship, family connections, or collective exchange at large. Thanks to this sort of man, theater production can sparkle or rekindle collective discussion on any ideologically or politically relevant matter. This is precisely the kind of wide diffusion that the author of the Frogs may hope for the messages of his play.

Why Nobody Should Sit near Socrates All this would be irretrievably lost if the Athenian citizen, after or instead of sitting in the theater, joins Socrates and sits down near to him. By this very action, he actually would withdraw his own individual contribution from the enlarged communication circuit at work within the polis. He no longer would bring any benefit to his friends, parents and fellow-citizens, and would confine his intellectual activity within an arbitrarily restricted framework. He would actually prevent the dramatic message from overspilling its original boundary, and so frustrate the author’s intentions. Sitting down with Socrates, in the end, is to make a choice that effectively threatens to abort that form of collective discourse

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traditionally propelled by the dramatic institution within the whole Athenian community. It also amounts to a deliberate refusal of exploiting the possibilities offered by mousike, or, in the Chorus’ words (Frogs 356), by “the sacred mysteries of the Muses”. The chorus has repeatedly stressed the relevance of these deities, not only to any tragic performance, but also to the present comical one (354-371).38 This refusal is therefore especially dangerous: it is education by means of mousikē, as well as of choral practices and physical training in the gymnasia, that produce a worthy political élite (726-728). Genuine learning can only be accessed the way it has always been, by means of individual engagement within collectively regulated institutions. Conversely, neglecting to teach mousikē is neglecting to instill military and finally political discipline within the civic body, an opinion that Aristophanes expresses elsewhere.39 The charge implied against Socrates is therefore one of subversion. To refuse mousikē ultimately amounts to undermining political cohesion.40 It also brings about a dismissal of ‘the most important things achieved by the tragic craft’: generally, the cultural impulsion spread within the polis by the tragedian acting, as ‘Aeschylus’ has been made to claim (accurately or not), as the didaskalos of the community (see 1030 and ff., and notably 1055);41 specifically, the diffusion of those good counsels for the political soteria Athens so desperately needs. All that would be thrown to the winds for the sake of producing an outpouring of words as pompous and arcane as they are sketchy and useless. Sitting down with Socrates, the reputedly clever anēr who could have been rendered makarios by proper dramatic initiation, and would then have put his blessed competence to the benefit of the whole community, finally turns into an act of an utter fool (cf. παραφρονοῦντος ἀνδρός: 1499). ‘Aeschylus’ and ‘Euripides’ are thus sliding off-stage. The chorus’ main objective, here, is not so much to oppose an intelligent, beatifying, politically beneficial ‘Aeschylean’ pattern of poetics to a useless, destructive, stultifying ‘Socrato-Euripidean’ one, but to reassert some metatheatrical principles. Far from aiming at an end in itself, a dramatic representation aims at directing a message to the audience, and therefore needs a competent public; this message needs to be further circulated 38 Cf. 674, 874 ff. See Lada-Richards (1999) 246. 39 Cf. Clouds 964-968, 988 ff.; Wasps 1060 ff. 40 The politically subversive implication of refusing mousikē emanating from these verses is noted by Whitman (1964) 246, and Lada-Richards (1999) 225-226. For a general discussion, see Csapo (2004) 235-239 and Mosconi (2008) 30-41. 41 On such claim, see Arnott (1991) 18-19.

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within public opinion at large in order to play a full role in the collective process of cultural elaboration taking place within the polis. As a whole, this choral song recalls the strategic function of institutionalized dramatic poetry: to mobilize the intellectual resources available within the public, and thus to promote cultural discourse needed by the community. In opposition to the glaringly apolitical stance of the Socratic group, the ultimate structural function of theater is political. Socratic activity can provide no alternative. It merely prevents the elaboration of consensual public opinion at its widest. In the end, to evade the expanded communication circuit imposed by the Dionysian performances, and to opt for the secluded discourse of the Socratic circle, represents actual sabotage of the most dynamic cultural structure at work in Athens. In the face of this threat, Aristophanes is as serious as a serious comic author needs to be. No marvel that there are no funny jokes at Socrates’ expense here. While condemning all Socratic chatter, Aristophanes has no words for what it actually intends to say. Do the Frogs provide an ante litteram indication that some at least of the Socratic criticisms leveled against poetry in so many Platonic pages might have indeed belonged to the ‘real’ Socrates, being fully alive and kicking in 405 BC? Be that as it may, this comedy identifies the Socratic attitude as the cultural option that any comic (or tragic) poet would be structurally unable to accept. It brands Socratic discourse as deeply disruptive of the functions exerted by the most original Athenian cultural institution. No accommodation seems to be possible: it is either attending the dramatic agōnes, and striving for communal sōtēria, or sitting near to Socrates, and plunging into individual folly. The operation of casting Socrates, although by a fleeting mention, in the dramatic role of the ‘anti-poet’ aims at rendering the wholesome message imparted by the Frogs even more assertive. What the text needs, just before concluding his panegyric of dramatic art, is to produce the image, in the darkest possible colors, of ‘anti-dramatic’ activity.

Why One Had Better Sit near Socrates Socrates’ great apologist Plato apparently decided to consider the Clouds so foolish and ridiculous that quoting this play would just strengthen his case (Apology, 19c1-5). Can the circumstance that he nowhere mentions the Frogs imply that he perceived these far different allegations as definitely more serious? Within dialogues like the Gorgias and the Apology (both providing a specially energetic vindication of Socrates’ behavior),

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the authorial strategy dictating some specific passages seems to exploit precisely the key terms appearing in the antistrophe. The latter does not explicitly declare the ideological identity of Socrates with Euripides, and this point is therefore ignored in the Platonic text. The response has a different aim: it basically counters the twin Aristophanic contentions that (a) collective sōtēria can only be achieved by dramatic ‘regeneration’, i.e. by listening intelligently to the dramatic messages and subsequently feeding the result into communal communication, and that (b) Socratic discourse runs against all such efforts. In the antistrophe, the word παρακαθήμενον (“sitting near”: 1492) says it all.42 Whoever is sitting is not moving around, and thus is staying idle: the way is open for the argon of 1498. To sit near Socrates means to withdraw from the only occupation worthy of an Athenian citizen: one cannot engage in politics if one confines himself within a self-contained coterie. Not only Plato but Socratic literature in general feels it necessary to react to that. Xenophon, for an instance, depicts a far different, wholly public Socrates, somebody who makes himself accessible to all and sundry in principle (Memorabilia, 1.1.10). In a similar vein, the Platonic Apology stresses that Socrates, in his god-ordained mission, is likely to address anybody he meets, a young or an old man, a foreigner or a fellow-citizen (30a2-4);43 he keeps going around (cf. περιέρχομαι, 30a7), relentlessly behaving like a gadfly, as a busybody would (cf. πολυπραγμονῶ, 31c5).44 The Gorgias opts for a different strategy: it turns Socratic ‘idleness’ into a virtue. Yes, Callicles is factually right (as factually right as Aristophanes might have been, the reader may observe):45 Socrates does sit in a corner all day long, chatting with some boys about some obscure questions, an activity he terms ‘philosophy’; he does not discuss relevant political affairs with serious, eminent citizens. But Callicles is wrong for branding this occupation as unfit, indeed ridiculous, for a grown-up citi-

42 The image of the “sitting Socrates” is current in Socratic literature as well; see Clay (1994) 40. 43 And the Euthydemus (271a) and Protagoras (315e–316a) produce the image of a Socrates surrounded by such a crowd that it becomes almost impossible to hear him. 44 Socrates, as the Clouds had already stated (cf. 316, 334, 363), is “idle” because such is the nature of “intellectuals”, argia (idleness) is the specific taunt attached to the sophists. See Zimmermann (1993) 282-283; Anastasiadis (2004) 65-67. 45 An analogy noticed by Stark (1953) 84.

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zen (484c4-485e2).46 Socrates has some excellent reasons for preferring his secluded practice of face-to-face dialogical discourse to open-air, one-to-many political games (500c5-8): there is no other possibility to achieve moral improvement for the benefit of all those who share the exercise. Philosophical activity, so this Platonic Socrates asserts, aims at identifying the real values in human life and the effective modalities for implementing them in the political context as well. First, it would simply be shameful to neglect the care of ‘the most important things’, ta megista (cf. 527e1). Secondly, since only better men can make better citizen, there can be no genuine political competence without a previous philosophical education (527d2-e1). The Apology asserts the principle that the unique modality to produce something good for the Athenian political community consists in individual action at the ‘private’ level, not at the ‘public’ one (ἰδιωτεύειν ἀλλὰ μὴ δημοσιεύειν: 31e232a3). The Gorgias uses the same terms (ἰδιωτεύειν, δημοσιεύειν) in order to declare that the capability of acting well at the private level is the precondition for acting well at the public level (514a5-e9). To the reader, the inference is now obvious: to brand Socrates’ attitude as ‘apolitical’ is to make a cheap mistake. The polemical strategy of the Gorgias makes the most of the term charis. For the chorus in the Frogs, this term, usually translated with ‘elegance, grace’, introduces the critical description of the Socratic activity, in opposition to the ‘blessed’ behavior of the competent spectator of drama: “charis therefore arises from not sitting down with Socrates in order to chatter…” (χαρίεν οὖν μὴ Σωκράτει παρακαθήμενον λαλεῖν: 1491-1492). In its most common, down-to-earth use, charis would have presumably been immediately accessible to most members of the audience: “it is elegant not to sit down with Socrates …”. Dramatic communication, and all that comes with it, is the model to follow; Socratic communication is the example to reject. Similarly, the Gorgias (485a4c2) has Callicles concede that there could be some charis in Socratic debating if this were restricted to didactic exercise for the benefit of young men needing to acquire dialectical resourcefulness; by contrast, full-time philosophizing can only be perceived as a ridiculous and useless pastime by any grown-up, responsible citizen.47 At the opposite limit of this semantic field, charis can denote a specific quality in the behavior of a citizen. In the formulation of the Athenian democratic ideology that Thu46 Dodds (1959) 272-273 stresses the similarity of such views to those implied by the reference to Socrates in the Frogs, as well as to other contemporary judgements hostile to “philosophy”. 47 The intertextual connection with the reference to charis at Frogs 1491 has been noted by Stark (1953) 84.

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cydides assigns to Pericles, it appears as the property of a typical member of the polis, a result of his distinctively Athenian education (paideia): “I would in particular believe that by us every citizen (anēr) has acquired the ability to take on himself so many different tasks, always with full grace (μετὰ χαρίτων) and with a special degree of self-reliance and versatility” (Thuc. 2.41.1). Charis can thus be considered as a most positive connotation of the “Athenian way of life”.48 Is the Aristophanic chorus alluding to such, or any similar, idea in its sudden evocation of the Socratic group? If the only individual behavior that will not produce charis for the common benefit consists in sitting near Socrates, no Athenian anēr belonging to the Socratic talking-circle can contribute to the general spiritual welfare. Finally, the choice of this specific term activates a self-referential game: charis is the result of choral song.49 To Aristophanes, this charis paves the way for the didactic action the poet will exert on his fellow citizens (Frogs, 1054-1055), and for the consequent acquisition of knowledge by the audience (μαθεῖν: 1484). So the meaning emerges: “if you want to enjoy charis, ignore Socrates and listen to me”. Plato fully agrees that spectators typically enjoy charis. His Socrates, in the Gorgias, specifically connects hēdonē, ‘pleasure’, to it (501e1–502c1).50 But to him this sort of pleasure is simply harmful. The audience will derive no epistemic or moral advantage whatsoever from attending a dramatic performance. Specifically, tragic poetry, a typical form of mass communication from one to many, is just an instance of dēmēgoria; as such, it is but systematic flattery, kolakikē (Gorg. 502d7). Politicians must be agreeable to the public they address: they will not give a thought about whether they are producing better or worse citizens (Gorg. 502e2-503a1: εἰ δέ γε βελτίους ἔσονται ἢ χείρους διὰ ταῦτα, οὐδὲν φροντίζουσιν). Nor could poets care either, for they only worry about pleasing their audience. In all such hands, to produce charis (the notion keeps being mentioned intensively in Socrates’ argument)51 becomes a perverse activity which prevents reaching any otherwise valuable end. To hammer the point home, this conclusion is stated as a matter of common wisdom: Callicles, who otherwise strongly opposes Socrates’ points, promptly agrees with this specific assessment (502b9-c1). Anybody can see the fact that tragedy produces no substantial good: this is not an opinion stem48 “Possession of social graces”; Sommerstein (1996) 294. 49 Lada-Richards (1999) 225. 50 On this specific meaning of charis, see Dover (1993) 20-21. Snell (1953) 112 sees here a specific response to Aristophanes’ Frogs. 51 Cf. χαριεῖσθαι, 502a1; χαρίζεσθαι, 502b3, c1, e5, e7; κεχαρισμένον, 502b5.

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ming from Socratic atopia.52 Therefore, tragic craft is irrelevant to anything that might be legitimately termed ta megista: so much for the Aristophanic charge that the Socratic posture leads to rejecting ta megista distinctive of the tragic techne. Tragic technē? In the Apology (22d4e1), the Platonic Socrates remarks that it is precisely the individual possession of a given technē that engenders the mistaken belief in the practitioner that he has knowledge of ta megista: poets (and artisans) exemplify such a mistake. The Gorgias (465b1-d7) denies that the so-called tragic technē deserves its current name: it is but an imitation of rhetoric, and rhetoric is itself an imitation of the technē of dikaiosynē (justice). All this goes together with the denial of a “poetic” sophia in the Apology: the poets (the tragic, the dithyrambic and ‘all the others’, the comic ones thus included: 22a9-b1) can say “many beautiful things”, πολλὰ καὶ καλά; yet they have no sophia, since they have no idea of what they are effectively putting into words (they are just the recipients of divine inspiration). As an empirical rule, anybody seems to be able to conceptualize the meaning of a given poetic utterance much better than the author (22b8-c3). It is not surprising, then, that in the Gorgias Socrates can be made to quote some especially good words by Euripides: “who knows whether to be alive is not indeed to be dead, to be dead to be alive?”, and enlist them verbatim in support of his actual allegations: for Socrates is no poet.53 Is that an implicit barb at Aristophanes, whose Frogs had only been able to laugh away the corresponding idea by means of parody?54 At first sight, the act of quoting Euripides to support an argument might seem to tally with one Aristophanic main notion: that the spectator’s competence is strategically relevant to the reception and further diffusion of the poetic message. But poetic competence does not need to be considered a form of sophia for that. Nor can poets derive any aspiration to ‘artistic leadership’ of society from it.55 Another denial hits the Frogs, although implicitly, rather badly. It invests the metatheatrical principle shared by ‘Aeschylus’ and ‘Euripides’ (and apparently by Aristophanes as well), and recognizes an ‘anthropo52 It is only in the Laws (658e) that hēdonē is accepted as a valuable criterion for evaluating mousikē in general, provided it is of the ‘cultivated’, not the ‘vulgar’, sort. But Socrates does not appear in this late Platonic work. 53 Gorg. 492e10-11 = Eur. fr. 638 TrGF. Wildberg (2006) 26 notes that this is the only instance where the Platonic Socrates is made to quote Euripides approvingly, while criticizing him elsewhere. 54 See 1082 (a truncated reproduction), 1477-1478 (a comically distorted quotation). 55 On this aspiration, see Silk (2000) 48.

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etic’ effectiveness to poetry: the poet’s function precisely consists in producing better men, which means ‘better citizens on the Athenian model’ (beltious anthrōpous: 1008-1010).56 The achievements claimed by Aristophanes in the parabasis of the Acharnians (650-651) pointed in the same direction: according to the Great King, “those men (i.e. the Athenians, whom the chorus is addressing) have become much better (πολὺ βελτίους γεγενῆσθαι) and will win any conflict, since they had him (= Aristophanes) for an adviser”. The tone is ironical and the reference is declaredly less to ethical than to military and political ‘improvement’. However, Aristophanes’ contemporaries might have been hard put to draw some precise borders between the three realms: so the formula is one and the same. In the Frogs, the chorus extracts an anti-Socratic pun from all this conceptual ensemble. It contrasts the ‘productive’, i.e. ‘virile’ poet whom Dionysus was looking for at the beginning of the play (the gonimos poietēs of v. 96)57 with the Socratic chatter-boxes who can only “generate idleness and waste of time” (cf. διατριβὴν ἀργὸν ποεῖσθαι: 1498). By means of another connected pun, ‘Aeschylus’ confirms his poetic productivity when replying to the assignments given to him by Pluto: ταῦτα ποήσω, “I will ‘produce’ just that” (1515). The response from the Gorgias is radical: not only are tragic authors finally denied any ‘anthropoetic’ ability, they are denied any ‘anthropoetic’ intention as well (502e2-503a1). In the Apology (36c), the aim to motivate every Athenian citizen, or any other man at that, into becoming as best and reasonable as possible (beltistos, phronimōtatos) is declared to be exclusive to Socrates’ mission. The Platonic Socrates thus sweeps virility away from dramatic art. By the same gesture, he also disposes of the whole range of activities and competences comprehensively designed as mousikē, covering all known modalities for learning, performing and producing music, dance and poetry, by themselves and in all their various possible combinations. The general accusation that Socrates, for all his pretentious talking, is substantially amousos, i.e. either uninterested or incompetent in the traditional crafts of the Muses, conforms to a comic tradition apparently so well established that even Plato occasionally plays with it.58 In his Sym56 Bouvier (2004) 15-16. 57 On this metaphor, see the discussion by Bouvier (2004) 17-23. 58 Eupolis (fr. 395 K.-A.) represents Socrates playing the lyre and singing some verses of Stesichorus; for a comment, see Patzer (1994) 67. Ameipsias has a play (staged in competition with Aristophanes’ Clouds in 423 BC) about Socrates, no longer a youngster, being taught music by Connus. In the Menexenus (235e) and Euthydemus (272c), Socrates makes some apparently self-ironical references to such teaching; see Patzer (1994) 61-64.

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posium (2.11-21), Xenophon asserts that Socrates does care for mousikē: he has a keen interest in music and dance and occasionally takes to dancing himself.59 Plato’s reaction is more articulated. In the Crito, Socrates is given a conciliatory posture: mousikē, he declares, has obviously been part of his education (50d). But the Phaedo produces a most ironical answer (60d7-61b7). Socrates does care: he has spent his whole life practicing mousikē. The genuine one, of course, philosophy; the vulgar one, at which he will give just a try in point of death, he leaves to the poets.60 In the Gorgias, Socrates proves that tragedy can only produce hēdonē, and that hēdonē can only stand in the way of knowledge. For a fully convincing example, Plato might have turned to the comedy that seems so often to provide a subtext for this dialogue. At the end of the literary agōn between the two competitors (Frogs, 1411-1413), Dionysus is in a quandary: he simply cannot bring himself to decide whom he will award victory. “The one I recognize to be a competent playwright (sophos), but the other gives me pleasure (hēdomai)” (the reader, incidentally, will never know for sure which is which). Here is the evidence damning hēdonē: what a dramatic agōn finally achieves is the destruction of the very possibility for the audience to produce a reasoned assessment of the outcome. Instead of instilling knowledge into the spectator, or, in Socratic terms, making him a better man (since to Socrates an ethical deficit is just an epistemic deficit), tragic performance paralyzes the faculties of judgment by sheer strength of passion. The spectator is thus thrown into induced akrasia, the situation where any lucid, well-argued evaluation he might otherwise produce is held in check by some opposite pulsion: the very predicament from which Socratic philosophy strives to extricate human beings.

Conclusion: Who Will Save Athens? Neither for Aristophanes nor for Plato is this a mere battle of ideas, still less of words. These are matters of life and death. A few months before 59 Cf. Brancacci (2004) 193-194. While not actually practising dance or music, the Platonic Socrates is elsewhere made to express full appreciation for mousikē, in particular as an element of political cohesion, and to condemn ‘New Music’; see in part. Republic 376e, 424c, 796b-c, where he may pick up the corresponding theories of Damon of Oa; Csapo (2004) 236, with additional references. A different tradition ascribes to Socrates two fragmentary verses declaring that “those who are the best at honoring the gods with their dances are the best at war”; fr. 2 Gentili - Prato = Athen. 14.628 ff. 60 Cf. Brancacci (2004) 209-210.

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the staging of the Frogs, Athens had undergone one of its most selfdestructive experiences. Dirty politics had led to the elimination of the most prominent Athenian military leaders just after (if not because) they had achieved a major victory. The self-inflicted shock of the mass trial held against six of the stratēgoi who had just won the battle of the Arginusae haunts the text of the Frogs.61 It presumably contributed to Aristophanes’ last-ditch appeal to adopt some policies that would promote internal reconciliation and avoid final defeat. At the trial, the demos had it its way and, following the urgings of the demagogues, broke all procedures and regulations. The famous Aristophanic parody of a famous Euripidean verse, “what is shameful, if the spectators do not consider it so?”,62 seems to anticipate the protestations quoted by Xenophon: “it is monstrous that somebody may prevent the people to do what they want” (Hellenica, 1.7.12). In his Apology, Plato recalls that Socrates, sitting that day as a prytanis in the Council, was the only one who refused to bow to popular pressure.63 In the initial pages of the Gorgias (473e6-474a1), Socrates is made to recall how he made a fool of himself “last year”, when he fumbled some voting procedure he should have conducted in his capacity of prytanis. This might be an allusion to Socrates’ posture during the trial: Plato would then have fixed the dramatic date of the Gorgias sometime in 405 BC, the very year the Frogs was a dominant event in Athens’ cultural and political life.64 If no such allusion is intended, it is still remarkable that Plato employs an almost Aristophanic procedure in turning his Socrates into a ridiculous persona, precisely in order to suggest a most serious point: by themselves, voting procedures, i.e. collective decision-making, will not save the polis (as the Apology implies, they will contribute to its destruction when used to bring a man like Socrates to his death). The polis can only be saved by the adoption of reasoned consensus on the fundamental points concerning political, and indeed human, life. Before anything else, communal soteria demands that all citizens be brought to recognize and share some fundamental ethical values. This can be achieved only by 61 See 416-421 (referring to the demagogue Archedemus, one of the initiators of the trial); 1182-1196 (declaring the fate of executed general Erasinides to be even worse than Oedipus’). 62 Frogs 1475. The Euripidean original, from the Aeolus (fr. 19 TrGF), is “what is repugnant if it does not look so to those who use it?” (τί δ᾽ αἰσχρὸν ἢν μὴ τοῖσι χρωμένοις δοκῇ;). 63 Cf. also Xen. Hell. 1.7.15. At the end of an accurate discussion, Giannantoni (1962), concludes that Xen. Mem. 1.1.18 is wrong in specifying that Socrates was presiding over the Council on that day. 64 Full discussion with reference to previous bibliography in Giannantoni (1962).

