Theocritus and His Native Muse: A Syracusan Among Many [ebook ed.] 3110615274, 9783110615272

Citation preview

Poulheria Kyriakou Theocritus and his native Muse

Trends in Classics – Supplementary Volumes

Edited by Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos Associate Editors Evangelos Karakasis · Fausto Montana · Lara Pagani Serena Perrone · Evina Sistakou · Christos Tsagalis Scientific Committee Alberto Bernabé · Margarethe Billerbeck Claude Calame · Jonas Grethlein · Philip R. Hardie Stephen J. Harrison · Richard Hunter · Christina Kraus Giuseppe Mastromarco · Gregory Nagy Theodore D. Papanghelis · Giusto Picone Tim Whitmarsh · Bernhard Zimmermann

Volume 71

Poulheria Kyriakou

Theocritus and his native Muse A Syracusan among many

ISBN 978-3-11-061460-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-061527-2 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-061479-4 ISSN 1868-4785 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018956676 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Editorial Office: Alessia Ferreccio and Katerina Zianna Logo: Christopher Schneider, Laufen Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Contents Acknowledgments | VII Introduction | 1 I. Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion | 12 Idyll 14 | 12 Idyll 4 | 18 Idyll 5 | 32 Idyll 10 | 43 Idyll 21 | 51 Idyll 12 | 55 Idyll 29 | 71 Idyll 30 | 75 Idyll 3 | 82 Idyll 11 | 96 Idyll 6 | 111 II. Success and failure in love and song | 122 Idyll 23 | 122 Idyll 20 | 132 Idyll 27 | 140 Idylls 8 & 9 | 147 III. Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics | 162 Idyll 1 | 162 Idyll 7 | 175 Idyll 13 | 193 Idyll 24 | 204 Idyll 22 | 217 IV. Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage | 239 Idylls 18 & 26 | 239 Idyll 16 | 258 Idyll 17 | 280 V. Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 300 Bibliography | 343 Index of passages | 357 Index of names | 365

Acknowledgments Several former students, friends and colleagues generously helped me with the preparation of this book. My sincere thanks go to Marco Fantuzzi, Evangelos Karakasis, Orestis Karatzoglou, Lazaros Keramydas, Theophilos Kyriakidis, Antonios Rengakos and Evina Sistakou, who provided bibliographical items and offered their kind encouragement. The help and friendship of Alexandros Kampakoglou have been invaluable throughout. Maria Leventi graciously found time to read the typescript and compile the bibliography and the indices. She saved me much time and effort and also saved me from many blunders. My gratitude can be only a small reward for her great labors. My students in courses on Theocritus often made me rethink my certainties and indeed proved themselves to be “saplings molded for truth”. The two anonymous referees made thoughtful suggestions, for which I am grateful. Many thanks go also to the editors, Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos, for accepting the book in the series. Over the years, Antonios has always been ready to respond promptly to requests and offer valuable, unstinting help with various problems. Katerina Zianna showed admirable patience and efficiency in the production of the book. As always, I owe the greatest debt to a namesake of Theocritus, my husband and colleague Theokritos Kouremenos. Without his help, support and encouragement in all things, this project would probably not have been completed. The book is for him, and ἦ μεγάλα χάρις δώρῳ σὺν ὀλίγῳ· αἴθ’ αὐτὰν δυνάμαν καὶ τὰν ψυχὰν ἐπιβάλλειν.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615272-202

Introduction This is a book about Theocritus’ way of handling the power and limitations of language and poetry, illusion, and his capacity as poet, vis-à-vis his predecessors and contemporaries. Like all Hellenistic poets, and indeed most if not all artists who are heirs of long and complex traditions, Theocritus had to perform a sort of a juggling act. He and his colleagues opted, and were very likely expected, to deal meaningfully, i.e. innovatively and interestingly, and perhaps competitively, with the tradition they inherited. Their work should not disappoint and alienate the sophisticated or jaded members of their audience, which included potentially spiteful or antagonistic colleagues. Poets also needed to secure the goodwill of actual or potential patrons, rich men and powerful rulers such as the Ptolemies and Antigonids, with their own geopolitical agendas and cohorts of lackeys or aspiring protégés. Recent scholarship has come to the fruitful conclusion that, despite their affinities, Hellenistic poets were not all products of the same mold, and their work did not follow any one set of aesthetic rules such as brevity, commonly associated primarily with Callimachus.1 The loss of most of their works and the scarcity of available secondary evidence hamper a comprehensive appraisal of strategies and outcomes. Nevertheless, the remains show fairly clearly that poets chose not only different genres but also different ways of handling the challenges they faced in balancing the weight of the tradition, negotiating favorable reception and, not least, securing patronage. Scholars seeking to define the poetic individuality of Hellenistic poets have often turned to their statements about poetry and other metapoetic strategies.2 Of the great Hellenistic trio, Apollonius, who chose to compose a heroic epic, unsurprisingly eschews references to eponymous colleagues and literary polemics. Already in the proem, though, the narrator states that the construction of Argo is still celebrated in the songs of earlier bards and thus he will not recount it (Arg. 1.18–19). With this early and no doubt significant reference to predecessors Apollonius neither denigrates nor dismisses them. He does not seem to pursue a strategy of self-promotion but marks his own poetic territory by indicating that his song begins differently (1.20–22). His references to Apollo and the Muses in the proem (1.1, 22) and elsewhere (2.844–45, 3.1–5, 4.1–5, 984–85, 1381–90) || 1 See the volumes edited by Gutzwiller (2007), Clauss and Cuypers (2010), and Harder et al. (2014). For overviews of the history of critical trends in the study of Hellenistic poetry see Klooster (2014) 159–65, and Pontani (2014). 2 See e.g. Morrison (2007), and Klooster (2011).

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615272-001

2 | Introduction

have been interpreted as declarations of a new poetics. I do not share this view, but Apollonius did manage to construct a novel work, a hymnic epic and love story, within the boundaries of the tradition and on its terms.3 In Callimachus’ surviving work several older and contemporary poets are mentioned by name appreciatively, or at least without hostility.4 In the Aetia Prologue he may refer to Antimachus’ Lyde (fr. 1.12 Harder) but not necessarily to Antimachus, and the fragments name no (other) rival. However, Callimachus’ praise is hardly ever unqualified, and he adopts a polemical stance against some unnamed predecessors (H. 1.59–64) and (alleged) contemporary critics or rivals (Aet. fr. 1 Harder, H. 2.105–12, Iamb. 4, 13; cf. AP 12.43.1 = 28.1 Pf.), implying his own poetic excellence. This is certainly not an unprecedented strategy, as Pindar, for instance, repeatedly exalts his poetry and attacks predecessors (N. 7.20–23, P. 2.52–56, fr. 52h.11– 22, 70b1.26 Maehler) and contemporaries (O. 2.86–88, N. 3.80–82; cf. O. 1.111–16), but the credentials of the tradition do not soften the asperity of Callimachus’ attacks. Some pieces on old poets by epigrammatists such as Posidippus of Pella (AB 118, 122) and Leonidas of Tarentum (Pl. 306, 307; cf. AP 7.28, Dioscorides AP 7.31), who, like Callimachus (AP 9.507 = 27 Pf.), also praises Aratus (AP 9.25), seem to be closer to the Callimachean than the Apollonian or, as I will argue, the Theocritean model. Theocritus adopts a third way, which, as far as may be known, is not shared by any contemporary and has not been investigated adequately. It is hardly unexpected that Theocritus would differ in this respect too, as his multi-faceted originality is obvious even to a casual reader. He composed poetry in various thematic, generic and dialectal registers, and his bucolic pieces stand at the head of the so-called pastoral tradition that continues in several permutations to the present day. Irrespective of the origins of his bucolic poetry, which are now largely beyond secure reconstruction, he casts his bucolic universe, which he apparently invented, at least to a considerable extent, as part of a venerable tradition. The hexametric vehicle and dramatic form of most of the bucolic poems and several others point to two major parts of Theocritus’ inheritance, epic and drama respectively. The virtual omnipresence of the themes of song and music in general and the Aeolic pieces in particular also place lyric conspicuously in the spotlight.

|| 3 For my view of the Apollonian narrator and his divinities see Kyriakou forthcoming. 4 The list includes Homer (Ep. 6 Pf.), Hesiod (AP 9.507 = 27 Pf.), Mimnermus (Aet. fr. 1.11 Harder, Iamb. 13.7), Hipponax (Iamb. 1; cf. 13.12–14), Simonides (Aet. fr. 64 Harder), Ion of Chios (Iamb. 13.44–49), Aratus (AP 9.507 = 27 Pf.), Heraclitus (AP 7.80 = 2 Pf.) and Theaetetus (AP 9.565 = 7 Pf.). He also mentions Archilochus’ iambic sharpness (fr. 380 Pf.) and his inebriation (fr. 544 Pf.).

Introduction | 3

The bucolic pieces and the rest of the collection contain precious few statements about poetry made by a first-person narrator and none made explicitly by “Theocritus”—the name appears nowhere in the collection and he almost never names his frame narrators. However, for all this scarcity and the variety and versatility of his narrative and narrators, a fairly consistent and adaptive strategy of narratorial presentation is detectable in the genuine poems of the collection. Theocritus avoids casting his narrators, especially those in non-bucolic pieces such as 16, 17 and 22, as superior to predecessors but also to contemporaries. Instead, he chooses to stress the advantages and merits of his colleagues, several of whom he names, tackling with the light, sure, and self-assured touch of a master the pursuit of success in a non-antagonistic mode. The acknowledgment of the merits of others does not seem to be a mere disingenuous or ironic strategy for suggesting his own superiority.5 Narratorial self-conceit never appears. The choice of lowly characters, several of whom are actual or self-styled excellent singers or entertain poetic ambitions but fail to boast, outdo rivals, or achieve their goal, is inscribed into this framework. The choice of characters and outcomes foregrounds and ironizes the theme of poetic excellence and simultaneously suggests a distancing from the tradition of competitive success. Theocritus’ poetic way never meets or confronts (the choices and standards of) the past headlong, in an antagonistic way, as if he had accepted a challenge issued on (and in) the terms of the tradition. He follows a different, parallel path, from which he may observe and even accompany the models for a while, like Simichidas’ walking part of the way along with Lycidas in 7 and even engaging in a friendly exchange of song with him. However, Theocritus will never join them for the entire journey, let alone presume to overtake or mock them.6 He is not (interested in presenting himself as) a new Homer, Hesiod, Hipponax or Pindar but simply (as) new. He does not imagine poetic initiations or the imprimatur of resurrected authorities for his poetic program. At most, he styles the old masters, for instance Simonides in 16, as Theocrituses of their

|| 5 Irony in literature is notoriously difficult to define and categorize, with respect to both its aims and methods, and to my knowledge its investigation in ancient literature remains a desideratum. For the concept in modern literature and discourse see Booth (1974), and Hutcheon (1995). I will use “irony” and “ironic” in connection with narratorial claims that are ambiguous or ambivalent and may not be taken at face value. 6 Theocritus would probably identify with the first part of the epigraph of Nietzsche in the 1887 edition of the Gay Science (Ich wohne in meinem eigenen Haus/ Hab Niemandem nie nichts nachgemacht) but not the second (Und — lachte noch jeden Meister aus/ der sich nicht selber ausgelacht): he is neither imitator nor mocker.

4 | Introduction

day. They were excellent but are not his rivals or competitors. He may be or aspire to be better than some, or even all, but he never claims or implies as much. The programmatic pieces feature no rivalry or contest between the characters. Like Lycidas and Simichidas in 7, Thyrsis and the goatherd in 1 acknowledge each other’s excellence and engage in no competition, although the description of the famous cup balances Thyrsis’ song. 6 ends with no victory but a loving, mutual acknowledgment of the merits of Daphnis and Damoetas. Even in 5, which features the most competitive and a rather acrimonious or aggressive exchange, no clear poetic or musical superiority emerges. Victory is awarded to Comatas, the contestant who shows relative moderation. Moral restraint wins, although Comatas’ success is not necessarily or exclusively to be attributed to his moral excellence, especially as he is not above moral reproach himself. Several characters even acknowledge their limitations, although these hardly ever involve musical competence, and the characters hardly ever achieve selfknowledge. The most prominent example is Polyphemus in 11, who lists his physical disadvantages but attempts to counterbalance them with praise of his assets, including his competence in piping and singing (38-40).7 Theocritus casts himself as a fellow of his characters, whose limitations and moderation he (ironically?) highlights. His voice merges with the voices of his characters, and narratorial irony, if it is there, turns into self-irony. This sharing of features emerges as one of the hallmarks of Theocritean poetics and obtains fairly easily because of the musical gifts of the characters, although their abilities (are said to) differ considerably. It may be assumed that these choices are Theocritus’ way of suggesting his poetic superiority: he manages to compose exquisite poetry by dramatizing and ironizing the shortcomings and travails of his awkward, self-deluded and occasionally grotesque characters, most conspicuously the ogre Polyphemus, his incongruous hero of bucolic love poetry. Irony may indeed serve the purpose of enhancing Theocritus’ poetic image. Theocritus does not sublimate his characters but highlights their shortcomings, not only those found in the poetic tradition but also novel ones. However, he nowhere engages in character vilification or narra-

|| 7 Polyphemus’ claim is rather modest, as he compares himself to the rest of the Cyclopes (συρίσδεν δ’ ὡς οὔτις ἐπίσταμαι ὧδε Κυκλώπων, 38), in contrast to the Vergilian Corydon, for instance, who suggests that he is the modern counterpart of Amphion (Ecl. 2.23–24), a legendary master. Ironically, the formulation of Polyphemus’ claim does not unambiguously indicate that he is better than his fellow Cyclopes, only that his skill is different, and thus conceivably inferior. The choice of οὔτις, Odysseus’ assumed name (Od. 9.366, 408, 455, 460) underscores the irony of the claim; for Polyphemus’ language cf. I n. 175 below.

Introduction | 5

torial elitism. Even in heroic epyllia and encomia as well as in mythological references Theocritus’ great, excellent heroes and heroines are not ostentatiously or grotesquely, as the case may be, self-conceited or deluded but are beset by various other limitations. This is not a novelty, as Greek heroes are never morally blameless. Even so, Theocritus innovates yet again in the presentation of a common theme by choosing or creating versions of the heroes’ stories that do not always agree with the commoner versions, at least as they are known today. His Heracles in 13 is long-suffering rather than all-powerful, and his comrades deride rather than defer to him. The Dioscuri in 22 steal their cousins’ brides rather than their cattle, and even Pentheus in 26 never achieves any kind of knowledge or self-knowledge. Theocritus’ mythological characters may not be in a position to emulate even their own counterparts in the literary tradition while some lowly characters aspire to emulate champions of the heroic and poetic past. Simaetha wishes to be a witch of the caliber of Circe and Medea (2.15–16), Comatas claims that the Muses favor him much more than the legendary singer Daphnis (5.80–81), and the lover in 29 would like for himself and his boy to become a famous couple like Achilles and Patroclus (29.31–34; cf. 12.10–11). Nevertheless, as already suggested, such characters are never provocatively or consistently arrogant.8 Theocritus’ creation of two bucolic heroes, Daphnis and Polyphemus, illustrates his priorities and the shaping of his poetic image. Daphnis is presented as the most famous hero of the bucolic world, its foundational figure. The story of his “Sorrows” is never told in any detail, apparently as known to all, even though his presence in the tradition does not compare to Polyphemus’, and his loves in 1 and 7 do not appear to be identical. The Cyclops is a famous figure in various branches of the tradition, but the story of his love troubles are narrated much more extensively than Daphnis’. More strikingly, despite Polyphemus’ disadvantages, including his lack of closeness with any god, let alone his failure to enjoy the sympathy of nature, in 11 he is cast as an accomplished singer and a model of those few people who are in a position to realize that poetry is sweet but difficult to find (1–4) and a palliative rather than a cure. Daphnis too owns a pipe (1.128–29), but his musical skills are not praised and, crucially, they do not help him cope with his troubles. Last but not least, Daphnis is more arrogant, eristic and bitter that the relatively modest Polyphemus, although the latter wallows in his illusions, even after he realizes that his song cannot attract Galateia.

|| 8 This circumspection is apparent also in the spurious Idyll 8, which features a singing contest between Daphnis and Menalcas with little arrogance or bickering.

6 | Introduction

Both Daphnis and Polyphemus are old and new, heroes of the tradition and victims of love, with assets and limitations. Daphnis is the great sufferer, but his troubles seem to be partly of his own making, and his plight has become the subject of the paradigmatic bucolic song. Polyphemus is the great survivor who sings of his plight and thus relieves it, but his failure to rid himself of his illusions makes his situation precarious and, potentially at least, hopeless. In 1 the bucolic world sings of a compromised hero, allegedly old but in essence new. In 11 the narrator associates himself and his friend Nicias with a hero beset by various limitations, immortalized already in Homer as a monstrous cannibal, but now appearing as a young, unfortunate lover. Theocritus, who chooses a different genre and even dialect, does not antagonize Homer. Although the language of Polyphemus constantly evokes his “future” misfortunes, the prequel of sorts which Theocritus constructs is not merely a narration of the pre-Homeric (or pre-Euripidean) past of the Cyclops. The open-endedness of the story and the echoes of the post-Homeric tradition, although difficult for modern readers to gauge, create an effect of novelty and new possibilities for the hero and the narrator. Theocritus is not a new Homer, and Polyphemus is not even another Daphnis—it is not incidental or trivial that in 6 Daphnis, whether he is the bucolic hero or not, does not sing in the voice of Polyphemus. Theocritus’ refusal to compete with his predecessors is also obvious in his epigrams on poets. Despite their brevity and pervasive ambiguity, they never suggest that the old masters were compromised by their propensity to abuse, in their lifestyle or their poetry. In a similar vein, Theocritus is not seeking to outdo his contemporaries. In 11, the narrator, who does not even call himself a poet, praises Nicias as a great singer (and healer). The first-person narrator in 7, an alias of Theocritus, is not the senior figure Lycidas but the younger and less accomplished Simichidas. Theocritus does not register any wish or ambition to prevail, as there is no indication that he construes his relationship with his contemporary colleagues antagonistically. To take one prominent example, Heracles’ reaction to the loss of his beloved boy Hylas in 13 and Polydeuces’ boxing match with Amycus in 22 have been handled also by Apollonius at the end of book 1 and the beginning of book 2 respectively. Scholars have long debated priority and the possibility that the second poet sought to improve on or “correct” his predecessor.9 If Apollonius wrote first, there is no evidence that Theocritus engaged in one-upmanship, and the same obtains for Apollonius. It is plausible that the poet who wrote second aspired to be more sophisticated than his predecessor, but the poems are first and foremost a tribute to the || 9 See III n. 109 below.

Introduction | 7

predecessor rather than manifestos of superiority. Similarly, it is impossible to determine and unprofitable to debate whether some shepherds such as Battus and Corydon in 4 or, most intriguingly, Lycidas in 7 are “masks” for Theocritus’ colleagues.10 Even in the encomia to Hiero II and Ptolemy II, poets do not so much seem to compete with or outdo each other as to unite with the rest in praising the virtues of the worthy, including their capacity as poets’ actual or potential patrons (16.101–3, 17.115–16). Of Theocritus’ predecessors only Bacchylides, who modestly even suggests that poetic novelty is very difficult (fr. 5 Maehler), seems to adopt a similar position of poetic unanimity, although Simonides, one of the poets named in 16, may have done something similar. Each Theocritean singer competes for a prize from his own chosen spot, and may achieve success or patronage, but certainty is never expressed, with the partial exception found at the end of 17 (136–37). Theocritus’ attitude toward his predecessors and contemporaries and the failure of his characters’ occasional inflated aspirations and attempts at emulation of models suggest that circumspection is a virtue: narrators and singers (should) recognize their situation and not wish to outdo themselves. This rejection of conceit and the concomitant serenity it engenders in Theocritean narrators are connected with another major, and quite unexpected, strand in Theocritean poetry: the power of word, including song, to provide practical or emotional assistance to characters in distress is a major open issue. This becomes particularly obvious in connection with one of the main themes of the collection, (unrequited) love, and foregrounds the limits of language. It is versatile and potent but not allpowerful. If one realizes its power and limits, one does not harbor excessive aspirations and grasps that even great skill does not guarantee superiority and success. Lovesick shepherds and occasionally other lowly characters woo and serenade their sweethearts, and the lover in 29 tries to persuade his boy with timehonored advice, but none achieves his goal and all remain dejected—the goatherd in 3 seems to be on the verge of perishing.11 This choice is particularly charged, as from Homer onwards both love and poetry (ab)use seductive lan-

|| 10 This goes back to the theory of the bucolic masquerade advanced by Reitzenstein (1893) 229– 34. See more recently Hubbard (1998) 22–32. For Lycidas see III n. 32 below. 11 The fruitless attempts of the two aspiring lovers depicted on the cup in 1 (33–38) are the first appearance of this cardinal motif, a mise en abyme in a poem and genre whose founding hero, the cowherd Daphnis, is the archetypal unfortunate lover. The contest of the two men in epic hexameters points to both bucolic contests and heroic epic, and the echo of their futile struggle in 7.48, which refers to inferior poets aspiring to compete with Homer, is heavily ironic.

8 | Introduction

guage to work their potent magic, and love is often cast as the inspiration for rhetorical excellence that leads to erotic success, although rarely to lasting wellbeing. In Theocritus, though, song fails to help the characters not only to satisfy their passion but also to fall out of love, or at least place it in some kind of (soberer) perspective. Song is difficult to master and it does offer pleasure, since this is its nature, as, for example, it is in the nature of animals to graze and mate, while heroes (and heroines) suffer and achieve fame in song. Song, though, is not by nature a panacea or even a cure. At most, it is a palliative that allows the lovesick to perpetuate their torment, as illustrated mainly in the Cyclops pieces. The failure of the characters to attract the objects of their desire or secure their loyalty is a manifestation of these limitations. To be sure, metapoetically Theocritus’ characters have fair chances of achieving success, namely fame. Paradoxically, though, they may do so in their failure as lovesick suitors who (try to) use poetry, even excellent poetry, to seduce their sweethearts or as carriers of other ambitions. Even the legendary figures of bucolic poetry such as Daphnis in 1 and 7 and Comatas in 7 feature as iconic unfortunate sufferers as much as, or more than, successful singers. On the other hand, despite their travails and shortcomings, Polyphemus and other Theocritean characters fare better than their elite predecessors but only insofar as they survive, especially when they realize at least some of their limitations and do not try to deal with them by incongruous means. There does not seem to be any profit forthcoming from characters’ wish or attempt to seek solace and help beyond their confined realm. The use of radical and controversial means such as magic in 2 or emigration in 14 seems to be dubious at best and a wild-goose chase at worst. Death, actual or potential, by suicide or other means is not billed as liberating, not even in the spurious 23. Last but not least, apart from the universal failure of lovers to deal with their predicament by means of persuasion or song, or to cure themselves by poetic or other means, instruction and advice offered to characters by friends or acquaintances are never helpful and may even prove harmful. Instruction and advice, which feature prominently in all major genres of elite poetry, provide angles for Theocritean refraction. In genuine pieces, instruction is either not completed or not a source of contentment, for either instructor or disciple. In 13 the instruction of Hylas is violently interrupted by his rape and disappearance, and in 5 Lacon does not appreciate the instruction he had received from Comatas, who also regrets it. Characters do not come to grief because of advice they receive: in 4 Aegon seeks an Olympic crown on the advice of Milon; in 10 another Milon urges Bucaeus to sing of his love; and in 14 Thyonichus advises Aeschinas, who has

Introduction | 9

decided to become a mercenary, to seek employment in the army of Ptolemy II. In 30 the thymos of the lover berates his reckless falling for a boy and tries to make him see sense. No recipient of advice or encouragement is harmed, but neither does any appear to be better off because of it and some appear to face risks and potential losses because of it. Only in the spurious 21 good, actionable advice is on offer. Likewise, only in the spurious 27 does a suitor win his sweetheart. On the other hand, although the mime frame occasionally serves to sharpen the edges of the characters to the point of ugly unpleasantness, the ambiguities and open-endedness of most genuine pieces leave open a window of possibility that the aspirations of characters may not be doomed to total failure. In Theocritean bucolic poetry, images of peaceful, contented life in surroundings of great natural beauty are ubiquitous. No characters are tormented by more serious issues than love (or thorn pricks), and certainly no one other than legendary heroes perishes, but suffering is often perpetuated or put off rather than eliminated, as is certainly the case with Polyphemus. More troublingly, Theocritus’ world is beset by the inability of his characters to chart or maintain a proper course of action, control their emotions and reactions, and/or just say the right thing. The main source of their distraction and distress is unrequited or lost love, but ultimately their problems reduce to their failure to achieve self-knowledge. What is more, the commemoration of Daphnis’ woes and similar stories and the constant evocation of elite poetry provide a background of heroic pain that casts shadows on the eutopia. Fame is achievable, but aggressively pursuing it plunges one into the quicksand of ambition and delusion. It is all well and good to be in a locus amoenus, to sit and sing in the shade and in the company of frisky animals and excellent singers, even to impersonate Daphnis like Thyrsis, but the danger of folly and delusion lurks within the singer(s) and/or the eutopia. Σωφροσύνη, restraint or temperance, rather than ἁσυχία is the elusive ideal. Whether in Sicily, Cos or Alexandria, one should have one’s stick with him and wear shoes (cf. 4.49, 56–57), enjoy what is (apparently) present and not seek, think or care about what is absent (cf. 10.8–9, 11.75) and probably inaccessible. Benefits are sometimes within one’s grasp, and song offers pleasure and relief to those who know that it is difficult to find (cf. 11.3–4) and that one should not always be asking (cf. 14.64–65), as the Theocritean narrator is not: he does not have a starry- or one-eyed view of (his) poetry, not even (his) encomiastic poetry. He realizes that his song is not necessarily the best, and that he is not the only or a special favorite of the Muses, but this does not embitter him. He is confident that some noble patron will seek him out (16.73–75) and posterity will appreciate his song (17.136–37). He freely acknowledges that the work of old masters such as Homer is unsurpassable and aspires to fame for his own contributions (22.214–

10 | Introduction

15, 221–23), as befits a singer that evokes the predicaments and achievements of heroes sung in the past by master-singers, and of lowly shepherds that also sing of their unrequited loves. There is really not much else for a (herds)man to do than sing his little songs (cf. 7.50–51) and (wish to) listen to great songs (cf. 7.72– 89), milk the ewe that (he thinks) is present (cf. 11.75) and hope for the best. The themes and choices adumbrated above feature with different combinations and degrees of emphasis throughout the collection, and groupings of poems on the basis of one or two elements may appear to be reductive. Strictly for purposes of expositional clarity, I have separated different groups of poems for discussion. I first discuss so-called mimes that treat the cardinal theme of unfortunate heterosexual love, against a background of song, competition, instruction, and misguided or ambivalent advice. The second group in part I includes the paederastic Idylls: while the prominence of song and competition retreats, the themes of illusion and even aspirations to heroic fame come more sharply into focus. The torment of unrequited love and the power of song, sublimated from various angles, inform the Cyclopean pieces, in which Polyphemus and his doublet, the anonymous goatherd, seek to deal with their predicament. A discussion of spurious pieces in part II brings out the limitations and some advantages of non-Theocritean characters. These Idylls feature a much lighter use of ambiguity and open-endedness than the genuine pieces. The most ambitious poem in this group is 8, which features the legendary youths Daphnis and Menalcas, a character from the bucolic tradition with some Cyclopean traits, and has affinities with 5 and 6. The singing contest set at the “dawn” of the bucolic era includes no trace of hostility or divine enmity and very little by way of narratorial or dramatic complexity. Daphnis is less enigmatic than in 1, and the judge delivers a straightforward verdict. Even expert instruction in bucolic song is available for an appropriate fee. 23, a homoerotic sequel of sorts to 3, is much less ambitious and arguably accomplished. Despite the pathos of the sympathetic lover’s predicament and his suicide, his attempt to control his posthumous reputation by securing a memorialization of his fantasy of a relationship with the cruel boy is utterly hopeless, and the audience are left in no doubt about its hopelessness. 20 also features some affinities with 3, but the arrogant, self-conceited and vindictive oxherd is very different from the goatherd in 3 and from the lover in 23. He is arguably the least sympathetic character and certainly the least successful narrator in the collection. Daphnis in 27, the last Idyll in which a namesake of the hero of 1 appears, is much more successful in rhetoric and love, and the piece is the only one that depicts a version of fulfilled and fulfilling erotic relationship.

Introduction | 11

The handling of the cardinal themes of love, song, competition and illusion in the genuine and non-genuine pieces allows for a better appreciation of the programmatic pieces 1 and 7 discussed in part III, which are unparalleled in their fullness of themes and characters. I focus mainly on the circumspection some characters recommend, the limitations of the bucolic hero Daphnis, the intricacies of song and the challenges facing singers. Before turning to 16 and 17 in part IV, the pieces that deal with patronage and the narrator’s view of his position visà-vis his heritage and the contemporary poetic scene, I discuss epyllia that deal with episodes from the mythology of non-bucolic heroes and heroines. These Idylls present a panorama of complex reworking of traditional material and feature various associations with non-mythological pieces such as the themes of love, endurance, celebration in song, and profound ambivalence. The discussion of Theocritus’ epigrams on poets in V illustrates major aspects of his poetics viewed against the background of his contemporary colleagues’, mainly Callimachus’, handling of similar material. The text of Theocritus is cited from Gow (19522). The translation of passages from Theocritean Idylls is taken from Hopkinson (2015), with some modifications. All other unattributed translations are my own.

I. Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion Idyll 14 The conversation between Aeschinas and Thyonichus, often categorized as urban mime,1 revolves around Aeschinas’ unfortunate love-affair with Cynisca and his plans following the couple’s break-up. The interlocutors are free men of unspecified profession and geographical origin but apparently of a relatively low socioeconomic status, as is shown mainly by Aeschinas’ manner of speaking, especially his use of short metaphors, several proverbs, and direct quotations.2 Like Simaetha in 2, Aeschinas is a jilted lover who cannot forget his sweetheart, Cynisca. He is also prolix and impulsive to the point of violent abuse, both physical and verbal. In a party he describes to Thyonichus he came to realize that Cynisca was no longer interested in him but had developed a passion for his young neighbor Lycus (24–26). It is indicative of his impulsiveness, and apparently his attitude to women, that he mentions irrelevant particulars of the party (12–17) but fails to indicate from the beginning that Cynisca had been present—she only appears at 21. By contrast, he admits readily and matter-of-factly that he drunkenly punched Cynisca on the head twice, when a song made her weep out of lovesickness for Lycus (30–35). Cynisca may have been a courtesan or just a woman of loose morals, who would not fear alienating the host Aeschinas, as a hired entertainer presumably would. Just two admirers, the neighbors Aeschinas and Lycus, are mentioned, which might indicate that she is not a professional courtesan, at least not a particularly popular or successful one, or a clearly disreputable woman. In any case, her social status and professional affiliation, if any, are not specified, but her participation in the party does not necessarily point to lack of social respectability.3 || 1 See, though, Pretagostini (2006) 67–70, who correctly draws attention to its blend of urban and rustic elements. 2 Cf. Dover (1971) 189–90, and Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 161. The diverse origins and occupations of Aeschinas’ drinking comrades in a party he had thrown (12–13) point in the direction of low socioeconomic status. For mobility as a major characteristic of Hellenistic society see e.g. Zanker (1983) 137–41, and Burton (1995) 7–40. Aeschinas’ thorough description of the fairly modest fare in the party (14–17) also shows naively or comically pretentious pride in his largesse as host. 3 In Aeschinas’ social environment women might not be excluded from male company; cf. Dover (1971) 189, and Burton (1995) 25–26 (cf. 50), who also points out, admittedly based mainly on evidence provided by Diogenes Laertius, that respectable women in the archaic, classical and

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615272-002

Idyll 14 | 13

Even if she was a courtesan, her status does not seem to be the reason why Aeschinas does not regret his abuse or has not tried to make amends for it. He relates the incident to Thyonichus without embarrassment, and there is no suggestion that he would have behaved differently with a different sort of woman or when sober. Thyonichus does not indicate that he is shocked or disapproves in any way. Aeschinas’ fellow drinkers apparently did not either, and not necessarily because they had been heavily intoxicated when Aeschinas punched Cynisca. Abuse of alcohol and women seems to be part of normal, everyday life for these men. Wealth and/or high social status do not guarantee absence of such vices, but in addition to the other indicators of social status, the frankness of Aeschinas and the tolerance of his friends might be taken as further signs of the casual attitude toward abuse of women among the Hellenistic lower classes. The abuse certainly accelerated and perhaps sealed the break-up of Aeschinas and Cynisca. Two months after the fateful party he has lost all hope of reconciling with her (44–49) and seeks a way to deal with his passion: he plans to follow the example of Simus, a man of his age, who allegedly took to the sea to forget an unfortunate love and returned cured (53–54). Aeschinas wishes to emigrate and become a mercenary (55–56), and Thyonichus advises him to seek employment with Ptolemy II, a generous king, great employer of free mercenaries and sophisticated patron of the arts (58–70). The outcome of 14 is even more openended than 2, as it ends with no response from Aeschinas, and his emigration, let alone employment as Ptolemy’s mercenary, remains only a potentiality. What is of greater relevance to the present discussion, the audience is in no position to know whether emigration actually helped Simus, and most important, even if it did, whether it will also help Aeschinas. His alleged hopeless infatuation with Cynisca (8–9, 50–53) does not bode well for the future, nor does his earlier failure to investigate the rumors of Cynisca’s passion for Lycus indicate acuity or prudence, as he admits (27–28). Both Thyonichus and Aeschinas himself suggest that Aeschinas is impulsive (cf. 10, 34) and not given to reflection or planning: he wishes that things go as he wishes (11) but is not in a position to ensure that they do (cf. 28, 57). When they do not, he explodes (34–38; cf. 21), then implodes (8–9, 50–53) and contemplates extreme measures (55–56). Thyonichus’ suggestion and his lavish praise of Ptolemy (59–65) do not appear to be misguided or potentially harmful to Aeschinas. The praise of the king,

|| Hellenistic periods were not excluded from symposia as a matter of course, although all women mentioned were associated with philosophers and members of philosophical societies such as the Pythagoreans (D.L. 8.41) and Plato (D.L. 3.46; cf. 6.97–98, on Hipparchia, the wife of the Cynic Crates).

14 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion which includes several features with little relevance to Aeschinas’ situation, has generated suggestions that the poem aimed, entirely or in large part, at royal flattery or even sycophancy, although in a sophisticated, ironic vein.4 It is difficult to believe that the entire poem is just an elaborate introduction to, or just a framework for, the crowning offer of royal flattery in pursuit of royal patronage. Although patronage may belong to Theocritus’ concerns, it does not do justice to the poem to view the concluding flattering praise as its key of sorts, or as a disjointed digression only superficially connected to the dramatic framework.5 Be that as it may, Thyonichus’ expansiveness contrasts with his brief earlier comments, creating an impression of asymmetry. He turns out to be more knowledgeable than one might initially assume, but the unexpected shift does not cast him in the mold of a sage counselor,6 inasmuch as it assimilates him to his impulsive friend. Thyonichus had so far appeared to be soberer and more restrained than Aeschinas, and the shift seems unlikely to benefit the latter. Even sensible advice given to a hotheaded, clueless or desperate man about to embark on a dangerous venture is ambivalent. Thyonichus’ final encouragement to Aeschinas to hurry to Egypt and do something as soon as possible while he is still young (65–70) may be viewed as an attempt to corroborate his friend’s resolve to deal with his illstarred passion. Still, given Aeschinas’ shortcomings and the dangers involved in his decision to become a mercenary, the assumption that his friend might rather advise restraint and patience, at least initially, or limit himself to good wishes (cf. 57), readily suggests itself.7 This failure to hit the right counseling

|| 4 See Lawall (1967) 122, Stern (1975) 58, Griffiths (1979) 110–12, Schwinge (1986) 64–65, and Burton (1995) 128–29. 5 Pretagostini (2003) argues that the praise of Ptolemy is elegantly integrated and thus reinforced in the mime, not least by means of the last injunction to the effect that one should not be asking on every occasion (64–65), which turns on its head the goal, explicit or implicit, of every encomium. Cf. next n. Hunt (2011) 380 associates Ptolemy’s characterization as “exceedingly pleasant” at 61 with Theocritus’ programmatic first word (1.1) and thinks that the correlation is complimentary and perhaps sincere. Hunter (2003) 36 argues that “Thyonichus, both recruitingsergeant and encomiast, represents one way of positioning the poet in the new dispensation.” According to Pausch (2011), Ptolemy is presented as the best judge of love poetry and best patron of the poet. 6 Contrast Griffiths (1979) 110, 115. The only sobering piece of advice Thyonichus offers at the end is that one should not be asking on every occasion (64–65). This is salutary, but it does not address the dangers of mercenary life or the plan’s prospects of success. 7 Stephens (2006) 109 argues that Thyonichus’ failure to praise Ptolemy’s generalship makes this king of peace rather than war a good choice of paymaster for a man enlisting to get over his love troubles, in other words unconcerned about prowess, glory or spoils. This may be so, but the hardships and dangers of military life are not obliterated because Ptolemy has not yet shown

Idyll 14 | 15

notes does not undermine the worth or praise of Ptolemy as king, paymaster and patron. Rather, it indicates that not only Aeschinas but also Thyonichus is a man who has little to do with the exquisite, sophisticated Ptolemy, and that “hastening (to Egypt)” (68) is a piece of advice that such men may give or take freely. It has been suggested that 14 looks back to, and presents a modern version of, archaic sympotic culture and martial valor.8 Aeschinas held a symposium for his friends but failed to preserve the requisite atmosphere of exclusive male camaraderie, which was undermined and eventually ruined by Cynisca’s power over him and her emancipated choice of lover. Aeschinas seeks to buttress his upstaged manhood and recover the community of his male comrades by enlisting as mercenary, and Thyonichus suggests that he should seek employment with a sophisticated king that exemplifies the ideals of aristocratic male sympotic culture. In a similar vein, Aeschinas’ decision to become a soldier, though of the modern mercenary rather than the archaic citizen sort, is conceptualized by Thyonichus in terms that echo archaic lyric ideals of militarism and great leadership, also exemplified by the exquisite Ptolemy, reminiscent of epic rulers but in a modern sophisticated guise. Such readings sublimate the reminiscences of archaic poetry by isolating them and essentially considering them out of context. Like other Idylls that ironically filter the tradition through a modern lens, 14 presents archaic concepts as unattainable, virtually irrelevant ideals rather than plausible aspirations. The poem depicts failure throughout, mostly on the part of Aeschinas but also of Thyonichus, who fail to realize that a young man should know how to take as well as deliver blows. Aeschinas fails to hear, see and understand what is happening under his nose, and to deal with his predicament in a restrained or resigned fashion. However, Aeschinas’ symposium does not make him feel isolated and depressed. His male comrades do not distance themselves from him, and so his sense of belonging to a male community does not suffer. His depression, evident in his loss of weight, pallor and unkempt appearance (3–6), takes hold after the symposium: it is a common symptom of lovesickness and does not signify isolation from his male friends. There is no indication that Aeschinas seeks to rejoin a male community that has been upstaged by a rebellious female. Cynisca was apparently a guest at the party like the rest and participated on equal terms in the love-toasts (18–21). If anything, Aeschinas plans to take flight just like Cynisca did, but he has no Lycus

|| himself to be a competent or energetic general. A mercenary, especially of the impulsive and unreflective sort, may come to grief in the employment of any commander. 8 See e.g. Griffiths (1979) 111–16, Burton (1995) 25, 51, 127, and Fountoulakis (2017).

16 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion to take refuge to. There is no doubt that Ptolemy is presented as the opposite of Aeschinas, and to an extent Thyonichus, but the king’s advantages do not change the fact that Aeschinas will be his mercenary. He is not indigent or motivated to emigrate by any kind of material difficulties but simply seeks to put as much distance between himself and Cynisca as he can. He tries to reassure himself that he will not regret this radical and potentially lethal choice by suggesting that soldiery is not, after all, the worst thing that could happen to a person (55–56), and that Simus, after all, came back from his service safe and sound. The dissonance between archaic ideals and contemporary realities, or between the public male sphere and private love troubles, is not conveyed by Aeschinas’ choice of new profession but by the choice of echoes of archaic poetry in the conversation. Aeschinas compares the weeping and flustered Cynisca to a little girl crying for her mother’s lap (31–33). After he hits her and she takes flight, she is a mother swallow (39–42) and a bull (43). The first two comparisons hark back to similes used by Achilles in speeches to Patroclus (Il. 16.7–10) and Odysseus (Il. 9.323–24) respectively. The incongruous choice of images, gender inversion and resulting dissonances have been correctly noted.9 Cynisca’s flowing tears and swift flight hark back to the plight of warriors in anguish over their comrades and in the thick of a long and arduous campaign respectively. Actually, gender inversion is present in the Homeric similes, and the Theocritean counterparts may be thought to “correct” it. Even so, intertextually the “correction” does not obliterate the dissonance, since the association of Cynisca with Homeric warriors, who are likened to a little girl and a mother bird, remains standing. Cynisca’s increasing independence is captured in the images Aeschinas uses to depict her, first visualizing her situation in terms of the female roles of girl and mother bird and finally in terms of the fable of a rebellious bull. This suggests his inability to control her, especially as he goes on to compare himself to a mouse caught in pitch (51). His lack of self-control extends to his images.10 Similarly, the echoes of archaic lyric (Tyrtaeus fr. 10.31–32 = 11.21–22; cf. 12.16–17 W2, and Archilochus fr. 114 W2) in Thyonichus’ final speech have very little to do with Aeschinas’ situation (65–67):

|| 9 See e.g. Stern (1975) 56–57, and Griffiths (1979) 114–15. Bernsdorff (1996) 83–84 suggests that the choice of a paratactic simile at 39–40 highlights the abruptness and speed of the subject’s flight. 10 Cf. Burton (1995) 49. For the possible, and difficult to identify with certainty, stylistic aims of Theocritus in his reworking of the Homeric images in his paratactic similes see Hunter (2014a) 68–72.

Idyll 14 | 17

ὥστ’ εἴ τοι κατὰ δεξιὸν ὦμον ἀρέσκει λῶπος ἄκρον περονᾶσθαι, ἐπ’ ἀμφοτέροις δὲ βεβακώς τολμασεῖς ἐπιόντα μένειν θρασὺν ἀσπιδιώταν, ᾇ τάχος εἰς Αἴγυπτον. So if you fancy pinning the end of your cloak over your right shoulder, and if you dare to stand firm and wait for the charge of a bold shield-bearing fighter, then off with you to Egypt as quick as you can.

First of all, Aeschinas is not about to become a general, of the Archilochean or any other sort. Tyrtaeus, who admonishes the youth of Sparta to stand firm and hold the line, does not visualize the enemies as wielders of shields. Instead, he focuses on the weapons, including the shield, of his addressees rather than on those of the enemies. Indeed the image of a sturdy soldier standing firm on the battlefield to face the attack of a bold shield-bearer is incongruously unusual. Normally, the enemy would be visualized as attacking with spear or sword, seeking to kill or rout the stout shield-bearing men standing firm to fend off the attack. Shield-bearing men (ἀνέρας ἀσπιδιώτας) are first mentioned in Homeric references to great leaders, the Athenians (Il. 2.554), and Achilles himself (Il. 16.167).11 One might expect that the use of the fairly rare word ἀσπιδιώτας would associate Ptolemy, Aeschinas’ prospective employer (cf. 17.93), with Homeric heroes, but as with the rest of the Homeric allusions, it moves in the opposite direction and is used of the enemy forces, and thus implicitly their general. On the other hand, it might not be accidental that the reference to Achilles is preceded by the elaborate simile of a pack of wolves feasting on a deer and lapping water from a spring (Il. 16.156–66). After Aeschinas has lost badly to a young and soft rival in love named Λύκος = ‘wolf’ (24–25), he faces the grim prospect of fighting foes armed, dangerous and eager for battle like actual hungry wolves.12 The failure of Aeschinas and Thyonichus to conceptualize Aeschinas’ situation in realistic terms, which are significantly or interestingly reminiscent of a venerable tradition, is emblematic of their limitations and failures. Unlike Ptolemy, they have no assets or distinctions. As already pointed out, Aeschinas’ portrayal is structured around his several shortcomings, but Thyonichus does not fare much better. Although Aeschinas’ latest plan may plausibly be considered another manifestation of his damaging impulsiveness, Thyonichus does not

|| 11 For the epic and lyric intertexts of Thyonichus’ admonition (and of Apollonius’ Arg. 3.1293–95) see Telò (2005). 12 For other possible puns with the choice of names such as Cynisca (‘Little Bitch’) and Cleonicus see Stephens (2006) 109–10.

18 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion ponder or question the friend’s plan but goes along with it, offering unreflective, almost prolix encouragement. The greatest shortcoming of the pair is their failure to recognize, or at least worry, that seeking solace and improvement of one’s condition outside one’s circumscribed realm is not necessarily bound to bring any benefit, when one has failed so completely even in small, intimate matters.13 Still, Thyonichus seems to mean well, and Aeschinas is not clearly doomed to failure in his latest plan, at least as far as his potential choice of employer is concerned.

Idyll 4 A potentially much more damaging, and perhaps spuriously motivated, bit of advice is given to Aegon in 4, a bucolic mime and the only bucolic piece without a fairly lengthy song or formal exchange of songs.14 The cowherd Aegon from the area of Croton in Sicily, who does not appear in the poem, is portrayed as a figure even less restrained than Aeschinas. Aegon’s colleague Corydon informs his interlocutor Battus, possibly a goatherd (cf. 39), that he is looking after Aegon’s herd because its owner has left for Olympia, persuaded by Milon to take part in the Olympic games (1–11): ΒΑΤΤΟΣ Εἰπέ μοι, ὦ Κορύδων, τίνος αἱ βόες; ἦ ῥα Φιλώνδα; ΚΟΡΥΔΩΝ οὔκ, ἀλλ’ Αἴγωνος· βόσκειν δέ μοι αὐτὰς ἔδωκεν. ΒΑ. ἦ πᾴ ψε κρύβδαν τὰ ποθέσπερα πάσας ἀμέλγες; ΚΟ. ἀλλ’ ὁ γέρων ὑφίητι τὰ μοσχία κἠμὲ φυλάσσει. ΒΑ. αὐτὸς δ’ ἐς τίν’ ἄφαντος ὁ βουκόλος ᾤχετο χώραν; ΚΟ. οὐκ ἄκουσας; ἄγων νιν ἐπ’ Ἀλφεὸν ᾤχετο Μίλων. ΒΑ. καὶ πόκα τῆνος ἔλαιον ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ὀπώπει; ΚΟ. φαντί νιν Ἡρακλῆι βίην καὶ κάρτος ἐρίσδειν. ΒΑ. κἤμ’ ἔφαθ’ ἁ μάτηρ Πολυδεύκεος ἦμεν ἀμείνω. ΚΟ. κᾤχετ’ ἔχων σκαπάναν τε καὶ εἴκατι τουτόθε μῆλα. ΒΑ. πείσαι κα Μίλων καὶ τὼς λύκος αὐτίκα λυσσῆν.

|| 13 Contrast, for instance, the narrator in Cavafy’s The City, who sternly disabuses a man wishing to emigrate and make a clean break with his past. 14 It is also the only poem with non-mythological characters in which athletic competitions, especially the great Panhellenic games at Olympia, have a prominent place. For the reception of the epinician tradition in the poem see Rawles (2007) and Kampakoglou (2014), esp. 12–13 (the discussion of Simonides PMG 509 = 18 Poltera). Thomas (1996) 235 associates the reference to Polydeuces (9), the only one in the corpus except for 22, and the stichomythia (1–14) with the exchange of Amycus and Polydeuces in 22 (54–74).

Idyll 4 | 19

BATTUS: Tell me, Corydon, whose cows are these? Do they belong to Philondas? CORYDON: No, to Aegon. He gave me them to pasture. BA. I daresay you milk them all on the quiet in the evening? CO. No, the old man puts their calves under them and keeps his eye on me. BA. And their master the oxherd, which country has he disappeared to? CO. Haven’t you heard? Milon has gone off with him to the Alpheus. BA. And when has he ever set eyes on oil? CO. They say he’s a match for Heracles in strength and might. BA. Yes; and my mother used to say I was better than Polydeuces. CO. And he’s gone taking his pickaxe and twenty sheep from here. BA. Milon could even persuade wolves to become rabid in an instant.

Milon was the name of a famous Crotonian wrestler of the sixth century, reportedly a member of the Pythagorean circle, who had won thirty-one Panhellenic victories. He performed many other feats, including carrying a bull on his shoulders around the stadium at Olympia and then eating it in one day (Ath. 10.412e-f). He also engaged in ox-eating competition with the Aetolian cowherd Titormus (Alex. Aet. fr. 11 Powell), another performer of amazing feats of strength (Ael. VH 12.122).15 There is no indication that the Theocritean Milon is an athlete,16 and Aegon would presumably compete in the boxing event (cf. 9, 33). Even if the archaic Milon is alluded to, the tone of the poem leaves little doubt that his extravagance, including his voraciousness, rather than his athletic prowess or glory is in the spotlight. Battus derides Aegon’s ambitions (7, 9), but Corydon reports and seems to trust rumors of his worth (8), although both men go on to observe and lament the detrimental impact that Aegon’s departure has on the wellbeing of his herd (12–27). It does not become clear in the poem why or how Milon, whose relationship to Aegon or professional capacity is not identified, persuaded Aegon to abandon his herd and embark on a pursuit that involved great expense (10), a considerable chance of injury or worse, and had apparently few realistic prospects of success. What is more, it is also left vague whether Milon simply encouraged a man who had already been harboring ambitions that were probably above his station or misled a cowherd who had never before entertained any thought of seeking a Panhellenic crown.17 || 15 See Gow (19522) 78, and Hunter (1999) 133, 138. Cf. Paus. 6.14.6–7 and next n. 16 Fantuzzi (1998) 74–75 thinks that he is, although he correctly points out that Milon may hardly have been the archaic wrestler, as the Idyll is clearly set in the Hellenistic present (cf. 31). Thomas (1996) 235 makes the interesting suggestion that time, myth and history are blurred in 4. Cf. Stephens (2006) 100. 17 Gutzwiller (1991) 154, 156 argues that Aegon’s pursuit and the choice of his associate’s name capitalize on the motif of a lowly person’s aspirations to compete with his social betters on the basis of his intrinsic worth. The stories about Titormus may have such background, but no class

20 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion To complicate matters further, Corydon suggests that Aegon had performed feats of gluttony and strength in local rustic competitions in the past: he had devoured eighty loaves all by himself and had dragged a bull down a hill and offered it to Amaryllis (33–37), a now deceased local beauty, whose demise is lamented by Battus (38–40). The competitions may have been part of Aegon’s training for his eventual participation in the Panhellenic games, or an early manifestation of abilities that may have fostered his ambitions, or both. The relationship of Aegon to Amaryllis, and of Battus to her for that matter, is not specified. Aegon may have been her lover or one of her suitors, possibly a rival of Battus for her affections. In either case, her death may have distressed Aegon, as it has Battus (39–40), and led him to seek consolation outside his geographical and professional area, just as Cynisca’s passion for Lycus in 14 drives Aeschinas to despair and thoughts of emigration. This is not particularly plausible or profitable to assume, as neither Battus nor Corydon suggests that Aegon had been distraught. On the contrary, Battus laments that Aegon has fallen in love with a miserable victory (27, quoted below), and Corydon reports that he is said to rival Heracles in strength (8), perhaps an echo of Aegon’s inflated aspirations. The kind of speculation involved in the attempt to surmise Aegon’s motives is often castigated as “documentary fallacy” because fictional characters are not “real” people with life histories and emotions.18 Vigilance should indeed be maintained against basing any reading on unprovable assumptions, although most scholars fail to follow their own strictures and engage in symbolic interpretations that are equally unwarranted. It is hard to believe that poets or audiences would confront fictional characters as puppets or shadow figures, and references to past events and histories do open a small window for the construction of characters’ histories. Certainty is never guaranteed or achieved, as poets almost invariably favor ambiguity or indeterminacy. Aegon may have been a distraught suitor, a cowherd that had harbored athletic ambitions for some time, both, or neither, but he took a bold and potentially reckless initiative on the advice or encouragement of Milon. The latter may be thought to have wished to help a friend’s recovery by persuading him to do something unusual or radical. Alternatively, he may have

|| distinctions are evident in 4. Aegon is an implausible athlete because he has had nothing to do with the great athletic competitions before Milon’s intervention, not because he is not a wealthy aristocrat. On the other hand, Aegon’s socioeconomic status may have inhibited his participation in the great games until Milon encouraged him to compete, but such a scenario cannot be taken for granted. What is certain is that Milon’s encouragement is viewed as detrimental. 18 See e.g. Segal (1981) 97.

Idyll 4 | 21

exploited Aegon’s ambitions or encouraged him to seek a Panhellenic crown, for selfish, conceivably venal, reasons. The second scenario is perhaps likelier than the first. As just pointed out, there is no indication that Aegon had suffered or, much less, become distraught because of Amaryllis’ death. Corydon says that Milon carried Aegon off to Olympia (6), and the latter left with a pickaxe and twenty sheep (10).19 Battus then suggests that Milon might persuade even the wolves to become rabid, or mad, at once (11). The import of this statement is not clear,20 and I will return to it in a moment. For now, let it suffice to say that it is unlikely to indicate a disastrous diminution of a sheep flock, comparable to a ravaging that would be produced by rabid wolves, or the vulnerable state of Aegon’s herd after his departure. The theme of this state has not yet been touched upon, and the assumption that Battus alludes at this point to the inadequacy of Aegon or Corydon as a cowherd is unwarranted. Concerning the sheep, it would be obscure to the point of incomprehensibility to illustrate Aegon’s madness and damage to the flock in this way. Besides, nothing is said to the effect that the flock, or any flock of sheep, belonged to Aegon or his father anyway. It is clear that Battus considers the entire enterprise as madness, not just the part involving the sheep. The man responsible for this madness is Milon, who may be thought to have encouraged Aegon to compete by, perhaps among other things, offering him his services as a trainer or some kind of agent. There is no mention of, or allusion to, such an arrangement. Still, it is hard to imagine why Corydon, who does not share Battus’ negative view of Aegon’s adventure or Milon’s role, would say that Milon carried Aegon off to Alpheus. If Milon had not been a (self-styled) trainer or agent but a friend, who only offered advice or encouragement, in the manner of Thyonichus in 14, for instance, it is highly implausible that he would have accompanied Aegon to Olympia, let alone have “taken him off” thereto. If Milon had sought no benefit, his dealings with Aegon are virtually impossible to make sense of, as there is no indication that he wished to harm Aegon, materially or physically, because he hated or had a grudge against him. It is possible that Theocritus did not care to elucidate the dealings, but Battus takes a dim view of them, and Corydon considers Milon’s role cardinal in the enterprise.

|| 19 These are the standard provisions of Olympic contestants, who had to train for a month before competing and were standardly derided as gluttonous. Cf. Σ (Wendel 137), Gow (19522) 79, White (1981) 141–42, and Hunter (1999) 133–34. For mockery of athletes and their model Heracles in Hellenistic comedy cf. also III n. 110 below. 20 For an overview of interpretive suggestions see Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 169.

22 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion On this basis, even if Milon was not venal or a fraudster, his role was ambivalent at best and detrimental at worst. In epinician poetry trainers are mentioned only in connection with boy athletes, but this does not necessarily rule out Milon’s capacity as (self-styled) trainer. Although not a boy, Aegon may have been quite young, and his participation in the Olympic games was certainly his first foray into a Panhellenic athletic competition. He would then need, or would be easily convinced that he needed, the services of a trainer who would (claim that he would) boost his chances of winning. Milon, though, is nowhere portrayed as a professional or competent trainer or a man otherwise likely to help Aegon in his venture. He seems to have encouraged and orchestrated Aegon’s ambitions, presumably for a fee or some other benefit, but neither Corydon nor Battus says or implies anything that might hint at actual, even limited, credentials of Milon as trainer.21 In this light, Battus’ comment at 11 apparently indicates that Milon is a wily or ruthless rascal: he might persuade right away even wild beasts, by nature unresponsive to persuasion, not simply to follow or obey him but to become afflicted with a deadly sickness, which motivates aberrant behavior. Rabies, which afflicts dogs and wolves, is not a mere synonym for madness but an affliction that alters completely the normal behavior of the animals, and causes paralysis and ultimately death. Battus apparently attacks Milon on two fronts, his detrimental influence on his victims and the means with which he exerts it, his power of persuasion. He highlights its irresistible sway by suggesting that Milon may paradoxically convince even wild animals not simply to do his bidding or change their behavior but to contract a deadly disease, harm others and perish miserably. Milon would then be cast as the opposite of Orpheus, the great charmer of inanimate and animate nature (cf. A. Ag. 1629, AR Arg. 1.26–31), including wild beasts (Eur. Ba. 563–64; cf. PMG 567),22 and even of the pitiless powers of the underworld (Eur. Alc. 357–62; cf. Pl. Smp. 179d).

|| 21 It is possible that τῆνος at 7 (“and when did he ever behold oil?”) is used ambiguously on purpose and that the external audience would interpret it as referring to Milon rather than Aegon, as neither 8 nor 11, pace Gow (19522) 78, indicates clearly the identity of the man Battus disparages at 7. Even if no ambiguity is intended or perceived, still Milon is nowhere designated as a trainer. 22 Distress over the misfortunes and death of bucolic heroes such as Daphnis induced wild animals to lament (Id. 1.71–72). The alleged suffering and wasting away of Aegon’s animals on account of his departure, which at first glance might be taken as pathetic fallacy reminiscent of the sympathy of nature for Daphnis’ plight, will appear quite prominently below (cf. next n.), and an inversion of Orpheus’ calming influence may also be relevant in this respect. Fantuzzi (1998) 75–76 ingenuously argues that Battus alludes to the end of the archaic wrestler Milon, who was

Idyll 4 | 23

Battus’ hostility toward Milon creates a dissonance congruent with the effect of dislocation and disruption that permeates the Idyll. Milon’s negative influence would impact the entire bucolic community but is likely to damage above all Aegon. The persuasion of Milon, a dangerous and probably venal charmer, an antiOrpheus of sorts, has rendered Aegon virtually insane. His herd and syrinx are left behind, just like Daphnis’ (cf. 1.115–30), but not because he is pining away for a girl. Rather, the syrinx is about to rot and the cows are on the verge of dying of starvation because he fell in love with a miserable victory, as Battus laments (26–28): φεῦ φεῦ βασεῦνται καὶ ταὶ βόες, ὦ τάλαν Αἴγων, εἰς Ἀίδαν, ὅκα καὶ τὺ κακᾶς ἠράσσαο νίκας, χἀ σῦριγξ εὐρῶτι παλύνεται, ἅν ποκ’ ἐπάξα. Ah, your cattle, too, will be gone to Hades, wretched Aegon, because you, too, are lusting after a miserable victory; and the pipe you once made is spotted with mold.

The sorry state of the herd may be contrasted with the appetite of their master, who pursues his goal with hearty provisions of food (10), apparently indifferent to the plight of his animals. Corydon believes that the cows pine away for their absent master (12), in the manner of forlorn or unfortunate lovers, but Battus may imply that they are merely hungry because Corydon does not take good care of them, despite his assurances to the contrary (17–19, 23–25).23 Although Aegon’s herd may not be grieving, and Aegon is not about to die, he runs serious risks and, as already pointed out, he may suffer injury or worse. Moreover, the presentation of his departure and the plight of his herd in terms reminiscent of Daphnis’ demise and its impact on nature highlight the potential irreversibility of Aegon’s abandonment of his world, a virtual death. However, the perceived confusion and disruption of the norms of the bucolic world are not the fallout from an emotion, love for a girl, experienced by a Daphnis-like Aegon. Instead, he fell in love with ugly victory, or set out to pursue it, because an evil charmer induced or encouraged him to do so. This powerful and nefarious agent, who might even persuade wild animals to fall ill at once, drives livestock to distraction by fostering a misguided love of athletic success in their master, the || reportedly torn to pieces by wolves (or dogs), and wishes that his namesake meet a similar fate. An allusion is plausible, but the emphasis on persuasion and rabies does not fit in with it. 23 For the troubles of Aegon’s herd and loss of appetite and withering as classic symptoms of lovesickness see Hunter (1999) 134–35, and Kampakoglou (2014) 18. Battus may indeed not share entirely Corydon’s view, but his position and the issue remain at best indeterminate. At any rate, both men seem to exaggerate the alleged problem of the herd, as I will argue below.

24 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion “hero” of the bucolic world. In any case, the disruption is different than that generated by Daphnis’ imminent death, but it may be to an extent illusory. I will return to Daphnis and Aegon in a moment. For now, the confusion in the norms of the bucolic world and the attempt of the two interlocutors to deal with it by assessing its impact and thus putting it in some perspective occasion a shift to a higher register in their forays into elite poetic genres, lament (26–28, 38–40) and encomium (32–37). Before his lament for the death of Amaryllis (38–40), Battus laments Aegon’s love of the wretched victory, which dooms the hallmarks of his previous life, both animate and inanimate, to withering destruction (26–28, quoted above). The particle καί, which appears in all three lines of Battus’ lament, has been interpreted variously, although in all cases as copulative. Gow thinks that the lament over the imminent demise of the cows at 26 harks back to the sheep that Aegon took with him as his rations (10). Hunter suggests that at 27 Aegon is said to follow the detrimental fashion for athletics (“you too”).24 These possibilities cannot be ruled out of hand, but I believe that it is more plausible to interpret the lament in its immediate context. The sheep have been mentioned a while back,25 and, as already suggested, Aegon is not said to be a shepherd that sacrifices his sheep in the pursuit of his victory. There is also no indication that there was any current fashion for athletics followed by Aegon. The particle at 26 and 28 naturally and emphatically links the two things thoughtlessly and detrimentally abandoned by Aegon, his cattle and his syrinx. Battus sums up the condition of the herd and its cause, adding the imminent destruction of the syrinx. In my view, the particle at 27 is mainly used emphatically = ‘in fact, actually’.26 Aegon used to be a cowherd and a bucolic syrinx-player, who had once fashioned his own instrument, but he has now abandoned his “natural” occupations. Corydon, consistently more sympathetic to Aegon’s novel enterprise, points out that Aegon bequeathed him the syrinx before he left; the instrument is thus in good hands and in no danger of disuse, as he himself is a singer of some quality, able to perform even (the latest) great hits (29–31):

|| 24 Gow (19522) 83; Hunter (1999) 136. 25 Cf. Dover (1971) 123. 26 For this use of the particle cf. 55, 61 and Denniston (19542) 320. It is also likely, and not mutually exclusive with the possibility just mentioned, that in the context of a lament, a genre that often included moralizing exempla, Battus is suggesting other, unnamed, examples of individuals, who pursued wretched victories to their own and others’ detriment. If so, there may be an implication that Aegon, along with his cattle and syrinx, will perish or suffer some kind of irreparable harm because of his reckless eagerness for the wretched victory.

Idyll 4 | 25

οὐ τήνα γ’, οὐ Νύμφας, ἐπεὶ ποτὶ Πῖσαν ἀφέρπων δῶρον ἐμοί νιν ἔλειπεν· ἐγὼ δέ τις εἰμὶ μελικτάς, κεὖ μὲν τὰ Γλαύκας ἀγκρούομαι, εὖ δὲ τὰ Πύρρω. Oh no it isn’t, by the Nymphs, for as he was going off to Pisa he left it me as a gift. I’m quite a singer; I strike up songs of Glauce and Pyrrhus pretty well.

This rounds off Corydon’s (literalist) defense of his adequacy as a replacement for Aegon in his capacity as herdsman and singer: he diligently takes the distressed animals to graze at the best spots (17–19, 23–25) and he is a knowledgeable singer. As a partial confirmation of this last claim, he strikes up a rustic epinician celebrating Aegon’s past exploits in rustic competitions (32–37). As may be expected, the forays of both Battus and Corydon into elite lyric genres are compromised by their limitations, especially Corydon’s. In a way these limitations may perhaps be meant to be viewed ironically as more troubling than Aegon’s, in that they become obvious in the very frame of the bucolic world, the dramatic frame of the poem. Battus had castigated Aegon’s pretensions of athletic success, and both men lamented the impact of Aegon’s departure on his herd. Nevertheless, both display behavior and ambitions that ill suit their station and do not fit (better) in their bucolic environment. The pessimism Battus expresses in his lament over the impact of Aegon’s departure on his cows and pipe is premature.27 He may be thought to ironically “impersonate” a mourner and express tropes of the lament genre without fully sharing the emotions. However, there is precious little support for such an assumption. Even if it is not ruled out, though, the choice of adopting the pose of a prematurely despairing pessimist may only serve to bring out his inadequacy as a proper bucolic mourner. Battus’ real or fictional distress is not justified by the condition of Aegon’s cattle, which may not be optimal but is not necessarily hopeless—the calves, at least, soon demonstrate a quite healthy appetite (44–45). Besides, Battus either does not know or disregards the fact that Aegon presented his syrinx to Corydon before he left. In any case, Aegon’s absence cannot realistically be so prolonged

|| 27 Several scholars have pointed out Battus’ emotional and linguistic excesses; see e.g. Segal (1981) 91, Haber (1994), Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 157, Hatzikosta (2005) 195–97, and Hunt (2017) 98. However, the naïve and impressionable Corydon, who reports rumors about Aegon’s might (8) and strikes up a sort of epinician for a past gluttony feat (33–34) may plausibly be thought to come off worse; cf. Ott, (1969) 47–48, Rist (1978) 52, and Gutzwiller (1991) 149–50, 156. Corydon also boasts of his musical competence and familiarity with contemporary music (30– 31), but these claims remain uncorroborated, although they are not mocked or otherwise denied by Battus. For Corydon’s boasts cf. Vox (1985) 173–74, and for the two shepherds see Barigazzi (1974) 302–3.

26 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion as to have already caused the decay of the instrument. As pointed out earlier, Battus may exaggeratedly imply that Aegon will die or suffer serious harm in his pursuit of the wretched victory—the lament over the rotting and forlorn syrinx, once fashioned by Aegon, is reminiscent of emotional references to items that once belonged to, or were used by, dead people (e.g. Eur. Alc. 945–46, El. 319–21, Tr. 1194–99; cf. A. Ag. 410–19, S. El. 267–74). This implication is brought out through the underlying association of Aegon with Daphnis, although this association is not articulated by the characters: the departure motivated by wretched “love”, the suffering animals, the neglected syrinx, the distress and laments of those left behind strengthen the impression that Aegon is (about to be) permanently lost, as good as dead (cf. 5). Indeed, no timeframe of his absence is mooted nor any anticipation of his return registered by either Corydon or Battus. Still, the sorrows and disappearance of Daphnis, the foundational story and narrative of the Theocritean bucolic world, produce a different, arguably less disturbing, kind of disruption. The bucolic world, including gods and animals, unites in its lament for Daphnis, or passes from natural contentment to universal bereavement. In Aegon’s world no sympathy or unambiguous longing, or even pathetic fallacy, is clearly observed. Instead, a reversal or breakdown of all connections occurs because of the “hero’s” ambitions, induced or fostered by the bad advice or spurious encouragement he received. The gods visit Daphnis and try to console and encourage him when he is wasting away because of love, but Aegon enjoys no similar support. Milon has persuaded him to abandon his herd, causing or encouraging his love of evil victory instead of love for a beautiful girl. Even Corydon, the colleague and presumed friend of Aegon, to whom he entrusted his herd and syrinx, is not above contemplating taking surreptitious advantage of the situation: he would milk the cows for his own benefit, were not the old man there to thwart the plan (3–4). This is another, very early sign of Aegon’s gullibility, which would also make him susceptible to Milon’s persuasion, and/or a consequence of the latter. Besides, although the old man, probably Aegon’s father, vigilantly prevented Corydon’s plan, he was not able, or did not even care enough, to prevent Aegon from falling in love with a miserable victory under the spell of Milon. What is more, Aegon is not the only one distracted by an incongruous longing and likely to suffer as a consequence. On a smaller, appropriately and exclusively rustic scale, the wary and sensible Battus too is stung by a thorn, as he ventures in the mountains barefoot and gawks at a heifer (50–57). The little incident may serve to evoke contemporary literature and art28 but it certainly signals the return of the poem back to the confined world of the rustics || 28 See Gutzwiller (1991) 151–52, and Hunter (1999) 141–42.

Idyll 4 | 27

and their concerns. These revolve around their animals and their homely liaisons as exemplified by the stalwart prowess of the lascivious old man (see quotation below). Battus’ failure to shod himself and especially to notice the thorns at his feet, distracted by a heifer, suggests that lack of forethought and especially infatuation, even temporary and in a homely context, have unpleasant consequences—the pain caused by the stinging of the thorn is visualized in terms of the small but overwhelming wound inflicted by love or sexual desire.29 The only one unaffected by such predicaments and lapses is Aegon’s Priapic father. He is not reported to show any concern for his son and carries on with his own love interests, taking over the role of both animals and young lovers in other bucolic Idylls (58–63): ΒΑ. εἴπ’ ἄγε μ’, ὦ Κορύδων, τὸ γερόντιον ἦ ῥ’ ἔτι μύλλει τήναν τὰν κυάνοφρυν ἐρωτίδα τᾶς ποκ’ ἐκνίσθη; ΚΟ. ἀκμάν γ’, ὦ δείλαιε· πρόαν γε μὲν αὐτὸς ἐπενθών καὶ ποτὶ τᾷ μάνδρᾳ κατελάμβανον ἆμος ἐνήργει. ΒΑ. εὖ γ’, ὤνθρωπε φιλοῖφα. τό τοι γένος ἢ Σατυρίσκοις ἐγγύθεν ἢ Πάνεσσι κακοκνάμοισιν ἐρίσδει. BA. Now tell me, Corydon, is the old man still grinding that dark-browed darling who once tickled his fancy? CO. Of course he still is, my poor chap. Just the other day I came across him while he was at it by the cattle pens. BA. Well done, old lecher! Your sort are not far behind the race of Satyrs and ugly-legged Pans.

His activities may be viewed as signifying a reestablishment of bucolic, or hyperbucolic, balance and the privileging of earthy pleasures over loftier, and effectively doomed, forays.30 Indeed, the old man displays a constancy and dedication to his lowly pursuits that may come to seem commendable after all the unease

|| 29 Cf. 59 (ἐκνίσθη), and the association of sluggish Bucaeus, who will turn out to be distracted by love, with a ewe lagging behind the flock because of a thorn-prick (10.4). I find it implausible that Battus’ gawking is sexually motivated, as Lawall (1967) 48–49 has suggested. Perhaps his mishap is a bucolic reminiscence of Thales’ fall into a well, derided by his Thracian slave-girl, as reported by Plato in Theaetetus (174a). The sequel, in which Socrates suggests that, to philosophers, kings are no better than shepherds and cowherds (174d–e), is also ironically relevant and may have mediated the reminiscence. 30 See e.g. van Sickle (1969), and Segal (1981) 101–2.