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developing a Socratic model of discourse, in the form of face-to-face dialogue promoting reciprocal examination within a small group of interlocutors. Any dramatic author would have felt compelled to disagree. Safety for the polis can only be achieved through the extended working of the dramatic institution, that unique instrument of mass communication forged by Athenian cultural traditions. “Follow the lessons that the good poets give in the theater of Dionysus to all who can understand them. Do not engage in hair-splitting Socratic talk. I know what I am talking about: I am the best dramatic craftsman now living in Athens”. So could a prosopopeia run on behalf of the author of the Frogs. “I am no professional politician, and yet I am practically the only Athenian who cares for genuine politics”,65 the Platonic Socrates replies, notably from the Gorgias. “We all need to become better men. This is no matter for dramatic or political rhetoric. Let us first sit down together in some quiet corner, and try to assess what is true and just”.

65 Cf. Gorgias, 473e6: οὐκ εἰμὶ τῶν πολιτικῶν: “I am no professional politician”, and 521d6-8: Οἶμαι μετ᾽ ὀλίγων Ἀθηναίων, ἵνα μὴ εἴπω μόνος, ἐπιχειρεῖν τῇ ὡς ἀληθῶς πολιτικῇ τέχνῃ καὶ πράττειν τὰ πολιτικὰ μόνος τῶν νῦν: “I believe that I am one of the few extant Athenians (I don’t like to say ‘the only one’) who is trying to implement the political craft and to produce a politically relevant activity”.

Veiled Venom: Comedy, Censorship and Figuration Gregory W. Dobrov Loyola University Chicago “Censorship is the Mother of Metaphor” –Jorge Luis Borges

Introduction The study of Greek comedy is constrained by centuries of transmission that have hidden nearly everything from view. Our profession comprises a network of efforts to recover what has been lost or obfuscated, beginning with the words of the poets themselves. In the case of Old Comedy, all composers except Aristophanes have receded into the shadows. From the Alexandrian period through the Middle Ages the rough-andtumble stage-play—the very “truth” of drama—was committed to Lethe. There was no Plautus or Shakespeare to revive or transmit the spectacle of the fifth-century comedy for later ages. Today, if we should like to hear the music of Birds, for example—before we graduate from understanding to appreciation—we must stop at a checkpoint to learn from experts who themselves command only a fraction of what the Alexandrians had at their disposal.1 The history of the genre, however, is not a simple trajectory from unconstrained expression to oblivion. An1

West (1973) tells the story of Eduard Fraenkel’s experience as a student with Friedrich Leo: “I had by then read the greater part of Aristophanes, and I began to rave about it to Leo, and to wax eloquent on the magic of his poetry, the beauty of the choral odes, and so on and so forth. Leo let me have my say, perhaps ten minutes in all, without showing any sign of disapproval or impatience. When I was finished, he asked: ‘In which edition do you read Aristophanes?’ I thought: has he not been listening? What has this question got to do with what I have been telling him? After a moment’s ruffled hesitation I answered: ‘The Teubner’. Leo: ‘Oh, you read Aristophanes without a critical apparatus’. He said it quite calmly, without any sharpness, without a whiff of sarcasm, just sincerely taken aback that it was possible for a tolerably intelligent young man to do such a thing. I looked at the lawn nearby and had a single, overwhelming sensation: νῦν μοι χάνοι εὐρεῖα χθών”.

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cient scholars whose voices are heard at various points in the record suggest that comedy was actually forced into hiding at a critical juncture in its development. Not all the lapses in our understanding, it would appear, are a historical accident; comedy learned to be difficult and elusive early in its history as an established competition. In this paper I juxtapose several important references to “indirect expression” (ἔμφασις) as a symptom of the first wave of political satire in the early 430s that elicited a legislative backlash.2 The implication here is that a rapid and productive mutation in comic discourse was precipitated by aggressive constraints on the genre as it became “politicized”. We know enough about the work and careers of Eupolis and Aristophanes to see that this is more than a scholiastic fiction. An important shift in comic theater is identified by Aristotle at Poetics 1449b7-8 where we learn that the generation before Aristophanes made the transition from abuse to narrative: “Of Athenian writers Crates was the first who, abandoning the ‘iambic’ or lampooning form, generalized his themes and plots.” An important but misunderstood factor in this story is the literary-critical term ἔμφασις: The Tractatus Coislinianus elaborates by specifying that “comedy differs from abuse (λοιδορία), since abuse rehearses without concealment the wickedness attaching (to people), but comedy requires the so-called emphasis”.3 If this is indeed a Peripatetic voice “closer to Aristotle than is usually thought”4 we might make a further connection to a passage in Poetics (1448a31-32) where the emergence of comedy is located in a democratic context. The anonymous essayists on comedy insist that satirical ridicule was a force so potent “that the fear and resentment [it] inspired among the political class shaped the entire history of the genre”.5 There is a growing bibliography that supports and extends this observation.6 Moreover, the ancient reception of fifth-century comedy establishes a link between the 2

3

4 5 6

Versions of this paper were presented at the Celtic Conference in Classics (July 11, 2008) and at the “Why Like Lies?” Conference at Cornell University (April 18, 2009). I am grateful to Keith Sidwell, Ian Storey, Phillip Mitsis, and Jeffrey Rusten for helpful suggestions. Koster Prolegomena XV 32 (Tractatus Coislinianus [=Janko VII]): Διαφέρει ἡ κωμῳδία τῆς λοιδορίας, ἐπεὶ ἡ μὲν λοιδορία ἀπαρακαλύπτως τὰ προσόντα κακὰ διέξεισιν, ἡ δὲ δεῖται τῆς καλουμένης ἐμφάσεως. Koster (1975) 63–67. See Janko (1984) for the text of the Tractatus with translation and commentary. See also Russell (1981) 204–206 and Cooper (1922). Janko (1984) 4. For a more thorough consideration of this question see Nesselrath (1990) 122-125. Olson (2010) 41. See especially Koster Prolegomena de Comoedia III-V. See especially Halliwell (1984) and (1991).

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politicization of the genre and the emergence of fantastic and vivid figuration as a means to elude or negotiate external constraints on the poets. On this account the first aggressive instances of censorship and litigation served as a catalyst for artistic development, ἔμφασις and φαντασία being technical terms for “indirect” or veiled expression— extravagant scenic metaphor and verbal imagery in particular. Aristophanes’ own phrase for this process is ἀεὶ καινὰς ἰδέας εἰσφέρων σοφίζομαι (Clouds 547).—a formulation that underscores the importance of the link between imagery and innovation (cf. καινόταται διάνοιαι, Wasps 1044). The survival of Aristophanes’ early work has given the impression that verbal and scenic extravagance was a hallmark of Greek comedy. From the perspective of the genre’s two hundred-year history (ca. 486– 270), however, the nexus of fantastic elements and aggressive political satire does not appear normative, but rather a relatively short-lived trend roughly coextensive with the “radical” democracy (430-415). The close collusion of fantastic and figurative elements with political satire was no accident. The broad deployment of figuration in the service of politically motivated attack reached a peak in the 420s as Aristophanes and Eupolis entered the competitive arena. Originating in the work of the preceding generation of comic poets such as Cratinus and attenuating in the penultimate decade of the fifth century, this art of concealment— fantastic figuration in plot, script, song and stage-play—emerges not as the definitive characteristic of Greek comedy, but rather an artistic “phase” for which strong motivation existed only until the political and social environment changed resulting in a “drastic shift in selfprojection” on the part of playwrights and a swift decline of political comedy.7

Comedy “Goes Political” We catch our first glimpse of political satire mid-century in the generation before Aristophanes. In the passage cited above (Poetics 1449b7-8) Aristotle specifies that the comic poet Crates departed from direct abuse to develop narrative plots of a more general nature. The title of his Samians, for example, suggests a scenario that addressed the military con7

“After 404,” notes Sommerstein (1996, N 73) “demographic, economic and political changes ... seem to have caused a drastic shift in Aristophanes’ political self-projection ... and eventually led him and others to abandon political comedy altogether.”

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flict in the early 430s between Athens and Samos; another title, Orators, would also seem to have political-satirical potential. At about this time we also pick up traces of lampoons by poets such as Cratinus and Hermippus directed at Pericles and his circle.8 Plutarch notes that at the end of the decade “comic choruses railed at Pericles in songs and scurrilous mockery, attacking his leadership for its cowardice and for its forfeiting of everything to the enemy”. He cites an anapaestic passage from the Moirai of Hermippus (fr. 47 PCG) to make his point. Here the image is that of a Satyr-King:9 “βασιλεῦ σατύρων, τί ποτ ̓ οὐκ ἐθέλεις δόρυ βαστάζειν, ἀλλὰ λόγους μὲν περὶ τοῦ πολέμου δεινοὺς παρέχῃ, ψυχὴ δὲ Τέλητος ὕπεστιν; κἀγχειριδίου δ ̓ ἀκόνῃ σκληρᾷ παραθηγομένης βρύχεις κοπίδος, δηχθεὶς αἴθωνι Κλέωνι”.

“O King of Satyrs Why are you not willing to carry a spear but offer only clever speeches about the war? Why is the spirit of Teles in you? When even a small hand-knife is put to the whetting-stone you start gnashing your teeth as if bitten by fiery Cleon”.

The later plays of Cratinus (active down to ca. 420), initially famous for his “Archilochean” invective, laid the foundation for the intense period of political satire in the work of Aristophanes and Eupolis. The controversy that seems to be associated with Aristophanes’ earliest work, Babylonians in particular, suggests that the young poet had begun to innovate along these lines in an aggressive and disturbing way.10 In his sketch On the Differences in Character (of the Comic Poets) the later critic Platonius attributes to Eupolis an escalation of political explicitness: “He is able to bring back the characters of lawgivers from Hades and through them

8

Examples from the oeuvre of Cratinus are Dionysalexandros, Nemesis, and Cheirons. See Cratinus, PCG frr. 246, 258–259. 9 Life of Pericles 3.66 = Hermippus fr. 47 PCG: “scipta fabula a. 430 ubi prima Lacedaemoniorum in Atticam irruptione facta (Thuc. II 19. 21. 22) Pericli ignaviam exprobrabant Athenienses quod pugnam detrectaret…” (PCG ad loc.) 10 Csapo and Slater (1995) 166-167 and Olson (2010) 42-43. See also Atkinson (1992).

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discusses the passing and repealing of laws”.11 The ongoing fictionalized conflict between Aristophanes and Cleon is well known and it would appear that in the penultimate decade of the fifth century there even emerged a trend of writing satire— Hyperbolus by Plato Comicus, for example—boldly aimed at individual politicians ὀνομαστί. When we follow the later work of the second generation of comedians (Cratinus, Hermippus et al.) as it leads into the period of high political satire (Eupolis, Aristophanes) it is important to underscore two interrelated aspects of the evolving genre. First, our evidence agrees with the judgment of ancient critics that there emerged a trend toward satirizing the contemporary business of the polis; comedy became closely associated with the notions “topical” and “political”. Second, there was a departure from direct, undisguised abuse. Comic theatre developed a strong quasi-fictional dimension in which the burning issues of the day informed narratives that employed, as it were, misdirection and camouflage. The metaphorical dimension of satirical comedy is strikingly sui generis and seems to spring full-blown from the head of poets in the 430s and 420s. There is a rich bibliography on comic figuration that has wrestled with the nature of image, metaphor, and allegory:12 Pericles as Zeus in Cratinus’ Nemesis, Cleon as Paphlagonian in Aristophanes’ Knights etc. An attendant feature of this historical moment is the emergence of a certain type of censorship that, as I suggest, catalyzed a systematic transformation in the ideas, poetry and performance of comic drama. While many kōmōidoumenoi are in evidence throughout the “political” period of Old Comedy, the more profound and “dangerous” ideas were bound up with imaginative and figurative strategies.

Censorship and the Case of Cratinus’ Dionysalexandros There is evidence for the imposition of constraints on comedy early on in its transition from occasional abuse to an integrated fiction in the service of political satire. The earliest example of legislation coincided with the start of the Samian conflict and remained in force for two years. A

11 Storey (2003) 48. Platonius is difficult to date precisely. “The only clue we have,” notes Storey (2003) 46, “is that Platonios and his audience were able to see Menander, either on stage or possibly in mosaics such as those from Mytilene, thus indicating a date any time before AD 500”. 12 Newiger (1957), Taillardat (1965), Komornicka (1964) to name a few seminal works.

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remarkably detailed and independent scholion to Aristophanes (Ach. 67) tells the story in a comment on “the archonship of Euthymenes:”13 This is the archon in whose term was dissolved the law against ridiculing, which was passed in the archonship of Morychides (440/39). It was in force during that year and the two years following in the archonships of Glaukinos (439/8) and Theodoros (438/7), after which it was dissolved in the archonship of Euthymenes.

The pressure intensified in the next decade as Aristophanes faced two attempts at prosecution by Cleon (426 and 424).14 The case has been made for similar examples down to 415,15 the year of the much-debated “Decree of Syracosius”.16 Recent scholarship on the nature of these restrictions has sought to negotiate between the specific (μὴ ὀνομαστὶ κωμῳδεῖν) and the general.17 What matters most for the purposes of the present argument is the perception on the part of ancient scholars of a causal connection between the earliest constraints on comedy and the emergence of a new, indirect or figurative (“emphatic”) poetics.18 The period between 440 and 437 offers a precise historical moment for such a connection: occasioned by the Samian war itself, the rather general Decree of Morychides “against ridiculing (μὴ κωμῳδεῖν)” has direct bearing on the link between censorship and the new poetics of ἔμφασις. An important occurrence of this term is found in the papyrus Hypothesis to the Dionysalexandros of Cratinus that has been convincingly dated to the early 430s.19 Evidence for an oblique, visual reference to Pericles 13 Tr. Csapo and Slater (1995) 168-169. Ar. Ach. 67 is “generally accepted because of the precision of the scholiast’s information and the fact that it is not an obvious inference from the text”. See Halliwell (1991) and Atkinson (1992). 14 Csapo and Slater (1985) 166-167 and Sommerstein (1996) 332. 15 Discussion of “the decree of Antimachus 426/5” and “the law of Cleon” (mid 420s) continues in the effort to tease truth from fiction. 16 Sommerstein (1996), Trevett (2000). Mattingly (1977) makes the case that “the war” referred to in this summary is, in fact, the Samian war. 17 In the pseudo-Xenophontic Constitution of Athens 2.18 the Old Oligarch asserts that “caricaturing the dēmos in comedy and speaking ill of it (κωμῳδεῖν καὶ κακῶς λέγειν) they do not allow, so as not to acquire a bad reputation. But as regards private individuals they encourage it … not one of the people or masses, but someone either wealthy, or distinguished or influential.” 18 Marshall (2000, 233) proposes a solution to the long-standing debate about the “pro-satyric” nature of Euripides’ Alcestis (438) as a rare instance of a tragedian responding to restricitions on comic freedom: “I propose that Euripides wrote a satyrless satyr play not because he was forbidden to do so by law, but because he could claim that he had been forbidden to [do] so by law”. 19 Many scholars including Storey and Marshall accept the argument of Mattingly (1977) who makes the case that “the war” here, in fact, is the Samian war. Cf.

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in this play supports the idea that external constraints served as a catalyst for comic theatre in the development of indirect means of criticism, i.e., an alternative to bald invective, unmitigated λοιδορία. We have in POxy 663 an unusually coherent insight into the larger narrative of a play that predates Aristophanes’ career: ... judgment, Hermes (5) leaves the stage and these talk to the audience about the poets [Koerte (1904)], and when Dionysus appears (10), they mock and jeer at him. When arrive, Dionysus by Hera unshaken sovereignty, by Athena (15) courage in war and by Aphrodite the prospect of becoming the most beautiful and most beloved of all, adjudges the victory to Aphrodite. Afterwards, he sails to (20) Lacedaemon, carries away Helen and returns to Mt. Ida. Hearing soon after that the Achaeans are ravaging the countryside and [seeing] (25) Alexandros, he quickly (30) hides Helen in a basket, disguises himself as a ram and awaits the consequences. Alexandros appears and detects them both, and orders them to be taken to the (35) ships intending to hand them over to the Achaeans; but when Helen objects, he takes pity on her and keeps her to be his wife, and sends off Dionysus (40) to be handed over. The satyrs accompany Dionysus encouraging him and maintaining that they would not betray him. In the play, (45) Pericles is ridiculed most persuasively by means of emphasis as having brought war upon the Athenians. (κωμῳδεῖται δ ̓ ἐν τῷ δράματι Περικλῆς μάλα πιθανῶς δἰ ἐμφάσεως ὡς ἐπαγειοχὼς τοῖς ̓Αθηναίοις τὸν πόλεμον). Translation adapted from Bakola (2005).

This travesty of the Judgment of Paris is set on Mount Ida and involves an abduction of Helen, a violent attack by Achaeans, and the metamorphosis of Dionysus into a ram. Paris appears, discovers Helen with the god, and orders that they be handed over to the Achaeans. When Helen protests he pities her and keeps her for himself. Dionysus, however, is duly handed over. In the first sequences of the play Dionysus replaces Paris and, simultaneously, “comes forward” in the persona of Pericles. The author of the hypothesis states that throughout “Pericles is lampooned with great plausibility by means of emphasis for bringing war on the Athenians”. This parabatic “coming forward” of a stage figure in the person of Pericles suggests an innovation in fiction-making. For the first time, “whole plays, rather than a few lines here and there, might be devoted to the criticism of aspects of Pericles’ control of Athenian politics”.20 There is good reason to see in the last line of this text a reference to the Samian War. Mattingly (1977) invokes Plutarch’s point (Pericles 24) that Pericles was motivated to involve Athens in the dispute bePlutarch Pericles 24 regarding the suspicion that Pericles involved Athens in the dispute between Miletus and Samos to please his Milesian mistress, Aspasia. 20 Vickers (1997) 60.

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tween Miletos and Samos to please Aspasia, a Milesian. As a “war over a woman” this conflict is an ideal point of reference for a burlesque of the Trojan War. The dating of ca. 437 also locates the Dionysalexandros plausibly in close sequence with another epic burlesque, the Odysseis, which Hall (2008, 511) sees as initiating “an important new trend in the ancient comic theater by relying on the humor to be derived from burlesque” rather than mere abuse. In this case the epic narratives were recruited as “images” or “metaphors” for delivery of critical ideas (the workings of ἔμφασις in my interpretation). The Dionysalexandros is thus a sophisticated scenario in which the personae of Dionysus, Paris and Pericles collude in a complex and suggestive manner. The god interacts with his satyr-chorus against a backdrop of the Judgment of Paris. Into the bargain, we are told, Cratinus included a persuasive lampoon of Pericles. Bakola (2005) detects a metatheatrical involvement with Satyr drama which Revermann (1997, 199) playfully renames “Διονυσπερικλεαλέξανδρος” (DionysusPericles-Alexandros). More to the point, the potential of the term ἔμφασις is extended in Revermann’s interpretation beyond verbal “innuendo” to include the visual dimension of performance. The proposal here is that the onion metaphor pointing up Pericles’ deformity (schinocephaly) was also realized onstage by means of an exaggerated comic mask. “I am sure”, notes Revermann, “that when the comic playwrights called Pericles ‘onion-head,’ they also made him look like one”.21

ἔμφασις and Comedy We have seen that in the Tractatus Coislinianus the term ἔμφασις is used to mark the boundary between simple abuse and narrative drama. Juxtaposed with the insight into the development of comedy at Poetics 1449b7-8 this distinction suggests a new trend in the political fictions of the 430s: poets such as Crates no longer presented undisguised abuse but told coherent stories in which direct attack was veiled in new metaphor and action. In the papyrus hypothesis to the Dionysalexandros the use of ἔμφασις foregrounds a means of tempering ad hominem satire that coincides with the first measures to restrict comic freedom.22 I have, so far, avoided committing to an exact translation of the word in this context. What, finally, does a “poetics of ἔμφασις” mean in a critical account of 21 Revermann (1997) 199. This argument is consonant in general with “schinocephalic” portraiture of the Athenian leader. 22 So Storey (2010) 192.

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ancient comedy just before the beginning of Aristophanes’ career? Following Bernays (1880, 149), scholars have usually rendered ἔμφασις as “innuendo”—the meaning it has in the rhetoricians. Over the years the problem of understanding the term in various critical contexts has been revisited a number of times with different results.23 Deriving from ἐν + φαίνω, the basic sense is that of “reflection,” “image” “representation”.24 It will be important to keep this root meaning in mind as we consider the possibility that, in progressing from abuse to narrative fiction, the comic poets developed methods of figuration—a range of metaphors, from the strategies of plot and staging down to individual passages in choral odes. The motivation for this, as I have suggested, will have been the need (or desire) to seek a more nuanced— perhaps less confrontational—delivery of critical ideas. Nünlist (2009, 211) identifies two nodes in the semantics of ἔμφασις as the term was used through late antiquity: “indirect presentation” and “emphasis in the current sense”. A more detailed account is given by Rutherford who analyzes the first of these into sub-types, the last of which is the most important:25 (i) signification of qualities, particularly stylistic ones; (ii) signification of something the speaker does not want to state directly, i.e., innuendo; (iii) signification beyond the literal meaning other than innuendo; (iv) signification of something beyond the literal meaning in the context of the theory of metaphor.

Regarding (iv) above Rutherford establishes a link in Aristotelian usage (as well as in Demetrius) between ἔμφασις and ἐνάργεια, the “anima23 Following Bernays (1880) and Volkmann (18852) ἔμφασις has figured in a number of discussions including the sixth chapter of Kustas (1973), Golden (1986), Rutherford (1988), Nesselrath (1990) 122-125, Dickey (2007), and Nünlist (2009) 211-212. 24 The first meanings in LSJ are: “I. 1. appearing in a smooth surface, reflection, as in a mirror or in water; … 2. outward appearance, impression presentation; II. Setting forth, exposition, narration”. One area of usage employs ἐμφαίνομαι and ἔμφασις in the sense of “be manifested in”, “be implied in”; another yields the meaning “representation”, “vivid reflection in a surface” (thus Plato Timaeus 71b and passim). ἔμφασις is a term of outward impression, appearance, presentation, even verbal narrative. 25 Rutherford (1988) 125-126 begins by distinguishing “three applications: a) the signification of various types beyond the literal meaning of the word; b) vividness, suggestiveness; c) force, impact”. The connection he makes between ἔμφασις and ἐνάργεια relies, in part, on Richardson (1980).

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tion” of inanimate objects. Philodemus, on the other hand, seems to find a closer connection between ἔμφασις and metaphor itself. It would seem that the vividness or clarity of indirect, figural modes of signification is not to be exaggerated:26 Πλανῶσιν δὲ τῆς ἐμφάσεως ὡς οὔσης σαφηνείας ἢ συντελοῦντος τὴν ὑπ ̓ αὐτῶν καλουμένην ἐνάργειαν τοῦ μεταφέρειν διὰ παντός.

They are mistaken in their view that emphasis is clarity or that pervasive application of metaphor produces what they term enargeia [mod. from Rutherford]

There can be little doubt that this understanding of ἔμφασις— “signification beyond the literal meaning in the context of the theory of metaphor”—is the most productive for our critical texts on comedy. I submit that the difficulty of translating ἔμφασις here has much to do with a natural polysemy that arises from flexibility of the Greek word (in contrast to the richness and specificity of English equivalents). In its application to comedy ἔμφασις comprehends a spectrum of figural strategies including, “image”, “scenic metaphor”, and “dramatic allegory”. Janko (1984) and others have been acutely aware of a “gap in [our understanding of] the Treatise that has long been felt”. Not surprisingly the literary-historical challenge posed by ἔμφασις in the Tractatus (as well as in the Cratinus hypothesis and elsewhere) has inspired a number of creative proposals. Golden (1986), for example, would like it to mean “narrative” while Janko (1984) prefers “fantasy”.27 These proposals address our problem as it relates to the literary-historical context outlined above but miss a compelling sense of ἔμφασις as a strategy of figuration used to veil or modify direct criticism. Comic narrative and fantasy certainly employ figuration, but these terms do not quite capture the flexible potential of ἔμφασις. It is instructive perhaps to consider here φαντασία, a related critical term derived from φαίνω and deployed in a parallel context. Platonius contrasts the rough style of Cratinus with the more sophisticated comedy of the younger generation in terms of φαντασία. Eupolis earns special praise: “he is exceedingly imaginative in his comic plots, for he brings important topics into his plays, and the sort of phantasia which the others employ in the parabasis he uses throughout his plays [Storey tr.]”. 26 Rhetorica Δ.177.23 ff. (cited by Rutherford 1988, 126). 27 In this connection Janko (1984) 202 notes that “if emphasis originally meant ‘appearances’ in dreams [Aristotle Div. Somn. 464b11], its application to comedy is best understood as ‘fantasy’ and fills a gap in the Treatise that has long been felt. The comic presentation of reality is in this case distorted, to use Aristotle’s analogy, like a reflection in water disturbed by the breeze”.

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Regarding the meaning here, Storey makes a good argument for emphasizing the visual potential of φαντασία as “imagery” with special reference to choral poetry. The application to drama entails that “the audience will see through the φαντασία of the language what the character sees or imagines he sees”.28 I propose that we read the semantics of ἐμφαίνειν (-φαίνεσθαι) along the same lines in translating ἔμφασις as it relates to “showing” and “creating a spectacle” in the theater. In various contexts, then, the “indirect manifestation” implicit in ἔμφασις will be rendered “figuration”, at various points more specifically “image”, “imagery”, “metaphor”, even “allegory”. The unifying idea here is that of expressing one thing through another, specifically an image presented (verbally or physically) on stage. Such figuration allows the poet to attenuate the flow of direct criticism and to pretend, at least, that he was about something altogether different. There is no single term that captures the dynamics of “showing” something “in” or “through” another. English will do its best by supplying available ad hoc synonyms such as the ones listed above. The point to emphasize is that the meanings of “indirect expression”, “metaphor” and “image” are amplified in application to the three-dimensional, “live” stage-play of Greek comedy. This genre possessed abundant resources for figuration that included dialogue, plot, costume, choral song, and various aspects of the mise-en-scène. I began by locating a few important occurrences of ἔμφασις relating to a context in the early 430s when the comic attacks on Pericles met with resistance in the form of the “Decree of Morychides”. Cratinus and his contemporaries developed strategies of figuration that mark a departure from simple abuse. This is the point of the crux in the Tractatus Coislinianus: Διαφέρει ἡ κωμῳδία τῆς λοιδορίας, ἐπεὶ ἡ μὲν λοιδορία ἀπαρακαλύπτως τὰ προσόντα κακὰ διέξεισιν, ἡ δὲ δεῖται τῆς καλουμένης ἐμφάσεως.

Comedy differs from abuse (λοιδορία), since abuse rehearses without concealment the wickedness attaching (to people), but comedy requires what is termed “figuration”.

The long, stormy miniseries “Aristophanes v. Cleon” that ran throughout the 420s provides a rich field from which to draw examples of figuration in the service of satire-under-pressure. 28 Storey (2003) 49-50 notes that “φαντασία has been related to the technical term visum or visiones used by Cicero (Acad. 1.40), Quintillian (6.2.29), and [Longinos] (15), which is clearly concerned with vivid verbal description… Longinos cites as an example of φαντασία from drama Orestes’ descriptions of the Furies at Euripides Or. 255-7 and IT 281-300”.

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Allegories of Abuse A renewed, vividly attested, instance of a restriciton on comic freedom arose in connection with Aristophanes’ Babylonians (426). Produced in the following year, Acharnians advertises the problem in speeches by a protagonist who appears to incorporate aspects of the poet’s autobiography and persona. There could be no better illustration of the new direction in comedy than a playwright who has so thoroughly permeated his fiction as to remain a critical challenge ever since: the voice and agenda of the satirical critic are beautifully confused and veiled. Hubbard (1991b) made a fine case for “the mask” of Aristophanic comedy as an extended metaphor blending life and art. Rosen (2010, 240) similarly reminds us that comic discourse “assumes a complicity between poet and audience, even when completely fictional characters are the ones engaged in such activity”. He continues with rhetorical questions, “whose point of view is being represented? Can we ever presume to answer this question? And, for that matter, is it necessary for us to answer it?” One may certainly try, in fact most readers of Aristophanes have felt compelled to do so. Keeping to the discussion at hand, I would like to consider a few brief examples of figuration informed by the tension between poet and a powerful κωμῳδούμενος—an Aristophanic trademark of sorts: Character as metaphor. The most vivid example of figuration imaginable is a stage-figure such as Dicaeopolis who is deployed as a metaphor for the playwright. It is not perhaps surprising that the apparent identity between the character and poet has prompted a number of suggestions including portrait masks (Dicaeopolis as Eupolis!) and a performance in which the poet himself played the lead role: “αὐτός τ’ ἐμαυτὸν ὑπὸ Κλέωνος ἅπαθον ἐπίσταμαι διὰ τὴν πέρυσι κωμῳδίαν εἰσελκύσας γάρ μ’ εἰς τὸ βουλευτήριον διέβαλλε καὶ ψευδῆ κατεγλώττιζέ μου κἀκυκλοβόρει κἄπλυνεν, ὥστ’ ὀλίγου πάνυ ἀπωλόμην μολυνοπραγμονούμενος”.29

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“And I know about myself, what I suffered at Cleon’s hands because of last year’s comedy. He dragged me into the council chamber and began slandering me, telling glib-mouthed lies about me, roaring at me like the Cycloborus, bathing me in abuse, so that I very nearly perished in a sewer of troubles”.30 29 Greek text is cited from Wilson’s two-volume OCT (2007b). 30 Tr. A.H. Sommerstein’s editions of Aristophanes (1980–2002).

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A scholion to this passage (ad 378) informs us that in Babylonians, the year before, Aristophanes got into trouble because he ridiculed both the public offices assigned by lot and the elected offices and Cleon in the presence of foreigners. This is because he entered the drama Babylonians at the festival of the Dionysia, which is celebrated in spring at the time when the allies bring the tribute. For this reason Cleon indicted him on a charge of wronging the citizens, alleging that he had written these things to commit an act of hybris upon the people (dēmos) and the Council, and he indicted him for wrongful acquisition of citizen rights and he brought him to trial [tr. Csapo and Slater].

The response in Acharnians answers an implicit charge of slandering the polis before foreigners. Aristophanes-Dicaeopolis assumes the guise of Euripides’ Telephus and makes a pathetic appeal to the demos: “ἐγὼ δὲ λέξω δεινὰ μέν, δίκαια δέ. οὐ γάρ με νῦν γε διαβαλεῖ Κλέων ὅτι ξένων παρόντων τὴν πόλιν κακῶς λέγω. αὐτοὶ γάρ ἐσμεν οὑπὶ Ληναίῳ τ ̓ ἀγών, κοὔπω ξένοι πάρεισιν· οὔτε γὰρ φόροι ἥκουσιν οὔτ ̓ ἐκ τῶν πόλεων οἱ ξύμμαχοι· ἀλλ̓ ἐσμὲν αὐτοὶ νῦν γε περιεπτισμένοι· {τοὺς γὰρ μετοίκους ἄχυρα τῶν ἀστῶν λέγω}”.

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What I shall say will be shocking, but it will be right. This time Cleon will not allege that I am slandering the city in the presence of foreigners; for we are by ourselves and it’s the Lenaean competition, and there are no foreigners here yet; neither tribute money nor troops have arrived from the allied cities. This time we are alone, ready-hulled; for I reckon the immigrants as the civic bran.

The frontal assault is nevertheless disguised as the comment of a dramatis persona with a suggestive but comical name. Formally speaking, Dicaeopolis is not Aristophanes and his activities—from the opening scene in the Pnyx to his Rural Dionysia—are a delightful theatrical fiction. This means of mockery throws up a screen of misdirection whereby ridicule is diluted in metaphor and confusion of identities. Plot as Allegory: in his seminal work, Newiger (1957) initiated the modern discussion of Aristophanic poetics, particularly with regard to the early plays.31 The high-point of sustained and bold figuration is

31 Newiger employs Hegel’s restrictive definition of “allegory” as the personification of an abstraction that is free of any particular character or individuality. Aristophanic comedy appears even more allegorical if we use the common, looser definition of “allegory” as an extended metaphor employing the personi-

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Knights (424) with a cast of characters that systematically represent realworld referents without ever naming them. In addition to the obvious allegorical structure, the play trades in a host of attendant images and metaphors. Cleon-as-Paphlagonian, for example, is by turns a monster (74-79), the evil eye (103), a torrent (137), an eagle (197), agitator of muck (306), a fisherman (313, 864-867), a pig (375-381), a bee (403), a dog-faced baboon (416), a storm (430-440, 691-693), a giant (626-629), (691-693), a thief (716-718), a cauldron (919-922), a lion (1037-1038), a fox (1067), a beggar (182-183) and a sausage seller (1397). This orgy of figuration represents a lurid and unconstrained picture of evil. The very mechanism of metaphor is, in a sense, dislocated: “real-world” Cleon is simply one of Paphlagonian’s many aspects in the larger allegory that overwhelms the particulars of political satire. Thoroughgoing references to eating, devouring and cannibalism add to the phantasmagoria of metaphor. Parabatic Imagery: Aristophanes, like Eupolis, traded freely in poetic imagery (φαντασία) of the sort just enumerated. A contribution of Newiger (1975) was to champion the originality of these Aristophanic καιναὶ ἰδέαι (the poet’s own formulation) against the view of earlier scholars such as Immermann that saw only metaphors and images recycled from popular speech. The “iambic” venom is quite palpable and redolent of older invective, but the metaphors are new. Cleon, for example, is featured in the parabasis of Wasps (lines 1030-1037) in an account of his conflict with the playwright: “ἀλλ̓ Ἡρακλέους ὀργήν τιν ̓ ἔχων τοῖσι μεγίστοις ἐπιχειρεῖν, θρασέως ξυστὰς εὐθὺς ἀπ ̓ ἀρχῆς αὐτῷ τῷ καρχαρόδοντι, οὗ δεινόταται μὲν ἀπ ̓ ὀφθαλμῶν Κύννης ἀκτῖνες ἔλαμπον, ἑκατὸν δὲ κύκλῳ κεφαλαὶ κολάκων οἰμωξομένων ἐλιχμῶντο περὶ τὴν κεφαλήν, φωνὴν δ ̓ εἶχεν χαράδρας ὄλεθρον τετοκυίας, φώκης δ̓ ὀσμήν, Λαμίας δ ̓ ὄρχεις ἀπλύτους, πρωκτὸν δὲ καμήλου. τοιοῦτον ἰδὼν τέρας οὔ φησιν δείσας καταδωροδοκῆσαι, ἀλλ̓ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν ἔτι καὶ νυνὶ πολεμεῖ”.

“Having Herculean courage he grappled with those most formidable, from the very start going straight for that Beast with the jagged teeth and terrible eyes that flashed the fire of Cynna, surrounded by a hundred doomed flatterers, licking him all about the head. He had a voice like a lethal torrent, the stench of a seal, the unwashed balls of Lamia, the arse of a camel. Our poet did not tremble at the sight of this horrible monster, nor did he dream of winning him over. Indeed he is still today fighting on your behalf”.

fication of actions, qualities and situations. Important reviews of Aristophanic imagery include Komornicka (1964) and Taillardat (1965).

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This sort of figuration is fantastic, even dream-like, and quite distinct from unadorned λοιδορία. The images here resonate in the broader context of Wasps where Cleon is explicitly mentioned so that the notion of “misdirection” is more appropriate: we are shown an entertaining and distracting picture without explicit mention of Cleon and invited to make the obvious connection on our own. This particular image is also striking for its post-mortem reprise at Peace 752-759 pointing up a theme that celebrates the conclusion of the six-year poetic offensive. Scenic Metaphor: The “onion” mask of Pericles proposed by Revermann (1997) for the performance of Cratinus’ Dionysalexandros is an example of ἔμφασις in the sense argued here, a metaphor wherein a physical prop concretized a familiar insult (“Pericles the onionhead”). Similarly at Peace 236-300 Aristophanes marks the trace left by his dead rival to conjure “the tanner that ground Greece to dust” in a bit of stage-play: As two allegorical figures prepare to grind the Greek poleis— represented by garlic, honey etc.—into a mash (μυττωτός), War demands a pestle and sends his assistant Tumult to Athens to fetch Cleon. Of course, both Cleon and Brasidas had just died at Amphipolis so the recipe fails and Trygaios sings a song of joy and peace. It is important to note that these various examples come very close to naming the object of ridicule without actually doing so. The poet thus maintains the fine line between “indirect representation” and outright abuse. Comedy on Metaphor: A few months after Cleon’s death Aristophanes himself inscribes in his prologue to Peace a critical insight about what I have termed “the poetics of ἔμφασις”. The play opens with a bit of farce in which two slaves banter about their dirty job of feeding a huge dung beetle. As the spectators will soon realize, the governing metaphor here is Eurpides’ Bellerophon with Trygaios as the hero and the beetle his Pegasus.32 At lines 43-49 there is a brief exchange about interpreting “the imagery of the dung-beetle”. A spectator—no doubt an Athenian— seems acutely aware of Aristophanes’ compulsive figuration and allusion. Recalling the recent run of colorful and abusive scenarios he has a hard time imagining that this bit of stage-play is simple farce… it must be allegorical! He considers himself relatively clever so he asks “what does the beetle represent”? An Ionian fellow sitting next to him answers without hesitation that this must be yet another veiled attack on Cleon: Οι.β οὐκοῦν ἂν ἤδη τῶν θεατῶν τις λέγοι νεανίας δοκησίσοφος, “τόδε πρᾶγμα τί; 32 This is one example of Aristophanic “contrafact”, a remake of a tragedy in the display of comic mastery. See Dobrov (2001) 89-103.

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Gregory Dobrov ὁ κάνθαρος δὲ πρὸς τί;” κᾆτ ̓ αὐτῷ γ ̓ ἀνὴρ Οι.α Ἰωνικός τίς φησι παρακαθήμενος· “δοκέω μέν, ἐς Κλέωνα τοῦτ ̓ αἰνίσσεται, ὡς κεῖνος ἐν ̓Αίδεω σπατίλην ἐσθίει”.

Sl. B: But perhaps some spectator, some youth, who thinks himself clever, will say, “What is this? What does the beetle mean?” Sl. A: And then an Ionian, sitting next him, will add, “I think it’s an allusion to Cleon, since he’s feasting on filth in Hades now”.

It seems rather natural that the contemporary term available for figuration here is αἰνίττεται, the riddle being one of the most ancient and established strategies of metaphor and misdirection. Here the comic poet is able to harness the momentum of his own figuration for a joke: his comedy is so compulsively abusive and figurative that even the most innocent horseplay will be suspected of political reference. Cleon is dead, but the poetics of figuration lives on!

Conclusion It is important to emphasize that the causal connection drawn from the ancient critical “story” of Greek comedy in the period 440-415 is offered as a weak version of the Borges principle stated in the epigraph to this paper. Periclean Athens was a far cry from twentieth-century tyranny and there is enough explicit ridicule in Aristophanes to prove that he was not running scared. At the same time, the heady cocktail of metaphor and politics seems to have evaporated as quickly as it was concocted. Just as we catch its beginnings in the work of Crates, Cratinus and Hermippus we observe that it subsides by the last decade of the fifth century. The style of figuration developed by Aristophanes and Eupolis left a strong impression, however, and it took the long interval of Middle Comedy for it to vanish altogether. The process of transmission that privileged the work of Aristophanes has left the erroneous impression that extravagant metaphor and engagé political satire were somehow normative. We know, of course, that this was not the case as ever more light is shed on other composers and periods. The suggestion here is that the convergence of the “political” trend in comedy and certain sharp constraints on its freedom precipitated a productive artistic development—a fortunate catalysis that, in fact, did become normative for a while (for Aristophanes at any rate). In this sense, censorship indeed begat marvelous metaphors.

PROSE

Shifting Paradigms: Mimesis in Isocrates Leslie Collins Edwards University of California, San Diego Introduction In her recent book, Ekatrina Haskins argues persuasively that Isocrates, in his Antidosis, inverts Plato’s epistemological hierarchy in order to counter the Academy’s attack on his educational program. He assigns δόξα, ‘opinion’ or ‘judgment’, a higher status than ἐπιστήμη, ‘certain knowledge’ (181-184), and theoretical studies a merely preparatory role for philosophy in the true sense, which is λόγων παιδεία, or ‘discursive education’ (262-266), and its realization in moral action. And although Isocrates models his defense of his own paideia on Plato’s Apology, Haskins argues that Isocrates does not wish to be seen as anything like Socrates. Rather, Isocrates’ imitation of the Apology elucidates the contrast between his philosophy and that of Plato. Against the Sophists, Isocrates’ earlier advertisement of his program, had singled out other rival educators for criticism, but by the time of the Antidosis, Isocrates is focused on the Academy, to the extent that the speech’s diction is strategically chosen to answer Plato.1 However, the epistemological hierarchy and some of the specific diction identified by Haskins that Isocrates presents so polemically in Antidosis do figure in his earlier work, as well. It is of particular interest that Isocrates includes μίμησις, ‘imitation’, explicitly in that hierarchy in Against the Sophists; it is absent from the Antidosis. Moreover, he seems to assign it, as he does δόξα, a high status, a position quite the reverse of that which it occupies in Plato’s Republic. There, several types of poetic imitation (impersonation, learning by imitation of models, audience identification) receive in common Plato’s suspicion partly because they 1

Haskins (2004) 39-44. Besides δόξα and ἐπιστήμη, Haskins discusses ποικίλος (colorful, varied) and ὀγκώδης (swollen, weighty), which have negative connotations in Plato’s Republic but are positive in Isocrates. See the discussion below. On the Antidosis as an attack on Plato’s definitions of philosophy, see also Nightingale (1995) 28-41.