28 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion and dissatisfaction displayed to various degrees by the younger men. Nevertheless, sex and the senior citizen, let alone sex with animals, is hardly a motif of the bucolic narrative or a comforting idea in the context.31 The age of the elder and the possible hint of ambiguity over the species of his sweetheart hardly restore balance and harmony. On the contrary, it may more plausibly be thought to suggest that the disruption of the norms of the bucolic world is older and deeper than that occasioned by Aegon’s departure. If so, the disturbance affects both herding and music, the emblematic occupations of the Theocritean bucolic characters. Animals and humans are either not close enough or possibly too close for bucolic comfort. Aegon has abandoned his herd in pursuit of non-bucolic occupations and distinctions. His animals do not unambiguously long for him but seem to be losing weight for indeterminate reasons, and wild animals certainly do not lament for him but might even go crazy if they came near Milon. The syrinx is entrusted to a man who may be an equivalent of the would-be athlete Aegon in his musical ambitions; he does not sing the sorrows of Daphnis, Polyphemus, or any other bucolic character, but strikes up the latest hits (31) and praises a feat of gluttony performed by Aegon (33–34). Corydon’s encomium is indeed problematic, and more so than Battus’ lament. Although he does not claim or aspire to be a first-class singer, he harbors some ambitions in this respect, which do not appear to be justified by his performance. Even Aegon’s gift of the syrinx to him does not clearly support his claims to musical competence. Aegon is not necessarily a competent judge of musicianship, or a more accomplished singer than Corydon himself. Irrespective of his competence, his gift to a friend or colleague charged with the fairly demanding and prolonged care of his herd is more likely to be motivated by gratitude than appreciation of musical skills. Even if Corydon is a hired hand, which I find unlikely, Aegon may have sweetened the deal with the gift of the syrinx, perhaps an item coveted by the self-styled “singer of some quality” (30).32 As already pointed out, the assertion of his familiarity with the international repertoire of song (31)

|| 31 The “dark-browed darling” the elder is “milling” may be a farm animal; see Hunter (1999) 143, and cf. Kampakoglou (2014) 14, who suggests that the old man’s rivalry with Pans and satyrs is the only competitive performance integrated in the bucolic world and that Aegon shares with his father a pronounced sexual drive and voracious appetite. Even so, such elements suggest dissonance rather than harmonization with either the epinician or the bucolic tradition as portrayed in 1 and 7. Gutzwiller (1991) 153 and Hubbard (1998) 30 also deny that the report of the old man’s activities restores balance; cf. Stanzel (1995) 85. 32 A namesake is mentioned rather contemptuously at 5.6 as a rude singer who has nothing to do with a proper syrinx.

Idyll 4 | 29

is never corroborated, but his limitations as a singer appear mainly in his “epinician” in honor of Aegon’s past victory (32–37):33 αἰνέω τάν τε Κρότωνα — ‘Καλὰ πόλις ἅ τε Ζάκυνθος ...’ — καὶ τὸ ποταῷον τὸ Λακίνιον, ᾇπερ ὁ πύκτας Αἴγων ὀγδώκοντα μόνος κατεδαίσατο μάζας. τηνεὶ καὶ τὸν ταῦρον ἀπ’ ὤρεος ἆγε πιάξας τᾶς ὁπλᾶς κἤδωκ’ Ἀμαρυλλίδι, ταὶ δὲ γυναῖκες μακρὸν ἀνάυσαν, χὠ βουκόλος ἐξεγέλασσεν. I sing the praises of Croton —“Zacynthus is a fair city…”— and of the Lacinian sanctuary that faces the dawn, where Aegon the boxer ate up eighty loaves all by himself. And it was there that he brought the bull down from the mountain, grabbing it by the hoof, and gave it to Amaryllis. The women gave a great scream, and the oxherd laughed.

Following the conventional praise of the victor’s hometown and the location of the festival in which he won his prize, Corydon calls Aegon “the boxer”, i.e. “that famous boxer” (33). It cannot be ruled out that Aegon had enjoyed some pugilistic distinction in local competitions, but it is likelier that Corydon projects his idea of Aegon’s wished-for future capacity (8–9) back into his very different past exploit. This is certainly an encomiastic faux pas, underscored and exacerbated by the possibility that Corydon sings an equally misguided preemptive epinician, as it were, before Aegon wins the Olympic victory, which is currently a dim potentiality at best. The feat celebrated in the encomium has very little to do with professional athletics, although it may (be meant to) associate Aegon with his heroic model, Heracles (cf. 8). If so, it is an association that evokes the comic, parodic, or satyric image of Heracles rather than his appearance in epic and lyric, another discrepancy. In one of his memorable vignettes Callimachus has a deified but still gluttonous Heracles drag by the foot great beasts such as bulls or boars that Artemis brings home to Olympus, to the amusement of the other gods (Hymn 3.148– 51). If ἐξεγέλασσεν (37) is a nod to Callimachus’ treatment of the story of Heracles and Theiodamas (fr. 24.13 Harder) or to a common source, then Aegon is associated with a brutish opponent of Heracles rather than, or as well as, the champion himself, another encomiastic misstep.34 || 33 For the reception of the epinician tradition see n. 14 above. The problem with the praise of Zacynthus at 32 does not affect my argument. It would be really intriguing if a snippet of another song were incorporated in Corydon’s encomium, but it seems more likely that emendation should be adopted; for thorough discussion see Kampakoglou (2014) 6–11. 34 Cf. the calf’s name Lepargos (45), which Callimachus uses for Theiodamas’ ox (Aet. fr. 24.19 Harder), and Battus’ thorn-prick in the foot (50–51; cf. Aet. fr. 24.1 Harder). The possible association of Aegon’s carrying of the bull with Theseus’ feat in Callimachus’ Hecale (fr. 260.4–15 Pf. =

30 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion Last but not least, Corydon’s response to Battus’ lament over the loss of Amaryllis indicates his possible inability to grasp even a friend’s emotional state and to offer the appropriate consolation. Corydon’s evocation of Aegon’s gift to Amaryllis seems to induce Battus to strike up a lament over her death (38–40): ὦ χαρίεσσ’ Ἀμαρυλλί, μόνας σέθεν οὐδὲ θανοίσας λασεύμεσθ’· ὅσον αἶγες ἐμὶν φίλαι, ὅσσον ἀπέσβης. αἰαῖ τῶ σκληρῶ μάλα δαίμονος ὅς με λελόγχει. Lovely Amaryllis, you alone we shall not forget, even now that you are dead: you were as dear to me as my goats when your life was extinguished. Oh, what a cruel fate is my lot!

Corydon is slow to grasp irony, as is obvious from his responses to Battus in the first part, but his reaction to Battus’ second lament is doubly inappropriate (41–43): θαρσεῖν χρή, φίλε Βάττε· τάχ’ αὔριον ἔσσετ’ ἄμεινον. ἐλπίδες ἐν ζωοῖσιν, ἀνέλπιστοι δὲ θανόντες, χὠ Ζεὺς ἄλλοκα μὲν πέλει αἴθριος, ἄλλοκα δ’ ὕει. Take heart, Battus my friend; tomorrow things may be better. While there’s life there’s hope; it’s the dead who have none. Zeus sometimes gives fine weather, sometimes rain.

First, Corydon may not realize that Battus is performing a lament and using the conventional tropes of the genre, although it is not clear that Battus is merely impersonating a bereft, mourning friend—in his first lament (26–28) he said nothing extraordinary or alien to his subject. If his second lament may be thought to be an expression of genuine feeling,35 and if he was Aegon’s rival for the affections of Amaryllis,36 then he is still disconsolate. Hunter thinks that Battus’ lament need not be taken too seriously.37 The introductory apostrophe is a quotation of Id. 3.6, and this may be a sign of irony, even of Battus’ non-rusticity,38 as

|| 69.4–15 Hollis) does not rule out the connection with Heracles but may serve to thicken the irony, further pointing up Corydon’s encomiastic confusion. 35 So e.g. Hubbard (1998) 30. 36 Cf. Hutchinson (1988) 168. 37 Hunter (1999) 138–39. 38 Others have taken the “quotation” as a clue for identifying the goatherd with Battus and the latter with Theocritus; see Stanzel (1995) 30. The fact that Battus had not heard of Aegon’s adventure before meeting Corydon (1–5) and that the latter offers him advice about not walking barefoot in the countryside (56–57) does not suggest that Battus is not a country dweller, as hardly anybody is abreast of everything in his environment, and Corydon obviously teases Battus here.

Idyll 4 | 31

he is quoting a goatherd who is performing a song with non-rustic generic affiliations. The association of one’s love with goats (39) is also to be found at the beginning of Simichidas’ song (7.96–97), possibly another reminiscence. If so, then Battus echoes another peculiar, generically mixed song by a peculiar herdsman, who seems to be familiar with both town and countryside, perhaps more with the former than the latter. This association is not particularly illuminating concerning Battus’ origin, let alone emotional history, but it does not offer any valid reason to doubt the sincerity of his feelings.39 In any case, if the goatherd in 3 and/or Simichidas in 7 may be thought to “quote” Battus, then the irony may be differently charted, although this would not affect the portrayal and audience perception of Battus’ situation, and there is no basis for considering any “quotations” one-way. Even if Battus is impersonating a mourner, though, Corydon’s response does not suffer primarily from his failure to detect Battus’ generic framework or to respond in kind, with a consolation poem. Instead, Corydon’s conversational consolation is inappropriate not only because of its banality, which is a common feature of many consolations, especially short ones, but also and primarily because the trite topoi he invokes are out of place in the context. The mutability of human fortunes and the wisdom in preserving hope as long as one lives feature often in consolatory contexts, but not in response to laments over the death of a loved one. The usual trope in this case is an admonition to show restraint and avoid excessive reactions: death is the common human lot, many people have suffered the loss of loved ones, and one should endure with resigned moderation afflictions sent by the gods lest one slide into hubris and provoke divine nemesis.40 There is indeed no point in telling a mourner that there are hopes for the future and that things are likely to change because death is absolutely irreversible. Corydon selects the wrong trope, and the result is incongruous. Even his first admonition to Battus to have courage, which seems to be on the right track, is undercut by the addressee’s curt response (θαρσέω, 44; cf. 5.31 and 35). Battus’ single-word response does not imply that his lament was largely a fiction but that Corydon’s consolatory banalities are out of place. A man may well lament the loss of a dear woman and vow to remember her, but that does not

|| 39 Cf. Kampakoglou (2014) 17–18. Battus’ comparison should probably be viewed rather as a sign of naiveté, genuine or ironic. It may also function as a vehicle for the imminent return of the poem to a more mundane register and for Battus’ resumption of the conversational initiative. Cf. Hunter (1999) 140. 40 Unsurprisingly, several relevant passages feature in tragedy and epigram; see Ciani (1975), and Jacob (2012) 116–17.

32 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion mean that he is all-absorbed in an unfortunate love, has lost courage or hope for the future, and does not realize that things may change for the better, although of course not in connection with the loss just lamented. All in all, the Idyll projects an image of dislocation: the characters fail to engage, uninterruptedly or properly, in the emblematic bucolic pursuits of herding, love, and song, including the commemoration of bucolic heroes and their predicaments. Possible venality (3–4, 6, 11), hostility (11, 20–22), hyperbole (15–16, 20, 26–28), including in gossip (62–63), loss, and absence, from Aegon’s departure and Amaryllis’ death down to clubs and shoes (49–57), create an atmosphere of asperity and unease. As already suggested, several scholars have argued that the old man’s constancy and achievements restore an earthy and even competitive balance. However, his “achievements” have little to do with a bucolic eutopia, or harmony between man and nature, and much more with a hyper-bucolic dystopia. Moreover, he seems not to have taught his juniors anything. At most, he has bequeathed his excessive, potentially disruptive, drives, perhaps sexual and more likely competitive, to his son, and is able to thwart Corydon’s thievish intentions. Aegon’s situation may recall Daphnis’ plight and its impact on the bucolic community, except for two salient factors, the agency of Milon and the inability of Corydon and Battus to engage in song—competitively or not, bucolic or otherwise—that might offer some comfort or pleasure. It is also not incidental that the subject of Aegon’s musical competence or excellence is never broached. Nobody is a competent singer or celebrates bucolic or other heroes. Song, then, offers no emotional, aesthetic or competitive advantage, and father figures provide no instruction or positive role models. The only achievement celebrated is a feat of gluttony and the dragging of a bull by the hoof down the hill, which is awkward for a cowherd and even for a suitor. Life in the bucolic world goes on, but achievements and comfort are in short supply. No bright, redeeming prospects and no comforting closure are in sight.

Idyll 5 Song and the advantage it may offer come more sharply into focus in 5, the most aggressively competitive Idyll in the entire corpus, and the only genuine one featuring a formal singing match decided by a judge, who awards a previously agreed upon prize. The contest of the goatherd Comatas and the shepherd Lacon takes place at a bucolic eutopia, but the register of the Idyll is mixed. It is the only Idyll that begins with an exchange of vituperative accusations, foregrounding the

Idyll 5 | 33

theme of hostility and aggression that runs throughout. A pine tree that pelts one with cones (49) is at best a dubious pleasure, and there are also references to limited resources and skills (5–10, 23, 28–29), harmful insects and animals (108–9, 112–15)41 and even unpleasant odors (51–52). Sexual and other physical aggression, obscenities, and teacher-pupil rivalry feature prominently. Comatas and Lacon, both possibly slaves,42 each claim that the other robbed him of a valuable and valued gift given by a friend (1–13). Both deny the accusation (14–19), and after some quite lengthy bickering (21–59) agree on the framework of a singing contest judged by the woodsman Morson (60–79). The latter declares Comatas the winner (138–40), but the soundness of his verdict is notoriously difficult to judge, as he and Comatas say nothing about its basis. This is unexpected and may hardly be trivial. In the only genuine Idyll in which a singer prevails, his singing excellence is not celebrated, and it is not even certain, at least not to modern audiences, that he prevails on account of it. If he does not, his victory offers some insight into Theocritus’ attitude toward song and competition. The contestants exchange extemporized couplets, and neither appears to clearly outdo the other. On the procedural level, Lacon issues the challenge (21– 22), and Comatas begins the contest (80–81), but there does not seem to be any clear advantage or disadvantage in this respect, or even strict rules governing the specifics of the contest. Scholars assume a breach of the rules or procedural irregularities on Lacon’s part, 43 but such assumptions are difficult to substantiate. Köhnken (1980) proposes that Lacon finds himself unable to answer Comatas’ last couplet (136–37), and thus Morson asks him to stop (138), in the manner of the referee in a boxing match, for instance; if the award of victory to Comatas had been decided on other criteria, then Morson would have addressed the victor first and said something about the basis of his verdict. The failure of the referee to say || 41 The scholia identified in these couplets, as well as at 43 and 121, obscene allusions to homosexual and heterosexual practices, which might provide a framework for Comatas’ abusive claim at 116–17; see Gutzwiller (1991) 140, and Fantuzzi (2006) 257–59. Rosenmeyer (1969) 137–38 suggests that ponos and violence subvert the pastoral vision. 42 Dover (1971) 128–29 suggests that the men may be free hired laborers and the references to servility (5, 10; cf. 118–19) intended as insults. Stephens (2006) 103 also thinks that Lacon’s servile status may be an insult and that Comatas is a freedman. 43 See Köhnken (1980), Gutzwiller (1991) 139, and Serrao (2000) 188–89. Kossaifi (2002) argues that Lacon the shepherd is a protégé of Apollo (cf. 82) while Comatas the goatherd is close to Pan, the bucolic divinity par excellence, and a double of the legendary Comatas of 7. In this light, the contest is decided in favor of Comatas before it begins. Although Pan is important, he holds no special place in the Idyll, at least not more important than the nymphs, to whom both contestants vow to make offerings (53–54, 148–49), and thus the conjectural criterion has little to do with the contest in general and Morson in particular.

34 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion anything about his verdict is difficult to account for and certainly frustrating to the audience, modern and probably ancient too, but it remains so no matter which assumption about the verdict is adopted. If Lacon had actually run out of steam, it is hard to believe that Morson would have bothered or considered it necessary to ask him to stop—he would have probably just declared that Comatas had knocked Lacon out and won. Morson’s intervention more plausibly suggests that Lacon was still able and about (to try) to top Comatas’ last couplet. Still, even if Lacon hesitated or failed to respond in time, as Köhnken suggests, this just underlines more clearly his presumption at 22 (ἀλλά γέ τοι διαείσομαι ἔστε κ’ ἀπείπῃς), the line which Köhnken considers the clue to the form of the contest and the basis of the verdict: the winner would be the singer able to outlast his opponent. This is not necessarily so, especially if one compares Idyll 8, as Köhnken also does. There too both rivals claim that they will outlast the competition (7, 10), but the match is decided on explicitly aesthetic grounds (82–84). What is more, Morson had no idea about the alleged winning rule, and it is difficult to accept, in the face of a total lack of evidence, that outlasting one’s opponent was a universally accepted rule for deciding a contest, known to both contestants and referee and understood by the external audience. If singing stamina were the only criterion, then a referee would hardly be necessary, and the contestants would be unlikely to urge him to be impartial (68–71). If there is a criterion, it is Lacon’s inferiority in the couplets he sings, not the last one he fails to improvise. Lacon loses because he is the lesser man, although not only or primarily from the artistic or procedural point of view. Gow suggests that music, which cannot be communicated to the audience, is implicitly presented as the factor deciding the contest.44 This sounds like a subterfuge, and if music were crucial, it is not clear why the poet would not have Morson hint at the alleged advantage or why he would issue his verdict at the point he does. Besides, it is unlikely that the music of one contestant was indisputably superior to the music of the other while their poetry was of about equal value. This also contradicts Gow’s own view that the poet would not wish to give an advantage to one side. Unless ancient audiences were (assumed to be) able to detect some advantage that escapes modern scrutiny, the most plausible assumption is that the verdict did not hinge on artistic superiority, or that such superiority would be as inscrutable to ancient audiences as to their modern counterparts.

|| 44 Gow (19522) 93–94. Cf. Dover (1971) 136. Rosenmeyer (1969) 147 (cf. 101, 137) calls Idyll 5 “the least musical of the pastorals” and draws attention to the verb λέγ(ε) at 78, which indicates a verbal rather than musical contest; cf. Hatzikosta (2005) 200. Song, though, is mentioned explicitly at 21 and 30.

Idyll 5 | 35

If the artistic basis and the fairness of the verdict are elusive to the audience, then the verdict is for all intents and purposes arbitrary, which renders the contest artistically ambivalent. Ironic ambivalence or arbitrariness may not be ruled out, especially since no other contest in the genuine pieces ends in victory, and neither contestant in 5 seems to enjoy a clear artistic or procedural advantage. This background makes it quite plausible that the verdict was delivered, partly at least, on the basis of non-poetic (and non-musical) advantage. This is not as outrageous as might appear at first sight. Even ancient juries did not take into account (only) hard evidence relevant to the case but also the morality and circumstances of the litigants.45 Various modern competitions, for instance beauty contests, college admissions or hiring decisions, also do not hinge only on formal qualifications. When such qualifications and performance are roughly equivalent, then other criteria influence the final decision. The only conceivable non-artistic factor that may have influenced Morson’s decision is the morality of the contestants.46 Even if that was not the decisive factor, and the verdict is arbitrary, a view which has the advantage offered by Occham’s razor or Alexander’s sword at Gordium, instruction and morality are important themes in the Idyll and the collection, and may influence the audience’s view of the verdict, even if the poem provides no clues as to Morson’s criteria. As the contest covers just a little more than one third of the poem (80–137), the preceding exchange, which takes up little more than half of the poem, offers the audience plenty of opportunity to form an opinion on the morality of the two contestants and quite likely a concomitant expectation that the best man will, or at least should, win, irrespective of their actual performance in the contest and Morson’s verdict. The verdict is followed by Comatas’ promise to honor Morson’s request for a present (139–41a)47 || 45 See e.g. Todd (1990) 35–38, and Humphreys (2007). 46 Several scholars have suggested that honesty is the criterion and that Lacon’s last claim (134–35) is obviously false and self-contradictory: he cannot offer to Eumedes a syrinx he, a slave, would not possess, or would no longer possess (cf. 5–7), or, in the unlikely case that he did, he would never offer as a gift; see e.g. Schmidt (1974) 218, 240–41, Giangrande (1976), Segal (1981) 200, Hubbard (1998) 33–34, Hatzikosta (2005) 198–200, and Domány (2009). It is obvious that outright lying or improbability of the alleged sort is out of the question. There is no indication that slaves would not possess musical instruments, especially of their own making, that Lacon would never offer a syrinx as a gift, or that he would have only one syrinx, the one Comatas allegedly stole, a claim refuted by the latter under oath anyway (17–19). Even if Lacon lies, it is not clear that Morson would (be able to) judge on such grounds, or that the audience would realize that self-contradictory insincerity was his criterion. Segal is right that “truth…remains hidden and evasive”. Crane (1988) 116–17 correctly dismisses the issue of plausibility and verisimilitude as well as scholarly attempts to make sense of the verdict on such a basis. 47 Cf. II n. 71 below.

36 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion and the winner’s triumphant reaction to his victory (141b–46). Morson secures a choice cut, and the expectations of the audience are apparently confirmed. In this light, the moral outlook of the contestants, which informed their past relationship and shapes their exchange before the contest as well as some of their utterances, may plausibly be thought to play a role in the (perception of the) outcome of the contest. Morson is apparently not a complete stranger to the pair. Since he does not know or recognize immediately the owners of the flocks they tend (cf. 72–73), he does not seem to be close to either, and it is not suggested or implied that he is aware of their antagonism or its background. In contrast to the pair’s lengthy disagreement over the best spot for the contest, the choice of Morson as judge is readily agreed upon (63–65), which suggests that neither man sees it as injurious to him and advantageous to his rival. Both contestants urge the judge to be impartial (68–71), so he is apparently not inclined to favor either, and the requests must be meant to prevent any favoritism that might arise in the course of the contest rather than on account of any previous connection. In any case, there is no indication that Morson would not be or is not impartial. This corroborates the assumption that his judgment relies on the performance of the pair, including the glimpses of their morality that become apparent in the contest, and not on any previous intelligence or his view of the contestants. Lacon’s aggressive and eristic stance becomes apparent in his outburst before the contest (74–75), and some of his boastful claims may be thought to have alienated Morson (e.g. 86–87, 110–11, 134–35), who apparently comes to share Comatas’ view of Lacon’s disadvantage (136–37). Comatas and Lacon have known each other for quite some time. The former is older, claims that he had offered instruction to the boy Lacon and castigates his former pupil’s unseemly and ungrateful stance (35b–38): μέγα δ’ ἄχθομαι εἰ τύ με τολμῇς ὄμμασι τοῖς ὀρθοῖσι ποτιβλέπεν, ὅν ποκ’ ἐόντα παῖδ’ ἔτ’ ἐγὼν ἐδίδασκον. ἴδ’ ἁ χάρις ἐς τί ποχ’ ἕρπει· θρέψαι καὶ λυκιδεῖς, θρέψαι κύνας, ὥς τυ φάγωντι. But I’m really annoyed that you dare to look me straight in the face, me who used to teach you when you were still a boy. See what a good turn comes to at last: rear wolf cubs, rear dogs, and they’ll eat you up.

Comatas does not specify the area of his instruction. Animal tending and/or music would be the most plausible guesses, but Comatas repeatedly denigrates Lacon’s musical skills throughout the encounter (23, 28–29, 136–37; cf. 5–7). Teacher and pupil apparently quarreled or went their separate ways sometime

Idyll 5 | 37

before the dramatic present, possibly even before Comatas had completed his instruction.48 At any rate, Lacon denies that he ever learned anything good from Comatas (39–40), although not explicitly that Comatas had been his teacher. Their relationship involved more than teacher-pupil interaction, and eventually antagonism. Comatas responds to Lacon’s dismissal of the value of his teaching with a recollection that is meant to grate on, if not to insult, the addressee: Lacon indeed had occasion to learn much good from him when he was the passive, and ailing, party in a past sexual encounter with his elder, which took place next to or amid Comatas’ mating animals (41–42; cf. 116–17): ἁνίκ’ ἐπύγιζόν τυ, τὺ δ’ ἄλγεες· αἱ δὲ χίμαιραι αἵδε κατεβληχῶντο, καὶ ὁ τράγος αὐτὰς ἐτρύπη. When I was buggering you, and you were in pain; and these she-goats were bleating, and the he-goat mounted them.

The incident has been viewed as an example of proximity between human and animal sexuality. Contrary to earlier scholars who have suggested the opposite, Stanzel thinks that according to Comatas the animals were roused by his encounter with Lacon. This would denigrate Lacon and place him on the same level as the lusty goats, whose bleating betrays their yearning for the he-goat.49 I believe that the specification is primarily meant to enhance the vividness and specificity of the recollection. Comatas seems to be interested in stressing his dominance rather than Lacon’s eagerness. If so, it would be quite clumsy on Comatas’ part to equate the ailing Lacon with eager goats. The passive Lacon’s eagerness will come into focus in Comatas’ second reference to their liaison (116–17), quoted below. The choice of specifying the youth of the goats (χίμαιραι) may be attributed to Comatas’ wish to draw a parallel between human and caprine mating couples. If so, and even if a more general association between animal and human sexuality is (also) intended, there is no way of telling, and little to gain from speculating or deciding, whether animals stimulated humans or vice versa. Although Comatas indicates that the relationship was unequal and that he held the dominant and gratifying role, the paederastic liaison was allegedly a component of the pupil-teacher relationship, and the assumed intimacy of the

|| 48 The imperfect ἐδίδασκον at 37 perhaps points in this direction. Cf. 13.8 (ἐδίδασκε), and the discussion below pp. 198–99. 49 Stanzel (1995) 91–92. Σ also thought that Lacon appeared to suffer but actually enjoyed the encounter, since in sexual intercourse pleasure is manifested as pain.

38 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion pair would exacerbate Lacon’s ingratitude toward Comatas.50 The aggressive incident quoted above is not mere bragging or empty talk, as Lacon does not deny but belittles it and responds with a curse (μὴ βάθιον τήνω πυγίσματος, ὑβέ, ταφείης, 43), which combines reference to the opponent’s death, shallow burial and, perhaps, passivity.51 The second reference to a sexual encounter between the pair, possibly the same occasion as the first, may indicate that Lacon did not suffer but was actually an eager partner, perhaps having swiftly learnt his “hard” lesson and taken to his passive role with masochistic glee (116–17): ἦ οὐ μέμνασ’, ὅκ’ ἐγώ τυ κατήλασα, καὶ τὺ σεσαρώς εὖ ποτεκιγκλίζευ καὶ τᾶς δρυὸς εἴχεο τήνας; Don’t you remember the time I took you from behind, and you grimaced and waggled your rump and held fast to that oak tree?

As already noted, nothing in the first reference (41–42) necessarily suggests that Lacon enjoyed the encounter, but in the second he is cast as a willing passive homosexual instead of a passive party subjected to the aggression of the domineering penetrator. The second reference, made in the presence of Morson, is perhaps calculated to humiliate Lacon, especially as Comatas does not specify that the encounter took place in Lacon’s boyhood. Adult passive homosexuals had been an object of derision at least since the time of old comedy, and this is perhaps the reason why Lacon now denies any memory of the alleged encounter (τοῦτο μὲν οὐ μέμναμ’, 118). On the other hand, it is probably telling that he does not deny or reject the possibility of such an encounter. Comatas’ graphic references to his past encounter(s) with Lacon may be viewed as proof not simply of rustic vulgarity but also of reprehensible aggression and compromised morality.52 His threats to his he-goat at the end have been castigated as excessive and a sign of invidiousness,53 but it is difficult to dissociate them from a pious, although exaggerated, wish to observe ritual propriety (147– 49a):

|| 50 For educational pederasty see Hubbard (1998) 33. Hatzikosta (2005) 206 is skeptical about the educational aspect of the relationship. 51 The insult ὑβέ = ‘hunchback’ may be meant to suggest that Comatas too had been a passive homosexual in his time, or perhaps that he has never changed, and bowed so often as to damage his back, but it is just as likely that Lacon intends primarily to denigrate Comatas’ bearing—at 51–52 he claims that Comatas’ goatskins stink worse than he does. 52 See e.g. Klooster (2011) 109. 53 Stanzel (1995) 88.

Idyll 5 | 39

οὗτος ὁ λευκίτας ὁ κορυπτίλος, εἴ τιν’ ὀχευσεῖς τᾶν αἰγῶν, φλασσῶ τυ, πρὶν ἢ ἐμὲ καλλιερῆσαι ταῖς Νύμφαις τὰν ἀμνόν. Hey you, the white butting he-goat, if you cover one of the nanny goats before I’ve sacrificed my lamb to the Nymphs, I’ll castrate you!

Comatas is close to his animals: he thrice refers to the goats, which actually belong to his master, as his own (1, 128, 145), including at the very beginning and end of the poem, while Lacon refers to his ewes as his own only once, in response to Comatas’ second reference (130; cf. 3–4, 102). The goatherd also shares his triumph with his animals, as if they were well-meaning friends: he will celebrate with them the sacrifice of the prize lamb to the nymphs the next day (140–46), and they have to be pure for the solemn occasion. Comatas occasionally becomes coarse and brusque, but none of his claims is demonstrably false. He apparently had been Lacon’s instructor and lover, and the younger man, who in his adulthood seems to favor homosexual relations (cf. 87, 90–91, 98–99, 106–7, 134–35), is now behaving provocatively if not shamelessly toward his elder. The first reference to their past liaison is motivated by Lacon’s dismissal of the value of his instruction. By contrast, when Lacon refers to his relationship with a young boy, in which he holds the dominant role of penetrator, he uses a coarse and abusive verb, perhaps with connotations of ritual pollution (μολύνει, 87). Even his dog, his prospective gift to his boy lover, is a fearsome animal that seizes wolves by the throat (106). He also claims that his gift of a syrinx, perhaps with a backward glance at Comatas’ earlier insult (5–7), secured him the favor of Eumedes (134–35) while Comatas admits that Alcippe did not respond to his gift of a bird (132–33).54 At most, Comatas responds in kind or caps the insults of Lacon. Already early on, before Lacon issues the challenge, he vehemently refuses to believe Comatas (20), although the latter swears that he has not stolen Lacon’s

|| 54 Gutzwiller (1991) 141–42 argues that Comatas on purpose assumes a self-deprecating stance, prefigured at 76–77 (cf. n. 56 below), as a strategy to trap Lacon: the latter should have understood the trick and ended the contest in reconciliation, as happens in Idyll 6, instead of pressing ahead and becoming flustered and frustrated. It is not even remotely plausible that this contest would end in amity or reconciliation, and, however Lacon might respond, a victory would be declared or effectively at least awarded to one contestant. This kind of psychologizing reading contributes nothing toward addressing the difficulty of identifying the criterion of the contest. In any case, the alleged blunder of Lacon and Comatas’ victory only come into question if the supposed difficulty of the former to top the last couplet of the latter is accepted, but this is unlikely, as argued above.

40 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion syrinx (17–19).55 Lacon then proceeds to issue the challenge, perhaps as a means of compensation for the damage the alleged thief inflicted, tries to determine the conditions of the contest, and assumes airs above his station. Moreover, Lacon is not only eristic but also prone to verbal abuse, which he initiates: he insults Comatas gravely, repeatedly and without provocation (25, 40, 51–52, 75, 79), refers to Comatas’ burial (43; cf. 44) and claims in self-congratulatory manner that he is provoking Comatas (110, 122). The abused man does not (deign to) respond to the insults, although the first reference to the homosexual encounter may be a response to the abusive “little fellow” (ἀνδρίον, 40). The only terms of abuse Comatas uses are “quarrelsome” (φιλοκέρτομος, 77), a Homeric hapax (Od. 22.287), and “contentious” (φιλεχθής, 137), an absolute hapax. These are much milder in themselves than Lacon’s insults and quite adequately justified by Lacon’s outbursts.56 Nevertheless, both are placed at strategic points, encapsulating his opponent’s shortcomings, especially the latter. φιλεχθής is actually the last word of the contest and of the moralizing last couplet, which looks back to Comatas’ first response to Lacon’s challenge (23–24; cf. 28–29) and the later complaints about the younger man’s temerity (35–38). Not incidentally perhaps, Morson intervenes and issues his verdict at that very point (138–39). The senior Comatas, straightforward and frank, is self-confident and does not shirk a challenge, even one issued by a man he does not appreciate, his former pupil and lover and current rival for the title of best singer. Lacon is arrogant, but his lack of confidence is obvious from his propensity toward abuse, his (premature and unsubstantiated) claims to musical excellence and ability to distress Comatas, and, last but not least, his discomfort over his lowly status.57 Comatas denigrates Lacon’s musicianship in return but he is also ready to bet a bigger animal

|| 55 Comatas too does not declare that he believes Lacon’s disclaimer of theft, equally backed up by oath (14–16), but he does not reject it as false either, and he reciprocates with his own disclaimer (17–19), which probably indicates that he accepts his interlocutor’s claim. Cf. next n. 56 He also calls Lacon κακέ and accuses him of envious spite in the initial exchange of accusations (12–13). When Lacon denies the accusation under oath, Comatas addresses him with ὠγαθέ (17). He later responds to one of Lacon’s outbursts, which includes the insult κάκιστε (75), with βέντισθ’ οὗτος (76), a good-natured, possibly even magnanimous, but certainly also bemused form of address, before concluding that Lacon is φιλοκέρτομος (77). The word scarcely occurs in extant literature before Theocritus; see Gow (19522) 106. If it is meant to recall its Homeric context, the equanimity of Comatas acquires an ominous tinge, as he cites the vaunt of a Homeric herdsman over the fallen loud-mouthed suitor Ctesippus, a violator of hospitality (cf. Od. 20.292– 308). For another echo of the last part of the Odyssey see below pp. 41–42. 57 His wish that the cowherd Lycopas would come along to act as the judge in the contest (62), dismissed by Comatas (63), may also suggest that he would feel comfortable with a man he knew.

Idyll 5 | 41

(29–30), when Lacon insultingly accuses him of bad faith concerning his initial proposal (25–27). As already suggested, Comatas only becomes coarse and abusive in response to Lacon’s lack of respect. In this light, even if Comatas’ claims about his superior musical skills (23, 29, 136–37) are not easy to judge and may be exaggerated, not only his self-confidence but also his general moral stance come out as superior, which would be a foreshadowing, or at least adequate justification, of his victory. Comatas chooses to sit and compete under an oak and pine (45–49) rather than the wild olive preferred by his rival (31–34), perhaps an oblique allusion to Olympic aspirations. At least in location if not also skill, he is much closer to his great namesake in 7 (86–89), a hero of the intriguing goatherd Lycidas and his friends, than the upstart Lacon.58 Even at the very end, in the context of his threats to his billy-goat, Comatas strikes a final, quite intriguing note, by casually mentioning a character from epic, the goatherd Melanthius (149b–150): ὃ δ’ αὖ πάλιν. ἀλλὰ γενοίμαν, αἰ μή τυ φλάσσαιμι, Μελάνθιος ἀντὶ Κομάτα. He’s at it again! If I don’t castrate you, may I be Melanthius instead of Comatas.

The reference, a natural choice for a goatherd, also hints at sophistication conceivably beyond the rustic sphere.59 It also demonstrates the vehemence of his vow and his devotion to piety. Melanthius is a particularly unpleasant, disloyal, and impious character: not only is he an attendant of the suitors, who assists them in any way he can, betraying his former master, he is also hostile and aggressive, both verbally and physically, toward the swineherd Eumaeus and the

|| It is perhaps incidental, but the names of both men mentioned by Lacon before the contest, Lycopas and Lycon (8), are etymologically related to λύκος, the animal Comatas associates with the ungrateful Lacon (38), who later claims that his dog seizes wolves by the throat (106). 58 Hubbard (1998) 32 argues that Comatas in 5 is the same as the legendary singer in 7; cf. Christoforidou (2005) 52–53. This would make Lacon an anti-Tityrus/Lycidas: instead of wishing to tend the master’s goats and enjoy his songs under the oaks and pines (cf. 7.86–89), Lacon insults his one-time teacher and lover and incites him to respond abusively by recalling their sexual encounter(s). 59 Cf. Berman (2005) 239. This finds a parallel in the disruptive appearance of Heracles and Polyphemus at the end of 7 (149–53). Comatas’ earlier passing reference to a cup fashioned by a sculptor Praxiteles (104–5) is another higher-register hint, perhaps a reminiscence of the goatherd’s famous cup in 1 (27–61).

42 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion disguised Odysseus (Od. 17.217–32, 248–52).60 The wretch eventually meets a terrible end at the hands of Odysseus’ party (Od. 22.187–99, 474–77). Comatas then curses himself not only to be castrated and die a miserable death if he fails to castrate his lascivious animal but also to become a morally despicable character, ungrateful, disloyal and abusive, who might count as an exaggerated mythological model of his opponent, the vanquished Lacon. It is probably not accidental that only one other mythological character, the bucolic hero Daphnis, is mentioned in the poem (20), at a symmetrical point with Comatas’ reference to Melanthius and in connection with a grave error of commission instead of omission.61 Just before Lacon challenges Comatas to the singing contest, he asserts that if he believed Comatas the misfortunes of Daphnis would be an appropriate punishment for him. In the aftermath of the contest, with his last words, and an oblique last shaft at Lacon, Comatas caps this claim by wishing to become Melanthius. In other words, he wishes not only to suffer terrible misfortunes like Daphnis, and potentially Lacon, but also to become an impious, aggressive and presumptuous wretch, just like the mythological goatherd who deserved such misfortunes fully. In any case, the contentious, ungrateful and presumptuous Lacon, Comatas’ former pupil, who failed to complete, or benefit from, his instruction, has been condemned to the dejected silence of the loser—the last mention of him is in the context of Comatas’ declaration that he will laugh at him over his defeat (142–43). Comatas’ exultation may sound exaggerated and in bad taste to modern audiences, but victors in various oral contests typically have the last word, and certainly the literal or metaphorical last laugh. Theocritus upsets this regularity only in 10, which, tellingly, features a self-styled victor in an extemporized, sui generis contest.

|| 60 The worthlessness of Melanthius is paralleled and underscored by his female double, his very sister Melantho. She is the lover of the suitor Eurymachus and utterly unsympathetic to the predicament of Penelope, the doting mistress who raised her (Od. 18.321–25). She also abuses the disguised Odysseus on two occasions (18.326–36, 19.65–69). 61 Daphnis is also mentioned by Comatas at the beginning of the contest (80–81), an indication of the hero’s iconic status in the bucolic world. Although Comatas’ claim that he enjoys greater favor with the Muses than Daphnis may be considered boastful, he at least acknowledges the legendary singer’s musicianship, and is the only contestant that also mentions with appreciation the work of an artist or craftsman (104–5).

Idyll 10 | 43

Idyll 10 This mime, neither bucolic nor urban, is unique in terms of generic affiliation.62 It dramatizes yet another version of the attempt to realize one’s potential and deal with challenges and limitations to the best of one’s abilities, as 4, 5 and 14 do. Like these and several other Idylls, 10 features two humble characters, Milon and Bucaeus, working as hired reapers. Bucaeus is sluggish in his work (1–6) because for ten days he has been infatuated with a scrawny girl he met, or perhaps just noticed, when she piped to the reapers at another farm (12–16). His down-to-earth colleague, devoted to his tasks and dismissing lovesickness as totally inappropriate for a laborer (7–11), teases Bucaeus for his love trouble in general and his sweetheart’s appearance in particular (17–18). He then suggests that Bucaeus should strike up a love ditty for the girl so that he may work more pleasantly (21–23). Totally unexpectedly Milon then proceeds to respond to Bucaeus’ song (24–37) with a work song (42–55). The motifs of lovesickness and friendly, or allegedly friendly, advice on how one should deal with it are very common in Hellenistic and later poetry,63 but the occasion dramatized in 10 is different in several respects. Bucaeus’ infatuation is a recent affair, and there is no indication that he has approached his sweetheart and been rebuffed. It is not clear whether or why he might be hesitating to make his move, or in what sense his love interest is remote or beyond his grasp, as his first question to Milon suggests (οὐδαμά τοι συνέβα ποθέσαι τινὰ τῶν ἀπεόντων; 8), especially since Milon anticipates nightlong embraces between the skinny girl and his friend (18). She is apparently the daughter or slave of a certain Polybotas (15), but neither relation seems to prohibit courting. If she is a slave, her master would hardly condone liaisons that might interfere with his chattel’s wellbeing and employability, but this might not deter an ardent suitor or necessarily doom his prospects. If she is a free woman, then her father might not approve of liaisons or of Bucaeus, who is poor. Some (modern) audiences may think that a free girl piping to reapers would violate the norms of Greek female propriety, but the girl’s family could be poor, in which case it might well welcome her wages. At any rate, Bucaeus takes a rather strange view of his love, and perhaps his first question to Milon (8) does not really correspond to his situation. Alternatively, it may be a || 62 For the rusticity of the poem, stylized rather than realistic, see Cairns (1970), and Hunter (1999) 200–1, who suggests that 10 offers competing literary images of the countryside as a place of romantic fantasizing and physical toil of a Hesiodic type. Cf. Lentini (1998), and Hunt (2009), and see the discussion below pp. 50–51. 63 See Cairns (1972) Index s.v. “symptoms of love”.

44 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion clumsy, pretentious attempt to describe his passion by echoing high poetry (cf. ἀλλά τοι/ ἤρατο τῶν ἀπεόντων, Pi. P. 3.19–20; cf. also δυσέρωτας… τῶν ἀπεόντων, Thuc. 6.13.1), which may in retrospect be associated with his song.64 For his part, Milon does not respond to the revelation of his friend’s predicament with an admonition that Bucaeus should try to win the girl’s favor or sober up and abandon all thoughts of love, which the audience might expect on the basis of rhetorical topoi and the dramatic situation in the poem. Other Theocritean friends or acquaintances such as Priapus in 1, Daphnis in 6, Thyonichus in 14 and even, mutatis mutandis, Corydon in 4 admonish the lovesick to focus on their love or deal with their infatuation but they always express sympathy, even if ironically. Milon’s unexpected failure to do any of the above indicates early on that he will not be a sympathetic adviser, which virtually annuls any chance that he will be effective. It is indicative that he uses teasing, though not hostile, comparisons drawn mainly from the realm of animals, which appear in several of his utterances (4, 11, 18; cf. 50–51, 52–53). His mocking disposition soon falls flat (19–20), a sign that Bucaeus is not presented merely as a punching bag. The first proverb about a dog’s taste of skin or guts (χαλεπὸν χορίω κύνα γεῦσαι, 11) is not particularly provocative and fits in with his conviction that poor laborers should concentrate on their work and avoid all damaging distractions.65 This is usually interpreted as referring to the difficulties of giving up a pleasant but potentially damaging activity once one has acquired a taste for it. It is equally plausible, and perhaps likelier in view of 8–9, that the use of the proverb is intended to highlight the difficulties of those who come to long after “remote” things beyond their means or reach.66 It is difficult for a dog to satisfy a desire for a delicacy such as guts, and thus a dog should probably not come to be obsessed with such a desire to begin with. Likewise, Bucaeus should not be longing for a

|| 64 For the song cf. n. 73 below. Pindar’s sermonizing about the folly of Coronis is prejudiced and distorting; see the discussion below pp. 245–46. The echo, if one may call it that, may point to the punishment of Coronis (and several of her unfortunate countrymen, P. 3.30–38) and suggest the unease of an insecure suitor. It seems unlikely, though, that Theocritus would wish for his audience to assume that Bucaeus consciously echoed elite poetry, at least at this point. Still, the possible association of Bucaeus with a mythical heroine instead of a hero would strike a first discordant note. 65 Actual hunger is unlikely to come into question; cf. n. 75 below. His other proverb about Bucaeus’ abundance of fine wine and his own deficient supply of the sour kind (13) also ironically targets his colleague’s supposed abundance and leisure, prerequisites for the pursuit of love interests; cf. Hunter (1999) 203. 66 Luzzatto (2001) argues that the proverb evokes an Aesopic fable adapted by Phaedrus (20 Guaglianone) about dogs that perish in a foolish attempt to get access to corium.

Idyll 10 | 45

sweetheart who is inaccessible by his own admission. In any case, whether one wishes to secure a steady supply of choice stuff or taste it for the first time, one is likely to run into trouble and harm oneself, neglecting necessary tasks while pursuing one’s obsession. The second proverb about divine punishment meted out to transgressors (εὗρε θεὸς τὸν ἀλιτρόν, 17), the response to the revelation of the girl’s identity (16), is also teasing but more caustic, as is obvious from Bucaeus’ complaint at 19. Milon’s statement is usually taken as a comment to the effect that the punishment fits the crime, namely that the god has punished a laborer turning his thoughts to love by making him fall for an ugly girl.67 It is not clear at all that Milon would have shown greater sympathy or understanding had Bucaeus conceived a passion for a great beauty, and thus it is unlikely that he would attribute to the divine a punishment of the alleged sort, although this cannot be ruled out in the context of colloquial, proverb-spiced discourse. However, I think that the main point, or sting, as it were, of the proverb is that the god gave the sinner Bucaeus what he had always wished for (ἔχεις πάλαι ὧν ἐπεθύμεις, 17): being naïve or inept, he was bound not only to fall in love but also to fall for an ugly duckling, as if he had been longing for an ugly sweetheart all along.68 There is no doubt that Milon rejects love(sickness) as damaging to laborers, and such a view would disqualify all girls as objects of Bucaeus’ interest, but the announcement of the girl’s identity motivates a further shot. The maligned Bucaeus counters it with his only indignant, and effective, reply in the poem (19–20)—it is perhaps not accidental that his last spoken words are the prudently pious advice “do not talk big” (μὴ δὴ μέγα μυθεῦ, 20), which momentarily checks Milon’s otherwise virtually relentless abuse (οὐ μέγα μυθεῦμαι, 21). For all his failure so far to offer (the expected) sensible advice, following Bucaeus’ warning, the unromantic Milon proposes to his colleague, whose musical competence he acknowledges, to sing a love song for the girl, admittedly so that he may improve his performance at work (21–23). This suggestion, a blend of an admonition to deal with love by means of song and to concentrate on one’s work dismissing idle distractions, may initially seem to go || 67 See Gow (19522) 197, and Hunter (1999) 204; cf. Dover (1971) 168, and Hopkinson (1988) 167. Cairns (1970) argues that Milon points to the fact that the female praying mantis (18) devours the male during mating. I find this unlikely, as lovesickness is dangerous to poor workers, but otherwise Bucaeus seems to face no special threat from the praying mantis/Bombyca. In view of Bucaeus’ predicament, the suggestion of Strano (1976) that Milon congratulates his colleague because the praying mantis was associated with good fortune finds no support in the text. 68 This is also perhaps the view of the scholia (ἁμαρτωλόν σε ὄντα δικαίως μετῆλθε τὸ θεῖον περιπεπτωκότα οἷς ἐπεθύμεις κακοῖς, Wendel 228).

46 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion someway toward remedying Milon’s initial unhelpful reaction to his colleague’s predicament. Nevertheless, it ultimately motivates more than Bucaeus’ composition (24–37). As already noted, quite unexpectedly, Milon responds with a work song (42–55), which he attributes to “divine Lityerses” and extols as appropriate for laborers (56).69 Milon may invoke Lityerses not only as a heroic figure intimately connected with agriculture but also as an aggressive character that issued challenges to reaping competitions and killed the losers, thus allusively “threatening” Bucaeus. If so, the threat is at best double-edged, since, according to one version of the story, Lityerses was killed by Heracles.70 Even if this version is not alluded to, and Lityerses is only a powerful mythical hero of agriculture, again Milon’s concluding claim, a kind of vaunt over the rival he apparently considers as vanquished, “this is what men laboring in the sun should sing” (56), clashes with his suggestion to Bucaeus to strike up a love song so that he may work better (22–23). After all, Bucaeus simply followed his colleague’s advice, and Milon’s self-proclaimed superior choice of song, even if true in connection with working men in general, has nothing to do with Bucaeus in particular. Milon does his best to belittle Bucaeus. The dismissively contemptuous suggestion at the end that Bucaeus should tell his mother at dawn of his starveling love (57–58) certainly indicates that Bucaeus is not a proper working man and reduces him to the status of a child.71 The suggestion of sleeplessness or disturbed sleep harks back to the beginning of the poem (10), but it is also reminiscent of folk songs about girls who

|| 69 For Lityerses, a harsh, Phrygian agricultural hero after whom a class of reaping songs was named, see Gow (19522) 204, Hunter (1999) 211–12, and Pretagostini (2006) 56–57. 70 This version is attested in Pollux (4.54), Photius and Suda. Hunter (1999) 212 (cf. 201) suggests that Milon’s association with Lityerses and contemptuous dismissal of Bucaeus’ love takes up in a different mode the story of Sositheus’ play Daphnis or Lityerses (TrGF 1 99 F 1a–3), in which Daphnis after a long search finds his beloved nymph in bondage to Lityerses, and the lovers are saved by Heracles, who kills Lityerses. For the play, which included an account of a singing match between Daphnis and Menalcas (cf. II n. 58 below), see also Scholl (2014) 203–26, and Shaw (2014) 140–41. Sositheus apparently portrayed Lityerses as a Heraclean figure with large and violent appetites, including feats of gluttony, but if Bucaeus, whose name may point to the cowherd Daphnis, is cast as the bucolic hero, then Milon, who sings a Lityerses song, may only be an equivalent of a doomed Lityerses. In any case, the absence of any pointer to Lityerses’ outrages should probably discourage such associations; cf. Karanika (2014) 214–17. 71 Cf. Hopkinson (1988) 171–72, and Hutchinson (1988) 173–74. Loss of appetite afflicts the lovesick, and loss of wages condemns workers to starvation; cf. Hunter (1999) 214.

Idyll 10 | 47

pine away and confide to their mothers,72 a final, indirect shot at the hapless Bucaeus. Milon has the last word in the exchange (56–58), but there is no indication that he has prevailed or that his advice has helped Bucaeus. Actually, it would seem that Milon’s irony and spiteful reply to Bucaeus’ song might be more likely to cause a deterioration of Bucaeus’ condition. It is equally doubtful whether the colleagues Milon addresses in his song (44–53) might benefit from his admonitions, as will be argued below. Even in the framework of the contest he comes up with, a display of sudden, uncaused and unlikely musical antagonism, his song does not seem to be demonstrably superior to Bucaeus’. The exchange of Milon and Bucaeus never so much as approaches the sharpness of the antagonism of Lacon and Comatas in 5. The impromptu “exchange” of songs also naturally lacks a formal framework, with prize and judge, and no winner is proclaimed or acknowledged, except by the unpleasant second contestant himself. Nevertheless, 10 leaves a bitterer aftertaste than 5, and certainly 14: for all Aeschinas’ shortcomings, Thyonichus seems to mean well, and a way out of trouble for his friend is possible. In 10 what begins as a friendly, or at least neutral, exchange between two coworkers, who have known each other for some time, ends with an extemporized song contest between them, ironically both singers of rather limited abilities. The responsibility for the shift falls squarely on Milon, who starts out as a sober laborer inquiring after the trouble of his distraught colleague but soon turns into an invidious rival (singer), mocking Bucaeus’ performance (38–40)73 and engag-

|| 72 Note, for instance, the song attributed to Sappho (fr. 102 V), to which Lentini (1998) traces the model of Bucaeus’ love. Cf. also the modern Greek folk song “The doctor”: a girl complains to her mother at night that love has sickened her gravely and asks her mother to fetch the doctor; the mother urges her daughter to stop crying and promptly promises to bring him “tomorrow morning, so that he may heal your wound, my daughter.” In Serbo-Croatian folk songs too, as Bovan (1991) 168 points out, “a daughter confided simply and directly first of all in her mother in all of love’s tribulations and secret desires.” 73 Milon’s comment may be taken as a snapshot of banter between male colleagues rather than actual antagonism. Several scholars have pointed out the problems in Bucaeus’ thematic, rhetorical, and metrical choices; see e.g. Hunter (1996) 125–27, and Fantuzzi (2006) 256; cf. Pretagostini (1992) 82–84. Rosenmeyer (1969) 172–73, 260–61 notes the remarkable combination of disconnected absurdity and awed, self-deprecatory innocence of Bucaeus’ comparisons. Cf. Grethlein (2012) 613–14. Although Bucaeus is not an accomplished singer, Milon is no better, and his teasing falls flat because of his presumption. Even the choice of the name of Milon may be significant, as it probably is in 4, and meant to draw attention to the character’s presumption:

48 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion ing in one-upmanship. Not only does he respond to the song he himself had suggested, he also self-importantly proclaims himself the better man and singer. As just noted, there is hardly any basis for such confidence. Milon believes that his subject matter is the only one appropriate for laborers, as love(sickness) is an inappropriate concern to them (56–58; cf. 41). However, this is neither self-evidently true nor universally accepted. To be sure, distractions threaten the livelihood of poor workers, but work songs are not necessarily monothematic, and love(sickness) is a prominent theme in them down the ages in several cultures. Any song, even a love song, which accompanies and facilitates work, should be just as welcome and acceptable as any other.74 More important, love is not an emotion reserved for the rich, although this is not an unprecedented claim, and Milon, who teasingly suggests as much (9, 11, 13), would have authorities to draw upon if he cared to.75 On the other hand, the universality of Eros and the boundless power of Aphrodite are such common motifs attested in venerable authorities that if Milon intends to exclude himself and his ilk from the rest of animate nature, he is on slippery ground at best. For the rest, neither the initial invocation nor the sequence or the conclusion of Milon’s song has any advantage over Bucaeus’. Both begin with a thematically determined appeal to female divinities, the Muses (24–25) and Demeter (42–43) respectively, and proceed with an explicit or implicit distinction between the speaker and others. Hunter suggests that Bucaeus’ appeal to the Muses is “rather

|| the historical Milon was a great athlete but also remembered for feats of gluttony and an end befitting a reckless and over-confident man; cf. nn. 15, 19 and 22 above. 74 Tellingly, in connection both with love songs at work and Milon’s failure to avoid self-contradiction, not even he considers a love song utterly irreconcilable with work, unlike bucolic characters, for instance (cf. 1.14, 3.1–5, 7.87–89, 11.12–13, 72–74). For an overview of work songs and their subjects see Gioia (2006), esp. 80–89 (love in work songs). In my own family a relevant story has been preserved: one of my great-aunts, when she was a girl, reacted to the news of a friend’s enviable match, announced at the washing place where women pounded their rugs for cleaning, by pounding harder while singing the extemporized verse τον είναι και καλύτερος (“there is an even better one”), hinting at her own superior beau and marriage prospects. 75 The motif of the incompatibility of love and hunger, according to which love presupposes a full belly (cf. e.g. Eur. fr. 895 Kannicht, Callim. Ep. 46.5–6 Pf.), is not necessarily relevant to the situation of Milon, Bucaeus, and their colleagues, and there is no indication that Milon alludes to the motif. Kirstein (2007) 176–7 thinks that hunger is as important a motif in 10 as love, but this is exaggerated. The reapers and their class may be poor, and lovesickness does interfere with their work performance, but they are not presently starving, although the danger of want and possibly even starvation is far from remote for them. Cf. Grethlein (2012) 607. Milon’s complaint against the stingy overseer (54–55) does not point to dangerous thirst or hunger but to bad faith in relation to the work contract.

Idyll 10 | 49

too ambitious for the context”, and that “Demeter is the proper divinity to whom working men should pay heed, not Boukaios’ Muses.”76 This is probably the implication of Milon’s incipit, but the Muses are the tutelary divinities of all songs and singers, irrespective of theme and circumstances, so the advantage is of the fig-wood variety (cf. 45), as it were. The irony that the goddesses’ beautifying help (25) may extend to the subject of Bucaeus’ song does not undermine the appropriateness of the invocation, and may even serve to ironically enhance it. Bucaeus takes up the motif of a lover’s tendency to turn his sweetheart’s defects into endearing assets, and in doing so distances himself from the universal view of Bombyca as scrawny and sun-scorched (26–29). Milon encourages the reapers to work strenuously and take good care of their sheaves (44–47), apparently as he does. On the other hand, Bucaeus naively and disarmingly points to his poverty (32–35) and even his limitations as an encomiast.77 Milon’s didactic stance implies superiority, which is not justified in any way. Both singers invoke an adynaton related to their ideal of a good life, to be rich like Croesus (32–35) and have plenty of water to drink like a frog (52–53) respectively, but Milon’s wish has a confrontational edge, made sharper and clearer by his subsequent address to the stingy overseer (54–55). Bucaeus’ wish for legendary riches takes a pious turn with his aspiration to have golden statues of Bombyca and himself dedicated to Aphrodite.78 As already suggested, his naïve wish to be represented with new clothes and shoes (σχῆμα...καὶ καινὰς ἐπ’ ἀμφοτέροισιν ἀμύκλας, 35) is a frank acknowledgment of his poverty.79 Nothing else is involved in this fantasy, and the song

|| 76 Hunter (1999) 205, 212 respectively. 77 For his limitations cf. n. 73 above. The end of his song “I cannot describe your ways” (τὸν μὰν τρόπον οὐκ ἔχω εἰπεῖν, 37) is ambiguous. Bucaeus may have meant to suggest that the excellence of Bombyca is beyond description, but the meaning “my powers of description fail me” is equally plausible. If the first meaning is the dominant or even the only one, the praise may also imply the encomiast’s limitations. 78 Burton (1995) 131–32 tentatively suggests that this wish and other elements in the poem such as the occupation of Bombyca and the name Polybotas, which recalls a Coan giant, may be associated with Ptolemy’s fondness for flute girls, his place of birth, Cos, and his dedication of statues to Aphrodite. If so, the poem would aim at ingratiating the king and motivating his favor toward the poet. Cf. Whitehorne (1974) 39–40, and Hunter (1999) 209. Irrespective of possible Ptolemaic background, Bucaeus’ wish is grand and perhaps naively extravagant, but there is no indication that “in his imagination, Bucaeus…leaves the rural sphere”, as Bernsdorff (2006) 182 thinks. Despite the extravagance of the wish, Bucaeus apparently hopes for improvement of his circumstances and gratification of the beloved within the rustic sphere. 79 σχῆμα probably refers to clothes (cf. Ar. Ach. 64), and καινάς qualifies in common both it and shoes. On the other hand, σχῆμα may cover more than clothing (cf. e.g. Eur. IT 246, Ion 238–40,

50 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion finishes as it began, with praise of Bombyca’s charms (36–37).80 By contrast, Milon’s fantasy (52–53) gives way to an attack on the overseer (54–55), a sour note on which to end an admonitory work song and likely to create tension and potentially to harm the workers it is meant to encourage and help. The teasing admonition to the overseer may be thought to spring from and promote a sense of solidarity or companionship among coworkers laboring in the sun. Even so, there is little sense of relief from toil or prospect of adequate reward: the laborers depend on a stingy overseer for their food and drink, and their selfstyled champion’s attack on him leaves them with little to look forward to. It is also noteworthy that the end features no mention of Demeter or any other divinity (contrast, for instance, 7.155–57) or the reapers, which deprives the song of an effect of closure and completion, not to mention piety. Even if the meal envisaged points to respite and reward, the suggestion of deficient food and drink undermines the sense of satisfaction, as does the confrontation with the overseer. While the lovesick Bucaeus acknowledges but distances himself from the negative opinion of others about Bombyca (26–29), Milon the Stakhanovite ends up embroiled and, potentially at least, embroiling his coworkers in bickering about food and drink. Gow suggests that “Milon is the most realistically drawn of all T.’s rustic characters, surpassing in this respect Battus and Corydon of Id. 4, Lacon and Comatas of Id. 5.”81 If so, then the portraiture of Theocritus includes dark shades, although the pious and emotional Bucaeus is quite sympathetically drawn. Moreover, single-minded devotion to hard work and avoidance of the dangers posed by all women, Milon’s only debatable advantages, do not conform with the Hesiodic idea of labor and manhood. There is not much to connect 10 with Hesiod apart from the agricultural setting, which is at best a weak link. More

|| Ar. R. 463). If it does so here, Bucaeus may wish for a new, superior appearance, which would be another indication of his naïve readiness to admit his limitations (cf. n. 77 above). It is probably not accidental that he does not wish for better clothes or appearance for his Bombyca, as in his view she, unlike him, is perfect as she is; the only addition to her excellence would be her representation with love-tokens (34; cf. 3.10, 5.88, 6.7, 11.10), of which the rose was sacred to Aphrodite; see Gow (19522) 202. Cf. next n. 80 The two final features singled out for praise are her feet and voice, perhaps in order to capture the grace of her entire frame, from toe to head, as it were. The focus on the feet (36) may have been inspired by his reference to his new shoes in his fantasy in the previous line (35). Argentieri (2003) argues plausibly that the puzzling metaphor ἀστράγαλοι for the feet indicates not knucklebones but rather sweet pea (lathyrus odoratus), a plant native to Sicily, in continuation of the rest of botanical references (cf. 28–30a, 34). Cf. Grethlein (2012) 614–15. 81 Gow (19522) 193. Cf. already Fritzsche (18702) 106.

Idyll 21 | 51

important, Hesiod cautions men to beware of wily, vain and acquisitive females (Op. 373–75, 703–5) but he also offers advice on advantageous matches and the choice of good partners (Op. 695–703; cf. Th. 607–10). Milon says nothing about marriage or appropriate relationships, and there is no indication that Bombyca is a gold-digger or immoral—her only defect is her appearance, but Bucaeus shoots this down, even if he does so in a manner that advertises its simplicity or clumsiness. To be sure, there is no irreparable damage, let alone destruction or demise in 10. Still, although Bucaeus does not appear to be worse off at the end of the song than at the beginning, Milon and the rest of the reapers do not appear to be better off either. No advice, initiative or course of action emerges as eminently sober or advantageous in Theocritus’ bucolic or rustic mimes. For a very different image of friendly concord in poverty and sane support of a friend and colleague one needs to turn to a spurious poem, 21.

Idyll 21 Read in juxtaposition with the mimes discussed above, 21 brings out more clearly some of their dominant features: the asperity and confrontational edge of 5, and to an extent 10, the impulsiveness of Aegon and Aeschinas in 4 and 14 respectively, and the inadequacy of Milon as counselor in 4 and especially 10. 21 includes an introduction addressed to a Diophantus (1–21) and a conversation between two poor old fishermen (22–67). This quite realistic snapshot features much more severe poverty than 10, including limited food (40–41) and the constant prospect of starvation.82 The name of only one of the two characters, Asphalion, is recorded, when his companion addresses him once by name (26).83 The companion remains unnamed, also only once addressed as “friend” by the discomfited Asphalion (22; cf. 38, 61), perhaps indicatively. Asphalion has had a dream in which he swore to abandon his trade after catching a golden fish and he fears that he might come to grief because of his oath (41–62). His friend offers him restrained, down-to-earth advice not to fear a spectral oath and to concentrate on the waking pursuit of his trade, his only protection from starvation and hope of amelioration in his circumstances (63–67).

|| 82 For a list and discussion of foci of contact between 10 and 21 see Kirstein (2007) 163–80. For the fishermen’s limited supply of food cf. n. 85 below. 83 For the significant name and etymological word-play see Belloni (2004) 18, and cf. O’Hara (1996) 37–38 and 267–77.

52 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion Pieces of practical advice, often concerning small matters, are not absent from genuine Theocritean poems, but they are almost always ironized.84 In 21 the friend’s mild manner, equanimity and virtual avoidance of all teasing and selfpromoting make him stand out from other characters of humble means in the corpus, especially the unrestrained Milon in 10. Love does not preoccupy the fishermen, who are old anyway (6), and it is nowhere mentioned in 21, although, ironically, their conversation takes place at night, when the lovesick cannot sleep (cf. 10.10, 57–58). The content of Asphalion’s dream might easily give rise to teasing or mockery. A poor fisherman dreaming of a golden catch85 and in his dream fearing that a divinity might punish him for catching a favorite fish (53–55) but still not even contemplating to throw the wondrous animal back in the water might easily become the target of jokes or ribaldry. To be sure, the dreaming Asphalion in a way attempts to be true to his name and avert the danger of divine punishment by swearing the oath to abandon fishing. Still, the more natural course would be for him to at least weigh his options and ponder whether or not he should release the catch. Nevertheless, his friend never mocks him, before or after the account of the dream. When the dreamer wakes up distraught, he marvels at the perceived length of the short summer night, which has brought him countless dreams and is still not over (22–24). The text of 25 is corrupt, but Asphalion seems to wonder blithely whether he had mistaken the actual length of the summer nights. The friend does not deride even this absurd claim but offers a factual explanation of Asphalion’s impressions (26–28). This may be (viewed as) a naïve reply, as is the advice to Asphalion to avoid blaming the fair summer (26), which is obviously the season in which poor people do not have to worry over and spend much for their upkeep. The reply apparently reproduces the manners of simple folk, who may take seriously and respond to all kinds of nonsense that more sophisticated people would quickly dismiss as absurdities with an ironic quip. On the other hand, it is not incidental that the

|| 84 Consider, for instance, Corydon’s advice to Battus (4.56–57) and Daphnis’ to Polyphemus (6.13–14). Cf. 14.64–65. The goatherd’s encouragement to Thyrsis (1.62–63) and Polyphemus’ to himself (11.72–75) may be classified in the same category, but the range of their implications is much wider. 85 Asphalion himself frankly admits that he is always dreaming of fish (45), although of the regular rather than the marvelous kind. His frankness takes an ironic turn when he reminds his friend that their last meal had been frugal “as we spared our stomachs” (40–41). This may be read as a joke, if not self-mockery, or as the naïve speaker’s view of their situation, but it stands out in Asphalion’s otherwise factual account and is likely meant to make the external audience smile sympathetically. Perhaps the belief that a full belly produces false dreams is also relevant in the context; see Gow (19522) 378.

Idyll 21 | 53

friend’s explanation of Asphalion’s sleep problems harks back to the narrator’s introduction, which also stresses in ring composition the cares of poor laborers that cut their sleep short (1–5, 19–21). The friend’s reference to Asphalion’s “anxiety” (ἁ φροντίς, 28) may not point (only) to his general circumstances but may (also) be an empathetic, perceptive guess at his particular cause for worry. At any rate, in a similar situation, Milon in 10, not much different socially and intellectually from the old fisherman, is quick to mock Bucaeus (18–19, 57–58), and even the song he himself had suggested (38–41). Asphalion’s friend refrains not only from mocking him but also from assuming any arrogant airs. His modest sobriety becomes clearly evident from his response to Asphalion’s request for help with the interpretation of his dream (31–38). In his most extended utterance in the poem the friend does not praise his own competence or dismiss the dream and Asphalion’s concerns. Instead, he responds with a thoughtful assessment of oneiromancy and his capacity as dream interpreter, expressing a good-natured view of the present situation of the two colleagues, awake before dawn at the shore. It is also to be noted, apart from Asphalion’s willingness to share his dream, which he somewhat unexpectedly calls “a fine one” (χρηστά, 29), that this is the only instance in the entire corpus in which a concerned subject takes the initiative to ask for a friend’s advice. In all other instances the opposite is the case, and it is the soberer or more self-confident, as the case may be, interlocutor who asks for information or inquires about the perceived predicament.86 Nevertheless, Asphalion does not come off as utterly foolish or grotesquely naïve, not least because the friend does not belittle him. All in all, the friend is presented as not only practical and levelheaded but also as sympathetic to Asphalion: he tells his friend twice not to worry (μὴ σύγε, μὴ τρέσσῃς, 63),87 and advises or encourages nothing extraordinary. Strictly speaking, 21 is as open-ended as 14, and to an extent 10. However, the friend’s verdict on Asphalion’s dream leaves much less room for indeterminacy than the rest, especially as, given the dramatic timing and situation depicted, the two fishermen are poised to go to work shortly after, if not immediately following, their conversation. The friend does not say anything about the meaning or symbolism of the dream, but the statement that “the dream was equal to lies” (ἴσα δ’ ἦν ψεύδεσιν ὄψις, 64) leaves little doubt that he considers it false and

|| 86 This is the case in 4, 10 and 14 but also in 7 (21–26). 87 It is probably not accidental that the elliptical first admonition μὴ σύγε is often used in drama by characters advising restraint and avoidance of extreme behavior and reactions bound to disgrace or harm them without bringing any advantage: S. OC 1441, Eur. Hec. 408, Ion 439, 1335, Ph. 532, IA 1459; cf. Md. 1056, Ar. Lys. 189, Men. Georg. 28.

54 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion not worthy of symbolic interpretation. In this light, the poem is much more fully rounded than the mimes of the genuine corpus, a common feature of several spurious Idylls and one of the hallmarks of the reception of Theocritus’ poetry by his imitators. The connection with the narrator’s frame is also much looser than in 11, 13 or 22, although the friend’s failure to provide an interpretation of the dream and his admonition to Asphalion to focus on his task may be viewed as the (narrator’s suggested) link between the beginning and end of the poem. The narrator’s initial address to Diophantus connects the poem to 6, 11 and 13, especially as the narrator then goes on to illustrate his point with a story. This is taken from the life of humble laborers rather than mythological characters, and the quite lengthy list of the fishermen’s tools (8–13) is unparalleled in the genuine Idylls. It is the motif of instruction, though, that both connects the introduction to the example and further differentiates the Idyll from the genuine corpus (1–5): Ἁ πενία, Διόφαντε, μόνα τὰς τέχνας ἐγείρει· αὕτα τῶ μόχθοιο διδάσκαλος, οὐδὲ γὰρ εὕδειν ἀνδράσιν ἐργατίναισι κακαὶ παρέχοντι μέριμναι· κἂν ὀλίγον νυκτός τις ἐπιβρίσσῃσι, τὸν ὕπνον αἰφνίδιον θορυβεῦντι ἐφιστάμεναι μελεδῶναι. Poverty alone, Diophantus, promotes skilled work: she is toil’s tutor, because care and anxiety make it impossible for laboring men to sleep; and if one of them does nod off for a while, pressing worries suddenly disturb his rest.

Poverty is “the instructor of toil” not in the usual sense that it stimulates inventiveness88 but in the sense that it does not even allow the poor laborers to enjoy a good night’s sleep. This kind of “instruction” is certainly not enviable but it is necessary for survival. Despite its harshness, the instruction is effective and the only one available to poor and isolated laborers. In a similar vein, the friend suggests that the only oneiromantic resource he possesses is his mind and that the best dream interpreter is the man instructed by his mind (εἰ γὰρ κεἰκάξω κατὰ τὸν νόον, οὗτος ἄριστος/ ἐστὶν ὀνειροκρίτας, ὁ διδάσκαλός ἐστι παρ’ ᾧ νοῦς, 32–33; cf. Eur. Tr. 632–33). Self-sufficiency and reliance on one’s own resources take the place of instruction by others and familiarity with arcane lore. As already noted, no symbolic interpretation is offered, and concern with anything but the pursuit of one’s trade is discouraged, as only labor guarantees survival (65–67). This sort of sane, realistic and good-natured advice or instruction is not delivered in the genuine Idylls, and characters such as Simaetha in 2 and Aegon in

|| 88 For a list of passages see Gow (19522) 370, and Kirstein (2007) 157–58, with further literature.