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admit no rational, reflective capacity and can therefore serve no proper didactic purpose. Or worse, the diversity and variety of models is conducive to social and moral pandemonium, as is clear from his description of the democratic city (Republic 557c-561e). This is a city of freedom, changeable and diversified (557c), and lacking any absolute authority (557e). The democratic man, like his city, is ποικίλος (561e), having within himself the most models of constitutions and characters (παραδείγματα πολιτειῶν τε καὶ τρόπων πλεῖστα ἐν αὐτῷ ἔχοντα, 561e). Throughout his life in this city he is exposed to varied pleasures from various sources; he indulges from moment to moment (τότε μὲν......αὖθις δὲ.....τότε δ’ αὖ.....πολλάκις δὲ.....) in various and sundry activities without priorities, freely changing careers and occupations as he indulges his passion of the day (διαζῇ τὸ καθ’ ἡμέραν οὕτω χαριζόμενος τῇ προσπιπτούσῃ ἐπιθυμίᾳ, 561c). Students do not stand in awe of their teachers but liken themselves to (ἀπεικάζονται) and compete (διαμιλλῶνται, 563a) with them in words and deeds.2 Contrary to Plato’s pejorative treatment of a constitution and pedagogy that offers individuals a choice of models to imitate, Isocrates’ Against the Sophists lays out an educational regime based on rigorous and analytical assessment of models as a foundation for good speech and moral action. Moral choice, dependent as it is on correct discourse founded on deliberation, requires the availability of many models to the deliberator. The correct choice of a model is in itself proof of one’s commitment to justice and to truth, as Isocrates’ criticism of his rival educators shows. I want to clarify that I am not arguing that Isocrates is refuting or responding to any text of Plato’s, although that is certainly chronologically possible. For example, it is quite likely that he alludes to and dismisses as ridiculous the basic argument of the Protagoras in his Helen, a speech dated by some to about 390 and thus contemporaneous with Against the Sophists.3 Werner Jaeger, pointing out that Isocrates opened his school 2

3

Plato uses ἀπεικάζειν to mean ‘mould oneself after’, a virtual synonym of μιμεῖσθαι, at 396d. Another term used pejoratively in the same Republic passage (563a), εὐτραπελία (flexibility, dexterity) is used with approbation by Isocrates of Athens’ intellectual flexibility (Antidosis 296), which is conducive to the development of an orator. Plato sees flexibility as a characteristic of the young that the elders in a democracy inapproriately imitate (μιμούμενοι), when they properly should be figures of stability and authority. Helen is dated as late as 370 by others; Against the Sophists is dated anywhere from 393 to 384; see Too (1995) 152-156. The probable allusion to the Protagoras is in Helen 1, on which see Howland (1937) 151-153; Isocrates belittles the idea that all virtues are really one virtue and in the next chapter (2) champions δόξα over ἐπιστήμη.

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after Plato’s Protagoras and Gorgias were likely written, thinks it clear that Isocrates had them before him “as prospectuses” when he wrote Against the Sophists.4 Yet the dating of many of Plato’s dialogues is very uncertain; in particular, the Republic, in which Plato primarily develops his theory of mimesis, may have its roots as early as the 390s but may have reached its final form decades later.5 Arguments about who influenced whom in the writing of such texts seem inevitably circular, flowing to some extent from the scholar’s opinions of the relative authority of Plato or Isocrates. However, that the two were working on the same ideas is obvious, and that their schools were in competition is known; it is hard to imagine how they could have avoided responding to and provoking one other, even if the stages of the argument between them cannot be definitively traced in their writings. Yet Isocrates and Plato were not thinking in a vacuum. That Isocrates is not shaping his epistemology around Plato’s to the extent Haskins suggests emerges from a closer look at Against the Sophists. After a review of the use and structure of imitation in Isocrates’ program as described in Against the Sophists, I will take a look at the ethical value Isocrates invests in the selection of παραδείγματα, as well as in other formal decisions. Finally, I will argue that imitation so construed was not generated in response to Plato, nor was it an innovation, but has precedents in the Presocratic and sophistic tradition about the origin of civilization, a narrative which figures prominently in Isocrates’ presentation of his own principles. However, Isocrates’ foregrounding of the ethical dimension of imitation, and the implication that the purely formal does not exist, is Isocrates’ contribution and defines his approach to education.

Imitation in Against the Sophists and the Levels of Training In his promotional pamphlet Against the Sophists Isocrates advertises his pedagogical approach in part by criticizing rival teachers of deliberative oratory (πολιτικός λόγος).6 In particular, Isocrates explains that they 4 5 6

Jaeger (1945) 48-50, 55-56. See Szlezák (2007) 342-343 for a survey. See also Thesleff (1989) and Nails (1998) 393-395. Isocrates speaks in very general terms about his rivals, and so there has been much debate about which sophists they were. See Kennedy (1994) 43-46 for a summary. Isocrates’ attack on other teachers of political discourse occupies chapters 9-14; he attacks another nameless group in chapters 1-8 for being greedy and ignorant quibblers, and he attacks the writers of rhetorical hand-

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take an approach that, although suitable to the earliest stage of education, does not work at the advanced level at which such discourse is taught. Isocrates uses the simplicity of teaching the alphabet to emphasize the complexity of the teaching of discourse. These rival teachers claim that they can ‘transmit’ (παραδώσειν) the science of discourse the way one can transmit the alphabet (9).7 The alphabet is a fixed or prescribed art (τεταγμένη τέχνη) which is never altered and remains always the same (ἀκινήτως ἔχει καὶ μένει κατὰ ταὐτόν, 12), so that we all always (ἀεί) use the letters in the same way for the same purposes.8 The art of discourse is the opposite (τοὐναντίον). It is a ποιητικὸν πρᾶγμα, a poetic or creative process (12). This means that oratory cannot be any good unless it suits the occasion and is innovative (ἢν μὴ τῶν καιρῶν καὶ τοῦ πρεπόντως καὶ τοῦ καινῶς ἔχειν μετάσχωσιν, 12). What works for one speaker or situation will not work for the next, and the most successful speaker is the one who can discover a way to say something that nobody else has (μηδὲν δὲ τῶν αὐτῶν τοῖς ἄλλοις εὑρίσκειν δύνηται, 12). Isocrates repeats this contrast between fixed knowledge and the creative process of producing oratory when he breaks down his own rhetorical training (16-18). On the one hand, even at the advanced level there is a relatively straightforward body of knowledge about the elements out of which all discourses are composed, and these are not difficult to learn (τῶν μὲν ἰδεῶν......λαβεῖν τὴν ἐπιστήμην οὐκ εἶναι τῶν πάνυ χαλεπῶν, 16).9 As a teacher can ‘transmit’ the alphabet

7

8

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books in 19-20. Steidle (1952) 259 argues that such invective was typical for a new teacher attempting to establish his own program. As for the piece’s title, it is no help, since Isocrates considers himself a sophist (Antidosis 220, To Philip 29) and makes it clear throughout Against the Sophists and elsewhere that the application of the term was debatable (e.g. Antidosis 155, 215). He also defends the work of the majority of sophists (Antidosis 197-202, 155). Using the same verb, Plato’s Socrates denies that a wise man can transmit (παραδίδωσιν) virtue (Protagoras 320a) in the same way that a real τέχνη can be taught (319b-c). See also Gorgias 504e on the orator’s ‘breeding’ (ἐγγίγνηται) of virtues into the souls of his listeners. Barwick (1963) 46-48 suggests that the singular τέχνη in Isocrates denotes a theoretical sort of treatise on rhetoric, while the plural denotes collections of model discourses used for imitation. However, Too (1995) 164-169 argues persuasively that τεταγμένη τέχνη here refers to an art like the writing of the alphabet, which “in Antiquity involved copying authoritative paradigms”, although Isocrates does refer to written τέχναι in his attack on his predecessors at Against the Sophists 19. Following Blass (1892) 108-109, 119, I translate ἰδέαι as (rhetorical) ‘elements’ although its meaning is controversial. Hubbell (1913) 6-9 defines it as the thought elements or ideas which the orator has ready as part of his stock in

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(παραδώσειν, 9), so a student can learn this science of rhetorical forms by handing himself over (αὑτὸν παραδῷ) to good teachers. But the next stage requires much more of the pupil: τὸ δὲ τούτων [ἰδεῶν] ἐφ’ ἑκάστου τῶν πραγμάτων ἃς δεῖ προελέσθαι καὶ μῖξαι πρὸς ἀλλήλας καὶ τάξαι κατὰ τρόπον, ἔτι δὲ τῶν καιρῶν μὴ διαμαρτεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ἐνθυμήμασι πρεπόντως ὅλον τὸν λόγον καταποικῖλαι καὶ τοῖς ὀνόμασιν εὐρύθμως καὶ μουσικῶς εἰπεῖν, ταῦτα δὲ πολλῆς ἐπιμελείας δεῖσθαι καὶ ψυχῆς ἀνδρικῆς καὶ δοξαστικῆς ἔργον εἶναι, καὶ δεῖν τὸν μὲν μαθητὴν, πρὸς τῷ τὴν φύσιν ἔχειν οἵαν χρὴ, τὰ μὲν εἴδη τὰ τῶν λόγων μαθεῖν, περὶ δὲ τὰς χρήσεις αὐτῶν γυμνασθῆναι.

But to chose from these the necessary elements for each subject, to mix them with each other and to arrange them suitably, and then, not to mistake the circumstances, but to embellish the entire speech properly with thoughts and to speak the words rhythmically and musically, these things require much study and are the work of a brave and imaginative soul. In addition to having the requisite natural ability, the student must learn the elements of speeches and practice their uses. (Against the Sophists 16-17)10

At this stage, the student must learn to select the right elements for the occasion, their combination, and proper arrangement (προελέσθαι, μῖξαι, τάξαι κατὰ τρόπον, 16). He must learn how to satisfy the requirements of the occasion (ἔτι δὲ τῶν καιρῶν μὴ διαμαρτεῖν, 16). And he must learn how fittingly to embellish (καταποικῖλαι, 16) the entire speech with arguments or thoughts and to speak in phrasing that is rhythmic and musical (καὶ τοῖς ἐνθυμήμασι πρεπόντως ὅλον τὸν λόγον καταποικῖλαι καὶ τοῖς ὀνόμασιν εὐρύθμως καὶ μουσικῶς εἰπεῖν, 16). The manifold, compound and changeful nature of λόγος prevents it from being simply transmitted by the teacher to the pupil. Rather, the burden of learning shifts increasingly onto the shoulders of the student, requiring his effort as well as aptitude. He must work hard (πολλῆς

trade (see Isocrates, Ep. 6.8). Cole (1991) 126 would seem to come up with the same meaning, equivalent to topos. Schlatter (1972) 591-597 thinks ἰδέαι is more general than that, encompassing general education, facts, a “fund of knowledge” including subjects in which ἐπιστήμη is acquirable, such as grammar. These are all subjects which the study of rhetoric per se would not supply, and Schlatter sees it as crucial in understanding the meaning of ἰδέαι that the term covers subjects which can be taught precisely, and are not under the province of what is καιρός, which is learned at a more advanced stage. Papillion (1995) 150-152 and Poulakos (1997) 98 have both distinguished the same two levels in Isocratean training. 10 Translations are based on those of Mirhady and Too (2000) or Norlin and van Hook (1928-1945), with my own variations.

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ἐπιμελείας, 17) as well as possess a certain kind of mind— vigorous and able to form judgments (ψυχῆς ἀνδρικῆς καὶ δοξαστικῆς, 17).11 Likewise, the role of the teacher at this stage is re-defined. Some aspects of the art at this advanced stage can be taught (διδακτά) through precise explanation. But the rest, the unteachable things, must be modeled by the teacher himself: τὸν δὲ διδάσκαλον τὰ μὲν οὕτως ἀκριβῶς οἷόν τ’ εἶναι διελθεῖν ὥστε μηδὲν τῶν διδακτῶν παραλιπεῖν, περὶ δὲ τῶν λοιπῶν τοιοῦτον αὑτὸν παράδειγμα παρασχεῖν ὥστε τοὺς ἐκτυπωθέντας καὶ μιμήσασθαι δυναμένους εὐθὺς ἀνθηρότερον καὶ χαριέστερον τῶν ἄλλων φαίνεσθαι λέγοντας.

The teacher must go through these aspects as precisely as possible, so that nothing teachable is left out, but as for the rest, he must offer himself as a model, so that those who are molded by him and can imitate him will immediately appear more flowery and elegant than others as they speak. (Against the Sophists 17-18)

The teacher’s παράδειγμα will be imitated by the students – those who are able (τοὺς ... μιμήσασθαι δυναμένους) – after they have been shaped or molded (ἐκτυπωθέντας) by advanced technical instruction in those areas which are ‘teachable’.12 Isocrates asserts here, as he will also in the Antidosis, that a limited subset of the advanced students will be able to master the art of oratory.13 11 ψυχῆς ἀνδρικῆς καὶ δοξαστικῆς is the very phrase that many scholars believe Plato is parodying at Gorgias 463a, where he describes the orator as possessing “a bold and conjecturing soul” (ψυχῆς δὲ στοχαστιχῆς καὶ ἀνδρείας); see on this Too’s summary and excellent discussion (1995) 153-156. δοξαστική is opposed by Plato to ἐπιστήμων at Theaetetus 207c; likewise, the Stranger in the Sophist says the Sophist possesses δοξαστικὴν ἄρα τινὰ περὶ πάντων ἐπιστήμην...ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀλήθειαν (“a certain conjectural knowledge about everything ... but not the truth”, 233c). See Steidle (1952) 260 ff. and Poulakos (1997) 96. Isocrates makes the same distinction between the ‘epistemic’ and ‘doxastic’ stages of training in Antidosis (182-185), using much the same terminology: the teachers of philosophy explain minutely (διακριβώσαντες) all the elements (τὰς ἰδέας, 183) used in discourse; as the students advance, they “get closer in their judgments (ταῖς δόξαις) to the occasion (τῶν καιρῶν, 184)”. The student’s δόξα must take over where the teacher’s ἐπιστήμη leaves off, for precise, fixed knowledge of the various and future καιροί is not possible (τῷ

μὲν εἰδέναι περιλαβεῖν αὐτοὺς οὐχ οἷόν τ’ ἐστίν· ἐπὶ γὰρ ἁπάντων τῶν πραγμάτων διαφεύγουσι τὰς ἐπιστήμας, 184). 12 So also tamed bears imitate human skills (μιμουμένας τὰς ἡμετέρας ἐπιστήμας,

Antid. 214): the animals have been tamed in order that they may imitate. 13 Only some students will be able to master this advanced level and discern the outcomes of the various occasions (οἱ ... δυνάμενοι θεωρεῖν τὸ συμβαῖνον,

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To imitate the teacher-model at this level is clearly not as straightforward as the mimetic tracing of the alphabet in primary education, nor is it part of the more straightforward instruction in the rhetorical elements, where exact knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) is the aim.14 At that stage, the student reproduces the imitated object.15 On the other hand, imitation by the advanced student of the teacher’s paradigm must include the ability to become, like the teacher, an innovator; paradoxically, those able to imitate here (τοὺς ... μιμήσασθαι δυναμένους) are nor reproducing the model but are creating something different.16 Likewise, Isocrates holds up this innovative imitation as a standard for his students elsewhere. In To Nicocles Isocrates advises the young king on how to go about reforming institutions: if possible become an inventor of the best things (εὑρετὴς γίγνου τῶν βελτίστων), but if not, imitate what is done well in other countries (μιμοῦ τὰ παρὰ τοῖς ἄλλοις ὀρθῶς ἔχοντα). This involves research into the fairness, expediency and internal consistency of law codes, but keeping in mind also the needs and opinions of a particular citizenry: ζήτει νόμους τὸ μὲν σύμπαν δικαίους καὶ συμφέροντας καὶ σφίσιν αὐτοῖς ὁμολογουμένους, πρὸς δὲ τούτοις οἵτινες τὰς μὲν ἀμφισβητήσεις ὡς ἐλαχίστας, τὰς δὲ διαλύσεις ὡς οἷόν τε ταχίστας τοῖς πολίταις ποιοῦσιν·

Seek laws that are altogether just and expedient and consistent with each other and, moreover, those which cause the fewest possible controversies and bring about the speediest possible settlements for your citizens. (To Nicocles 17)

Antidosis 184). On Isocrates’ argument for rhetoric as an elite practice see Ober (1998) 264-268. 14 As he explains in Helen, anyone can invent (εὑρεῖν), learn and imitate (μιμήσασθαι) the fixed and simple models offered by certain rivals, which do not correspond to a complex and diverse reality but follow one set road (μία τις ὁδὸς); but Isocratean discourse, because of its complexity, its many ἰδέαι and many difficult-to-learn καιροί, is more difficult to invent and compose (11). 15 For a summary of mimesis used in teaching, see Koller (1954) 57-58. 16 Too (1995) 184-99 argues that the Isocratean theory of μίμησις is enacted here in the intentionally abrupt ending of the text right at the point where a promise is made to teach, thus providing a model that cannot be copied exactly. However, Too’s assertion that Isocrates’ conception of the teacher’s role and the role of paradigms was his uniquely or was fundamentally an innovation is questionable; rather, as I will argue, it is an inheritance from a Sophistic and Presocratic pedagogical tradition in which mimesis did not produce copies. In addition, in regard to Too’s assertion —made also by Eucken (1983) 32 and Cahn (1989) 137— that Against the Sophists is an intentional fragment, it seems uncharacteristic of Isocrates to prefer silence over a full explanation.

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Implicitly, Nicocles would import from such comparative study not a carbon copy of a foreign institution, but some kind of hybrid of the best of many, something new if not original. Nicocles is advised to collect information; to examine it for its merits in absolute and in relative terms; and to winnow and recombine. Imitation is here a step toward innovation, and requires research, analysis, and synthesis.17 Yet to some degree, although it requires an increasingly independent capacity to form judgments, the innovative aspect of the rhetorical art— the mixing, embellishing, and responding to various occasions— is teachable. Isocrates denies that it can be implanted, yet it has been explained, learned, and drilled within the advanced curriculum (Against the Sophists 17). So the teacher’s παράδειγμα must represent something besides his innovative power. Isocrates is vague about what aspects of oratory are not teachable. He calls them ‘the things left over’ (τὰ λοιπά) after the teacher has gone through, as precisely as possible, everything teachable. The unteachable is by definition difficult to explain.18 Yet, whatever these things are, the teacher provides a paradigm of them, and the most able students, in some sense, imitate them in order to complete and perfect their rhetorical training; they instantly seem, as Isocrates puts it, more flowery and elegant than others in their speaking (εὐθὺς ἀνθηρότερον καὶ χαριέστερον τῶν ἄλλων φαίνεσθαι λέγοντας, 18). The adverbs ἀνθηρότερον and χαριέστερον modifying the verb λέγοντας suggest that the unteachable is a stylistic capability or quality.19 17 Imitation and innovation are linked elsewhere: at Panathenaicus 202-10, where innovation is predicated on historical analysis. Isocrates argues against his proSpartan ex-student that the Spartans, illiterate as they are, could not have been the inventors of the best ways of life because inventors (εὑρεταί) are those whose literacy has empowered them to understand not only what has been accomplished in their own time but in other times as well (209), for a knowledge of the past prepares the mind to find solutions to present problems: τὰ

παραλελειμμένα τῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων καὶ τῶν τεχνῶν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων οὐχ οἱ τυχόντες εὑρίσκουσιν, ἀλλ’ οἱ τάς τε φύσεις διαφέροντες καὶ μαθεῖν πλεῖστα τῶν πρότερον εὑρημένων δυνηθέντες καὶ προσέχειν τὸν νοῦν τῷ ζητεῖν μᾶλλον τῶν ἄλλων ἐθελήσαντες (the things which have been over-

looked, whether in ways of living or in the arts or in all other activities, are not discovered by any and every one, but by men who have superior endowments and are both able to learn the most of what has been discovered before their time and willing more than all others to give their minds to search for what is new, 208). 18 Plato has Socrates call a thing (such as virtue) unteachable (οὐ διδακτόν) if it cannot be explained (Protagoras 319b-d). 19 The adjective ἀνθηρός is used of poets/poetry and of speech, e.g., at Euripides fr. 955g (Snell); Democritus Testimonia fr. 1, line 115; Plutarch 46. 683E2

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In fact, Isocrates sees style as the most difficult and demanding aspect of rhetoric. As we have seen, embellishment (καταποικῖλαι), an aspect of style, is a subject situated by Isocrates at the advanced level in his program. Moreover, he laments the absence of ποικιλία (ornamentation) from the works of his old age (To Philip 27, Panathenaicus 4) as his powers wane, while his grasp of the subject matter (ὑπόθεσις) endures intact. Thus it makes sense that the final polish on the training of an orator could include a full flowering and refinement of style, beyond that which is taught at the advanced level. Yet, at the same time, for Isocrates style is not a surface or superficial aspect of λόγος, but rather reflects the character of thought.20 For example, Isocrates says that the more substantial πολιτικός λόγος has a characteristically more poetic and more ornamented style (λέξει ποιητικωτέρᾳ καὶ ποικιλωτέρᾳ) than forensic oratory; it uses, at the same time, more serious arguments (ἐνθυμήμασιν ὀγκωδεστέροις), and those who have mastered it are wiser and better men (σοφωτέρους καὶ βελτίους, Antidosis 47). We saw that Isocrates teaches his advanced students to ‘embellish with thoughts’ (τοῖς ἐνθυμήμασι....καταποικῖλαι, Against the Sophists 16). Indeed, Plato likewise merges style and substance in the passage cited above, where he applies the adjective ποικίλος to character (τρόπος) and to the democratic type of constitution; he also has it describe a style.21 Thus the ‘more flowery and elegant’ way of speaking that the graduate of Isocrates’ school would acquire from imitating the teacher’s model should also entail an ethical dimension. And so it is consistent that, in Against the Sophists 21, Isocrates names justice, self-control, and reasonableness (δικαιοσύνη, σωφροσύνη, ἐπιείκεια) as not teachable (διδακτόν). No τέχνη can implant (ἐμποιήσειεν) such things in those with weak moral natures (τοῖς κακῶς πεφυκόσι πρὸς ἀρετήν). At the same time, Isocrates declares here that (where it is paired with ποικίλος). It often modifies surface appearance, as at Plutarch Pericles 1.3.2 (color); 4. 54E6-8 (paint); Euripides, IA 73 (beauty). χαρίεις likewise modifies Protagoras’ μῦθος, chosen over a reasoned λόγος at Plato, Protagoras 320c6 and a λόγων ποιητής at Isocrates Antidosis 192; the imitative εἶδος (form) of play at Sophist 234b1. The adverb χαριέντως describes graceful or elegant speech at Plato, Republic 331a and Isocrates, Philip 22; it describes speech which is elegant but not expert at Panathenaicus 37. In Isocrates, however, the substantive οἱ χαρίεντες, men of refinement, refers not merely to superficial qualities (To Nicocles 41, Ep. 4.2 and 4.9). 20 Poulakos (1997) 66-72, Haskins (2004) 31-56. 21 Rep. 557c-558c, 604c-605a, and 426a. See Haskins (2004) 44: “For Plato, a style rich in figurative language is congenial to multifaceted and shifty persons who form a motley, disorganized democratic polity”.

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his training in φιλοσοφία will be of use towards attaining ‘reasonableness’ perhaps even before rhetoric (πρὸς ἐπιείκειαν ἢ πρὸς ῥητορείαν); more than anything else, it helps to encourage and to train (συμπαρακελεύσασθαί γε καὶ συνασκῆσαι) moral qualities in students. Though unteachable, then, the proper ethical character must be one thing modeled by the teacher.22 And certainly the teacher must do so not only through his deeds but through his λόγοι.23

Truth, Justice and the Selection of Models Isocrates lists several reasons that the study of λόγος πολιτικός leads a student towards moral improvement,24 but the most interesting one for us is set forth at Antidosis 276-277, which describes the process of invention. After selecting topics (ὑποθέσεις) of significance and of benefit to the community, the speaker or writer of discourses will have to make other choices regarding their treatment: Ἔπειτα τῶν πράξεων τῶν συντεινουσῶν πρὸς τὴν ὑπόθεσιν ἐκλέξεται τὰς πρεπωδεστάτας καὶ μάλιστα συμφερούσας· ὁ δὲ τὰς τοιαύτας συνεθιζόμενος θεωρεῖν καὶ δοκιμάζειν οὐ μόνον περὶ τὸν ἐνεστῶτα 22 Isocrates repeats this point in similar language at Antidosis 274, where he denies that any τέχνη can produce virtue or justice in bad natures (τοῖς κακῶς πεφυκόσιν ἀρετὴν ἐνεργάσαιτ’ ἂν). This opposition between education and talent or nature (φύσις) is, of course, not unusual. Most often opposed to τὸ διδακτόν elsewhere in Greek thought is τὸ φυσικόν, and it is commonly debated whether such ethical qualities as courage are, or can be, taught or are innate. See, e.g., Xenophon Mem. 3.9.1 (ἡ ἀνδρεία πότερον εἴη διδακτὸν ἤ φυσικόν); Empedocles fr. 118.4 (... λέγειν ὅτι φυσικῶς καὶ ἀδιδάκτως τὸ ζῶιον φεύγει μὲν τὴν ἀλγηδόνα, διώκει δὲ τὴν ἡδονήν); Euripides, Hippolytus 79; Pindar Ol. 9.100 and Nem. 3.41. 23 While the virtues cannot be taught or implanted, they can and should be modeled by those in authority. See To Nicocles 31: “Let your own self-control (σωφροσύνην ) stand as a model (παράδειγμα) to others, recognizing that the behavior (ἦθος) of the whole city is modeled (ὁμοιοῦτα) on its rulers. Let it be a sign that you are ruling well if you see those being ruled becoming more prosperous (εὐπορωτέρους) and more self-controlled (σωφρονεστέρους) because of your supervision (ἐπιμέλειαν)”. See Pucci (2002b) 15-20 on the philosopher as the model of virtues that may or may not be teachable in Xenophon’s Apology of Socrates. 24 First, in the pursuit of praise and honor, the composer of a λόγος πολιτικός will inevitably choose honorable rather than petty subjects. And in order to be persuasive, he will try to establish a reputation for good character (277-278), so that his words will be consistent with his deeds.

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λόγον, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τὰς ἄλλας πράξεις τὴν αὐτὴν ἕξει ταύτην δύναμιν, ὥσθ’ ἅμα τὸ λέγειν εὖ καὶ τὸ φρονεῖν παραγενήσεται τοῖς φιλοσόφως καὶ φιλοτίμως πρὸς τοὺς λόγους διακειμένοις.

Then from the evidence relevant to his topic, he will select the most appropriate and advantageous. Someone who is accustomed to examine and evaluate such topics will have this same facility not only for the speech at hand but also for other affairs. As a result, those who are philosophical and ambitious in regard to discourse will both speak and think intelligently. (Antidosis 276-277)

The person who writes political discourses must have a knowledge of material suitable for evidence; he must also have an ethical sense in order to select (ἐκλέξεται) from this material what is most proper and fitting (πρεπωδεστάτας καὶ μάλιστα συμφερούσας) to use as examples. The habitual process of examining and testing these examples (τὰς τοιαύτας συνεθιζόμενος θεωρεῖν καὶ δοκιμάζειν) for suitability will develop the same ability (τὴν αὐτὴν δύναμιν) in other aspects of his life, not just in speaking and writing. Evidently the intellectual exertion of choosing and examining a paradigm directs the student towards appropriate moral action. Here we see that the mechanism behind the connection Isocrates draws between good speaking and good sense, between good speaking and good living is the ability—which Isocrates’ paideia develops— to select appropriate παραδείγματα for imitation. Models have power, in other words, because of the analytical process invested in selecting and studying them.25 Isocrates explains in Evagoras that the memorials of outstanding character that are preserved in discourse are of more value than those in statuary, both because they can be widely published but also because the virtues they praise are imitable. In somewhat paradoxical language, Isocrates claims that, for those who choose not to be lazy (τοῖς μὴ ῥᾳθυμεῖν αἱρουμένους), it is easy to imitate the characters and thoughts of other men preserved in speech (τοὺς δὲ τρόπους τοὺς ἀλλήλων καὶ τὰς διανοίας τὰς ἐν τοῖς λεγομένοις ἐνούσας ῥᾴδιόν ἐστι μιμεῖσθαι, 75). In other words, the models will not be simply copied but will need to be studied: Isocrates says that he is writing this λόγος in order to assemble the virtues (τὰς ἀρετὰς) of Evagoras, and having adorned them verbally, present them to his descendants for their examination (θεωρεῖν, 76) and study (συνδιατρίβειν, 76). This is why we exhort young men to study philosophy, he says: in order that they may wish to emulate those who are being eulogized (ἵνα ζηλοῦντες τοὺς εὐλογουμένους). 25 Steidle (1952) 261 n. 2 remarks on the term παράδειγμα as belonging to a vocabulary of empirical ethics.

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Nicocles and Evagoras’ other descendants ought to take him and other ancestors as their models (παραδείγμασι χρώμενος, 77). The incompetent selection and use of models is one of Isocrates’ most serious charges against his rivals. The criticism he makes of his rival teachers in Against the Sophists, discussed above, is fundamentally for selecting the inappropriate παράδειγμα: they use as a model for their method the teaching of a fixed τέχνη such as writing the alphabet, when the art of rhetoric, a poetic subject, requires a different approach (12). He repeats the charge after he explains the difference between the two subjects, asserting that those who use such paradigms (οἱ χρώμενοι τοῖς τοιούτοις παραδείγμασι, 13) ought to pay their students rather than charge tuition, since they are clearly unqualified to teach. This incompetence opens them up to charges of boasting (οἱ τολμῶντες ἀλαζονεύεσθαι, 10), and of untruthfulness (τῆς μὲν ἀληθείας οὐδὲν φροντίζουσιν, 9) in their hyperbolic claims (τὰς ὑπερβολὰς τῶν ἐπαγγελμάτων, 10) to teach. Near the beginning of the Panathenaicus, which he composed near the end of his life, Isocrates says he has long waged war against those rival teachers whom he regards as imposters (τοῖς ἀλαζονευομένοις, 20). Some of them seek to imitate him (μιμεῖσθαι γλιχομένων τινὲς, 16) and yet abuse his λόγοι, misreading them as badly as possible (παραγιγνώσκοντες ὡς δυνατὸν κάκιστα), analyzing them incorrectly (διαιροῦντες οὐκ ὀρθῶς), and ripping them to pieces (κατακνίζοντες, 17). These imitators, then, are also critics who do not produce a carbon copy of their model— although Isocrates does not think much of their analytical abilities. And not only do these teachers make their living using Isocrates’ discourses as παραδείγματα for their students, but they have not produced enough of their own work to be able to set their own examples before their students. In fact, their work is entirely derivative; besides imitating (and distorting) Isocrates, they show off by chanting the verses of Homer and Hesiod and repeating from memory the best commentary of past scholars; they have nothing new to say (19).26 The fraudulent teacher’s misuse of examples is also evoked in a nonpedagogical context by way of a comparison later in the Panathenaicus. Isocrates explains that certain Athenian generals had mistreated those in their power because they took as their model for this conduct the customary violence of the Spartans when they held power. The generals believed that if they imitated the deeds of the Spartans (ἢν μιμήσωνται 26 See Pucci (1977) 9-16, 26-27 on imitation that produces a distortion and (96101) involves interpretation.

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τὰς Σπαρτιατῶν πράξεις, 100) they would be more successful in keeping control. Isocrates concludes that the Spartans are therefore culpable as the teachers of such acts, whereas the Athenians should be forgiven, as students defrauded by the false claims of their teachers (ὥσπερ τῶν μαθητῶν τοῖς ὑπὸ τῶν ὑπισχνουμένων ἐξηπατημένοις, 101). Isocrates attacks as unethical the sloppy and unjustified choice of models elsewhere in his oratory, outside of strictly pedagogical contexts. For example, in Peace, Isocrates is critical of those orators who, with the admonition to imitate the ancestors (ὡς χρὴ τοὺς προγόνους μιμεῖσθαι, 36), urge a continuation of the Social War against Athens’ former allies. Isocrates would like to know, which ancestors? Those who fought the Persian Wars, or those who governed towards the end of the Peloponnesian War? To imitate the latter would be self-destructive, considering the dire consequences for Athens of that war (37). But for such orators to urge the imitation of the generation of Marathon would be most shameless (ἀναισχυντότατοι, 38) since the war they champion is a war waged against fellow Hellenes rather than on their behalf, and using mercenaries rather than citizen forces (38, 42-47). For Isocrates the example of the ancestors is not a simple ideal or formula; the ‘ancestors’ provide various models, which must be examined and selected in light of the circumstances of the particular time and in light of various outcomes. The incompetent orators who misuse the model of the ancestors are able only to cheat or lie (φενακίζειν δυναμένων, 36), whereas Isocrates’ correction of them is the truth (ταῖς ἀληθείαις, 38). This truthful discourse is beneficial rather than agreeable to the audience (39), a drug (φάρμακον, 39) to heal their ignorant minds.27 By contrast, Isocrates several times explicitly demonstrates the just use of models, using the adverb δικαίως. Having criticized the arguments some orators have made against mounting a Panhellenic expedition against Persia (Panegyricus 138-139), he offers his own παραδείγματα (140-149). Isocrates uses these examples, he asserts, justly (δικαίως χρῶμαι τοῖς παραδείγμασιν, 143). At Panathenaicus 222-228, Isocrates argues that people who wish correctly to assess (ὀρθῶς δοκιμάζειν) a potential object of praise and model for imitation must take the time to examine it in detail (θεωρεῖν ἀκριβῶς). This is because nothing is in itself laudable, only its correct use at the correct time. Therefore one could not justly (δικαίως) praise the Spartans for their concord (ὁμόνοιαν) among themselves, nor should one take them 27 For good advice as a φάρμακον to cure ignorance, cf. Plato, Politicus 310a and Charmides 157a. On the φάρμακον and rhetoric in general, see de Romilly (1975).

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as a model and imitate them (οὐ χρὴ μιμεῖσθαι), because through this concord they have caused so many injustices to others. While the incompetent teacher or orator tricks his students or audience with his unjust examples, Isocrates’ oratory models justice not only through its just employment of παραδείγματα but generally in its just approach to its topics and arguments. Indeed, Isocrates several times claims that he uses his oratory justly (δικαίως), whereas he criticizes other orators for using their oratory unjustly. At the conclusion of Antidosis he reviews his arguments and concludes that he has piously and justly (ὁσίως καὶ δικαίως, 321) used his λόγοι throughout. Isocrates judges his treatment of Athens in the Panathenaicus to have been done beautifully and justly (καλῶς γὰρ καὶ δικαίως, 231).28 In the Areopagiticus, he maintains that he has in his λόγοι praised democracies justly and reasonably (δικαίως καὶ λόγον ἐχόντως, 60). Indeed, before he launches into his praise of Athens in the Panathenaicus, Isocrates explains that those who wish to praise any state accurately and justly (ἀκριβῶς καὶ δικαίως) must set it side by side with another and make a thorough comparison: ἡγοῦμαι δὲ χρῆναι τοὺς βουλομένους ἐγκωμιάσαι τινὰ τῶν πόλεων ἀκριβῶς καὶ δικαίως μὴ μόνον περὶ αὐτῆς ποιεῖσθαι τοὺς λόγους ἧς προῃρημένοι τυγχάνουσιν, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ τὴν πορφύραν καὶ τὸν χρυσὸν θεωροῦμεν καὶ δοκιμάζομεν ἕτερα παραδεικνύοντες τῶν καὶ τὴν ὄψιν ὁμοίαν ἐχόντων καὶ τῆς τιμῆς τῆς αὐτῆς ἀξιουμένων, οὕτω καὶ ταῖς πόλεσι παριστάναι μὴ τὰς μικρὰς ταῖς μεγάλαις, μηδὲ τὰς πάντα τὸν χρόνον ὑφ’ ἑτέραις οὔσας ταῖς ἄρχειν εἰθισμέναις, μηδὲ τὰς σῴζεσθαι δεομένας πρὸς τὰς σῴζειν δυναμένας, ἀλλὰ τὰς παραπλησίαν καὶ τὴν δύναμιν ἐχούσας καὶ περὶ τὰς αὐτὰς πράξεις γεγενημένας καὶ ταῖς ἐξουσίαις ὁμοίαις κεχρημένας· οὕτω γὰρ ἂν μάλιστα τῆς ἀληθείας τύχοιεν.

But I think that those who wish to be exact and just in praising any given state ought not to confine themselves alone to the state which they single out, but even as we examine purple and gold and test them by placing them side by side with articles of similar appearance and of the same estimated value, so also in the case of states one should compare, not those which are small with those which are great, nor those which are always subject to others with those which are wont to dominate others, nor those which stand in need of succor with those which are able to give it, but rather those which have similar powers, and have engaged in the same 28 But not so his blame of Sparta, which he reconsiders and deems to have been done immoderately (οὐ μετρίως), contemptuously (ὀλιγώρως), too bitterly (λίαν πικρῶς), and unintelligently (ἀνοήτως, 232). On this passage, see the discussion of σωφροσύνη below.

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deeds and enjoyed a like freedom of action. For thus one may best arrive at the truth. (Panathenaicus 39-40)

Here we see the same verbs (δοκιμάζω, θεωρέω) used at Antidosis 277 of the assessment of examples to be used in an argument.29 The comparison, an ‘exhibiting side-by-side’ — παραδεικνύοντες, the verbal form of παράδειγμα— will require an analytical examination of each of the terms of the comparison which, to be just, must be chosen for their similarity. Moreover, such a careful and just analysis is the most likely path to the truth. While Isocrates claims to use his oratory justly, there are those who use theirs unjustly (μὴ δικαίως τοῖς λόγοις χρωμένων, Helen 7), or who deceive with their speech and use it unjustly (τοῖς λόγοις ἐξαπατώντων καὶ μὴ δικαίως χρωμένων αὐτοῖς, Nicocles 2). And as in the passage discussed above, where Isocrates denies that an orator could justly praise the Spartans as a model of concord (Panathenaicus 226), the adverb δικαίως commonly modifies verbs of praise and blame in Isocrates, as well as verbs of judging and claiming, which introduce or conclude arguments. For example, in the Antidosis, Isocrates commences his refutation of a critic’s argument against him by asserting that this argument could not justly damage him (οὐδ’ ἐκεῖνος ὁ λόγος δικαίως ἄν με βλάψειεν, 98). In the Areopagiticus, he denies that anyone could justly praise the mildness of the Thirty Tyrants over that of the democracy (οὐδὲ τὴν πραότητα δικαίως ἄν τις ἐπαινέσειε τὴν ἐκείνων μᾶλλον ἢ τὴν τοῦ δήμου, 67). In the Panegyricus, Isocrates states that the founders of panegyric festivals are justly praised (τῶν τοίνυν τὰς πανηγύρεις καταστησάντων δικαίως ἐπαινουμένων, 43) for having handed down such a unifying custom. Isocrates has Nicocles, in his praise of monarchy, assert that we might justly judge it to be a milder form of government than democracy (πραοτέραν ... δικαίως ἂν αὐτὴν εἶναι κρίνοιμεν) since it is easier to give heed to one person than to please many and diverse people (Nicocles 16). Isocrates ponders what strategy to take in defending his reputation at Panathenaicus 22-23: Should he counter the lies being spread by his enemies in the profession, or should he dismiss them as not worth the effort and instead attempt to counter the ill-will within the lay-public, to teach them that they hold this opinion neither justly nor fittingly (διδὰσκειν αὐτοὺς ὡς οὐ δικαίως οὐδὲ προσηκόντως περί μου ταύτην ἔχουσι τὴν γνώμην;)?30 29 See pp. 388-390, above. 30 There are many more examples of δικαίως with verbs of praise, blame, judgment, e.g., Busiris 34 and 44, Antidosis 75, 121, Panathenaicus 112, 115, 215, 261, Nicocles 11.

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Another unteachable virtue that Isocrates’ paideia cultivates in its students, ἐπιείκεια, ‘reasonableness’ or ‘suitability’, is relevant to rhetorical strategy, as the related rhetorical term τὸ εἰκός suggests.31 It is a virtue linked to a sense of the right moment, place, or measure (ὁ καιρός).32 An ἐπιεικές speech or argument is one that measures up to the moment or is delivered at the right moment (Antidosis 310, 176; Ep. 6.5), since ἐπιείκεια is proven through the exercise of judgment (δόξα). Through rhetorical study one learns to form suitable judgments in the present moment (νῦν) about the future (δοξάζειν περὶ τῶν μελλόντων ἐπιεικῶς, Ep. 5.4). Isocrates’ paideia avoids the useless and false subjects contrived by other teachers, instead pursuing the truth and training students in the practical affairs of government, for suitable judgment about useful things (περὶ τῶν χρησίμων ἐπιεικῶς δοξάζειν) is more powerful than exact knowledge about useless things (περὶ τῶν ἀχρήστων ἀκριβῶς ἐπίστασθαι, Helen 4-5). Men who are ἐπιεικεῖς do not remain fixed in past judgments (δόξαι) formed unjustly, but in their quest for truth are open to being persuaded by those who argue for justice (Antidosis, 170).33 The judgments of some people are ἐπιεικεῖς and able to conjecture about what is needed (στοχάζεσθαι τοῦ δέοντος δυναμένας, Peace, 28). Not only is ἐπιείκεια modeled through the selection of suitable approaches to rhetorical topics, but it is demonstrated by the proper behavior and judgment of those trained in rhetoric.34 The unteachable virtue σωφροσύνη is used of restraint in decisions about the construction or tone of a λόγος; in particular, a speaker demonstrates σωφροσύνη when he selects words so as to show consideration for the intended audience. For example, Isocrates believes that his different versions of the Adrastus story (Panegyricus 54 ff. and Panathenaicus 168 ff.) will be understood by anyone who is not unschooled or envious as showing self-restraint (σωφρονεῖν, Panathenaicus 172); this is probably a reference to the more favorable treatment of 31 On τὸ εἰκός see Aristotle, Rhetoric 1357a34, 1376a17-23; Plato Phaedrus 267a and 273b3 –c5; Usher (1990) 156 and Steidle (1952) 261 n. 2 and 270-271. 32 See Untersteiner (1954) 176-178, who discusses Gorgias DK 82 B6 and the contrast therein between τὸ πρᾶον ἐπιεικές (kind fittingness) and τοῦ αὐθάδους δικαίου (arrogant positive right); τὸ πρᾶον ἐπιεικές is related to καιρός and has as its object τὸ δέον ἐν τῶι δέοντι (the right thing at the right moment). On καιρός, see also Wersdörfer (1940) 54-83. 33 Likewise see Areopagiticus 68-69; but at Areopagiticus 33 Isocrates praises the judges of early Athens for not indulging their sense of ἐπιείκεια, instead of observing the laws (νόμοι). See also Aristotle, Rhetoric 1374a12-b21 and EN 1137b18 ff. 34 On Isocrates’ expansion of the stylistic term τὸ πρέπον (appropriateness) to ethics, see Usher (1990) 7.

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Thebes in the Panathenaicus, composed at a time when Athens was attempting to improve relations with Thebes.35 A complicated exchange late in the Panathenaicus seems to revolve around the rhetorical expression of σωφροσύνη. Isocrates explains that it is only because he was forced by another ethical constraint that he did not follow the common practice of most orators—a practice he describes as showing restraint (σωφρονεῖν)— and conclude this λόγος at this particular moment, after a presentation of great and memorable deeds (Panathenaicus 199). Rather, the false assertion of one of his former students, whom he had asked to critique what he had written to this point, made it shameful (αἰσχρόν) for him as the teacher not to respond. The student, known to be sympathetic to Sparta, has corrected Isocrates’ comparison between Athens and Sparta, asserting that the Spartans ought justly (δικαίως) to be praised as the discoverers and teachers of the best ways of life to the rest of the world (202). Isocrates then scolds the former student for his lack of regard for his audience and shame at uttering a lying and impious speech (μηδὲν φροντίζει τῶν παρόντων, μηδ’ αἰσχύνεται λόγον εἰρηκὼς ἀσεβῆ καὶ ψευδῆ), one full of many contradictions (πολλῶν ἐναντιώσεων μεστόν, 203). When the former student scales back his praise of the Spartans, Isocrates approves of this defense made with more self-restraint and without the earlier excessive frankness (ἀπολελογημένον σωφρονέστερον ἢ τότε παρρησιασάμενον, 218). A gesture toward the goodwill of the audience, then, which might well be called flattery,36 Isocrates recasts as an educated (οὐκ ἀπαιδεύτως) tact constraining one’s own particular feelings. This is also suggested by the way the former student, the panegyrist of the Spartans, ultimately characterizes Isocrates’ treatment of the Athenians and Spartans. The speech, he concludes after further reflection, was a test of Isocrates’ former students to see if they remembered what they had been taught about how a speech was put together (ὃν τρόπον ὁ λόγος τυγχάνει γεγραμμένος) and were able to grasp that Isocrates was showing self-restraint (σωφρονῶν) in choosing to praise Athens in order to win over the audience (237).37 Outside of its expression through the λόγοι themselves, σωφροσύνη is a virtue of the pupils who study philosophy under Isocrates (Antidosis 229, 290), even if it cannot be taught (274). In fact, the unteachable σωφροσύνη explicitly can be learned from models, as the passage at To Nicocles 31, discussed above, makes clear (cf. also Areopagiticus 20). And Isocrates has Nicocles argue (Nicocles, 46-47) that 35 See Norlin and van Hook (1928-1945) ad 173. 36 As Plato has Socrates do at Gorgias 463a. 37 For a fuller discussion of this complex passage, see Too (1995) 68-73. See also Ober (1998) 364.