Idyll 12 | 55

4 have no protection from their ambivalent fancies and ambitions. The only partial exceptions occur in 1 and 7, the major programmatic pieces of the collection. Advice does not feature prominently in them, and is not invariably taken up when it appears, but the poems strike admonitory notes of sobriety, circumspection and restraint, not least in connection with the major predicament of unfortunate love. Apart from 1 and 7, the themes of love, advice and the pursuit of bliss are handled in the emblematic Cyclops pieces and in the paederastic Idylls, in a nonbucolic, non-dramatic and non-competitive setting. 12 and 29 feature lovers who address their beloved boys, and 30 a lover who tries to admonish his own impulsive heart. Like the rest of the poems discussed so far, the paederastic pieces are open-ended, but the prospect of loss and failure, even of wallowing in fantasies and illusions, is ever-present. The narrators often evoke, and fall short of, different mythological and literary models, which highlights the ambivalence of their aspirations and the precariousness of their situations. On the other hand, famous heroes of the mythological past and models of the literary tradition are rarely mentioned explicitly, and the open-endedness of the Idylls suggests that the narrators’ hopes may come true, at least in part. The narrators are quite sober about their situation and future and even the comeliness of their sweethearts, in contrast, for instance, to the narrator of the spurious 23. The language of the narrators, modern heroes of sorts, evokes the literary past, sublimating their present and future. The narrators, though, never entirely lose their restraint or sight of their limitations, unlike, for instance, the arrogant young cowherd of the spurious 20. Viewed as a group, the intriguing short poems in the voice of men infatuated with boys present a miniature and quite novel panorama of the prospects and potential outcomes of homoerotic, and by extension erotic, attachment. The Cyclops Polyphemus, especially in the emblematic 11, is a grotesque counterpart of Daphnis but he appears to be more restrained and less selfconceited than Daphnis. This portrayal brings Polyphemus closer to Theocritean narrators and characters in other erotic poems, not least 12 and 30, and turns him into Theocritus’ prototypical hero of love and song.

Idyll 12 The poem is written in the Ionic dialect, which is otherwise used only in 22 among the genuine Idylls, but this rarity is only the most conspicuous aspect of its intriguing character. The use of intertexts adds layers of complexity hardly paralleled

56 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion in the other paederastic pieces.89 On the other hand, the narrator-lover, who addresses his beloved boy, provides no information about himself, the addressee or the setting, and eschews direct advice to the boy. Paederastic poems, from Theognis’ (1299–1318) down to Theocritus’ own 29 and Simichidas’ song in 7, usually include laments over the unresponsiveness of the young beloved and/or their fickleness as well as advice or warnings to them. The lover is the only partner afflicted by passion in the non-egalitarian and mostly short-lived relationship. He often assumes the role of wise or world-wise counselor and aspires to educate his beloved in the ways of gods and humans. The boy is encouraged to abandon the stance of foolish arrogance and be mindful of the swift passage of time, which will soon reduce him to the position of the older and/or unfortunate lover.90 The narrator of 12 and, in his view, the couple have no such concerns or needs. The narrator also does not praise any asset or advantage of his own, and even the boy’s beauty is mentioned only once (ἐγὼ δέ σε τὸν καλὸν αἰνέων, 23), with no particular emphasis.91 Not only is the lover dedicated to the boy, but his sweetheart also does not need advice or chastisement.92 Most important, although the narrator nowhere indicates explicitly that he hopes for a life-long relationship, the emphasis on perfect reciprocity and especially the wish for commemoration of the happy relationship in future song under divine auspices (10–16) and for posthumous eternal fame (17–21) point unambiguously in this direction. The narrator begins by addressing the beloved who has returned after a twoday absence (1–2):

|| 89 Wilamowitz (1906) 179 (cf. Gow [19522] 221) thought that the poem had several deficiencies and was written partly in jest, but such a view cannot be corroborated on the basis of the assumption that the speaker is the poet Theocritus. 90 Cf. Cairns (1972) 85–89, and Hunter (1996) 177. 91 Gow (19522) 226 is probably right that καλός is not merely used of physical beauty. Even if it is, the praise is certainly very brief, especially in the context of a lover’s discourse. χαρίεις (20) too may not indicate only physical charm but refer also, or primarily, to the gracious reciprocity of the lovers’ affection. Pindar’s Olympian 10 also mentions the gratitude (χάρις) that Patroclus showed to Achilles (18–19), in an otherwise unattested incident. For the pair cf. n. 101 below. The eschewing of praise fits in with the general restraint of the narrator-lover and/or may be partly due to the poem’s debt to Theognis’ address to Cyrnus (237–54), an important intertext for the portrayal of the couple, which I will discuss below. 92 Signs of fickleness on the boy’s part may be his two-day absence (1–2), perhaps on a jaunt with another admirer (cf. Hunter [1996] 189), and the distress he occasionally causes the lover (25–26), but the latter never says or implies anything to that effect. Even if the beloved is fickle, he does not spurn or abandon his lover.

Idyll 12 | 57

Ἤλυθες, ὦ φίλε κοῦρε· τρίτῃ σὺν νυκτὶ καὶ ἠοῖ ἤλυθες· οἱ δὲ ποθεῦντες ἐν ἤματι γηράσκουσιν. You have come, my dear lad, after two days and nights you have come; but those who feel longing grow old in a day.

The occasion of the address is not made unambiguously clear, and some scholars suggest that it was not composed to greet the boy’s arrival but some time after the gratifying event.93 This is possible, but the desire of the speaker and the possible epic and lyric reminiscences of his address speak for a dramatic occasion contemporaneous with the boy’s arrival or very soon afterwards. The address may recall Sappho (fr. 48 V) and/or the greetings to the newly arrived Telemachus by Eumaeus (Od. 16.23) and his mother (Od. 17.14).94 It is obvious that the erotic content of the Sapphic fragment is more akin to the context, but the delight of the older greeters of Telemachus, who had feared that they would die before his return, is also relevant. Telemachus is an only child, and thus especially precious to the mother and her friends, especially since he had run a mortal risk, and the house is beset by intractable adversities (cf. Od. 16.17–19). An echo of maternal affection may serve to signal early on the narrator’s difference from the paternal figures of chastising older lovers.95 The boy’s absence was shorter than Telemachus’, but its effect on his lover is described not only in emotional but also in physical terms, perhaps an allusion to an additional disadvantage in the context of a love affair. Nevertheless, there is no gentle complaint or reproach directed at the boy similar to those addressed to Telemachus. On the contrary, the speaker stresses the great pleasure that the boy’s arrival caused him through an extended series of comparisons. The intensity of his enjoyment parallels the delight caused by the arrival of spring after || 93 See Walsh (1990) 19–20; cf. Payne (2007) 110. It is not specified whether the boy is present to hear the passionate greeting or not, in other words whether the poem should be viewed as a dramatic address or as a soliloquy, but the issue does not affect my argument. 94 There are certainly other possible intertexts such as Anacreontea 18 W and Theognis 1249– 52 (cf. Hunter [2010] 276–77), but no debt that may be considered clearly identifiable, on linguistic or thematic grounds. 95 Note also that the winning boy in the kissing contest of the Diocleia, laden with crowns, returns home to his mother (32–33), although this probably echoes Pindar (P. 8.85–86; cf. O. 8.68– 69) rather than Homer. A more pertinent model is Ganymede, the paradigmatic mythological boy beloved, who is mentioned at the very end of the poem as the addressee of the prayer of the judge in the kissing competition of the Diocleia (35–37). Ganymede is mentioned in Pindar’s Olympian 1 and 10, and both references may have been relevant to Theocritus’ poem: the boy Pelops in 1, who was not restored to his mother (O. 1.46), and the boy victor Hagesidamus in 10 are associated with Ganymede (O. 1.44, 10.105). For Ganymede cf. n. 115 below.

58 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion winter and the eating of a sweet apple after a sloe (3–4). The comparisons also include the greater lusciousness of the ewe’s wool over her lamb’s (4), the preferability of a virgin over a thrice-married woman (5) and the advantage of a nimble fawn over a calf (6). The list culminates with the incomparable tunefulness of the nightingale among birds (6–7). Finally, the speaker compares himself to a traveler in the scorching sun who takes refuge under a shady oak (8–9), a possible allusion in ring-composition to Sappho’s fragment (48 V; cf. A. Ag. 901, 966–67). The comparisons include no explicit or direct praise of the youth or the lover, and little direct correspondence between the pair and the figures in the comparisons.96 Although it is the arrival of the boy that causes delight, it would be absurd to claim that the lover compares him to a ewe much woollier than her lamb or even to a virgin girl, which would be gauche, as the boy in an ongoing sexual relationship cannot be a virgin. It is also remarkable that the return of the boy, for all the pleasure it causes, is compared not to lack of pleasure but to lesser delights or advantages. Only at the very end does the speaker compare himself to a traveler in extreme discomfort. The comparisons are not meant to diminish the suggestion of his torment during the boy’s absence, which would carry the possible implication that he had sought comfort in the company of less attractive boys. Instead, they point to a degree of control over his emotions,97 or to restraint in the visualization of the couple’s situation, and thus some modicum of finesse rather than its opposite. Despite his joy and relief, he does not lose sight of an appropriate scale on which to measure and describe his feelings. The joy and comfort of the reunion soon give way to contemplation of the future of the union. The lover proceeds to expresses a wish for a reciprocal and harmonious relationship, universal fame of the relationship in song (10–16), and future commemoration (17–21). There is little doubt that he is devoted to the boy and does not envisage any cooling of his emotions, but it is probably not insignificant that he does not wish only for the boy to equal, i.e. return in equal measure, his affection. Instead, he hopes for reciprocal, divinely inspired love, a sign of distancing from the usual motifs of the paederastic literary tradition, as already suggested. Line 11 (ἐπεσσομένοις δὲ γενοίμεθα πᾶσιν ἀοιδή) echoes another pair of models, Theognis and Homer, a doublet of Sappho and Homer at 1. Theognis || 96 Cf. Rosenmeyer (1969) 258–59. According to Payne (2007) 102, the exaltation of the nightingale (6–7) points to self-praise, but there is no indication that the narrator styles himself as a singer, even one that improvises under the inspiration of love, as lovers commonly claim to do, from Euripides (fr. 663 Kannicht) down to Bion (9 Gow). 97 Contra Hunter (1996) 189–90; cf. Gow (19522) 221. Giangrande (1971) suggests that the narrator is a vulgar and unsophisticated rustic trying hard to make up for his shortcomings; cf. Segal (1981) 214, and Morrison (2007) 250.

Idyll 12 | 59

proudly asserts that his song has made Cyrnus universally famous and has immortalized him (237–54): σοὶ μὲν ἐγὼ πτέρ’ ἔδωκα, σὺν οἷσ’ ἐπ’ ἀπείρονα πόντον πωτήσηι, κατὰ γῆν πᾶσαν ἀειρόμενος ῥηϊδίως· θοίνηις δὲ καὶ εἰλαπίνηισι παρέσσηι ἐν πάσαις πολλῶν κείμενος ἐν στόμασιν, καί σε σὺν αὐλίσκοισι λιγυφθόγγοις νέοι ἄνδρες εὐκόσμως ἐρατοὶ καλά τε καὶ λιγέα ἄισονται. καὶ ὅταν δνοφερῆς ὑπὸ κεύθεσι γαίης βῆις πολυκωκύτους εἰς Ἀίδαο δόμους, οὐδέποτ’ οὐδὲ θανὼν ἀπολεῖς κλέος, ἀλλὰ μελήσεις ἄφθιτον ἀνθρώποισ’ αἰὲν ἔχων ὄνομα, Κύρνε, καθ’ Ἑλλάδα γῆν στρωφώμενος, ἠδ’ ἀνὰ νήσους ἰχθυόεντα περῶν πόντον ἐπ’ ἀτρύγετον, οὐχ ἵππων νώτοισιν ἐφήμενος, ἀλλά σε πέμψει ἀγλαὰ Μουσάων δῶρα ἰοστεφάνων. πᾶσι δ’ ὅσοισι μέμηλε καὶ ἐσσομένοισιν ἀοιδή ἔσσηι ὁμῶς, ὄφρ’ ἂν γῆ τε καὶ ἠέλιος. αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν ὀλίγης παρὰ σεῦ οὐ τυγχάνω αἰδοῦς, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ μικρὸν παῖδα λόγοις μ’ ἀπατᾶις. I have given you wings, on which to fly over the endless sea, soaring above the entire earth with ease. You will be at every dinner and feast, on the lips of many men, and in orderly fashion lovely youths with tuneful little pipes will sing of you in beautiful and clear voices. And when you go to Hades’ house of many laments in the earth’s darkness, not even in death will you lose your fame, but men will always cherish your immortal name, Cyrnus, as you roam over the land of Greece and the islands of the fishy sea. You will not ride on horseback, but the splendid gifts of the violet-crowned Muses will speed you. Future men too will sing of you as long as there is earth and sun. And yet you do not respect me even a little but you tell me lies as if I were a little child.

Theognis’ promise about the posthumous fame of Cyrnus (243–47) echoes the epic claim about the imperishable glory of Achilles (ὣς σὺ μὲν οὐδὲ θανὼν ὄνομ’ ὤλεσας, ἀλλά τοι αἰεὶ/ πάντας ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπους κλέος ἔσσεται ἐσθλόν, Ἀχιλλεῦ, Od. 24.93–94) and of historic warriors such as Tyrtaeus’ Spartans (fr. 12.31–34 W2; cf. Simonides fr. 11.13–18 W2). Cyrnus, though, was a disloyal and deceitful partner (253–54; cf. 1263–66). Helen, the most famous thrice-married woman (cf. 5, Stesich. fr. 85 Finglass), whose ill-starred relationship with Paris had been divinely motivated, laments that the couple will become a song for future generations (Il. 6.357–58): οἷσιν ἐπὶ Ζεὺς θῆκε κακὸν μόρον, ὡς καὶ ὀπίσσω ἀνθρώποισι πελώμεθ’ ἀοίδιμοι ἐσσομένοισι.

60 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion Zeus brought upon us an evil lot so that in the future we become a subject of song for future men.

The equation of Cyrnus with epic heroes and famous historic counterparts is a daring move on the part of Theognis, as it hinges on a shifting of cause and effect, or a vicarious acquisition of achievement-based fame. The fame or notoriety of epic heroes and their great deeds is generically guaranteed.98 Heroic renown is the subject of (famous and faming) song but is not itself generated by song. By contrast, Theognis’ agency was crucial in the celebration of Cyrnus and the immortalization of his name, as Cyrnus had no distinction or achievement remotely comparable to those of heroic counterparts.99 His renown is not the result of great, divinely awarded prowess or other assets and achievements of his own. Instead, he becomes famous in life and death, soaring effortlessly over sea and land and celebrated handsomely at every symposium, because a divinely gifted poet loved him passionately and secured his immortality in splendid poetry. Nevertheless, the beneficiary has shown himself ungrateful and deceitful, and Theognis perhaps strikes a retaliatory blow by recording his lover’s immorality, in effect turning his fame into notoriety. In this light, it is the lover whose worth and suffering are comparable to that of the epic heroes, but it is the beloved, who is not even said to be handsome, lovely or otherwise desirable, that enjoys imperishable renown. By the conventions of archaic epic and lyric, the gifted poet also enjoys renown, but Theognis, the lover-poet responsible for Cyrnus’ fame and/or notoriety, says nothing about his own fame. Significantly, Theognis borrows the language of heroic epic, apparently not only because he wished to glorify his subject (and implicitly his poetry) as heroic but also because there was no other language in his poetic heritage that might be used in a discourse about imperishable renown. I will return to Theognis’ enterprise at the end of the discussion. For now, the association of the Theocritean couple with the pair TheognisCyrnus may (be meant to) raise the possibility that the boy would be disloyal or would fail to reciprocate the lover’s devotion. The narrator, though, unlike the

|| 98 Both male and female Homeric characters are said to be immortalized in song. Future generations will sing of Helen and Paris, Orestes (Od. 3.202–4; cf. 1.298–300), Penelope (24.196–98) and Clytaemestra (24.199–202) as well as the Trojan war and the nostos of the Achaeans (Od. 1.326–27, 8.489–91, 577–80; cf. 8.73–82, 492–95). All characters, whether virtuous or immoral, are great sufferers by divine agency, and the majority of events commemorated are naturally grim. Similarly, Achilles’ immortal fame is a divine boon, but it is a recompense for his short life full of sorrows (cf. Il. 1.352–56, 414–16, 505–6, 9.412–16, 18.95–96, 436–46). 99 Cf. the glorification of Polycrates in Ibycus S151, and see Kyriakou (2004) 222–25 with further literature.

Idyll 12 | 61

Iliadic Helen, does not report or envisage any suffering, not even any unpleasantness between him and the boy. On the other hand, he does not hope for fame in the lifetime of the couple. What is more, in the posthumous praise he envisages, they are placed in the company of men of the golden rather than the heroic age (10–16): εἴθ’ ὁμαλοὶ πνεύσειαν ἐπ’ ἀμφοτέροισιν Ἔρωτες νῶιν, ἐπεσσομένοις δὲ γενοίμεθα πᾶσιν ἀοιδή· ‘δίω δή τινε τώδε μετὰ προτέροισι γενέσθην φῶθ’, ὃ μὲν εἴσπνηλος, φαίη χ’ Ὡμυκλαϊάζων, τὸν δ’ ἕτερον πάλιν, ὥς κεν ὁ Θεσσαλὸς εἴποι, ἀίτην. ἀλλήλους δ’ ἐφίλησαν ἴσῳ ζυγῷ. ἦ ῥα τότ’ ἦσαν χρύσειοι πάλιν ἄνδρες, ὅτ’ ἀντεφίλησ’ ὁ φιληθείς.’ If only the Loves would breathe on us both equally, and we could become a subject of song for future lovers —“Outstanding were these two among men of the past, the one the “inspirer” (as a man from Amyclae might say), the other the “listener”, as a Thessalian would call him. They loved one another on equal terms. It was a second golden age indeed when the beloved loved in return.”

The future singers, praising the relationship in terms and with terms of different Greek paederastic cultures, will view the pair as idealized models, themselves modeled on a mythical, ideal past, apparently quite different from the singers’ present and even the time of heroes.100 This glosses over any suffering the models of earlier ages may have experienced and certainly insulates the blessed pair from any unpleasant associations. Perhaps more suggestively, it also points to a wishful regress in the desires and views of various generations of lovers. Each generation seeks to identify an ideal past, full of virtues and distinctions of predecessors, in the hope of emulating them while celebrating them in song. The regress, receding as far back from the present of each generation of lovers as possible, can only stop at the golden age, which in Hesiod is not even said to have featured reciprocal love. The narrator too, a member of the current generation, looks back for models and forward to the future of the couple as models. Epic heroes may briefly shift back into focus with the prayer of the narrator for eternal posthumous fame (17–21): || 100 For the temporal and spatial range of the paederastic reminiscences see Hunter (1996) 191– 94. The golden age reference may be a reminiscence of the famous Pindaric passage in which the poet laments the mercenary relationship of contemporary poets to patrons and contrasts it with the earlier worth of free paederastic love poetry (I. 2.6–11). Pindar’s appeal to Echo to bring news of the laudandus’ victory to his father in Hades (O. 14.20–24) may be an inspiration for 12.19–21 (quoted below), perhaps harking back to the allusions to Telemachus at the beginning.

62 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion εἰ γὰρ τοῦτο, πάτερ Κρονίδη, πέλοι, εἰ γάρ, ἀγήρῳ ἀθάνατοι, γενεῇς δὲ διηκοσίῃσιν ἔπειτα ἀγγείλειεν ἐμοί τις ἀνέξοδον εἰς Ἀχέροντα· ’ἡ σὴ νῦν φιλότης καὶ τοῦ χαρίεντος ἀίτεω πᾶσι διὰ στόματος, μετὰ δ’ ἠιθέοισι μάλιστα.’ Father Zeus and you unaging immortals, two hundred generations from now I should like someone to bring me news in Acheron, from where there is no return, “Your love and that of the handsome youth are spoken of by everyone, and especially by the young men.”

This may recall Achilles’ peculiar and unfulfilled wish before the sortie of Patroclus and the Myrmidons (Il. 16.97–100; cf. 9.46–49) and thus contrast the fame of the Homeric pair with the namelessness and implied insignificance of their Theocritean counterpart.101 It is true that the audience of Idyll 12, and the other paederastic Idylls, never learn any name of the pair, their place of origin or any other personal detail. However, this lack of information will not necessarily obtain in the projected future, when the lovers will have become famous and will be enjoying lasting fame among admirers and singers. Alternatively, the narrator may not envisage or hope for the actual survival of the pair’s personal names but of their sobriquets, in other words that they will survive as paradigms of homoerotic “Inspirers” and “Listeners”. Even so, the couching of the prayer in terms of epic counterparts that mostly remain unfulfilled casts a shadow over the narrator’s hoped-for future fame. Following his prayer for posthumous eternal fame, the narrator suggests that the gods are in charge of those things (22–23), as is to be expected in connection with both the prayer and the possibility of setbacks. Still, the sequence (23–26), which has been derided as mundane, bathetic or disconnected,102 provides grounds and suggests hope for the realization of the wish, although the gods might naturally choose otherwise. The reference to the pimples on a liar’s nose (24) certainly belongs to a much lower register than that of the idealized future just envisaged by the narrator, but this suggestion of simplicity, even naiveté, which rounds off his portrayal, does not detract from his seriousness of purpose. The narrator asserts that, irrespective of the divinely determined future, both he

|| 101 See Hunter (1996) 192–93. Achilles and Patroclus are not lovers in Homer, but their relationship has been construed in erotic terms ever after; Aeschylus dramatized the erotic relationship of the heroes in his Myrmidons. Plato dismisses Aeschylus’ version of the heroes’ relationship (Smp. 179e-180b). In Hellenistic literature and beyond, Achilles and Patroclus were the paradigmatic homosexual couple (cf. 29.34, Bion fr. 12). Cf. Pretagostini (1997) 16. 102 Cf. Walsh (1990) 19, Morrison (2007) 250, and Payne (2007) 107.

Idyll 12 | 63

and his beloved are true to each other and have a stable relationship that withstands the shocks of minor quarrels. These assets make them worthy of posthumous immortalization in song, in which they will be celebrated as models of reciprocal love. The narrator begins with himself, suggesting that his praise of the boy’s merit is truthful (23–24). He justifies this claim not by stressing his sincerity or the intensity of his feelings but the laudable, generous and loyal behavior of the boy. Occasional injuries inflicted by him are healed straightaway, the lover is compensated for his distress with double benefit and thus incurs great profit (25–26). This is a rather sober and frank representation of the relationship, which the narrator does not idealize by glossing over occasional quarrels, although his view of their impact may be rosier than the boy’s. The narrator believes, and the audience have no reason to doubt, that the boy does not cause the occasional lovers’ quarrel out of spite or lack of devotion, as he is reportedly ready to make generous amends for any unintended mistake and injury. He is a source of gratification and abundant rewards to his lover, and most important, the couple appreciate and respect each other equally, in apparent perfect harmony and reciprocity. This comforting image notwithstanding, the end of the poem contains links to potentially ambivalent precedents. Already the echo of Theognis’ address to Cyrnus and Helen’s complaint suggest an ambivalent model for the boy. The evocation of the final model, or models, is different. The narrator turns to the honors the Nisaean Megarians bestowed on the historical lover-hero Diocles (27–29): Νισαῖοι Μεγαρῆες, ἀριστεύοντες ἐρετμοῖς, ὄλβιοι οἰκείοιτε, τὸν Ἀττικὸν ὡς περίαλλα ξεῖνον ἐτιμήσασθε, Διοκλέα τὸν φιλόπαιδα. Nisaean Megarians, oarsmen supreme, may you live in prosperity because you greatly honored the stranger from Attica, Diocles the lover of boys.

According to later sources, this Eleusinian ruler, exiled from his homeland, found refuge at Megara, and died in battle defending his beloved boy.103 The choice of

|| 103 Apart from the scholia on Theocritus, which recount the story of Diocles, games in his honor are mentioned by Pindaric scholia on O. 7.157 and 13.156. According to the scholia on Ar. Ach. 774, the games were founded by Alcathous, a son of Pelops (cf. Paus. 1.41); see Gow (19522) 226–27, and Olson (2002) 268–69. Pindar also reports that there were contests in honor of Alcathous at Megara (I. 8.67). The ode, possibly for a boy victor, celebrates the achievements of Achilles and the gods’ decision to honor him with a dirge sung by the Muses at his funeral (56a60). The Theocritean narrator and his beloved are thus connected with several heroes and in several ways that presage both homoerotic devotion and eternal fame.

64 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion the Megarians may have something to do with the fact that they were Theognis’ fellow citizens. The emphasis on their maritime excellence may be meant to counterbalance the story of their disparagement by the Delphic oracle and their proverbial worthlessness.104 The nautical prowess of the Megarians may also hark back to the glorious past of colonization and the whole range of paederastic time.105 Irrespective of such associations, the Megarians duly appreciated and honored Diocles’ devotion to his friend. Both the hero and they have become famous, as hopefully the narrator and his beloved will. The Megarians set a moral standard and may serve as models for the Theocritean pair and the future generations of their admirers: not only did they honor the goodly Diocles but they also managed thereby to overcome their limitations and the prejudice against them—to get rid of the Boeotian sow stain (cf. P. Ο. 6.90, fr. 83 Maehler), as it were. Be that as it may, athletic games in Diocles’ honor took place at his tomb. The narrator says nothing about these games and focuses only on an early spring kissing contest of boys at his tomb (30–34): αἰεί οἱ περὶ τύμβον ἀολλέες εἴαρι πρώτῳ κοῦροι ἐριδμαίνουσι φιλήματος ἄκρα φέρεσθαι· ὃς δέ κε προσμάξῃ γλυκερώτερα χείλεσι χείλη, βριθόμενος στεφάνοισιν ἑὴν ἐς μητέρ’ ἀπῆλθεν. ὄλβιος ὅστις παισὶ φιλήματα κεῖνα διαιτᾷ. Always at the beginning of spring the lads gather round his tomb and compete for the prize in kissing; and whoever most sweetly presses lips on lips goes home to his mother loaded with garlands. Fortunate is he who judges those kisses for the boys.

The contest is not attested elsewhere.106 The lack of specifics fits in with the earlier parts of the poem, but the choice of Diocles as a paradigmatic lover and famous hero honored by generations of boys inevitably harks back to and qualifies the narrator’s wish for the idealized relationship he hopes for. || 104 In 14 Aeschinas, the jilted lover, compares himself to the disparaged Megarians (48–49); for the oracle see Σ ad loc. (= Deinias FGrHist 306) and Gow (19522) 257. Apollonius narrates the story of the mistaken interpretation of a Delphic oracle by the Megarian colonists of the Pontic Heraclea, which led to their veneration of the wrong hero (Arg. 2.846–50). 105 Hunter (1996) 191–92. 106 For possible parallels, little known and remote anyway, see Gow (19522) 227. Hunter (1996) 191 mentions the exchange of oaths between homosexual lovers at the tomb of Iolaus (Arist. fr. 97 R), which would not involve a judge, whether as recipient of any token of affection or not. It is quite precarious to assume that Theocritus invented the competition, but an element of fiction or adaptation may not be ruled out.

Idyll 12 | 65

Only boys compete in the kissing contest, and there is no mention of their, or any, older lovers. The narrator’s report may even include a hint of promiscuity, as the boys are engaged in a competition of homosexual ardor, judged by a lucky judge, presumably an adult. I will return to the contestants and the judge in a moment. Diocles’ fame notwithstanding, it is his affection for his beloved, who is neither named nor otherwise specified, rather than his prowess and readiness to sacrifice himself for the boy, or indeed his self-sacrifice, that comes into focus.107 The story of Diocles may point in the direction of exclusive, selfless devotion, even of the implied readiness of the narrator to sacrifice himself for his boy. Still, the selectivity renders the use of the exemplum ambiguous. Not only are prowess and self-sacrifice completely suppressed, but also the reciprocity or egalitarian nature of the relationship and indeed the younger member of the model couple are also left out of the picture. On the other hand, the background of Diocles’ story serves to project the narrator and his boy as enjoying an advantage over the model pair, at least potentially: the narrator aspires to a lifelong happy relationship with the beloved rather than to sacrifice for his sake. The most remarkable feature of the competition is the role of the judge: he does not judge the kisses bestowed by boys to other boys, or to older lovers, but receives them himself. This is apparently due to the peculiar nature of a kissing contest, which may hardly be judged by simple observation. However, it is certainly unexpected that the Megarians would found, or that the narrator would choose to mention, a contest that involves boys only as potential partners, without any current connection with lovers, at least in the framework of the competition. The fortunate judge is at best remotely associated with Diocles, and even the winning boy may hardly be paralleled to the hero’s beloved. A clue to the solution of these puzzles may be found in the prayer the narrator imagines that the judge addresses to Ganymede (35–37): ἦ που τὸν χαροπὸν Γανυμήδεα πόλλ’ ἐπιβῶται Λυδίῃ ἶσον ἔχειν πέτρῃ στόμα, χρυσὸν ὁποίῃ πεύθονται, μὴ φαῦλος, ἐτήτυμον ἀργυραμοιβοί. I daresay he utters many a prayer to bright Ganymede that his mouth should be like the Lydian stone with which moneychangers test gold to make sure it is not false.

|| 107 φιλόπαις (29) may mean ‘lover of a boy’ but also, and more naturally in Greek, ‘lover of boys’; cf. Pl. R. 474d5. It is then not even made clear whether Diocles loved one or many boys.

66 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion Obviously, this is the narrator’s view of the contest and the role of the judge.108 According to this view, the judge worries that his judgment may be wrong and wishes for a kissing touchstone as unerring as the Lydian stone in testing pure gold.109 This may suggest that the judge is insecure about his abilities, concerned about the potential trickery of the competing boys, or both. In any case, the judge emerges as the narrator’s final model. Instead of invoking the help of a divinity, the judge turns to Ganymede, who was most beautiful among mortals and snatched to Olympus to serve as winepourer to the gods (Il. 20.232–35 [cf. 5.265–67], HyAphr 202–17). Ganymede had no achievements in his record, did not take any initiative, and was not involved in a loving or even dedicated relationship except as a victim of divine abduction. Still, the prayer may be addressed to him, the paradigm of boyish beauty, on account of his excellence, his physical beauty but also, and primarily, his moral innocence. In other words, the judge invokes Ganymede to help him identify the most guileless boy as deserving the prize for excellence, although not in a beauty contest. Thus Ganymede is not hors concours in a competition of the Megarian sort, as Gow suggests, and the implied problem of the narrator is not for how long he will enjoy sweet kisses, as Hunter wonders.110 Moreover, the poem does not end with the narrator’s infidelity of thought, or in an ecstatic fantasy of erotic exuberance, as Legrand and Payne believe.111 Throughout the poem the narrator wishes for honesty and reciprocity, and for eternal fame, the due reward for mutual devotion. He is satisfied that his devotion to his beloved is neither unrequited nor directed to an unworthy object. His praise of the boy, the only fame currently available, is truthful, and the boy amply deserves it. Similarly, Diocles was a paradigmatic homosexual lover, who fully deserves the fame he has been enjoying and the honors the worthy Megarians have bestowed on him. Nevertheless, as already pointed out, his boy is not named or otherwise described, and the relationship is not (explicitly) celebrated as reciprocal or equal. The kissing competition, which brings boys into focus, also highlights potential dishonesty, or at least lack of reciprocal fervor, which might compromise a perfect relationship. The narrator, whose similarity to Diocles is not very close, cannot apparently shake off all his worries over his boy’s honesty, or at || 108 The particle combination ἦ που that introduces the assumed prayer suggests that the narrator is quite but not absolutely certain about his assumption and, more important, that the statement is an assumption. See Denniston (19542) 285–86. 109 The predicate attributed to Ganymede, χαροπός (35), is probably chosen for its associations with brightness, which is a characteristic of youthful beauty, but also the brightness of pure gold. 110 Gow (19522) 230; Hunter (1996) 191. 111 Legrand (1925) 80; Payne (2007) 108–9.

Idyll 12 | 67

least the future of their relationship, not to mention boys and relationships generally. He considers the judge fortunate (ὄλβιος, 34), not because the latter promiscuously enjoys scores of sweet kisses but because there is a unique boy to whom he can turn to for unerring judgment concerning the purity of the contestants, or for fulfilling his role in a morally impeccable manner.112 There is no indication that the narrator also would seek the assistance of Ganymede, but the similarity between the judge’s explicit and the narrator’s implicit worry may point in this direction. Ganymede is the epitome of youthful innocence, a boy snatched from his family so suddenly and cruelly that Zeus even paid compensation to his grieving father. Instead of wishing for, or fantasizing about, as many boy partners as possible, and instead of just enjoying the kisses of boys, both the narrator and the judge, in the narrator’s view, are aware of their limitations and the precariousness of their situation, praying to gods and heroes for assistance. The heroes and lovers of old acquired fame despite their problems. The Megarians, for all their proverbial worthlessness, did right by Diocles and deserve good fortune. The narrator too hopes that despite inevitable uncertainties, including potential divine hostility, he will have an honest, lifelong reciprocal relationship with his boy so that they may come to reap the reward of fame. For his part, the judge hopes that Ganymede will help him identify and reward the most deserving contestant. The innocence of Ganymede and his paradigmatic status as paidika make him the ideal model for the narrator’s beloved and the winning contestant in the kissing competition. As a divinized hero, Ganymede is also the ideal helper for the judge and, implicitly, the narrator. The poem then repeatedly tackles the same theme, a fervent wish for reciprocity, marked by unalloyed honesty. The narrator never envisages lack of reciprocity, rupture or any unpleasantness between the lovers, currently or in the future. Nevertheless, he is sober and pious enough to acknowledge the precariousness of future bliss and fame, not least by means of the associations he draws, both explicit and implicit. The gentleness of the lover and his view of concord appear more clearly if read against Callimachus’ epigram on the young beloved

|| 112 It is probably not accidental that in the space of seven lines (28–34) in a short poem that does not feature repetitions the predicate ὄλβιος appears twice, qualifying the praiseworthy Megarians (28), who honored Diocles, and the fortunate judge (34), who turns to Ganymede for assistance. Both the Megarians and the judge, who is evidently Megarian anyway, are associated with paragons of moral excellence and set a moral standard themselves.

68 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion Theocritus (AP 12.230 = 52 Pf.),113 which also mentions Ganymede but exemplifies a very different way of dealing with models: Τὸν τὸ καλὸν μελανεῦντα Θεόκριτον, εἰ μὲν ἔμ’ ἔχθει, τετράκι μισοίης· εἰ δὲ φιλεῖ, φιλέοις, ναίχι πρὸς εὐχαίτεω Γανυμήδεος, oὐράνιε Ζεῦ, καὶ σύ ποτ’ ἠράσθης—οὐκέτι μακρὰ λέγω. If Theocritus, nicely darkening on his chin, hates me, hate him four times over, if he loves me, love him. By Ganymede of the fair locks, heavenly Zeus, you too were a lover once. I say no more.

The epigram touches on major themes of homosexual love poetry: the beauty of the beloved, perhaps with a touch of the lover’s view that every feature of the beloved, even if not commonly considered attractive, is beautiful;114 reciprocity and the lack thereof, and Zeus, the lover of Ganymede, as a model for (homoerotic) lovers.115 Markedly absent is the unqualified devotion of the narrator to Theocritus, a potentially indifferent beloved. What is more, all the motifs informing the epigram are employed in a very unusual manner. The request of the narrator in the prayer to Zeus, which follows the praise of Theocritus’ beauty, is conditional on the boy’s feelings toward the narrator. This extraordinary stance has nothing to do with the curses rejected or locked out lovers hurl at their cruel sweethearts: the boy has not rejected or come to despise the affection of the narrator and has apparently not even declared his feelings yet.116 Alternatively, if he has, the narrator may not trust him. The parallelism of the narrator and Zeus in the name of Ganymede distances the reference from the common motif of mentioning the vulnerability of gods in general and the philandering Zeus in particular in the context of homosexual love and its tribulations. The narrator, who does not take reciprocity for granted and does not even pray for it, assimilates Zeus’ situation to his own rather than vice versa: it is || 113 He is probably not the poet (cf. V n. 79 below). The age of Theocritus is not indicated in the epigram, but the narrator’s appeal to Zeus’ relationship with Ganymede probably suggests that the beloved is younger than the narrator. 114 Cf. Hunter (1999) 206–8. 115 This goes back to Theognis (1345–50). Cf. S. fr. 345 Radt, Eur. Tr. 821–22, Or. 1392, IA 1049– 53, Cy. 585, Pl. Phdr. 255b5–c1, Lg. 636c7–d4, Xen. Smp. 8.30. For Ganymede in Pindar see n. 95 above. 116 Tarán (1979) 7–8 suggests that this is an instance of the topos of loving one’s friends and hating one’s enemies, but there is no parallel for the prayer, in essence a request to a god to dispense or withhold favor from someone who has not yet revealed or proven his feelings. For Callimachus’ innovations in the epigram cf. Mülke (2004) 196.

Idyll 12 | 69

not so much uncontrollable or compromising passion that unites god and mortal but a vindictive attitude toward the beloved. It is obvious, though, that such assimilation involves serious distortion: the god, for all his great passion for Ganymede, was naturally never in danger of being rejected and had no reason to come to hate, or be vindictive toward, Ganymede. By contrast, the narrator’s vindictiveness toward a potentially unloving Theocritus is emphatically stressed, conceivably to the point of suggesting a qualification of his feelings. His first request to Zeus is to hate Theocritus four times over if Theocritus hates him and to love him, presumably equally, if he loves the narrator. It is no wonder that he cuts the address to Zeus short, with a possible glance at the virtue of poetic brevity: ironically, if he said more, his case was bound to unravel. The Callimachean narrator, an unusual lover who appears to be four times more concerned with hatred than with love, evokes a model he (re)shapes in a provocative manner.117 The lover in Theocritus’ 12 is unusual in a different way. The originality of the poem may be sought in the selective manner in which the narrator deals with models, including a suitable language, for the novel, egalitarian and reciprocal, relationship and the prospects he sketches, or at the very least to which he fervently aspires. The audience have no valid reason to doubt the sincerity of his report of the relationship, especially the attitude of the boy. To be sure, the specter of disloyalty and loss kept in the foreground by the models the narrator evokes renders his prospects ambivalent and, potentially at least, precarious. He attempts to put new wine in old bottles by invoking successive models that may not correspond to his situation and the relationship he aspires to. This may be a sign that he is naïve or deluded in idealizing or sublimating his situation. On the other hand, he does not entirely lack sobriety or restraint. He certainly does not distort his models to make them fit his situation or aspiration. Instead, he engages in selectivity: he reimagines an ideal, heroic past as model for his relationship and imagines that this process will serve as a model for future sublimation of his relationship in selective commemorative idealization. The combination of selective evocation and noble aspiration does not highlight his foolish inadequacy, or his fantasies of self-worth, heroic eternal fame and homoerotic promiscuity, but in a way enables him to surpass his heroes: he is not gifted and may never become famous but he is in a committed relationship that will not necessarily fail and may even prove stable and glorious. By contrast, Theognis implicitly enjoys the renown of a lyric

|| 117 In an epigram alluding to the passion of Zeus for Ganymede Asclepiades, for instance, does not include any vindictiveness (AP 5.167 = 14 GP).

70 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion Homer, and Cyrnus is cast in the mold of renowned epic heroes, but their relationship was doomed, as Theognis had failed to locate a worthy object of his affection and recipient of his precious gift. Unlike Achilles, Patroclus and Diocles, the narrator aspires to a lifelong, egalitarian relationship rather than to sacrifice for the sake of the beloved. Honesty, loyalty, appropriate praise and rewards for the worthy are his ideals, which are not ridiculed or doomed. The famous designations of the pair as “inspirer” (εἴσπνηλος, 13) and “listener” (ἀίτης, 14) by future singers are indicative of the narrator’s and the poem’s point of view.118 The two lexical rarities do not suggest that the wish for reciprocity morphs into a fantasy of distinct roles of active inspiring and passive listening.119 Rather, the narrator imagines that the future singers will celebrate an egalitarian relationship, at the beginning and the end of their song, in ring composition, designating the pair as excellent men of old modeled on lovers of the golden age (δίω δή τινε τώδε μετὰ προτέροισι γενέσθην/ φῶθ’, 12–13, ἦ ῥα τότ’ ἦσαν/ χρύσειοι πάλιν ἄνδρες ὅτ’ ἀντεφίλησ’ ὁ φιληθείς, 16). In between they will insert the glosses, as if including a footnote, which may serve more than one purpose. Local dialects apparently had specific terms for paederastic liaisons, which do not necessarily correspond precisely to the lauded relationship but provide an aura of traditional authority and perhaps mediate the narrator’s attempt to locate models. An echo of the singers’ formulation (ἡ σὴ νῦν φιλότης καὶ τοῦ χαρίεντος ἀίτεω, 20) is put in the imagined gratifying message the narrator hopes to receive in the distant future in the underworld. As Theognis does not wish to or cannot invent a new discourse of eternal fame that entirely bypasses epic discourse, so the narrator of 12, who focuses on eternal fame, does not wish to or cannot abandon the discourse of archaic homoerotic lyric, which echoes the epic discourse on fame. Rather then showing lack of restraint and sophistication manifested in fantasies and empty, unfulfillable wishes, the narrator’s aspirations suggest the opposite. His selectivity, quite circumspect claims and especially the open-endedness of the poem do not preclude a positive outcome. In 29 and 30, Theocritus’ two other paidika poems, which deal with non-egalitarian relationships, recourse to models also features prominently and is problematized, but the narrators project very different outcomes for their liaisons. This choice rounds off the prospects

|| 118 For the two terms, the second of which is unattested in the Thessalian or any other dialect, see Gow (19522) 223–24. Hunter (1996) 192 suggests that the reference to Amyclae evokes the story of the authorizing paederastic liaison of Apollo and Hyacinthus. If so, this sad story of bereavement is another echo of a lover’s sufferings. 119 See Payne (2007) 105.

Idyll 29 | 71

of paederastic liaisons and shows the uniqueness of the narrator’s aspirations in 12. Whether homoerotic, and by extension erotic, relationships are egalitarian or not, their prospects are hardly ever completely optimistic. In 29 and 30 the motif of fame is absent. In 12 the lover’s emphasis on fame rather than his inappropriate choice of models may be thought to signal the fragility of his aspirations and projections. On the other hand, he has at least a metapoetic claim to eternal fame as the narrator of the song “Listener”, which commemorates a stage of his relationship with the boy and his view of its prospects.

Idyll 29 The persona of the narrator of 29 is much closer to the mold of the lover in archaic homoerotic poetry than the narrator of 12,120 although the final version of the future he contemplates is much less standard and may be viewed as the polar opposite of 12. He claims to be ardently in love with his comely but fickle boy addressee (4–9). He admonishes the boy as to the best choice of sexual partner (10– 20) and promises rewards, including civic repute, although not explicitly eternal fame, if he heeds his lover’s advice (21–24). The boy does not receive advice on broader moral, let alone on political, issues but is specifically urged to eschew promiscuity and devote himself to his guileless lover instead of hitching up with the latest admirer of his beauty. The boy’s levity or lack of concern with honesty is perhaps first intimated by the choice of the proverb that opens the poem (‘οἶνος, ὦ φίλε παῖ,’ λέγεται, ‘καὶ ἀλάθεια’, 1). Whether a quotation from Alcaeus (οἶνος, ὦ φίλε παῖ, καὶ ἀλάθεα, fr. 366 V) or not, and whether from a paederastic poem or not, the narrator highlights wine and truth. Since the setting of the poem is apparently a symposium (2), another link to the archaic tradition, the choice of proverbial elements may have been determined by the setting. However, since there was a closely related saying or proverb (οἶνος καὶ παῖδες ἀληθεῖς), the choice may indicate that the narrator does not wish to associate the boy with truth or fidelity even by way of a proverb. The swift passage of time and the fading of youthful beauty receive considerable emphasis, in a version of the thematically standard warning to the beloved to abandon his youthful arrogance or his illusion that his attractions will last forever (25–30). The future of the boy and the narrator will come into focus at the

|| 120 For the archaizing effect of 29 see Pretagostini (1997) 17 and cf. Prauscello (2006) 187, 206, who also observes that the meter (gl2d) is “entirely neglected outside Sapphic and Alcaic tradition”.

72 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion end of the poem (39–40), to which I will turn in a moment. The next piece of advice to the boy, to be pliant and devote himself to his honest admirer (31–32), is introduced by an exhortation in the name of the boy’s soft mouth (ἀλλὰ πὲρρ ἀπάλω στύματός σε πεδέρχομαι, 25). It also includes a lower-register indication of the swift advent of old age (κὤτι γηράλεοι πέλομεν πρὶν ἀπύπτυσαι “we become old before one can spit”, 27).121 12 features a similar lower-register mention of a liar’s nose pimples (24), but the narrator of 29 evokes both the boy’s beauty and the graphic repudiation of hateful things, either by the act of spitting or by verbally invoking it.122 The narrator’s encouragement to the boy to stay true to his friend for life is reinforced by his reference to Achilleian friends (33–34), a model of lifelong devotion,123 and the proclamation of his readiness to undertake onerous labors for the sake of the boy (37–38). For all the narrator’s declarations of love, his devotion and the prospects of the couple’s relationship are hardly comparable to their counterparts in 12. First of all, the relationship is non-egalitarian, and not only age-wise. The narrator is certainly older (10) and he deems himself in a position to give the boy profitable advice (11, 21–22, 31). On the other hand, unlike the boy in 12, the addressee of 29 is particularly fickle (14–18) and unlikely to heed the advice of his lover, who may after all just be one of the most recent, or most persistent, encomiasts of his beauty. As already noted, the lover’s advice is geared toward checking the boy’s promiscuity. The lover may experience disappointment and suffering, but the stiff competition for the boy’s sexual favors indicates that the lover has no other way of securing the coveted favors. His stance is not entirely selfless, especially as he does not even openly attribute base or underhand motives to his rivals, although he drops strategically placed hints to that effect at the beginning and end of his admonitions (13, 32). Just before the end, the narrator’s self-styling as Heracles in the performance of particularly challenging labors, the apples of the Hesperides and Cerberus, is inappropriately hyperbolic,124 even if made and excused as a lover’s promise. Apart from the difficulty of the tasks and the geographical remoteness of their setting, the apples may be considered more appropriate in the context of an erotic

|| 121 Cf. Pretagostini (1997) 15. For the narrator’s desire to enjoy his beloved sexually, apparent among other things in his exhortation, see Hunter (1996) 179. 122 Cf. 27.5, Eur. Hipp. 614, Hec. 1276, IT 1161, IA 874. 123 Cf. n. 101 above. 124 The two labors were the culmination of Heracles’ career in different canons; for the order of the labors see Bond (1981) 166.

Idyll 29 | 73

relationship because of their preciousness, beauty and association with the hieros gamos of Zeus and Hera. The narrator suggests that he would be willing to go to the ends of the earth and secure an exquisite, divine, and highly symbolic prize for his beloved. His vow is not undermined only, or even primarily, by the gap between his situation and the assets of Heracles, an immortalized demigod enjoying eternal fame. The poem does not deal with fame125 but mentions in passing only the prospect of the boy’s good civic repute (21–22). The narrator’s claims are mainly undermined by their position within a declaration of the contingent character of his devotion to the boy (35–40): αἰ δὲ ταῦτα φέρην ἀνέμοισιν ἐπιτρέπῃς, ἐν θύμῳ δὲ λέγῃς ‘τί με, δαιμόνι’, ἐννόχλης;’ νῦν μὲν κἀπὶ τὰ χρύσια μᾶλ’ ἔνεκεν σέθεν βαίην καὶ φύλακον νεκύων πεδὰ Κέρβερον, τότα δ’ οὐδὲ κάλεντος ἐπ’ αὐλεΐαις θύραις προμόλοιμί κε, παυσάμενος χαλέπω πόθω. But if you consign my words to be carried away by the winds and say to yourself, “Why are you pestering me?”—as it is, I would fetch the Golden Apples for you or bring back Cerberus, guard dog of the dead—but in that case, I would not come to my courtyard door even if you called, and my cruel desire would be at an end.

At the beginning, following the declaration of his readiness to open his heart to the boy over wine (1–3), he states emphatically that the boy’s beauty has left him only half-alive (5–6): he alternates between heaven and hell depending on the boy’s whimsical willingness to grant him his favors (7–8). The association of the fortunate lover with the gods, or the ecstasy of erotic bliss that elevates him to the sphere of the divine, may hark back to Sappho (fr. 31.1–5 V), an appropriate sequel to the possible echo of Alcaeus (fr. 366 V) at 1, but the difference is fundamental: the Sapphic narrator relates the profound psychosomatic impact that the encounter with the beloved has on her, which brings her to the verge of death, and the divinely blessed person is the man having an interview with the girl.126

|| 125 The glossing over of the Hesperides, whose singing capacity is mentioned by Hesiod (Th. 275, 518), Euripides (Hipp. 742, Her. 394) and Apollonius (Arg. 4.1399), is another indication that fame, including the poetic sort, is not thematically important in the poem. 126 The image of the savage snake attacking a nest made on a poorly chosen tree (12–13) may also be a distant echo of Sappho’s metaphor for bittersweet Love (fr. 130 V), again with a major shift in the identity of the characters: while the Sapphic narrator describes an attack of Love on her (or, indeed, him), the Theocritean narrator cautions the boy on the nefarious implications and dangers of promiscuity.

74 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion Still, if Sappho’s poem is a relevant intertext, then the narrator follows a trajectory of allusions similar to that of 12: both poems begin with reminiscences of Lesbian lyric and proceed with suggestions of Theognis’ addresses to his beloved (cf. e.g. 87–114, 1299–1334), including implicit or explicit invocation of Achilles. Nevertheless, 29 ends neither with a complaint reminiscent of Theognis (253– 54) nor with any image of erotic bliss harking back to the end of 12, and not even with a declaration of resignation like Sappho fr. 31 V. Instead, the narrator of 29 threatens the boy with complete repudiation, envisaging a cessation of his passion and an irrevocable break-up. The threat may materialize when the boy will not be young and attractive anymore and will be reduced to soliciting lovers, including the narrator. This, though, is quite unlikely, given that the thematically standard warning addressed to foolish youths is different. The narrators of paederastic poems do not suggest that the boys will eventually solicit their current admirer’s favors, which the age difference makes virtually impossible anyway, in practical and cultural terms. Rather, they predict that the boys will suffer in turn, as older admirers of cruel youths. The narrator probably projects an earlier moment in future time, when the boy will be older and wiser, although not old enough to be a lover. The boy is currently wallowing in his delusions and eager to enjoy himself with as many partners as possible (14–18), so he might well be relieved were his annoying lover to leave him alone (35–36). Soon, though, when a savage creeping creature injures him (13), he may realize the correctness of the lover’s advice, namely that he should have built his nest on a secure branch (12). He will then try to make amends, but it will be too late for love (39–40). The final threat perhaps implies, or at least leaves open the possibility, that by then the narrator will have turned to other, more receptive or loyal, partners. Although this may just be taken as a hopelessly empty threat meant to scare the fickle addressee into compliance, the end of the poem seems to adumbrate the likelihood that there will be an end to the lover’s tormenting devotion, when the boy will have failed to heed his advice. This will be a lose-lose situation for the boy and certainly not a win-win one for the narrator. The latter, though, reserves for himself, or fantasizes about, an advantage or the amelioration of his condition, while he projects the future condition of the former as worse and virtually hopeless. Even if no other partner(s) of the narrator are involved, potentially mutual, or unilaterally vindictive, indifference takes the place of the harmony and hoped-for lifelong reciprocity of 12. The couple of 29 are much more likely to part ways sooner rather than later, and not exactly amicably, than to spend their lives together. They will not enjoy a stable relationship, much less fame comparable to that of mythological models, as a fickle boy and a selfish man may hardly measure up to such ancient models

Idyll 30 | 75

of achievement, loyalty and lifelong attachment. Although the open-endedness of the poem allows for some hope that the boy will come to his senses and the narrator will enjoy some consequent bliss, the final projection indicates that it is the lover who may eventually come to his senses. The realistic projection of separation may (be meant to) leave an unpleasant, or harshly sobering, aftertaste. Without (credible prospect of) loyal concord and reciprocity between the narrator and his beloved, the only possible outcomes are definitive estrangement, which may injure both equally or one more than the other, and resignation on the part of the older lover. The narrator of 29 envisages, or assumes the pose of opting for, the first possibility, attempting to turn his loss into a vindictive victory of sorts: instead of issuing the thematically standard warning that the boy will suffer as he is currently suffering and will continue to suffer, he claims that his suffering will cease while the boy will come to be tormented. The narrator of 30 eventually makes the other choice. He is not yet in a relationship with his beloved boy but he is clear-eyed about his situation and the prospects of the liaison, which is bound to be ephemeral. Rather than addressing and admonishing the boy, he tries to reason with himself but finally resigns himself to the invincibility of Love.

Idyll 30 30 is less harsh than 29, although the narrator’s tormenting disease of love is lamented right at the beginning and throughout.127 The poem includes mainly a “debate” between a narrator already advanced in years and his own θυμός (11– 32). It is more dramatic in form than 29, but the identity of the “debaters” blunts the dramatic edge. The boy, the narrator’s object of desire, is not present, addressed or admonished, and his feelings, behavior, and potential response to the narrator’s feelings are not matters of primary concern. The narrator has few hopes of a happy outcome, even if the boy becomes his partner, and he indicates that at his age he should have known how things stand with boy love and avoided it. Already the aged Ibycus (PMGF 287), infatuated by Eros’ seductive glances and terrified by the onslaught, compared himself to an old prize-winning racehorse that dreads and is reluctant to be yoked again to a chariot for another competition || 127 The “disease” is called “grievous” at 1 (ᾬαι τὼ χαλέπω καἰνομόρω τῶδε νοσήματος) and 23 (παύσασθαι δ’ ἐνίαυτος χαλέπας οὐκ ἴ), marking the narrator’s perception of the erotic predicament in ring composition. Cf. 17 (τὼν χαλέπων παῖδος ἐρώ). The formulation of 23 and 29.40 (παυσάμενος χαλέπω πόθω) is similar, which may suggest that either poem echoes the other, but the narrators envisage totally different outcomes.

76 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion (ἦ μὰν τρομέω νιν ἐπερχόμενον/ ὥστε φερέζυγος ἵππος ἀεθλοφόρος ποτὶ γήραι/ ἀέκων σὺν ὄχεσφι θοοῖς ἐς ἅμιλλαν ἔβα, 5–8). The Theocritean narrator eschews all reference to races and prizes, but the boy’s glance and the aging narrator’s awareness of his helpless predicament may owe something to Ibycus,128 especially as the latter may echo Achilles’ terrifying onslaught, likened to the galloping of a prize-winning horse (σευάμενος ὥς θ’ ἵππος ἀεθλοφόρος σὺν ὄχεσφιν, Il. 22.22). The suggestion that the beauty of the boy is mediocre but his smile irresistible sounds refreshingly novel with respect to archaic lyric models (3–4): κάλω μὲν μετρίως, ἀλλ’ ὄποσον τῲ πόδι περρέχει τὰς γᾶς, τοῦτο χάρις, ταὶς δὲ παραύαις γλύκυ μειδίαι. He is only moderately handsome, but from top to toe he’s a complete charmer, with a sweet smile on his cheeks.

The reference to the boy’s charm is an elaboration on the acknowledgment of his physical plainness. His charm is no greater than the distance of a walker’s foot from the ground, but the narrator is infatuated with his winsome smile. There is no hint that the boy is promiscuous. His blushing and the glance he cast the narrator the previous day, which the latter interprets as bashful (7–8), may be coy or calculated to inflame the lover,129 or it may be the lover’s illusion. In any case, there is not even a clear indication that the boy is aware of the narrator’s love. Unsurprisingly, no reciprocity and no fame, in song or otherwise, are mentioned or contemplated. The virtually exclusive focus on the older man and his introspection makes for a very isolated narrator and lover, perhaps the loneliest in the collection. He does not even address the boy, he mentions no relatives, friends or acquaintances, and confides in no one, but returns home and sits alone with his memories and dreams—much like several narrators in the poetry of Cavafy. However, the debate with his θυμός, although not dramatic in the conventional sense, “creates” an interlocutor and generates clearer, if not necessarily comforting, insight into his condition and prospects. The narrator of 30 takes on the role of the soberer interlocutor, a figure like Milon in 10 or Thyonichus in 14.130

|| 128 For the glance of the beloved as wounding arrow see Barrett (1964) 260, and Wilkinson 234; cf. the discussion of Pindar’s praise of Theoxenus’ glances (fr. 123 Maehler) below p. 80. 129 Cf. Hunter (1996) 182. 130 The weakness brought about by love and the all-consuming infatuation characteristic of the passion as well as specifications on the duration of the ailment (2) are also reminiscent of Idyll 10. So is the motif of the limited physical charms of the beloved, although the girl Bombyca is depicted

Idyll 30 | 77

Yet unlike Milon, Aeschinas or even Polyphemus in 11, the narrator does not suggest or imagine any means of escaping from passion but focuses only on his advanced age, which is unsuitable for the tribulations of boy love. The beloved is not accused or suspected of anything untoward. The potentiality of his fickleness is squarely placed in the context of his youth, as his young life is always speeding forward and changing friends (18–19):131 τῷ μὲν γὰρ βίος ἔρπει ἴσα γόννοις ἐλάφω θόας, χαλάσει δ’ ἀτέρᾳ ποντοπόρην αὔριον ἄρμενα· A boy’s life moves along like the running of a swift deer; the next day he will cast off and sail elsewhere.

By contrast, an older man, who cannot cure himself of his predicament, suffers prolonged, relentless torment, entangled in painful memories and even dreams at night (21–23). The encounter with the boy the previous day has inflicted a fresh wound (7–9), probably in the narrator’s liver (10), commonly viewed as the seat of sexual desire (cf. 11.15). This is the first hint of the power of the invincible Eros, which the frail θυμός will invoke at the end (25–32). In the framework of a short, monothematic piece the “debate” emerges as an intertextual tour de force with echoes of epic duels, lyric predicaments and tragic dilemmas. Deliberations of epic heroes with their θυμός over whether they should resist or retreat occur four times in Iliad (11.404–10, 17.91–105, 21.553–70, 22.99–130). The accounts include a formulaic introduction (ὀχθήσας δ’ ἄρα εἶπε πρὸς ὃν μεγαλήτορα θυμόν, 11.403, 17.90, 21.552, 22.98) and sequence (ἀλλὰ τίη μοι ταῦτα φίλος διελέξατο θυμός; 11.407, 17.97, 21.562, 22.122; cf. 385), reworked in the narrator’s introduction (πόλλα δ’ εἰσκαλέσαις θῦμον ἐμαύτῳ διελεξάμαν, 11). The “initiative” is always said to belong to the hero but he goes on to reject what he describes as the dilemma of his θυμός. With the exception of Menelaus in 17, the heroes opt for resistance because they deem it the honorable course of action that becomes a warrior. By contrast, Menelaus rejects resistance to Hector, although, as he admits, retreat and abandonment of the body of Patroclus who fell for the sake of Menelaus’ honor may be considered shameful by his comrades (17.91–93). However, he opts for retreat,

|| in starker terms, admittedly by her admirer’s colleague, and Bucaeus acknowledges the low estimation of Bombyca’s charms (10.26–29). 131 The simile of the doe’s knees for portraying the swiftness of the passage of time for the boy is apparently indebted to the New Sappho, the complete version of fr. 58.5–6 V, one of several debts to Aeolic poetry apart from the formal and thematic sort; see Méndez Dosuna (2008) 193–97.

78 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion invoking divine favor to his adversary and reassuring himself that no comrade will blame him, since fighting against the gods is a recipe for disaster (98–101). The narrator of 30 is not concerned with honor or public opprobrium but with a course of action appropriate to his situation. Mutatis mutandis, the narrator’s θυμός opts for the pious rationale and unique decision of Menelaus, invoking the universal power of Eros over mortals and immortals, including great Zeus and Aphrodite herself, the goddess of love (ταῦτα γάρ, ὤγαθε,/ βόλλεται θέος ὂς καὶ Δίος ἔσφαλε μέγαν νόον/ καὔτας Κυπρογενήας, 29–31). These are the only fellow victims of Eros mentioned in the poem, and the θυμός elaborates on Menelaus’ reservations. At the same time, the response points in another intertextual direction, with the use of the form ἔσφαλε, which is very rare and occurs before Theocritus only in Pindar (P. 8.15, I. 4.53; cf. N. 11.31; cf. e.g. S. Aj. 452, Eur. Hi. 6). All these instances involve ruthless or underhand (cf. δολομάχανον, 25) suppression of the ambitions of mighty mortals and immortals, including the madness that afflicted Ajax. Resistance to love is then not only impossible for a mere mortal but also potentially impious and thus bound not only to fail but also to incur severe punishment. Remarkably, the narrator’s θυμός does not tout the rights or primacy of emotions over reasoning but calmly brings up the ineluctable tyranny of divine power (25–32).132 The reasoning, as it were, of the θυμός sets the poem apart from an epigram of Meleager (AP 12.117), in which the θυμός rejects reasoned argument (λογισμός) as useless in the face of all-conquering love that brought low even mighty Zeus, and even from the attempt of the Cyclops to rid himself of his infatuation with Galateia by turning to useful tasks (11.72–74). The famous address of Euripides’ Medea to her θυμός, if genuine, is also unlike the narrator’s hectoring. Medea resolves to proceed with the filicide after weighing the pros and cons of sparing the children: she does not simply yield to the irrational urgings of her θυμός, although her reasoning may be viewed as rationalization of her passion for revenge, which stems to a large extent from anger and sexual jealousy (Md. 1056–80; cf. 1042–55, 1236–50). Closer to the debate between the narrator and his θυμός may be the report of the guard’s dilemma in Sophocles’ Antigone (225–32), in which the man’s tormented soul successively castigates his equally strong, simultaneous urges to report the unpleasant message to Creon and to abort the dangerous mission. Yet more echoes of archaic and classical literature are concentrated at the end of the Idyll, lurking, as it were, in shadows of dreams and leaves.133 A parallel

|| 132 The futility of striving to defeat Eros is compared to the hopeless attempt to calculate the number of the stars (25–27), which may be an indirect allusion to human limitations. 133 Perhaps an early echo is ἐρωία (6) = ‘respite’, a Homeric word used in this sense twice for the lack of respite in relentless fighting (Il. 16.302, 17.761). The martial context underscores the

Idyll 30 | 79

to the painful memories of an abandoned lover and his dreams of the absent beloved (21–22) is found in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (414–26), but the Theocritean narrator does not even mention the fleeting pleasure of such dreams (cf. Eur. Alc. 354–56), stressing only his torment. The rare qualification δολομάχανος (25), occurring first in a Simonidean fragment that names Eros’ parents as Aphrodite and Ares (PMG 70 = 263 Poltera), may point to the god’s formidable parentage but it mainly highlights the devious wiles of the invincible power holding sway over gods and men.134 The metaphor of the θυμός straining its neck like an ox to pull the yoke (28–29) may also hark back to the infamous harness of necessity that Agamemnon at Aulis straps on, breathing the changing wind of his impious spirit (A. Ag. 218–21). The θυμός of the narrator assumes a stance that may be described as Stoic, apparently preferring not to struggle against divine compulsion (28–32): καὶ νῦν, εἴτ’ ἐθέλω, χρή με μάκρον σχόντα τὸν ἄμφενα ἔλκην τὸν ζύγον, εἴτ’ οὐκ ἐθέλω· ταῦτα γάρ, ὤγαθε, βόλλεται θέος ὂς καὶ Δίος ἔσφαλε μέγαν νόον καὔτας Κυπρογενήας· ἔμε μάν, φύλλον ἐπάμερον σμίκρας δεύμενον αὔρας, ὀνέλων ὦκα φόρει . Willing or unwilling, I must now stretch out my neck and drag at the yoke: that, my friend, is the will of the god who can upset the great mind of Zeus and of Aphrodite herself. As for me, he swiftly takes me up and carries me away like a short-lived leaf which needs only the slightest breeze.

εἴτ’ ἐθέλω (28) is placed first, before the apodosis, and εἴτ’ οὐκ ἐθέλω (29) last, perhaps so as to stress the decision of the θυμός to cooperate in the face of inescapable necessity.135

|| grievousness of the narrator’s plight that will become clearer later: he cannot win (cf. 25–27) or get some respite (cf. 21–22), not even in sleep (6, 22). 134 Cf. Pretagostini (1997) 19–20. Eros is often visualized as a naughty, ruthless child or teenager in Hellenistic poetry, and his parentage is not fixed. Aphrodite is often said to be his mother or associate. For his parentage see III n. 67 below. Here Aphrodite is as much affected as anyone else, although this does not disqualify her as his mother; cf. A.R. Arg. 3.91–99. The invincibility of Eros and Aphrodite and the folly of those who try to fight them is a common motif in tragedy; see e.g. S. Tr. 441–44, 497–98, and cf. Swift (2011) 397–99. 135 Direct Stoic influence should probably not be assumed, especially since no testimony about the particular belief survives from the work of Theocritus’ contemporary Zeno. In fact, in an iambic fragment of Cleanthes (SVF I.570), θυμός asks λογισμός to satisfy its desires. Already Pindar suggests that it is helpful to bear one’s yoke lightly and that kicking against the goad becomes a slippery path (P. 2.93–96).

80 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion The final beautiful, haunting image is of a single leaf, verdant for a day and lifted and tossed around by the slightest breeze (31–32). This is probably a reminiscence of Glaucus’ famous comparison of mortal generations to leaves (Il. 6.145–49) that has been reworked by several poets, including Mimnermus (fr. 2.1–8 W2) and Simonides (fr. 19–20 W2), who emphasize the transience not only of mortal life but also or primarily of youth.136 For all its advantages, this period of mortal life is marked by a foolish outlook, misguided plans and unrealistic hopes. Simonides contrasts this thoughtlessness with the wisdom and perhaps the fame of Homer (fr. 20.13 W2). In light of such reminiscences, the distinction between youth and maturity becomes blurred: although the thoughtful θυμός of an aged man/narrator does not entertain the foolish hopes of the θυμός of a youth (cf. esp. Simon. fr. 20.6 W2), the lot of mortals is similar throughout their short lives, and fame or other consolation is nowhere in sight. Pindar, in an ode of his old age, probably the latest surviving, stresses the transience of mortal life, comparing men as creatures of the day to the dream of a shadow (P. 8.92–96). Yet he ends on a comforting note, extolling the divine gleam granted by competitive success (96–100). In a similar vein, Bacchylides ends his epinician on Hiero’s Olympic chariot victory with speculation on the brevity of human life, the inefficacy of the hopes of mortals and the impossibility of recovering youth; at the same time he celebrates the beautiful bloom of prosperity, the permanence of excellence and the fame of laudandus and laudator (3.74–98). The most pertinent lyric intertext is Pindar’s encomiastic fragment that praises the beauty and, in particular, the captivating sparkle of the flashing eyes of the youth Theoxenus (123 Maehler). The narrator tackles the futility, indeed the dangerous impropriety, of showing erotic restraint in old age. He begins by addressing his θυμός and stating that love should be pursued in youth but goes on to suggest that a man insensitive to the charms of Theoxenus’ glances has a cold heart and is dishonored by Aphrodite of the beautiful eyelids.137 Πειθώ and Χάρις are also mentioned at the end (cf. Ibycus PMGF 288), perhaps as a transition to a part about the poet’s skillful praise of his subject.138 || 136 Cf. Pi. P. 9.46; Bacchylides boldly applies the metaphor for short-lived mortals to the innumerable souls of the dead in Hades, as many as the leaves the wind shakes on sheep-nurturing Ida (5.64–67). 137 Fr. 127 Maehler also features an address to the narrator’s θυμός, exhorting him to pursue things appropriate to his age after wishing for appropriateness (καιρός) in love. 138 Simonides too may have tackled the same themes. An elegiac fragment features an apostrophe to his soul (21.3 W2), likely the earliest surviving example, and a reference to his youth (4–8). Abundance of leaves is also mentioned, a possible thematic link to the previous fragments. The next fragment is equally lacunose and difficult to place in plausible context, but it features praise

Idyll 30 | 81

The Theocritean narrator and his θυμός have no similar comforts. The boy looks nothing like the ravishing Theoxenus, and love is a yoke everybody takes on out of necessity, without any possibility of choice or escape. As already noted, the Theocritean narrator does not mention or allude to fame, heroic, poetic or any other sort. The aged lover has no lofty aspirations. He harbors no illusions about the beauty or loyalty of his boy, or his own power to rid himself of his passion. Indeed, his very θυμός makes the most reasonable case. The epic and lyric tradition is full of images and models of eternal fame, including heroes and even gods, but the narrator of 30 (and 29) and his beloved boy may aspire at best to transient or partial happiness, and local good repute. From this perspective, the narrator’s wishes for constancy, concord and commemoration in 12 acquire an aura of hollowness as strong as young people’s belief in their invulnerability, which is swept away like a leaf in the lightest breeze. On the other hand, there is no reason to read the Theocritean paederastic pieces as a group in an echo chamber. There seems to be better justification in reading them as windows, which include window references: they open up different vistas but are not necessarily a continuum or a set of communicating vessels. Love is a tortuous torment, youth a tangle of cruel fickleness and self-deception, and rewards, including fame, as elusive as a dream, but a decent man who aspires to an erotic and poetic Elysium of sorts may not be automatically dismissed as wallowing in a delirium of illusions and doomed to failure on such account. Among the love poems of the collection, song as well as (illusions of) success and fame come into focus primarily in connection with the heroes and the fictional dawn of the bucolic universe. This is in view in 1 and the Cyclops pieces, which deal with the love woes of Daphnis and cast the epic mongrel as his grotesque counterpart respectively. The closest the two heroes come to appearing together in the collection is in 6, in which an oxherd Daphnis, possibly the bucolic hero, addresses his song to Polyphemus and Daphnis’ companion Damoetas responds in Polyphemus’ voice. The Cyclops in 11 is long-suffering like Daphnis and savaged by the arrow of Cypris, but eventually he turns out to be able to hold his own with the palliative of song. The anonymous goatherd in 3, a double of the serenading Cyclops, although otherwise entirely different from Daphnis, is quite close to him in his lack of prospects, or illusions, of amelioration. Theocritus may plausibly be thought to ironize the poetic celebration and indeed creation of heroes in general and his own poetry and heroes in particular.

|| of the young Echecratidas, whose charms delight the narrator, although as part of a rejuvenating fantasy of the skillful encomiast (fr. 22 W2).

82 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion What seems to be beyond reasonable doubt is that, for all his assets, Daphnis compares unfavorably to his Cyclopean incarnations, as I will argue below. Polyphemus is, mildly put, an extraordinary herdsman, singer and bucolic hero: his surviving the torment of love, not to mention eventual success in love attested in later sources as well as his notorious punishment at the hands of Odysseus and his surviving crew, makes him irreconcilably different from Daphnis. Quite unexpectedly and strikingly, he exhibits greater restraint than Daphnis and a lack of self-conceit, especially in the emblematic 11, which also brings him closer to narrators such as the lovers of 12 and 30. However, the most unassuming and unfortunate Cyclopean lover is the anonymous goatherd in 3: lonely like the lover in 30, he is apparently not able, and certainly does not try, to reason with himself or fall out of love but comes even to the point of entertaining thoughts of suicide.