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σωφροσύνη that comes from a rational decision (μετὰ λογισμοῦ) is more abiding than that which comes naturally (φύσει). This suggests that while σωφροσύνη cannot be taught, it can be self-taught. Inasmuch as his λόγοι model how to select paradigms justly, formulate judgments fittingly, and express his opinions with self-restraint, Isocrates offers a paradigm of the unteachable virtues to his students. And he makes this explicit at Panathenaicus 30-31, where he asserts that the educated person’s ability to select examples justly and in other ways to construct a good λόγος carries over to his management of his life. Not only must he use his good judgment in responding to day-to-day circumstances, the way he would in constructing a speech, but his social interactions should likewise be carried out fittingly and justly (πρεπόντως καὶ δικαίως). In fact, Isocrates explicitly denies here—just as he does in Against the Sophists— that mastery of the teachable material, the skills and exact knowledge, makes a person educated, but rather this ethical social behavior, patterned though it is on rhetorical criteria.38 And elsewhere, Isocrates states that just as, in discourse, one must chose the elements (ἴδεαι) which are appropriate to an overarching goal (τέλος), so an intelligent life requires deliberation about purposes and choices (λογίσησθε καὶ βουλεύσησθε ... τίνα βίον προελέσθαι) before actions can be taken. Life requires the same φιλοσοφία, the same search for the expedient (τοῦ συμφέροντος), as λόγος (Ep. 6.8-10). Isocrates’ emphasis on analysis of options, in life as well as in constructing a speech, as a basis for moral action, defines the orientation of his pedagogy. From the founding of his school, Isocrates’ pedagogy, although dedicated to deliberation, relied on μίμησις as a means of acquiring and training as well as employing deliberative power, at the advanced as well as elementary level. And for Isocrates, imitation is essential to virtuous behavior. Plato’s ridicule of a democratic city’s and individual’s cultivation of many models as mindless, lazy and immoral could be his take on Isocratean imitation as expressed in Against the Sophists and demonstrated throughout his oratory. But is this version of mimesis originally Isocratean?

38 Whom do I call educated (πεπαιδευμένους), since I exclude the arts (τέχνας) and sciences (ἐπιστήμας) and specialties (δυνάμεις)? First, those who manage well the circumstances which they encounter day by day (πράγμασι τοῖς κατὰ τὴν ἡμέραν ἑκάστην προσπίπτουσι), and who possess a judgment (τὴν δόξαν) which is accurate in meeting occasions (καιρῶν) as they arise and rarely misses the expedient course of action (στοχάζεσθαι τοῦ συμφέροντος); next, those who are decent and honorable in their dealings (τοὺς πρεπόντως καὶ δικαίως ὁμιλοῦντας) with all their associates ... (Panathenaicus 30-31)

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Democritus’ Paradigm That Isocrates and Plato were engaged in a hostile exchange over pedagogical approaches and that Isocrates’ Antidosis reveals traces of it, as Haskins argues, seems clear; yet my examination of Against the Sophists reveals that the epistemological foundation for this conflict and its terminology were in place earlier in Isocrates’ career, when he first advertised his program. I would like to conclude by suggesting that the origin for Isocrates’ epistemological terminology may not lie in his rivalry with Plato but with his own tradition, an inheritance from the sophists and Presocratics.39 The variety of mimesis in which a model is not so much copied as taken as an inspiration for something analogous but different is paralleled in Democritus. And Isocrates’ conception that this sort of innovative mimesis is the product of a particularly able and dexterous mind rather than within the capacity of all men may well be grounded in Democritus. More generally, Democritean epistemology is a clear antecedent to Isocrates.40 Democritus not only conceives of ethical education as mimetic,41 but in two of his Kulturgeschichte fragments he also assigns to imitation a central role in man’s technological advances. In B154 men are pupils of the animals in the ‘greatest things’ such as weaving and mending, build39 Barney (2006) 77-81 argues that it is misleading to apply labels so as to separate the thought of sophists from Presocratics (such as Democritus) of the period, or from Socrates and Plato, for that matter. More evidence comes from Isocrates himself, who applies the term ‘sophist’ to Zeno (Helen 3), Melissus (Helen 3, Antidosis 268), Empedocles and Parmenides (Antidosis 268), Anaxagoras (Antidosis 235, 268), and also to Plato and the Academy (Helen 1, To Philip 12). Socrates is called a sophist by Aeschines (Against Timarchus 173) and, of course, by Aristophanes in Clouds. See also de Romilly (1992) 168-177 on Democritus and sophistic ideas. Ancient testimony links Protagoras to Democritus as pupil and teacher, and Protagoras to Isocrates as teacher and pupil (DK 80A1 and A2) on which see Untersteiner (1954) 2, 7, 56, 71. 40 De Romilly (1992) turns repeatedly to Isocrates as the heir (and critic) of the sophistic tradition, to which she also closely attaches Democritus; see, e.g., 5256, 71-73. I am also heavily indebted to Cole (1967), who cites and discusses Isocrates as an inheritor of and evidence for one strain within the anthropological tradition of Democritus. On Democritus’ anthropology, see also Havelock (1957) 115-124; Farrar (1988) 242-245; Kleingünther (1933) 107-109. 41 B39 ἀγαθὸν ἢ εἶναι χρεὼν ἢ μιμεῖσθαι (One must either be good or imitate someone who is good); B79 χαλεπὸν μιμεῖσθαι μὲν τοὺς κακούς, μηδὲ ἐθέλειν δὲ τοὺς ἀγαθούς (It is bad to imitate the wicked, and not even to want to imitate the good). See Vlastos (1975) 390-399 on the Democritean concept of the soul making for itself a noble pattern to imitate (DKB 189, B235), and of the hard work involved (B241, B182).

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ing, and in singing; as pupils, they have imitated (κατὰ μίμησιν) the animals in order to learn these skills.42 Yet human houses are not exact copies of a swallow’s nest; clearly these humans have adapted their models to their own specific needs and circumstances, so that the resulting τέχναι, though imitations, are also innovations. Moreover, these animal models or teachers are not actively teaching their pupils; there is a certain incongruity in the teacher-pupil image applied to this animalhuman relationship.43 These students have selected their models and endowed them with their power; they are the students’ solutions to problems (being cold, unsheltered) or to satisfying other needs (pleasure) because the students figured out that they could use them as such, applying the animals’ technologies by analogy to their own benefit. In A151 Democritus conjectures that the mule was not a product of nature (φύσεως ποίημα) but a contrivance of human inventiveness and venturesomeness (ἐπινοίας ἀνθρωπίνης καὶ τόλμης... ἐπιτέχνημα τοῦτο) and a ‘thing stolen’ (καὶ κλέμμα). Men, ‘becoming students’ (μαθητὰς δὲ ἀνθρώπους τῆς βίας ταύτης γεγενημένους) of ‘this violence’ (τῆς βίας ταύτης , i.e., the rape of a mare by an ass), advanced to the practice of breeding them (προελθεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν τῆς γονῆς αὐτῶν συνήθειαν).44 Here an imitative act, a copy or theft (κλέμμα) of something observed in nature, is also an invention; these pupils do not so much look up to the authority of their model but appropriate it with 42 DKB154 γελοῖοι δ’ ἴσως ἐσμὲν ἐπὶ τῶι μανθάνειν τὰ ζῶια σεμνύνοντες, ὧν ὁ

Δ. ἀποφαίνει μαθητὰς ἐν τοῖς μεγίστοις γεγονότας ἡμᾶς· ἀράχνης ἐν ὑφαντικῆι καὶ ἀκεστικῆι, χελιδόνος ἐν οἰκοδομίαι, καὶ τῶν λιγυρῶν, κύκνου καὶ ἀηδόνος, ἐν ὠιδῆι κατὰ μίμησιν. Perhaps we are ridiculous to make a big

deal out of animals learning, when Democritus shows that in the greatest things we are the pupils of them, of the spider in spinning and mending, of the swallow in the construction of houses, and of the songbirds, the swan and the nightingale in singing, through imitation. (This translation is based on Taylor [1999] 147). 43 Aristotle may be correcting Democritus B154 when, at Historia Animalium 9.612B18-21, he asserts that birds imitated human houses when they built their nests. See Cole (1967) 53 n. 18. 44 DK A151 λέγει Δ........ μὴ γὰρ εἶναι φύσεως ποίημα τὴν ἡμίονον, ἀλλὰ

ἐπινοίας ἀνθρωπίνης καὶ τόλμης ὡς ἂν εἴποις μοιχιδίου ἐπιτέχνημα τοῦτο καὶ κλέμμα. δοκεῖ δέ μοι, ἦ δ’ ὅς, ὄνου ἵππον βιασαμένου κατὰ τύχην κυῆσαι, μαθητὰς δὲ ἀνθρώπους τῆς βίας ταύτης γεγενημένους εἶτα μέντοι προελθεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν τῆς γονῆς αὐτῶν συνήθειαν. Democritus says ... For the mule is not a

product of nature, but a crafty contrivance of human ingenuity and daring and, you might say, of sexual violence. It seems to me, he says, that a mare once happened to give birth after having been raped by an ass, and men, becoming students of/ getting the idea from this violent act advanced/went on to develop this kind of breeding. (This translation is based on Taylor 1999, 131).

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aggressive boldness (τόλμης). Moreover, the mating is by chance (κατὰ τύχην), but so is the witnessing of it by men; yet this opportunity is recognized and exploited by human rational powers and through specifically the power of imitation. These two fragments contain several central features of Isocratean imitation at the advanced level. As in B254, Isocratean students are not taught by their teacher-παράδειγμα, they do not have implanted in them a fixed knowledge. Through imitation, however, they can still learn what their teacher knows how to do but cannot teach. As with these human pupils of animal builders, weavers, and singers, Isocrates’ advanced students of political discourse will be thinking analogically, deriving suggestions for addressing their own circumstances from their models. As in A151, Isocrates’ students will, in selecting their models, be recognizing an opportunity (καιρός); they will analyze its components in order to determine how to make it serve their purposes.45 Cole argues that one fragment of Democritus (DK B30) as well as other sources that drew upon him conceive of technical innovation or progress in general as originating with a small group of men, who then teach their innovations to the population at large. In fact, Democritus seems to say that, for a particular new idea, a small subset of the elite group of men endowed with skill in λόγος (τῶν λογίων ἀνθρώπων ὀλίγοι) would have been responsible.46 As Cole notes, Isocrates likewise credits an elite group, not all human beings, with having advanced human culture over time. Although Cole believes this version of the Kulturgeschichte narrative was also developed by earlier sophists, he identifies Isocrates’ use of this version as the first documented instance.47 In Isocrates’ Kulturgeschichte narrative, progress was incremental and a communal effort (κατὰ μικρὸν αὐτοὶ συνεπορίσαντο), but it was the people most naturally suited to τέχναι (πρός τὰς τέχνας εὐφυεστάτους, Panegyricus 32-33) who actually invented our current way of life or had 45 The parallels only go so far, of course. The subject matter modeled by the animals in B254 would be quite teachable, if the animals could systematize and explain their τέχναι as ἐπιστήμαι. However, from the perspective of the human ‘students’ at the time before these technologies were known or defined, they could not be taught. 46 DK B30 τῶν λογίων ἀνθρώπων ὀλίγοι ἀνατείναντες τὰς χεῖρας ἐνταῦθα, ὃν νῦν ἠέρα καλέομεν οἱ Ἕλληνες· ‘πάντα, , Ζεὺς μυθέεται (?) καὶ πάνθ’ οὗτος οἶδε καὶ διδοῖ καὶ ἀφαιρέεται καὶ βασιλεὺς οὗτος τῶν πάντων’. ‘A few learned people, raising their hands towards what we Greeks now call the air, said‚ Zeus thinks of all things and he knows all things and gives and takes away, and he is king of all things’. (This translation is Taylor’s [1999] 9). See Cole (1967) 56-58. 47 Cole (1967) 6-7.

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it bestowed upon them by the gods. Elsewhere, in the tradition of Democritus’ λόγιοι ἄνθρωποι, Isocrates makes λόγος itself the Kulturbringer: λόγος has ennabled communal and cooperative behavior, but has also been the ἡγεμών (leader) that showed the way towards hierarchical institutions and hierarchizing practices of civilized society such as teaching and judging.48 Not surprisingly, Isocrates cites the central role of λόγος in the development of civilization as an argument in defense of his own profession.49 Moreover, as it is for Democritus, μίμησις is for Isocrates a critical link in the chain of innovation that resulted in civilization inasmuch as it is the mechanism for the spread of culture. In the days before other Greeks had laws and cities, Athens made herself a model (αὑτὴν παράδειγμα ποιήσασα, Panegyricus 39) by establishing laws and constitutions for them. She was the innovator, the discoverer, of many arts (τῶν τεχνῶν ... τὰς μὲν εὑροῦσα), but those she did not discover, she examined (τὰς δὲ δοκιμάσασα)—implicitly, she selected and imitated these— and taught them to others. Athens invented the idea of sending out colonies to redress a land shortage, which other Greeks later imitated (36). Athens did this social, cultural and technical innovating (and imitating) in response to circumstances: social disorder and deprivation (34-37), lawlessness amd violence (39-40), the human need for basic necessities of life as well as pleasure (40).50 The Democritean evidence thus provides a precedent not just for the innovative and analytical nature of Isocrates’ advanced μίμησις in rhetorical training, but also for its limitation to an elite group of able and thus advanced students (τοὺς ἐκτυπωθέντας καὶ μιμήσασθαι δυναμένους, Against the Sophists, 18). Isocrates asserts that ordinary men never have a share in beautiful and skilful speech (τῶν δὲ λόγων τῶν καλῶς καὶ τεχνικῶς ἐχόντων οὐ μετὸν τοῖς φαύλοις, Panegyricus 48), which is the most trustworthy sign of education (σύμβολον τῆς παιδεύσεως ... πιστότατον, 49). Everyone wishes they could have this 48 See Antidosis 253-257 and Nicocles 5-9; λόγος as the ἡγεμών: Nicocles 9. The ability to persuade and to make clear what we desire through words has enabled men to live together, found cities, make laws and invent the arts; λόγος has in fact contributed to every good thing man has devised. λόγος has provided the means for morality, because it is with language that justice and honor (and their opposites) are established and that good and bad are praised and blamed (Nicocles 7, Antidosis 255). λόγος makes it possible to teach the ignorant (τοὺς τ’ ἀνοήτους παιδεύομεν) and assess the wise (τοὺς φρονίμους δοκιμάζομεν, Nicocles 7, Antidosis 255). Philosophy plays the same role at Panegyricus 47. 49 Nicocles 9, Antidosis 257. 50 See also Panathenaicus 119-148.

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ability and they envy those who do (πάντες μὲν ἐπιθυμοῦσι, τοῖς δ’ ἐπισταμένοις φθονοῦσι, 48). While many people are up to lawmaking (μυρίοι ... ἱκανοί, Antidosis 80), not many can discourse worthily regarding public affairs (οὐκ ἂν πολλοὶ δυνηθεῖεν, 80). This is why the rare few (σπανιώτεροι) who have the minds to invent such speeches (τοιούτους λόγους εὑρίσκειν) ought to be held in esteem (81).51 Isocrates measures the difficulty of skilful speaking as opposed to lawmaking by the degree of innovation required: lawmakers may be praised for collecting the oldest laws and inventing nothing new, but those who compose speeches cannot merely copy what has already been said but must be able to do the more difficult task of seeking for and inventing new things (καινά, 83).

Conclusion Haskins fills in a compelling picture of Isocrates’ interraction with Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s school. I am attempting to insert other figures, whose influence on Isocrates can be discerned, into the picture. Against the Sophists uses vocabulary charged with meaning for Plato, but also for others of Isocrates’ contemporaries who were in that group of scientists, philosophers, educators, and mathematicians called sophists and Presocratics. The particular case of μίμησις seems analogous to another term that occupies a rung in both Isocrates’ and Plato’s epistemological hierarchies, ἰδέα. Mourelatos has shown that this term and its variant εἶδος were prominent in Presocratic discussions of the typetoken distinction in biology, mathematics and physics.52 The concept of the universal as represented by ἰδέα was of intense interest to many within Socratic/sophistic circles, and its implications for various subjects were being worked out. It was not a subject about which, as Mourelatos puts it, “Plato would have had to teach Democritus much”.53 Isocrates is

51 See Ober (1998) 264-268 and Panathenaicus 208, cited above in n. 17. 52 Mourelatos (2006) 64-74. In biology, Empedocles’ “εἴδεα of other tissues” (DK 31B98) and, in anthropology, the many forms (ἰδέεσιν) in which the different tribes of humans were structured (B35); in mathematics, Philolaus’ two proper εἴδη of number, odd and even (DK 44B5); and the distinction in Democritus’ atomic theory between the infinity of atomic shapes and sizes (types) and of particular atoms (tokens) of each type. Mourelatos believes (p. 73) that Democritus may have been commenting on Plato’s use of ἰδέα as a sublime model at B165. 53 (2006) 73. See also Havelock (1963) 262-270 and Pucci (2005).

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likely to have constructed his epistemological framework and the pedagogical method based on it without requiring the inspiration of Plato.

Polybius and Daniel: Two Universal Histories, or What Does It Mean To Be Contemporary? François Hartog University of Paris These pages begin with a startlingly simple observation: students of Polybius are not interested in Daniel, and those who study Daniel, of whom there are many, take little note of Polybius, often no more than a single reference to his Histories. And yet, Polybius and Daniel, who were contemporaries, each had in mind a form of universal history.1 What do we actually know? We know that Polybius was the son of Lycortas, that he participated in 168 BC in the decisive battle of Pydna, and that he spent seventeen years as a hostage in Rome; about Daniel we know only of one pseudepigraphical book written, or rather finalized, between 167 and 164 BC. However, the acknowledgement of their contemporaneity is actually quite recent. Even Isaac Newton, the great researcher of ancient chronologies, regarded the prophecies of Daniel as articles of faith.2 What was necessary above all was recognition of the fact that ‘Daniel’ did not live in the sixth century BC at the court of the rulers of Babylon, but, rather, in the second century BC. This actually was, or should have been, known from convincing evidence provided by the third century neo-Platonist Porphyry in the twelfth book of his treatise Against the Christians. However, that thesis was itself rejected by both Jews and Christians who always insisted on the canonical nature of Daniel’s text, even though for Jews it ranked among the Writings and for Christians among the prophets (meaning those who foretold the coming of Christ). Because of the “impiety” of Porphyry’s books, their “sacrilegious curiosity” as Augustine called it, Christian emperors suppressed 1

2

The field could be enlarged further to include the first Chinese historian, Sima Qian (Sseu-ma Tsien) whose Mémoires historiques begin with the unification of the empire around 220 BC. Obviously, for him, empire, China, and the world were one thing. See Bonnaud (2007), who makes no mention of Daniel. Newton (1732).

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them; they were known only from citations retained by Jerome and a few others. Although Polybius clearly does not carry the same weight as Herodotus and Thucydides, he still ranks third in Greek historiography and has, at different times, contributed to the political, military and even historiographical reflections of the Western world. His lost book six, on the Roman constitution, caused a lot of ink to flow. For Polybius, despite all the tipping of the scales that transpired over time, it was the Roman regime, more than the Greek city-states, more even than the Sparta of Lycurgus, that was to become “the most perfect political system of our time”.3 This surprising initial observation provides an opportunity to reflect on contemporaneity. It is not enough to belong to the same time to be of the same time. These two works, which do not start from or speak of the same world, do not tell the same “history”: they appear to be unaware of each other, illustrating perfectly the notion of the noncontemporary as contemporary proposed by the historian Reinhart Koselleck.4 As we know, ancient chronography was fond of synchronisms; that was the tool that helped chronography develop and that was used systematically by the first Christian chronographers. Establishing a synchronism was a way of building bridges, of relating separate histories, of linking computations and different times (tempora). Can we draw anything more from the synchronism between Polybius and Daniel than the simple observation that around 168 BC something happened that was important to both, mainly the defeat of Macedonia by the Romans and the persecution of the Jews by Antiochus Epiphanes? Particularly when we consider the legacy of their writings and specifically their respective proposals regarding a universal history? Let us indulge briefly in the old exercise of parallels, in search not of unlikely similarities in the two books, but by positioning them to mirror each other, in order to better reveal what is specific to each and to better grasp their respective underlying assumptions.

The Political Context according to Daniel and Polybius There is an initial surprise in store for the reader of Daniel who read Polybius first. The Romans are virtually absent from the Orient! The Greeks still dominate the scene. How does Daniel present Antiochus? 3 4

Hartog (2003) 26-27. Koselleck (1990) 279-280.

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He is the eleventh horn of the fourth monster in Daniel’s vision. He is a “contemptible person” who came to power “through intrigue”.5 In fact, he had no right to the throne and upon returning from Rome where he had been held hostage he schemed to gain power. According to Daniel, a single brief elliptical notation explains the retreat of his army from Egypt, which he had invaded: “for ships of Kittim shall come against him and he shall lose heart and withdraw”.6 What is there to say? Everything becomes clear when we realize that by Kittim he means the Romans. This term, used in the Bible, originally designated Cyprus and by extension the peoples of the west, thus Romans. At this point we are no longer in the realm of history but of prophecy (and in retrospective prophecy, therefore, in fact, a way of writing history). Polybius, for his part, could not be clearer. A senatus consultum, issued in 168 by C. Popilius Laenas, ordered Antiochus to cease hostilities against Ptolemy and to leave Egypt: “in this way, he wrote, the Romans saved the kingdom of Ptolemy, which had almost been crushed out of existence”, and he added, “for had this not been so [the Persians defeated], and had not Antiochus been certain of it, he would never, I think, have obeyed the Roman behests”.7 It was Polybius who made the connection between the two lands. Concerning the death of Antiochus, Polybius is specific. He died at Tabae, in Persia, at the end of 164. In need of money, he had decided to raid a sanctuary of Artemis but was stopped by the populations installed around the sanctuary and turned back. “He was smitten with madness, as some people say, owing to certain manifestations of divine displeasure when he was attempting this outrage on the above sanctuary”.8 Although he echoes the rumor, Polybius does not reflect upon it; however, such an end would not conflict with the behavior of an individual to whom Polybius himself preferred to call Epimanēs (the mad) rather than Epiphanēs.9 For Daniel, the context of his end is very different and the sovereign’s death happens as part of the eschatological prophecy, a direct echo of the verses of Ezekiel and Isaiah. It comes “at the time of the end”: Antiochus “shall come into the beautiful land” (Palestine) and only the traditional enemies of Israel would be spared; he stretched his hand against Egypt and “yet he shall come to his end, with no one to help him”.10 Porphyry correctly deduced that the publication 5 6 7 8 9 10

Daniel, 11.21 in Metzger and Murphy (1994). Daniel, 11.30. Polybius, Histories, trans. By Paton (1927) 29.27.7. Polybius, 31.9. See also Macc. 6.1-4, 2. Macc. 9.1-2. Polybius, 26.1a. Daniel, 11.40-45.

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of the book was finished before the actual death of Antiochus, since most of the prophecy proved to be inaccurate. Polybius became the touchstone for commentators on Daniel who quote him in counterpoint to the account for the disappearance of the fourth monster: “and as I watched, the beast was put to death, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.”11

What is the Problem in Polybius? In the preface to his Histories, Polybius expresses himself in the first person. Daniel also uses “I”, but it appears only in the second part of the book, beginning with chapter 7. The first part contains only the third person. How did Rome conquer the world in less than fifty-three years? This is the driving question for a historian wishing to understand and explain what had just happened, first to the Greeks, then to Roman elites as well. To the former, he tries to explain their defeat, and to the latter, their victory, leading them to reflect on what they were to make of one another. What intellectual tools does he employ? A true understanding of the new world order demands a new history. With the Roman conquest, history “began to form an organic whole” and events are perceived as “interlaced”. “Fortune having guided almost all the affairs of the world in one direction and having forced them to incline towards one and the same end, a historian should bring before his readers under one synoptical view the operations by which she [fortune] has accomplished her general purpose”.12 With this rather complex sentence, Polybius intends to show that the autopsiē (necessary for an ordinary historian) is no longer sufficient for the new historian who must appeal to a notion, borrowed from philosophy, manifesting a grasp of the totality: that of synopsis. He himself must personally achieve that vision of the whole, that coherent view of events, that corresponds to the point of view of fortune. He must see as Fortune does, adopt its point of view and recreate it as best he can for his reader, in order to enable him to see this new universal history, which he calls “general” history. The synopsis is a double one: it has both an epistemological dimension and a narrative one. Better yet, it seeks to allow the cognitive and the narrative to meet. But though he lifts autopsie to the level of synopsis, the Greek historian 11 Daniel, 7.11. 12 Polybius, 1.4.1-2.

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remained within a single point of view and the constraints of the visible. With Daniel, the starting point is different: “history” emerges from the invisible, through dreams and visions and is viewed through prophecy. Who was Polybius? One of the conquered: he endured defeat at Pydna; socially, he was elite; politically, he was hostile to democracy. In defeat, he was moved to try to understand what had happened which, in his view, should not have happened. To the question ‘who makes history?’ in other words, ‘why Rome?’ Polybius had a double answer. What happened was the work of Fortune (tychē), while Rome’s power resided in its politeia, its constitution, and Polybius stresses that this was the result of a long process of development. Why does he start to write history? Because, as a hostage in Rome, political activity was denied him. History, we can assume, arose as a substitute, but it also provided something else. Fully understood, it allowed him to achieve that vision of the whole that action alone cannot construct. In addition, he adopted the topos of history as a useful teacher. It is that “master who offers the ability to endure with nobility the twists of fate” by “recalling the suffering of others”.13 Perhaps his eagerness to celebrate the virtues of history was all the greater because of his strong desire to convince himself they were real. Immediately after Pydna, Aemilius Paullus, the victorious Roman general addressed the defeated king Perseus in Greek, urging him to be strong in the face of suffering. What fortune freely gives, it also takes away. Polybius added that he always kept in mind a saying of Demetrius of Phalerum (an Athenian ruler at the end of the fourth century), from his treatise On fortune, inspired by the peripatetics, in which he emphasized the constant and unpredictable mutability of fortune. What had just been given to the Macedonians, who had been almost unknown until their victory over the Persians, could easily be taken from them one day. Hadn’t the outcome been foretold one hundred and fifty years earlier? asks Polybius.14 In this we hear an echo of the old theme of the instability (lack of asphaleia) of all human affairs, which Herodotus had already made one of the lessons of his tales, but, by calling it Tyche, Polybius cast it in a stoic, more contemporary way. Where did Polybius actually write? It was in Rome that he conceived and undertook his great project. It was there that he had the “intuition” that a new world called for a new history. How could he have grasped what he called thaumasion, the idion, the paradoxon of conjecture and how could he inform himself about what had just happened in the 13 Polybius, 1.1.2. 14 Polybius, 29.30-31.

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rest of the Mediterranean world if he had returned to live in Megalopolis or even stayed in Athens and its libraries? He had to be in Rome and to see the world from the Roman point of view. Yet it was in the Greek intellectual tradition that he was to find the tools for such an intellectual undertaking. There was of course the example of Thucydides who was his major historiographical reference, but he was no longer sufficient. Although he had worked to present the conflict that he called the Peloponnesian War as one that gradually engulfed the whole world, Thucydides’ history was still what Polybius called “separate” or “fragmented” history. It is true that Ephorus, the fourth century historian, was hailed as his only true predecessor, but Fortune was still far from having “tilted everything in one direction”. No, in a surprising way, it was not by a historian, but by a philosopher, critiquing history, that he found the final foundation on which to create his history: a universal history. He will actually take up Aristotle’s reflections on tragic poetry and on history, begun in book IX of Poetics, but he inverts them. With Aristotle, and against him, he formulates the conceptual framework of a new history that no one has yet written. The new course that history took once Rome became dominant in the Mediterranean, permitted him to confirm with assurance history’s superiority over tragedy; of history as the true tragedy.15 Aristotle’s definition of mythos, as a “system of facts” applies to history. It forms a whole, has a beginning and an end, and inclines toward a single end. Far from being restricted to the particular, it is open to the general. But Polybius’ ‘general’ is not the same as Aristotle’s: by general, he meant everything, that totality that has shaped history since 220 and that must be seized with a synoptic gaze. General history is contrasted with partial history (kata meros) and ultimately extends in a spatial sense, like “catholic history” (historia katholikē).16

What Is the Problem in Daniel? In December 168, Antiochus Epiphanes outlawed the cult and consecrated the Temple to Olympian Zeus. The time of abomination and desolation began. The people were divided. One revolt began, led by Mattathias, later by his son Judas the Maccabee. At the end of 164 the Temple was retaken, purified, the cult reestablished. Daniel addressed himself to the Jews who were unhappy. They were vulnerable to crimi15 Polybius, 2.56.11-12. 16 Hartog (2003) 22-23.

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nal intrigue and to Antiochus’ persecutions, and some of them joined with the enemy Greeks while others chose the path of armed revolt. To Daniel it was not, as Polybius had written, a matter of “withstanding the reverses of Fortune nobly” but rather “piously”. Revolt was useless and in general, action was ineffective. Prophets always appear at moments of crisis or danger, but acknowledgement of sin, the forgotten covenant and the return to God were demanded. There is nothing in Daniel that resembles a master history of life, according to the Greek topos; there is obviously no room for any such genre. For the issue is less one of knowing and of instructing than it is one of grasping the true sense of what is happening. Antiochus did not emerge out of a vacuum, he belonged in fact to the wicked line that began with Alexander, a line of which he is the latest and cruelest offshoot; the arrogant eleventh horn. The end of the fourth beast, the fiercest one of all, is imminent, the time of the end. The stone is rolling already that will reduce to dust the statue of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, beginning with its feet, made of a mixture of iron and clay. Then the violent disappearance of the beast will mark the beginning of the fifth kingdom, the one that will have no end.17 This is the message that Daniel, the interpreter of dreams, bears, chosen by God as the prophet. Such is the meaning of king Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, such is the meaning of the vision of the four beasts that emerged from the sea. Thus the two chapters, 2 and 7, answer and complete each other in announcing the end time. Who was Daniel? His name was a venerable one meaning “God had judged” and it was a name still in use, which was not the case for the major prophets, to whom new prophecies could not be attributed. As we see clearly in the beginning of the book, a variety of stories circulated under this name.18 Daniel was considered a soothsayer: he had received the knowledge of the all-seeing and of dreams and won over all the Chaldeans. For Flavius Josephus who held him in high regard, Daniel “not only prophesized future events, but he also determined the time of their fulfillment”: he revealed the times and the dates. “The abomination that desolates”, the end of the book tells us, will last one thousand three hundred and thirty-five days.19 What tools did he have to accomplish his task? He was visited by dreams, he received visions and revelations, which were also physical 17 Daniel, 2.44. 18 Bickerman (1967) 92—100. 19 Daniel, 12.12. Daniel actually gives four different durations. That of 1335 days is the final one.

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trials.20 He devoted himself to an asceticism that prepared for and accompanied the revelations. Although he interpreted, with the grace of God, the dreams of kings, he was unable to understand his own visions. He needed the help of an angel, who might be Gabriel or another, to pass from seeing to understanding. Thus when he resumes the book of Jeremiah and reflects on the prophecy of the 70 years that had to pass before the return from Exile and the reconstruction of the Temple, it is Gabriel who gives him the key: he must have meant a week of seventy years, or 490 years. The vision is given and not created (here we are far from Polybian synopsis), and even his interpretation required the intervention of a non-human intermediary, alone authorized to give meaning to these (albeit retrospective) prophecies. The great vision that the end of the book suggests includes an entire chapter that is, in fact, a history of the Middle East between the fourth and the second centuries BC, but in reality as viewed from Jerusalem. This history, written in the future tense, is offered in the form of prophecy. Officially, Daniel was staying in Babylon. A hostage, like Polybius, he was selected to be educated at the royal palace. There, he would have had frequent occasions to display his knowledge. His book, however, was published in Jerusalem, in a sectarian milieu. He has been associated with the Essenians, the Assidians, the Anawim, and the recluses of Qumran.21 The book calls them the maskilim, the “enlightened ones”, responsible for instructing the crowds.22 It is quite clear that Daniel is writing entirely from and within the pre-established prophetic corpus. In the milieu of scribes in which it was composed, one read, reread, meditated, wrote and rewrote. Polybius was looking at things from Rome, and he wished to make the Greeks and the Romans see what neither, for different reasons, had yet been able to see. He managed to effect a decentering: he made the Greeks see that the Mediterranean world was Roman, and he allowed the Romans to see, so to speak, from the outside, in the third person. Although Daniel claimed to see the future after Babylon, everything is perceived from Jerusalem at the very moment of the persecution of Antiochus. His vision was templocentric. Daniel’s account begins with Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem and concludes with Antiochus’ invasion of Palestine and the profanation of the Temple, the disaster that foretold the end time. The return from Babylon, after Cyrus, and the reconstruction of the Temple, did not 20 Daniel, 2.19. The Septuagint and Theodotion translate everything related to visions as orama, enupnion, orasis, theōrein. 21 Lacoque (1976) 20-21. 22 Daniel, 11.33; 12.3.10.

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begin the eschatological time heralded by Jeremiah. In fact, with the retreat, the period extending from the exile to Antiochus seems to have formed a single period. The profanation is a new destruction, whether repetition or a continuation. Thus one might question, yet again, the prophets about the return, and meditate on the words of Jeremiah. From this inspired meditation (pesher), it appears, as we have seen, that the meaning of the seventy years was definitely 70 (with the actual return to Jerusalem), but also seventy weeks of seventy years (490 years). That introduces an interminable work of adjustment, one that Christians would pursue with considerable passion, since, for them, Daniel could only be predicting the coming of Christ. Why, one might ask, go back (in imagination) to the sixth century BC in order to speak of the present? Why predate in this way? What is the need for this detour and this veil? Why the pseudepigraphy? The book is careful to establish, at the beginning of each chapter, this clear chronology, punctuated by the line of kings whom Daniel served: from Nebuchadnezzar to “Darius the Mede” and “Cyrus the Persian”. The process also serves to connect the two parts of the book (chapters 1 to 6 and chapters 7 to 12) and to make a continuous narrative of these different stories evoking the time of the Babylonian exile while describing the current persecution. However, the important point is that this way of establishing a point of view, of expressing it and perhaps of having an impact on the present situation, does so from the distance of a prophecy which is supposed to have taken place in the 6th century. Perhaps that is the only way of formulating predictions that are acceptable because they occur in real time and place. It is the condition for authority. In Daniel’s critical analysis (of the visions that he alone sees, even when he is among others), God is the only guarantor. Moreover, the words, Daniel tells repeatedly, must remain ‘sealed’ until the end time. That the seal is just now broken is further proof that the end is certainly near.

The Question of Succession Daniel has continued to be linked to the theory of the succession of empires, which constitutes one of the great organizing schemas of European history. Is this schema Greek, Persian or something else? I don’t think the answer is unequivocal, and it is not my intention to join the debate, so I will limit myself to a few remarks about Polybius and Daniel.23 Does the theme of succession of empires figure in the Polybian 23 Momigliano (2002) 65-71. Flusser (1972) 148-175.

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view of history? When, in his preface, he enumerates the powers which, in his view, preceded Rome, he is not tracing the genealogy of power, he is attempting to compare (paraballein, sugkrinein) the most famous powers (dynasteiai) before Rome, which are shown to be incomparable. Never before was there such a power.24 For him, the only powers that merit comparison and recognition are the Persians, the Lacedaemonians and the Macedonians. After the Roman conquest, the standard changes. Up until then, power was regional. The Persians were not able to leave Asia, the Lacedaemonians fought only for domination in Greece and the Macedonians never moved west. These conquests followed one another, but that point was not one that interested Polybius, who was concerned above all with comparison, or rather, with the incomparable status of Rome, which would develop the best political system of the time. One empire may follow another, but nothing is passed from one to the next, not power, not any power. Why is it then that Daniel is repeatedly invoking the theme of succession of empires up to the modern era? Ironically, not even the destruction of the theory of the four monarchies, formulated by Jean Bodin in the sixteenth century, could erase it.25 Succession per se, that is, power passing from one king to another, was not even the most important thing for Daniel. His emphasis was not on a continuity of power that could be transmitted from one to another. Rather, what merited his attention was the fact that one power ends and another begins, for “God changes times and seasons, and deposes kings (kairous, chronous, basileis).26 Here he is prompting reflection not upon power itself and its transmission, but recognition of the divine as all-powerful. God is the master of history, in every case. Did Antiochus, to return to him, embody the exact counterexample? Was it not his idea to “change times and the law”, in other words to lay claim to power that did originate with God alone?27 The image of the statue of the dream combines both succession and contemporaneity. It is described from head to feet, from gold to iron mixed with clay, hence the succession, but it is the entire statue that is crushed by the stone, which broke off from the rock. “In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall this kingdom be left to another people. It shall crush all these

24 25 26 27

Polybius, 1.2.7. Bodin (1945), chapter 7. Daniel, 2.21. Daniel, 10.14.

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kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever”.28 In contrast to all the others, it is the fifth kingdom, the one that will have no end, that matters. Similarly, the four beasts are seen emerging together from the sea, and according to the interpretation given to Daniel, “as for these four great beasts, four kings shall arise out of the earth”.29 Visions and kings follow upon each other, but in another sense, they remain current with each other, until the establishment of a kingdom that will not be destroyed of the one who is like a son of man. In matters of universal history, the future of Polybius’ concept will not follow a straight line. Rather, it is Diodorus of Sicily’s definition, as demonstrated in his Library, that will prevail. It is both simple, and strong: a unique book, made up of other books, and a continuous story, as if concerning a single city, starting from earliest possible antiquity and continuing up to the author’s time. By contrast, Daniel’s universal history will always be sought in two directions: that of the apocalyptic path and calculation of the end and that of the succession of empires. In Latin, the “translatio”.

28 Daniel, 2.45. 29 Daniel, 7.17.

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List of Contributors EGBERT J. BAKKER is Professor of Classics at Yale University. He works mostly on Homer and the classical historians, and is interested, among other things, in the linguistic side of literary questions. Among his publications are Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse (1997) and Pointing at the Past: From Formula to Performance in Homeric Poetics (2005). He has edited, among others Brill’s Companion to Herodotus (2002) and the Blackwell Companion to the Ancient Greek Language (2010). JEAN BOLLACK has established at the University of Lille a research center devoted to the interpretive and critical study of classical texts, a method explicated in the collection La Grèce de personne (1997) and in Sens contre sens (2000). An application of this method can be found in his four-volume Empedocle (1965-1969) and in Oedipe roi (4 vols., 1997; 2010). His research is not limited to ancient texts and he has developed, for instance, a poetics based on the work of Paul Celan (L’Ecrit, 2003). Many of his books have been translated into a variety of languages besides English. CLAUDE CALAME, former Professor of ancient Greek poetry at the University of Lausanne, is now director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris (historical and religious anthropology of Greek poetics). He has recently published The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greece (Princeton 2003), Masks of Authority. Fiction and Pragmatics in Ancient Greek Poetics (Ithaca, NY–London 2005), Poetic and Performative Memory in Ancient Greece. Heroic Reference and Ritual Gestures in Time and Space (Cambridge, MA – London 2009), Greek Mythology. Poetics, Pragmatics, and Fiction (Cambridge 2009). VITTORIO CITTI Professor of Classics in the Universities of Cagliari and Trento. His research interests include Homer, drama and Hellenistic literature. He is currently preparing a new critical edition of Aeschylus for the Accademia dei Lincei. In view of this major undertaking in Aeschylean scholarship, he has published numerous articles of textual criticism as well as the volume Studi sul testo delle ‘Coefore’ (Amsterdam 2006). Since 1988, he has been directing the journal Lexis: retorica, poetica e comunicazione nella tradizione classica and the series Supplementi di Lexis, as well as Lexis’ Research Tools and Classics in the Libraries.

446

List of Contributors

LESLIE COLLINS EDWARDS is Lecturer in Greek and Latin Literature at the University of California at San Diego. She is the author of A Reading Course in Homeric Greek (Books 1 and 2), which is based on editions by R. Schoder and V. Horrigan (Focus Publishing: Newburyport, Mass. 2005 and 2008); The Warrior, the Lover, and the King: Studies in Characterization in the Iliad (Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie 189) Frankfurt am Main 1988; “Poetic Values and Poetic Technique in Aristophanes”, Ramus: Critical Studies in Greek and Roman Literature 19.2 (1990) 143159. GREGORY W. DOBROV is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Loyola University Chicago. After completing his dissertation on Aristophanes under the guidance of Pietro Pucci (1988) he taught at Syracuse University (1988-1992) and the University of Michigan (1992-1998). His publications include Beyond Aristophanes: Transition and Diversity in Greek Comedy (Oxford, 1995), The City as Comedy: Society and Representation in Athenian Drama (Chapel Hill, 1997), Figures of Play: Greek Drama and Metafictional Poetics (Oxford, 2001), and Brill’s Companion to the Study of Greek Comedy (2010). ANTHONY EDWARDS is Professor of Greek and Latin Literature at the University of California at San Diego. He is the author of: Hesiod’s Ascra (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2004); “Historicizing the Popular Grotesque: Aristophanes and Bakhtin’s Rabelais and his World,” in: B. Branham (ed.), Bakhtin and the Classics, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press 2002, 27-55); “Homer’s Ethical Geography: Country and City in the Odyssey,” TAPhA 123 (1993), 27-78; Achilles in the Odyssey: Ideologies of Heroism in the Homeric Epic, Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie 171 (Meisenheim 1985). ANDREW FORD studied with Pietro Pucci when taking his BA at Cornell University and taught with the maestro as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in 1984-1986. He is currently Charles Ewing Professor of Classics at Princeton University. His publications on Greek literature and literary history include Aristotle as Poet: The Song for Hermias and Its Contexts (forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2010), The Origins of Criticism: Literary Culture and Poetic Theory in Classical Greece (Princeton University Press, 2002) and Homer: The Poetry of the Past (Cornell University Press, 1992). BARBARA GOFF is Professor of Classics at the University of Reading, UK, where she has taught since 2001. Prior to that she was Associate