Idyll 3 This mixed-register take on bucolic lovesickness and wooing has connections to several other Idylls, not only to 11 but also to 1, 7 and 4. An anonymous goatherd woos and serenades his beloved Amaryllis outside her cave, in effect performing a daytime, bucolic paraklausithyron. He mentions another girl interested in a gift he has been reserving for Amaryllis (34–36), perhaps in order to make her jealous, and even tries his hand at elite poetry (40–51), all to pathetically little effect. The poem begins with an arrangement unparalleled in the Idylls, a short introduction in the goatherd’s voice (1–5): Κωμάσδω ποτὶ τὰν Ἀμαρυλλίδα, ταὶ δέ μοι αἶγες βόσκονται κατ’ ὄρος, καὶ ὁ Τίτυρος αὐτὰς ἐλαύνει. Τίτυρ’, ἐμὶν τὸ καλὸν πεφιλημένε, βόσκε τὰς αἶγας, καὶ ποτὶ τὰν κράναν ἄγε, Τίτυρε· καὶ τὸν ἐνόρχαν, τὸν Λιβυκὸν κνάκωνα, φυλάσσεο μή τυ κορύψῃ. I’m going to serenade Amaryllis. My goats are grazing on the hill, and Tityrus is in charge of them. Tityrus, my dear friend, feed my goats and take them to the spring, Tityrus; and watch out for the billy goat, the tawny Libyan one, in case he butts you.

While the narrator is serenading, or about to serenade, Amaryllis, his goats are on a hill tended by Tityrus, presumably a colleague and possibly friend, whom he proceeds to address. This addressee is given the task Thyrsis (1.14) and Lycidas (7.87) would undertake in order to help the masters whose exquisite musical performances they wish to attend. Tityrus also carries the name of the singer that will grace Lycidas’ rustic celebration for the safe arrival of Ageanax at Mytilene

Idyll 3 | 83

with a performance of the “Sorrows of Daphnis” and the tale of the legendary goatherd (7.72–82). Tityrus may be a satyr or a satyric figure in 3, as indeed also in 7, or even the leading he-goat of the flock, reminiscent of the ram of the Homeric Cyclops (Od. 9.432), trustingly and familiarly left in charge by the goatherd. It is possible that the choice of name, the “herding” of Tityrus, and the last instruction to him are meant to be ambiguous and suggestive, contrasting a satisfied, lusty “lover” with the unfortunate speaker, but the surface meaning is that Tityrus is a human herdsman, and in what follows I will treat him as such.139 Even if he is a favorite animal, his master views and treats him as human, possibly a(nother) reminiscence of the Homeric Cyclops, with whom the goatherd has much in common. Charged with the urgent business of herding, Tityrus does not join the narrator in the serenade that follows the framing address to him. In all genuine Idylls with a frame there is a performance after it, but Tityrus in 3 is neither a singer nor the audience, unlike his namesake in 7, Nicias in 11 and 13, or Aratus in 6. Tityrus’ absence from the serenade, not to mention the absence of any indication that he has offered practical advice or emotional encouragement to the narrator, highlights the latter’s isolation. More intriguingly, if the address of the goatherd to Tityrus may be thought to point to a closeness similar to that of Daphnis and Damoetas in 6, Tityrus’ absence and failure to react as well as the lack of any reference to him in what follows make the affection appear one-sided and potentially as unrequited as the speaker’s love for Amaryllis. Other characters are mentioned in his song, but no relative, friend, or colleague is said to stand by him and (attempt to) provide any support, whether by means of practical advice or musical performance that might comfort him in his longing.140 He thus appears as one of the loneliest characters in the Idylls, and his anonymity may underscore

|| 139 For the identity and name of Tityrus see Hunter (1999) 110–11, who suggests that the definite article with proper names, a colloquial feature, points to the speaker’s narrow horizons. However, it is also important that these encompass tender emotions toward an unresponsive sweetheart and an absent friend. Gutzwiller (1991) 118 thinks that the repetition of the name is part of needless verbiage. In my view, it points to emotional attachment rather than garrulity. Cf. n. 160 below. 140 Even the sieve-diviner Agroeo (31–33) is not said to offer him any practical help or instruction, unlike the crone Cotyttaris to Polyphemus (6.40). The diviner’s services do not provide any assistance in his attempts to attract Amaryllis and are certainly not requested with a view to, and thus do not succeed in, freeing him from his passion. His report of the diviner’s verdict is a sign of his simplicity, as has often been pointed out, but also of his lack of practical or emotional help. The swarthy girl who is asking him for the goat he has been keeping for Amaryllis (34–36) is not even said to be interested in him.

84 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion this effect: there is no one present to call him by name or otherwise address him, and he does not even address himself or otherwise mention his name. The goatherd in 1 also remains anonymous but he is never alone, lonely, or in need of any assistance. Unlike Polyphemus in 11 and the lover in 30, the goatherd in 3 also fails to remonstrate with and thus distance himself from his passionate self and longing, even temporarily, as the Cyclops does. Unloved, unassisted, and unchanged, the goatherd appeals only to the unresponsive Amaryllis. Even Bucaeus in 10, conversing with a co-worker anyway, and the Cyclops in 11 have mothers to whom they may complain or appeal about their love woes, although these mothers do not seem to be of much help to their lovesick sons—in 3 the only parental figure mentioned is the mother and nurse of cruel Eros, a lioness (15–16). Mothers are almost exclusively the only first-degree family members mentioned in the genuine bucolic Idylls, in contrast to the non-genuine and the non-bucolic ones.141 The references to mothers foreground emotion and possibly ironic innocence or infantilization of the characters, as the case may be.142 Corydon does mention the anonymous old man, probably the father of the herdsman Aegon (4.4), an athlete-to-be, who has in the dramatic present abandoned the bucolic setting. Aegon’s presumed father supervises the herd but offers no emotional support or any advice.143 However, Aegon embarked on the Olympic venture on the spurious or at least misguided advice of Milon. He has entrusted not only his herd but also his syrinx to his friend and/or colleague Corydon, who claims some musical distinction, admires Aegon and proceeds to sing a rustic epinician for the absent friend. Comatas and Lacon in 5 used to be intimate and mention other friends and lovers. The goatherd in 3 is for all intents and purposes alone and apparently lonely, at least in his love trouble. The first sketch of this impression is the main function of the unique introduction/frame, which is puzzling in its lack of relevance to the rest of the poem. It has been viewed as theatrical, in effect a stage: a performer/actor enters and indicates

|| 141 Polybotas may be Bombyca’s master or father (10.15). Even if the latter, this would be the only exception in the genuine pieces, and it does not involve emotions. Simichidas names the father of his hosts (7.4), who are historical figures. 142 Burton (1995) 62–82 discusses the presence of strong female characters, mainly mothers, lovers and goddesses, in Theocritus, but in 3 not even the parents of gods and heroes are mentioned—only Pero, who remains unnamed, is designated as the mother of Alphesiboea (45). 143 For Aegon’s presumed father see above pp. 27–28.

Idyll 3 | 85

that he is performing the incongruous(ly amusing) role of a naïve goatherd/comast,144 apostrophizing at the beginning a character offstage and supplying (unnecessary) background information.145 This may be so, but the most noteworthy aspect of the introduction is not its theatricality but the revelation of the speaker’s situation in a setting remotely akin to drama. In effect, the narrator is thinking aloud, and the audience is acquainted with his concerns and emotions, an arrangement unparalleled in Greek drama prologues, the only conceivable dramatic model of the introduction. Euripidean and Menandrean prologues, the main precedents, are stylized pieces in which the speaker may communicate thoughts and emotions, but their main function is to provide information about the background of the play and occasionally about future developments. Requests or admonitions to characters offstage to do and avoid certain things are never included. The goatherd first talks about his animals, which naturally do not sympathize with him, but his concern for them is apparent in his instructions to Tityrus. Similar instructions may or may not have been given earlier. As soon as the goatherd mentions his goats, he repeats (or provides for the first time) the instructions as if Tityrus were present because of the urgency of his concern for his animals. As already noted, the declaration of his affection for Tityrus after the address by name and especially the repetition of the same address in ring-composition suggest an emotional closeness to the addressee. There is indeed no other Idyll in which a character addresses another one by name twice in such close proximity, or indeed a monologue with a similar frequency of references to personal names.146 If the goatherd is presented as a performer enacting a role, a big if, the role is that of an unlucky, lonely lover wooing an unresponsive female with all the limited material and even musical resources available to him. The absence of any indication or reminder of role-playing at the end reinforces the effect of sincerity, or at the very least suggests that the performer remains “in character” throughout. The generic or intertextual ironies that may arise in connection with the performance of a rustic κῶμος in the daylight and with the role-playing of the performer are mitigated by the sympathy (meant to be) generated by the plight of the dramatic character, the wooing goatherd. In other words, the alleged performance or role does not undermine, let alone obliterate, the sympathy for the woes || 144 Cf. Hunter (1999) 109, Payne (2007) 60–62, and Sistakou (2017b) 19. 145 Hermogenes (Id. 2.3 = p. 322 Rabe) claims that 1–2a is an example of simplicity and sweetness, of saying what is not necessary in the context. This applies to virtually all the pronouncements of the goatherd. 146 The closest parallel is Daphnis’ triple address to Cypris (1.100–1; cf. 6.42–44), but there are clear differences. Daphnis’ address is a tricolon, in which the qualifications of the addressee mitigate the effect of the repetition.

86 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion of the character portrayed. Audience awareness of a dramatic performance does not compromise or ironize sympathy with the characters impersonated, and the introduction does not make the Idyll an exception. The first part of the serenade (6–11), reminiscent of the appeal of the Cyclops to his Galateia (11.19–41), sketches the modest lover’s predicament and his simple wooing strategy: Ὦ χαρίεσσ’ Ἀμαρυλλί, τί μ’ οὐκέτι τοῦτο κατ’ ἄντρον παρκύπτοισα καλεῖς, τὸν ἐρωτύλον; ἦ ῥά με μισεῖς; ἦ ῥά γέ τοι σιμὸς καταφαίνομαι ἐγγύθεν ἦμεν, νύμφα, καὶ προγένειος; ἀπάγξασθαί με ποησεῖς. ἠνίδε τοι δέκα μᾶλα φέρω· τηνῶθε καθεῖλον ὧ μ’ ἐκέλευ καθελεῖν τύ· καὶ αὔριον ἄλλα τοι οἰσῶ. Charming Amaryllis, why don’t you peep out any longer from your cave and invite me in— me, your sweetheart? Do you hate me? Do I look snub-nosed close up, my girl, and is my beard too full? You’ll make me go hang myself. Look, I’m bringing you ten apples; I’ve gathered them from the place you told me to gather them, and tomorrow I’ll bring some more.

οὐκέτι (6) and ἐγγύθεν (8) may suggest that the goatherd had enjoyed favor with his cave-dwelling sweetheart at some point, but this is not certain. Even if the alleged invitations Amaryllis previously extended to him were not illusory, they may have been playful, teasing or mocking, similar to the antics of Galateia (6.6– 15) or of the Cyclops’ alleged female admirers (11.77–78). For what this is worth, a previous affair or intimacy would even violate the conventions of the paraklausithyron of the kind sung by the goatherd. Be that as it may, there seems to have been some communication and physical proximity, although not intimacy, between the goatherd and his beloved, as his possible reference to her distress at viewing him up close seems to indicate.147 He also mentions his gift of apples from a place she had pointed out to him. I will return to the apples in a moment. For now, in no genuine bucolic Idyll or urban mime is the beloved completely inaccessible to the suitor, but such access as there may be does not entail previous erotic success. The paederastic pieces, including the spurious 23, are similar in this respect. The only possible example of completely inaccessible beloved is Galateia in 11 and perhaps, mutatis mutandis, the absent Ageanax and the cruel Philinus in the embedded songs of 7 with their non-bucolic generic associations. Amaryllis has been viewed as a literal nymph (cf. 18–19) wooed by a satyr or a satyric figure, and even as a statue of which the goatherd is enamored.148 The second suggestion seems || 147 See, though, Gow (19522) 66. 148 Gutzwiller (1991) 120.

Idyll 3 | 87

far-fetched, but the first may capture some of the poem’s ambiguities. Nevertheless, I think that the identity of Amaryllis as a human female is more plausible, especially since the goatherd addresses her as “φίλα γύναι” at 50, and I will treat her as human. Other objects of affection of Theocritean herdsmen are not said to be cavedwellers, but there is precious little information about their actual dwellings, and it is easier to imagine and accommodate in the poem a cave-dwelling girl than a nymph as the goatherd’s beloved. Perhaps the cave is an “inverted”, ironic reminiscence of the Cyclops, the double of the goatherd. In any case, whether Amaryllis is a mortal or a nymph, her infatuated admirer does not lose sight of his limitations. He fails to put on airs and show conceit, over either his physical appearance or his material assets or musical skill—nowhere does he try to elevate the first or so much as alludes to the rest. He also does not mention other lovers of his or any popularity with women. His humbleness, or naïveté, demonstrated by his recourse to love divination (28–30) and the appeal to the authority of the sieve-diviner (31–33), is his main positive and likable trait. Like the Cyclops in 11, he acknowledges his physical ugliness, which may put Amaryllis off, and tries to attract her with simple gifts such as apples. He brings some with him and promises more for the next day (10–11), perhaps implying that, if she gives in, she will enjoy a steady supply. This promise does not imply that the “performance” is a repeated one, as has been suggested.149 Apples were love-tokens used in human and divine wooing, but it is not clear that the goatherd does not understand their symbolism.150 His apples are especially valuable because they have not only symbolic but also practical significance, like the fertile goat mentioned later (34). The desire of Amaryllis for them, whether actual or playful, suggests modest means and is a measure of proximity between the beloved and her suitor, which differentiates

|| 149 Payne (2007) 62–63. The promise of gifts does not necessarily entail a repeated, comastic performance, especially since the apples were requested on a previous occasion, and indeed the failure of this performance and the goatherd’s dejection leave little room for repetition—the references to repeated performance by the Cyclops in 11 are all in the voice of the frame narrator (13, 18, 80–81) while he refers to frequent serenading in the recent past (39–40), before the dramatic time of the serenade he considers his last. For the songs of the Cyclops and the goatherd cf. Sistakou (2017a) 304–5. 150 Hunter (1999) 113–14. The goatherd will later mention Hippomenes’ apples (40–42), which according to tradition were given to him by Aphrodite and came from her garden or the garden of the Hesperides or Dionysus’ wreath; see Spanoudakis (2002) 330–32. At 10–11, though, there is no allusion to heroes or divinities, and the gap separating bucolic present from heroic past is so wide that the audience would be unlikely to associate the goatherd’s apples with heroic endeavors.

88 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion the pair from Galateia and the Cyclops, although Galateia too is promised abundant comfort and a supply of rich resources (11.34–51). Touchingly, the goatherd too goes on to tell Amaryllis of other gifts he is reserving for her, a beautiful garland (21–23)151 and the goat (34). Even before he embarks on his mythological song, his mention of the gifts and the threat to offer the goat to another girl, a swarthy servant eager to have it (35–36) and by implication willing to reward the donor appropriately, show some determination and even versatility in his attempts to win over Amaryllis.152 He may well be naïve but he is trying his best and does not give up as easily as one might have expected. In any case, neither gifts nor hints may be viewed as aggressive or pronounced self-advertisement. What is noteworthy, though, and what makes him very different from the suitors of other Idylls, especially the Cyclops in 11, is his constant awareness of Amaryllis’ failure to reciprocate, and his virtual despair over it. To be sure, the Cyclops in 11 is not particularly optimistic, or deludes himself into believing, that Galateia is fond of him or may respond to his advances, unlike the self-conceited Polyphemus in 6 (31–33). Nevertheless, he elaborates on his assets and skills and allows himself various fantasies of happy proximity and cohabitation with Galateia in his nice cave (11.43–53, 65–66).153 3 features no parallel, with the very partial exception of the simple gifts the goatherd offers and especially his wish to become a bee that is buzzing outside Amaryllis’ cave and enter it, passing through the ivy and fern that conceal her (12–14): αἴθε γενοίμαν ἁ βομβεῦσα μέλισσα καὶ ἐς τεὸν ἄντρον ἱκοίμαν, τὸν κισσὸν διαδὺς καὶ τὰν πτέριν ἅ τυ πυκάσδει. If only I could turn into that buzzing bee and come into your cave through the ivy and fern that hide you!

|| 151 It has naturally been pointed out that a garland cannot be (p)reserved as a gift in the manner of an animal, for instance, and thus it must have been worn by the speaker who threatens to tear it apart. The goatherd’s temporal horizon, or any other horizon for that matter, is not very wide. Cf. his promise to bring more apples tomorrow (11). His “keeping” the garland for Amaryllis may indicate that he is hoping for a quick or even immediate response on her part. 152 Still, he nowhere says anything about the girl’s fondness for him and thus does not openly try to make Amaryllis jealous. Given his focus on the gifts, the threat may involve only or primarily Amaryllis’ potential loss of a precious asset, and to a competitor of little physical or social distinction to boot, rather than to a sexual rival. Messi (2007) 47 suggests that μελανόχρως (35), a Homeric hl (Il. 13.589), is chosen with a view to presenting the girl as inferior to splendid Amaryllis. 153 For the comforts of Polyphemus’ bucolic life and their role in 11 cf. n. 166 below.

Idyll 3 | 89

Scholars have commented on the incongruousness of the goatherd’s failure to enter a dwelling without a locked door and find out whether his beloved is actually rejecting him. There was no physically impenetrable barrier, and thus the goatherd enacts the role of an excluded lover in a naïve mode and unsuitable setting.154 However, it is not the presence of physical barriers but the unresponsiveness of the beloved to the advances of the suitor that stops the latter from entering the private space of his object of desire. Some comast lovers declare that they would use violence to enter the house of the beloved,155 although this hardly ever comes to pass, as it would be a completely desperate or mad suitor that would dare force his way into a house uninvited. The goatherd is not at this point and is no harasser. With or without doors, the cave is Amaryllis’ private space, and an unattached female’s residence at that. No decent, sane person, least of all an unrelated male and aspiring partner, whose wooing has so far largely fallen on deaf ears, would enter such a space uninvited. The goatherd’s serenade is the equivalent of a modern person’s knocking on an unlocked but closed door and entering only when given permission to do so. The goatherd does not wish to become a bee because the insect is physically able to enter while he is not but because it may enter without invitation or permission and without causing problems. A metamorphosis wish is a common topos in erotic literature,156 and the goal of the suitor is usually stated explicitly—even the Cyclops, who actually laments his lack of gills, states that this piscine asset would enable him to kiss at least the hand, if not the lips, of his beloved Nereid (11.54–56). The goatherd says nothing similar. It is beyond doubt that he wishes to enjoy some intimacy with Amaryllis (cf. 18–20, quoted below), but it is also significant that he wishes for transformation to a creature with which his beloved could have no amorous contact and whose sexual reproduction was in doubt (cf. Arist. GA 759a8–760b3). In this light, the goatherd wishes to change shape in order to gain access to Amaryllis’ dwelling but not to any part of her body—the bee/goatherd will only penetrate the screen that bars vision and will see and be close(r) to Amaryllis but will not touch or be touched by her.157 It is not accidental that the only sign he interprets as hopeful is the twitching of his right eye, which indicates that he may see her (37–38), || 154 See e.g. Gutzwiller (1991) 116, Hunter (1999) 109, 114, and Payne (2007) 63–64. 155 See 2.127–28, AP 12.252, and Gow (19522) 58, 64. 156 See Hunter (1999) 114. 157 It cannot be ruled out that, as Σ suggests, the wish for transformation into a bee is motivated by and implies a wish to sting Amaryllis and make her suffer as he does, in a literal version of the metaphorical sting of love; cf. [19] and AP 5.163. If so, the bee/goatherd would touch and even “penetrate” Amaryllis. However, the creature’s asexual nature and especially the almost

90 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion and the last hope he expresses in the poem is that Amaryllis may deign to look at him because, after all, she is not made out of adamant (39). The wish for transformation is framed by two references to the excruciating pain love has caused him. First, he invites Amaryllis to look but does not specify at what, and then comments on his pain (θᾶσαι μάν. θυμαλγὲς ἐμὶν ἄχος, 12). The structure of the poem makes the apples (10) an unlikely, although not impossible, object of her gaze, and θυμαλγὲς ἐμὶν ἄχος may be exclamatory, or a separate clause instead of an object to the preceding verb θᾶσαι. If so, Amaryllis would be asked to survey the whole setting described so far and about to be adumbrated further, namely the speaker, his gifts and especially his woes. The second and more extensive reference, a bitter acknowledgment of his experience of the withering power of the pitiless divinity (15–17), is followed by the goatherd’s only explicit encouragement to Amaryllis to have some physical contact with him, apparently so that his pain may be soothed (18–20): ὦ τὸ καλὸν ποθορεῦσα, τὸ πᾶν λίθος, ὦ κυάνοφρυ νύμφα, πρόσπτυξαί με τὸν αἰπόλον, ὥς τυ φιλήσω. ἔστι καὶ ἐν κενεοῖσι φιλήμασιν ἁδέα τέρψις. Dark-browed girl with beautiful glances, all stonyhearted, embrace me, your goatherd, so that I can kiss you. There is a sweet pleasure even in empty kisses.

The audience may imagine that he is now beginning to overcome his distress over his woes and become bolder. Putting aside his asexual wishes, the suitor indulges in pleasant fantasies of, if not outright optimism over, his prospects of erotic success. He asks Amaryllis to embrace him (“your goatherd”)158 so that he may kiss her. Immediately, though, he indicates that kissing, sweetly pleasant though it may be, is as far as he hopes to proceed. The Cyclops also wishes to kiss the hand of his underwater girl if she does not wish for a proper kiss on the lips (11.55–56), but as already mentioned, he is also much more confident because of his assets and thus at least cautiously more optimistic than the goatherd, entertaining fantasies of proximity and cohabitation with Galateia (11.43–53, 65–66). The tone of the goatherd’s wish may become more apparent through a comparison with other similar claims made by males in poetry, all in the context of

|| total absence of any fantasy of intimacy with, or punishment of, Amaryllis speak against such readings. 158 The apposition may suggest awareness of his limitations, or pride, at least in his professional capacity if not in other advantages. Given the goatherd’s failure to boast or register pride anywhere in the poem, the former is likelier.

Idyll 3 | 91

the process of seduction. In the famous Cologne epode of Archilochus, the speaker mentions the many pleasures of Aphrodite available to young men beside the real (“divine”) thing (τὸ θεῖον χρῆμα, fr. 196a.15 W2). Delphis claims that he was about to serenade Simaetha and be content with a kiss (2.118–26), while in the spurious 27 Daphnis, who has already snatched a kiss, quotes the goatherd (4) but proceeds to seduce his addressee, as do the other speakers. The goatherd has no chances or hopes of similar success. There is little indication that he tries to secure a kiss by suggesting that Amaryllis may enjoy the sweet delight of kissing without any emotional attachment. Such attachment or even delight on Amaryllis’ part is virtually out of the question: the goatherd only urges his beloved to make a small concession and offer him the pleasure of an “empty” kiss, i.e. some limited physical contact that will not lead to anything else.159 Even when he ventures to entertain hope that his song may induce her to give him a look (39), to which I will return, he does not envisage love or sex. Already at the beginning of the serenade, when he wishes that Amaryllis would peep out from her cave and call to him as she did before (7), he does not necessarily hope that she would invite him in but more likely that she would invite him to come to the entrance of the cave, probably for sweet talk or the hoped-for kiss (19). Nowhere does he envisage the culmination or consummation but only the inception of a relationship with Amaryllis, which might not develop much beyond the pleasurable but limited contact of a kiss. The goatherd’s lack of pretension, pride and optimism is underscored by his threats of suicide, made at the beginning, middle and end of the poem (9, 25–27, 52–54). Scholars have generally heaped scorn on these threats and viewed them as silly, associating them with the threat of the Cyclops to play sick and cause distress to his unsympathetic mother (11.67–71).160 It is true that the threats are not carried out in the poem, and the last one, with which the goatherd declares his readiness to allow wolves to devour him at the spot where he collapses in

|| 159 Messi (2007) 43 suggests that the Archilochean intertext would lead the audience to see through the goatherd’s request. However, even if the suitor wishes for more intimate contact, the inaccessibility of Amaryllis annuls any possibility that he might enjoy it, and the intertextual background rather highlights his lack of prospects. 160 For the silliness of the goatherd see e.g. Rosenmeyer (1969) 173–74; cf. Garson (1971) 192, and Gutzwiller (1991) 123. Gutzwiller also asserts that he absurdly wishes to kill himself because Amaryllis finds him snub-nosed (118, 121). He imagines that she rejects him and does not reciprocate his love because of his ugliness (7–9), but it is the rejection, whatever its cause, not the cause, that leads the suitor to suicidal despair.

92 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion despair, sounds exaggerated.161 The earlier statement that he will take off his cloak prior to his attempting to kill himself by jumping off a cliff into the sea may be a realistic touch, or a demonstration of the sincerity of his attempt (25–27): τὰν βαίταν ἀποδὺς ἐς κύματα τηνῶ ἁλεῦμαι, ὧπερ τὼς θύννως σκοπιάζεται Ὄλπις ὁ γριπεύς· καἴ κα δὴ ’ποθάνω, τό γε μὲν τεὸν ἁδὺ τέτυκται. I’ll take off my cloak and leap into the waves at the place where Olpis the fisherman looks out for the tuna; and if I die, at least your pleasure will certainly be achieved.

Leaps of lovers (and drinkers) from a cliff at Leucas were mentioned already in archaic and classical poetry (Anacr. PMG 376, Stesich. fr. 326 Finglass, Eur. Cycl. 166). Most famously, Sappho killed herself in that manner over her love for Phaon (Men. Leuc. fr. 1 K–A), and legend had it that those who survived such suicidal leaps would be cured of their passion, as Aphrodite had been cured of her love for Adonis on the advice of Apollo (Phot. Bibl. 153a–b; cf. Strabo 10.2.9).162 A cloak might act as a life jacket and thus delay, and possibly somehow prevent, drowning, and the goatherd assures Amaryllis that he will make his suicide attempt without cheating or hoping for deliverance. This kind of assurance is certainly naïve, as there is no indication that Amaryllis would think that he would not be serious or that she would care even if he were not.163 Be that as it may, the goatherd seems to be genuinely distraught and suffering in his constant awareness of his lack of prospects of success. As already suggested, it is unclear whether he is actually about to kill himself or not, but suicidal despair may not be ruled out. The final comment on Amaryllis’ presumed reaction

|| 161 Stanzel (1995) 136–37 suggests that the extraordinary mode of suicide, following the song’s catalogue of lovers who paid a high price for their erotic bliss, indicates that the goatherd has realized that he is not ready for a similar sacrifice. Cf. Kossaifi (2017) 42–43, who argues that the evocation of death rhetorically underscores unfortunate love. However, one may hardly disregard or circumvent the open-endedness of the poem, and even if the goatherd would be unlikely to commit suicide in the manner he envisages, this would not indicate that he expresses no suicidal tendencies, which make suicide a possibility. 162 See Hunter (1999) 118, and Kivilo (2010) 179–81. 163 If the MSS reading καἴ κα μὴ ’ποθάνω (27), which Graefe emended to καἴ κα δὴ ’ποθάνω, is retained, the goatherd might imply that Amaryllis would find the cure of her suitor sweet because she would no longer suffer unwanted wooing. Both readings are likely, but the speaker’s despair over Amaryllis’ harshness (cf. 53–54) makes the emendation preferable, especially as the allusion to the legend and the prediction of Amaryllis’ alleged reaction may be deemed brief to the point of obscurity. Σ suggests that Amaryllis would draw satisfaction from the suicide attempt even if he survived.

Idyll 3 | 93

to his death is formulated as a wish that she experience intense physical pleasure over it, similar to the sensory delight produced by honey sliding down one’s gullet.164 This shows dark pessimism and a bitterness brought on by the final realization of the beloved’s indifference to his plight (52–54): Ἀλγέω τὰν κεφαλάν, τὶν δ’ οὐ μέλει. οὐκέτ’ ἀείδω, κεισεῦμαι δὲ πεσών, καὶ τοὶ λύκοι ὧδέ μ’ ἔδονται. ὡς μέλι τοι γλυκὺ τοῦτο κατὰ βρόχθοιο γένοιτο. My head is aching, but you don’t care. My song is ended. I shall die where I fall, and the wolves will devour me just so. May that be as sweet as honey in your throat.

Whether these are his last words before his death or not, they depict his disappointment over the failure of the most exalted and ambitious part of his performance, the song about the mythological heroes (40–51). This follows the favorable sign of the twitching eye, which may indicate that he will see Amaryllis, and his hopeful expectation that she will give the singer a look (37–39): ἅλλεται ὀφθαλμός μευ ὁ δεξιός· ἆρά γ’ ἰδησῶ αὐτάν; ᾀσεῦμαι ποτὶ τὰν πίτυν ὧδ’ ἀποκλινθείς, καί κέ μ’ ἴσως ποτίδοι, ἐπεὶ οὐκ ἀδαμαντίνα ἐστίν. My right eye is twitching: am I to see her, then? I’ll sing here resting against this pine tree, and perhaps she’ll take notice of me, since she’s not made of adamant.

Should his reaction to the perceived omen and his decision to sing be taken as a change of tack, similar to his invitation to Amaryllis to give him a kiss (19)? That initiative ended with the assurance that the kiss would be pleasurable, although it would be the limit of their intimacy (20), at least for the present. Does he now forget his limitations, striking up an ambitious tune and hoping to emulate the successful mythological lovers he envies, only to realize that he has no hope, as he will receive neither kiss nor look, and thus resolve to lie prostrate at Amaryllis’ door as dinner for the wolves? A plausible answer may be yes and no. He seems to naively take heart from the twitching of his eye and proceeds to sing a song that may soften Amaryllis, but it is not clear that her mollification is his only or his main goal. He may be thought to prepare or “preen” himself in anticipation, as those expecting to meet or encounter their lovers often do. The sign may predict that Amaryllis is likely to

|| 164 Gutzwiller (1991) 123 suggests that the simile evokes the sensation of choking on sticky honey and that the goatherd hints at revenge.

94 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion appear, and he prepares himself in style for that eventuality, hoping that the song will induce her to return his gaze. He cannot make himself appear handsome or dapper, for instance, so that Amaryllis may turn and look at him when she appears but he can be seen and heard engaging in a serious and enchanting pursuit, one likely to appeal to a soft-hearted young female. Alternatively, and not mutually exclusively, he may expect that the song will function as an incantation that would bring about the hoped-for favorable response of Amaryllis and perhaps precipitate her appearance. Whatever its aims, the song gives him a plausible and conceivably pleasant pretext to linger for a while longer and fill the time until Amaryllis’ hoped-for appearance and much-anticipated glance. It is interesting, and indicative of his overall stance, that the aim or aims of the song will likely be realized through its artistic quality rather than its subject, although this is naturally pertinent to his situation. The song is a catalogue of successful love affairs between mortals, mainly herdsmen, and their glamorous lovers, including goddesses.165 It is the enamored goatherd’s version of the epic κλέα ἀνδρῶν, which Achilles famously sings in his tent, in the company of his dear friend Patroclus, in order to pass the time in a pleasant and conceivably edifying way (Il. 9.186–92). The difference between the infatuated goatherd pining away in solitude outside his sweetheart’s cave and the infuriated epic hero playing his lyre and singing away in his tent in the company of his friend is obviously enormous, not only with respect to their persons and situations but also to the effect of their songs: the epic narrator explicitly, in ring-composition, designates aesthetic pleasure as the effect of Achilles’ singing (186, 189). Still, the differences notwithstanding, and despite the absence of any suggestion that the singer and/or Amaryllis might draw pleasure from the song, it is important to observe that the song has no explicit practical value in attracting Amaryllis, either. This differentiates it substantially from the serenade of the Cyclops to Galateia in 11, in which the singer emphasizes his assets and repeatedly invites Galateia to abandon her marine home and join him.166 The goatherd does not indicate that his serenade might induce Amaryllis to abandon her cave. He also does not draw any explicit parallel between himself and the lucky men and does not invite Amaryllis to imitate the passionate females. It may hardly be denied

|| 165 Cozzoli (2007) 62 argues that the catalogue, the stories of which may be traced back to Hesiod’s Catalogue of Women, has affinities with Hellenistic elegy, mainly the work of Hermesianax. Cf. Hunter (2005) 264–65, and Messi (2007) 32. 166 The emphasis on the assets may afford the Cyclops some comfort and go some way toward explaining his failure to sink into despair like the goatherd; see, though, the discussion below pp. 102–3.

Idyll 3 | 95

that he would wish to enjoy the favors of his beloved as the heroes he celebrates managed to, but it is telling that he states nothing to that effect. However, although he admits that he is physically unattractive, he is a herdsman like Adonis (46–48) and perhaps Endymion (49–50) and offers apples and an animal to win his beloved like Hippomenes (40–42) and Bias (43–45) respectively. There is nothing else for him to do in order to win Amaryllis’ heart and hand, and it is not even certain that he ignores the price the mythological heroes paid for their loves.167 It is perhaps not incidental that in his account only female members of two couples, and Alphesiboea, the daughter of one of them (45), receive predicates that praise their comeliness (45, 46), while the males are never said to be handsome, not even the fabulously attractive Adonis. On the other hand, Alphesiboea’s mother is not named, and Selene and Demeter, the lovers of Endymion and Iasion respectively, are not mentioned or otherwise designated at all. The successful males and even Melampous, the brother of Bias, are active, resourceful, cunning, able to overcome all resistance or simply irresistible, while the females are charming, beautiful and subject to deep, irrational emotions, utterly unable to resist the men’s attractions and wiles. This would certainly be an understandable (bias in the) description of the goatherd’s view of, or wishful thinking about, himself and Amaryllis: he would cast himself in the mold of a ruggedly manly, resourceful and generous shepherd—after all, he has brought the apples she had asked for and is ready to offer other gifts—and the beloved in the mold of a beautiful heroine or divinity falling madly and eternally in love and lust with him. Still, the goatherd says nothing of the sort. In this light, the goatherd tentatively tests the waters of models and genres that seem to be above his station and thus he seems to be out of his depth. He certainly fails to go all the way and suggest an advantageous comparison between himself and the heroes in the exempla he chooses, a potentially crucial move for his purposes. On the other hand, this modesty stems from and highlights his self-conscious and sympathetic failure to put on airs or to express hopes of emulating his “models” and enjoying similar success. At the end, he even piously breaks off his song and refuses to recount the blessings of Iasion (50–51).168 He does not outdo or get ahead of himself, he gives his all in his attempt to win

|| 167 For this view see Gutzwiller (1991) 121 and Hunter (1999) 123 with previous literature. 168 Cf. Schroeder (2017) 314. According to Payne (2007) 67, 79, the goatherd is unable to enact the roles to which he aspires or to identify with the heroes successfully because he fails to achieve the kind of dramatic impersonation undertaken by Thyrsis in 1, but no aspiration to any role may be detected.

96 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion over his mysterious, unyielding and invisible mistress, and fails. It is not particularly surprising that he falls into deep despair and regrets bitterly her lack of concern, pointing for a second time to the sweet pleasure she will receive from his cruel death (52–54; cf. 27). Theocritean goatherds, named and unnamed, mythical and contemporary, are repeatedly derided as uncouth and/or unfortunate in love (1.86–88, 5.51–52, 6.7; cf. 7.15–16). Nevertheless, they are an important group of herdsmen, often outdoing others, both musically and morally.169 The sympathetic anonymous representative of the group in 3 is the least endowed and the most unassuming, extolling neither his appearance nor his assets or musical skills. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he fails to win Amaryllis but at least he is likely to win over the external audience. A much more elaborate attempt of an awkward suitor to attract an elusive, unresponsive nymph by means of song and his reaction to his failure are famously found in Idyll 11.

Idyll 11 The Cyclops, a sort of double of the goatherd, has a much heavier legacy to negotiate than the latter. Accordingly, his serenade for his beloved Nereid Galateia (19–79) is more complex than the goatherd’s, although without any mythological references. Equally important, there is a frame narrator, who addresses Nicias and reproduces the song as example of the initial gnome about poetry as the only effective remedy for love (1–3a). For brevity’s sake, in the following discussion I will refer to Polyphemus’ song as if it were a single composition, but given the importance of song in the poem and the collection, the frame narrator’s specification about the song may hardly be incidental (13b–18): ὃ δὲ τὰν Γαλάτειαν ἀείδων αὐτὸς ἐπ’ ἀιόνος κατετάκετο φυκιοέσσας ἐξ ἀοῦς, ἔχθιστον ἔχων ὑποκάρδιον ἕλκος, Κύπριδος ἐκ μεγάλας τό οἱ ἥπατι πᾶξε βέλεμνον. ἀλλὰ τὸ φάρμακον εὗρε, καθεζόμενος δ’ ἐπὶ πέτρας ὑψηλᾶς ἐς πόντον ὁρῶν ἄειδε τοιαῦτα· While he, singing of Galatea, pined away alone on the weedy seashore from daybreak, having a most hateful wound deep in his heart, which an arrow from the great Cyprian goddess

|| 169 Cf. Berman (2005), who stresses the quick wit and linguistic vibrancy of Theocritean goatherds.

Idyll 11 | 97

had fixed in his liver. But he discovered the remedy; and, sitting on a high rock, he would sing in this way as he gazed out to sea.

The last phrase, with the imperfect ἄειδε (cf. 13b–14) and the choice of τοιαῦτα instead of ταῦτα or similar, leaves no doubt that the song was not a singular performance. The reproduction then is a typical version of serenades the Cyclops performed repeatedly with similar content and goal, as is also indicated at the end (80–81; cf. 12–13a).170 In this light, the song is cast as the frame narrator’s own version of “The serenade of Polyphemus” or “The sorrows of Polyphemus”. This is apparently based on performances of the serenade, or on stories the narrator had heard about the plight of his countryman, which incorporated mentions or performances of the serenade (7–8). This background enhances the foundational aspect of the song, and the authority of the frame narrator, who thus takes on a role similar to Thyrsis in 1 or Tityrus/Lycidas in 7, presenting an ancient Sicilian herdsman as a legendary unfortunate lover and accomplished singer. Obviously, the recitation or (re)creation of the embedded love serenade also has a pronounced metaliterary aspect in its echoes of various traditions about Polyphemus and the songs about him. The frame narrator then seems to implicitly claim a place for himself in these traditions, but his stance and situation are different in important respects from those of the singers in the so-called programmatic Idylls. Polyphemus is a Protean, inter-generic literary character, and the narrator in 11 (and 6) invests him with the attributes of a founding figure of a genre, especially as the dramatic time of the hero’s appearances is his youth and predates that of his epic and dramatic incarnations. By contrast, the frame narrator in 11 does not suggest that he is a poet or singer, not even a lover, although the doctor Nicias is praised as particularly favored by the Muses (6). The narrator, the counterpart of the singers in the programmatic pieces, does not claim such favor or a sweet voice (cf. 1.19–20, 65, 7.37–38, 80–82, 88–89), and the only association with the Cyclops he mentions is their common home country (7–8).171 The young

|| 170 Some scholars suggest that Polyphemus sang one or more unsuccessful songs before he hit on the one that cured him; see e.g. Deuse (1990) 75, Manuwald (1990) 89, and Farr (1991) 480– 81; cf. Dover (1971) 174. Contra Köhnken (1996) 181–83, who rightly argues that there is no support for this view in the text and that song works as a palliative. Spofford (1969) 35 and Goldhill (1991) 254–56 suggest that the song alleviates and nourishes the singer’s desire, but such “nourishment” makes no difference to the situation of Polyphemus, whose desire would be unlikely to abate even without the song. For the effect of song see below pp. 107–9. 171 The home of the Cyclops was a matter of scholarly dispute, but at 7.151 he is placed in the area of Syracuse. The country suggested at 11.7 is naturally taken to be Sicily, specifically the

98 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion lover Cyclops is portrayed as an accomplished syrinx-player and singer (11.17–18, 38–40, 80–81; cf. 6.9), performing his own composition and thereby shepherding his love and in the end (intent on) returning to his lambs (73–74). In the short run at least, the Cyclops is outdoing the legendary Daphnis in several respects, not least if the story that he eventually had his way, and even a son, with Galateia is taken into account (Timaeus, FGrHist 566F69).172 I will return to Daphnis and Polyphemus below. Interestingly, the young and enamored Cyclops is a character that has positive and commendable features, despite his grotesqueness and limitations. The frame narrator stresses the ferocity of Polyphemus’ passion and the seriousness of his plight (10–16), but at least the Cyclops is in a position to sing a structured if naïve and formally somewhat rough song.173 Since he is in his teens (11), experiencing apparently his first love with all its torments, the Idyll offers another version of the bucolic dawn depicted in 6, featuring a hero-lover, who used to sing from dawn to dusk (12–15) and even at night (38–40) his woes in his serenade to his beloved. For all his failure to achieve his goal, Polyphemus tries to disengage himself from his dire affliction. In this connection it is crucial to attempt to identify why and how the Cyclops is chosen as an example for the frame narrator and addressee, both in connection with the tradition and the rest of the Theocritean

|| area of Syracuse, and thus the Cyclops to be the countryman of the internal and the external narrator, namely Theocritus, but not Nicias, who is reported in the scholia to be of Milesian origin. This scenario is plausible, although no geographical or ethnic specifics of any sort are provided. “Our countryman” may be taken as an actual rather than poetic plural, especially since Nicias may have been of Sicilian origin or have had close associations with Sicily. In any case, the choice of making Polyphemus Sicilian and lovesick underpins his casting as another hero of bucolic beside Daphnis. 172 For later versions of Polyphemus’ legend, according to which he was united with his Galateia, see Gow (19522) 118, and Hunter (1999) 242. 173 Kutzko (2007) 79–82 discusses the use of μουσίσδω (81), a rare verb that occurs in extant literature before Theocritus only in the chorus’ disparagement of Polyphemus’ musical skills and refinement in Euripides’ Cyclops (489). Hunter (1999) 218–19 cites literature on the linguistic and metrical peculiarities of the Idyll and favors the view that there is no marked difference between the frame and the song of the Cyclops. This is a stylistic manifestation of the closeness of the two countrymen, the frame narrator and Polyphemus, perhaps with a view to self-parody, but the failure of the narrator to indicate that he or Nicias had any love interest or trouble creates at least an emotional distance between frame and song. On the other hand, the narrator’s introductory address to Nicias in 13 (1–4) before the recitation of the example of Heracles’ lovesickness may be thought to go some way toward self-referentially diminishing such distance. For the relationship of the narrator and Nicias see the discussion below. Whitmarsh (2009) argues that the fictional ‘I’ in antiquity was essentially metaleptic.

Idyll 11 | 99

corpus, especially the bucolic section. The youth and lovesickness of Polyphemus may be implicit points of contact between him and the narrator, possibly also between the Cyclops and Nicias, but this is nowhere stated. The narrator and Nicias are apparently friends, as Σ and mainly other addresses to the doctor in the collection indicate (28, Ep. 8). The relationship of Nicias and the narrator is not specified in 11 (or 13), and very little information about them is provided. This applies primarily and significantly to the narrator, who remains anonymous throughout the poem (and the collection). No professional capacity of his is indicated, either. Not even the gender of the narrator is stated, in contrast to nonbucolic poems such as 16–17, 22, 24, 26, and 28–30, although the narrator’s familiarity with Nicias and the paederastic content of 13 leave little doubt that a man addresses the doctor, even if one disregards (one’s reliance on) external evidence. There is no reason to cast doubt on this evidence, or much less to assume that audience knowledge of the poet’s identity, gender, home-country etc. would become suspended or irrelevant when relevant information is not made explicit in a poem, especially as the distinction between poet and narrator was not consistently important or relevant to Greek audiences. Specification of the personal relationship between the narrator and Nicias would be unlikely to modify significantly any reading of 11 (or 13) anyway, and in what follows I will refer to the duo as friends. On the other hand, it is important not to disregard the narrator’s choice to say very little about Nicias and even less about himself. He sketches a difference between the two frame characters but facilitates their association with their “model”, the singer-lover Polyphemus, by suppressing elements that would mark their distance from an ancient ogre—mutatis mutandis he adopts a similar strategy in 13. Naturally, for the association between Polyphemus and the frame characters to work, the narrator also made several targeted choices in the presentation of Polyphemus’ predicament and his attempt to deal with it, to which I will now turn before returning to the frame characters. As already suggested, the Cyclops has several limitations, and his apparent lack of friends or supporters contributes to his predicament. He mentions other Cyclopes (38) and his mother (25, 54, 67–71) but he performs his serenade alone, as the goatherd does in 3. He has a comfortable home in a cave, and all manner of animals, but none is near. Unlike in 6 (9–14, 29–30), not even a companion dog is mentioned—the narrator says that his sheep often returned from pasture to the fold of their own accord (12–13).174 His love strands him all alone on the inhospitable seashore, an unlikely location for a shepherd. He is quite naïve and hilariously clumsy but he does his literary best to entice Galateia, although he falls || 174 For the dog in 6 see n. 200 below.

100 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion dramatically and artistically short of the mark. Following an introduction with flattering, hyperbolic comparisons of the marine belle with soft cheese, young animals and unripe grapes (19–21), clearly intended as a captatio benevolentiae, the Cyclops embarks on a touching recollection of the onset of his passion (25–29). The comparisons may be a bucolic reminiscence of Sappho (fr. 156 V), but his inadequate descriptions may be associated with Bucaeus’ problems (10.36–37). His inability to see Galateia (22–24) puts the audience in mind of the goatherd in 3, but through a heavily ironic lens: he apparently sees Galateia in his dreams, which he does not even perceive as such. This simplicity underscores the distance that separates him from other unfortunate lovers but also the intensity of his plight. He walks a precariously thin line between the grandeur of pathos and the bathos of the burlesque. For all his problems, he rationalizes Galateia’s rejection by acknowledging his ugliness (30–33) and embarks on an attempt to convince her that his material assets and musical aptitude outweigh his physical disadvantages (34–66). His first encouragement to her to abandon her marine home and share his wealth with him at his abode (42–44) leads to an extensive praise of his cave (45–49), apparently in the context of a developing fantasy involving her consent to visit, spend some time and eventually the night with him. The increasingly intimate turn of this fantasy pushes again to the foreground the problem of his physical appearance, which is likely to turn off Galateia, so he makes the vow to allow her even to blind him if she pleases (50–53). Her presumed continued indifference leads him to wish wistfully for the opposite means of achieving proximity, his visiting her home with gifts of flowers. He declares his willingness to satisfy himself with any concession of intimacy, however small, she might be willing to allow (54–59), another reminiscence of the goatherd (3.18–20). As the stubborn problem of his ugliness interfered with his previous fantasy of intimacy, now another problem, his inability to swim, cuts short his fantasy of a love dive (60–62). Ironically, he deals with it as he dealt with the first one, by conjuring up a benign version of his bloody future,175 and reverts to a briefer invitation to Galateia to come out of the sea and forget to return home (63–64). His last wish that she share his shepherding and dairy-making activities (65–66) is less

|| 175 For Polyphemus’ entrapment in the language of Homer in general and Odysseus in particular see Hunter (1999) 219, and cf. Kutzko (2007). Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 166 suggest that, in magical terms, the use of Homeric language can be dangerous in that it invites the disasters described in the Odyssey to be visited upon the singer. Posidippus (AB 19.7–8) refers to Polyphemus, the lovesick suitor of Galateia, as a goatherd and a swimmer, a possible reworking of 11 and echo of 6 (6–7).

Idyll 11 | 101

ardent than his previous fantasizing, including work details but no allusions to sexual intimacy. Nevertheless, this less daring and more dairy, as it were, suggestion also falls on deaf ears. In apparent despair, the Cyclops now seeks a scapegoat for his misfortunes, which he finds in the person of his mother, whom he accuses of callous indifference to his evident plight and outrageous failure to put in a good word for him with her young friend Galateia. He vows to punish her by playing sick and thus causing her distress as grievous as his own (67–71).176 Finally, he collects himself and vows to concentrate on his work, feeding his lambs and plaiting baskets for his cheese. He abandons the idle pursuit and fantasies of making cheese with the recalcitrant Galateia, whom he had initially praised as exquisitely beautiful, whiter than soft cheese (20) but now dismisses as an easily replaceable source of milk (72–76): ὦ Κύκλωψ Κύκλωψ, πᾷ τὰς φρένας ἐκπεπότασαι; αἴ κ’ ἐνθὼν ταλάρως τε πλέκοις καὶ θαλλὸν ἀμάσας ταῖς ἄρνεσσι φέροις, τάχα κα πολὺ μᾶλλον ἔχοις νῶν. τὰν παρεοῖσαν ἄμελγε· τί τὸν φεύγοντα διώκεις; εὑρησεῖς Γαλάτειαν ἴσως καὶ καλλίον’ ἄλλαν. O Cyclops, Cyclops, where have your wits flown? If you went and plaited wicker baskets and cut down greenery and carried it to your lambs, you would have much more sense. Milk the ewe that’s by you; why do you pursue someone who flees? Maybe you’ll find another Galatea who is even prettier.

The distinction between φρένες (72) and νοῦς (74) marks the shift from harmful mental distraction to sensible concentration on the task at hand. With a piece of exquisite irony, perhaps the poem’s supreme example thereof, this sober resolve to abjure wide-ranging fantasies and come to his pastoral senses177 is immediately undermined by yet another apparent fantasy of nocturnal sexual intimacy. This one is presented as a report of a fact and involves several girls allegedly inviting him to spend the night with them (77–79): || 176 Remarkably, the Cyclops mentions his mother thrice (26, 54, 67), all in connection with Galateia, but never his father. This contrasts with Odyssey and may count as a sign of ironic infantilization; cf. above p. 84. Prauscello (2007) 94–95 argues that the indifference of Polyphemus’ mother toward her son’s plight is an ironic version of the loving paternal care of Alcinous toward Nausicaa (Od. 6.66–67; cf. 7.311–15) in the framework of Theocritus’ reworking, including gender inversions, of the encounter of Odysseus and Nausicaa in Odyssey 6. Liapis (2009) suggests that the choice of aching body parts, head and feet (or legs), implies Polyphemus’ sexual frustration. 177 If the dative ἄρνεσσι alludes to Il. 16.352, then Polyphemus resolves to be a more competent shepherd than the neglectful colleague in the Homeric simile (352–55).

102 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion πολλαὶ συμπαίσδεν με κόραι τὰν νύκτα κέλονται, κιχλίζοντι δὲ πᾶσαι, ἐπεί κ’ αὐταῖς ὑπακούσω. δῆλον ὅτ’ ἐν τᾷ γᾷ κἠγών τις φαίνομαι ἦμεν. Many girls invite me to play with them through the night, and they all giggle when I take notice. It’s clear that on land I too am a somebody.

If the report of Galateia’s visits suggests dreams (22), the admirers may also appear in his dreams. In any case, the Homeric (and the Euripidean) Cyclops is unmarried and uninterested in marriage and (heterosexual) liaisons, but the first young bachelor in extant literature to reject a match and mention a multitude of other suitable partners is famously Achilles (Il. 9.388–400). Penelope’s self-conceited suitor Eurymachus also refers to a multitude of available brides after his setback with Odysseus’ bow (Od. 21.250–52), perhaps a significant echo of Achilles’ words (Il. 9.395–97). Nevertheless, not even he says anything about his physical desirability or other assets. The model of the boast of the Cyclops is possibly another claim made by a young hero, perhaps a virgin, the very same Achilles in Euripides’ IA, a kind of Iliadic prequel, in which he mentions multitudes of girls coveting, literally “hunting”, his bed (μυρίαι κόραι/ θηρῶσι λέκτρον τοὐμόν, 959–60). It is conceivable that the alleged scores of girls covet his bed not only because of his sex appeal but also because of his lineage and heroic credentials (cf. 944–54), but the formulation of the claim suggests a pack of girls attracted to his physical assets. It is telling that unlike his Homeric counterpart he does not say anything about parents or guardians that might arrange the match. Similarly, the girls mentioned by the Cyclops may be more appreciative of his wealth than Galateia, but their alleged salacious calls for “nocturnal play” seem to point in the direction of his sex appeal. Be that as it may, Achilles did not live long enough to have any chance to marry any of the eager or suitable girls, and Polyphemus’ echo of his claims may be ominous. Whether the mention of other girls is also a ploy to make Galateia jealous or not, it certainly provides Polyphemus with some comfort, unlike his other fantasies, as it leads him to the conclusion that he too after all appears to be somebody on land (δῆλον ὅτ’ ἐν τᾷ γᾷ κἠγών τις φαίνομαι ἦμεν, 79), although this too ominously evokes his eventual undoing by “Nobody” (Οὔτις, Od. 9.366, 408, 455, 460). Payne argues that the song works as a remedy for the Cyclops because it translates the actual comforts and advantages of his bucolic existence into a contemplative, imaginary double that takes the place of Galateia or his erotic fantasy,

Idyll 11 | 103

thereby soothing him and mediating his return to the real world.178 Some comfort in his assets may not be ruled out as the basis for his partial or temporary recovery, but if the Cyclops, or any lover, needs song for this salutary effect, then it is song or the aesthetic pleasure it affords rather than its content that is of paramount importance. This is obvious from the effect of sad songs on the audience in other Idylls such as 1 and 7. Besides, the particular song also relates quite extensively the charms and attractiveness of the nymph and especially the singer’s disadvantages such as his physical ugliness, lack of gills, inability to swim, and his mother’s lack of sympathy. If he draws comfort from the recitation or contemplation of his material assets, then he should be thought to draw comfort from the contemplation of his defects. Less paradoxically, his listing of the latter would be likely to enhance his ardor and distress. Aesthetic pleasure or comfort is not related to the content of a work of art, and there is no indication that the comforting effect should be differently construed for artist and audience. Polyphemus’ return to reality foregrounds, and is a possible consequence of, the song’s failure to impress Galateia rather than its success in comforting the singer. The goatherd in 3 sinks in allegedly suicidal despair in consequence of his failure to attract Amaryllis, but dejection is apparently not the only conceivable outcome of such failure. In any case, Polyphemus’ return to reality is certainly as beset by erotic fantasies as the predicament that led to his attempt to lure their object with his serenade. Crucially, though, for all his simplicity and especially the flimsy basis of his last assertion, Polyphemus is not self-conceited. He may harbor erotic fantasies, which interfere with his ability to be absolutely clear-eyed about his prospects in love, but he is not arrogantly in love with himself. His restraint becomes apparent not only when viewed alongside his counterpart in 6, not to mention such cocky young men as Lacon in 5, but also, and primarily, Daphnis in 1. Thyrsis’ song is about Daphnis at the end of his life and labors while Polyphemus is undergoing his baptism of emotional fire, as it were. Still, it is their attitude toward others and their own assets rather than the timing of their troubles that

|| 178 Payne (2007) 79–82. He also claims that the song works as a remedy for the audience, Nicias and his successors, because it makes them forget their preoccupations and become absorbed in Polyphemus’ experience, returning to reality abruptly with the intervention of the narrator at the end. The audience may find the song delightful and absorbing, but it is unlikely that they would forget the rest of Polyphemus’ story. They expect closure, or healing of their desire for knowing what happened next, either in the short or the longer term, and the narrator’s intervention prohibits it. The return of the audience to reality is jolting not because they return to their preoccupations but because their expectations, shaped by previous experiences as audience of different songs, are dashed.

104 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion emerges as their most radical difference. Daphnis’ plight and tragic end notwithstanding, he certainly enjoys unparalleled advantages over Cyclops in several respects. Daphnis is the founding figure of bucolic, whom Theocritus presents as belonging to the mythology of the bucolic world. The proverbial sorrows of this hero are reported to have been, and in the dramatic present of the Idylls still are, sung by generations of excellent bucolic singers. Few details of the story are provided, presumably suggesting that its background is famous. By contrast, the sorrows of Polyphemus, the ironic, grotesque or comic counterpart to Daphnis, are recounted with reasonable fullness in 11 and taken up in another key in 6. To be sure, Polyphemus is a countryman and apparently a contemporary of Daphnis, if the character in 6 is the legendary hero. Even so, they share little else beside their capacity as lovesick and musically accomplished herdsmen. For the rest, the suffering Cyclops has found a way to deal with his love trouble, and certainly does not die because of love, even if he does not manage to secure Galateia’s affections, a possibility not entirely fantastic in view of his literary pedigree. Whether Daphnis was loved by a nymph or not, he was certainly loved by a girl who roamed the countryside in distress looking for him (1.82–85). Not only his human companions but also several gods visited him, and indeed the whole of animate and inanimate nature grieved for him as he lay dying in his usual haunts (68–70, 117–18). By contrast, the hapless Cyclops habitually abandons his animals and serenades his invisible beloved alone at the shore of the unfriendly sea. However, despite all the emotional support and friendly advice Daphnis receives, he is unyielding and unrepentant, as well as defiant and aggressively arrogant toward Cypris. He may or may not have vowed that he would give Love a fall (97–98), but he claims a victory over his killer even in death (103). His farewell to his world is full of pride, although he registers no distinction other than his capacity as oxherd. Daphnis’ last words are an invitation for the undoing of natural order because he is dying (132–36): ‘νῦν ἴα μὲν φορέοιτε βάτοι, φορέοιτε δ’ ἄκανθαι, ἁ δὲ καλὰ νάρκισσος ἐπ’ ἀρκεύθοισι κομάσαι, πάντα δ’ ἄναλλα γένοιτο, καὶ ἁ πίτυς ὄχνας ἐνείκαι, Δάφνις ἐπεὶ θνάσκει, καὶ τὰς κύνας ὥλαφος ἕλκοι, κἠξ ὀρέων τοὶ σκῶπες ἀηδόσι γαρύσαιντο.’ Now you brambles may bear violets, and you thorns may do the same, and the fair narcissus may bloom on the juniper, and everything may be changed, and pears can grow on the pine tree, since Daphnis is dying. Let the deer tear apart the hounds, and let the screech owls from the mountains rival nightingales.

Idyll 11 | 105

It is true that animals have been lamenting his plight, and he may envisage his death as the trigger of a natural catastrophe. Besides, unlike the Cyclops, he does not mention, let alone boast about, any assets such as beauty, wealth, fame or musical skill. On the other hand, in the dedication of his syrinx to Pan he does not only praise his instrument, which may be considered a sign primarily of affection rather than pride, although the latter may be thought to be involved, but he also, without ado, invites the god to come and receive it himself (128–30): ἔνθ’, ὦναξ, καὶ τάνδε φέρευ πακτοῖο μελίπνουν ἐκ κηρῶ σύριγγα καλὸν περὶ χεῖλος ἑλικτάν· ἦ γὰρ ἐγὼν ὑπ’ Ἔρωτος ἐς Ἅιδαν ἕλκομαι ἤδη. Come, lord, and accept this pipe, smelling sweetly of honey from its compacted wax and with a good binding around its lip; for I am now being haled away by Love to Hades.

Daphnis’ familiarity with the gods may go some way toward explaining this quite surprising summons. Still, the appeal to Pan may be meant to hint at Daphnis’ arrogance, lack of prudence and the possible failure of his invitation. The god did not apparently bother or wish to visit the dying man, perhaps unsurprisingly, despite his rustic and musical associations. It is indicative that nothing is said about the god’s response to Daphnis’ summons or his acceptance of Daphnis’ gift.179 The bucolic divinities par excellence (cf. 12–18, 1–6), Pan and the nymphs (66–69), who would be friendly to Daphnis (cf. 141, the very end of Thyrsis’ song), were absent from the scene of his death. This is probably meant to give the audience pause. It might be viewed as a sign of his doom and similarity to other dying heroes such as the Homeric Hector and the Euripidean Hippolytus,180 but the presence of other gods, who are not openly or irrevocably hostile to Daphnis, complicates the picture. Be that as it may, both the frame and Thyrsis’ song in 1 are full of gods, which contrasts strikingly with 11 and 6.181 Once in each poem the Cyclops

|| 179 Daphnis’ dedication and description of the syrinx may be associated with the goatherd, the audience of Thyrsis’ song and a devotee of Pan, like Daphnis; see Payne (2007) 44–45, and cf. III n. 7 below. Even so, Daphnis does not observe the same standards of pious prudence as the goatherd (cf. 15–18), and the fate of the syrinx remains uncertain, unlike that of the cup and goat the goatherd offers to Thyrsis. It is unlikely that this silence is meant to indicate beyond doubt that the god rejected the dedication, but it certainly undermines the effect of closeness between dying bucolic hero and major bucolic divinity. 180 If, for instance, Daphnis’ “epitaph” (1.120–21) evokes the Euripidean Hippolytus’ appeal to Zeus (Hipp. 1363–66), as Hunter (1999) 99–100 suggests, then his pride gains in background depth, including the literary kind, and ominous significance. 181 Cf. Fantuzzi (1998) 65.

106 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion swears by a god, Zeus and Pan respectively (11.29, 6.21).182 For the rest, only the Cypris and the Muses appear in the framing introduction to 11, the goddesses responsible for the plight of Polyphemus (and Daphnis) and for the cure the Cyclops discovered respectively (3 [cf. 6], 16). I will return to the gods below. For now, it is important to stress that Polyphemus has two major advantages, despite his ironic profusion of disadvantages, from the perspective of the tradition and his performance under discussion. The Cyclops in 11 modestly and soberly acknowledges his problems and defects but has found a way to deal with his predicament by means of song. His virtues not only set him apart from Daphnis but also form the basis of his exemplarity for the frame characters. The narrator seems to align himself with Polyphemus’ modesty: he presents Nicias as an expert doubly qualified to judge the truth of the initial gnome about poetry as the appropriate treatment for lovesickness and about the difficulty of finding it. In other words, he presents Nicias as much closer to Polyphemus, the hero who found the medicine for lovesickness. The narrator casts himself as a man who has the initial insight, which he presents as his personal view, and seems to defer to the expertise of his addressee, a doctor and poet, and by extension of other favorites of the Muses (1–6): Οὐδὲν ποττὸν ἔρωτα πεφύκει φάρμακον ἄλλο, Νικία, οὔτ’ ἔγχριστον, ἐμὶν δοκεῖ, οὔτ’ ἐπίπαστον, ἢ ταὶ Πιερίδες· κοῦφον δέ τι τοῦτο καὶ ἁδύ γίνετ’ ἐπ’ ἀνθρώποις, εὑρεῖν δ’ οὐ ῥᾴδιόν ἐστι. γινώσκειν δ’ οἶμαί τυ καλῶς ἰατρὸν ἐόντα καὶ ταῖς ἐννέα δὴ πεφιλημένον ἔξοχα Μοίσαις. There is in nature no remedy for love, Nicias—neither an ointment, I believe, nor a powder— other than the Pierian Muses. This remedy is a light and pleasant one for mortals, but it is not easy to find. I believe that you are well aware of this, being both a doctor and an especial favorite of all nine Muses.

This apparent neat distinction between the frame characters and the declaration of Nicias’ advantages become complicated or ironized by the notorious problem || 182 Cusset (2011) 123–24 discusses the anachronistic reference of the pre-Homeric Cyclops to the post-Homeric god Pan and suggests that Theocritus may enhance his anachronism by alluding to later sources that made Pan the son of Penelope by a suitor or Odysseus. He also thinks that the mention of Pan, the god of uncontrollable fear and desire, foregrounds the delusions of the afflicted, in this case Polyphemus’ delusions of Galateia’s antics. Such background may be of some importance, but the bucolicity suggested by the invocation of the bucolic god par excellence is likely to overshadow all other associations. In 6 Polyphemus also swears by Paian (27), but this is probably a cry of triumph.

Idyll 11 | 107

of song being both a symptom of and cure for love. It is difficult to discern the effect of song on lovesickness in general and the nature of the benefit Polyphemus reaps from his serenade in particular.183 The narrator may or may or may not have actually presented the issue as a problem and/or the original audience may or may not have perceived it as such. In any case, perhaps the most significant factor in the assessment of the issue is that song is not part of the symptomatology of love in the poem or the collection, in the sense that the Cyclops and other lovers had nothing to do with music before falling in love.184 Bucaeus used to be a singer long before he became infatuated with Bombyca (10.22–23; cf. 11.38). What is more, singing is not a symptom of love similar to e.g. headache and loss of appetite or sleep: Theocritean lovers do not gain musical abilities in the manner they lose weight, because and after they have fallen in love. Music is available to them, in the same way that dairy products and all the equipment and resources of their world are. What changes when love comes along, or the main symptom of love, is the lovers’ single-minded devotion to their objects of desire and their attempt to win over their recalcitrant sweethearts by directing all their energy toward the achievement of that goal. In this mother of all bucolic battles, as it were, lovers such as Polyphemus and his double, the goatherd in 3, employ all manner of strategies and resources. Beautiful song is one of them, and it is not used or meant to help the lovesick singer but to attract or charm the unwilling beloved. In this light, the curative effect of the song may in medical terms be considered as a serendipitous byproduct of a medicine administered for another “condition”. Originally, it is not even meant to be “administered” to the lover but by the lover to the beloved in order to eliminate the recalcitrance of the beloved and thus indirectly the lovesickness of the lover. The lovesick sufferer hopes that by singing he will put an end to the ache of his longing by attracting or charming his beloved and thus consummat-

|| 183 It has been suggested that the narrator in the introduction (1–6) teases his doctor friend Nicias whose medical expertise fails to alleviate the torment of love. He indicates that in healing lovesickness poetry is superior to traditional (and expensive, cf. 81) medicine; see e.g. Hunter (1999) 224–25, 243 and Faraone (2006) 75. For the considerable fees demanded by Greek doctors see also Rossi (2001) 194, and cf. Ecca (2016) 326. If there is irony, it is mitigated: besides acknowledging and praising Nicias’ poetic capacity, the narrator presents love as a physical complaint. Unlike other medical doctors (and charlatans, self-styled healers who sang magic incantations), Nicias knows the appropriate medicine for this ailment. 184 Contrast e.g. Eur. fr. 663 Kannicht and SH 566, attributed by the scholia to Nicias. Cf. Bion fr. 3.1 (Μοίσας Ἔρως καλέοι, Μοῖσαι τὸν Ἔρωτα φέροιεν), paraphrased by Bernsdorff (2006) 198 with “Love elicits poetic production (1a) and helps bear one’s love (1b, 3b ~ Id. 11.53)”.

108 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion ing his love. Such fulfillment does not materialize, but the song does end up comforting the sufferer.185 Poetry or song offers some kind of relief and pleasure, but this is not easy to find or devise (3–4). ἐπ’ ἀνθρώποις at 4 is ambiguous (among men, for men, available to men), no doubt intentionally so. The object of the infinitive εὑρεῖν is usually said to be the right kind of song, that which will bring the desired relief, but no such qualification appears in what precedes or follows. The distinction drawn is not between the right vs. wrong kinds of song but between song vs. other, ineffectual remedies for love. It is true that not every song is successful in curing or treating love, as Hunter points out, citing the failure of the goatherd in 3.186 Apart from the fact that a κῶμος or paraklausithyron is by convention unsuccessful, it is not certain that the goatherd fails completely to “shepherd” his love, at least temporarily. He does fail to attract his beloved out of her dwelling, but so does the Cyclops. Unlike the goatherd, Polyphemus consoles or collects himself, but it is not clear that the goatherd commits suicide like the lover in 23. Be that as it may, there is no indication that the narrator in 11 draws a distinction between different songs. Instead, he praises song as superior to all other medicines. It may be implicit, and may even ironically undermine the validity of the gnome and the pertinence of the example, that the salubrious song needs to be appropriately chosen and crafted, especially given the formal roughness of Polyphemus’ song. However, this is not the point of the narrator at the beginning. The model of effective song may be the wondrous, and difficult to find, μῶλυ, which Hermes gives to Odysseus as protection against Circe’s drugs (μῶλυ δέ μιν καλέουσι θεοί, χαλεπὸν δέ τ’ ὀρύσσειν/ ἀνδράσι γε θνητοῖσι· θεοὶ δέ τε πάντα δύνανται, Od. 10.305–6).187 This wonder,

|| 185 The effect of the remedy, which will turn out to be palliative rather than curative, is not immediately clear. (I use cure and remedy interchangeably, as it makes no difference to my argument at this point.) For an overview of the debate over the efficacy of song as cure or relief see e.g. Schmiel (1993), and cf. Kutzko (2007) 73–74, Fantuzzi (2016) 284, and Foster (2016) 110–11. Interestingly, in contrast to the bucolic pieces, in the non-bucolic 10 a love serenade is not incompatible with work, although Milon dismisses it at the end as inappropriate and inferior to his own work song (10.56–58). The effect of the song on Bucaeus is not specified, but its potential for a palliative effect is acknowledged, not least by the unsympathetic Milon, as it is slated to help the lovesick Bucaeus combine his two occupations, work and love, which are incompatible without it. 186 Hunter (1999) 220. 187 Cf. Kaiser (1964) 200–13, and Hordern (2004) 289. Faraone (2006) 86–89 also builds on μῶλυ and argues that Theocritus exploits the tradition, and attributes to Polyphemus the invention, of a kind of poetic incantation with effects similar to amulets and magical pharmaka: these protect the carrier or user from destructive demonic forces such as Circe’s pharmaka or Eros, much like μῶλυ protected Odysseus, and Medea’s pharmaka protected and helped Jason against

Idyll 11 | 109

though, is not contrasted with other protective medicines, just as song is not contrasted with song. Rather, μῶλυ is exalted because it is inaccessible to humans, i.e. it is a completely different class of thing. In the same way song, which is accessible only to the few favorites of the Muses, is distinct from medical treatments, which are available to all sufferers, at least those who can afford them. Nicias in his double capacity as doctor and poet is in a position to realize fully both the medicinal significance of song and the difficulty in finding/inventing it. The assertion that he is a favorite of all nine Muses suggests that he is likely to have already found/invented song, or to be in a privileged position to find/invent song easily. This stands in implicit contrast to others, the narrator included. A resulting association with the Cyclops, who managed to find/invent the requisite medicine (τὸ φάρμακον εὗρε, 17), is likely part of the narrator’s ironic teasing of Nicias mentioned above. The narrator proceeds to present evidence for his view and strengthen his case by means of a mythological example, as in 13 (and, in a different way, the end of 7). He turns to the first love of a hero particularly close to him, his countryman the ancient Polyphemus, a singer (and “healer”) as accomplished and inventive as Nicias. As already suggested, this character has a long, varied and respectable literary pedigree, which features the Homeric epic and, as far as can be known today, Philoxenus’, or perhaps Timotheus’, dithyramb (PMG 780–83).188 Irrespective of, and against, this colorful background, Polyphemus morphs into a bucolic hero, or an emblematic figure of the “new genre”, with all the (ironic) advantages and disadvantages associated with this role. A burlesque role model of the narrator and Nicias, who may or may not be lovesick, Polyphemus is a victim of Cypris, the nemesis of Daphnis. As already pointed out, she and the Muses are the only divinities that appear in 11, in contrast to the profusion of divine presences in 1, both in the frame and Thyrsis’ song. The narrator mentions

|| the earthborn giants in Apollonius’ Argonautica. There may be some parallels in the wording of 11 and magical incantations inscribed in amulets, but the effect of the song is not the same as that of an incantation, or song is an incantation employed in a different context: while amulets and similar objects are meant to have an apotropaic, repelling function in keeping the danger away from the wearer, poetry does not keep love away from Polyphemus and fellow sufferers but manages to assuage its terrible effects, at least for a while. The constant repetition of the incantation does not thwart different demonic assaults but keeps in check the same relentless demonic assault. For an allusion to μῶλυ at the end of Idyll 9 see below pp. 159–60. 188 The genre of Timotheus’ poem is unknown, and Philoxenus’ dithyramb may have predated it; see Hordern (2002) 106–9, who also provides a list of authors and poems, mainly plays from Middle Comedy, that dealt with the Cyclops theme. Cf. Hordern (2004) 285–88, and Kutzko (2007) 91–97.

110 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion the Muses, the patronesses of poetry, explicitly in connection with Nicias and only by extension with himself and the Cyclops. On the other hand, the narrator, as a persona of the poet Theocritus, is not only Polyphemus’ imitator of sorts, as reperformer of the serenade to Galateia, but also the creator of a genre that may be traced to the serenade, although not exclusively to it. Like Polyphemus, the narrator is associated with a venerable tradition but appears quite modest. He does not praise himself or call himself a singer and does not claim any sort of superiority or distinction, not even to his contemporary Nicias, but he “invents” and thus adds a “new” hero to the formidable gallery of tradition. His failure to invoke the Muses is a possible hint of his distancing from the Homeric singer, and he does not invoke bucolic divinities such as the nymphs or Pan, either.189 He positions himself as an interlocutor of a distinguished friend or close acquaintance in a discussion about love, in a setting that may recall archaic lyric precedents, and quoting a song not explicitly said to be his own. As a Greek artistic creation, it was by definition inspired by the Muses, but neither the model hero nor the narrator invokes them. This dissociation from the traditional patronesses of poetry highlights the simplicity or naive lack of self-awareness as well as the isolation of the example’s hero and not least the frame narrator’s selfdeprecating failure to lay claim to divine favor or any musical distinction. To the narrator, poetry is a difficult enterprise (εὑρεῖν δ’ οὐ ῥᾴδιόν ἐστι, 4), with much to negotiate and formidable colleagues to emulate, including contemporary ones such as Nicias. For all the hurdles it involves, it does provide some comfort but no cure. Most intriguingly and ironically, it deals in appearances that may be illusory, leading clearly only to apparent distinction (δῆλον ὅτ’ ἐν τᾷ γᾷ κἠγών τις φαίνομαι ἦμεν, 79). Significantly, the first verb the narrator uses to refer to himself is δοκεῖ (2), and the last one Polyphemus employs is φαίνομαι. The focus on personal belief, appearances or illusion is steady throughout. Among several other things, this may also belong to the narrator’s means of teasing Nicias, the distinguished doctor and poet. Polyphemus, the legendary ogre with rich non-bucolic pedigree, cannot be completely rid of his illusions, although music generates some comfort and sobriety, at least in 11 and for a while. A musical and lovesick Cyclops is not Theocritus’ invention but he appears to be much closer to the Theocritean narrator(s) and several major characters than Daphnis, not only in the framework of Theocritus’ bucolic but also within his poetic universe at large.

|| 189 Payne (2007) 72 suggests that the failure of the narrator to invoke the Muses is a sign of the fictionality of his creation, but this failure is certainly not unique and thus particularly marked in 11, as neither Lycidas nor Simichidas in 7 or the singers in 6, for instance, appeal to the Muses.

Idyll 6 | 111

As already noted, the Cyclops, the ancient countryman of the narrator in 11, does not appear to be already enshrined in the mythology of the bucolic world as sketched and glorified in the rest of the collection.190 This is somewhat paradoxical and very telling. The lovesick Cyclops is a survivor and thus moderately successful, or potentially more successful than Daphnis. Still, he does not boast about his advantages, and his final claim to distinction, although a product of his illusions, is hedged and couched in terms of appearance. The creation of a genre and the simultaneous creation of two iconic heroes for it, or two (hi)stories, is virtually unique in extant Greek literature. What makes it even more remarkable, and to an extent unexpected, is the failure of the narrator/creator to boast about any distinction or superior insights, even when he offers a suggestion about lovesickness to a friend.191 From archaic down to Hellenistic literature pride in one’s poetic novelty, inventiveness and alleged inventions are regularly registered. Pindar, Aristophanes and Callimachus are well-known examples. Even Aristotle registered his contributions to dialectic and his pride in them (SE 183b15–184b8). The Theocritean narrator and his heroes, especially Polyphemus, do nothing of the sort. Even in 6, Polyphemus, the voice of Damoetas’ song, hardly claims any distinction or superiority, although his illusions deepen, as he judges his appearance “fair” and “gleaming” (36–38).

Idyll 6 This short and intriguing Idyll makes no reference to old or contemporary poets but it has obviously other connections with 11192 and some with 1 and 7. Addressed to a certain Aratus (2), on whom more below, the Idyll narrates a past incident, a

|| 190 In 7 the sorrows of the oxherd Daphnis are the subject of excellent bucolic song (72–77) while the shepherd Polyphemus is recalled as an inebriated comast (150–53). The exalted status of Daphnis is also apparent from his several appearances in the non-genuine Idylls and Theocritus’ successors. By contrast, the Cyclops is mentioned only in the Lament for Bion (60). 191 This apparent modesty is also obvious in 28, the dedication of the gift of a distaff to Nicias’ wife. The narrator does not explicitly cast the poem as a dedication. Despite his loving descriptions and the allusion to fame put in the mouth of an anonymous observer (24–25), which recalls the predictions of posthumous fame made by Homeric heroes, he downplays the practical and stresses the symbolic or emotional value of the gift. Equally important, he calls only Nicias a favorite of lovely-sounding Charites (7) while for himself he reserves only the modest designation “lover of song” (23). 192 For the connections between 11 and 6 see e.g. Bernsdorff (1994) 44–48, and Köhnken (1996) 179–81. Cf. next n.

112 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion summer noon meeting of Damoetas and Daphnis, who engage in a song exchange about the love woes of Polyphemus. However, as in many other cases of poems that deal with the same heroes and stories, 6 and 11 are not necessarily meant to be read against each other.193 Daphnis is probably the iconic oxherd, syrinxplayer and eventual ill-starred lover of the legendary bucolic past. This is nowhere made explicit, no doubt intentionally, and there is no insurmountable obstacle in taking him as a non-legendary cowherd, perhaps a contemporary of the external narrator, or a figure of the dramatic near past. Nevertheless, the choice of such a significant name, the weight of the legendary figure of Daphnis, the audience’s familiarity with him, and the absence of any contemporary marker make the identification of Daphnis in 1 and 6 quite probable. On the other hand, unlike 1, both 6 and 11 deal with the lovesickness of a young character, a Homeric monster and aggressor, perhaps using his intermediate poetic reincarnations as the vehicle for a transition to, and creation of, a dramatic present set in a stylized or ideal(ized) bucolic past.194 In 6 neither Polyphemus nor Daphnis or any other figure is cast as heroic or paradigmatic. Significantly, Daphnis is portrayed as very young, probably a little younger than his friend and colleague,195 and there is no mention of any love interest of his, certainly not of the heterosexual sort. The end of the poem may hint at a homosexual relationship, or at least erotically tinged intimacy, between the two boys (42),196 but the Idyll emphasizes their concord and friendship, also apparent and sublimated in their musical skill (43–46). The young herdsmen engage in their competitive song exchange near a spring (1–5): Δαμοίτας καὶ Δάφνις ὁ βουκόλος εἰς ἕνα χῶρον τὰν ἀγέλαν ποκ’, Ἄρατε, συνάγαγον· ἦς δ’ ὃ μὲν αὐτῶν πυρρός, ὃ δ’ ἡμιγένειος· ἐπὶ κράναν δέ τιν’ ἄμφω ἑσδόμενοι θέρεος μέσῳ ἄματι τοιάδ’ ἄειδον. πρᾶτος δ’ ἄρξατο Δάφνις, ἐπεὶ καὶ πρᾶτος ἔρισδεν.

|| 193 Cf. Cusset (2011) 147. Neither of the two Idylls presupposes the other, in the sense that the situation in the songs of 6 may be understood only through the song in 11 or vice versa. For instance, scholars have argued that the exchange of roles between Polyphemus and Galateia in 6 points to the “remedy” that Polyphemus (thinks that he) discovered in 11; see e.g. Ott (1969) 72– 84, and Stanzel (1995) 183–90. This is certainly not the only possible or even the most plausible construal. Cf. n. 200 below. 194 For Polyphemus in the literary tradition after Homer cf. n. 188 above. Bowie (1996) 93–94 suggests that the name Damoetas, common in Thessaly, evokes the poetry composed by Simonides for his Thessalian patrons. 195 Cf. Hunter (1999) 249. 196 Cf. Bowie (1996) 91–93.

Idyll 6 | 113

Damoetas and Daphnis the oxherd once brought their herd together to the same place, Aratus. One of them had a downy face, the other a beard half-grown. One summer noon they both sat down at a spring and sang as follows. Daphnis first began, since he first made the challenge.

The setting faintly suggests a eutopia, but without description and geographical or topographical specifications. It is not even clear whether the youths looked after two herds or the same one, and Damoetas is never called an oxherd. The phrase “into one place” (εἰς ἕνα χῶρον, 1) occurs in the description of the first battle of the Iliad (4.446 = 8.60), and may have been rare, although the paucity of surviving poetry naturally precludes confidence. If Theocritus may be thought to allude to it, then the expectations raised by this allusion are significant. Apart from the narrative weight of the first pitched encounter, the goddess Eris plays a prominent role (Il. 4.440–45; cf. Theocr. 6.5), πρῶτος is mentioned twice (Il. 4.442, 447; cf. Theocr. 6.5), and a pastoral, although not idyllic, coloring is apparent in the simile placed before the catalogue and the obituary of a young Trojan casualty (Il. 4.452–55). The gory and noisy setting of the epic battle may be thought to contrast with the peaceful, tuneful contest of the Idyll, but since the language is plain and unmarked, it may seem to be a tenuous thread on which to hang weighty associations. 6 features no competitive hostility, no teasing or bantering. The bucolic ideal of musical excellence in an idealized countryside seems to come to life, but a closer look reveals, among other things, a hall of mirrors, a parallel to the chamber of echoes in 7. There Simichidas/Theocritus appears as a young poet that aspires to a (future) place in the poetic hall of (bucolic) fame. He offers advice of dubious efficacy to his friend Aratus but receives the imprimatur of Lycidas, a senior master of bucolic song and admirer of the legendary goatherd and singer Comatas. In this connection, 6 may be viewed as a poetic prequel of sorts, so far back in the bucolic past as to include no authoritative, or at least no older, musical figure, let alone any legendary hero or singer. The two bucolic singers have no past to speak of and no declared models. Their future in love or in song is not mentioned. The first singer addresses, and the second answers in the voice of, Polyphemus, a herdsman and syrinx-player but no legendary hero (yet). He has several shortcomings, and the audience know well of his future career as a cannibal. His problems are compounded and his future doom suggested in part by his failure to seek, or profit from, (authoritative) advice. Polyphemus relies on the apotropaic hocus-pocus of a crone (40), as Simichidas in 7 advises Aratus, and Simaetha in 2 tried unsuccessfully, to do (7.126–27, 2.90–92). The dramatization of the bucolic dawn, as it were, and the youth of the characters suggest a time of

114 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion innocence, without shadows of (past) outrages and suffering, but the effect turns out to be as elusive and deceptive as reflections in a hall of mirrors. Before looking into them, some conclusion as to the connection of frame and exchange is in order, especially given the absence of any reference or allusion to Aratus at the end of the poem. If Aratus is the same person as the friend of Simichidas in 7,197 it is conceivable that 6 is meant to offer him some form of advice or encouragement in his love trouble, as this is the subject of the songs, and the singers are in a loving, although not necessarily erotic, relationship. It is difficult to maintain, even as a working hypothesis, that the narrator admonishes or encourages Aratus to forget his love interest and devote himself to other things, as no such option is on the horizon for the Cyclops and it is irrelevant to the boys. If the narrator may be thought to offer advice different from Simichidas’, he may advise Aratus to change tactics and feign indifference in his attempt to win over his love-interest. This possibility is also remote, and certainly impossible to corroborate on the basis of textual evidence. The behavior of Galateia, Polyphemus’ love-interest, and the efficacy of Polyphemus’ antics are difficult to assess.198 It would then be at best preposterous and at worst foolish on the part of frame narrator and audience, including first and foremost Aratus, to take the situation dramatized in the exchange of songs at face value and consider it as the basis for actionable admonition. If no advice to Aratus may be plausibly considered as offered (in earnest), the address may be viewed as a framing device for the narration of a story interesting on other, largely undetectable, grounds. Formally, it is close to the introductory addresses in 11 and 13, and perhaps closest to that in the spurious 21. Aratus is told a story potentially meant to illustrate one or more points, presumably moral/cognitive and/or poetic. It is possible, however, that the story may be (presented as) told only for the sake of aesthetic pleasure, as the song of Thyrsis in 1 or Tityrus/Lycidas in 7 is enjoyed for its own sake. Be that as it may, even if a nonaesthetic motive is thought to be there, the advice offered or moral to be drawn is as unknowable as the narrator’s motive(s) and relationship to Aratus. The failure to register any concerns and aspirations in the frame aligns the narrator and his || 197 There is no cogent reason to identify Aratus in either poem with the poet of the Phaenomena. Cusset (2011) 66–68 discusses several possibilities about the identity of Aratus and the function of the narrator’s address to him. The suggestion that Aratus is the narrator’s love-interest in 6, made by Ott (1969) 70 and Gutzwiller (1991) 130, and possibly also in 7 cannot be corroborated; cf. Stanzel (1995) 178–79, and Payne (2007) 99. 198 Hunter (1999) 244 suggests that Galateia’s very presence at the shore is in doubt, pointing to the pervasiveness of the theme of uncertainty over motives and perception in the poem, manifest not least also in Daphnis’ song. Cf. Gutzwiller (1991) 127.

Idyll 6 | 115

addressee with the characters in the song exchange.199 Such alignment promotes both the impression of simplicity or “innocence” and the opaqueness or hollowness of aspirations, not least that of giving and receiving advice. The problems of offering sensible and mainly actionable advice appear most clearly in Daphnis’ song, although the only explicit admonition it contains is for the Cyclops to restrain his dog so that it may not bite Galateia’s legs as she is coming out of the sea to woo him (13–14):200 φράζεο μὴ τᾶς παιδὸς ἐπὶ κνάμαισιν ὀρούσῃ ἐξ ἁλὸς ἐρχομένας, κατὰ δὲ χρόα καλὸν ἀμύξῃ. Take care that it doesn’t jump at the girl’s legs as she comes out of the sea and doesn’t scratch her fair skin.

The identity of the counselor is not specified, as the voice in the song is nowhere said to be Daphnis’. This is another point of indeterminacy, congruent with the uncertainty about Aratus and (his relationship to) the frame narrator. Daphnis’ song begins immediately after its announcement, and the narrator of the song addresses another character, without indication or implication that he is doing so in the voice of another person. In this light, the most plausible assumption is that the voice in the song is Daphnis’. The possibility that it might not be suggests another intriguing narrative level that might create a series of embedded songs, performed by anonymous singers: Theocritus, the external narrator, is not named or otherwise identified, the anonymous voice of the frame reproduces the song of Daphnis, and he possibly sings in the voice of a singer who is not named or otherwise identified.201

|| 199 Cf. Reed (2010) 243–44. 200 The delightful image of the dog running along the beach barking (10–12) and the report of Galateia’s earlier behavior (29–30) have been viewed as major indications of a reversal in the situation of the Cyclops in 11; see n. 193 above. It may be more significant that the only animal the Cyclops in 6 seems to have a rapport with is a dog, the guardian of his flock, and a universal symbol of loyalty. Cf. Rosenmeyer (1969) 138. This contrasts with the apparent lack of dogs in 11 and Odyssey 9 and with the attachment of the Homeric Cyclops to his ram (Od. 9.447–60), but the behavior of the Theocritean dog is probably a part of Polyphemus’ illusions; see Hunter (1999) 251. Besides, if the dog was friendly to Galateia when she had been failing to respond to Polyphemus’ advances (29–30), then not even the dog’s loyalty is unwavering. Contra Kolde (2005) 111–12, who suggests that the dog evokes Odysseus’ Argus. 201 Cf. Cusset (2011) 68. The goatherd in 3 is also anonymous, and Theocritus is nowhere named or otherwise identified as the narrator in the collection, even in poems in which the narrator addresses or mentions his friend, the medical doctor Nicias.

116 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion The issue of the voice in Daphnis’ song does not affect my argument, and in what follows I will refer to the narrator of the song as Daphnis. He seems to suggest that Polyphemus should take note and advantage of Galateia’s wooing (6–10): βάλλει τοι, Πολύφαμε, τὸ ποίμνιον ἁ Γαλάτεια μάλοισιν, δυσέρωτα καὶ αἰπόλον ἄνδρα καλεῦσα· καὶ τύ νιν οὐ ποθόρησθα, τάλαν τάλαν, ἀλλὰ κάθησαι ἁδέα συρίσδων. πάλιν ἅδ’, ἴδε, τὰν κύνα βάλλει, ἅ τοι τᾶν ὀίων ἕπεται σκοπός· Galatea is pelting your flock with apples, Polyphemus; she calls you a laggardly lover and a goatherd. And you have no regard for her, you poor wretch, but sit piping sweetly. Again— look!—she is pelting the dog that follows you to watch your sheep.

Ironically, this is reminiscent of the taunt of Priapus to Daphnis (1.82–91). If the oxherd in 6 is the same as the famous bucolic hero in 1, then he will eventually fail to profit much from the experience of Polyphemus, himself a sort of grotesque proto-Daphnis.202 As already pointed out, there is a big catch in Daphnis’ advice: it is not clear whether Galateia does any of the things described in the song and in Damoetas’ reply in the voice of Polyphemus (21–22, 25–28), since her very presence at the shore may be an illusion.203 Even if she is there and teases Polyphemus, her purpose is not necessarily erotic. If it is not, then Daphnis gives false, or at least ironic, and certainly useless, advice. Payne argues that Thyrsis’ impersonation of Daphnis in 1 is more vivid, informative and memorable to the audience than the hero’s own appearance in 6, which consists in the adoption of a persona for the sake of an impersonation: he addresses Damoetas as if the latter were Polyphemus.204 The effect on the audience may be correctly assessed, but 6 also says more about Daphnis than the audience hear in his song, and he does not necessarily assume an identity in order to tease Damoetas as if the latter were Polyphemus. It is Damoetas who assumes the identity of Polyphemus in response to Daphnis’ address to Polyphemus, || 202 Cf. Bernsdorff (1994) 45, and Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 150. A Daphnis eventually associated with Priapus advising a Polyphemus associated with Daphnis to pay attention to a girl wooing him, in a kaleidoscope of associations, destabilizes all bucolic and mythological certainties, even with respect to the use of exemplary stories; cf. Fantuzzi (1998) 68–69. In any case, the uncertainty over the love story and woes of Daphnis in 1 does not allow for easy intertextual assumptions. 203 For Galateia see n. 198 above. The second song, which answers the first point by point, may be entirely ironic, with the Cyclops pretending to be naïve in order to cap Daphnis’ claims. This does not affect my argument, but the possibility adds yet another level of indeterminacy to the poem. 204 Payne (2007) 97, 100.

Idyll 6 | 117

which was not necessarily bound, or even meant, to draw Damoetas into the game. In this respect, Damoetas is the more dramatically or fictionally self-projecting member of the pair. The reception of the Theocritean Daphnis is not determined so much by the vividness of impersonation(s) as by the (fictional) enshrinement and glorification of the “Sorrows of Daphnis”: this canonical and unsurpassable song about the bucolic hero’s woes is hailed as the supreme, defining product of the bucolic tradition. Theocritus’ audience perceives and remembers Daphnis in 1 as “the” bucolic Daphnis because he is the subject of “the” bucolic song par excellence. Daphnis becomes Daphnis in “The sorrows of Daphnis”, as Achilles becomes Achilles in the tale of his wrath narrated by the poet of Iliad, or Medea becomes Medea in the poems about her filicide. A younger Achilles is a character in Euripides’ IA and the girl Medea in Apollonius’ Argonautica, for instance, but the appearance of the heroes in these works is always filtered through their later careers. The narration or dramatization of episodes preceding or following the heroes’ fictionally defining experiences may alter, refine, ironize or problematize the latter, as the case may be. Still, prequels and sequels can never compete with the preeminence of the central episodes, especially when the latter are enshrined in songs or texts projected and viewed as canonical masterpieces in a venerable tradition. Theocritus’ inventive coup is not that he undermines certainties and reverses expectations in contrasting “pale” appearances of characters in their persons with vivid informative impersonations in fictional self-projection. Rather, Theocritus fashions and presents several of his characters such as Daphnis and Comatas both as august model heroes of the bucolic tradition, characters in later singers’ songs, and possibly as modern bucolic characters and singers in their own right, all within the framework of a single collection or in poems circulated within a relatively short period of time. It is this indeterminacy over the identity and time frame of homonymous characters, a name and frame game, that destabilizes certainties and ironizes reception. To be sure, this choice also undermines or renders uncertain and ambivalent the “priority” or authoritative status of any version of the “tradition”, including his own, most prominently in 1, 6, and 11, but also in 3, for instance, especially because the narrator eschews directional clues as to the extent of the characters’ illusions and the audience’s reception of their claims and antics.205 In this vein, Polyphemus’ self-satisfied response brings out the virtual impossibility of his seeing sense. Even if Damoetas assumes the pose of a naïve Polyphemus in order to respond in character, as it were, to Daphnis’ song, this does not affect the audience’s reception of || 205 Cf. Payne (2007) 98.

118 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion the impersonation. If 6 is viewed as a sequel of 11, a big if, its dramatic time is a little later than that of 11, and the prospects as well as the emotional condition of the lovesick suitor seem to have improved, but the amelioration may well be an illusion. If it is, his greater conceit actually signals a deterioration of his condition. The Cyclops does not appear to have understood or learnt much, which is unsurprising, not least in view of the uncertainties concerning the basis of Daphnis’ advice. In burlesque fashion, Polyphemus’ only successful teacher is the crone Cotyttaris, who ironically, despite his claim about her “thorough instruction” (ἐξεδίδαξε, 40), has not taught him anything more demanding or profitable than spitting thrice in his bosom (39). As already suggested, her instructions in apotropaic magic are reminiscent of the anonymous crone’s apotropaic ministrations Simichidas mentions at the end of the song about Aratus’ lovesickness. Simichidas wishes that the quietude Aratus and his friend(s) should adopt may be safeguarded by a crone “who spits and keeps ugly things away” (ἅτις ἐπιφθύζοισα τὰ μὴ καλὰ νόσφιν ἐρύκοι, 7.127). Daphnis had claimed that ugly things regularly appear beautiful in love (18–19): ἦ γὰρ ἔρωτι πολλάκις, ὦ Πολύφαμε, τὰ μὴ καλὰ καλὰ πέφανται. Truly, Polyphemus, ugly things often seem fair to love.

It is not clear what Galateia mistakes for lovely, whether Polyphemus, or her alleged shenanigans, or both. In any case, if she does nothing of the things Daphnis alleges, or if she does them in jest and not out of love, the gnome is as ambivalent as the rest of Daphnis’ song. The actions of Galateia and Polyphemus constitute a reversal of sorts of Simichidas’ wish: Galateia does not (wish that she may) keep ugly things away but flees the loving and pursues the unloving (and unlovely) one (καὶ οὐ φιλέοντα διώκει, 17; cf. 11.75),206 as Aratus in 7 pursues Philinus; Polyphemus, who judges by his reflection in the water that he is handsome, spits in his bosom to avert the evil eye from his self-perceived, illusory beauty (34–40): καὶ γάρ θην οὐδ’ εἶδος ἔχω κακὸν ὥς με λέγοντι. ἦ γὰρ πρᾶν ἐς πόντον ἐσέβλεπον, ἦς δὲ γαλάνα, καὶ καλὰ μὲν τὰ γένεια, καλὰ δέ μευ ἁ μία κώρα,

|| 206 Galateia does everything in her power and tries every move to achieve her goal, as the proverb at 18 seems to suggest; see Cusset (2011) 114–15, and Clúa Serena (2015).

Idyll 6 | 119

ὡς παρ’ ἐμὶν κέκριται, κατεφαίνετο, τῶν δέ τ’ ὀδόντων λευκοτέραν αὐγὰν Παρίας ὑπέφαινε λίθοιο. ὡς μὴ βασκανθῶ δέ, τρὶς εἰς ἐμὸν ἔπτυσα κόλπον· ταῦτα γὰρ ἁ γραία με Κοτυτταρὶς ἐξεδίδαξε. Indeed, even my looks are not so bad as they say. The other day, when there was a calm, I was looking into the sea, and in my judgment my beard seemed fair, and fair my single eye, and it reflected the gleam of my teeth whiter than Parian marble. But to avert bad luck I spat in my breast three times, as the old woman Cotyttaris taught me.

In this light, the impression of the equality of the singers’ personae, or of the giver and receiver of advice, is enhanced. Damoetas’ Polyphemus seems (or pretends) to be cleverer than Daphnis, indeed to cap the claims Daphnis makes in his song.207 However, there is little difference between one irrationally blown like thistledown in pursuit of an elusive target one deems fair, like Galateia (15–19), and one wallowing in one’s deluded judgment of one’s physical fairness in hopes of erotic success, like Polyphemus. Reflections or impressions on an unstable surface such as that of the sea take on a life of their own through the subjects’ emotions. Love (apparently) distorts Galateia’s view of the appearance of the (alleged) object of her affections as well as Polyphemus’ view of the appearance of the same individual, in this case himself, now a subject appreciatively judging his own reflection. Hunter suggests that Polyphemus gazing at his own reflection is a comic Narcissus, who instead of see(k)ing Galateia see(k)s γαλάνα and falls in love with his own image.208 Still, the grotesque, narcissistic emphasis on his good looks, apart from being meant to demolish Daphnis’ oblique allusion to his ugliness (19), may plausibly be thought to be motivated not so much by self-infatuation or vainglory as by his passion for Galateia. This seems to be at the root of his delusion, or desire to convince himself, that he is a perfectly suitable match for her, in other words that his beloved can be hopelessly infatuated with him because he is a worthy potential partner. His (attempt at) self-assurance is then meant to buttress his conviction that his interest for Galateia is not hopeless and that the affair will

|| 207 Cf. Hutchinson (1988) 187. 208 Hunter (1999) 257. Polyphemus’ self-description in a tricolon privileges the third and longer part (37–38) over the first and second (36), which are of almost equal size. There is little doubt that the emphasis on the teeth serve to recall their gruesome function in Odyssey 9. However, their gleam, although obviously exaggerated and perhaps disquieting through their comparison with hard marble, is the only aspect of the Cyclops that may not necessarily be deemed completely illusory. If so, a self-deluded self-description contains a factual and believable element that serves to qualify the audience’s impression of the character.

120 | Lovers and friends: lovesickness, advice and illusion ultimately have a happy end. The most extreme part of Polyphemus’ delusion is not his belief in his beauty but his fantasy of control over Galateia, which includes her capitulation to his terms and vow to be his wife on his island (31–33): ταῦτα δ’ ἴσως ἐσορεῦσα ποεῦντά με πολλάκι πεμψεῖ ἄγγελον. αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ κλᾳξῶ θύρας, ἔστε κ’ ὀμόσσῃ αὐτά μοι στορεσεῖν καλὰ δέμνια τᾶσδ’ ἐπὶ νάσω· Perhaps, when she sees me keep behaving in this way, she will send a messenger. But I shall lock my doors until she swears that she will make my fair bed herself upon this island.

His threat of locking the door and Galateia’s anticipated vow have ironic ramifications. First, any locking done by the Cyclops is likely, if not bound, to evoke the captivity of Odysseus and his crew, although they were shut in rather than out. A cave can hardly have a door with a lock, although no cave is mentioned in 6. Polyphemus envisions locking his door in order to make Galateia vow to be his bride, but the locking evokes a night of bloody revenge rather than marital bliss. Be that as it may, I see no reason why Polyphemus would wish to make Galateia his servant or sexual slave, as some scholars have suggested,209 and it is most unlikely that at 26 (ἄλλαν τινὰ φαμὶ γυναῖκ’ ἔχεν) he refers to a wife, as there is no indication that even a dissembling Polyphemus would pretend, and hope to trick Galateia, that he has taken a wife.210 While in 11 he stresses his material assets to lure Galateia, here he emphasizes that his physical ones might not discourage her, or a rival. Material assets were unlikely to attract a sea nymph, but at least they were real enough, while his beauty is just an illusion, which Polyphemus harbors and, paradoxically, Galateia now shares, at least according to Daphnis. In this context, Polyphemus in 6 thinks, or at the very least adopts the pose of believing, that he is in control. Perhaps a little older than in 11, he is more self-confident and even has a plan of sorts to extract a marriage vow from Galateia, now turning the tables on her and playing hard to get as she used to do when he had been courting her. Nevertheless, he is as deluded as in 11, although the delusion is of a different sort. In 11 he is less conceited and makes an attempt to come to his senses by weaning himself off the pursuit of the fleeing one, although it becomes immediately obvious that he cannot shake off all his delusions: the owner of many || 209 See Cusset (2011) 153–54. 210 The Homeric Polyphemus is a bachelor, but the Cyclopes were possibly polygamous (cf. Od. 9.113–15). The Theocritean Polyphemus nowhere suggests that he wishes for more than one partner at a time, and even an ironic ambiguity as to marriage arrangements is implausible: institutionalized polygamy may hardly be invoked in order to incite the sexual jealousy of a potential partner.

Idyll 6 | 121

assets believes that he has many admirers eager to spend the night with him (11.77– 78). On the other hand, his belief in his desirability as a much sought-after partner notwithstanding, he nowhere takes for granted or deludes himself into believing that his alleged admirers perceive him as comely. He declares that on land he clearly appears to be somebody (11.79), but he never says that he appears to be a comely somebody, a καλός. By contrast, in 6 he rejects the common opinion about him and adopts, perhaps even on the hyperbolic side, Galateia’s supposed view of him. There are no alleged other admirers that might buttress his judgment of his appearance on land, only his reflection on the sea surface. All in all, then, neither of the two Cyclops Idylls presents Polyphemus in a decidedly more positive light than the other. The references to his precious one eye are most indicative in this respect. In 6 Polyphemus wishes to preserve his sight to the end and exorcises Telemus’ prophecy (22–24), but the audience know that the prophecy will come true, as all prophecies invariably do. In 11 he vows to let Galateia burn his eye if she agrees to join him in his cave (52–53). His alleged readiness to lose his eye and his attempts to protect himself from the evil eye and blindness are equally grotesque and doomed to failure. Even his childish plan to play sick and cause distress to his indifferent mother (11.70–71) is a version of his pose of indifference toward Galateia. In Theocritus’ two-part portrayal of him, as a young, lovesick monster and a grotesque bucolic hero, he does not seem to be superior to previous incarnations. Thus the two Idylls may hardly be meant to be viewed as examples or a manifesto of poetic superiority, whether over the Chian and/or other bards, or even over Theocritus himself. Only in the non-genuine pieces 23 and 20, which have several affinities with 3 and 6 respectively, do lovers and narrators fail completely to show restraint in word and even deed. Not only do they harbor illusions, but also there is no prospect that they may enjoy any fulfillment. On the other hand, in 27 an oxherd named Daphnis manages to seduce his girl with a promise of marriage, and early marriage to the nymph Nais features as part of the rewards of Daphnis for his musical excellence in 8, perhaps, among other things, a point of contrast with the hero’s presentation in the genuine pieces. Before turning to the bucolic hero Daphnis in 1 and 7 (and other, mythological, heroes in the genuine poems), it is important to observe that Theocritus and his successors dealt with the hero and the major themes of love and song by focusing on aspects that are not central in the programmatic pieces. Theocritus chose to depict a very young Daphnis and his Cyclopean connections, as it were, at the dawn of bucolic history. His successors followed him in those respects, but the end products are markedly different, mainly in their dramatic straightforwardness, relative optimism, and narratorial closure.

II. Success and failure in love and song Idyll 23 This homoerotic sequel of sorts to 3 recounts the suicide by hanging of a spurned lover and the lethal punishment of his cruel beloved boy by Eros. Unlike other composers of sequels (and prequels), the poet of 23 engages in elimination rather than elaboration, the addition of the boy’s death notwithstanding. The suicide of the lover and the end of the beloved are actually the only episodes described in any detail in the poem. Gow dismisses it as inelegant and “the least attractive of the whole Theocritean corpus”.1 This judgment may be too harsh, and I will argue that the poem does contain some original elements. However, it is undeniable that the linear structure, explicitness, didacticism and quite plodding, piling style of the poem do not make it particularly engaging, at least to modern audiences.2 The lover, whose last speech (19–48) is quoted verbatim by the narrator, is a sympathetic character in his lack of presumption and his depth of devotion to the boy—he even says that his halter is his last gift to the boy and that he will kill himself in order to stop annoying the beloved with his presence (20–22)—but virtually nothing is left to the imagination. Strict narratorial control is imposed throughout. The didactic orientation of the poem becomes obvious in the punishment and condemnation of the boy (58–60). The narrator tries hard to present them as justified, but his effort is at best partially successful, generically or dramatically. He portrays the god Eros as a stern judge meting out punishment for the crime of spurning the advances of one’s admirers or of hating (62–63). However, in both archaic lyric and Hellenistic poetry harsh or foolish boys and girls do not regularly die, crushed by statues of Eros or by other means.3 The potential punishment

|| 1 Gow (19522) 408; cf. e.g. Legrand (1898) 58 and n. 12 below. For a more nuanced view see Lambert (2004) 79, and Hunter (2008) 394–99. 2 Copley (1940) has argued that the poem is constructed in triads, which might be thought to make it more pleasing. There is no doubt that it has a design and perhaps a fairly well thoughtout structure, but by itself this does not make it less simple or more pleasing. 3 The tale of the suicide Iphis and the cruel Anaxarete is narrated in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (14.698–758; cf. Ant. Lib. 39); see Hunter (2008) 396. Cf. Copley (1940) 52–53. There are stories of murderers who die as a punishment (see Gow [19522] 414), and an epigram of Callimachus (8) advises stepchildren to beware of their stepmothers even in death because a boy who was decorating his stepmother’s grave with a garland was killed by the stele, but no tale exactly parallel to that narrated in 23 survives.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615272-003

Idyll 23 |

123

for the alleged crime involves the eventual, virtually certain, turning of the offenders into unfortunate mature lovers.4 The narrator says that the boy insulted Eros (58), but the nature of the insult remains vague, as there is no indication that the boy spurned love in general, discounted the power of the god or had taken vows of chastity. Even Aphrodite in tragedy does not threaten or punish with death people who spurn admirers but only those who insult her by dismissing her power and prerogative, as in Aeschylus’ Supplices and Euripides’ Hippolytus. Similarly, the goddess says that Daphnis vowed or boasted that he would defeat Eros but suffered defeat (1.97–98). The boy may be thought to come to grief because, apart from his cruelty, he also becomes polluted by brushing against the corpse of the lover (55–56), but this kind of pollution is not punishable by death. The only conceivable explanation for the god’s wrath is the boy’s cruelty, but this would be a virtual unicum for the notoriously cruel Eros. The narrator, who suggests that even small, humane concessions on the boy’s part such as a glance, word or kiss would comfort the lover (7–9), apparently means to indicate that the boy’s intransigence, which led to the lover’s suicide, was hubristic and presumably hateful to Eros. Greek gods, though, were not merciful and did not reward mercy. According to the narrator, the boy had a change of heart on the verge of death. However, the dying boy’s didactic pronouncement (χαίρετε τοὶ φιλέοντες, ὁ γὰρ μισῶν ἐφονεύθη·/ στέργετε δ’ οἱ μισεῦντες, ὁ γὰρ θεὸς οἶδε δικάζειν, 62– 63), which is unrealistic in that the manner of his death makes it very unlikely that he would have the opportunity or desire to say anything, shows that he has acquired little maturity or wisdom.5 His last words first focus on his death as an occasion for lovers to rejoice (62), an impiously inappropriate reaction (cf. Od. 22.412, Archil. fr. 134 W2, Cratin. fr. 102 K-A). He then attempts to widen the scope by admonishing those who hate to love because the god knows how to punish || 4 The lover mentions this retributive punishment (33–34), and even the narrator seems to allude to it at the beginning (4–5). The bitter pain inflicted by Eros’ arrows is a metaphor for the acuity of lovers’ suffering (cf. e.g. 11.15–16), but the reference to the boy’s ignorance of the god’s power may hint at his eventual, painful acquisition of the requisite knowledge, although not as lover. 5 This may be a distant echo of tragedy (cf. next n.), but tragic perpetrators of crimes do not give advice to people to be cautious and avoid similar mistakes, as they very rarely (have a chance to) realize their lethal blindness or guilt. Aegisthus in Aeschylus’ Choephori, for instance, does not even learn who his killer is. Jason in Euripides’ Medea never admits that he was even partially responsible for the death of his sons. Only Peleus in Andromache advises against unfortunate marriage alliances (1279–83), but the misfortune of his family has a different cause, and the passage, which has been deleted by recent editors, is probably spurious. Contrast Moschus fr. 2.8 (στέργετε τὼς φιλέοντας ἵν’ ἢν φιλέητε φιλῆσθε), and cf. Reed (2006) 231, who suggests that the moral of the fragment is more ambiguous than the counterpart of 23. For the boy’s last words cf. n. 19 below.

124 | Success and failure in love and song (63), essentially presenting the god as a love policeman. Even so, the fact that the poem ends with the boy’s pronouncement leaves no doubt that the narrator endorses it as the moral of the story, although he fails to justify it convincingly. Throughout the poem, there are few echoes or refractions of the tradition,6 and Theocritus’ own poetry is no exception, although, as already suggested, 3 is important not only thematically but also formally and structurally. Again, lack of echoes is not a defect by definition, but the comparison with the genuine poems leaves an impression of exiguousness. The two characters, who remain anonymous throughout, have few features other than those germane to the story, and presented already in the introduction, which recounts the growing despair of the unfortunate lover in the face of the handsome boy’s angry scorn. The boy’s physical attractiveness is described in detail (2, 7–9, 14–15), and so is his unyielding cruelty toward his admirer, who could helplessly fall only deeper in love, despite the boy’s cruel spurning of his advances (3–14). The man was so far gone in his infatuation that even the hostile rage of the handsome youth excited his passion (15–16). The couples in the genuine paederastic pieces are also anonymous, but the first-person narration, the intricacies of the narrators’ sketch of the relationships and of the pairs’ behavior provide a depth absent from the largely one-dimensional 23. The genuine frame poems 11 and 13 narrate mythological examples, 3 features a song about mythological love-affairs, and 6 an episode of Galateia’s turbulent wooing by Polyphemus. By contrast, 23 is introduced as a tale or folktale (“there was a man who loved passionately a cruel youth etc.”), which might function as an early signpost of didacticism and of a virtually complete lack of temporal or geographical markers. Even though the lover’s monologue may for all intents and purposes be taken as a paraklausithyron, no mention of night, the advent of morning, or indeed song is made, and the narrative of the boy’s activities and end likewise fails to include any temporal indication. Idyll 29 implies the context of a symposium (1–2), and 30 specifies the duration of the lover’s infatuation (2) and the time of his last encounter with the boy, which inflamed him further (7–9). 12 begins with the memorable reference to the lover’s crippling distress over a brief absence of the beloved and his joy at the boy’s return (1–9). 2, 10, 11 and 14 include details about the lovers’ socioeconomic status and the onset and development of their passion. Although the embedded songs of 7 provide few details about the relationships they mention, even those

|| 6 For echoes of Homer and Bion see Radici Colace (1971). Sistakou (2016) 207–11 discusses formal and structural similarities with tragic dramas.

Idyll 23 | 125

songs include temporal and contextual specifics and feature a profusion of humans and gods. Unsurprisingly, 3 and 30, focusing exclusively on the pair, are closest to 23. Nevertheless, apart from the specifications in 30, the goatherd in 3 refers to several people, and his relationship to Amaryllis seems to have included an earlier stage in which the pair held conversations and had some intimacy.7 The goatherd also mentions the plants screening the entrance to his sweetheart’s cave (3.14), but neither the narrator nor the lover in 23 says anything about the boy’s house or door or gymnasium, for instance. Crucially, the man is all alone in his presumably nocturnal lament and suicide, and so is the boy in his apparently matutinal pursuits.8 The only other humans mentioned in the poem are the addressee of the epitaph the lover scratches on the boy’s wall (46–48), on which some more below, and the addressees of the dying boy’s last words, the lovers, who should rejoice over his death, and the haters, who should be warned by it (62–63). None of these is an individual or group known to the characters or otherwise specified by temporal or other means. Actually, they are mere representatives of groups operating in diachrony rather than synchrony and they contribute virtually nothing to a clearer sketch of the pair’s individuality or relationship.9 With no rival(s) for the boy’s affections mentioned by the narrator or the lover, the boy comes across as an enraged Hippolytus (3, 6, 10–14; cf. 19–20) rather than a disloyal Cyrnus or the fickle beloved of 29. He is actually the only beloved, male or female, in the collection whose intransigence seems to stem from anger. Neither the narrator nor the lover says anything about any perceptible, or perceived by the boy, shortcoming of the lover, unlike, for instance, the goatherd of 3 or the Cyclops. The lover is not even said to be advanced in years. The boy finds the lover and his courting hateful, for reasons neither the narrator nor the

|| 7 See above p. 86. For the goatherd’s loneliness see I n. 140 above. 8 The vulgate reading of 57 (τῆλε φίλων) deserves consideration: the boy went to the pool “apart from his friends”. 9 The lover also does not invoke any god or supernatural power, unlike characters in genuine poems, who often invoke or talk about gods and heroes. Only Eros and Cythereia appear cursorily in the introduction (4–5, 16) and the statue and judgment of Eros at the end (57–63). Unsurprisingly, 11 and 6 include very few references to and invocations of divinities; See above pp. 105–6. Of the spurious poems, 21 is closest to 23, as the two fishermen do not invoke gods or mention humans, although Asphalion refers to Poseidon and Amphitrite (54–55; cf. 19). The conversation between the fishermen that follows the introduction and takes up the rest of the poem mitigates the sense of their isolation. The two old fishermen are in the countryside, with no other people around, but at least they have each other. The lover and the boy in 23 are apparently city residents, as the reference to the boy’s gymnasium indicates, but no other citizen is mentioned.

126 | Success and failure in love and song lover cares to point out or speculate about. As already suggested, no vow of chastity is involved, and the boy’s attitude does not seem to be shaped by aesthetic or material concerns, for instance. He does not seem to be driven by vanity, fickleness or even a fear of commitment like the girl Acrotime in 27. The narrator indicates that the boy did not know the power of the god Eros (4–5), which finds parallels in other poems relating the travails of lovers and the cruelty of their beloved youths and maidens. However, the narrator does not elaborate on the boy’s ignorance or foolishness but devotes more than half of the introduction (6–15), unfortunately corrupt, to the account of the boy’s angry reaction to the lover’s courting. The only conceivable reason for the boy’s angry intransigence is the lover’s perceived attempt to impose his will on him. This may be appreciated as one of the precious few innovative features of the poem. On the other hand, the failure to associate the boy’s harshness with religious beliefs or ritual practices, which might make him the heir of famous heroes of the tradition, robs his behavior of intertextual depth. No Idyll, especially no paederastic Idyll, is abundantly informative or detailed, but echoes of the tradition contribute to the creation of dramatically significant effects, for instance in 1, 7 and 12. In 23 the absence of wider context and intertextual background creates an impression of reductiveness, with virtually no flashes of individuality. Remarkably, although the poem is substantially lengthier than the genuine paederastic pieces, it does not include any warning to the youth to mend his ways. Following a series of comparisons of youthful beauty with short-lived beautiful flowers (28–29), there is a prediction that the boy will eventually suffer the pangs of unrequited love when he is older (33–34).10 Nevertheless, he is not explicitly admonished to curb his foolish arrogance, show good sense and evince some favor toward his devoted lover before it is too late. The glossing over of other standard themes of paederastic poetry such as a promise of rich emotional rewards to the boy is not unexpected in view of the lover’s despair and abandonment of all hope of rapprochement or success. The poem, though, does not even include an expression of regret or lament over the boy’s foolish failure to reciprocate and enjoy happiness, widespread or eternal fame, or at least civic good repute. Even the prediction that he will fall in love and suffer in his turn falls flat, as Eros will very soon demand the boy’s lifeblood rather than his tears, and his lover’s earlier assertion that he knows the future (27) turns out to have been an empty claim. For all his abandonment of hope and his decision to kill himself, the lover has gained little insight into his own posthumous prospects and especially the || 10 Cf. n. 4 above.

Idyll 23 | 127

boy’s potential reaction to his death.11 The lover’s speech falls into two almost equal parts, in the first of which he laments his plight and recounts his resolve to die (19–34): ἄγριε παῖ καὶ στυγνέ, κακᾶς ἀνάθρεμμα λεαίνας, λάινε παῖ καὶ ἔρωτος ἀνάξιε, δῶρά τοι ἦνθον λοίσθια ταῦτα φέρων, τὸν ἐμὸν βρόχον· οὐκέτι γάρ σε, κῶρε, θέλω λυπεῖν ποχ’ ὁρώμενος, ἀλλὰ βαδίζω ἔνθα τύ μευ κατέκρινας, ὅπῃ λόγος ἦμεν ἀτερπέων ξυνὸν τοῖσιν ἐρῶσι τὸ φάρμακον, ἔνθα τὸ λᾶθος. ἀλλὰ καὶ ἢν ὅλον αὐτὸ λαβὼν ποτὶ χεῖλος ἀμέλξω, οὐδ’ οὕτως σβέσσω τὸν ἐμὸν πόθον. ἄρτι δὲ χαίρειν τοῖσι τεοῖς προθύροις ἐπιβάλλομαι. οἶδα τὸ μέλλον. καὶ τὸ ῥόδον καλόν ἐστι, καὶ ὁ χρόνος αὐτὸ μαραίνει· καὶ τὸ ἴον καλόν ἐστιν ἐν εἴαρι, καὶ ταχὺ γηρᾷ· [λευκὸν τὸ κρίνον ἐστί, μαραίνεται ἁνίκα πίπτει· ἁ δὲ χιὼν λευκά, καὶ τάκεται ἁνίκα † παχθῇ·] καὶ κάλλος καλόν ἐστι τὸ παιδικόν, ἀλλ’ ὀλίγον ζῇ. ἥξει καιρὸς ἐκεῖνος ὁπανίκα καὶ τὺ φιλάσεις. ἁνίκα τὰν κραδίαν ὀπτεύμενος ἁλμυρὰ κλαύσεις. Cruel and sullen boy, reared by a savage lioness; stony-hearted boy unworthy of love—I have come to you bringing this last gift, my noose. I do not want you to be troubled with the sight of me any longer, lad; I am going where you have condemned me to go, to a place where they say is the universal remedy for lovers’ sufferings—oblivion. But if I put that remedy to my lips and drink it all, I shall not even then quench my desire. Now at last I begin to take pleasure in this door of yours. I know what will happen to you. The rose is fair, too, but time withers it; the violet is fair, too, in the spring, but it quickly ages; fair, too, is a boy’s beauty, but it lasts a short time. A moment will arrive when you too are a lover, when your heart is on fire and you weep salt tears.

This section has the greatest narrative and thematic potential, as it touches on past, present and future and deals quite extensively with the predicament of unrequited love and the terrible end of a hopeless attachment.12 The potential is not

|| 11 The lover’s failure to become wiser even on the verge of death parallels the boy’s situation. Cf. n. 19 below. 12 Gow (n. 1 above) calls this part frigid and points out that the boy cannot, ex hypothesi, hear the speech addressed to him. This may be so, but if the lament is a form of paraklausithyron, then the addressee is, ex hypothesi, assumed to be in a position to hear it. Even if the boy does not hear the speech, the lover takes care to leave a suicide note scratched on the wall of his addressee’s house. This would inform the boy of the suicide’s motive. Be that as it may, the invention of the suicide note-cum-epitaph is one of the poem’s few original devices.

128 | Success and failure in love and song actualized, as the lover focuses on the beautiful boy’s harshness and says nothing about any advantage of his own,13 for instance, or anything about the history of the unfortunate affair, as already suggested. The initial address to the boy (19– 20), apart from standard metaphors conveying his cruelty, concludes with a reproach to the effect that the “stony” boy is unworthy of love (λάινε παῖ καὶ ἔρωτος ἀνάξιε, 20).14 This cry might signal that the lover on the verge of death is about to have a change of heart, or at least make a soberer assessment of the boy’s character and his indifference to the imminent death of the lover, but nothing comes of it, as the lover soon declares his devotion to the boy even in death (25–26). The lover’s instructions to the boy, which will turn out to be mere wishful thinking, take up the second part of his speech just before his suicide (35–48): ἀλλὰ τύ, παῖ, καὶ τοῦτο πανύστατον ἁδύ τι ῥέξον· ὁππόταν ἐξενθὼν ἀρταμένον ἐν προθύροισι τοῖσι τεοῖσιν ἴδῃς τὸν τλάμονα, μή με παρένθῃς, στᾶθι δὲ καὶ βραχὺ κλαῦσον, ἐπισπείσας δὲ τὸ δάκρυ λῦσον τᾶς σχοίνω με καὶ ἀμφίθες ἐκ ῥεθέων σῶν εἵματα καὶ κρύψον με, τὸ δ’ αὖ πύματόν με φίλασον· κἂν νεκρῷ χάρισαι τεὰ χείλεα. μή με φοβαθῇς· οὐ δύναμαι † εἴν † σε· ἀπαλλάξεις με φιλάσας. χῶμα δέ μοι κοίλανον ὅ μευ κρύψει τὸν ἔρωτα, κἢν ἀπίῃς, τόδε μοι τρὶς ἐπάυσον· “ὦ φίλε, κεῖσαι·” ἢν δὲ θέλῃς, καὶ τοῦτο· “καλὸς δέ μοι ὤλεθ’ ἑταῖρος.” γράψον καὶ τόδε γράμμα τὸ σοῖς τοίχοισι χαράσσω· “τοῦτον ἔρως ἔκτεινεν· ὁδοιπόρε, μὴ παροδεύσῃς, ἀλλὰ στὰς τόδε λέξον· ἀπηνέα εἶχεν ἑταῖρον.” But do me this one last sweet favor, my lad. When you come out and see my wretched body hanging in your doorway, do not pass me by; stop and weep a while, and after your libation of tears release me from the rope, put on me the clothes that your body has worn, cover me up, and give me a final kiss: dead though I be, grace me with your lips. You have nothing to fear from me: I cannot detain you: one kiss, and you will be rid of me. Hollow out for me a grave to bury my love; as you depart, cry out three times, ‘There you lie, my friend,’ and,

|| 13 In what is arguably the most emotional part of the poem (35–48), which will be discussed in a moment, a possible reference to the lover’s beauty may be detected, although καλός (45) may point to his moral rather than physical assets. Cf. 12.23 and I n. 91 above. There is no indication that the lover of 23 is self-conceited. If he points in passing to his comeliness, this brief suggestion would highlight his difference from the Cyclops in 6 and especially the arrogant oxherd in 20. 14 If the reference to the lioness as the boy’s foster mother (19) harks back to 3.15–16 (νῦν ἔγνων τὸν Ἔρωτα· βαρὺς θεός· ἦ ῥα λεαίνας/μαζὸν ἐθήλαζεν, δρυμῷ τέ νιν ἔτραφε μάτηρ), then the lover “corrects” the goatherd: love is not pitiless, but the unyielding beloved is savage and unworthy of love.

Idyll 23 | 129

if you like, these words too: ‘My fair comrade is no more.’ The inscription should be the words I am writing on your house wall: ‘Love was the death of this man. Wayfarer, do not pass by; stop and say, “His comrade was cruel.”’

The lover hopes that the boy will piously conduct his funeral. His desire for sexual contact with the boy emerges clearly from his wish that the boy should cover him with his clothes (39–40a) and kiss him (40b; cf. Bion 1.45). I will return to kissing in a moment. What is most conspicuous and unexpected is the lover’s wish that the boy ritually address him as “friend” (φίλος, 44) and “comrade” (ἑταῖρος, 45) before departing. The epitaph which he scratches on the boy’s wall and asks him to put up is addressed to a passerby reading the inscription. The speaking tombstone is a frequent topos in funerary inscriptions at least from the fourth century onwards and the only echo of a literary or sub-literary genre. In the epitaph the “comrade” (ἑταῖρος) of the deceased is called “cruel” (ἀπηνής, 48), which might be taken as another complaint or reproach. However, all this comes at the apex of the lover’s fantasy about the softening of the boy at the sight of the deceased and the boy’s willingness to offer him a loving funeral. The repeated use of “comrade” (ἑταῖρος) recasts the relationship in terms of this fantasy, and the claim about the “comrade’s” cruelty memorializes a moral failure in the framework of a relationship that did not exist and thus did not lead to the lover’s death. While the first part of the epigram (τοῦτον ἔρως ἔκτεινεν, 47) is true as far as it goes, since his lovesickness actually killed the lover, the last (ἀπηνέα εἶχεν ἑταῖρον, 48), which dictates posterity’s view of the affair, is misleading. The passerby is provided with an explanation of the reference to the deceased’s cause of death: he died because his cruel partner dealt harshly with him. The boy had indeed been harsh with the man infatuated with him, but the duo were no partners or lovers.15 This is the desperate lover’s only attempt to gain some control over his situation, admittedly posthumously, by dictating and securing a memorialization of his fantasy of an unfortunate erotic relationship. The lover’s infatuation turned out to be utterly unrelieved and fruitless, as the boy angrily refused him even the smallest token of affection (7–9; cf. 30.7–8). The hapless man, about to put an end to his tormented life, although not to his torment (cf. 26, 43), tries to make the posthumous best of his desperate situation by styling himself as the ill-starred lover of a cruel partner, a reversal of sorts of the fantasy of reciprocity in 12: instead of “Inspirer” and “Listener”, the pair in 23 might be called and, crucially,

|| 15 Lambert (2004) 79–80 thinks that the lover’s desire for mutuality is shattered by the honesty of the epitaph, but such honesty is detected only in the first clause (47).

130 | Success and failure in love and song memorialized as “Lover” and “Cruel partner”.16 This is the only share of posthumous, eternal fame to which he aspires. Although not a reflection of any idyllic and idealized golden age of homosexual concord, it is still a measure of fame carved in stone and commemorated by future generations of men passing by the memorial, as future sailors will comment on the tomb of the champion killed by brave Hector (Il. 7.89–91). For the rest, the lover’s speech echoes mainly the previous and next part. ἀπηνής (48), the last word of the lover about his cruel “partner”, is the first word of the narrator about the boy (1), which comes even before ἔφαβος.17 Unsurprisingly, kisses, the desirability of the boy’s mouth, and his exceptional beauty appear prominently in both the introduction and the lover’s speech. As already noted, the narrator emphasizes the boy’s refusal to grant the lover even a coy glance, or a glimpse of radiant lips and blushing cheeks (7–8)—the only glimpse, admittedly of a gothic sort, of a beautiful crimson color is provided by the boy’s blood spreading in the water, as his head is being crushed by the falling statue (60–61). Kissing as a relief from the torment of love (cf. 9) is the only pleasure unfortunate lovers such as the goatherd (3.19–20; cf. 27.4) and the Cyclops (11.55– 56) may aspire to (cf. 2.126). It is also a major theme in 12 (30–37; cf. 29.25). The goatherd in 3, alone in his serenade, apparently without support from any companion and helpless in his love, wishes that Amaryllis may appear so that he may give her a kiss but ends with the dark note that she will savor his death as a mouthful of honey (54; cf. 27).

|| 16 From Homer onwards several characters (e.g. Hector [Il. 6.460–61, 7.89–91] and Tecmessa [S. Aj. 501–4]) imagine statements people will make about them or their loved ones (so-called τις-Reden), but no one dictates a statement and certainly no one attempts to shape posterity’s view of relationships and emotions involved in them. Radici Colace (1971) 333–34 thinks that the ritual farewell echoes Odysseus’ account of the final salutation to his dead comrades (Od. 9.65). This may be so, but the epic group solidarity and funeral service are very remote from the fantasy of partnership the lover entertains or even from the posthumous renown the speaker of 12 aspires to. For τις-Reden see Stoevesandt (2008) 147, and Finglass (2011) 448–49. 17 ἔφαβος designates the boy in the frame (1, 60; cf. 56), and the last predicate attributed to him is κακός (60), a lapidary, as it were, moral condemnation, perhaps deliberately chosen to contrast as an antonym with ἀγαθός (2) and καλός (15) in the references to the boy’s physical beauty (cf. 28–32) and possibly the lover’s physical/moral comeliness (45). Only at the very end, the last time he refers to the boy, does the narrator use παῖς (61), which might be meant to convey some emotion over his death and a kind of rapprochement with the linguistic choices of the lover, who uses παῖς repeatedly (19–20, 35; cf. κῶρε, 22), in accordance with his self-perception as ἐραστής and the boy as hoped-for παιδικά (cf. 32). The narrator first refers to the lover as ἀνήρ τις πολύφιλτρος (1).

Idyll 23 | 131

In 23 the lover’s obsession with kissing is evident from the unusual metaphor he employs in his contemplation of death to which the boy has condemned him. He calls the oblivion of death, i.e. the fact that the dead do not remember or care about anything, the reputed common cure for lovers’ ills (23–24). This might be thought to be the poem’s innovative suggestion about the perennial quest for a cure for love, different from song, magic, or emigration. As Aeschinas in 14, for instance, wishes to travel abroad and become a mercenary to find a cure for his disease, the lover in 23 wishes to take a journey to the realms of oblivion. Nevertheless, he goes on to say that even if he firmly attaches this remedy to his lips and drains it to the dregs, he will not quench his desire. In other words, he will not be rid of his passion for the boy even in death (25–26). This may be a distant reminiscence of Achilles’ vow to remember Patroclus even in death (Il. 22.389–90) or epitaphic references to the “water of forgetfulness”.18 Most pertinent in the context of the poem is the lover’s visualization of his death and posthumous situation in terms virtually identical to those that might describe a passionate kiss (cf. Bion 1.48–49). The speaker describes a passionate action, attaching his lips to the remedy and draining it, as if it were the kiss of his lover, but declares that even such a draught as he envisages will not quench his desire. Death is not a palliative for love—not his anyway. At least he hopes to enjoy some satisfaction from the posthumous kiss and funeral care he enjoins the boy to offer him. Unlike the goatherd in 3, he does not (bring himself to) imagine or imply that the boy will actually enjoy his death, or will be completely unmoved by it—he only allows that his death will remove a nuisance from the boy’s life (21–22; cf. 42).19 The lover is incurable, pathetically vulnerable and/or incorrigible, even on the verge of death and allegedly beyond. The narrator insists that the boy felt and did nothing of what his lover had wished for (53–57), but the boy’s unyielding intransigence is already obvious from the introduction (1–14; cf. 17–20). In this light, it is not the possible illusion of the lover about his comeliness (45) and especially about the boy’s softening after his death that sets him apart from other lovers in the collection. It is the lover’s hope and attempt, however desperate, to

|| 18 Cf. Hunter (2008) 398. 19 Death, though, is indeed the ultimate equalizer or unifier: the only redeeming aspect of the poem’s didactic ending is the unexpected similarity of the voices of the lover and the boy on the verge of death: irrespective of the boy’s impiety, insult to the god and insensitivity toward his lover, the boy is at the end assimilated to the lover, killed by love (cf. 47~60, 62), crying out about love and hatred and declaring that the hateful one has perished (62~22). Ironically, this is very far from the lover’s fantasy of companionship.

132 | Success and failure in love and song have his fantasy of a relationship memorialized and thus glorified in and by posterity. This attempt is the poem’s main original and noteworthy element. It goes one step further than the fantasies of the lovers in 12 or 29, as they were in a relationship with their boys, at least in the dramatic time of the Idylls. Apart from the death of both lover and boy, 23 is unique in that the introduction and, to an extent, the lover’s speech leave the audience in little doubt that the lover, for all his lack of pretention and the apparent absence of rivals or disadvantages, has virtually no hope that his wishes might come true, even partially. On the other hand, despite the futility of the lover’s wishes, his story became famous enough to be the subject of a poem, in a metapoetic vindication of sorts. In this respect at least, he is much closer to the lover in 12 than (to) the lovers in the other spurious pieces, primarily the arrogant oxherd in 20.

Idyll 20 The oxherd, the only narrator of the poem, failed to enjoy a coveted kiss by Eunica and entertains no hopes of success or rapprochement with her. However, he does not become dejected, let alone suicidal, on account of his failure, but he is enraged (15–18), like the boy in 23, and turns vindictive (44–45), like the lover in 29. This self-conceited character may not properly be called a lover, and it is not even clear whether he ever had any valid reason to hope that Eunica would favor him. Unlike the lover of 23, he has had some physical proximity to his object of desire and had tried to kiss her. In the dramatic present of the poem she has already rejected and abandoned him (17), and he undertakes or envisages no other attempt to approach or win her over, whether by means of gifts or song. The reasons for her rejection of his advances are listed in a caustically contemptuous speech of hers, which he quotes (1–10): Εὐνίκα μ’ ἐγέλαξε θέλοντά μιν ἁδὺ φιλᾶσαι καί μ’ ἐπικερτομέοισα τάδ’ ἔννεπεν· ‘ἔρρ’ ἀπ’ ἐμεῖο. βουκόλος ὢν ἐθέλεις με κύσαι, τάλαν; οὐ μεμάθηκα ἀγροίκως φιλέειν, ἀλλ’ ἀστικὰ χείλεα θλίβειν. μὴ τύγε μευ κύσσῃς τὸ καλὸν στόμα μηδ’ ἐν ὀνείροις. οἷα βλέπεις, ὁπποῖα λαλεῖς, ὡς ἄγρια παίσδεις. [ὡς τρυφερὸν καλέεις, ὡς κωτίλα ῥήματα φράσδεις· ὡς μαλακὸν τὸ γένειον ἔχεις, ὡς ἁδέα χαίταν.] χείλεά τοι νοσέοντι, χέρες δέ τοι ἐντὶ μέλαιναι, καὶ κακὸν ἐξόσδεις. ἀπ’ ἐμεῦ φύγε μή με μολύνῃς.’

Idyll 20 | 133

Eunica laughed at me when I wanted a sweet kiss, and in a mocking tone she said, “Get away from me! Do you, an oxherd, want to kiss me, you poor thing? I’ve not learned to kiss country bumpkins, but to press townsmen’s lips with mine. Don’t you kiss my pretty mouth, even in your dreams! How you stare! How you prate! How roughly you flirt! [How softly you address me! What lively words you speak! How soft your beard is! How fragrant your hair!] Your lips are infected, your hands are filthy, and you stink. Get away from me, in case you make me dirty!”

Kirstein suggests that Eunica rejects him because he is an oxherd, while in genuine poems suitors are never spurned because of class or professional prejudice. He also claims that her reproaches reveal nothing about the suitor’s individual traits but are generic reproaches to oxherds.20 A socio-professional slant is certainly there, since Eunica denigrates her suitor as a pretentious oxherd and styles herself as a dainty lady with urban partners (cf. 31–32). On the other hand, there is no reason to assume that the traits she points out are not personal, whether she believes that all oxherds are rough rustics unworthy of her or not. In his rebuttal of her reproaches and alleged folly in rejecting an excellent suitor, the oxherd stresses first, and at length, his personal advantages (19–31).21 Since no sane woman would reject such a catch, he rationalizes his amatory setback by attributing it to Eunica’s bias, which he further tries to demolish by invoking mythological examples of oxherds who enjoyed the affection of divinities (34–41) in order to cast her as hubristically foolish and blinded by her arrogance (42–45; cf. 31). Although he devotes significant space to his refutation of her reproaches, he says nothing in praise of his professional capacity, whether about his animals, wealth, or herding competence. There is also no claim that oxherds are not roughlooking or -smelling, for instance, and no indication that he misunderstands the import of Eunica’s reproaches. In any case, as will be argued below, he fails to refute both Eunica’s reasons for rejecting him as a person and as an oxherd. This is not unrelated to the fact that he fails to contextualize the relationship, if this is the right term to use in his case. Eunica is apparently a town-dweller (31; cf. 4),22 while the oxherd dwells in the mountains (30)23 and does not seem to care much for town-folk, at least for the likes of Eunica. No other specification is provided about either party, their surroundings, dwellings, circumstances or encounter. || 20 Kirstein (2007) 136–37. 21 As Rosenmeyer (1969) 257 points out, “with a series of rococo comparisons”. Cf. n. 27 below. 22 She may be a courtesan, and she is certainly no blushing maiden. On the other hand, it is not clear that she is a sex professional, as ἑταίρα (18) may be used to designate a person the speaker would aspire to have a relationship with (cf. 23.45, 48). 23 Bernsdorff (2006) 184 suggests that in post-Theocritean bucolic poetry the mountains have become the main bucolic habitat, and the poet of 20 mentions them two more times (35, 45).

134 | Success and failure in love and song The oxherd unexpectedly addresses shepherds, only once, and asks them to confirm that he is handsome (19). The address may be meant to suggest that his speech is not a soliloquy but addressed to a silent, internal audience of his colleagues, who may be thought to sympathize with him. Alternatively, the address may be meant to highlight the rustic’s simple manner of speaking, which favors direct over indirect speech and includes appeals, although not questions, to an unspecified person or persons to confirm the truth of the speaker’s statement.24 Even if the oxherd addresses an actual audience of shepherds, their silent presence and failure to offer any corroboration of his claims make the address dramatically inert.25 For the rest, apart from the poem’s failure to sketch a distinctly bucolic (or indeed urban) setting, the main distinguishing mark of 20 from 3, 6 and 11, which may be considered models or parallels, is the absence of both any trace of humility or self-awareness and any kind of emotional attachment of the speaker to Eunica.26 The oxherd never as much as mentions Eunica’s beauty or charm even in passing, perhaps (meant to count as) a major blunder if she is a pampered courtesan or a lady popular with men and presumably used to expressions of male admiration. I already noted that the oxherd stresses hyperbolically, to the point of narcissism, his own physical desirability,27 and is enraged because Eunica has rejected him (15–18): ἐμοὶ δ’ ἄφαρ ἔζεσεν αἷμα, καὶ χρόα φοινίχθην ὑπὸ τὤλγεος ὡς ῥόδον ἕρσᾳ. χἂ μὲν ἔβα με λιποῖσα, φέρω δ’ ὑποκάρδιον ὀργάν, ὅττι με τὸν χαρίεντα κακὰ μωμήσαθ’ ἑταίρα.

|| 24 Cf. Kyriakou (2006) 414. 25 For the address to the shepherds and its possible metaliterary context see below pp. 139–140. 26 See Kirstein (2007) 106–11, with previous literature. Apart from the jilted and lovesick Simaetha in 2, even Aeschinas in 14, who has been reduced to unkempt skin and bones by his love trouble (4–5; cf. 10.1–6, 14), calls his ex-girlfriend “charming” (8) and declares that he is on the verge of going mad (9) as he cannot fall out of love (50–53). Arland (1937) 55 suggests that the oxherd manages to free himself of passion, unlike the Cyclops in 11, and 20 is indeed the only poem in the collection in which love trouble seems to cease, but there was apparently no love or suffering to begin with. 27 White (1979) 130 even suggests that the narcissistic oxherd is depicted as a pathicus. Kirstein (2007) 111–14 discusses the debts of the oxherd’s self-praise to Idyll 11, arguing that the oxherd attributes to himself features of Galatea, grotesquely fusing in his self-conceited rant the virtues of suitor and beloved. Cf. below pp. 138–39.

Idyll 20 | 135

Straightaway my blood boiled, and I blushed at the insult like a rose in the dew. She went off and left me, but I bear anger in my heart because this vile courtesan slighted the handsome fellow that I am.

17b (φέρω δ’ ὑποκάρδιον ὀργάν) is probably a reminiscence of 11.15 (ἔχων ὑποκάρδιον ἕλκος), the narrator’s description of Polyphemus’ lovesickness (cf. Bion 1.17, μεῖζον δ’ ἁ Κυθέρεια φέρει ποτικάρδιον ἕλκος). This substitution of anger for lovesickness sets the Idyll irreconcilably apart not only from the genuine bucolic and paederastic pieces but also from 23. The oxherd’s anger and vindictiveness make future advances impossible, but it is plausible that his prospects would not be good, even if he persisted in his wooing. There is no confirmation of, let alone universal agreement over, his alleged beauty. It is true that there is no denial or refutation of his claims, either.28 Still, even if they are not completely fantastic, the self-praise of his appearance is obviously immoderate. Similarly, his boasting about his alleged virtuosity in song and all music instruments as well as wild success with all ladies (26–31) suggest quite forcefully that all this is wildly exaggerated and a product of a self-conceit at least as grave as the arrogance he imputes to Eunica. To take just one example, the claim that his eyes were much brighter than Athena’s (ὄμματά μοι γλαυκᾶς χαροπώτερα πολλὸν Ἀθάνας, 25) naturally remains totally unsubstantiated and is hubristic. Simaetha too claims that the chest of her Delphis was brighter than the Moon (2.79), but this is naïvely exaggerated praise of the beloved in a homely, confessional address to the goddess. The Moon, at least, is certainly visible while the oxherd is unlikely ever to have set eyes on Athena. Fantuzzi argues that the oxherd responds to Eunica’s taunts with an elevated reference to the warrior-goddess, defending his manliness and bravery by attributing brightness to his eyes: according to the tenets of physiognomy, bright eyes (χαροποί) denoted bravery (ps.-Aristotle, Physiogn. 807b1–12, 812b5–5) and grey (γλαυκοί) cowardice (812b4–5).29 If the oxherd may be thought to wish to counter the taunt of softness, he presents himself as brave but the warrior-goddess as a coward: not only does he dare to hubristically compare his eyes with those of the goddess but he also denigrates the alleged divine model of bravery by suggesting that her eyes are of a color signifying cowardice. Besides, this unfortunate, hubristic comparison associates contrasting physiognomic categories || 28 The reproaches of Eunica may go some way toward this end, but she does not say that her suitor is ugly. She denigrates his rough looks, manner of speaking and unpleasant smell, but these shortcomings are not incompatible with good looks, at least of a rugged sort. See the discussion below. 29 Fantuzzi (2007a) 18–19.