List of Contributors

447

Professor in the Department of Classics, University of Texas at Austin. She was educated at King’s College, Cambridge University, and the University of California, Berkeley. Her most recent publications include Euripides: Trojan Women (London, 2009); Crossroads in the Black Aegean: Oedipus, Antigone and Dramas of the African Diaspora (with Michael Simpson; Oxford, 2007); and Citizen Bacchae: Women’s Ritual Practice in Ancient Greece (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2004). SIMON GOLDHILL is Professor of Greek at Cambridge. He has published very widely on Greek literature and culture, including Language, Sexuality, Narrative: the Oresteia (Cambridge, 1984); Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 1986); The Poet’s Voice (Cambridge, 1989); Foucault’s Virginity (Cambridge 1995); Who Needs Greek? (Cambridge 2002) and several edited volumes. His new book, The Victorians and Classical Antiquity will appear next year from Princeton. FRANÇOIS HARTOG is Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), where he holds the Chair of Ancient and Modern Historiography. His publications include Régimes d’historicité, Présentisme et Expériences du temps (Paris, Le Seuil, 2003), Evidence de l’histoire. Ce que voient les historiens (Paris, Gallimard «Folio», 2007), Vidal-Naquet, historien en personne. L’homme-mémoire et le moment-mémoire (Paris, La Découverte, 2007), Anciens, modernes, sauvages (Paris, Seuil «Points», 2008). THOMAS HUBBARD is Professor of Classics at the University of Texas, Austin, specializing in Greek literature and the history of sexuality. His books include The Pindaric Mind (1985), The Mask of Comedy (1991), The Pipes of Pan (1998), Greek Love Reconsidered (2000), and Homosexuality in Greece and Rome (2003). STEFANO JEDRKIEWICZ is a former diplomat, now an independent scholar living in Rome. He is the author of Sapere e paradosso nell’antichità: Esopo e la favola [Knowledge and Paradox in Antiquity: Aesop and the Aesopic Fable], Rome 1989, and Il convitato sullo sgabello. Plutarco, Esopo ed i Sette Savi [The Guest on the Stool. Aesop, Plutarch and the Seven Wise Men], Rome 1997, and of several essays on the representation of the “intellectuals” and the interaction between “high” and “low” in Greek literature and culture. PIERRE JUDET DE LA COMBE is Directeur d’études at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and Directeur de recherches at the CNRS. He works mainly on Greek archaic and classical poetry

448

List of Contributors

(Hesiod, tragedy, comedy) and on the history and the theory of literary interpretation. Among his publications are: L’Agamemnon d’Eschyle. Commentaire des dialogues, 2 vols. (Lille, 2001), and Les Tragédies grecques sont-elles tragiques? Théâtre et théorie (Paris, 2010). PHILLIP MITSIS was at Cornell University for twenty years, first as a student and then as a colleague of Pietro Pucci. Since 1995 he has been Alexander S. Onassis Professor of Hellenic Culture and Civilization at New York University where he also directs the American Institute for Verdi Studies. In addition to writing art and music criticism, he has published widely on ancient philosophy, especially Hellenistic philosophy, and on its influences on early modern philosophers. GREGORY NAGY is the author of The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979; 2nd ed., with new Introduction, 1999). A forthcoming publication is Homer the Preclassic (University of California Press 2010). Since 2000, he has been the Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC, while continuing to teach at the Harvard campus in Cambridge as the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature. PHILIPPE ROUSSEAU is Professor of Ancient Greek Language and Literature at the University Charles de Gaulle – Lille 3, a member of the UMR (CNRS-Lille 3) 8163 “Savoirs, Textes, Langage”, and former President of the university (2000-2005). His main research interests are Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry, (thèse d’État on the Iliad, Lille 1995, and papers on Homer, Hesiod, and Pindar), war and poetry in Europaean literatures, and utopian thought in antiquity. OLIVER TAPLIN retired in 2008 from his posts as Professor of Classics at Oxford University and Tutorial Fellow of Magdalen College. His first book was The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (1977); his most recent is Pots and Plays (2007). He is glad to have remained in touch with Pietro Pucci ever since they were Junior Fellows together at the Center for Hellenic Studies in 1971-1972. CHRISTOS TSAGALIS is Associate Professor of Greek Literature at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has published on Homer, Hesiod, Greek Historiography, and Epigram. He is the author of Epic Grief: Personal Laments in Homer’s Iliad (Walter de Gruyter, 2004), The Oral Palimpsest: Exploring Intertextuality in the Homeric Epics (Harvard Univer-

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449

sity Press, 2008), and Inscribing Sorrow: Fourth-Century Attic Funerary Epigrams (Walter de Gruyter, 2008). He has coedited with F. Montanari and A. Rengakos Brill’s Companion to Hesiod (Brill 2009) and has just finished editing a special issue on Homeric Hypertextuality (Trends in Classics 2.2, 2010). DANIEL TURKELTAUB earned his Ph.D. at Cornell University under the direction of Pietro Pucci with a dissertation on Homeric divine epiphany scenes. He has held visiting positions at Stanford, Notre Dame, Washington and Lee, and Millsaps College, and is currently Assistant Professor at Santa Clara University. His publications include “The Syntax and Semantics of Homeric Glowing Eyes: Iliad 1.200” (AJPh 2005) and “Perceiving Iliadic Gods” (HSCPh 2008), which explores the systematic correlation between modes of perceiving gods and heroic status in the Iliad. FROMA ZEITLIN is Ewing Professor of Greek Language and Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. She has published extensively in the field of ancient Greek literature on epic, drama, and prose fiction. Her books include Under the Sign of the Shield: Semiotics and Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes (1982; 2d ed. 2009) and Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature (1996). She coedited two other volumes (on theater; on sexuality, 1990) and edited selected essays of Jean-Pierre Vernant (1991).

Publications by Pietro Pucci 1958 “Alcune osservazioni sulla sticomitia”, Maia 10: 281-306. 1959 “Osservazioni testuali sulle Nuvole di Aristofane”, BPEC 7: 85-91. “Scoli metrici inediti delle Nuvole”, PP 14: 56-75. 1960 “Catullo romantico?”, Belfagor 6: 677-687. “Saggio sulle Nuvole”, Maia 12: 3-42. 1961 “Aristofane ed Euripide. Ricerche metriche e stilistiche”, Memorie della classe di scienze morali e storiche dell’accademmia dei Lincei 10: 277-421. “Il carme 50 di Catullo”, Maia 13: 249-256. “Sophia nell’Apologia platonica”, Maia 13: 317-329. 1963 “Notes critiques sur l’Apologie de Platon”, RPh 37: 255-257. “Politica ed ideologia nel De amicitia”, Maia 15: 342-358. “Odisseo dal Kansas a Ithaca”, Belfagor 18: 725-732. 1966 Platone, Simposio, Fedro, Alcibiade I, Alcibiade II, Teage, Ipparco, Carmide, Lachete, Liside (traduzione e commento di Pietro Pucci). Bari. “Textual notes on the Clouds of Aristophanes”, in: L. Wallach (ed.), The classical tradition. Literary and historical studies in honor of H. Caplan. Ithaca, NY, 115-122.

452

Publications by Pietro Pucci

1967 “Euripides Heautontimoroumenos”, TAPhA 98: 365-371. “Le scienze dell’uomo al congresso di Baltimore”, Belfagor 22: 200-204. 1971 “Lévi-Strauss and classical culture”, Arethusa 4: 103-117. 1973 “Review of T.B.L. Webster, Sophocles: Philoctetes”, AJPh 94: 197-202. 1975 “Horace’s banquet in Odes 1.17”, TAPhA 105: 259-281. “True and False Discourse in Hesiod”, in: G.M. Kirkwood (ed.), Poetry and Poetics from Ancient Greece to the Renaissance: Studies in Honor of James Hutton. Ithaca, NY, 29-55. 1977 “Euripides. The monument and the sacrifice”, Arethusa 10: 165-196. Hesiod and the Language of Poetry. Baltimore, MD. “Il mito di Pandora in Esiodo”, in: B. Gentili and G. Paioni (eds.), Il mito greco. Atti del Convegno internazionale (Urbino 7-12 maggio 1973). Rome, 207-229. 1978 “Lingering on the threshold”, Glyph 3: 52-73. 1979 “On the eye and the Phallos and other permutabilities, in Oedipus Rex”, in: G.W. Bowersock, W. Burkert and C.J. Putnam (eds.), Arktouros. Hellenic Studies Presented to Bernard M.W. Knox on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. Berlin, 30-33. “The Song of the Sirens”, Arethusa 13: 121-132. 1980 The Violence of Pity in Euripides’ Medea. Ithaca, NY. “The Language of the Muses”, in: W.M. Aycock and Th.M. Klein (eds.), Mythology in Twentieth-Century Thought and Literature. Lubbock, TX, 163-186.

Publications by Pietro Pucci

453

1982 “The Proem of the Odyssey”, Arethusa 15: 39-62. 1984 “Deconstruzione e intertestualita”, Nuova corrente 93-94: 283-301. 1985 “Epifanie testuali nell’Iliade”, SIFC 3: 170-183. “Voce e scrittura in Omero”, in: B. Gentili and G. Paioni 9eds.), Oralità: cultura, letteratura, discorso: atti del convegno internazionale (Urbino 2125 luglio 1980). Rome, 537-546 (discussion 547-550). 1986 “Les figures de la métis dans l’Odyssée”, Mètis 1: 7-28. 1987 Odysseus Polutropos. Intertextual readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad. Ithaca, NY. 1988 “Banter and banquets for heroic death”, in: B. Andrew (ed.), Poststructuralist classics. London - New York, 132-159. Warwick Stud. in Philos. & Liter. London. “The drama of language. The Oresteia (rev. of Goldhill)”, Helios 15: 3-8. “Inscriptions archaïques sur les statues des dieux”, in: M. Detienne (ed.), Les savoirs de l’écriture en Grèce ancienne. Lille, 480-497. with Marcel Detienne. “Autour du polytrope”, L’infini 23: 57-71. “Reading the riddles of Oedipus Rex”, in: P. Pucci (ed.), Language and The Tragic Hero: Essays on Greek Tragedy in Honor of Gordon M. Kirkwood. Atlanta, GA, 131-154. “Strategia epifanica e intertestualità nel secondo libro dell’Iliade”, SIFC 6: 5-24. 1990 “The Tragic Pharmakos of the Oedipus Rex”, Helios 17: 41-49. 1991 “The Endless End of Oedipus Rex”, Ramus 20: 3-15.

454

Publications by Pietro Pucci

1992 “Human Sacrifices in the Oresteia”, in: R. Hexter and D. Selden (eds.), Innovations of antiquity. New York, 513-536. Oedipus and the Fabrication of the Father: Oedipus Tyrannus in Modern Criticism and Philosophy. Baltimore, MD. 1993 “Antiphonal Lament between Achilles and Briseis”, Colby Quarterly 29: 258-272. “Figure femminili nell’Edipo re”, in: R. Pretagostini (ed.), Tradizione e innovazione nella cultura greco da Omero all’età ellenistica: scritti in onore di Bruno Gentili. Rome, 551-563. “L’apologie d’Apollon dans Hérodote, 1, 91”, Mètis 8 (1-2): 7-20. “L’io e l’altro nel racconto di Odisseo sui Ciclopi”, SIFC 11: 26-46. 1994 “God’s intervention and epiphany in Sophocles”, AJPh 115: 15-46. “Peitho nell’Orestea di Eschilo”, Museum Criticum 29: 75-138. 1995 Ulysse polutropos: lectures intertextuelles de l’Iliade et de l’Odyssée. Villeneuve d’Asqc. 1996 “Auteur et destinataires dans les travaux d’Hesiode”, in: F. Blaise, P. Judet de La Combe and Ph. Rousseau (eds.), Le Métier du mythe. Lectures d’Hésiode. Villeneuve d’Ascq, 191-210. “Between Narrative and Catalogue: Life and Death of the Poem”, Mètis 11: 5-24. Enigma, segreto, oracolo. Pisa. “The Song of the Sirens”, in: S. Schein (ed.), Reading the Odyssey. Princeton, NJ, 191-199. 1997 “The Helen and Euripides’ ‘comic’ art”, Colby Quarterly 33: 42-75.

Publications by Pietro Pucci

455

1998 “La vertigine dell’enigma”, Il cavallo di Troia 9: 107-114. Platone, Fedro. Rome. The Song of the Sirens: Essays on Homer. Lanham, MD. 1999 “Écriture tragique et récit mythique”, Europe (les tragiques grecs) 837-838: 209-234. 2000 “Entre mythe et poésie: le tissage du chant de Pénélope”, RHR 217: 279-192. “Le cadre temporel de la volonté divine chez Homère”, in: C. DarboPeschanski (ed.), Constructions du temps dans le monde grec ancien. Paris, 3348. 2002 Xenophon. Socrates’ Defense. Introduction and Commentary. Amsterdam. “Theology and Poetics in the Iliad”, Arethusa 35: 17-34. 2003 “Review of A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey by I.J.F. de Jong”, CPh 98: 81-87. Sofocle. Filottete. Milan. “Dynamics and Variations of Nietzsche’s couple”, Mètis n. s. 2: 163185. “La scrittura di Ulisse”, in: S. Nicosia (ed.), Ulisse nel tempo: la metafora infinita. Venice, 563-577. “Prosopopée d’Hélène”, in: M. Broze, L. Couloubaritsis, A. Hypsilanti, P. Mavromoustakos and D. Viviers (eds.). Le mythe d’Hélène. Brussels, 89-119. 2004 “Leçons étatsunisiennes”, Clio 19: 179-185.

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2005 “Héraclite: l’universel et le particulier”, RPhA 23: 21-37. “Euripides’ heaven”, in: V. Pedrick and S.M. Oberhelman (eds.), The Soul of Tragedy: Essays on Athenian Drama. Chicago, IL, 49-72. “Of Gods and Men (review of J.S. Clay, Hesiod’s Cosmos)”, CR 55: 395-397. “Prométhée d’Hésiode a Platon”, Communications 78: 51-70. 2006 “Il testo di Tirteo nel tessuto omerico”, in: F. Roscalla (ed.), L’autore e l’opera: attribuzioni, appropriazioni, apocrifi nella Grecia antica: atti del convegno internazionale (Pavia, 27-28 maggio 2005). Pisa, 21-41. 2007 “Euripides and Aristophanes: What Does Tragedy Teach?”, in: C. S. Kraus, S. Goldhill and H. Foley (eds.), Visualizing the Tragic: Drama, Myth, and Ritual in Greek Art and Literature: Essays in Honour of Froma Zeitlin. Oxford - New York, 105-126. Inno alle Muse: Esiodo, Teogonia, 1-115. Pisa. 2008 La fame di Ulisse. Rome. 2009 “The Poetry of the Theogony”, in: F. Montanari, A. Rengakos, and C. Tsagalis (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Hesiod. Leiden, 37-70.

General Index abuse 7, 336. 360, 361, 363. 366, 367, 369, 370, 373, 388 acculturation 112 Aeschylus 4, 14, 15, 119, 192, 193, 194, 203, 205, 206, 207, 208, 210, 211, 214, 216, 268, 299, 305 n. 6, 319, 339, 340, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 349, 355 Ajax 5, 67, 73, 74, 106, 118, 119, 122, 224, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231 allegory 179 n. 24, 187, 327, 363, 368, 369, 371, 372 anadiplosis 294 n. 41, 297-302 Aristophanes Acharnians 7, 239, 247 n. 29, 313, 329, 336, 346 n. 34, 355, 370, 371 Birds 290, 291, 292 n. 31, 298, 343, 359 Knights 7, 303, 307, 312, 321, 324, 326, 327, 329, 331 n. 49, 334, 336, 337, 345 n. 27, 346 n. 34, 363, 372 armor 94, 97 n. 37, 145, 219, 265 authority 1, 4, 14, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 24, 31, 32, 34, 35, 93, 95 n. 32, 99, 130, 134, 141, 143, 182, 193, 257, 316 n. 27, 322, 331, 332, 333, 334, 378, 379, 386 n. 23, 396, 409 beauty (kallos, morphē) [and aesthetics] 6, 93, 101, 254, 255, 263, 268, 270, 272, 273, 274, 275,

276, 277, 281, 282, 359 n. 1, 385 n. 19 Bellerophon 97, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104 n. 64, 107 n. 73, 189 n. 14 censorship 7, 362, 363, 364, 374 Cithaeron 5, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243 n. 19, 244, 245, 246 contemporaneity 401, 402, 410 copy: see imitation Crates 360, 361, 366, 374 Cratinus 286 n. 15, 361, 362, 363, 364, 366, 368, 369, 373, 374 cultural koine 107 Daniel 8, 401-411 democracy/democratic 7, 195, 228, 304, 308 n. 12, 317, 319, 320, 321, 322, 324, 326 n. 43, 327, 330, 332, 334, 335, 336, 342, 352, 361, 378, 385, 394, 401 Dionysalexandros 362 n. 8, 363, 366, 373 ‘dit’ 170, 183, 185 doubling 6, 79, 80, 82, 83, 263, 269, 271, 278, 279, 283, 285, 297, 298, 301, 302

226, 318, 325, 333, 360, 364,

264, 284,

Earth 4, 19, 169, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 287 echo 17, 64, 85, 100, 237, 243, 246, 284 n. 6, 291, 292, 294, 295,

458

General Index

296, 297, 299, 301, 302, 403, 405. eidōlon 6, 263-282, 302 Eleutherae 238, 240, 247, 248 elite (upper-class) 304 n. 5, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 327, 332, 333, 336, 349, 383 n. 13, 397, 398, 405 enalinkios 157, 159, 162 ethos 105 n. 67, 132, 133, 137, 140, 141, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 275 Eupolis 7, 303, 304 n. 3, 305, 307, 308, 313, 320, 355 n. 58, 360, 361, 362, 363, 368, 370, 372, 374 Euripides Helen 4, 6, 264, 265, 266, 268, 269, 270, 271, 273, 275, 282 n. 33, 283, 284, 285, 290, 291, 293, 294 n. 41, 296 n. 47, 298, 299, 300, 301 family 4, 5, 18, 55, 59, 106, 118, 123, 124, 125, 126, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 194, 195, 196, 199, 200, 222, 227, 231, 235, 256, 304 n. 5, 348 fathers 3, 5, 58, 125, 133, 134, 137, 138, 149, 150, 151, 220, 225, 229, 263 food 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 47, 50, 144, 197, 305, 307, 323, 337 formulaic intensification 94, 96 friendship 4, 73, 96, 115, 187, 199, 220, 226, 310, 312, 348

117, 127, 193, 220, 259, 135, 219, 119, 328,

195, 321,

gastēr 1, 37-50, 305 genealogy 25, 99 n. 46, 101, 117, 124, 174 n. 14, 180 n. 30, 182,

183, 280, 285, 301, 303 n. 2, 410 Hector 2, 5, 45, 66 n. 30, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 90 n. 13, 94, 95, 97 n. 37, 98, 104, 105, 107 n. 73, 109 n. 81, 121, 122, 123, 133 n. 11, 134, 136, 139, 142, 148, 150, 151, 158, 219, 220, 227 n. 32, 229, 231, 232, 233, 277 hierarchy/hierarchical 275, 304, 308, 314, 315, 318, 320, 321, 322, 326 n. 43, 327, 330, 332, 333, 334, 377 homoios 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 159, 161, 162, 166 idealism 115-127 imitation 130 n. 4, 134, 267, 273, 276, 283 n. 3, 354, 377, 379, 380 n. 8, 383, 387, 388 n. 26, 389, 394, 395, 396, 397 initiation 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 33 n. 45, 163, 167, 349 intertextuality 51-52 kleos 38, 43, 46, 51, 74, 135, 137, 139, 142, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152 kudos 140-142 Lycian epic 108-113 lying: see pseudea menos 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47 metaphor 7, 16, 100 n. 51, 148, 210, 211, 233, 244, 245, 268, 286, 289, 298, 321, 322, 323 n. 38, 327, 336, 341, 355 n. 57, 359, 361, 363, 366, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 374 mythological landscape 99, 103, 239

General Index

nightingale 283, 291, 292, 296, 298, 299, 301, 302, 396 n. 42 Oedipus 5, 225 n. 25, 230 n. 21, 235, 236, 240, 243, 244, 245, 246, 357 n. 61 Old Comedy 7, 359, 363, 364 oral voice 17, 18, 21, 22, 33, 34-35 orphic commentary 23, 24, 29, 33 paradigm/paradeigmata 28, 65, 99, 134 n. 15, 135 n. 22, 138, 140, 141, 142, 151, 152, 188, 301, 383, 384, 387, 394, 395 paraenetic poetry 135 n. 22 patron (patronage, client, clientage) 199, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309 n. 14, 310, 312, 314, 325, 330 Philoctetes 224, 225, 226, 231 poet-B 79, 84 Polybius 8, 400-411 prophecy 403, 404, 405, 408, 409 pseudea 153, 163, 164, 167 rebuke-pattern 83 remembering 37, 43-47, 73 Sarpedon 2, 39, 40, 77-78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 98, 104, 105, 107 singleness 120, 123, 124, 263 slave/slaver/slavish 118, 120, 124, 130 n. 4, 149, 250, 253, 254, 303, 306, 307, 309, 319, 322, 324, 325, 327, 330, 331, 332, 334, 335, 336, 337, 379 Socrates 7, 52, 67, 68, 70, 73, 75, 76, 259, 275, 276, 307 n. 9, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 348-358, 380 n. 7, 395 n. 39 sons 3, 5, 44, 55, 65, 77, 78, 80, 81, 83, 98 n. 40, 107 n. 73, 117,

459

123, 124, 127, 132, 134, 135, 144, 150, 151 n. 59, 210, 219, 227 n. 31, 229, 238, 252, 261, 297, 298 space embedded story space 2, 88, 97103, 112, 113 intertextual space 88, 89, 104108 story space 2, 88, 89-97, 103, 113 transcendental space 112 succession of empires 409, 410, 411 suitors 1, 2, 37, 38, 39, 40, 47, 48, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61 n. 18, 67, 76, 119, 123, 124, 222, 223 Thebes 5, 58, 112, 113, 137, 138, 139, 145, 181, 189, 190, 191, 192, 194, 195, 197, 198, 199, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 244, 247, 248, 393 thumos 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 45, 50 tour 96 truth 1, 3, 30, 46, 47, 50, 52, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 72, 75, 76, 132, 144, 152, 153, 164, 165, 167, 170, 173, 196, 243, 250, 255, 260 n. 3, 270, 272, 283, 314, 321, 359, 364 n. 15, 378, 382 n. 11, 386, 389, 391, 392 tyrant/tyrannical/tyranny 26, 187, 188, 191, 196, 197, 199, 247, 302-337, 304, 311, 317, 319, 320, 322, 325, 334, 391 Universal History 8, 401, 402, 404, 406, 411 Vernant 266-267 visual comparison 157 imaging 91, 95

460

General Index

Wilusiad 108-113 writing 1, 8, 17, 18, 28, 33, 34, 35, 51, 83, 104 n. 64, 206, 212, 261 n. 6, 267, 279, 307, 341 n. 7, 363, 379, 380 n. 8, 387, 388, 403, 408