136 | Success and failure in love and song and thus turns out to be self-refuting: grey eyes are not bright and belong to cowards. The oxherd fails to stress his beauty or his manliness or both. Although he makes the comparison in passing, and it is perhaps not meant to keep the attention of the audience, surrounded as it is by a volley of self-admiring comparisons, it is an unmistakable sign that if Eunica considers herself to be above the gods (cf. 43), so does her suitor. For her part, Eunica is a more intriguing character, not least with respect to her attitude toward the rustic suitor. There is no doubt that she has rebuffed his advances, but her speech is introduced with the participle ἐπικερτομέοισα (2). The verb occurs in the Homeric epics and rarely afterwards.30 It never qualifies a speech that is hostile, openly or throughout, although Patroclus (Il. 16.744), Achilles (Il. 24.649) and Eumaeus (Od. 22.194; cf. 22.287, 24.240) address enemies. The speakers adopt a bantering tone, teasing or mocking their addressees and occasionally others. Patroclus’ speech is delivered in lieu of a vaunt over the dead Kebriones, his last named victim and Hector’s half-brother and charioteer. Eumaeus mocks Melanthius, the dedicated servant of the suitors, who is bound, literally and metaphorically, to die, shortly after the suitors. Priam, though, the addressee of Achilles’s speech, is not in any such position (cf. Od. 24.240). It is unlikely that Achilles mocks him, although he may adopt a tongue-in-cheek attitude, intimating that the elder should leave the camp immediately.31 Eunica is presented as a victorious warrior, who mocks fallen adversaries and also takes revenge on hubristic or immoral enemies. On the other hand, Patroclus’ teasing vaunt is out of place and out of character for him, indicating both his deepening delusion, loss of restraint and sobriety, and his imminent demise at the hands of Apollo.32 Achilles also will soon be dead, as a consequence of his quarrel with Agamemnon, which led to the death of Patroclus and Hector. Neither

|| 30 Before Idyll 20, it is used only by Herodotus (8.92), who relates the shouted reproach of the Aeginetan captain Polycritus to Themistocles as their ships pursued the routed Persian vessels at Salamis: Polycritus mocked Themistocles because the latter had accused the Aeginetans of medizing. 31 The claim that the ransoming of Hector’s body may be delayed if Agamemnon hears of Priam’s presence from Achaean leaders who might visit Achilles’ tent for consultations, allegedly a common occurrence (651–55), may be a mocking jab at his own camp: there were no consultations between Achilles and the other leaders during his withdrawal from fighting, although things improved markedly after his renunciation of his anger. Achilles may mock the boorishness and impiety of Agamemnon and the tendency of other leaders to side with him rather than with Achilles, even in pious matters in which he takes honorable initiatives, such as the situation in book 1. Cf. Postlethwaite (1998) 102–3. 32 For warrior vaunts see Kyriakou (2001a), and cf. Neal (2006) 74–75.

Idyll 20 | 137

Eunica nor her addressee is running any actual danger. Even so, the high-register evocation of battle situations and actual or imminent battle deaths, placed so early on in the narration, is an intriguing device in a poem that may hardly be called distinguished with respect to its links with the tradition, especially that of high poetry. The introductory qualification of the quoted speech, which takes up about one fifth of the poem, leaves the audience wondering about Eunica’s stance. Since the narrator is the oxherd, who entertains no doubt as to her attitude or intentions but describes her as putting on airs and harboring utter contempt for her lowly suitor (cf. 12–15), the audience are not encouraged to question the validity of his view in general and the use of ἐπικερτομέω in the sense ‘to mock’ in particular. Still, the initial suggestion of mockery, which, it may be noted, contributes little to the account of the woman’s response to the suitor’s advances and is not taken up at the end, in contrast to the verb ἐγέλαξε (1, 15), may be viewed as a pregnant choice that leaves open a small window of ambiguity, both linguistic and dramatic. There is no indication that the narrator perceives and means to suggest any ambiguity in Eunica’s speech or attitude toward him, but informed audiences may detect the connotations, and wonder whether her claims are made entirely in earnest. As already suggested, a handsome and even artistically accomplished rustic with several rustic admirers may very well flirt roughly, smell unpleasantly and have dirty (or tanned) hands. If the oxherd is not completely unattractive, Eunica may rebuff him while not being absolutely serious in all that she says. He may have several shortcomings but she may just point them out only to tease, inflame and incite him to offer her more than he has already. More concretely, if she is a courtesan, or even just a woman with experience in sexual liaisons, it is most unlikely that she would be eager to grant her favors to a suitor who does not appear to be seriously interested in her or willing to offer material rewards in return, as the oxherd apparently is not. His only objective seems to have been a kiss, or conceivably a sexual liaison that would grow from it. He says nothing about any deeper feelings for Eunica and certainly does not offer her any gifts, unlike the bucolic suitors in other Idylls, or at least a promise of a stable relationship.33 || 33 Not even his allegedly wide-ranging musical skill is put to the service of his courting, and there is no suggestion that it might have the capacity to entice Eunica or at least assuage his torment, since no such torment exists. In any case, the contrast with the Cyclops, who promises a long list of gifts and comforts to Galateia (11.34–58), and with the goatherd in 3 (10–11, 21–23, 34) and Daphnis in 27 (34, 38, 60–62) is obvious. Trovati (2001) 40, who considers 11 one of the main models of 20, is able to name only musical excellence as a common advantage. For the decoupling of musical skill from amatory persuasion in late bucolic cf. Reed (2006) 230.

138 | Success and failure in love and song If so, then the suitor’s anger is excessive, and his blaming of Eunica and the final curse (44–45) out of place,34 as much a result of self-conceit as the rejection he attributes to Eunica’s arrogance.35 Although ἐπικερτομέοισα, used early on by a narrator who shows no subtlety, may not render the entire poem ambivalent, the attitude of Eunica is less clear than that of the beloved women and boys in other poems, despite the verbatim quotation of her speech.36 In a similar vein, the narrator’s list of love affairs of gods and oxherds (34–41), which harks back to 3 (40–51) and highlights the gap with it, does little to make things clearer or support the oxherd’s claims. The goatherd evokes happy unions between mortals and passionate, albeit ultimately doomed, affairs between mortals and goddesses. The mortal men have some similarities with him, as they were certainly in love with their ladies and some actively wooed them, but he draws no explicit parallels between himself and the mythological models. The indignant oxherd evokes no wooing and no unions between mortals but only examples of divinities who fell madly in love with oxherds, while Eunica has spurned him and thus obviously considers herself more important than gods (42– 43). Eunica, though, is a mortal woman and she would not necessarily afford to grant her affections to whoever might take her fancy, however (allegedly) handsome and accomplished he might be. Whether a courtesan or not, she apparently needed to secure a partner or partners able and willing to provide for her. By contrast, the gods could indulge their passions with no other considerations. In any case, the gods fell in love with surpassingly handsome youths. The profession, status and material assets of the mortal sweethearts were naturally irrelevant to their divine lovers—all mortals are by definition inferior to gods, and the mythological oxherds were of noble origin anyway. Nothing of the sort applies to Eunica

|| 34 The curse may be a reminiscence of a complaint attributed to Sappho (fr. 168b.4 V), perhaps cursing Eunica not only to sexual loneliness but also specifically to professional failure, if she is a courtesan; cf. Fantuzzi (2007a) 25–26. The loss of the context of the original, if such it is, prohibits assessment of the echo’s effectiveness, but the record of the narrator does not provide grounds for critical optimism. For vindictive curses see Faraone (1999) 81. 35 His description of Eunica’s affectation and posing (11–15) is also not corroborated. There is no valid reason to assume that it is a completely misguided assessment, but his tendency to exaggeration and his anger do not inspire much confidence as to the accuracy of his claims. 36 The audience hear the actual words of the female object of desire also in 27, another spurious piece. Cf. Kirstein (2007) 78. Simaetha also quotes the first speech of Delphis to her, and there are very short and largely uninformative quotations of a lady’s words at 5.85 and 14.22 (cf. 6.7, 8.73). Interestingly, the speeches, whether the speaker appears as a character or not, do not illuminate the audience, as they do not eliminate ambivalence over the speaker’s intentions. This is the case mainly in 27; see the discussion below pp. 142–43.

Idyll 20 | 139

and the angry oxherd. He claims that he is a great, sophisticated beauty irresistible to all mountain ladies, but he names no names and narrates no story of any affair. No matter how loudly he blows his own horn, it is scarcely believable that he could compete in beauty, let alone in lineage, with an Adonis or a Ganymede. To be sure, a claim of this sort would not be surprising or unexpected in the mouth of this speaker, who favorably compares his eyes to Athena’s (25), and thus it is unlikely that he avoids it out of modesty. It is actually the only one that might bolster his case, which is badly made to begin with, but the arrogant oxherd does not even call the heroes handsome,37 although this characterization would associate them much more closely with him and would bring out Eunica’s alleged foolishness much more effectively than the indignant repetition of the assertion that gods fell in love with oxherds. The narrator’s attempt to bolster his wounded pride and self-esteem by falling back on love affairs between gods and oxherds ultimately ends up being as misplaced and doomed to failure as the rest of his claims. In this light, the oxherd is arguably the least successful narrator in the entire collection. He fails both to kiss and to top Eunica, but the most serious handicap is his failure to achieve his apparent intended goal, the refutation of her reproaches. Actually, this is his only certain “achievement” in the poem, the serious weakening of his case through his own exaggerated claims and compromising revelation of his shortcomings. At best he shares some of Eunica’s alleged negative traits and at worst he alone possesses them. Most Theocritean narrators and/or characters say more or, more often, less than they should for their purposes, and the sophisticated, multi-leveled irony and open-endedness of most pieces are not unrelated to the control exercised over the information about the narrators. In all cases, judicious glossing over, subtle implication and sympathetic, even if ironic, presentation—often with a view to the tradition, as in the case of the Cyclops—are virtually guaranteed to win the appreciation and goodwill of the audience. The oxherd has none of these advantages. His rejection by Eunica turns out to be unsurprising, and his anger the lashing out of a self-conceited man. As the etymology of her name and the introductory Homeric echo ironically suggest, Eunica carries a handsome victory over him. The pride of the oxherd, including his failure to woo Eunica and his appeal to the judgment of the shepherds, has been taken as a sign of “a new metaliterary

|| 37 The goatherd in 3 also does not say much about the heroes, especially the lovers of goddesses, but he at least mentions the charm of the unnamed Peiro (45) and the beauty of Aphrodite (46), not to mention Amaryllis (6, 18), while the oxherd does not even deign to call goddesses beautiful. The only beautiful person in his speech is himself.

140 | Success and failure in love and song self-awareness of the bucolic genre…a metaphor for the self-awareness of the bucolic characters” and an instance of poetic experimentation with love and pastoral also found in Augustan Roman poetry and the Greek Bion.38 If so, this selfawareness, which lacks any kind of affirmation and self-knowledge, is hardly different from self-delusion. The bucolic genre may indeed achieve autonomy, have its own rules and standards and compete on an equal footing with other genres such as epic and love elegy, but in 20 at least the price of this autonomy is heavy. The genre that emerges is profoundly different from Theocritean bucolic: the narrator is an oxherd that has little to do with his Theocritean colleagues in their stylized countryside; he takes pride in a nominal bucolic environment and manages to achieve nothing, not even to gain the sympathy of the audience. The only successful bucolic lover in the collection, a character much better integrated in his world, appears in the spurious 27: he is an oxherd and and carries the highly significant name of Daphnis.39 Despite his girl’s maiden status (7, 20, 65) and the early kiss Daphnis stole from her (1–6), she seems to follow in the footsteps of the assertive Eunica, at least initially. This is quite unexpected in view of the gap separating 20 and 27, especially with respect to the male characters. Obviously, there is no way of knowing whether 27 is later than 20 or vice versa. Nevertheless, the choice of the name of Daphnis and the affinities of his girl and Eunica, despite the different outcome of the encounters with their suitors, allow a glimpse of the complexity of intertextual connections between spurious and genuine bucolic pieces as well as among the spurious ones.

Idyll 27 Stichomythic throughout except for a short narrative coda (67–71b) and two corrupt lines, probably in another voice addressing a shepherd (72–73),40 Idyll 27 is the last bucolic piece of the collection and the last one featuring a character called Daphnis. These are not its only or its most significant distinctions. Unlike the rest

|| 38 Fantuzzi (2007a) 33–35; the quotations are from p. 34. 39 For Daphnis in 8 see n. 42 below. 40 The first lines of the stichomythia and possibly also an introductory narrative section may be missing. Kirstein (2007) 67–74 reviews the evidence and discusses the various suggestions, reaching the conclusion that the poem is complete. A similar abrupt opening that may indicate the loss of a previous part is found in the spurious 25; see Schmitz (2012), who argues plausibly for its completeness. For the beginning of 18 see IV n. 6 below. In what follows I adopt the view that 27 is complete, but the issue does not affect my discussion.

Idyll 27 | 141

of the collection, it features a wooed girl, who is probably called Acrotime, as speaking character.41 Last but not least, the wooing is successful and leads to a sexual encounter, following Daphnis’ promise of marriage,42 whether spontaneous or craftily coaxed by Acrotime. The poem provides no information about the background or fulfillment of the promise, which makes it more ambiguous and open-ended than the rest of the spurious pieces. However, the promise and to an extent the prospect of the couple’s happy conjugal life ever after seem to be solid. Acrotime is the only girl in the collection said to herd goats (47) or sheep (69; cf. 38) and to be a member of a distinguished herding family.43 Daphnis’ parents carry significant bucolic names (42), and, as his namesake in 6, he might well be merely a contemporary herdsman (48, 71; cf. 45, 64), with no connection with the legendary hero other than the name. The poem eschews all mention of the features traditionally associated with the heroic Daphnis, his youth(ful charm), musical expertise, relationship with the natural world and divinities, including his parents and nymph lover, or, most prominently, his love woes. Daphnis has a syrinx (11), but there is no hint of musical distinction. Be that as it may, it is not easy to shake the belief that there is more in the name than the name itself: the poem is the work of a successor working in the tradition of a predecessor viewed or venerated as the founding figure of a poetic genre that featured Daphnis as its hero.44 Irrespective of Daphnis’ connection with the bucolic hero, and although there is no clear sign that he succeeds in securing the girl’s favor because he is more competent than other suitors, rhetorically or otherwise, succeed he does. This development is quite unexpected in view of the rest of the collection and has

|| 41 Cf. n. 36 above. 42 The spurious 8 also relates that the young Daphnis, whose victory in the singing match with Menalcas first marked his excellence among shepherds (92), married the nymph Nais (93). Earlier, the contestants had stressed their happiness at the wondrous presence of their lovers and their distress at their departure (41–48), but Daphnis’ wooing is not mentioned while Menalcas’ is probably unsuccessful (cf. 53–56). 43 For the bucolic aristocracy in the poem see Bernsdorff (2006) 185. 44 Payne (2007) 100 identifies a prominent deviation from Theocritean bucolic orthodoxy, as it were, in the presentation of Daphnis as a character instead of an impersonator or object of impersonation as in 6 and 1 respectively. He does not discuss the coda or the last two lines of the poem, which in their present textual state are virtually desperate and certainly unconnected to the rest, but if they did belong to the poem, they could be the last part of a dramatic or impersonating framework. The glossing over of Daphnis’ heroic attributes rather than the possible absence of impersonation is arguably the most conspicuous deviation from the Theocritean portrayal of the bucolic hero.

142 | Success and failure in love and song generated much discussion, primarily about the stance and objectives of Acrotime. Before turning to them, it is important to observe that already at the beginning of the stichomythia (1–7) Daphnis is in a more advantageous position than wooing lovers-to-be in other poems: he has managed to snatch a kiss from the girl, unlike the goatherd in 3 and the Cyclops in 11, the scorned and smarting oxherd in 20, and the unfortunate, tormented lover in 23. The first success of Daphnis is an early sign that the girl is different from her counterparts in the rest of the collection: she is either strongly attracted to Daphnis, although not infatuated with him, or she is willing to take chances, perhaps with a view to marriage, or both. If a substantial reward in exchange for her favors is on her mind, this concern could throw some light on Eunica’s rejection of her ungenerous suitor in 20, although certainty is impossible, as neither poem specifies the objectives, if any, of the female party. In the initial exchange about the mythological love affair of the oxherd Paris and Helen (1–2) Acrotime, who first evokes the story, calls Helen “prudent” (πινυτάν) and a victim of Paris’ aggression (1). In the mouth of a maiden, this may be a naïve or a conspicuously biased view. The virginal Acrotime, on the verge of becoming sexually active but still devoted to Artemis (16, 18; cf. 63), may entertain notions of female restraint and male sexual violence that have little to do with the facts of myth or life, whether regarding the sexes or sex. In her eyes even Helen, viewed by many (men) as a notorious adulteress, was actually a prudent victim of an aggressive oxherd. Acrotime herself has been tricked into giving a kiss (cf. 12), and she fears worse might befall her if she is not vigilant. Alternatively, in view of the girl’s subsequent emphasis on wooing and bridal gifts (33), even on an oath of fidelity (35), the reference to Helen may be part of her wish or plan to present herself as Helen, the heroine of many suitors (cf. 23), and by doing so to win gifts. In this vein, some scholars argue that Acrotime is not a passive victim of seduction but an active partner in the affair, manipulating her suitor and seeking not so much immediate gratification as a marriage promise.45 Her reference to prudence (1), combined with her subsequent mention of many suitors she has rejected (23), has been thought to evoke Penelope, another lady of many suitors, who, crucially, is often characterized as prudent in Odyssey, unlike Helen.46 This cannot be ruled out, but the mythological heroine par excellence wooed by many suitors with scores of gifts was Helen. Notoriously, Tyndareus even had the as-

|| 45 See Sider (2001), and cf. Cairns (2012) 57–58. 46 See Kirstein (2007) 63–69. The reference to many suitors may be an allusion to Archilochus (fr. 196a.38 W2); cf. next n.

Idyll 27 | 143

pirants swear an oath, although not of fidelity to her. It is not particularly plausible that a girl wooed and willing, or at least likely, to be seduced by an oxherd would evoke Penelope, the paradigm of conjugal fidelity. In a similar vein, it is unlikely that a poet wishing to cast Penelope, an unsuitable heroine, as Acrotime’s model would make a single qualification attributed to Helen the main thrust of his allusion, even if Acrotime would wish to suggest that Helen was actually as prudent and long-suffering as Penelope. If Helen is the only model evoked, the girl takes care to suggest that the heroine was not a frivolous golddigging adulteress but an excellent, thoughtful lady, who fell victim to the aggression of Paris. Even so, as already suggested, the issue of Acrotime’s attitude cannot be decided beyond reasonable doubt, but other epic connections drawn later on, in the seduction scene, may suggest that she is not naïve, let alone a helpless victim of male aggression. In the first extant seduction scene (Il. 14.283–353), Zeus, the patron of seducers, as it were, is tricked and seduced by Hera, his cunning, scheming wife. The young Acrotime has nothing to do with the matronly seductress Hera, but both express anxiety, real or feigned, over potential witnesses to the sexual encounter (Il. 14.330–36, 27.57). The male partners dismiss the anxiety and provide a covering, although not for the same reasons (Il. 14.342–45, 27.53–54).47 Aphrodite is called Paphia three times in 27 (15, 16, 56) but nowhere else in the collection.48 In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite the goddess leaves her rich temple in Paphos, adorned by the Graces (58–63), to go meet Anchises, after Zeus has inspired in her a passion for the handsome oxherd.49 She is also saluted as guardian of Cyprus in the envoi (292; cf. HHom. 6.2–3, 10.4–5). Acrotime’s phrase “nice clothes” (εἵματα καλά, 53) appears twice in the Hymn, when Aphrodite dresses up for the trip to Ida (64) and when she puts her clothes back on after the tryst with Anchises (171; cf. 232).50 There is no sign that Acrotime dressed up for the meeting

|| 47 The man who, like Daphnis, seduces an innocent, timid girl in Archilochus’ Cologne epode (fr. 196a.42–44, 46–47 W2) is shifty and glib-talking, but he has the decency to cover the girl with his cloak without prompting (44–45), unlike Zeus and Daphnis. Cf. Carey (2009) 157–58. Poseidon, another resourceful seducer, tricks the girl Tyro by taking the form of the river she covets, but he also produces unasked a wave as covering (Od. 11.235–45), a natural concealment for a marine god, as the cloud is for his brother. 48 Paphia occurs in Bion 1.64 and the Anthology. Cf. Reed (1997) 232. 49 A very similar passage is found in Odyssey 8 (362–66), the end of Demodocus’ song about the adulterous tryst of Ares and Aphrodite intercepted by Hephaestus, the cuckolded husband. See Baumbach (2012) 137–41. 50 The phrase also occurs several times in Odyssey (6.111, 13.218, 16.79, 17.550, 21.339), none in a context of seduction. Most relevant is the occurrence in the context of Odysseus’ encounter with the

144 | Success and failure in love and song with Daphnis, and he seems to take little care to protect her dress from soiling before she protests, unlike the diligent Anchises, who places his lover’s exquisite garments (εἵματα σιγαλόεντα) on a nice chair (164–66). The phrase may evoke Aphrodite’s elaborate seduction of Anchises, although Daphnis is the initiator of the seduction.51 Whether Acrotime has in mind an eventual marriage to Daphnis or not, the seduction is not a particularly swift affair. Following the first attempt at securing a second kiss (6), the young man turns to a version of the cliché about the transience of youth, (8, 10; cf. e.g. 7.120–21, 23.28–32, 29.25–30), but this has apparently not swayed any young person, at least not in literature. This background might lead the audience to expect that Daphnis will fail, or at least that the outcome of his wooing will remain open-ended, but such expectations will not materialize. Still, initially he has little success, as Acrotime dismisses him (7), in a manner reminiscent of Eunica (20.3). Daphnis does not proceed to threaten the girl with the prospect of the usual punishment envisaged for arrogant young people, their eventual suffering from unrequited love, conceivably because he is younger than other lovers and especially because he has not lost hope yet. Still, he threatens the girl with the ire of Aphrodite (15, 17), but Acrotime, confident in the assistance of Artemis (16, 18; cf. 63), dismisses the danger in a manner reminiscent of Euripides’ Hippolytus (Hipp. 14–19, 102, 113). Daphnis may imply the arrows or wounds of (unrequited or unfortunate) love (cf. 11.16, 23.5, 30.10), but Aphrodite’s punishment may take other forms, and the image of the inescapable net (λίνον ἄλλυτον, 17) more readily suggests death rather than love,52 especially if the story of Hippolytus is a model. Daphnis’ final shot, as it were, is to warn that no maiden can escape Eros (20), although the notorious arrows of the god do not come into this picture. A similar warning is addressed to the Danaids at the end of Aeschylus’ Supplices (1050–51) and dismissed by the addressees who trust in the assistance of Zeus (1052–53, 1062–73). They will not fall in love, except for Hypermestra, but they will eventually suffer terribly on account of their impious dismissal of Aphrodite. || nubile Nausicaa, a girl wooed by several local suitors, who had been urged by the disguised Athena in a dream to do her laundry the next day (6.21–40). As already noted, Acrotime also claims that she has been wooed by many suitors (23; cf. Od. 6.34–35, 284, 11.288, and n. 53 below). 51 Hunter (2012) 104 suggests that the encounter of Anchises and Aphrodite is described as the “wedding night” of a bridegroom with a virgin bride. The reference to the good stock of the bucolic couple’s parents (42–44) may be another reminiscence of the claims of the disguised Aphrodite in the Hymn (111–12; cf. 94, 131–32); see Sider (2001) 102, and Cairns (2012) 58. 52 Cf., though, Ibycus, who complains that Love “makes me enter the endless hunting-net of Cypris” (ἐς ἄπει-/ρα δίκτυα Κύπριδος ἐσβάλλει, PMGF 287.3–4).

Idyll 27 | 145

Although so far Daphnis has made no progress, his casual reference to the possibility of Acrotime’s union with a bad man (22) takes the exchange in a new and more promising direction. Acrotime states or brags that she has had many suitors (πολλοί μ’ ἐμνώοντο, νόῳ δ’ ἐμῷ οὔτις ἕαδε, 23).53 Daphnis replies than he too is one among those many (24). Quite unexpectedly, Acrotime does not, for instance, repeat that she does not like him or any of the rest because she would prefer to remain single and devoted to Artemis. Rather, she ponders the disadvantages of marriage, a concern which Daphnis dismisses (25–32). He succeeds in reassuring her and she proceeds to ask for a pledge of marriage and ample provisions if she consents to mate with him. This may not be accidental but the result of her plan or at least her wish to secure the coveted promise. By contrast, the oxherd and Eunica in 20 never reached this stage, as his failure to offer her anything may have doomed his chances of winning her over. For a parallel, it is illuminating to turn to a difficult union, that of Jason and Medea, the first stages of which are narrated in Apollonius’ Argonautica. The famous first meeting of the couple (Arg. 3.956ff.) has not been considered a model of 27, presumably because it includes no literal seduction. Nevertheless, the encounter unfolds in a similar manner and features several of the motifs found in 27. Some are of the expected sort: the physical excitement of the pair (Arg. 3.1008–10, 1019– 24, 1077–78, 1131, 1140–41 ~ 27.67–68), the reservations and fears of Medea (Arg. 3.1132–33; cf. 1105–8, 1161–62 ~ 27.25, 35, 61), the assurances of Jason (Arg. 3.975– 79, 990–92, 1079–80 ~ 27.52, 60, 62) and his joy over his success (Arg. 3.1147–48 ~ 27.71). Jason also adduces and shapes to his advantage the example of a famous couple, Ariadne and Theseus (3.997–1004, 1097–1101), which he presents as a precedent. As Acrotime and Daphnis each view the story of Helen and Paris from their own perspective for their own ends (1–2), so Jason celebrates Ariadne but glosses over the dark, and potentially alarming to Medea, parts of her affair with Theseus.54 Even the issue of the father’s consent to his daughter’s choice of partner (27.40) comes up in Jason’s narrative: he suggests that Minos eventually consented to his daughter’s union with Theseus (3.1000–1) and expresses the wish that Medea’s father might be similarly amenable (3.1100–1). || 53 Both verb forms are rare and may recall their first occurrence in extant poetry. ἐμνώοντο may hark back to Od. 11.288 (μνώοντο), from the story of the wooing of Pero, which featured not only the difficulty of winning the girl but also a heavy bride-price in cattle her father demanded. Cf. 3.43–45. The perfect ἕαδε (27.23) occurs only in Apollonius’ Argonautica (1.867, 3.568, 1062) in contexts that involve divinely induced sexual desire. 54 For the story and Jason’s narrative selectivity see e.g. Hunter (1989) 207–8 and Goldhill (1991) 301–6, who also point out the connection with Odysseus’ cunning evocation of marriage in his supplication of Nausicaa (Od. 6.180–85). For further literature see Clare (2002) 280.

146 | Success and failure in love and song Finally, the Apollonian narrator indicates that Medea would have happily offered her soul along with the drugs to her beloved (3.1015–16), as Daphnis wishes that he were able to offer Acrotime his soul on top of the other gifts he promises her (62). The most striking parallel is the promise of marriage Medea extracts from Jason (3.1128–30). He is of course in a privileged position in comparison both to Medea and Daphnis, as the favor he is seeking is divinely guaranteed, and Medea is already hopelessly in love with him. He receives the coveted magical drugs and the necessary instructions for their use quite early on in the encounter (3.1013– 14), and so does not need to do or say anything more. Medea, though, manages to make him promise marriage and eternal fidelity before they part, a pledge that sounds fairly innocuous but will have far-reaching, terrible consequences for all involved, not only for the couple but also their families, not least their future children. In this light, for all the happy contentment of the encounter between Acrotime and Daphnis, the echoes of heroic cunning and misfortune create a troubling background and raise the specter of unhappiness.55 Nevertheless, the possibility of discord or betrayal seems to be remote, although the relative openendedness of the poem does not eliminate it completely. Daphnis, whose luck changes and whose prospects of success improve markedly when he presents himself as an eager prospective bridegroom among many (24), seems to be a fairly decent, honest fellow. For her part, Acrotime, whether eager for marriage throughout or not, is not as stubborn, arrogant or unyielding as other young women (and men) wooed by aspiring lovers primarily in genuine and even in spurious Idylls. She does not seem to be promiscuous, either, but her acquiescence and its aftermath are cast in fairly realistic physical and emotional terms (51–71). The seduction is carried out by a young man who is not self-conceited or devious and not even arrogant or prone to self-aggrandizement. He shares little beyond the name with the bucolic foundational hero in the genuine pieces but has actually much in common with the goatherd of 3, whose line about kissing he quotes (4; 3.20). Several characters in the collection, including the unfortunate lover in 23, are similarly free of conspicuous presumption, but they fail to win any favor, let alone consummate their passion, and suffer on this account. By contrast, the oxherd in 20 does not seem to suffer of lovesickness but, as argued above, he does not seem to have been in love to begin with. His problem is his

|| 55 If the coda (Ὣς οἳ μὲν χλοεροῖσιν ἰαινόμενοι μελέεσσιν/ ἀλλήλοις ψιθύριζον, 67–68) echoes Simaetha’s reminiscence of her first sexual encounter with Delphis (καὶ ἐψιθυρίσδομες ἁδύ, 2.141), then this precedent too points in the direction of oncoming trouble for Acrotime and Daphnis.

Idylls 8 & 9 | 147

wounded pride, which renders him antagonistic and vindictive. The poet of 27 sketches a picture in which the encounter of the couple and its aftermath lack a confrontational edge and a prominent pessimistic slant, although deception, failure and even misfortune are in the background. This choice marks yet another strand in the reception of the Theocritean tradition: unlike the eristic, nominally bucolic, antagonism of 20, or the despair of 23, 27 moves in a down-to-earth direction of fulfilled and fulfilling love.56

Idylls 8 & 9 A similarly benign but much more complex and at times puzzling take on the tradition is found in 8 and 9, which narrate singing competitions between the youths Daphnis and Menalcas. Both poems are set in a fuller, more easily recognizable bucolic context than 20 and, to an extent, 27 and, while they are not open-ended, their overall effect is more elusive. Major themes of Theocritean bucolic—love, song, and even pathetic fallacy in 8—are touched upon but either are not given full range or include intriguing twists. In 9 the poet ventures in several directions, with mixed results at best. 8, modeled mainly on 5 and 6, certainly features founding figures of the bucolic tradition, and 9 probably does too.57 Formally, 8 aims at an impression of naiveté, adopting tropes of popular song, verbatim repetitions, and clear structural divisions. Dramatically, it evokes an early period of “innocence”, like 6, when Daphnis was a talented youth but not yet the grand master of song, or a (future) consort of a nymph, or of any female (or male). Menalcas has some Cyclopean traits, as will be argued below, and in this respect the poem harks back to 11. On the other hand, the poet of 8 apparently did not

|| 56 Bernsdorff (2006) 193 draws attention to the fact that, despite the fulfillment of desire and the mutual pleasure of the partners, obscenity is absent. Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 179–80 point out that the relative optimism of Roman poets concerning erotic fulfillment in a pastoral setting may have a precedent in post-Theocritean bucolic, although 27 may be a product of the imperial period; Trovati (2001) 47–48 dates it to the time of Bion. Daphnis’ success is by no means a rape, as Reed (1997) 30, for instance, suggests. The seduction takes place in an apparently pleasant bucolic setting, but there are no conspicuous features of a locus amoenus, especially as the “bed” is a ditch or a dry riverbed (53), unlike the setting of the epic encounters and the seduction of the girl in Archilochus’ epode (fr. 196a.42–44 W2) discussed earlier; cf. n. 47 above. 57 For the models of 8 see Fantuzzi (1998) 70–73. Reed (2014) focuses on 6 as the model of both 8 and 9. There is no reason why the characters in 9 would not be the same figures, but the poem includes scant information about them and the narrator; cf. n. 75 below.

148 | Success and failure in love and song wish to reproduce or echo the creation of a bucolic hero out of an epic ogre. Instead, he chose Daphnis and Menalcas, from the “original” cast of bucolic characters, and recounted a legendary singing match (cf. ὡς φαντί, 2) to which Daphnis is challenged by his colleague.58 Menalcas appears in 9 too, and Acrotime’s father is called Menalcas (27.44), but the character or name does not occur in the genuine poems.59 Daphnis’ victory established his undisputed mastery among herdsmen (92), and soon afterwards, while still a youth, he married the nymph Nais (93). The impression of earliness is accentuated by the absence of any bucolic tradition or heroic models to whom the boys (might) refer or look up to. They do engage in a singing contest, which does not seem to be improvised on the occasion of their meeting, but this seems to be a feature of their rustic world rather than a tradition associated specifically with Daphnis or any other founder. Gods too are rarely mentioned, and, interestingly, no divinity even remotely associated with herdsmen is invoked. Both boys are musically accomplished and already preoccupied with love matters (41–60) despite their youth (3, 28–29, 61, 64–66, 81, 88, 93)—Menalcas is still working and presumably living with his strict parents (15–16; cf. 9.13). They are also dedicated to their animals, to which Menalcas at least turns for help with his tasks (65–70; cf. 63–64) and even his love interest (49–52). Daphnis declares that his animals are an oxherd’s jewel (79–80), and Menalcas’ erotic paradise includes his animals (53–56), perhaps a reminiscence of the Cyclops (cf. 11.63–66). The close connection with the animals is already obvious not only from the narrator’s specification of the boys’ occupation (1–2) but also and primarily from their full manner of addressing each other (μυκητᾶν ἐπίουρε βοῶν Δάφνι, 6; ποιμὴν εἰροπόκων ὀίων, συρικτὰ Μενάλκα, 9), which includes name, occupation, and an epithet for the animals each tends.60 This fullness, which does not occur in the genuine poems, may be meant to suggest the boys’ pride in their occupations, possibly with a touch of gentle, benign irony. The youth and equality of

|| 58 According to Σ arg., a singing match between Daphnis and Menalcas, in which Pan was the judge and Daphnis won (and married a nymph Thaleia or Pimpleia), was recounted by Sositheus in his play Daphnis or Lityerses (TrGF 1 99 F 1a-3), perhaps a version of a legendary contest between poetic masters; cf. Fantuzzi (1998) 69–70, and for the play see I n. 70 above. 59 For the bucolic Menalcas, originally of Euboean origin and in Hermesianax the beloved of Daphnis (Σ 8.56 = fr. 2 Powell), see Gow (19522) 172, Hunter (1999) 66, and Scholl (2014) 181–86. According to Hermesianax, the Chalcidian Menalcas also had an unrequited passion for Euippe and fell to his death (Σ arg. 9 = fr. 3 Powell). For the possible influence of Hermesianax on 8 see below p. 155. 60 The phrase εἰροπόκων ὀίων is used of the sheep of the Homeric Cyclops (Od. 9.443), just before he addresses his ram in his most emotional moment (9.447–60); cf. the discussion below.

Idylls 8 & 9 | 149

Daphnis and Menalcas (cf. 3–4) virtually eliminate the possibility of unpleasantness in their past, and the boys currently show no signs of foolish arrogance. Their confidence in their ability to win the match is stated in the initial exchange (7, 10) but quite succinctly and without acrimony or abuse (cf. 33–34, 37–38). Similarly, the discussion about the choice of prize and umpire (13–27) has nothing of the length and bickering of 5. The prize is unlike any staked and won in the genuine poems, a syrinx fashioned by each contestant (18–24). Daphnis and Damoetas in 6, for instance, exchange a syrinx and a flute (42). The prize in 8 does not seem to be particularly valuable, as it does not confer material benefit, and each contestant already possesses one. Besides, the contest leaves Menalcas with nothing, although the loss is not irreplaceable. Apparently this is meant to suggest that neither boy is after material rewards,61 as they are generally little different from each other. Disagreement about the proposed location of the singing match is also completely absent: all the bucolic world is apparently an appropriate stage for the boys, and they have not yet developed particularities.62 Most important, despite the general closeness to 5 and the boys’ expression of confidence in their musicianship, they never claim that they are accomplished, not to mention the best, singers, nor is there any reference to previous (victories in) singing contests. Each also graciously acknowledges the musical excellence of his opponent and wishes for the welfare of the animals of both (33–40). Love, which occupies the next two quatrains, is combined with the motif of pathetic fallacy but, tellingly, not in connection with lament or irrevocable loss. Rather, it appears in a context of happiness and only a potential misfortune, the departure of the beloved. The history of the characters and the background of their attachment to their sweethearts are left as vague as in the rest of the spurious poems, but there is no sign of failure or total lack of prospects, as there is no sign of promiscuity, not even amongst animals. The closest the Idyll gets to the rawness of animal sexuality mentioned in several genuine poems, including 5, especially at the end (146–50; cf. 1.151–52), is Menalcas’ address to his billy-goat as “husband of the white nannies” (ὦ τράγε, τᾶν λευκᾶν αἰγῶν ἄνερ, 49), obviously to a polygamous champion. On the other hand, the speaker’s address to a

|| 61 Daphnis is ready to set a calf as a prize and encourages Menalcas to set a lamb, which may hardly be deemed equivalent; cf. Legrand (1927) 2.8, Arland (1937), 14 and Rossi (1971) 7. At least the lamb is very large, but apparently Daphnis’ idea of fairness is that each contestant should just bet one of the animals he tends, irrespective of their relative worth; contrast Lacon’s acrimonious protests (5.25–27). 62 For the bucolic habitat in post-Theocritean bucolic poetry cf. n. 23 above.

150 | Success and failure in love and song male animal and his request for a favor (49–52) as if to a friend is reminiscent of Polyphemus’ famous address to his ram (Od. 9.447–60), the most emotional touch in the portrayal of the cannibalistic monster. If Odyssey 9 is actually a relevant intertext at this point, it sheds some light on the poet’s concerns: he inserts the humane reminiscence of the epic Cyclops in an amatory context, which might connect him with the young and lovesick Polyphemus, the Theocritean bucolic singer.63 I will return to Menalcas’ request in a moment. For now, despite the Cyclopean background, Menalcas, whose skill in piping is acknowledged by Daphnis, is nowhere obnoxious. However, he loses, which is perhaps not unconnected with his issuing of the challenge with swagger, although mild in comparison with the stance of characters in genuine poems. What is more, beside his connections with Polyphemus, admittedly rather distant, he is the only one of the two contestants that needs to invite and convince his beloved Milon to join him (51–52). Daphnis’ reply to Menalcas’ message to Milon via his he-goat is lost, and it is plausible that it contained an invitation to Nais, but the last pair of quatrains are not as closely matched in content as the first two, so the third pair may not have been, either. In any case, in the extant part of the poem Menalcas not only loses the match but also fails to explicitly secure his beloved, in contrast to Daphnis. Menalcas also does not mention any admirer or suitor, unlike Lacon, for instance. By contrast, his rival Daphnis is wooed by a cave-dwelling beauty, whose advances he modestly rejects (72–75), conceivably because he is attached to Nais and dedicated to his tasks: κἤμ’ ἐκ τῶ ἄντρω σύνοφρυς κόρα ἐχθὲς ἰδοῖσα τὰς δαμάλας παρελᾶντα καλὸν καλὸν ἦμεν ἔφασκεν· οὐ μὰν οὐδὲ λόγον ἐκρίθην ἄπο τὸν πικρὸν αὐτᾷ, ἀλλὰ κάτω βλέψας τὰν ἁμετέραν ὁδὸν εἷρπον. And as for me, a girl with brows that meet noticed me yesterday from her cave as I drove my heifers past, and she kept saying, How handsome I was, how handsome! But I gave no answer—not even a bitter one—but went on my way looking at the ground.

|| 63 Cf. Menalcas’ addresses to other animals (63–68), including the wolf (63–64), on which see below. The final reference to the full udders of the ewes and the prospect of setting some milk in the cheese-crates (69–70) is reminiscent of the dairy abundance of Cyclops (11.34–37) and perhaps of Lacon’s claim, which precedes his coarse reference to his mating with a prepubescent boy (5.86–87).

Idylls 8 & 9 | 151

The reference to the bitter reply that he failed to make to the girl (74) is quite enigmatic,64 but he is as partial to women as Zeus (ὦ πάτερ, ὦ Ζεῦ,/ οὐ μόνος ἠράσθην· καὶ τὺ γυναικοφίλας, 59–60), although he resists temptation. By contrast, the only problems Menalcas faces in his work come from animals: he appeals to the wolf to spare his animals but also to his dog to avoid long sleep and be vigilant with its task, assisting the young and inexperienced shepherd (63–66): φείδευ τᾶν ἐρίφων, φείδευ, λύκε, τᾶν τοκάδων μευ, μηδ’ ἀδίκει μ’, ὅτι μικκὸς ἐὼν πολλαῖσιν ὁμαρτέω. ὦ Λάμπουρε κύον, οὕτω βαθὺς ὕπνος ἔχει τυ; οὐ χρὴ κοιμᾶσθαι βαθέως σὺν παιδὶ νέμοντα. Spare my kids, wolf, and spare their mothers; don’t harm me just because I am little and tend a big flock. My dog Lampurus, are you sleeping so deeply? You shouldn’t be resting while a boy is the shepherd.

This echoes both the false dream of the Homeric Agamemnon (εὕδεις Ἀτρέος υἱὲ δαΐφρονος ἱπποδάμοιο·/ οὐ χρὴ παννύχιον εὕδειν βουληφόρον ἄνδρα/ ᾧ λαοί τ’ ἐπιτετράφαται καὶ τόσσα μέμηλε, Il. 2.22–25 = 60–62) and Homeric similes about incompetent shepherds (Il. 15.630–36, 16.352–55). Menalcas is less secure than Daphnis, emotionally and professionally, as his epic associations imply. Even Proteus, the god he evokes, is not necessarily a model for himself, unlike Daphnis’ address to Zeus the arch-philanderer, and the mention is embedded in an extraordinary context (49–52): ὦ τράγε, τᾶν λευκᾶν αἰγῶν ἄνερ, ἐς βάθος ὕλας μυρίον — αἱ σιμαὶ δεῦτ’ ἐφ’ ὕδωρ ἔριφοι — ἐν τήνῳ γὰρ τῆνος· ἴθ’, ὦ κόλε, καὶ λέγε, ‘Μίλων, ὁ Πρωτεὺς φώκας καὶ θεὸς ὢν ἔνεμεν.’ Billy goat, husband of the white nannies, go into the measureless depths of the forest (come here to the water, you snub-nosed kids), for that’s where he is. Go, stump-horn, and say, “Milon, Proteus herded seals even though he was a god.”

|| 64 Gutzwiller (1983) 179–81 thinks that it is indicative of the behavior of the adolescent version of the hero, whom Theocritus portrays as sexually mature in 1. Fantuzzi (1998) 72 suggests that the missing reply evokes and “corrects” the shenanigans of the δύσερως Cyclops in 6, who told Galateia that he had another partner. Scholl (2014) 193–94 draws attention to the fact that, unlike 11, the setting of 8 is not the seashore, as Fantuzzi suggests, but the mountains, as 2 and Menalcas’ reference to the sea (56) indicate: Menalcas will gaze down at the Sicilian sea from up in the mountains of northeastern Sicily.

152 | Success and failure in love and song Apart from the injunction to the billy-goat, the reference to Proteus as a seal-tender betrays some considerable straining on the part of the speaker, which does not bode well for his prospects of success. Gow thinks that Milon is not a goatherd because otherwise the message would not make sense, since it points out that a god deigned to herd animals more offensive than goats and thus Milon should not despise a goatherd-lover.65 It cannot be ruled out that seals are (presented as) more offensive than goats, especially if one takes Odyssey 4 into account, in which Menelaus insists on the acrid smell of the creatures (441–46; cf. 406). 8, though, does not specify the basis of Milon’s potential rejection of Menalcas’ advances, and for what this objection is worth, it would be quite pointless to dispatch an animal as a messenger to a boy who spurns herdsmen. The simile comparing Proteus sleeping among his seals to a shepherd sleeping among his sheep (Od. 4.413) probably facilitated the association between Proteus and Menalcas.66 Whether Milon is a herdsman or not, Menalcas perhaps encourages him to avoid pursuits he considers alien such as hunting or dwelling in the woods, for instance, and to take care of (his) animals, as Menalcas does.67 In the last quatrain he describes his paradise, as it were, in a nice priamel (53–56): μή μοι γᾶν Πέλοπος, μή μοι Κροίσεια τάλαντα εἴη ἔχειν, μηδὲ πρόσθε θέειν ἀνέμων· ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ τᾷ πέτρᾳ τᾷδ’ ᾄσομαι ἀγκὰς ἔχων τυ, σύννομα μῆλ’ ἐσορῶν Σικελικάν τ’ ἐς ἅλα.68 I should not like to have the land of Pelops or the wealth of Croesus, or to outrun the winds; rather let me sing with you in my arms beneath this rock as I watch my flock grazing and look out over the Sicilian sea.

|| 65 Gow (19522) 179. Menalcas tends sheep but his flocks apparently included goats (45, 63; cf. 9 17). 66 The seal-herding capacity of Proteus, on the island of Pharos, is mentioned also in Callimachus’ Victoria Berenices (ποιμένα [φωκάων], Aet. fr. 54.6 Harder). Proteus is an Egyptian king and the host of Helen in Herodotus (2.112–16, 118) and Euripides’ Helen, and Callimachus combines both strands of the tradition about him, perhaps drawing an intentional parallel between the formula ποιμὴν λαῶν and his phrase ποιμὴν φωκάων. For Proteus cf. Massimilla (2010) 229– 30 and Harder (2012) 403. 67 Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 167–70 suggest that Menalcas advises his friend to come to him and abandon the woods where the archaic athlete Milon (cf. I n. 22 above) met his doom. 68 The MSS reading of 56 is σύννομα μῆλ’ ἐσορῶν τὰν Σικελὰν ἐς ἅλα, and Gow has adopted the emendation of Valckenaer. The sheep may be the object of ᾄσομαι or ἐσορῶν or even both (cf. n. 70 below), but it is likely that ᾄσομαι is intransitive.

Idylls 8 & 9 | 153

The evocative range of the first couplet is very wide, from archaic lyric (Tyrtaeus fr. 12 W2) to Theocritus’ poetry (10.32),69 but the fantasy of the second couplet involves concord and especially physical proximity to the beloved, as all erotic fantasies in the collection do. However, the intensity of feeling and wish is apparently stronger, as Menalcas formulates his fantasy with a future indicative verb instead of an optative or similar.70 As already pointed out, there is no indication that Menalcas will enjoy Milon’s affection, although the possibility remains open. On the other hand, if his singing is a reminiscence of 11, then Menalcas’ fantasy of proximity has scant chances of ever coming true. In the frame of the poem, he fails to attract his beloved, as most lovers in the Idylls do, especially those of homosexual orientation. The last the audience hear of Menalcas, he is dejected at his defeat and unusually compared to a bride who regrets her marriage (90–91), presumably the loss of her virginity. The inverted simile apparently highlights the loss of Menalcas’ metaphorical or musical innocence. Still, his sadness and distress over his defeat seem to be nothing extraordinary or extraordinarily unfortunate: in the bucolic world of the poem, one singer, no matter how accomplished, is bound to lose in a contest and be sorry for his loss, but at least Menalcas is not derided or denigrated. However, the sexual context of the comparison and his assimilation with the weaker, emotionally distraught member of a heterosexual couple may contain a last, oblique suggestion of his failure to find fulfillment in love, in contrast to Daphnis’ success. The concluding report of Daphnis’ marriage to Nais (93), although not necessarily implying happiness ever after, is a salient point of dissonance with the genuine pieces, pointedly juxtaposed with, and in a manner “correcting”, the canonical account of his excellence and woes. All in all, the echoes of 5 and 6 and even of 1 notwithstanding, the poem’s foci of dissonance with the genuine pieces are much more numerous. Last but not least, they include the handling of the judge, whose verdict first establishes Daphnis’ excellence among herdsmen. The goatherd awards the prize to Daphnis on strictly aesthetic grounds, the sweetness of the performance (82–84), which echoes the goatherd’s praise of Thyrsis’ song (1.146–48; cf. 7–8, 61, 65). Although this sweetness is an elusive or subjective

|| 69 See Gow (19522) 179. For Bucaeus’ wish in 10 see nn. I.78 and 79 above. 70 The fantasy may involve singing with Milon in his arms while they will be tending their animals together (σύννομα), which may imply that Milon is a herdsman, although it may imply that Menalcas wishes for Milon to become, or act as, a herdsman. The syntax of μῆλ(α), which may be the object ᾄσομαι and/or ἐσορῶν, does not affect my point. If the verb takes an object, then τυ, in common to it and ἔχων, is just as likely a candidate as the sheep, especially if Menalcas’ fantasy is indebted to the report of Polyphemus’ activity (11.13–18; cf. 39).

154 | Success and failure in love and song quality, the verdict does not leave the audience wondering, unlike Morson’s verdict in 5. Moral ambiguity or lapses of the contestants, which might have influenced the outcome, are entirely absent. Less expectedly, the goatherd finally asks Daphnis for musical instruction and offers a fee, a productive goat.71 The motif of useful teaching and a fitting reward for it, which forms part of the history of the contestants in 5, is transferred to the request of the judge to Daphnis (85–87): ‘αἰ δέ τι λῇς με καὶ αὐτὸν ἅμ’ αἰπολέοντα διδάξαι, τήναν τὰν μιτύλαν δωσῶ τὰ δίδακτρά τοι αἶγα, ἅτις ὑπὲρ κεφαλᾶς αἰεὶ τὸν ἀμολγέα πληροῖ.’ And if you would like to teach me too, as I herd my goats, I will give you as my fee that goat without horns which always fills the milk pail above the brim.

There is also perhaps a reminiscence of the goatherd’s promised reward to Thyrsis for the performance of his song (αἶγά τέ τοι δωσῶ διδυματόκον ἐς τρὶς ἀμέλξαι,/ ἃ δύ’ ἔχοισ’ ἐρίφως ποταμέλγεται ἐς δύο πέλλας, 1.25–26), with a realistic scaling down of the animal’s productivity, and of Morson’s utilitarian request (5.139–40). As just noted, there is no word about Daphnis’ acceptance or rejection of the offer, but the poem does not encourage an assumption that the arrangement would not work out well, or that Daphnis and his student-to-be might eventually fall out, like Comatas and Lacon in 5. Besides, although the goat offered as teaching fee may recall the goatherd’s gift to Thyrsis in 1, there is nothing here comparable to the amazingly elaborate and richly symbolic cup. This makes for an “original” bucolic setting that appears to be simpler and less intriguing than its counterpart in genuine Theocritean poems. In 1 Daphnis’ woes are the celebrated subject of bucolic song, a gifted performance of which is rewarded with the milk of a goat and a symbolic artifact. In 8 Daphnis is the winner of a bucolic song contest and is asked to offer musical instruction to the judge, a herdsman colleague, in exchange for a bountiful animal. Menalcas’ affinities with the Theocritean Polyphemus are not explicit or prominent enough to render him a mask or persona of the Cyclops, but the echoes of 11 may not be overlooked,

|| 71 Rosenmeyer (1969) 163 n. 33 calls this an “empty promise, which is not meant to be fulfilled.” The issue remains open-ended, as indeed does Comatas’ promise to send a choice portion of the sacrifice meat to Morson (5.141). As nothing is said about Daphnis’ response, there is no basis for judgment or speculation, but like Comatas, no character in the Idyll seems to be devious, and there is no reason to assume that if Daphnis took up the offer, the goatherd would not honor his promise.

Idylls 8 & 9 | 155

either. By choosing to narrate a contest between Daphnis and a Cyclopean Menalcas the poet of 8 both acknowledges and qualifies the Theocritean version of bucolic beginnings. If so, the poem has quite ambitious poetological concerns. It may juxtapose Hermesianax, the author of an elegiac poem about Menalcas, with Theocritus.72 Even so, Daphnis and Menalcas also, or just as prominently, evoke Theocritus’ Daphnis and Polyphemus. In any case, the victory of Daphnis, despite the initial narratorial hint that the rivals are equal (3–4), and the report about his marriage render the poem much less allusive and open-ended than the genuine pieces, and the hero much less enigmatic than his Theocritean counterpart. The poet of 8 presents only this bucolic hero, although he nods to Theocritus’ Polyphemus. He turns to the beginning of Daphnis’ career, ties up loose ends and adds new elements. Interestingly, his Daphnis is not only a master herdsman and singer but also a future husband and potential teacher. In this light, Daphnis may be viewed as the presumed initiator of the tradition that will glorify him, although apparently not only or mainly his woes, as he is a successful lover and will soon be the husband of a nymph. The goatherd’s request for musical instruction while he is tending his goats harks back to the unfulfilled wishes of Thyrsis in 1 (12–14) and Tityrus/Lycidas in 7 (86– 89) to hear the music of a master while tending the master’s goats: song and herding are not incompatible, and a goatherd needs instruction by the expert oxherd, a champion among herdsmen. Not only coarseness and grotesqueness but also unfulfilled yearning, ominous prospects and hostility, divine or human, have been expunged from the “original” bucolic setting. Even expert instruction in song is available for a goat, as it were. Such neatness is not to be found in 9, a much shorter piece. It seems to touch on poetological issues more extensively than 8, but its confusing narratorial and thematic structure causes serious interpretive difficulties. The poem begins in dramatic mode, as a mime: a voice invites Daphnis and Menalcas to exchange bucolic songs, although not in a contest (1–6), but at 14 and after the song exchange the speaker appears to narrate the exchange and its aftermath as a past incident (22–27). From this perspective, the poem has greater affinities with 6 than with 5 but it eschews completely the motif of love. At the end, the narrator stresses his attachment to the bucolic Muses (28–36), which brings out the poetological orientation of the poem. No information about the age or musical

|| 72 See Hubbard (1998) 35. For the poem of Hermesianax cf. n. 59 above. The choice of elegiac couplets for the first part of the contest (33–60) may (also) be a tribute to other poems, perhaps about the woes of Daphnis or other heroes such as Menalcas, as the poet of 8 may have cast his intertextual and poetological net more widely.

156 | Success and failure in love and song abilities of the two singers, not to mention any primacy or equality in song, is provided in the narrator’s invitation or the songs. Their mastery, though, is implied in the invitation, the narrator’s enthusiastic reaction to the performance and his offer of gifts, a staff and a conch-shell, as a reward (22–27).73 The singers praise the pleasures of bucolic life, mainly their wealth in animals74 and the comforts they enjoy because of it, in summer and winter respectively. This focus brings the poem quite close to 8 or 11, except in that the singers are completely dedicated to their animals, and less emphatically to bucolic song. They are fully absorbed in their paradisiac world, which is not disturbed by love, ambition or rivalry. The role and persona of the narrator are much more difficult to grasp, as is the relationship of the characters and the occasion of the exchange. Initially, the speaker appears to be a colleague or friend of the herdsmen who asks repeatedly for a song exchange and insists on the rules governing it in a manner reminiscent of a teacher, judge or umpire (1–6).75 Apart from the unique and enigmatic change of the poem’s mode from mimetic to narrative, a thornier problem, which is not discussed in detail in recent literature, is presented by the end of the poem (28–36): Βουκολικαὶ Μοῖσαι, μάλα χαίρετε, φαίνετε δ’ ᾠδάν τάν ποκ’ ἐγὼ τήνοισι παρὼν ἄεισα νομεῦσι· μηκέτ’ ἐπὶ γλώσσας ἄκρας ὀλοφυγγόνα φύσω. ‘τέττιξ μὲν τέττιγι φίλος, μύρμακι δὲ μύρμαξ, ἴρηκες δ’ ἴρηξιν, ἐμὶν δ’ ἁ Μοῖσα καὶ ᾠδά. τᾶς μοι πᾶς εἴη πλεῖος δόμος. οὔτε γὰρ ὕπνος οὔτ’ ἔαρ ἐξαπίνας γλυκερώτερον, οὔτε μελίσσαις ἄνθεα· τόσσον ἐμὶν Μοῖσαι φίλαι. οὓς γὰρ ὁρεῦντι γαθεῦσαι τὼς δ’ οὔτι ποτῷ δαλήσατο Κίρκα.’

|| 73 The staff awarded to Daphnis (23–24) may hark back to the gift of Lycidas to Simichidas in 7 and thus imply his excellence, at least in future time. Bernsdorff (2006) 203–4 makes much of the description of the staff as self-shaped, but see below pp. 158–59. The conch-shell offered to Menalcas is certainly not an instrument of herdsmen in Euripides’ IT (303) but the Taurian alarmsystem or an improvised alarm tool. Cf. 22.75–77. Even if it were an instrument, the narrator’s care to specify its Icarian origin (26) may be an attempt at introducing an exotic note in the poem and/or a reminiscence of the geographical specifications in Idyll 1 (57–58) or 7 (65) rather than a homely bucolic touch. 74 The narrator appears to extend his invitation to oxherds (cf. 3–5), but in the songs it becomes apparent that only Daphnis is one while Menalcas tends sheep and goats (16–18), as in 8; cf. Gow (19522) 185. 75 The only information the narrator provides about himself is that his father had a farm (23) and that he is devoted to poetry (28–36). Gow (19522) 185 suggests that his interaction with the singers shows that these cannot be the mythical herdsmen of 8, but there is no reason why a poem would not include in its cast a companion of those figures. For the narrator cf. below p. 159.

Idylls 8 & 9 | 157

Muses of country singing, many greetings to you! Disclose the song which once I sang in the presence of those herdsmen. Let me no longer grow an ulcer on the tip of my tongue. “The cicada is dear to the cicada, the ant to the ant, hawks to hawks, and to me the Muse and song; may my whole house be filled with it. Neither sleep nor spring’s sudden arrival is sweeter, nor are flowers sweeter for the bees; that is how dear the Muses are to me. Those whom they regard with favor Circe never harms with her potions.”

The address of the narrator to the bucolic Muses (28) begins as an envoi, or at least the audience are likely to take it as the beginning of the poem’s end, on the model of archaic hymns or Theocritus’ 22. Quite surprisingly, after χαίρετε there comes a request incompatible with an envoi and at home in an appeal to the Muses for a song (ᾠδάν, or ᾠδάς, if the MSS reading is preserved). Even more astonishingly, the requested song (or songs) turn(s) out to be the one (or those) “I once sang to these herdsmen” (28–29): the narrator now appears as a singer himself, who also sang to the herdsmen instead of just listening to their songs.76 This shift would be quite bold or abrupt, as the case may be, but not hopelessly problematic, if not for the specific content of the address to the Muses. There is no parallel for an address in which a singer asks the goddesses to reveal or inspire a song or songs sung on a previous occasion. Per se not even that unicum would cause insurmountable interpretive problems but for the virtual impossibility of accommodating it in the context of Greek beliefs about the Muses and song performance. Traditionally, the Muses are asked to inspire, reveal, or help with new songs or performances, and to show favor or grant kleos and longevity to songs already performed or slated to be reperformed. Some of these difficulties may be addressed with quite radical measures. Gow discusses the suggestion of Bücheler, who considered 1–6 spurious and 28–30 as a part of the introduction rather than the epilogue: he accepted ᾠδάς/ τάς (28–29) and emended ἄεισα to ἄκουσα (29), taking the songs to be those that the narrator heard from Daphnis and Menalcas.77 Even such a radical intervention does not solve all the problems of the passage: it annuls the narrator’s singing capacity,

|| 76 It is not even clear if that occasion was the same as that on which Daphnis and Menalcas exchanged their songs, or the occasion on which the narrator sang about that exchange, or, as ποκ’ may indicate, a different one on which the narrator sang for Daphnis and Menalcas, if they are the shepherds mentioned at 29. Either way, παρών (29) is redundant. 30 is obscure and seems to have little point, whatever the precise meaning of the saying or proverb, and 32–36 may be the song in question or a prelude to it. If the latter, this would leave the song unquoted or unreported, another unicum. In any case, 32–36 are inane as a song and too extensive to be a (clumsy) prelude. 77 Gow (19522) 191; he points out that this necessitates the further change of ποκ’ to τόκ’ (Meineke).

158 | Success and failure in love and song does not adequately account for χαίρετε and does not eliminate the awkwardness of the appeal to the Muses for a song or songs sung and heard before. As it is, the most economical solution is to keep 28–30 in their place without emendation, but the issue does not affect my discussion. Whether transposed and emended or not, 28–30 may be taken as an attempt by the narrator to strike a personal, unique pose in a poem that contains several echoes of previous poetry, mainly Theocritus’ Idylls. The speaker’s invitation to Daphnis and Menalcas to exchange songs probably harks back to 7 (35–36, 49–51). The singers’ description of the comforts of bucolic life is patterned on the attempts of Comatas and Lacon to convince their opponent to compete from the spot each favors and praises extravagantly (5.45–59).78 The Cyclops’ praise of his material assets and comfortable life in 11 is the other relevant intertext in this connection, despite the absence of erotic context in 9. The figure of Polyphemus is more closely associated with Menalcas, who dwells in a cave (15–16), and the association is perhaps mediated by 8, in which Menalcas has some Cyclopean features, as argued above. The description of his comforts in winter (18–20) may recall also Lycidas’ projection of his celebration of the safe arrival of Ageanax at Mytilene, but that party is soaked in good wine (7.63–70), as is the party attended by Simichidas at the farm of his friends (147–55). As already noted,79 the narrator’s gift of the staff to Daphnis (23–24, quoted below) is perhaps a reminiscence of Lycidas’ gift to Simichidas and his endorsement of the younger poet (7.43–44, 128–29). The reference to the sharing of the shell meat (27) may hark back to Aeschinas’ party (14.14–17), and the obscure line 30 possibly to 12.24. Finally, the address to the Muses (28–30) may owe something to Thyrsis’ envoi (1.144–45), especially as his song is a version or reperformance of one he had sung in the past on the occasion of a match with a competitor (1.19–24). All in all, none of these reminiscences is particularly intriguing, dramatically or poetologically, nor are all of them taken together. To take just one example, the gifts the narrator presented to the singers, the self-grown staff and the conch-shell, might be, and have been, considered a promising focus from an intertextual point of view, and to an extent they are (22–25): Τοῖς μὲν ἐπεπλατάγησα καὶ αὐτίκα δῶρον ἔδωκα, Δάφνιδι μὲν κορύναν, τάν μοι πατρὸς ἔτραφεν ἀγρός, αὐτοφυῆ, τὰν οὐδ’ ἂν ἴσως μωμάσατο τέκτων. τήνῳ δὲ στρόμβω καλὸν ὄστρακον...

|| 78 Cf. also 9.5–6 ~ 5.60–61. 79 See n. 73 above.

Idylls 8 & 9 | 159

I applauded them and right away gave each a gift: to Daphnis a staff grown on my father’s farm, naturally shaped, which not even a craftsman could find fault with, and to Menalcas a fine spiral shell...

The natural perfection of the staff, which not even a carpenter might blame, may be thought to evoke the attractiveness of bucolic song, but it is unlikely that this virtue, or the reference to the carpenter, or the conch shell, would be enough to equate the song(s) with the bucolic genre as a whole and mediate its later assignment to the slender style.80 The gifts are a poor counterpart of the cup in 1 or, more significantly, Lycidas’ staff in 7. They have nothing of the elaborate associative power of the cup, and the carpenter has no foolish ambitions and engages in no competition, which might recall Lycidas’ disparagement of foolish builders and poets (7.45–48). Similarly, the person of the gift-giver and the specifics about the origin of the staff as well as the absence of specification about its wood serve to distinguish it from rather than associate it with Lycidas’ staff. Unlike Lycidas, the narrator does not seem to be older than the singers or to enjoy any kind of superiority. This and the reference to his father’s farm (23) may suggest that he is still quite young, and the staff is not even made of the wood of the potentially significant wild olive tree.81 Even if these dissonances may be ignored, it is implausible and interpretively unproductive to associate the protection the Muses provide to their favorites (35– 36) with the allegorical interpretation of μῶλυ in the Circe episode (Od. 10.305) first attested in the Stoic Cleanthes (SVF I.526; cf. Σ on 33–36): Odysseus was not seduced by Circe because, unlike his intemperate companions, he possessed wisdom—in other words, Hermes’ μῶλυ was the hero’s prudent intelligence. In this vein, in 9 the Muses are cherished because they convey to the poet the wisdom of poetry or song, which protects him from the vicissitudes of love. This protection is particularized through another crucial intertext, perhaps as double allusion or “window reference”: the beginning of Idyll 11 (3–4), which also alludes to the same Odyssean episode and powerful protective, suggests that poetic wisdom is the only effective antidote to love.82 No matter how one interprets Odyssey 10, the sexual background makes it an unlikely intertext for 9, especially as mediated through Idyll 11. It is convoluted to the point of obscurity to assume that a poet who stresses and celebrates his devotion to the Muses, following a performance of pleasing but non-erotic songs, || 80 Cf. Bernsdorff (2006) 204. 81 An olive tree or staff is also mentioned by Vergil in the context of bucolic singing (Ecl. 8.16), perhaps significantly. 82 See Parry (1987), and Bernsdorff (2006) 199–201; for μῶλυ in 11 see I n. 187 above.

160 | Success and failure in love and song would exalt their help or protection in a matter not mentioned, or in any way alluded to, in the poem. In other words, it is difficult to see the Muses’ protection as a repellant so effective as to have eliminated all trace of love in the poem, especially since the connection with the elimination of love needs to be established by means of an allusion to Idyll 11, in which love is prominent, and poetry does not even offer a cure or permanent protection but is at most a palliative. The narrator of the last part of 9 is devoted to the (bucolic) Muses because he styles himself as a poet who takes supreme pleasure in this capacity. However, the last reference to the protection the Muses afford against powerful magic such as the potions of Circe may indeed be an attempt to claim for himself and his song more than one influential model. Any reference to the favor of the Muses in later poetry is bound and most probably meant to recall the poetic investiture of Hesiod and his celebration of his wise patronesses, who favored him with the gift of pleasing and soothing song (Th. 22–32, 94–104; cf. 81–82). The reference to the favor and protection of the Muses in 9, a piece perhaps indebted to 7 and its reworking of Hesiod, is likely to recall, also or primarily, Callimachus’ programmatic Aetia prologue, which emphasizes the ineffectuality of powerful magic directed against the sophisticated favorite of poetic divinities, Apollo and the Muses. If so, the magic in 9 would not be the enchanting and detrimental inducements of love, which is completely absent from the poem, but rather the (spiteful and ineffectual) envy of rival singers, which is explicitly mentioned in Callimachus.83 No poetic rivalry is invoked in 9, which may be thought to undermine the association with Callimachus. Still, the poem narrates an exchange of pleasing songs of herdsmen, and its last part deals with poetry and stresses the narrator’s devotion to the Muses. The narrator asks the goddesses to reveal a bucolic song, admittedly in an awkward manner, and he celebrates their benevolent gaze upon their favorites, which protects them from magic.84 The focus on the gaze is likely to recall the end of Callimachus’ Aetia prologue (fr. 1.37–38 Harder; cf. Hes. Th. 81–82), although with no mention of old age, presumably because it is irrelevant to the narrator of || 83 Envy (βασκανίη) is also mentioned in Callimachus’ funerary epigram for his father (21 Pf. = AP 7.525), in which the son’s songs are praised as “superior to envy” (κρέσσονα βασκανίης, 4). This achievement is associated with the generalship of Callimachus’ namesake grandfather (3–4), perhaps punning on the etymology of the name “beautiful warrior”; cf. Klooster (2011) 192. 84 The distinction between the happy favorites of the Muses and the unfortunates who lack such favor and protection is made explicit if the MSS reading γαθεῦσι(ν) is preserved at 36. The verb should be γαθεῦντι, as Gow (19522) 192 points out, and in any case the distinction is obvious, whether implicit or explicit. With the reading γαθεῦσαι (Brunck) the narrator includes a hint that the goddesses rejoice in the contemplation of their favorites, a further sign of favor and distinction.

Idylls 8 & 9 | 161

9 and his friends. Instead, the narrator chooses to suggest that, like Callimachus, he is immune to deleterious influences, perhaps to spiteful suggestions to abandon (bucolic) song or sing differently—the sophisticated choice of genre, subject matter and style under divine auspices is also a major theme in Pindar and Theocritus, among others. His choice to mention Circe rather than Telchines or other magicians does not point to protection against love magic but indicates that he claims Homer too, in addition to Hesiod and Callimachus, as a model: he is not only as sophisticated as the poet Callimachus but also as empowered as the Homeric hero Odysseus, who succeeded in thwarting Circe’s threat because he enjoyed divine favor and had divine protection, whether material, in the form of a drug given to him by a god, or moral/intellectual, in the form of innate, god-given wisdom. Poetry is a powerful drug, often called an incantation and associated with magic on various levels. As far as its power and effect are concerned, the crucial factor from Homer down to Callimachus’ Aetia prologue and 9 is the favor of the gods it presupposes and signals. This favor may take different forms but always neutralizes even the most powerful magic, of Circe or the Telchines. Nevertheless, unlike Pindar and Callimachus, the narrator of 9 tries hard but cannot drive on untrodden paths skillfully, and his confidence in his poetic ability, although not provocatively arrogant, distances him significantly from Theocritean narrators. He tries to say something original in a novel way but manages only to add insult to injury: in Callimachean terms, he may be thought to try to fashion a short and delicate tale like a child but he finds himself in a cul-de-sack rather than on a narrow lane, and he ends up asking the Muses for an old song. The goddesses would hardly look with delight upon such a devotee, whether in his youth or old age. Even Daphnis, apparently a more competent singer, is much more explicit in his self-praise (7–8; cf. 8.37–38) than most genuine Theocritean narrators (contrast e.g. 5.80–81). This is hardly Daphnis, or a Daphnis similar to, the “original” Theocritean hero, the divine favorite and subject of bucolic song, magisterially introduced in Idyll 1.

III. Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics Idyll 1 From any aspect one may consider it, including that of the motifs discussed above, Idyll 1 is programmatically representative in its fullness of bucolic topoi and cast. The legendary Daphnis makes his first, and possibly his only, appearance in the collection, as a character in Thyrsis’ song.1 A host of cardinal motifs, from natural beauty, musical excellence, aesthetic pleasure, competition, piety, gifts down to unfortunate love, loss, and pathetic fallacy, all appear in the frame and/or in Thyrsis’ song. Only 7, perhaps not incidentally almost exactly equal in length, compares to 1 in sweep of motivic and imagistic comprehensiveness. This closeness notwithstanding, 1 is dramatic throughout and features scant reference to the non-bucolic world. It is a poem about a bucolic song, indeed the bucolic song par excellence (19–20), and a wonderful cup, enclosed all around by its bucolicity, and perfectly executed, mindful only of its own seductiveness and artistry, including in the representation of labor(s) and a pervasive sense of longing, loss and unfulfilled action and desire. Next I will focus mainly on the first part of the poem with its self-conscious references to song and singers (1–63), beginning with the ecphrasis of the famous cup (27–56): καὶ βαθὺ κισσύβιον κεκλυσμένον ἁδέι κηρῷ, ἀμφῶες, νεοτευχές, ἔτι γλυφάνοιο ποτόσδον. τῶ ποτὶ μὲν χείλη μαρύεται ὑψόθι κισσός, κισσὸς ἑλιχρύσῳ κεκονιμένος· ἁ δὲ κατ’ αὐτόν καρπῷ ἕλιξ εἱλεῖται ἀγαλλομένα κροκόεντι. ἔντοσθεν δὲ γυνά, τι θεῶν δαίδαλμα, τέτυκται, ἀσκητὰ πέπλῳ τε καὶ ἄμπυκι· πὰρ δέ οἱ ἄνδρες καλὸν ἐθειράζοντες ἀμοιβαδὶς ἄλλοθεν ἄλλος νεικείουσ’ ἐπέεσσι· τὰ δ’ οὐ φρενὸς ἅπτεται αὐτᾶς· ἀλλ’ ὅκα μὲν τῆνον ποτιδέρκεται ἄνδρα γέλαισα, ἄλλοκα δ’ αὖ ποτὶ τὸν ῥιπτεῖ νόον· οἳ δ’ ὑπ’ ἔρωτος δηθὰ κυλοιδιόωντες ἐτώσια μοχθίζοντι. τοῖς δὲ μετὰ γριπεύς τε γέρων πέτρα τε τέτυκται λεπράς, ἐφ’ ᾇ σπεύδων μέγα δίκτυον ἐς βόλον ἕλκει ὁ πρέσβυς, κάμνοντι τὸ καρτερὸν ἀνδρὶ ἐοικώς. φαίης κεν γυίων νιν ὅσον σθένος ἐλλοπιεύειν,

|| 1 For Daphnis in the rest of the collection see the discussion of Idylls 6, 8 & 9 and 27 above.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615272-004

Idyll 1 | 163

ὧδέ οἱ ᾠδήκαντι κατ’ αὐχένα πάντοθεν ἶνες καὶ πολιῷ περ ἐόντι· τὸ δὲ σθένος ἄξιον ἅβας. τυτθὸν δ’ ὅσσον ἄπωθεν ἁλιτρύτοιο γέροντος περκναῖσι σταφυλαῖσι καλὸν βέβριθεν ἀλωά, τὰν ὀλίγος τις κῶρος ἐφ’ αἱμασιαῖσι φυλάσσει ἥμενος· ἀμφὶ δέ νιν δύ’ ἀλώπεκες, ἃ μὲν ἀν’ ὄρχως φοιτῇ σινομένα τὰν τρώξιμον, ἃ δ’ ἐπὶ πήρᾳ πάντα δόλον τεύχοισα τὸ παιδίον οὐ πρὶν ἀνησεῖν φατὶ πρὶν ἢ ἀκράτιστον ἐπὶ ξηροῖσι καθίξῃ. αὐτὰρ ὅγ’ ἀνθερίκοισι καλὰν πλέκει ἀκριδοθήραν σχοίνῳ ἐφαρμόσδων· μέλεται δέ οἱ οὔτε τι πήρας οὔτε φυτῶν τοσσῆνον ὅσον περὶ πλέγματι γαθεῖ. παντᾷ δ’ ἀμφὶ δέπας περιπέπταται ὑγρὸς ἄκανθος, αἰπολικὸν θάημα· τέρας κέ τυ θυμὸν ἀτύξαι. I will give you a deep cup, too, sealed with sweet wax, two-handled, newly made, still fragrant from its chiseling. High up on the rim winds ivy, ivy speckled with gold-flowers; and along it twines the tendril making a fine show of its yellow fruit. Inside, with more than human artistry, is carved a woman arrayed with a cloak and headband. By her, two men with fine heads of hair are contending in speech, one from each side; but she is unimpressed, and she at one time gives one of them a smiling glance, then turns her attention to the other, while they labor in vain, their eyes long dark-rimmed from love. Near them are carved an old fisherman and a rugged rock, on which the old man energetically gathers his big net for a cast. He is the very image of effort: you would say that he was fishing with all the strength of his limbs, so much do the sinews bulge all over his neck, gray haired though he is; his strength is worthy of youth. A short distance from the sea-worn old man is a vineyard with a fine load of purple grapes. A little boy is on guard there, sitting on the dry-stone wall. Near him are two foxes; one goes among the vine rows and plunders the grapes that are ready to eat, while the other uses all its guile to get his knapsack, and is determined not to leave the boy alone until he has only dry bread left for his breakfast. He meanwhile is weaving a fine trap for grasshoppers by linking together rushes and stalks of asphodel, and his care for his knapsack and vines is much less than the pleasure he takes in his plaiting. All around the cup is spread pliant acanthus. It is a wonderful product of the pastoral world, a marvel to amaze your mind.

The third and most extensively described scene on the cup, which depicts the boy absorbed in the weaving of a cricket-trap (45–54), has been viewed as symbolic of the (bucolic) poet.2 This is plausible, especially given the Dionysiac setting of the vineyard, the poetologically charged image of weaving, the absorption of the

|| 2 See e.g. Hunter (1999) 77, Purchase (2003) 97, and Heerink (2015) 61. For the ecphrasis of the cup, which balances Thyrsis’ song and includes details of physical appearance, movement and emotional shifts, see Kania (2016) 130–31, and Sistakou (2017a) 310.

164 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics boy, the connection with the musical crickets, and perhaps even with Callimachus’ programmatic, self-conscious Aetia prologue. The boy’s lack of interest in his lunch may also have something to do with a poet’s neglect, chosen or otherwise, of material gain and creature comforts. I will discuss poetic poverty below. On the other hand, it should also be kept in mind that the scenes on the cup are more directly akin to the occupations and circumstances of the characters, contemporary and mythical, of the poem and the genre than to those of the poet.3 To be sure, in the first two scenes the lovesick, exhausted men, engaged in a verbal contest in the presence of a fickle beauty (32–38),4 and the old fisherman (39–44) are not standard bucolic characters, not even (exclusively) bucolic at all, but the boy is not either.5 All three scenes pick out central themes of the collection, unfortunate love and labor (of love) rather than song or poetry. If the boy and his occupation are a metaphor for the poet and his work, then the two foxes may not be left out of the self-conscious image, but their integration is difficult. At first glance and within the ecphrasis they seem to parallel and outfox, as it were, the two men laboring in love and in vain. If one is willing to pursue parallels to their limits, then the foxes might be taken as the poet’s professional rivals, for instance, but such an assumption would create many more puzzles than it would solve, as the foxes are after the grapes and the boy’s food and not his artifact, which he has not even finished yet. He neglects his appointed task, and his unfinished, preferred task provides only aesthetic pleasure and no material reward or benefits that might be represented by the food the foxes covet. The poet may have inserted an image in which only one figure symbolizes the poet, but it is plausible and sobering to keep in mind that absorption and pleasure in one’s favorite task are hardly features exclusive to poets, in life or in the poem. Not only poets but also audiences and even critics may see themselves in the boy, but their preoccupations, including the search for parallels and symbols, may become an end in itself, however pleasurable.

|| 3 If anything, it is the goatherd rather than the figures on the cup that displays poetic features. Cf. Gutzwiller (1991) 93–94 and n. 6 below. 4 It is likely that the men compete for her favor, but this is not stated and may not be taken for granted, especially as erotic rivalry does not usually take the form of debates in life or art. For the scene and the situation it captures see Payne (2007) 29–33 with previous literature. None of the ambiguities concerning the situation and relationships of the figures on the cup affects my discussion. For 1.38 and 7.48 (ἐτώσια μοχθίζοντι) see n. 33 below. 5 Cf. Rosenmeyer (1969) 91.

Idyll 1 | 165

In any case, if the boy is a symbol for the (bucolic) poet, this choice points to poetic modesty rather than pride, and the ongoing efforts in all three scenes contrast with the perfect, completed execution of the cup and the song of Thyrsis.6 In this light, if poets are to be sought in the poem, then the two frame characters are likelier candidates than the boy. In my view, the most intriguing aspect of 1 is the absence of hostility and arrogance from the exchange before the song, especially as far as poetry and music are concerned. The Idyll begins with an exchange of major compliments between the two characters (1–11): ΘΥΡΣΙΣ Ἁδύ τι τὸ ψιθύρισμα καὶ ἁ πίτυς, αἰπόλε, τήνα, ἁ ποτὶ ταῖς παγαῖσι, μελίσδεται, ἁδὺ δὲ καὶ τύ συρίσδες· μετὰ Πᾶνα τὸ δεύτερον ἆθλον ἀποισῇ. αἴ κα τῆνος ἕλῃ κεραὸν τράγον, αἶγα τὺ λαψῇ· αἴ κα δ’ αἶγα λάβῃ τῆνος γέρας, ἐς τὲ καταρρεῖ ἁ χίμαρος· χιμάρω δὲ καλὸν κρέας, ἔστε κ’ ἀμέλξῃς. ΑΙΠΟΛΟΣ ἅδιον, ὦ ποιμήν, τὸ τεὸν μέλος ἢ τὸ καταχές τῆν’ ἀπὸ τᾶς πέτρας καταλείβεται ὑψόθεν ὕδωρ. αἴ κα ταὶ Μοῖσαι τὰν οἴιδα δῶρον ἄγωνται, ἄρνα τὺ σακίταν λαψῇ γέρας· αἰ δέ κ’ ἀρέσκῃ τήναις ἄρνα λαβεῖν, τὺ δὲ τὰν ὄιν ὕστερον ἀξῇ. THYRSIS: A sweet thing is the whispered music of that pine by the springs, goatherd, and sweet is your piping, too; after Pan you will take the second prize. If he should choose the horned goat, you will have the she-goat, and if he has the she-goat as his prize, the kid falls to you. The flesh of a kid is good before you milk her. GOATHERD: Sweeter is the outpouring of your song, shepherd, than that cascade teeming down from the rock up above. If the Muses should take the ewe as their gift, you will have a stall-fed lamb, and if they would like to have a lamb, you will be next and take away the ewe.

Each extolls the other’s musical competence and compares it to the performance of divinities. This is a reversal of the initial exchange of abuse in 5, for instance. || 6 It can also hardly be insignificant that song or poetry takes precedence over instrumental music, despite the goatherd’s reported excellence and the prominence of music in the bucolic genre. Unlike pottery or song, instrumental music does not lend itself easily to poetic description, imitation, and thus mise en abyme, although the beginning of the poem (1–3, quoted below) apparently imitates the sound of the syrinx. For the sound patterns imitative of folksong in the song of Thyrsis see Kaloudis (2017). The choice of hexametric vehicle used to reproduce lyric songs does not affect my discussion.

166 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics Thyrsis then suggests a piping performance by the goatherd near some tamarisks (12–14), but he refuses (15–18) and proposes instead a song performance by Thyrsis under an elm, in return for lavish bucolic gifts (19–63). Again, this finds reverse parallels in Lacon’s challenge, Comatas’ response, and the acrimonious setting of prizes in 5 as well as in the disagreement of the herdsmen over the most appropriate place to hold their singing contest. Still, and despite the parallel between Thyrsis’ song and the ecphrasis of the cup, remotely similar to Milon’s unexpected song in 10, there is no suggestion of, or allusion to, a contest between Thyrsis and the goatherd.7 The exchange quoted above may be viewed as competitive, but its graciousness and compliments undermine any agonistic undercurrent. I will return to this exchange in a moment. For now, Thyrsis even offers to mind the animals of the goatherd while the latter would be playing the syrinx (14), a suggestion that not only precedes and parallels the goatherd’s offer of gifts but is also reminiscent of the wish of Tityrus/Lycidas that he were a contemporary of the legendary Comatas and minded the master’s goats while listening to his music (7.86–89; cf. 8.85). It has been suggested that in 1 strife and love belong to the past while the present is informed by reciprocal friendship.8 However, it is notable that Thyrsis’ past singing contest with the Libyan Chromis (23–24) is not said to have ended in victory or the award of a prize, although the implication is perhaps there. Still, the contest is another focus of ambiguity in a poem that contains several instances of the trope, and the exotic provenance of Chromis adds spice but does not elucidate the background of the story.9 It remains an open possibility that the contest was friendly and/or informal, like the exchange of Damoetas and Daphnis in 6, a significant possible parallel. The goatherd uses ἐρίσδων to refer to Thyrsis’ past performance (24), but the verb, which is not found in the spurious || 7 Payne (2007) 44–45 argues that Thyrsis incorporates his audience in the song: the choice to include a mini-ecphrasis of the syrinx rather than to praise the music of the instrument Daphnis dedicates to Pan (128–30) should be taken as implicit exaltation of Thyrsis’ own art over the goatherd’s, as Pindar contrasts his dynamic song with static sculpture (N. 5.1–8), but the contrast between song and instrumental music is hardly as striking. In any case, even if Thyrsis praises his art, this may be just his response to the goatherd’s praise of the wondrous cup, and in his capacity as ecphrastic celebrator the goatherd too is a sort of poet. He offers the cup readily in friendship and good faith, and urges Thyrsis to be similarly unstinting with his song (62–63), which he proves to be. If there is an undercurrent of competition, it vanishes in the graciousness and piety that concludes the exchange. For the goatherd’s encouragement to Thyrsis see below pp. 173–76. 8 Hunter (1999) 69. 9 For speculation about the agonistic context and its ramifications see e.g. Acosta-Hughes (2006) 30.

Idyll 1 | 167

pieces, occurs in connection with both the acrimonious contest of Comatas and Lacon (5.30, 67) and with Daphnis’ friendly challenge (6.5). This suggests that Thyrsis’ contest with Chromis may not necessarily have been a formal affair and may have ended in a draw, for instance. In any case, whether it was a formal contest that ended with the victory of one contestant or not, a singing contest does not necessarily carry unpleasant connotations of rivalry or strife. Even the “contests” or quarrels, including love affairs, in the song of Thyrsis, things of the remoter past, are already settled or some are set to continue, and friendship is also there. Daphnis has been vanquished by Eros or at any rate accepts his defeat, whatever form his dispute with the god may be thought to have taken (97–103). Aphrodite remains helpless to resist the attractions of her shepherd lovers (105–10) and the attacks of her mortal adversaries (112–13): her humiliation at the hands of Diomedes, even if the reference is to a second, future encounter, is guaranteed by the first (Il. 5.330–430), certainly from the point of view of the poetic tradition. Besides, despite the acrimonious exchange between Daphnis and Aphrodite (97–113), humans, gods and animals, or the entire animate universe, show concern for Daphnis, visit him and/or lament his plight (71– 93). These are indisputable tokens of friendship—even Aphrodite tries to support him, although belatedly (138–39).10 As already suggested, the concord of Thyrsis and the goatherd is underscored by the generous offer of gifts in exchange for the wonderful song, which are repeatedly mentioned in the frame. This contrasts not only with 5 but also with 6, in which gifts are exchanged after the contest ends in a draw (42–46; cf. 9.22–27). The goatherd promises not only a particularly productive animal (25–26) but also the cup he had bought at apparently considerable expense (57–58) and had never even used so far (οὐδέ τί πω ποτὶ χεῖλος ἐμὸν θίγεν, ἀλλ’ ἔτι κεῖται/ ἄχραντον, 59–

|| 10 Anagnostou-Laoutides & Konstan (2008) argue that Aphrodite is the object of Daphnis’ passion. For Daphnis’ associations with Near-Eastern consorts of goddesses such as the Sumerian Dumuzi and the Semitic Tammuz cf. Hunt (2011) 385–86, who suggests that Daphnis is modeled on the Adonis of the Adonia hymn of Idyll 15. Aphrodite’s emotion (95–96), grief or anger, her role, and Daphnis’ love story are probably meant to be ambiguous. It is to be noted, though, that the end of Thyrsis’ song stresses the love of Muses and nymphs for Daphnis (141), perhaps alluding also to the traditions about his mother and lover, both nymphs, and to his poetic excellence; see Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 155–56. The first refrain of the song is an invocation of, and appeal to, the “dear Muses” to begin the bucolic song (64, 70, 73, 76, 79, 84, 89), a strong implicit link between the legendary and the contemporary singer; cf. Acosta-Hughes (2006) 29–31.

168 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics 60).11 Similarly, his assertion of the honesty of his promise (κοὔτι τυ κερτομέω, 62) is reminiscent of Comatas’ claim that he is honest and Lacon is abusive (φιλοκέρτομος, 5.77). κερτομέω may suggest both abuse and falsity, but the intention of the speaker to denigrate the target is always present. The goatherd denies any such intention, and his honesty is proven not only by his immediate offer of the promised gifts upon conclusion of the song (149–51) and his gracious offer of praise (146–48) but also by his piety, a feature fully shared by Thyrsis. Already at the very beginning, both men give precedence to gods in the award of potential prizes (3–6, 9–11). The praise of their colleague’s performance (1–3, 7–8), in a “contest” of compliments, is also cast in a gracious style. It is usually claimed that the prizes in the putative musical contest between the goatherd and Pan appear in a descending order of value (3–6) and that the goatherd tops this by suggesting prizes of equal value, of which the Muses have first choice (9–11).12 I am not aware of another example of such outstripping, or of equal prizes awarded to professionals of unequal skill. Equally important, it does not seem self-evident, at least to a person unfamiliar with animal herding, that while an adult goat is more valuable than a young she-goat a ewe and a lamb are approximately of equal value—certainly the ewe is fleecier (cf. 12.4) and produces milk. The idea presumably originated from the two alternative prizes that the Muses may choose, either a ewe or a lamb, with the remaining prize awarded to the human singer. This does not necessarily indicate that the Muses may choose only between prizes of equal value but just as plausibly that they may, for reasons of their own, prefer the lamb to the ewe. The Theocritean Muses are not Aristophanic divinities always on the lookout for the fattiest animal on offer, but sophisticated goddesses who may favor the young animal. The wishes and choices of gods are inscrutable, as will be obvious from the behavior of Aphrodite, and perhaps also the nymphs, in Thyrsis’ song. It is true that the Muses have first choice of prize, although it is also conceivable that the avoidance of the word ἆθλον (3) in the goatherd’s reply does away with the agonistic suggestions of Thyrsis’ praise—the goatherd omits to respond to the line that mentions it.13 If so, then the goatherd corrects rather than tops Thyrsis or tops by correcting him. || 11 Apart from Callimachus’ programmatic use of ἄχραντος (H. 2.111), the predicate occurs in a fragment of Agamemnon by Ion of Chios (TrGF 1.308), in which the speaker promises the addressee a cup, a prize in Pelias’ funeral games. This is perhaps a significant allusion but it is now obscure to us. 12 See Gow (19522) 4, and Hunter (1999) 73. Contrast Rosenmeyer (1969) 96. 13 Note also the choice of δῶρον (9), which is not used by Thyrsis and appears before γέρας, common to both (5, 10).

Idyll 1 | 169

Human-divine competition is always dangerous and detrimental to mortals,14 unless they have divine support, like the Homeric Diomedes did, for instance, and Thyrsis may hardly be thought to suggest that the goatherd would actually compete with Pan. Still, even a mere unwitting hint of a competition between human and divine musicians would be considered highly inauspicious and would thus be avoided by a fastidiously god-fearing character such as the goatherd, who declines Thyrsis’ enthusiastic request for a piping performance (12–14) because he is afraid of disturbing Pan (15–18). His suggestion of a song performance by Thyrsis includes an alternative suitable place for it near Priapus’ statue (21–23), although this is not necessarily a sign of piety. As already suggested, this exchange marks a clear difference from the protracted disagreement of Lacon and Comatas over the location of their singing match. They too invoke divinities (5.14, 17–18, 70, 74, 79, 141) and vow to make offerings to them (5.53–54, 58–59, 80–81, 82–83), but the location and the match itself have nothing to do with gods, even though the prize is to be sacrificed to the nymphs (5.148–49).15 In a similar vein, after Milon’s initial invocation of Demeter (10.42–43), the brusque and newly contentious singer fails to invoke, or even evoke, the goddess or any other divinity. Despite the compliments, piety, generosity and indeed harmony of the bucolic universe apparent in the interaction of Thyrsis and the goatherd, at the end of his great speech the latter strikes a fairly somber, at least mildly disquieting note: he suggests that there is no way for Thyrsis to take his song to Hades that causes forgetfulness (62–63): κοὔτι τυ κερτομέω. πόταγ’, ὠγαθέ· τὰν γὰρ ἀοιδάν οὔ τί πᾳ εἰς Ἀίδαν γε τὸν ἐκλελάθοντα φυλαξεῖς. I don’t speak in mockery at all. Come on, my good fellow; you certainly can’t carry your song to Hades that causes forgetfulness and save it there.

This is an unusual and surprising claim, both in its dramatic context and in connection with ideas about poetic fame and excellence in Greek literature. It has also received surprisingly scant scholarly attention. First of all, Thyrsis has given no sign that he is reluctant or unwilling to comply with the goatherd’s request, || 14 The story of the punishment of Thamyris by the Muses (Il. 2.597–600) is the cautionary tale par excellence in the musical sphere. For the allusion to this story at the end of the goatherd’s speech (62–63) see below pp. 176–77. 15 It is actually Morson who mentions the sacrifice first (5.139–40) in his request for a gift, but it is not particularly likely that Comatas did not intend to sacrifice the lamb to the nymphs. At any rate, Comatas immediately takes up the suggestion, promises the gift (5.141), and then displays a fastidious kind of piety (5.147–50).

170 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics and he proceeds with the song without any indication that he would not have done so without the encouragement. This unexpected warning may be considered exaggerated, especially as the part of the speech dealing with the suggestion for a song performance has been completed in ring composition at 61. The encouragement perhaps suggests that the goatherd is particularly eager for the song and worries that the promised gifts would not be enough to ensure the granting of his request. Even so, the evocation of Hades is an unexpected choice in the context. The belief that the deceased in Hades forget everything or are impervious to pain and distress is standard in Greek thought,16 and the goatherd would not expect Thyrsis to be an exception to the common lot of humanity: Thyrsis too will forget his song, and there is no point in his “saving” it now for eternity, as it were.17 However, this warning, which echoes the punishment of Thamyris (Il. 2.597–600, quoted below), acquires additional weight because it collapses the distinction between the physical mortality of the singer and the virtual immortality of his song. By the 5th century BC the belief that songs—especially those about worthy subjects, as virtually all in literature are credited to be—confer and enjoy imperishable fame, or virtual immortality, had become as common as the belief about the forgetfulness of the deceased in Hades.18 The famous Daphnis and his sorrows are certainly worthy subjects for any song and singer, and “The sorrows of Daphnis”, the song of Thyrsis, is presented as the quintessence of bucolic song. It is thus virtually impossible, on the basis of beliefs about poetry and the dramatic frame, that bucolic song will be forgotten upon Thyrsis’ death. The goatherd certainly does not say or imply anything remotely so outrageous. Nevertheless, it is also not to be overlooked that while the song(s) about Daphnis’ sorrows and the bucolic genre will not perish, the goatherd suggests that the particular version or performance of Thyrsis will survive only as long as the singer does. In a programmatic piece about song, and especially bucolic song, this may hardly be an incidental remark. Not only does it echo the story of Thamyris, a traditional

|| 16 See e.g. A. fr. 255, 353 Radt, Eur. Alc. 937, Ar. R. 186, Pl. R. 621a, Callim. Hc. fr. 80 Hollis, [Theocr.] 23.23–24. The Homeric Achilles, who proclaims that he will remember Patroclus in life and death (Il. 22.387–90), is an exception in this respect. 17 This is apparently a singer version of the admonition addressed to rich misers to invest their resources wisely by patronizing poets because in Hades their riches are useless and they will be forgotten if not celebrated in song; see 16.22–65 and cf. 17.106–21. 18 Cf. Kyriakou (2004) 222–25. Simonides, though, may have also suggested that (poetic?) fame too eventually perishes (PMG 594 = 305 Poltera); see V n. 36 below.

Idyll 1 | 171

tale of poetic pride and divine punishment for it, it also touches on issues concerning the production and fame of oral and/or popular performances versus written and elite compositions. It is not clear whether Thyrsis gained acclaim for a composition of his own about Daphnis’ sorrows or just for the performance of such a composition, not necessarily one composed by a specific or eponymous composer but what might be called a popular or traditional song. Even if the latter is the case, there can be little doubt that Thyrsis, who identifies, and probably had always identified, himself in a sphragis at the very beginning of his performance (65), puts his personal stamp on the song.19 For all intents and purposes the song may be considered as his composition as well as his performance.20 If so, then the goatherd’s reference to the forgetfulness Hades brings on is not a casual statement of a fact of (singer) life but his view of, and cautioning Thyrsis about, the fate of a particular version or performance of a song and the gifted singer’s appropriate behavior. According to the goatherd, no matter how excellent and famous, Thyrsis’ song(s) will survive only as long as he does, and there is no point in his refusing another performance, and one to be richly rewarded to boot, which may sustain and spread its fame, although the latter is not explicitly mentioned. To be sure, illustrious predecessors such as Homer (7.47, 16.57, 22.218–20) and Simonides (16.44–47) are celebrated in Theocritus’ poetry: their famous songs apparently broke the Hades barrier, glorifying both themselves and their subjects, but in realistic terms the masterpieces of these masters have survived as texts. The excellence of a legendary singer, Comatas, is also highly praised by Tityrus/Lycidas (7.83–89), and Daphnis himself was a piper, apparently of some esteem (cf. 129; cf. 141). Nevertheless, there is no reference to any particular song or performance of the legendary bucolic masters: Tityrus/Lycidas wishes that he might derive aesthetic pleasure by experiencing the exquisite sweetness of the legendary predecessor’s singing voice, not that he might hear a specific song performed on a specific occasion.21 The implied limitations of the endurance and

|| 19 Cf. Goldhill (1991) 245, and Pretagostini (1992) 71. 20 The sphragis does not state explicitly that the song is Thyrsis’ own (composition), unlike those of Theognis (19–23) and Susarion (fr. 1.1–2 K-A), for instance. On the other hand, even in popular genres such as the laments for Adonis or work songs such as the Lityerses individual performances would be considered as compositions of the performers, who might compete in contests and gain fame for their skill and erudition (cf. 15.96–99). For Thyrsis’ individual performance see Payne (2007) 44–45, and cf. n. 7 above. 21 Stanzel (1996) 213 associates the end of Tityrus/Lycidas’ song (7.88–89) with 1.1–2: if this is a meaningful echo, it is significant that the mastery of Comatas is evoked in terms of the sounds

172 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics fame of Thyrsis’ performance are foiled by Daphnis’ situation and his posthumous fate in the song. Daphnis, whose musical skill comes into focus only at the very end of the song, dedicates his syrinx to Pan in view of his demise (128–30), and there is no indication that he will preserve his expertise in Hades. However, his fame that has passed into song, his distinction as a favorite of the Muses and nymphs, and perhaps his vow to remain an embarrassment to Eros even in Hades (103) put him on a totally different level from ordinary mortals, living and dead, including apparently the gifted Thyrsis. In this vein, Thyrsis’ praise of the goatherd’s piping excellence notwithstanding, there is no explicit claim or implicit suggestion that the goatherd enjoys widespread renown even in the countryside (contrast e.g. 7.27–29), or that he is a particular favorite of the Muses or other bucolic/musical divinities (contrast e.g. 7.95, 11.6). Thyrsis’ accomplishments are more lavishly celebrated (7–8, 20, 148), but the spread of his fame too is only implied (contrast e.g. 7.37–38, 91–93). As already noted, the reference of the goatherd to the forgetfulness (of song) caused by Hades contains a warning against arrogance that echoes Homer’s report of the punishment the Muses inflicted on the hubristic singer Thamyris (Il. 2.597–600): στεῦτο γὰρ εὐχόμενος νικησέμεν εἴ περ ἂν αὐταὶ Μοῦσαι ἀείδοιεν κοῦραι Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο· αἳ δὲ χολωσάμεναι πηρὸν θέσαν, αὐτὰρ ἀοιδὴν θεσπεσίην ἀφέλοντο καὶ ἐκλέλαθον κιθαριστύν· He declared boastfully that he would be the victor even if the Muses themselves sang against him, the daughters of Zeus the bearer of the aegis. They in wrath maimed him and took away from him his wonderful song and made him forget his skill in playing the lyre.

I pointed out above that no implication of hubristic presumption on the part of Thyrsis or his companion is present, and the goatherd is thus unlikely to suggest that Thyrsis will be punished as Thamyris was if he does not grant the goatherd’s request.22 Nevertheless, the transience of mortal life in general and the danger of forgetfulness threatening oral performers in particular, especially those who might behave foolishly or invidiously like Thyrsis, is given an extra twist by the

|| of nature and the syrinx-playing of the goatherd, of music rather than the performance of specific songs. 22 It is not clear whether even Daphnis dies because he spurned Eros or from some other cause connected with Eros. The story is notoriously left vague (97–98, 103), probably on purpose. Even if he offended Eros, though, an association with hubrists like Thamyris is remote, as no actual competition is involved.

Idyll 1 | 173

recollection of the punishment of Thamyris, fully deserved though that was: if Thyrsis fails to perform the coveted song, he will not “forget” his musical abilities or become incapacitated while alive, but his potential refusal is cast in terms of avaricious, useless covetousness and a foolish, hubristic assumption or confidence that one’s assets may be safe or saved for eternity. Daphnis became famous, and the Muses and nymphs did not come to hate him, but he is not celebrated as a singer. The singer Thamyris emerges as a more relevant foil for Thyrsis than Daphnis: he became hateful to the Muses and notorious, and the goatherd suggests that Thyrsis’ potential foolishness may be a sign of dangerous arrogance. In light of the above, Idyll 1, the programmatic, enchanting poem celebrating the founding hero of bucolic in an atmosphere of beguiling harmony between man and nature and of concord between the characters, strikes a somber and sobering note at an important point. What is more, for all the poem’s celebration of natural and artistic beauty, the encouragement of the goatherd is just one example of themes that run through the poem, (the prospect of) absence, failure and loss. I singled out the goatherd’s encouragement because it touches directly on the fragility of exquisite song just before a masterly performance, but the frame characters and especially the actors in the drama narrated in Thyrsis’ song also experience (the prospect of imminent) failure and loss. An early and harmless instance is the pious rejection of Thyrsis’ request for a piping performance (15– 18). More importantly, the nymphs and Pan are not there to support Daphnis and do not even show up in his haunts (66–69, 123–29),23 while the gods who visit fail to get any response to their encouragement. The last one reported to arrive, Aphrodite, fails both to subdue and to support the dying Daphnis. Not even the Muses, invoked by Thyrsis in the refrains and the envoi and about to receive a milk libation, are said to visit, either Daphnis or Thyrsis. The latter says that Daphnis was a favorite of the Muses and the nymphs (141), but neither group arrives to support, honor, or lament their darling in person. Among mortals, Daphnis’ supportive colleagues do visit (80) but naturally fail to save him. The girl has been looking for but never manages to find him (82–85), and a typical goatherd gazes invidiously at his frisky billy-goats, as Daphnis envies the dancing maidens (85–91). Nobody manages to achieve anything, fulfill their goal or satisfy their desire, with the exception of the goatherd, who gets the lovely performance he longs for,

|| 23 The absence of the nymphs may count as a reason why κρανίδων (22) = ‘springs’ should be preferred to Κρανίδων (cf. EB 29, with short -ι-) or the variant (Tr2) Κρανιάδων = ‘(statues of) spring nymphs’. Alternatively, a reference to statues of the nymphs would underscore the sense of absence: Thyrsis’ song begins and ends (141) with the nymphs, but the goddesses are conspicuous by their absence, which may imply indifference toward Daphnis’ plight.

174 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics perhaps because of the generous rewards he offers and the warning he issues. For all its sweetness, the song he craves is a lament over the sorrows and loss of Daphnis, and its dramatic time is a moment of last suspense and efforts before the final keeling over, the fated end, which is never elaborated upon. This sense of poised yearning and the prospect of imminent failure or loss mentioned above is a trademark, perhaps the major one, of the bucolic experience. Even the figures and stories depicted on the cup, for which the goatherd provides his own interpretation and which include animals, appear in the midst of their activities and under the spell of their strong urges. There is no telling, and no narrative, as to whether one of the debating men will emerge victorious, for instance, or whether both will fail in love. The old fisherman’s net is apparently heavy, but if he manages to pull it out it may not contain (only) fish. Even the boy has not finished and may well not finish his pleasing task, and it has the potential of turning all-consuming or obsessional, as already suggested. The failed search of the girl all over the bucolic haunts and the attitude of Daphnis exemplify emotional obsession and the helplessness it generates,24 which may be thought to be shared by the audience. Idyll 1 and the rest of the genuine pieces of the collection are much closer to the openendedness of drama and lyric than to the closure of epic. Fate is fulfilled (93, 139– 40), a great, god-beloved man perishes, mysteriously no less, like Oedipus in Sophocles’ OC, nature laments in pathetic fallacy, but the losses and failures are not made good or even explained. Nearly fifty years ago, Thomas Rosenmeyer argued in a fine analysis, which includes a reference to the goatherd’s encouragement, that an undercurrent of pervasive but underplayed melancholy adds richness to the texture of Theocritean poetry but does not degenerate into self-conscious grieving because of the simplicity of the bucolic cast.25 What is probably even more pervasive and disquieting, potentially at least, is the related sense of failure, both of presence and of fulfillment, which forms the basis of this melancholy. However, there is indeed a buffer between expectation, or even frustration, and desperation. This is not to be located so much in the simplicity or any other feature of the bucolic characters as in Theocritus’ choice to focus on defining rather than definitive moments, on the last stretch before the end rather than on the end itself. Examples of this open-

|| 24 For the nuance of the enjambed ζάτεισα across the refrain and δύσερως (85) see Hunter (1999) 92. The position of the participle signifies the length of the search but more importantly the verbal action comes after the ecphrastic specifications (πάσας ἀνὰ κράνας, πάντ’ ἄλσεα ποσσὶ φορεῖται, 83) and highlights the contrast between natural beauty and emotional torment, or perennially pleasing surroundings and inescapably obsessive longings. 25 Rosenmeyer (1969) 230–31.

Idyll 7 | 175

endedness are numerous, not only in the bucolic pieces but also in the rest of the collection, from Aeschinas’ plan to emigrate in 14 to the narrator’s expectation of patronage in 16. The potential for failure or derailment is always there, tackled differently in different poems but almost never actualized. Music and song in exquisite contexts, natural and otherwise, offer comfort, delight and even (the prospect of) fame but never any guarantee or panacea. The most extensive view of this aesthetic, self-conscious tension is provided in 7, which narrates a past event. This unique piece, a virtual chamber of echoes, begins and ends with references to Demeter (3, 155–57) and descriptions of eutopias (6–9, 131–55), which paradoxically evoke Erysichthon and the Cyclops. In between, an exchange of bucolic song in an encounter between a master and an aspiring master holds pride of place.

Idyll 7 For all the importance of the song exchange, the preceding conversation of Lycidas and Simichidas is equally intriguing in the richness of poetological issues it raises and the interpretive challenges it presents. The narrator Simichidas, already viewed in antiquity as an alias of Theocritus (Σ hyp and on 21),26 expresses confidence in his musical abilities. He describes himself as the equal of renowned Lycidas (30), even as a favorite of the Muses (37) and the nymphs, who functioned as his instructors (37–38, 91–93). He then modestly claims that he does not yet count himself the equal of Asclepiades and Philitas but is like a frog competing with crickets (39–41), although he specifies that he said this “on purpose” (ἐπίταδες, 42). Gow suggests that the modesty of Simichidas is calculated to draw Lycidas into the exchange of bucolic song he has suggested (36),27 but Simichidas’ specification and purpose seem to be richer. First, the idea of a false rather than a calculated claim is possibly preponderant and certainly not to be dismissed. Second, 42 looks back primarily, and perhaps exclusively, to

|| 26 Σ explain Simichidas as a patronymic or a nickname because the poet was allegedly snubnosed (σιμός). For the name see Nickau (2002) and Méndez Dosuna (2008) 200, who draw attention to the possible debt of Theocritus to Simias. However, even if Simichidas is a persona of Theocritus, the poet significantly chose not to use his name; see e.g. Krevans (1983) 219, Bowie (1985) 67–68, Goldhill (1991) 229–30, and Whitmarsh (2009) 61; cf. Rosenmeyer (1969) 15–16, Segal (1981) 117, Effe (1988) 90–91, and Hutchinson (1988) 203–5. 27 Gow (19522) 142. Cf. Segal (1981) 169–70. For an overview of ironic readings of Simichidas’ speech see Rudoni (2015) 107 n. 24.

176 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics Simichidas’ claim of modesty (39–41),28 which immediately precedes it, rather than the suggestion for the song exchange. Simichidas’ purpose then is primarily, and perhaps exclusively, to elicit praise or an endorsement from Lycidas, whether in connection with the song exchange or not. He does obtain the endorsement, although there is irony in it. Fishing for compliments and aiming at eliciting a reassurance that his reputation as the best singer is indeed deserved, he gets a laugh, a crook, and an ambiguous assurance that he is not a crook (42– 44; cf. 128–29). I will return to this praise and its ironies below. For now, Simichidas’ purpose is associated with the song exchange he has suggested but more closely with its direction or goal: he is more concerned with the acknowledgment of his worth by Lycidas than with the materialization of the exchange. Simichidas wishes to present himself as a sensibly sober, self-conscious young poet, with good potential. He has not reached his poetic peak yet but is already enjoying fair success and renown, and Lycidas may even draw some benefit from the proposed exchange (36). However, Simichidas does not seem to aim at defeating Lycidas, or at demonstrating his superiority. Despite his advantages, he proposes a friendly exchange of song rather than a contest and (claims that he) has no inflated idea of himself.29 In this light, Simichidas does not seem to try to present himself as superior to Lycidas. His reference to the latter’s renown as the best syrinx-player among rural folk (27–29) is not necessarily meant to denigrate the addressee in comparison with the speaker, who claims for himself a universal reputation as a “clear voice of the Muses” and “the best singer” (37–38), but does not style himself as an urban(e) poet superior to a country musician. If Simichidas implies that he is a more sophisticated poet than Lycidas, in my view a big if, he does not do so by means of the reference to Lycidas’ area of musical excellence or the socio-economic standing of his fans. Bucolic poets excel in both syrinx-playing and singing, or in singing accompanied by piping, and the two are used interchangeably.30 Simichidas is not above boasting, unlike Lycidas, but the

|| 28 Piacenza (2010) suggests that the choice of animals in the metaphor is ambivalent and that the frog is not unqualifyingly inferior to the crickets. 29 The logical implication of his claims, comparisons and qualifications is that he apparently does not consider Lycidas equal to the famous luminaries Asclepiades and Philitas, either, since in Simichidas’ estimation he and Lycidas are roughly equal (30). Nevertheless, this ironic implication may not necessarily be perceived as denigrating or spiteful to, and especially by, Lycidas, who nowhere exalts himself. Simichidas’ emphasis on personal assessment (κατ’ ἐμὸν νόον, 30, 39) leaves open, and is perhaps meant to suggest, the possibility that Lycidas may judge differently the relative worth of the singers in question. 30 Cf. Hutchinson (1988) 206–7, and Massimilla (2017) 401. The goatherd and Thyrsis in 1 excel in piping and singing respectively, but this distinction, drawn apparently for dramatic reasons,

Idyll 7 | 177

latter acknowledges the virtues and potential of a promising younger man, although he apparently sees through Simichidas’ posturing. The song of Simichidas is presented as a token of honor to Lycidas (94–95), who is repeatedly associated with the Muses, in connection with the encounter (12), the favor of the goddesses he enjoys (95), and the gift he presents to Simichidas (128–29). It is then hard to believe that the courteousness of Simichidas toward Lycidas is just a smokescreen for the younger poet’s wish to indirectly denigrate his elder. Lycidas’ reaction to Simichidas’ claims, ironical or not, is also indicative of his appreciation for Simichidas’ stance (42–48): ὣς ἐφάμαν ἐπίταδες· ὁ δ’ αἰπόλος ἁδὺ γελάσσας, ‘τάν τοι’, ἔφα, ‘κορύναν δωρύττομαι, οὕνεκεν ἐσσί πᾶν ἐπ’ ἀλαθείᾳ πεπλασμένον ἐκ Διὸς ἔρνος. ὥς μοι καὶ τέκτων μέγ’ ἀπέχθεται ὅστις ἐρευνῇ ἶσον ὄρευς κορυφᾷ τελέσαι δόμον Ὠρομέδοντος, καὶ Μοισᾶν ὄρνιχες ὅσοι ποτὶ Χῖον ἀοιδόν ἀντία κοκκύζοντες ἐτώσια μοχθίζοντι.’ So I spoke on purpose; and with a sweet laugh the goatherd said, “I present you with this stick of mine, because you are a sapling molded for truth by Zeus. I very much dislike the builder who strives to produce a house as high as Mt. Oromedon and those cocks of the Muses who vainly struggle to crow in rivalry with the Chian bard.”

Lycidas even gives Simichidas a gift. Although crooked, and thus ironically charged, the staff is an item important to the goatherd.31 It may be and has been connected with poetic investiture in the manner of the Muses’ gift to Hesiod (Th. 30–31) or to Archilochus (SEG xv 517). However, the encounter certainly does not turn a non-poet into a gifted professional but involves an older singer’s endorsement, recognition or blessing of a junior colleague rather than initiation proper. Apart from Lycidas’ smiles and laughter (19–20, 42, 128–29), perhaps signs associating him with divinities,32 irony has usually been detected in his use of the

|| is not universal. It is standard for bucolic musicians, beginning with Daphnis and Polyphemus, to possess a syrinx and sing in its accompaniment. 31 For the crook see Borgeaud (1979) 83, 101, who suggests that it is an item of the god Pan, and Cameron (1995) 415–16, who points out that the staff the Muses gave Hesiod was of laurel wood, long and straight. 32 Several scholars have thought that Lycidas has several features that associate or identify him with divinities such as Apollo (Williams [1971], Livrea [2004]), Pan (Brown [1981], Clauss [2003]), a satyr (Lawall [1967]), or Dionysus (Moscadi [2007]). For arguments against this approach see Giangrande (1968) 515–33, and cf. e.g. Serrao (1971) 16–39, Walker (1980) 65–70, Zagagi (1984),

178 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics attribute πεπλασμένον (44) = ‘fashioned’, but also ‘made up, false’. There is likely an echo of the claims of the Hesiodic Muses (Th. 27–28) in the oxymoronic “made up for truth”. Unlike the goddesses, though, Lycidas is (also) complimenting Simichidas as a favorite (offspring) of Zeus and a sensible young poet, taking at face value Simichidas’ claim of inferiority instead of rejecting it. So Simichidas is either called “a fiction invented for truth” or “a young plant of Zeus fashioned for truth”. Neither is a pure, straightforward compliment (cf. the gift of the crook), and the ambiguity obfuscates the meaning further. For all this uncertainty, Simichidas had obviously not compared himself to Homer, but Lycidas’ mention of this unsurpassable master serves to ironically put any thought of a contest to rest, by underscoring the foolishness of the aspirants and the dislike they motivate in sensible people. I do not share the view that epic vs. non-epic poetic medium is part of Lycidas’ statement.33 Instead, probably (also) in capping fashion, he points out, and perhaps warns Simichidas, that things can be(come) much worse than the young man indicated. Still, if Lycidas’ juxtaposition of Homer to the cocks of the Muses is reminiscent of Pindar’s famous image of crows trying in vain to compete with the divine bird of Zeus (O. 2.86–88; cf. N. 3.80–82, Bacch. 5.16–23), it is important that the crows are replaced by “cocks of the

|| Goldhill (1991) 230, and Arnott (1996) 64–66, who also lists identifications of Lycidas with mortal poets (p. 64 n. 40); cf. Klooster (2011) 197 n. 76. Hubbard (1998) 24 and Ruggi (2011) suggest respectively that Lycidas is a caricature of Philitas and Theocritus’ friend Nicias. For Philitas cf. n. 50 below. Lycidas is certainly never said to be divine or associated explicitly with any god(s) other than the Muses (95; cf. 12, 27, 129), which is not surprising in view of his musical excellence. Simichidas may attribute to him, ironically, appreciatively or both, some features reminiscent of divinities. However, his midday appearance, his behavior and final turning off in the direction of Pyxa (130–31), where according to Σ there was a temple of Apollo, are scant evidence for a divine identification, and there is no unambiguous, universally convincing sign of alterity in his presentation. The identity of divinities is also virtually always revealed in epiphanies. Even if Lycidas is a god in disguise, or a numinous impersonation of the spirit of bucolic song, or even a poetic master such as Hesiod, Philitas or Callimachus, the encounter with him does not result in Simichidas’ poetic investiture. It is then safer to abandon attempts at identification, especially as they in some ways resurrect the controversial and universally condemned bucolic masquerade approach. 33 Cf. e.g. Cameron (1995) 417–18. ἐτώσια μοχθίζοντι (48) occurs also at 1.38, a self-quotation that serves to further denigrate the poets aspiring to compete with Homer by describing them in terms of a static image of futility; cf. Zimmerman (1994) 80, Stanzel (1996) 212, and Hubbard (1998) 23.

Idyll 7 | 179

Muses”. The aspirants in Pindar are denied the title of poet, and may not be exclusively poets, but Lycidas, in a more restrained manner and perhaps crowded poetic field, hierarchizes poets and their inspiration.34 Be that as it may, the main token of the worth of Lycidas and Simichidas is the song each sings in the exchange. Both songs deal with homosexual lovesickness, Lycidas’ for Ageanax and Aratus’ for Philinus,35 but incorporate various voices and echoes of other genres.36 It is important to note that, in contrast to the frame, their narrative is open-ended, and the fulfillment of the wishes of the narrators contingent upon events that have not yet taken place and may never come to pass. Both songs then capture the yearning and emotional torment of the characters rather than the outcome of their wishes and efforts, which brings them close to other Idylls. There is scarcely any happy lover in Theocritus, but at least Lycidas envisages a happy occasion, the rustic symposium he and his friends will hold to celebrate the safe arrival of Ageanax at Mytilene. The symposium will include bucolic song (72–89),37 which has been viewed as a cure or substitute for Lycidas’ love.38 Ageanax is last mentioned a little before the middle of Lycidas’ song (69). However, Lycidas’ subsequent failure to mention the beloved or his passion is not necessarily a sign of cure or oblivion, especially if one compares Lycidas’ situation and aesthetic enjoyment with Polyphemus’ recourse to song in 11, for instance. Lycidas’ passion is burning hot at the moment, but if Ageanax consents to save him, he will be comforted and the beloved will reach his destination safely (52–56):

|| 34 For the rivalry of cocks with the Chian bard rather than some other kind of bird(s) see Hunter (1999) 165, and Bonanno (2008); cf. Cozzoli (1996) 17–19. 35 The characters in Simichidas’ song may be historical figures, as may be his hosts and companions (1–6), but each song is a fictional creation of its composer. Whether they narrate real events or not, strictly speaking, ‘Lycidas’ and ‘Simichidas’ in the songs are fictions of the homonymous fictions of Theocritus, which adds two more voices in a poem with a profusion of narrators. In what follows, I will assume that Lycidas and Simichidas sing of their own experiences, but the issue does not affect my discussion, as the assessment of the situations described in the songs does not hinge on the identity of the narrators. 36 For the connections of the songs with other genres (propemptikon, sympotic poetry, magical prayers/incantations) see Hunter (1999) 166–67, 171, 181–82. 37 The last part of the song on Comatas (83–89) may not be in the voice of Tityrus, the projected singer of the rest of the bucolic piece (72–82), but in the voice of Lycidas. Even so, there is no indication that Lycidas adds a coda Tityrus would not or could not endorse, and I will refer to the singer of this part as Tityrus/Lycidas. 38 See e.g. Walsh (1985) 13, Hubbard (1998) 27, 56, Hunter (1999) 144, 173, and Payne (2007) 80.

180 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics Ἔσσεται Ἀγεάνακτι καλὸς πλόος ἐς Μιτυλήναν, χὤταν ἐφ’ ἑσπερίοις Ἐρίφοις νότος ὑγρὰ διώκῃ κύματα, χὠρίων ὅτ’ ἐπ’ ὠκεανῷ πόδας ἴσχει, αἴ κα τὸν Λυκίδαν ὀπτεύμενον ἐξ Ἀφροδίτας ῥύσηται· θερμὸς γὰρ ἔρως αὐτῶ με καταίθει. Ageanax shall have a good voyage to Mitylene both when the Kids appear at evening and the south wind drives before it the waves of the sea and when Orion’s feet touch the ocean, if only he will rescue Lycidas from his roasting by Aphrodite: a hot love for him is burning me up.

It is not clear why or how Ageanax’ action will influence the outcome of his trip. More important, the uncertainty over what Lycidas hopes that Ageanax will do, respond to his love before he leaves for Mytilene or leave for Mytilene and thus allow Lycidas’ passion to cool,39 further complicates the narrative of the song. The second possibility may not be dismissed out of hand.40 Still, the assumption presupposes that the lover’s fervor would diminish with the departure of the beloved, but this is not self-evident, and the departure may just as likely have the opposite effect. In any case, it would be unprecedented for a Theocritean, or indeed any Greek, lover in the throes of burning passion, like Lycidas, to wish for relief through the departure of his beloved and to envisage a celebration motivated by the arrival of the beloved at his destination. There is no reason to assume that Lycidas would not (still) hope or imagine that Ageanax might reciprocate his feelings, and there is again no parallel for such disposition. Besides, it would be quite outrageous for Lycidas to ask Ageanax to sail in the stormy season so that Lycidas might feel better, and Ageanax would be unlikely to consent to such an absurd request, even if Lycidas assured him that his consent would guarantee a safe journey. Finally, it is difficult to imagine why Lycidas would single out Mytilene as the destination of Ageanax if his only wish were that the beloved leave Cos and thus save him—Σ indeed resort to

|| 39 For the first possibility see Gow (19522) 145, Dover (1971) 156, Hatzikosta (2005) 249, Billault (2008) 508, and Hopkinson (2015) 113, and for the second Heubeck (1973) 11–13, Furusawa (1980), Hunter (1999) 168, and Fantuzzi (2017) 341. 40 The reference to the preservation of the garland on the head of the celebrating Lycidas (64) has been associated with the belief that it indicates release from passion. Lycidas may then suggest that when his symposium will take place he will have been released from his passion. Even if this points to oblivion rather than consummation, it is too much to hang on a single word. The obvious meaning is that Lycidas will celebrate properly, with carefully woven and placed garlands and good wine. At any rate, release from passion is as likely to come from satisfaction of one’s desire as from departure of its object.

Idyll 7 | 181

attributing a Mytilinean origin to Ageanax. The song says nothing about the background or prospects of Lycidas’ passion, but the conditional at 55 may be viewed as a hint of a threat: if he does not give in to Lycidas, Ageanax may not enjoy a safe journey.41 Verisimilitude and fullness of detail were not among the main priorities of Greek poets, and logical leaps or even absurdities are not to be ruled out a priori in their work, but they do not appear beyond doubt in Lycidas’ song. Although there may never be a secure and widely accepted reconstruction of the situation envisaged in the song, the following scenario is not implausible: Ageanax has so far not responded to Lycidas’ passion for him but is bound to sail to Mytilene sometime in the near future. The presumed certainty or inevitability of Ageanax’s journey may be viewed as the reason why he will sail in the stormy season (53–54) and why Lycidas does not try to dissuade him from undertaking the perilous journey. Such an attempt would be expected in a farewell poem composed by a lover. Instead, Lycidas resorts to making the safety of the journey conditional on Ageanax’s yielding to his passion. It is unlikely that a lover would entertain dispassionately the departure of his beloved and the dangers of his trip, but since Ageanax has not yet reciprocated and the trip appears to be inevitable, Lycidas’ main concern and hope seem to be that a relationship may be established before Ageanax sails away and possibly forgets about his suitor altogether. If things go as Lycidas hopes, and Ageanax does reciprocate, Lycidas expresses certainty that Ageanax will be rewarded with a safe trip, for which he more conventionally or realistically wishes in ring composition at the end of the first part of the song (cf. πλόος 52, πλόον 61, εὔπλοος 62). He will celebrate his lover’s safe arrival at Mytilene, and he projects the pleasures of this celebration, mainly but not exclusively the bucolic song accompanying it. As already indicated, some scholars think that the departure of Ageanax will comfort Lycidas, and the passion will further abate in the aesthetic experience of listening to exquisite song about the travails of legendary bucolic heroes and their triumph over adversity. In other words, Lycidas envisages great and significant relief from his burning passion in his capacity as audience of bucolic song rather than singer. He certainly looks forward to Tityrus’ song about Daphnis’ woes (72–77) and the legend of an anonymous goatherd singer (78–82). He also

|| 41 This implication is then humorously taken up and expanded by Simichidas, who threatens Pan with punishment if the god does not help Aratus (109–14).

182 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics longingly wishes that he were able to hear the legendary Comatas (83–89).42 However, it is not clear that he hopes to alleviate his plight by listening to bucolic song. Crucially, Lycidas embeds his expectations and wishes in his own newly composed song. If song is a possible remedy or palliative for unrequited love, a major tenet of Theocritean bucolic, then Lycidas may have found relief with his own song, as a performer rather than a listener, whether or not he sought comfort and composed his song for this reason. Like the legendary goatherd (83–85), the great singer Comatas toiled for a year, or the spring of a year, locked in a box (ἔτος ὥριον ἐξεπόνασας, 85), as his admirer and colleague Lycidas toiled over his new little song he fashioned on the mountain (τοῦθ’ ὅτι πρᾶν ἐν ὄρει τὸ μελύδριον ἐξεπόνασα, 51). The background and prospects of the relationship of Lycidas and Ageanax remain indeterminate. This open-endedness does not allow for easy conclusions, but Lycidas is a master-singer, a senior colleague and a sort of poetic mentor of the young poet Simichidas, as Comatas is a model for Lycidas. Despite Lycidas’ reverence and longing for the old masters and songs, and although in my view there is little support for the assumption that he seeks to cool his passion with song, if he, the composer of “a brand-new little song”, may be thought to desire or seek poetic relief from his erotic passion, it is very unlikely that he would do so only in his capacity as audience, pleasurable and even helpful as that might be. Lycidas, the renowned goatherd singer, composes and sings a bucolic song about, among other things, a bucolic song that he plans to hear. This includes praise of Comatas, a legendary goatherd singer and hero of aipolic poetry, as it were, that Tityrus/Lycidas fervently wishes he were able to hear. Song (about and within song) is pleasurable and comforting, but the master-singer Lycidas is a composer and performer. He is not cast only in the role of audience and beneficiary of a song that might cool his passion. Whether comfort is sought and likely to be found or not, it may come mainly from Lycidas’ resources (cf. 22.222), as is the case with Polyphemus. By contrast, Simichidas sings a song about the lovesickness of his friend Aratus (96–127), which includes no mention or prospect of any celebration or comfort, although it mentions the great contemporary singer Aristis (99–102), to whom I will return. Simichidas proceeds to describe the lavish celebration at the farm of his hosts (131–57), so both themes of Lycidas’ song have parallels in Simichidas’ account of the memorable day on which he met Lycidas. However,

|| 42 Even if the wish is part of Tityrus’ song, Lycidas obviously shares it, at least vicariously. Cf. n. 37 above and 47 below. For a possible unmarked switch from third to first person already in Homer see Il. 15.346–47 and 348–51; cf. 9.684–85, 23.854–55, Od. 15.424 and 425–29.

Idyll 7 | 183

song has no part in the celebrations at the farm. More significantly, Simichidas not only does not foresee any comfort for Aratus but he also evokes outrageous mythological models for the celebrants at the farm. At the beginning of the song he claims that he too is in love, with the girl Myrto (96–97). It is not clear that he is enjoying much success, but he does not seem to suffer like other lovers, mythological or contemporary. His friend Aratus, burning with desire for a boy (98– 102), is in much worse shape, and Simichidas takes it upon himself to help him. Simichidas thus takes on the role of the helper or counselor found in 10 or 14, for instance: like Milon in 10, he first tries to find some means to comfort the lovesick man and then, like Thyonichus in 14, he offers a piece of advice that will help with the curing of passion. Such parallels suggest that Simichidas’ help will at best be limited and his role perhaps ambivalent. He first turns to Pan (103–14), an appropriate god to invoke in the context of erotic infatuation and a “bucolic” song, which the nymphs taught to a herdsman on the mountains (91–95). He effectively tries to bully the god into granting Aratus’ wish, but then for good measure he also turns to the Erotes and asks them to target the pitiless Philinus with their bows (115–19).43 This is usually interpreted as a prayer to turn the tables on Philinus and punish him for his cruelty with unrequited passion for another man, not Aratus, because a boy is not normally supposed to be in love with his lover.44 This is plausible, and the audience may have interpreted the prayer along these lines.

|| 43 Simichidas professes some uncertainty over the identity of Aratus’ beloved (105). This is probably an ironic pose: it is cast as an escape-clause, which is appropriate both in a prayer, especially since it seems to be ironically playful, and in the report of Simichidas’ second-hand knowledge of Aratus’ problem (99–102). Simichidas does not repeat this strategy in the appeal to the Erotes (115–19), but this does not suggest that they need a specific target, as Hunter (1999) 183 argues. After all, Pan too is enjoined to deliver a particular boy, not just any boy, to Aratus (103–4), and if Philinus is not the boy in question, the god would know who that boy would be. The gods are asked to assist Aratus, whoever the object of his passion may be, and they are assumed to know the identity of the boy they are to afflict, whether the praying mortal declares it or not. 44 See Gow (19522) 160–61, and Hunter (1999) 186–87; cf. Dover (1971) 163, and Hatzikosta (2005) 257–58. Gow points out that the places the Erotes are summoned from, the Milesian springs Hyetis and Byblis and the Carian town Oikous near Miletus, are associated with the unhappy incestuous love of the siblings Byblis and Caunus, children of Miletus, who founded Oikous and built a temple of Aphrodite there. It would then be strange for Simichidas to ask the Erotes from such a haunted place to bring about a reciprocal, happy relationship. Ehrhardt (2003) 268–80 suggests that the references to Miletus and the temple of Aphrodite in Oikous in 7 and 28 may be traced to Theocritus’ affection for Nicias and his sailing to Miletus, perhaps from Cos; cf. Ruggi (2011) 243–44.

184 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics On the other hand, in the golden age reciprocal love was (said to be) the norm (cf. 12.16), and Pan has already been asked to deliver the object of Aratus’ passion unsummoned into his arms (104). It is not clear that Simichidas (or Aristis) would not imply that Aratus wished for a reciprocal, life-long relationship. It is difficult to believe that Pan would operate on a stunned, robotic Philinus that would have or would develop no feelings for his lover. Even if the god did, it is not improbable that Simichidas leaves open the possibility that the Erotes may afflict Philinus with a passion (for Aratus) inappropriate for a young boy and a deserved punishment for a stubborn older one: Philinus does not realize or take into account that he is getting overripe and less attractive, as the women declare (120–21), and that he should come to his senses and yield to Aratus before it is too late.45 In any case, Aratus should now forget Philinus, who is no longer worth the trouble (122–25), for whatever reasons. Simichidas finally advises renouncement of erotic pursuits, presumably all kinds thereof, and devotion to tranquility (126–27). This may, and has been thought to, parallel and ironically outdo Lycidas’ sublimation of bucolic song and his comforting immersion in the pleasures of the bucolic celebration, in other words to be Simichidas’ version of the ideal of bucolic tranquility, first depicted in the song and then in the description of the festival that concludes the frame narrative. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the tranquility sought and ironically (to be) secured by the services of a crone that spits apotropaically is the result of failing to achieve the goal initially pursued, or a second best, however desirable and satisfactory it may be. Equally or more troubling, there is no indication that Simichidas’ final suggestion will be taken up by Aratus, or that it may help him much. In this vein, Aratus may well not draw benefit from Simichidas’ help as a friend or comfort from his or Aristis’ song. It is impossible to know whether Aristis was a real person, but whether he was or not, it is difficult to account for his mention and praise if one does not assume that he had composed a song about Aratus’ love woes.46 Tityrus and Aristis, whose songs are reproduced and/or (partially) quoted in the songs of Lycidas

|| 45 The ambiguity over the mediation of a divinity and the possible punishment of a recalcitrant object of love in a prayer for assistance perhaps echoes the famous appeal of Sappho to Aphrodite (1.21–24 V). The image of the overripe pear and the verdict of the women have been associated with the disparagement of Neoboule by the speaker in Archilochus’ Cologne epode (fr. 196a.24–31 W2; cf. Aesch. fr. 264 Radt); see Henrichs (1980). If the women may be thought to have an interest in putting down Philinus because he is their rival (cf. Dover [1971] 163), then the echoes have an ironic tinge: both the Archilochean speaker and the Theocritean women are interested in securing lovers for themselves, which undercuts the validity of their judgments. 46 Gow (19522) 156 expresses some perplexity over the mention of Aristis, whom he considers a historical figure, like Aratus, and I find it plausible that more than can now be recovered may be

Idyll 7 | 185

and Simichidas respectively, enjoy the esteem of the narrators.47 Only Simichidas explicitly praises the excellence of Aristis as a singer, although not explicitly as the composer or performer of a song about Aratus, perhaps not accidentally. With a rather ostentatious pun on Aristis’ name (99–100), Simichidas calls him a singer worthy of competing at Apollo’s festival and indeed an equal to Apollo himself (100–1). This sounds exaggerated, especially as the knowledge of Aratus’ predicament did not apparently require special mantic/poetic skills. Besides, if Simichidas is quoting Aristis, then the inefficiency, or at the very least indeterminacy, of Simichidas’ attempt to help Aratus is transferred to or shared by the allegedly exquisite singer. The songs of Lycidas and Simichidas, their parallels notwithstanding, differ substantially, not least with respect to song and its impact on the characters, or their relationship to song. Lycidas has an intriguing affinity with the heroes of the bucolic world, while Simichidas’ connection with them is (presented as) rather superficial: it involves and practically exhausts itself in displays of erudition and the ironic praise of a superstitiously guaranteed tranquility. Simichidas suggests that he and Aratus, who are quite obviously (more) at home in urban settings, should abandon erotic pursuits and lead a quiet life.48 What is perhaps more indicative of the distance between Lycidas and Simichidas as singers is that the former chooses to set into music his own passion while the latter simply and, as just noted, with ironic artifice, responds to, and even undertakes to heal, the passion of a friend. Moreover, as argued above, Lycidas draws pleasure and possibly some solace from song, whether he composes it for the latter purpose or not. By contrast, Simichidas, the younger poet, who mentions and perhaps quotes Aristis, yet another great singer, is as likely as not to provide comfort to the afflicted friend. Nevertheless, Lycidas endorses Simichidas and regales him with a || implied at this point. Cf. Dover (1971) 161, and Hunter (1999) 181. In what follows I will share the assumption that Aristis sang of Aratus’ troubles, but the issue does not affect my discussion. If the assumption is correct, Simichidas’ praise of Aristis (99–102) quite likely (also) serves to exalt the fame of Aratus’ love woes. The services of this excellent singer would elevate the status of Aratus to the level of legendary lovers such as Daphnis. 47 Hunter (1999) 180 and 181 suggests that the song of Simichidas, which may be viewed as a recreation or quotation of Aristis’ song, may be performed by another singer, unlike Lycidas’ personal performance. Lycidas does identify himself as the singer of his song, but this does not necessarily rule out performances by other singers. The performance of Damoetas in 6 in the voice of Polyphemus would be an obvious example. If Simichidas’ song reproduces Aristis’ presumed poem, whether verbatim or not, Lycidas also reports the content of Tityrus’ future song, and the end (83–89) may belong to this song, especially since Tityrus and Aristis have a similar function in the songs of Lycidas and Simichidas respectively. 48 See Payne (2007) 128–32 with previous literature.

186 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics gift from the Muses before he departs. This is possibly an acknowledgment of Simichidas’ virtues, for all his shortcomings, and/or a token of appreciation of his bold way of dealing with the masters. Simichidas proceeds to take part in a lavish celebration, the description of which may be, and has been, considered the mark of the influence the encounter with Lycidas had on him. The last part of the poem is indeed replete with echoes of poetry, but before turning to it, it is important to observe that the first part is quite similar in this respect (1–9): Ἦς χρόνος ἁνίκ’ ἐγών τε καὶ Εὔκριτος εἰς τὸν Ἅλεντα εἵρπομες ἐκ πόλιος, σὺν καὶ τρίτος ἄμμιν Ἀμύντας. τᾷ Δηοῖ γὰρ ἔτευχε θαλύσια καὶ Φρασίδαμος κἀντιγένης, δύο τέκνα Λυκωπέος, εἴ τί περ ἐσθλόν χαῶν τῶν ἐπάνωθεν ἀπὸ Κλυτίας τε καὶ αὐτῶ Χάλκωνος, Βούριναν ὃς ἐκ ποδὸς ἄνυε κράναν εὖ ἐνερεισάμενος πέτρᾳ γόνυ· ταὶ δὲ παρ’ αὐτάν αἴγειροι πτελέαι τε ἐύσκιον ἄλσος ὕφαινον χλωροῖσιν πετάλοισι κατηρεφέες κομόωσαι. Some time ago Eucritus and I were on our way from town to the Haleis, and Amyntas made a third with us. Phrasidamus and Antigenes were preparing a harvest festival for Demeter, the two sons of Lycopeus, noble, if anyone is, among men illustrious on account of their descent from Clytia and Chalcon himself, who by setting his knee firmly against a rock made the fountain Bourina spring up beneath his foot. Nearby, poplars and elms wove a shady grove with their green foliage arching above.

Right from the beginning, before the encounter with the master Lycidas and the charged exchange, the narrator provides a glimpse of his way of dealing with the tradition. The setting of the narrative points at least to Homer, Hesiod and probably Philitas, one of the models of Simichidas (40).49 All references to Coan landmarks and aristocracy may indeed owe something to Philitas.50 Apart from the

|| 49 Philitas’ Demeter may also be the model or a model for Theocritus’ choice of goddess honored in the festival and/or its location in a wonderful grove, in which the older poet received his poetic investiture. See Kyriakou (1995) 230–31; for the ominous connotations of θαλύσια, a Homeric hapax (Il. 9.534), see 227–28. For Homeric echoes in 7 cf. e.g. Ott (1972) 143–49, and Halperin (1983) 224– 27; cf. n. 51 below. The list of predecessors evoked in 7 may include Sappho and Alcaeus, Pindar, Stesichorus, Simonides, and Philoxenus. For the Lesbians and Simonides (fr. 22 W2) see Hunter (1996) 26 and (1999) 166–67, and for Stesichorus, the possible source of the story of Daphnis (cf. 7.75), Hubbard (1998) 26, and Davies and Finglass (2014) 596–98. For Philoxenus cf. n. 59 below. 50 The spring Burina (6) is mentioned in one of his surviving fragments (fr. 24 Powell = fr. 6 Spanoudakis). Bowie (1985) 67–80 thinks that Lycidas too comes from the bucolic poetry of Philitas set on Lesbos; cf. Spanoudakis (2002) 227–28. Cameron (1995) 488–93 and Hubbard

Idyll 7 | 187

encounter of Simichidas with Lycidas, which may recall Homeric encounters51 and the initiation of Hesiod on Helicon, Homer and Hesiod appear indirectly also in connection with the Coan nobility. Chalcon was a host of the wandering Demeter (Σ 5–9[c]) and the ancestor of the Coan hosts of Simichidas, who may have been friends or patrons of Theocritus. He wounded Heracles when the hero landed on the island on his way back from the first capture of Troy. Heracles killed the local king Eurypylus and perhaps his sons by Clytia, Chalcon and Antagoras; he then had a son Thessalus with Chalcon’s sister Chalciope or even his mother Clytia (Il. 14.250–56, 15.24–30; cf. 2.677–79, Apollod. 2.7.1, 8).52 According to Hesiod (fr. 43a.55–64 M-W), Chalcon and Antagoras were grandsons of Poseidon, who fathered Eurypylus by Mestra, the daughter of Erysichthon (and a greatgranddaughter of her divine consort). In light of this august but, as usual in Greek mythology, checkered genealogy, the family of Phrasidamus and Antigenes is related not only to Poseidon and Erysichthon but also to Heracles.53 The creation of the spring Burina and the lush grove around it, similar to both the farm of Simichidas’ hosts on Cos and the nymphs’ grove on Ithaca (Od. 17.204–12), also recalls Heracles not only by means of his relationship to the Coan nobles of old but also in the description of Chalcon’s intervention. To be sure, the kicking of a rock to create a spring is always bound and meant to bring audiences in mind of the creation of Hippocrene by Pegasus (Arat. Phaen. 216–23; cf. Callim. fr. 2, 112.5–6 Harder), another son of Poseidon, and a creature associated with Bellerophon, yet another son of Poseidon and one of the greatest mythological monster-slayers before Heracles.54 Irrespective of this background, the creation of the Coan spring is described in terms reminiscent of the creation of another one, related in Apollonius’ Argonautica (4.1444–46). || (1998) 24–26 point out that Philitas, who is not known to have composed bucolic poetry, is an anti-bucolic figure, who may have contrasted his learned poetry with the world of rustics. Payne (2007) 140 objects that Philitas is a model for Simichidas and not for Lycidas, but this is not clear and has nothing to do with the origin of the character of Lycidas anyway. Sbardella (2000) 69– 71 argues convincingly against assumptions that Philitas composed bucolic poetry; see also Dettori (2000) 7, 38, 180. 51 The main Homeric precedents are Odysseus’ encounter with the disguised Athena (Od. 13.221–440) and with the goatherd Melanthius (Od. 17.204–53); see Hunter (1999) 147. 52 Cf. Sherwin-White (1978) 317–18. 53 The hero will be mentioned explicitly as a mythological model alongside the Cyclops Polyphemus, another son of Poseidon, in connection with the exquisite wine served at the farm of Phrasidamus and Antigenes (148–55a, quoted below). 54 According to some sources, the mother of Bellerophon was Mestra (Hes. fr. 43a.81–82 M–W, sch. T on Il. 6.191).

188 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics That spring was kicked into existence by none other than Heracles in another enchanted grove, that of the Hesperides in Libya, although Chalcon is not necessarily described in Heraclean terms.55 The wondrous transformation of the Hesperides to earth and dust and their gradual reappearance as shoots and trees, a poplar, elm, and willow (Arg. 4.1408–9, 1423–28), may have some connection with the Coan groves. One or more of those trees were standard in descriptions of goddesses’ groves (e.g. Od. 5.72, 10.510, 17.208). In Callimachus’ Hymn 6, in Demeter’s beloved grove, in which all kinds of trees, decorative and fruit-bearing, were blooming (25– 30), the sacred tree first smitten by Erysichthon’s gigantic men was a poplar (37– 39). The goddess, who in the first part of the hymn is said to have been persuaded to drink only by Hesperus (8), the father of the Hesperides, takes the form of her priestess to dissuade Erysichthon from his folly (42–49) and then appears as herself (57–58), when he threatens to plant his great ax in her flesh (53–55). The quite puzzling detail of Chalcon’s firmly pressing his knee against the rock as he created the spring includes the Homeric hapax ἐνερείδω in the middle voice, a reminiscence of the blinding of Polyphemus by Odysseus and his men (Od. 9.383). What is more, Apollonius uses the same lexical rarity in his description of Heracles’ uprooting of a tree which he meant to use to fashion a new oar (Arg. 1.1198). The tree recalls Polyphemus’ club (Arg. 1.1190–1205 ~ Od. 9.319–24), and Heracles, about to abandon the expedition because of his distress over the disappearance of young Hylas, is cast in Cyclopean terms. The reminiscences of Polyphemus and Heracles in connection with a spring and a locus amoenus create a disquieting association between the framing parts. Philitas’ grove of Demeter was perhaps a model for the description of the beautiful groves of goddesses in Theocritus, Apollonius and Callimachus, although hardly as a setting for the outrages narrated or evoked.56 Theocritus offers an embarrassment of poetic and horticultural riches, as it were, with the description of two groves, which frame the encounter of Lycidas and Simichidas. On the other hand, neither grove is a setting for musical performances. Simichidas suggests that the party hosted by the descendants of Erysichthon and the relatives of Heracles and the wine served by the Castalian nymphs were similar to those enjoyed by Heracles and Polyphemus (148–55a): || 55 Cf., though, Hunter (2015) 275–76. Since the relative chronology of Theocritus and Apollonius cannot be determined (cf. n. 109 below), the direction of reminiscences may be the reverse, but this does not substantially affect my argument. Whether Theocritus echoes Apollonius or vice versa, Chalcon and Heracles are associated by means of the springs they created. 56 Callimachus’ famous reference to envy and the priestesses of Demeter (H. 2.105–12) may also hark back to Philitas; see Stephens (2015) 98. For the influence of Philitas’ Demeter on Theocritus, Callimachus and Apollonius see Spanoudakis (2002) 244–303.

Idyll 7 | 189

Νύμφαι Κασταλίδες Παρνάσιον αἶπος ἔχοισαι, ἆρά γέ πᾳ τοιόνδε Φόλω κατὰ λάινον ἄντρον κρατῆρ’ Ἡρακλῆι γέρων ἐστάσατο Χίρων; ἆρά γέ πᾳ τῆνον τὸν ποιμένα τὸν ποτ’ Ἀνάπῳ, τὸν κρατερὸν Πολύφαμον, ὃς ὤρεσι νᾶας ἔβαλλε, τοῖον νέκταρ ἔπεισε κατ’ αὔλια ποσσὶ χορεῦσαι, οἷον δὴ τόκα πῶμα διεκρανάσατε, Νύμφαι, βωμῷ πὰρ Δάματρος ἁλωίδος; Nymphs of Castalia who dwell on steep Mt. Parnassus, could it have been a bowl like this that old Chiron provided for Heracles in Pholus’ rocky cave? Could it have been nectar like this which set that famous shepherd by the river Anapus dancing among his sheepfolds— the mighty Polyphemus, who used to pelt ships with mountains? Of such quality was the drink which you then mixed for us, Nymphs, by the altar of Demeter, goddess of the threshing floor.

This contrasts with Lycidas’ plans to draw on his supply of famous local wine and accompany it with roasted beans (65–66), as Tityrus will sing of legendary shepherds and singers of the past (72–89). More ominously, “mighty Polyphemus”, although prominently designated as a shepherd, is not evoked in this capacity, and no mention of his flocks or his loves ensues. Instead, he was persuaded by nectareous wine to dance,57 obviously before he hurled mountainous boulders at ships. The mention of persuasion is probably meant to ring alarming bells, as in other Idylls it is either unsuccessful or dangerous (4.11, 22.170; cf. 2.138, 29.10). Be that as it may, Polyphemus is not the young lover and singer of 11 and 6 but a monstrous, inebriated reveler, the cannibal about to be blinded of Odyssey 9. Cos is cast as a blessed, almost enchanted place, revering Demeter and echoing with song, and Simichidas praises to the point of excess the festival and the pleasure it generated. Despite the differences of the songs of Lycidas and Simichidas, both look to the future, as does Simichidas at the end (155b-57), but the past, evoked explicitly and implicitly, is also prominent, although from different perspectives. Tityrus/Lycidas expresses his longing for it in his wish that Comatas were his contemporary and he a devoted attendant taking care of the master’s business and enjoying his song (86–89). This is a wish informed by mimetic desire,58 although, as argued above, Lycidas does not draw comfort from listening to song, if comfort is his objective at all. Significantly, in connection with Lycidas’ praise of poetic modesty (45–48), Tityrus/Lycidas does not wish

|| 57 This may be a reminiscence of the appreciation of the Cyclops for Maron’s wine (Od. 9.359), but it may also contrast with the mention of nectar in Lycidas’ song (82). 58 For this view see Payne (2007) 140. Cf. Gutzwiller (1991) 170–1.

190 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics that he played the syrinx to accompany Comatas or that he sang with the master, or in competition with him. At most, Tityrus/Lycidas’ wish may be thought to point to studying with the master, or sitting at his feet, as it were. Simichidas’ participation in the lavish Coan festival at the farm of his hosts puts him in mind of past celebrations, but not of the musical or quietist variety. It is not accidental that the description of the lavish festival does not include any mention of music or song, and certainly the mythological parties evoked are not of a kind Simichidas would wish to be a guest at, in present or future.59 In this light, his encounter with the great Lycidas, whether a divinity or a divinely gifted master, does not transform his voice or view of poetry by enabling him to imagine his own experience as a reenactment of that of archetypal characters, just as Tityrus/Lycidas does in his song. If anything of the sort obtained, then Simichidas would either evoke completely inappropriate models, or his experience at the festival would be invested with heavy irony. This is not impossible, but it certainly undermines all connection with Lycidas’ experience, at least as sketched in his song and with respect to song. Simichidas does not become a singer, or a different or better singer, because of the encounter with Lycidas—he just receives the imprimatur of a master and turns and goes his own way, spatially and poetically, in his song and his reminiscences of the festival. He presents to Lycidas and the external audience a vision in which the torment of love is not cured or alleviated, by either gods or men, including poets. Even a great party in honor of the goddess of plenty may be associated with inebriation and the dance of a monstrous shepherd rather than inspiration and the song of a melodious goatherd. Simichidas does not change during or after the encounter with Lycidas, at least not in ways securely detectable to modern audiences. It is possible, and quite plausible, that the account of the festival, with its general hyperbole, is meant to rival at least Philitas, if not Asclepiades too,60 and possibly others. In this light, in the wake of his exchange with Lycidas and the imprimatur he has received, Simichidas may now try to compete

|| 59 Cf. Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 163–64, who also correctly point out that the inquiries to the nymphs (147–55), divinities of the bucolic world, parallel standard appeals to the Muses for information. The nymphs are associated with the spring of Castalia at Delphi, which enhances their association with Apollo and the Muses. For all these musical connections, no answer of the divinities and no song ensue. On the other hand, the stories of Heracles’ visit to Pholus had been handled by Stesichorus and Epicharmus, and Polyphemus’ dancing appeared in Philoxenus’ dithyramb; see Hunter (1999) 197–98. 60 Krevans (1983) 215–16 suggests that Simichidas’ song is indebted to Asclepiades; cf. Hubbard (1998) 25, who thinks that Lycidas’ song would evoke Philitas, and in more detail Spanoudakis (2002) 252–58.

Idyll 7 | 191

with and outdo the masters he had claimed not to rival yet, although that claim was probably a pose. Even if he now feels confident to compete with the masters, he is not very different from the narrator in his song. While Lycidas turned to legendary heroes and masters, Simichidas turned away from all such models. As already implied, the beginning and end of Simichidas’ journey and his recollections point both to the elite poetic tradition and to his hosts’ family history, which included supreme divine favor and violent outrages. In the eutopia of the farm, in which wondrous wine flows freely right by the altar of Demeter, poured by Castalian nymphs, Simichidas thinks of ancient hosts and guests, the centaurs Pholus and Chiron and Heracles, and the Cyclops Polyphemus and Odysseus. Heracles and Polyphemus were offered exquisite wine, which Pholus and Odysseus had also received as a gift, from Dionysus (Apollod. 2.5.4) and Apollo’s priest Maron (Od. 9.196–211) respectively. A long list of inversions is apparent at all levels, temporal and otherwise. One-time guests or gift-recipients become hosts and victims of their own guests; monstrous shepherds dance in their divine cups; wine springs like water in a celebration in honor of Demeter.61 Miracles occurred in the lives of the heroes commemorated in the song of Tityrus/Lycidas, and they labored too, but they were saved by the gods and immortalized in song. In Simichidas’ song no one is saved or safe, although Aratus may have been praised by the lauded singer Aristis. Excess is dangerous, and even a divine gift may trigger violence and cause harm to the recipient. The quietist ideal, which includes primarily the renunciation of, or at least relief from, the torment of love is as inaccessible as Tityrus/Lycidas’ chance to hear Comatas’ song. Ironically, the ideal is mediated by the ministrations of the crone, an incongruous agent.62 The past puts the present in perspective but also has a potentially corrosive impact on it. The Muses’ cocks may crow and labor in vain (47–48), but singing, of iconic musical insects and birds such as the cicadas and nightingales no less, can also be (experienced as) laborious chattering and persistent murmuring (139–41), like the complaints of

|| 61 Even the nightingale makes a sound appropriate to the turtle-dove and vice versa (ὀλολυγών …τρύζεσκεν…ἔστενε τρυγών, 139–41); see n. 63 below. 62 It is probably not accidental that the crone is supposed to keep away of τὰ μὴ καλά, a phrase used in the same metrical position and with κα- also scanned as short at the end of Daphnis’ song (6.19), which sums up the confusion and hopelessness of the lover’s delusion and the problems of love. Daphnis’ song is of course addressed to Polyphemus.

192 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics the Callimachean Telchines.63 The descendants of Erysichthon are pious and offer first fruits to Demeter in a celebration with their friends at a wondrous grove. Yet the plight of their ancestor cannot be blotted out: he entered the grove of the goddess to get timber in order to entertain his friends in style but exited a wretch, condemned to insatiable hunger and thirst to the point of autophagy. Simichidas may claim not to rival Philitas (39–41), or Theocritus may not aspire to compete with him or Callimachus, for instance. On the other hand, from the point of view of the poetic legacy evoked in 7, Philitas too may turn out to come poet(olog)ically short: he may be thought to commit the sin of exiguousness rather than excess, pursuing an ideal of purity and refinement that turns out to be an illusion.64 In both 1 and 7, the great programmatic pieces celebrating song and the concord between man and idealized nature under divine auspices, discordant echoes and threatening shadows cannot be blocked out. Advice is virtually never adequate(ly heeded), and even divine favor and support do not always save or insulate the heroes from the dangers of arrogance and excess, and the predicaments that result for the heroes and those associated with them. Theocritus does seem to privilege moderation, restraint and a clear-eyed, if ironic, renunciation of all excess. His heroes, even hubristic ones, and even his ogres may not be hopelessly doomed, at least as far as their commemoration in song is concerned. For all their defects and troubles, they may enjoy some success and find some comfort or relief. Immortalized in the songs of famous singers, they become the subject of yet another celebratory song of a singer who, like Simichidas, appreciates the masters and does not claim to be equal to them yet. The masters smile approvingly on and sing along with him, but he follows his own way, capturing the suffering, delight or achievement of the heroes before their fated end: Daphnis is wasting away, Polyphemus is dancing away, Chalcon is pressing his knee on the rock, || 63 See Kyriakou (1995) 217–23, and cf. Hunter (1999) 194. ὀλολυγών (139) may denote the treefrog, although White (1979) 9–16 is probably right in arguing that it is the nightingale; cf. Piacenza (2010) 371. The turtle-dove (τρυγών, 141), not a melodious bird, was proverbial for garrulousness (cf. 15.88); see Gow (19522) 290. 64 It seems unlikely that Simichidas’ pairing of Philitas and Asclepiades would not have some poetological background. If so, and if the Florentine scholiast that names Asclepiades as one of the Telchines attacked by Callimachus (Aet. fr. 1 Harder) is to be trusted, then the coupling may be a shaft against the latter and/or an oblique dismissal of the distinction Callimachus draws between himself and his models and rivals. For the Aetia prologue see V n. 64 below. Simichidas may suggest either that Philitas and Asclepiades are equally worthy, and there is no reason to prefer one over the other, or that both have defects, and there is no reason to privilege one over the other. Since Callimachus considered Philitas’ Demeter a paradigmatically refined poem, Callimachus and those that shared his views may be presented as poetological Bucaei, praising a scrawny favorite as a great beauty.

Idyll 13 | 193

and Heracles is not attacking or attacked but taking a moment to enjoy a divine draught.65 The last approving laugh, as it were, belongs to poppy-carrying Demeter (cf. 7.155–57), the suffering and terrible goddess: she punished Erysichthon with burning hunger but visited his descendants and regales their descendants with an abundance of grain. Like Daphnis and Comatas, Erysichthon and his family will appear in no other genuine Idyll, but the loves and labors of Heracles and other mythological, non-bucolic heroes will be the subject of several other pieces.

Idyll 13 In 13 the paradigmatic hero Heracles, a member of the Argonautic expedition, meets his match, unsurprisingly the terrible god Eros, but at the end the devastating loss of his beloved Hylas fails to annihilate him. The poem is not the first account in Greek poetry of heroism, and in particular Heraclean heroism, overwhelmed by passion. In surviving poetry, Hesiod (fr. 25.20–25, 26.31–33 M–W), Bacchylides (16), and Sophocles (Trachiniae) dealt with his passion for Iole and his death by the hand of his wife Deianeira. Theocritus, though, sketches a portrait that is extraordinary in highlighting the hero’s frustration, suffering and endurance while eschewing emphasis on his achievements and glory, and even glossing over his divine parentage. In this light, 13 is an epyllion, a small epic, not only on account of formal and narrative choices66 but also and primarily because of its mythological or dramatic selectivity: it follows the hero along his lovelorn, tormented path to a proximate destination rather than to his manifest destiny, and with no reference or allusion to the latter. Heracles strays and wanders but manages to find his footing and proceed to Colchis, while Trachis, Zeus, and even the rest of his career are completely suppressed. As in 11, the addressee of the narrator is Nicias and the subject the torments of love, which the narrator illustrates with an example, the story of Heracles’ distress over the disappearance of his beloved Hylas. The narrator again says nothing about

|| 65 Cf. the image of the deified Heracles on Olympus, retiring for the night after having had his fill of fragrant nectar and escorted to the chambers of his wife Hebe by the deified Alexander and Ptolemy I (17.28–29). Apart from the ironic reminiscences of Heracles’ propensity for drink and of his promiscuity, on which see Radke (2007) 247–48, ambivalence is first suggested by the choice of the predicate κενταυροφόνοιο (17.20), which may recall the killing of Nessus but also of Chiron; cf. IV n. 88 below. Spanoudakis (2002) 134–35 suggests that Philitas had treated the stories of the famous wines of Odysseus and Pholus in one of his poems, possibly Hermes. 66 See Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 191–96.

194 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics any professional affiliation of his or even of Nicias. Both men are referred to only as transient mortals tormented by Eros, the divine power not otherwise described or identified—even the identity of his divine father remains in the dark (1–4): Οὐχ ἁμῖν τὸν Ἔρωτα μόνοις ἔτεχ’, ὡς ἐδοκεῦμες, Νικία, ᾧτινι τοῦτο θεῶν ποκα τέκνον ἔγεντο· οὐχ ἁμῖν τὰ καλὰ πράτοις καλὰ φαίνεται ἦμεν, οἳ θνατοὶ πελόμεσθα, τὸ δ’ αὔριον οὐκ ἐσορῶμες. Not for us alone, Nicias, as we used to think, was Love begotten by whichever of the gods was his father: we are not the first to admire beauty, we who are mortal and do not know what tomorrow brings.

Divinities apparently inherit their fierce nature from no one, are not said to have any connection with other gods and torment or terrorize mortals. The nymphs that abduct Hylas are terrible to country-folk (44), and are not devotees of any goddess, unlike, for instance, their counterparts in Apollonius’ Argonautica (1.1222–25). The only Olympian mentioned in 13 is Zeus as a metonymy for the sky (11), and the heroes, called a godlike band (27–28) and demigods (69; cf. 17), are not said to sacrifice to, or otherwise have anything to do with, gods at any point of the trip narrated in the poem. Not only Heracles but also the rest of the heroes do not turn to any god for help, and no divine plan is said to be in place for them. It is unlikely that Theocritus would wish to revise the standard mythical background of the Argonautic story, but the absence of any divinities apart from all-powerful Eros and the terrible nymphs contributes to an effect of eerie isolation and lack of help—Heracles’ companions do not try to help or even to find him. I will return to the companions below. For now, line 2 may point to the bewildering variety of traditions about Eros’ parentage67 but it may also suggest a parallel between the god and the handsome Hylas: his charms overwhelm mortals and immortals alike, and his parentage remains undeclared, but he has a foster father, who is both his lover and trainer (6–9).68 His heroic lover suffered || 67 See e.g. Gow (19522) 232, Barrett (1964) 260–61, Hunter (1989) 113, and Breitenberger (2007) 164–69. The narrator does not mention Eros’ mother—indeed the only mother mentioned in the poem is Alcmene (20). 68 It is probably not accidental that the form ἔγεντο is used twice in close proximity, for Eros in connection with his father (ᾧτινι τοῦτο θεῶν ποκα τέκνον ἔγεντο, 2) and for Heracles, the foster father of Hylas, who wished to pass on to the boy the heroic education he had received and had made him famous (ὅσσα μαθὼν ἀγαθὸς καὶ ἀοίδιμος αὐτὸς ἔγεντο, 9). Although μαθών does not necessarily imply formal instruction (cf. e.g. Il. 6.444), in the context of Hylas’ training the choice of μαθών and ἀγαθός, which suggests physical and moral prowess, indicates that Heracles had received and meant to pass on a complete heroic education. Siring and fostering result in the

Idyll 13 | 195

not only the torment of love but also mockery on account of his “desertion” of Argo (73–74). These are fairly standard elements in narratives of love and heroic misfortunes. It is more unusual and troubling that Heracles, Hylas’ foster father and educator, failed not only to protect and recover the boy but also apparently to complete his education, although by no fault of his own, despite his noble intentions and even his reluctance to part from Hylas (8–15, quoted below). Serendipitously, intertextual depth is provided by the survival of Apollonius’ version of Hylas’ rape (Arg. 1.1172–1357). Although the framework of the story and the disappearance of the boy are common to both poets, the presentation of Heracles is quite different. The Apollonian hero abandons the expedition but has a prominent place in book 1 and retains it throughout the epic. Obviously, the scale of the two poems needs to be taken into account in any intertextual reading of the story. On the other hand, not only Heracles’ relationship to Hylas and his abandoning the expedition but also his joining it with Hylas is mentioned by both Theocritus (19–21) and Apollonius (Arg. 1.131–32). All the important milestones of Heracles’ Argonautic adventure are present in both poems, and salient discrepancies may not be attributed only to their scale. The Theocritean Heracles joins the Argonautic expedition in the manner of all other heroes (16–18) while Apollonius specifies that the hero abandoned the labors he performed for Eurystheus and sped to Iolcus on his own accord, without Eurystheus’ knowledge and approval (Arg. 1.124–31). Apollonius does not mention the erotic relationship in the catalogue, or indeed anywhere in the poem, explicitly. Theocritus mentions Heracles’ first and emblematic labor, the killing of the Nemean lion, but for the rest his main occupation at the time of the Argonautic expedition seems to be the education of his young lover (5–15): ἀλλὰ καὶ Ἀμφιτρύωνος ὁ χαλκεοκάρδιος υἱός, ὃς τὸν λῖν ὑπέμεινε τὸν ἄγριον, ἤρατο παιδός, τοῦ χαρίεντος Ὕλα, τοῦ τὰν πλοκαμῖδα φορεῦντος, καί νιν πάντ’ ἐδίδασκε, πατὴρ ὡσεὶ φίλον υἱόν, ὅσσα μαθὼν ἀγαθὸς καὶ ἀοίδιμος αὐτὸς ἔγεντο· χωρὶς δ’ οὐδέποκ’ ἦς, οὔτ’ εἰ μέσον ἆμαρ ὄροιτο, οὔθ’ ὁπόχ’ ἁ λεύκιππος ἀνατρέχοι ἐς Διὸς Ἀώς, οὔθ’ ὁπόκ’ ὀρτάλιχοι μινυροὶ ποτὶ κοῖτον ὁρῷεν, σεισαμένας πτερὰ ματρὸς ἐπ’ αἰθαλόεντι πετεύρῳ, ὡς αὐτῷ κατὰ θυμὸν ὁ παῖς πεποναμένος εἴη, †αὐτῷ δ’ εὖ ἕλκων† ἐς ἀλαθινὸν ἄνδρ’ ἀποβαίη.

|| creation of great sons (cf. 17.64, for the birth of Ptolemy, similar to his father), but it is important that Hylas’ biological father and the story of his murder by Heracles are glossed over by Theocritus. On the contrary, the theme of the boy’s education appears prominently and very early on. For his origin cf. below p. 197.

196 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics The bronze-hearted son of Amphitryon, too, who withstood the fierce lion, loved a boy, the graceful Hylas who still wore his hair long. Just as a father teaches his dear son, he taught him all the knowledge that had made him noble and renowned in song himself. He was never apart from him—neither as midday came on, nor when Dawn with her white steeds gallops up to the house of Zeus, nor at the time when piping chicks look to their rest as their mother shakes her wings on her smoke-darkened perch—so that the boy might be trained as he wished and turn out a true man in company with him.

Some of Theocritus’ linguistic choices deserve particular attention. At the beginning of the flashback to Heracles’ career before the Argonautic expedition, the first verb used for the hero, in the reference to his only labor mentioned, is “withstood” (ὑπέμεινε, 6). At the conclusion, when the narrator mentions his arrival at Iolcus to join Jason’s expedition, he is called “the man of many toils” (ταλαεργὸς ἀνήρ, 19),69 the son of a heroine (20). The absolute hapax “bronze-hearted” (χαλκεοκάρδιος, 5) may also point to heroic endurance rather than prowess.70 In the only reference to Heracles’ fame, ἀοίδιμος (9), a Homeric hapax (Il. 6.358), preserves the metapoetic coloring of the original occurrence, and both Homer and Theocritus use it in connection with an unfortunate love story, Helen and Paris’ and Hylas and Heracles’ respectively. However, the Homeric Helen attributes her misfortunes and fame or notoriety to the agency of Zeus while Theocritus focuses on Heracles’ heroic education and prowess. Both Helen and Heracles were Zeus’ children, who had a tumultuous and famous career, but as already

|| 69 ταλαεργός qualifies mules in the archaic epic (Il. 23.654, 666, Od. 4.636, 21.23, HHom. 4.568, Hes. Op. 46, 791, 796) but also a poor working widow in a simile for Medea’s distress in Apollonius’ Argonautica (4.1062). It is precarious to assume a connection between heroes of two poems on the basis of one word, but Medea and Heracles are bound to endure much because of the Argonautic expedition. 70 Kirstein (1997) associates it with Pindar’s claim that only a heart of adamant or iron may be impervious to the charms of the handsome Theoxenus (fr. 123.2–6 Maehler) and argues that the adjective is meant to stress the paradox of a hero with a heart of bronze, i.e. impervious or insensitive to tender emotions, falling victim to Eros. Cf. Hunter (1999) 267. This may be an oblique allusion, because Heracles was notoriously not impervious to love, or at any rate lust. It seems unlikely that Theocritus would rely on an invented or rare word, placed before the reference to the hero’s emblematic labor, to announce a revision of the traditional image of lusty Heracles. He was not impervious to love but was able to withstand all heroic challenges as if his heart were of bronze. Nevertheless, his powers of endurance managed nothing when “a terrible god was tearing his liver” (71).

Idyll 13 | 197

suggested, Zeus’ paternity is not mentioned in 13,71 nor is his or any god’s involvement in Heracles’ labors. Despite the mention of the Nemean lion labor and the reference to the fame of Heracles’ prowess in song, the Theocritean narrator focuses more on the hero’s laborious pursuits than on his glorious achievements. Although Apollonius too refers to the toilsome labors of Heracles, he emphasizes mainly his extraordinary physical prowess, even his savagery, and his immortalization (Arg. 1.1315–20). The narrator indicates that he trained, literally ‘nourished’, Hylas (ἔφερβε, 1.1211), but the passing reference serves as introduction to a digression about the boy’s story, which explains why rather than how Heracles trained Hylas. The hero became the boy’s foster father after killing his father Theiodamas, as a punishment for his people’s outrages (1.1212–19). As already noted, Theocritus glosses over the story and indeed all reference to the paternity of Hylas. Puzzlingly, the boy is eventually called “Argive” (49), in the only passing reference to his background. The qualification may be used in the epic sense ‘Greek’, but this sounds unsatisfactory. The specification is both placed at an emphatic position in the line and dramatically inane, as there is little plausible reason for stressing Hylas’ nationality at this point. Most transmitted genealogies make Hylas a Dryopean, and Dryopean settlements were found in Argolis,72 but “Argive” for “Dryopean in Argolis” is unlikely, and Heracles’ Argive origin would not make Hylas his compatriot. However, if the Dryopean settlement assumption is not ruled out, it is perhaps of some interest that according to Stephanus Byzantius (472.7) Nemea was a Dryopean settlement, so Heracles may have met Hylas when he went there for the lion. Such a scenario would connect his two labors mentioned in the poem, the killing of the savage beast and the training of suave Hylas (cf. 14), or his heroic endurance and vulnerability, but this is too neat and speculative for comfort. Be that as it may, the suppression of all information about Hylas’ family leaves the audience in the dark about the boy’s history before he became Heracles’ companion. Hylas’ story is framed by references to his beauty and desirability to humans and gods (7, 48–51). He appears and disappears as a shooting star, beautiful and elusive, without family or other connections that might ground him in the world

|| 71 Crucially, the immortalization of Heracles is also glossed over, although “mortals” at 4 may obliquely suggest that the hero of the paradigm is immortal. It may be thought to prime the audience for such a reference, but only Hylas will appear in the company of divinities, although disconsolate (53–54); cf. 72 and n. 73 below. 72 See Jameson, Runnels and van Andel (1994) 63–65. See also Kowalzig (2007) 135, and WeberPallez (2016) 64–65.

198 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics of mortals.73 Apollonius also elaborates on his beauty (1.1229–33), and apart from his father and the story of his removal from his family and home he mentions the ritual the Mysians observe in his honor (1.1354–57). There is no report of any rites for Hylas in 13.74 Instead, Theocritus focuses on the process of the boy’s education at Heracles’ hands, and even includes the specification that Heracles was passing on what he had learned and had made him noble and famous (9). Hylas’ education is billed as heroic, both all-inclusive and ambitious in its scope, but not otherwise particularized. What is more important, in the dramatic time of the poem, the education has not been completed.75 Apollonius’ Hylas has a much more circumscribed role, that of Heracles’ squire and attendant (Arg. 1.131– 32, 1207–10). There is no indication that Heracles wished for the boy to become a hero like himself, although Hylas’ service would associate him with a great role model for a potential heroic career. For the time being, in the prehistory and in the dramatic time of the epic, Hylas has been trained as squire. The imperfect ἔφερβε (1.1211) used in connection with the training looks back to the entire period Hylas had spent with Heracles rather to than the dramatic present. It also points to the relationship of the pair and introduces the digression to Hylas’ story, as already indicated. In 13 the only information about the past covers the period after the bonding of the pair and includes the specification that the enamored Heracles never left the side of Hylas but taught him everything like a father. || 73 His lovers, mortal and immortal, take on roles of incestuous parents, trying to act as educators and protectors or comforters (53–54), but they do not accomplish their self-assigned missions in the dramatic time of the poem. Hunter (1999) 287 points out the ambiguity of Hylas’ blessedness (72). Heracles’ attempt to locate and save Hylas includes a paratactic simile (62–63) in which a lion, a symbol appropriate for the hero but not the lover/foster-father Heracles, hastens to capture a crying fawn. Cf. n. 78 below. For a similar ambiguity in Apollonius’ account of Polyphemus’ search for Hylas (Arg. 1.1243–49) see Kyriakou (1995) 94–96. 74 Heracles’ three cries and Hylas’ response (58–60) may be an allusion to the Mysian rite in honor of Hylas and his metamorphosis into Echo as reported by Antoninus Liberalis (Met. 26.5; cf. Strabo 12.4.3), perhaps drawing on Nicander’s Heteroioumena (fr. 48). Even so, an allusion of this sort highlights the elision rather than the inclusion of the rite. 75 The report of an ongoing process fits in with the rest of the narrative, in which very little is said to be completed or accomplished. This is demonstrated by the profusion of imperfects (6 [ἤρατο], 8, 10, 16, 17, 21, 54, 65, 67–71, 73) used for the Argonautic expedition and Heracles’ dealings with Hylas; cf. 1 (ἐδοκεῦμες), for a false belief, and 60 (εἴδετο), for a false impression. The success of the expedition is not mentioned, and aorists appear only in the account of its first leg, the crossing of the Symplegades (22) and the arrival at Mysia (29) and probably Phasis (23). Cf. 6 [ὑπέμεινε], and n. 81 below. On the other hand, the poem, and the trouble tackled in it, begins with an event, the birth of Eros, which is naturally reported with aorists (1–2), as is Hylas’ plunge into the pond (49–50). Verbs in the present are also few, the most significant for the condition of mortals at the beginning (3–4) and of Hylas at the end (72).

Idyll 13 | 199

Ironically, as soon as the boy leaves Heracles’ side to perform a task (36–37), he disappears, and Heracles no longer has any chance of fulfilling either his sexual yearnings or his pedagogical ambitions. There is no indication that his allowing Hylas to fetch water was negligent on his part, and the audience may plausibly assume that the boy’s duties as attendant were part of his heroic education. However, the earlier emphasis on the pair’s physical closeness may serve to suggest the danger the boy’s separation from his protector entails. It is not Heracles’ fault that the nymphs spotted and snatched Hylas, or that the abduction cut short the boy’s heroic education, and indeed his mortal life. Nevertheless, the sense of loss, of missed opportunities and frustration, is deepened as the boy vanishes before reaching manhood and becoming a “true man” (15), a hero, or the subject of heroic song, even if he becomes immortalized. By contrast, there is no suggestion that the training of the Apollonian Hylas as a squire had not been completed at the time of his rape. It is perhaps significant that Heracles is not even present when the boy leaves for his task. Another hero is also involved in the search for the boy, an older comrade by the significant name of Polyphemus (Arg. 1.1240– 49), which evokes the Cyclops in Odyssey, a main intertext in Apollonius’ presentation of Heracles in book 1. Whether Apollonius alludes to the stories about the Argonaut Polyphemus’ love for Hylas (cf. FGrHist 310 F10, 15) or not, Heracles has a devoted companion, who awaits his return, goes along the path to meet him and hears Hylas’ cries. He breaks the terrible news to Heracles (1.1253–60) and even abandons the expedition too (1.1321–23, 1345–47; cf. 4.1468–77), although this does not help the pair. In Theocritus Heracles is all alone in his loss and goes to search for Hylas alone (55–57). This is all the more surprising given the narrator’s reference to Telamon. He was Heracles’ permanent table companion, who also enjoyed Hylas’ services as table attendant (36–39). In Apollonius Telamon accuses Jason of plotting with his associates to abandon Heracles so that he would get rid of a rival that would outshine him (Arg. 1.1289–95) and tries to force the return of Argo to Mysia (1.1296–1302). Perhaps Theocritus alludes to this story, or to traditions about the association of Heracles and Telamon, most notably their collaboration in the first sack of Troy, first mentioned in Pindar’s Isthmian 6 (26–56; cf. N. 4.25– 26). If so, the graciousness of the two heroes’ interaction in that poem contrasts sharply with Telamon’s apparent indifference in 13, in which nothing is said about any distress he experienced over the abandonment of Heracles. In contrast to the Apollonian Polyphemus, the Theocritean Telamon does not initiate the search for Hylas or accompany Heracles in it. He does not even object to his abandonment. Heracles forgets everything and wanders away from all civilized, inhabited space: he loses all sense of control and restraint and even his humanity,

200 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics behaving like a savage beast. His comrades eventually leave him behind and all, apparently including Telamon, mock him as a deserter (58–75): τρὶς μὲν Ὕλαν ἄυσεν, ὅσον βαθὺς ἤρυγε λαιμός· τρὶς δ’ ἄρ’ ὁ παῖς ὑπάκουσεν, ἀραιὰ δ’ ἵκετο φωνά ἐξ ὕδατος, παρεὼν δὲ μάλα σχεδὸν εἴδετο πόρρω. [ὡς δ’ ὁπότ’ ἠυγένειος ἀπόπροθι λὶς ἐσακούσας] νεβροῦ φθεγξαμένας τις ἐν οὔρεσιν ὠμοφάγος λίς ἐξ εὐνᾶς ἔσπευσεν ἑτοιμοτάταν ἐπὶ δαῖτα· Ἡρακλέης τοιοῦτος ἐν ἀτρίπτοισιν ἀκάνθαις παῖδα ποθῶν δεδόνητο, πολὺν δ’ ἐπελάμβανε χῶρον. σχέτλιοι οἱ φιλέοντες, ἀλώμενος ὅσσ’ ἐμόγησεν οὔρεα καὶ δρυμούς, τὰ δ’ Ἰάσονος ὕστερα πάντ’ ἦς. ναῦς γέμεν ἄρμεν’ ἔχοισα μετάρσια τῶν παρεόντων, ἱστία δ’ ἡμίθεοι μεσονύκτιον αὖτε καθαίρουν, Ἡρακλῆα μένοντες. ὃ δ’ ᾇ πόδες ἆγον ἐχώρει μαινόμενος· χαλεπὸς γὰρ ἔσω θεὸς ἧπαρ ἄμυσσεν. οὕτω μὲν κάλλιστος Ὕλας μακάρων ἀριθμεῖται· Ἡρακλέην δ’ ἥρωες ἐκερτόμεον λιποναύταν, οὕνεκεν ἠρώησε τριακοντάζυγον Ἀργώ, πεζᾷ δ’ ἐς Κόλχους τε καὶ ἄξενον ἵκετο Φᾶσιν. Three times he called for Hylas, as loud as his deep throat could bellow; three times the boy replied, but his voice came faintly from under the water, and though close by he seemed a long way off. At a fawn’s crying in the hills, a lion that eats raw meat rushes from its lair toward the meal that awaits; just so in the untrodden thickets of thorns Heracles was driven along in his agitation and desire for the boy, and he covered a great deal of ground. How unhappy lovers are! Greatly he suffered as he wandered the hills and thickets, and all Jason’s business was neglected. The ship was laden with the crew who were present, and it had its tackle aloft, but while they waited for Heracles the heroes took down the sails again at midnight. He in his madness went wherever his feet led him: a cruel god was rending his heart. That is how the handsome Hylas came to be numbered among the blessed ones; but Heracles was mocked as a deserter by the Argonauts because he had abandoned the Argo with its thirty benches; and it was on foot that he came to the Colchians and the inhospitable Phasis.

As already noted, Heracles’ three cries and Hylas’ dimly heard response (58–60) may point to a Mysian ritual but they recall the Iliadic episode in which the wounded Odysseus is in mortal danger and calls out thrice to his companions (Il. 11.462); Menelaus hears him (Il. 11.463) and he summons Ajax, Telamon’s son, to collaborate with him and save Odysseus (Il. 11.464–71).76 The same heroes collaborate in the battle over Patroclus’ body and send the message of his demise to Achilles (Il. 17.651–55, 18.18–21), perhaps a model of Polyphemus’ announcement || 76 The accusative λῖν (6) also occurs only in this episode (Il. 11.480).

Idyll 13 | 201

of Hylas’ loss in Apollonius’ account (Arg. 1.1257–60). This kind of collaboration or even interaction is absent among Theocritus’ Argonauts, although they are presented as a group throughout, from joining the expedition, embarking on the trip and bivouacking together, to waiting for Heracles and even mocking him.77 To be sure, Heracles separates himself from the group, but his comrades do not do anything to find or assist him in any way. Isolation is dangerous and potentially detrimental, as is obvious from the case of Hylas and Heracles, and of the Dioscuri in 22, on which more below. Although the comrades wait for Heracles (68–70), there is no report of any wish or plan to organize a search party. The continuation of Heracles’ labors is not mentioned, either, nor, as already pointed out, is his immortalization. The noble and famous Heracles, who had withstood the savage lion (τὸν λῖν ὑπέμεινε τὸν ἄγριον, 6), is likened in a paratactic simile to a flesh-eating lion in the mountains (ἐν οὔρεσιν ὠμοφάγος λίς, 62)78 and he roams in desperate suffering over mountains and forests (66–67). Nevertheless, for all his failures and the savagery of his love torment, graphically suggested in the reference to the thorns he trod on (64) in his maddened search in the wild, the account of the predicament concludes only with the last line (75), which provides an unexpected piece of information: the unfortunate maddened lover and mocked comrade did reach Colchis, on foot. Line 75 has been emended and pronounced spurious, a clumsy attempt to round off the poem by restoring Heracles’ reputation.79 I do not share the view that the line is spurious or, even if it is, that it destroys the effect of the poem. Whether Theocritus or an interpolator composed it, the unexpected specification, which may be an innovation, fits in well with the rest of the poem and forms a fitting conclusion to it. I attribute the line to Theocritus, but the identity of the composer does not affect my argument. If he was not Theocritus, then he was competent enough to invent a conclusion worthy of Theocritus. There is no compelling reason why Theocritus would not wish to include a suggestion of the hero’s recovery, which is part of his Hellenistic saga anyway. Even without line 75, audiences would not imagine that the loss of Hylas would incapacitate or annihilate Heracles. The poem does not deal with the destruction of lovers but with the irresistibility and troubles of love. In this light, the story of || 77 On the other hand, the expedition is presented as Jason’s affair (16–17, 67; cf. 22.31). 78 Méndez Dosuna (2008) 198 associates the simile with Simias’ Egg (AP 15.27.13) and traces a common model to Sappho. 79 Mastronarde (1968) 287–88 argues for a colon instead of a comma at the end of 74; cf. n. 84 below. Griffiths (1996) 103–4, 109–11 thinks that the poem first presents Heracles “as a kind of semi-divine educationalist” (103) and then as a maddened beast, but no measure of divinity is involved in any part of Heracles’ story.

202 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics Hylas and Heracles is not mythologically innovative and does not indicate that the crisis was anything more than a particularly trying but passing setback for Heracles. Indeed, if Theocritus wished to narrate a story of passion with lethal consequences, Heracles’ passion for Iole, not to mention Medea’s passion for Jason, would be a much more appropriate choice. With line 75, the poem presents a suffering lover who managed to overcome his great loss, at least partially. Heracles, the man of toils, recovers enough from his terrible distress to abandon his wild search and pick up the pieces, and that without any assistance, not even the assistance of song. Heracles gets back on the war-path, as it were. Unlike the Apollonian Heracles, he is not said to resume his labors, either on his own initiative or in accordance with any divine plan, or the pursuits that demonstrated his nobility and secured his eventual immortalization and fame in song. Theocritus’ Heracles resumes specifically Jason’s pursuit (16–17), which Hylas’ disappearance had for a while driven completely out of his mind (67). To be sure, it is unlikely that he would only travel to Colchis and then spend the rest of his life doing nothing else but grieving for Hylas. Theocritus, though, focuses on, or stops at, the first steps of the hero’s recovery, while its completion and his eventual immortalization are glossed over. It is this incipient recovery that implicitly reconnects Heracles to his heroic identity and story, from which he has strayed, disturbed by his love. Although he is not presented as an immortal and not even as the son of Zeus, he is not destroyed or irrevocably damaged by his love, at least as far as his career is concerned.80 Besides, and just as importantly, the poem remains open-ended. Heracles reaches his destination on foot, but there is no information about the timing. It is not clear whether he arrived before or after the Argonauts’ departure from Colchis. If he caught up with his comrades, there is no indication whether and how he contributed to the success of the expedition, which, as already suggested, is completely suppressed in the poem. It is indeed difficult to imagine that Heracles would be involved in the acquisition of the coveted fleece: if he had been present, the feat would have counted as his thirteenth, or umpteenth, labor, and the emphasis on Jason’s leadership may be thought to make this scenario unlikely. In this light, the trek on foot to Colchis emerges as another of the labors that the

|| 80 Contra Hunter (1999) 289.

Idyll 13 | 203

much-suffering man had to endure.81 Heracles’ passion for Hylas causes him terrible, maddening pain, separates him from his comrades, and obliges him to undertake a toilsome journey over land, although he had set out on a ship.82 What is arguably worse, his unhelpful comrades, instead of sympathizing with his trouble, mock him as a deserter, despite his apparent dedication to the task. The mockery is mild, as the explanation of ‘deserter’ (λιποναύταν, 73) suggests: Heracles literally abandoned Argo (74), not his post as member of the expedition and not due to incompetence, cowardice or other morally blameworthy reason.83 Still, the mockery is a blow to his status and adds insult to injury, as Heracles the suffering lover finds no sympathy or help, and Heracles the man of toils and comrade in toil suffers mockery. All in all, the Theocritean Heracles achieves little and suffers much. His love and aspirations for the boy, who for his part remains disconsolate, remain unfulfilled. Heracles is thus an appropriate model for all suffering lovers, who yearn after beauty but face obstacles in fulfilling their desire. Heracles’ story, though, does not end with the (mocking) mention of his desertion but with (the report of) his arrival at Phasis. Not only does he survive, unlike, for instance, Daphnis, he also does not become emotionally incapacitated or permanently isolated from the rest of humanity. No mortal may hope to rival Heracles’ feats, as indeed not even the Greeks at Troy did, not to mention his fellow Argonauts. Like death, love is a great equalizer and brings out the vulnerability even of noble, famous heroes. Heracles’ recovery, which occurred without human or divine support, offers at least some hope to the

|| 81 Note that the verb ἵκετο frames the references to Heracles’ participation in the expedition, his arrival at rich Iolcus (19) and inhospitable Colchis (75); cf. 29, 59. Similarly, the excursions of Hylas and Heracles are marked by the verb ᾤχετο (36, 56). Hylas abandons the expedition, and so does Heracles, but Hylas goes down in the dark water of the pool (κατήριπεν δ’ ἐς μέλαν ὕδωρ, 49; cf. κατέβαινεν...ἐς Ἀργώ, 21), while Heracles reaches his destination, although he arrives at Phasis alone and on foot. For the choice of verb tenses in the Idyll see n. 75 above. 82 The impossibility of walking home is a major worry in the Homeric epic, in which the destruction of the ships, the host’s and Odysseus’, equals death or permanent exile. In a memorable exhortation Ajax, Telamon’s son, encourages his comrades to do their best to push back Hector and the Trojans from the ships, ironically asking whether they expect to return home on foot if Hector destroys the ships (Il. 15.504–5). Heracles, the paradigmatic hero of labors, managed to complete his journey on foot. 83 λειποναύτης occurs only in Suda; λιπόναυς is found in a famous passage in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (212) in which the eponymous character ponders the terrible choice between filicide and desertion of the expedition. Agamemnon fails to protect his daughter but does not become a deserter and accomplishes his mission. If this is relevant, Heracles is in worse shape: he fails to protect his foster son, stays behind in Mysia, suffers scorn as a deserter, and does not apparently contribute to the mission. Nevertheless, he is not a deserter, although he deserted the ship.

204 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics rest of humanity that unfortunate love is not a death sentence.84 Although mortals may not hope to rival Heracles and do not possess his powers of endurance, they should not despair: the torment of love rendered Heracles as helpless as any mortal and thus his recovery offers hope. Love may cause injuries and damages of various sorts even to superheroes but is not a terminal affliction, even when the succor of song or other assistance is not available or brought to bear on the sufferers. Lovers of all orientations and walks of life toil, experience frustration, and incur heavy losses. They do not achieve fulfillment or rewards but neither do they die or become incurably disturbed in the genuine Idylls, all of which are open-ended. Even Daphnis remains defiant on the point of death and declares his power to vex Eros in Hades (1.103). Like Simaetha and the Cyclops, or the narrator in Sappho’s 31 V, Heracles recovers or bears his longing (cf. 2.164). In Theocritus’ other epyllia too the burden of heroic limitations and the price of glory are heavy, but the heroes are not the only ones that suffer, and some may even escape unscathed.

Idyll 24 Even Heracles’ first achievement, the strangling of the snakes, which took place very early on in the hero’s career, does not so much highlight the glory of heroic virtues as it hints at heroic limitations and the suffering they are bound to entail. Naturally, the morality of a baby, heroic or otherwise, does not come into question, but the narrator’s choice of characters, focus and predictions points to troubling aspects of Heracles’ future career even while future crimes and disasters are glossed over. Alcmene’s prominent role and the selective prophecy of Teiresias are cardinal in this respect. Theocritus’ choice to focus on female experience, the domestic atmosphere of the Idyll and the precedent of the Pindaric Alcmene (N. 1.50–51, Paean 20 = fr. 52u Maehler) may account for Alcmene’s prominence, although hardly for the specifics of her presentation. The epyllion has often been read as a courtly poem, or at least a piece congruent with and celebrating staples of Ptolemaic propaganda.85 This is quite plausible in general and with respect to a Heracles poem in particular. However, there is nothing clearly sycophantic or || 84 Wilamowitz (1906) 177, who put a colon at the end of 74, suggested that the last line is the narrator’s answer to Nicias’ advice to abandon paederastic pursuits; cf. Di Marco (1995) 133–34. There is no reason to assume such advice, limit the import of the poem to pederasty, or make the last line into an interpretive key, but the poem does highlight resilience. 85 See e.g. Griffiths (1979) 91–98, Zanker (1987) 178–81, Weber (1993) 241–42, Huttner (1997) 138–40, and Stephens (2003) 142–45.

Idyll 24 | 205

encomiastic in the Idyll. Poets may use different strategies to achieve the same or a similar end, but the poem contains no piece of corroborating evidence that might intimate, or tip the scales in favor of, a propagandistic agenda. This is especially valid if the Idyll’s last part, which apparently contained a reference to the poet and perhaps his actual or prospective patron(s), is spurious. In any case, if the poem was meant to be agreeable to Ptolemy, his family and court, it is remarkable that the poet chose to praise mainly Alcmene and to suppress Heracles’ descent from Zeus. Nor would the prominence of Ptolemaic women and the poem’s putative propagandistic concerns be a sufficient explanation, as it is open to the charge of circularity.86 Whether or not Alcmene is prominent because Ptolemaic queens were prominent too, the main interpretive challenge remains to account plausibly for her role in the context of the poem, irrespective of putative propagandistic concerns. As already intimated, in my view her character and role highlight mainly the limitations of gifted individuals and the suffering involved in heroic careers, first and foremost in connection with the heroes’ family. In myth, Heracles’ wives and children pay the heaviest price, but Theocritus chooses to narrate an episode from the hero’s infancy and suppresses all mention of his mortal marriages (cf. Pi. N. 1.33–72, Paean 20 = fr. 52u Maehler). Nevertheless, he manages to include signs of current and future heroic trouble, including in the presentation and prospects of Heracles’ excellent mother. No tragic foreboding or irony is involved, and future suffering is offset by the prospect of divine rewards and glory, including celebration in song, but suffering there will be. Alcmene takes the initiative at all significant moments of the plot (2, 34, 65– 66), and the children are addressed (7–8) and referred to (22; cf. 73, 80) only as hers—Amphitryon, mentioned already at 5, is not explicitly designated as the father until 56 (cf. 59), which projects the perspective of the happy baby. Teiresias even predicts that Alcmene will be the subject of song among Achaean women, and revered by Argive ladies (76–78).87 Naturally, “Argive” may be a synonym of

|| 86 This is also the case with the emphasis on Heracles’ education, with the long catalogue of his teachers (105–33), which has been associated with the education of royal children in general and of the young Ptolemy in particular; see e.g. Porro (2000) 181–82, Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 201, Ambühl (2005) 96, and Manakidou (2017) 246–47. There is no way of circumventing the hurdle of the absence of any reference or allusion to the Ptolemies so as to avoid circularity. Radke (2007) 270–71 calls attention to the fact that the lion skin, an emblem of the hero and prominent in representations of the Ptolemies, is mentioned as the bed of the young Heracles (135) rather than a trophy. Griffiths (1996) cut the knot by arguing that the poem ended at 104. 87 It is probably not incidental that she is regularly designated by her personal name instead of e.g. a patronymic or periphrastic designation such as “Amphitryon’s spouse”. Only after Teiresias’ prophecy is she referred to as Heracles’ mother, without her personal name, but still the

206 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics “Greek”, especially following “Achaean”, but in a poem in which Argos and its demotic are used for the characters’ origin (104, 123, 129), and in which Thebes is nowhere mentioned, the term is probably used in its proper sense, or at the very least ambiguously.88 Be that as it may, in a prophecy meant to soothe the anxiety of Alcmene and reveal a glorious future, the limiting of the circle of her fans turns out to be a relatively minor blip. More intriguingly, before the prophecy, in which she will be associated with Thetis (73–74), the report of Alcmene’s activities recalls a host of heroines whose children suffered and caused them much suffering: Danae, Clytaemestra, Andromache, Hecuba, and the queen in the so-called Lille Stesichorus (fr. 97 Finglass). In this light, the gradual emergence of the heroic capacity of Heracles is given an unusual and conceivably unprecedented twist, in the framework of the domestic, familial environment and on the background of the celebration of his mother in song. The poem does not touch on mythological stories about the troubles of Heracles and his family before and after his death, and even if one takes the tradition into account, Alcmene will not suffer as harshly as other heroines. The echoes of their misfortunes create an effect of teasing foreboding but also suggest that for all her virtues Alcmene in some respects fails to measure up to her “models”. When she first appears, she is putting her bathed and nursed babies to sleep on Amphitryon’s shield (1–10): Ἡρακλέα δεκάμηνον ἐόντα ποχ’ ἁ Μιδεᾶτις Ἀλκμήνα καὶ νυκτὶ νεώτερον Ἰφικλῆα, ἀμφοτέρους λούσασα καὶ ἐμπλήσασα γάλακτος, χαλκείαν κατέθηκεν ἐς ἀσπίδα, τὰν Πτερελάου Ἀμφιτρύων καλὸν ὅπλον ἀπεσκύλευσε πεσόντος. ἁπτομένα δὲ γυνὰ κεφαλᾶς μυθήσατο παίδων· ‘εὕδετ’, ἐμὰ βρέφεα, γλυκερὸν καὶ ἐγέρσιμον ὕπνον· εὕδετ’, ἐμὰ ψυχά, δύ’ ἀδελφεοί, εὔσοα τέκνα· ὄλβιοι εὐνάζοισθε καὶ ὄλβιοι ἀῶ ἵκοισθε.’ ὣς φαμένα δίνησε σάκος μέγα· τοὺς δ’ ἕλεν ὕπνος. Once upon a time Midean Alcmena bathed and fed full with milk the ten-month-old Heracles and Iphicles, who was younger by one night, and placed them both in a bronze shield, a fine piece of armor which Amphitryon had stripped from the body of Pterelaus. She put

|| references to the nurture and education she provided to the boy frame this part too (103, 134). Her name appears prominently in the prophecy about her future glory as mother of the greatest hero (78). For Teiresias’ address to her cf. below p. 213. 88 Contrast, for instance, the universal renown of Penelope (Od. 19.107–14) and Alcestis (Eur. Alc. 150–55, 445–54, 991–1005). Even the Sophoclean Heracles refers to himself not only as the son of heavenly Zeus but also as the “son of the best mother” (S. Tr. 1105–6).

Idyll 24 | 207

her hands on the children’s heads and said, “Sleep sweetly, my babies, and wake again; sleep safely, my children, my soul, two brothers. Rest happy, and happy reach the dawn.” With these words she rocked the great shield, and sleep came over them.

The detail of the shield, on which more later, may be a teasing pointer to the story of the exposure of baby Ptolemy I on a shield by his father Lagus, and the baby’s salvation by an eagle (Ael. fr. 285). The reference to nursing may also teasingly hint at another traditional story, which also involved exposure, the nursing of Heracles by Hera (Lycophr. 1327–28; cf. 38–39). According to one version of the story (D.S. 4.9.6), Alcmene exposed Heracles, fearing Hera’s reaction to his birth. The baby was found by Hera and Athena, and the latter talked Hera into nursing it, but the nursing session was ruined by the baby’s vigorous sucking at the foster mother’s breast. Hera threw the baby down, and Athena returned him to his mother.89 According to other versions, Hermes tricked Hera into nursing the baby because heavenly honors were accessible to the progeny of Zeus only if they nursed at Hera’s breast; when the goddess realized the trick, she pushed the baby away, and the gushing milk became the Milky Way ([Eratosth.] Katast. 44; cf. Paus. 9.25.2, Hyg. Astr. 2.43). The mention of nursing and the crib might then suggest previous or subsequent developments, and when no relevant story materializes, the domestic atmosphere of the poem is reinforced.90 Nevertheless, in extant literature the only toddler stretched on his father’s shield is the boy Astyanax in Euripides’ Troades. He is buried in Hector’s shield, the weapon involved in many victories (1221–25), but now an Achaean spoil. It is left at Troy because its owner Neoptolemus took pity on another of his chattels, Andromache, the widow of Hector and mother of Astyanax, who begged her master to relinquish it to serve as her son’s coffin (1136–42). The gap separating a murdered child from babies sleeping peacefully at home is for all intents and purposes unbridgeable, but most of the elements mentioned in the passage quoted above appear also in Euripides’ play: the nursing of the boy (758–59), his sleep (1188), and the care lavished on him by both his mother (760, 1175–76) and grandmother (1186–88). Emphasis is placed on the boy’s beautiful head, now smashed and mangled (“from where the bones shattered the blood smiles”, 1176– 77), and his now inert limbs (1178–79). Even the washing of the dead boy is mentioned (1151–52), in preparation for his funeral. It is unlikely of course that any audience would think that Alcmene’s children would share the fate of Astyanax, or || 89 Davidson (2000) 10–11 points out that Diodorus does not indicate Alcmene’s presumed discomfort at nursing the voracious infant. 90 For other possible models suggested but not exploited such as the pseudo-Hesiodic Aspis see Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 258–59.

208 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics that Alcmene would suffer as Andromache or Hecuba does, but it should not be forgotten that the reminiscences come very early on in the poem, and a first-time audience would have little idea of its sequence or scope. The extraordinary detail of the Theocritean twins’ crib may also be a reminiscence of the bronze box in which Danae and the baby Perseus were tossed in the stormy sea. Alcmene’s address to the babies (7–9) has been associated with the address of Danae to her infant in a fragment of Simonides (PMG 543 = 271 Poltera).91 The link between different generations of Heracles’ family (cf. Περσήιον αἷμα, 73) and the hereditary excellence in the progeny of Zeus, the ultimate ancestor of the Ptolemies, has been often pointed out. Heracles and Perseus are both slayers of snakes,92 and Hera’s dragons will not be Heracles’ last reptilian adversaries. The age of the children in the Idyll (1–2) cannot be traced back to Simonides or any other known model and may be an innovation for the sake of the delightful vignette of the toddler brandishing and showing off his new “toys” to his father (56–59), and perhaps of the baby Iphicles trying to flee (25–26).93 Of particular relevance is that the Simonidean echo foreshadows trouble ahead, although Alcmene addresses her

|| 91 Both addresses are usually referred to as lullabies; see Poltera (2008) 509. However, neither contains any mention of singing or chanting. Cf. de Lesdain (2017) 184–85. All verbs used for the mothers’ utterances are verbs of saying (εἶπεν [271.7 Poltera], and κέλομαι [271.20 Poltera] for Danae, and μυθήσατο [6] for Alcmene; cf. φαμένα [10]). The main link with lullabies is the use of anaphora in the mothers’ reference to the babies’ sleep, but anaphora is not exclusive to lullabies. Alcmene puts the babies to bed with a wish that they may sleep through the night. Perseus is already fast asleep when his weeping, anxious mother addresses him. She would have liked to communicate and share her distress with him, but this is impossible; cf. Rosenmeyer (1991) 23, and Hutchinson (2001) 307. She then calls for the baby to go on sleeping and for the storm to cease before addressing a prayer to Zeus (271.23–26 Poltera). Dionysius of Halicarnassus (26), who preserves Simonides’ fragment, even uses the poem as an example of expert lyric composition very close to prose, and describes it as Danae’s lament. Pelliccia (2009) 252 rejects this characterization and discusses Simonides’ creative reworking of epic soliloquy in the dignified, emotionally generous address of the mother to her sleeping infant. 92 For an association of the baby Perseus and Heracles see Vox (1990), who argues that the shield may be viewed as a grave, reminiscent of the Spartan mothers’ injunction to their sons to come back with it or on it. Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 261 suggest that the babies falling asleep may recall the baby Astyanax falling asleep in his nurse’s arms (Il. 22.502). 93 Cf. n. 104 below. Orestes in Aeschylus’ Choephori is urged by the chorus to be another bold Perseus (831–37) and is comforted at the end, when the monstrous Erinyes attack him, as the liberator of Argos and decapitator of two snakes (1044–47). He also shows to the city and the allseeing father god, probably Zeus, his dead enemies and the cloth that had entrapped his father Agamemnon (973–85). For other possible reminiscences of Choephori see next n.

Idyll 24 | 209

babies in a peaceful domestic, indeed bourgeois, setting.94 Danae and her baby will be saved, presumably by the intervention of Zeus, to whom the desperate mother appeals, but her situation casts a shadow over Alcmene’s happy babies and their caring mother. In a similar vein, Alcmene’s consultation of Teiresias, quoted below, has a parallel in the queen’s consultation of the seer, apparently in the presence of her sons, in the so-called Lille Stesichorus (fr. 97 Finglass).95 The fragment is part of the queen’s reaction to the prophecy of the seer, which predicted dire misfortunes for the house and the death of her sons. The queen rejects the certainty that informed Teiresias’ prophecy, apparently in connection, exclusively or primarily, with her sons’ mutual fratricide and the capture of Thebes. She believes that the attitude and relationships of humans change according to the whims of the gods and expresses the wish that Apollo may not fulfill all the predictions of the seer. She declares that if it is really fated for her children to die in mutual fratricide and for the city to be captured, it would be better for her to die immediately. However, she turns to her sons and suggests a plan, the division of their inheritance by lot, which will allow them to avoid fratricidal enmity and the destruction of the city if Zeus would be willing to put off the downfall of the family until a future time. The fragment provides no clue as to when or why the queen or some other party or parties summoned Teiresias, or whether the seer gave the prophecy on his own initiative. In any case, the queen hopes that all is not lost for her family yet and || 94 The account of the commotion in the house (34–63) and the consultation of Teiresias may be indebted to the nocturnal commotion caused by Clytaemestra’s dream of a snake-child in Aeschylus’ Choephori (33–41, 527–39), itself an elaboration of the dream in Stesichorus’ Oresteia (fr. 180 Finglass), and her consultation of dream interpreters, although the Metaneira-Demophoon episode in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter was probably a closer model; see Hunter (1996) 12, and Faulkner (2011) 195. Still, it is remarkable that apart from the reptilian imagery used for both Orestes and Clytaemestra, the care for the baby Orestes and specifically his suckling is a prominent theme in the play, mentioned in connection with the dream, his nurse’s lament (749–60) and finally in the arresting scene of Clytaemestra showing her breast to Orestes in her attempt to persuade him to spare her (896–98). While his nurse, a simple and affectionate mother figure and one of Aeschylus’ most sympathetic minor characters, focused on the helplessness of the infant, crying to be fed and changed, Clytaemestra refers to the sucking gums of the drowsy infant, a possible association with the jaws of the snake-child (cf. 543–50). 95 The speaker remains unnamed in the fragment, and Stesichorus may not have narrated that Oedipus’ mother bore him children and/or remained alive after the revelation of his crimes. For the traditions about Oedipus’ wives and children see Mastronarde (1994) 20–22, and Finglass (2015) 88, who argues that the Stesichorean queen, perhaps Euryganea, is not Oedipus’ mother and her sons are not the product of incest. The identity of the speaking mother does not affect my discussion. For her identification with Jocasta see Tsitsibakou-Vasalos (1989), and MacInnes (2007).

210 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics that her plan may facilitate or mediate the outcome she wishes for,96 although none of these hopes will be fulfilled. As with the rest of the parallels discussed above, Alcmene is in a very different situation from that of the Stesichorean queen, but her outlook seems to be darker. Nevertheless, Alcmene’s initiative immediately following the terrible sign and even her succinct appeal to the seer to be frank suggest prudence and a realistic view of misfortunes, perhaps partly in the model of the Stesichorean royal mother. Irrespective of these possible associations, both the account of the initiative and the introduction to the prophecy highlight Alcmene’s virtues and limitations but also contain hints that might forebode an ominous prophecy concerning the future misfortunes of Heracles and his mother (64–74): Ὄρνιχες τρίτον ἄρτι τὸν ἔσχατον ὄρθρον ἄειδον, Τειρεσίαν τόκα μάντιν ἀλαθέα πάντα λέγοντα Ἀλκμήνα καλέσασα χρέος κατέλεξε νεοχμόν, καί νιν ὑποκρίνεσθαι ὅπως τελέεσθαι ἔμελλεν ἠνώγει· ‘μηδ’ εἴ τι θεοὶ νοέοντι πονηρόν, αἰδόμενός με κρύπτε· καὶ ὣς οὐκ ἔστιν ἀλύξαι ἀνθρώποις ὅ τι Μοῖρα κατὰ κλωστῆρος ἐπείγει. μάντι Εὐηρείδα, μάλα τοι φρονέοντα διδάσκω.’ Τόσσ’ ἔλεγεν βασίλεια· ὃ δ’ ἀνταμείβετο τοίοις· ‘θάρσει, ἀριστοτόκεια γύναι, Περσήιον αἷμα, θάρσει· μελλόντων δὲ τὸ λώιον ἐν φρεσὶ θέσθαι.’ Just after the third cockcrow heralding daybreak, Alcmena summoned Tiresias, the seer whose every word is truthful, recounted to him the strange occurrence, and asked him to explain what the outcome would be. “And if the gods are planning something bad, do not hide it on account of your regard for me. Mortals cannot escape what Fate quickly spins from her distaff, even if they know what is to come. Prophet, son of Eueres, I am teaching you what you well know already.” So spoke the queen, and he replied with these words: “Take heart, mother of noble children, descendant of Perseus, take heart, and store up in your mind the better part of what is to come.”

Alcmene is named by the narrator for the last time in connection with her consultation of the seer (66). In Pindar’s version, Amphitryon invites Teiresias (N. 1.60– 61), presumably right away, but nothing is said about the question put to the seer or any appeal made to him. Teiresias is called “the eminent prophet of highest Zeus, the truth-speaking seer” (Διὸς ὑψίστου προφάταν ἔξοχον,/ ὀρθόμαντιν Τειρεσίαν), perhaps so as to stress the association of the events and the prophecy with the god, but before that “the neighbor” (γείτονα, 60) of Amphitryon. This is

|| 96 Cf. Swift (2015) 136.

Idyll 24 | 211

arguably the homeliest touch in the ode: perplexed and amazed by the extraordinary nocturnal events, the king turns to a trusty, competent neighbor. More coolly or realistically, the Theocritean Alcmene waits for the morning (64–66). Her account of the sensational events to the seer is reported with the phrase χρέος κατέλεξε νεοχμόν (66). This phrase is found nowhere else, but all three words, especially the adjective, occur separately in inauspicious contexts, mainly accounts of disasters and misfortunes. Most relevant among these are passages from Aeschylus (P. 693), Euripides (Hipp. 866, Ba. 216; cf. Su. 1057, Her. 530, Tr. 231, IT 1162) and Aristophanes (Thesm. 701; cf. R. 1371–72).97 Several of these passages describe disasters afflicting or about to afflict young people—in Thesmophoriazusae the endangered “child” is actually a wineskin disguised as a baby girl, and the chorus invoke the Fates in a paratragic expression of horrified amazement (700–3). The determinism of the decrees of fate is mentioned by the Stesichorean queen (fr. 97.211–12 Finglass; cf. 224) and Alcmene (69–70). The thorny issue of the relationship of gods and fate is beyond the scope of the present discussion, but it should be pointed out that in Aeschylus at least, and perhaps already in Stesichorus, the Fates are closely associated with the Erinyes and with guilt and punishment or the moral order of the universe.98 In this light, Alcmene may allude to divine anger or punishment because of Zeus’ adultery with her. Nevertheless, she shows no panic or loss of control. Her concluding appeal to the seer to reveal the designs of the gods is quoted in direct speech (68–71). It is introduced with the regal ἠνώγει, which rounds off the difference from the invitation to the seer in the Pindaric account, as already suggested.99 Alcmene urges the seer to discard all consideration for her (feelings) and reveal the possible evil designs of the gods—there is no mention, and apparently no expectation, of a favorable omen or outcome, again in contrast to Pindar

|| 97 For the verb, which also occurs in accounts or predictions of disasters and extraordinary occurrences and misfortunes, see e.g. Il. 9.115, 591, Od. 10.250, 11.368–69, 12.35, 19.464, 23.321, A.R. Arg. 4.730, 800. 98 Cf. Fraenkel (1950) 728. 99 Note also the concluding reference to her as “queen” (βασίλεια, 72), the only one in the poem. Gow (19522) 275 notes that it is used here instead of βασίλισσα (cf. 15.24), the Macedonian term for ‘queen’, which does not occur in serious poetry. Acosta-Hughes (2012a) 249–50 suggests that it may be inspired by the festival of the Basileia, for which the poem was perhaps composed in 285; cf. IV n. 104 below. διδάσκω (71), Alcmene’s last word, which will reappear repeatedly in the account of Heracles’ education, may be slightly presumptuous, although she acknowledges the seer’s credentials; cf. n. 101 below. If it is a reminiscence of the exchange of Oceanus and Prometheus ([Aesch.] PV 373–74), which deals prominently with fate and necessity, then Alcmene’s declaration has a condescending coloring.

212 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics and Stesichorus. There is also no sign, and it is not in any way obvious or plausible, that the seer would not be frank, and the admonition is an indication that, irrespective of her moral strength and her practicality, Alcmene expects problems at every turn and takes things such as the seer’s inhibitions for granted. She declares that humans cannot escape the decrees of Fate, apparently whether seers reveal them or fail to do so, out of circumspection or for other reasons. Gow suggests that Alcmene acknowledges the inevitability of Fate, even if one is forewarned.100 Attempts to avert fated disasters are virtually doomed, although not necessarily eschewed, a priori—the feud of Oedipus’ sons is a case in point, not least perhaps in Stesichorus. There is, though, no indication or implication that the thoughtful matron Alcmene would countenance the possibility of altering the course of Fate, even in order to reject it. The queen seeks to override Teiresias’ potential reluctance to reveal this course. In extant literature the seer declines to speak in Sophocles’ OT and Euripides’ Phoenissae. However, the interlocutors of the seer take it for granted that he will be frank and are surprised and distressed when he refuses to speak. As already mentioned, in Stesichorus Teiresias reveals everything, possibly on his own initiative. In any case, it would be pointless for Alcmene to say that even if the seer reveals everything, there is no benefit. On the contrary, she apparently believes that knowledge is a benefit and wishes to learn as soon as possible what Fate has in store. There is no point for Teiresias to suppress its decrees out of consideration for her feelings because Fate is ineluctable and her “spinning” bound to become apparent, as Teiresias himself knows very well. Alcmene concludes her speech with a respectful form of address including the seer’s office, patronymic and knowledge, but also a reminder that, given the inevitability of Fate, inhibiting respect is inappropriate for such an august, knowledgeable professional.101 At last, the first hopeful words in the poem are pronounced by Teiresias, who urges Alcmene to “take heart” (θάρσει, 73, 74), framing his address to her with this encouragement. The prophecy (75–85) marks the turning point from the horrific attack of the snakes and the baby’s achievement to the heroic prospects of || 100 Gow (19522) 426. 101 The little speech is reminiscent of her request to her husband to rise immediately and check on the children (35–40). That speech also included repeated imperatives but also the list of the wondrously disquieting signs that clearly indicated uncanny developments. Such specifications are absent from the appeal to the seer, replaced by the declaration, actually a reminder, that her explanations are unnecessary. Even the listing of the signs is introduced with the polite or cautioning, as the case may be, “or do you not hear/notice etc.”, which implies that Amphitryon certainly does, although in actuality she informs him about them, as she woke up before her husband, who could not have noticed anything before she woke him up.

Idyll 24 | 213

Heracles’ career. The first part of Teiresias’ answer is as elegantly constructed as Alcmene’s appeal, and her own glorious future has pride of place in his prediction. Apart from the repeated encouragement, he addresses her as “mother of excellent offspring, descendant of Perseus” (73), a polite echo of her address to him. Greeks identified people by personal name, father’s name and hometown, or other indication of place of origin such as one’s deme in Athens. A married woman of the heroic age would be fully introduced with mention of her personal name, the name of one or both of her parents, husband and hometown. Formal or respectful addresses to such ladies would include at least one of the above.102 Sometimes a grandfather’s name, or more rarely the name of a more distant ancestor, would be used instead of a patronymic. Teiresias mentions only Alcmene’s descent from the line of Perseus, her grandfather, probably in order also to imply the continuity between him and Heracles, and eschews all reference to Amphitryon and/or Alcmene’s capacity as wife of the ruler. Instead, he chooses to highlight her capacity as mother by mentioning her excellent progeny,103 possibly an indirect allusion to her mating with Zeus. This prepares for the prediction of her glory as the mother of the great hero Heracles—Iphicles is not necessarily included in Alcmene’s excellent progeny, although he is not explicitly excluded.104 The seer’s choice of address implies that the offspring in question had an excellent father, without specifying that he is not Amphitryon, a fact nowhere explicitly stated in the poem anyway. Still, despite the soothing tone, the rare adj. ἀριστοτόκεια (73) points to the famous lament of Thetis (Il. 18.54) and raises the specter of maternal loss and suffering.105 Thetis’ short-lived son even adduces Heracles as an example of demigod mortality and

|| 102 When the lady had high office such as that of a queen, she might be addressed accordingly (e.g. A. P. 155, 173, 623), but simpler forms of address such as the all-purpose, unmarked “(young/old) lady” were widely used, even for queens (e.g. A. Ag. 317, 351, 1407, S. OT 678, 931, 934). Each poet used the various forms of (self-)identification and address to highlight different aspects of a character’s or group’s status and situation. For instance, Hecuba is never called “queen” by the chorus in Euripides’ Hecuba but thrice called so in Troades (178, 341, 966), reflecting the difference in the presentation of the character but also perhaps the difference that even a few extra days of captivity made in the outlook of the Trojan women. 103 Cf. e.g. Pi. P. 11.3, a possible model, and Eur. Tr. 610–11; cf. also n. 99 above. 104 The references to Iphicles in the account of the snakes’ attack (23–26, 60–61), which have no parallel in the main extant models, Pindar’s Nemean 1 and Paean 20, balance the corresponding references to Heracles (26–29, 62–63) and contribute much to the atmosphere of the poem, both its domestic and heroic aspect. 105 For the adj. cf. Eur. Rh. 909 and see Fries (2014) 450. Stesichorus’ ἀλαστοτόκος (fr. 17.1 Finglass) was perhaps inspired by the same Homeric hl, although Callirhoe’s supplication of her son Geryon echoes also Hecuba’s plea to Hector (Il. 22.79–89).

214 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics troubles: despite Zeus’ exceptional affection for him, he fell victim to Hera’s hostility (Il. 18.117–19). Teiresias’ encouragement to Alcmene to think of a bright future after the second θάρσει may also hark back to the Homeric formula used in encouragements to anxious parents (Il. 18.463, Od. 16.436, 24.357; cf. 13.362). The most comforting part begins when Teiresias vows that Alcmene will enjoy Panhellenic renown because of her son. Many Greek women will eulogize her name in song as they prepare their yarn for spinning in the evenings and she will be honored by Argive ladies (76–78): πολλαὶ Ἀχαιιάδων μαλακὸν περὶ γούνατι νῆμα χειρὶ κατατρίψουσιν ἀκρέσπερον ἀείδοισαι Ἀλκμήναν ὀνομαστί, σέβας δ’ ἔσῃ Ἀργείαισι. Many of the women of Greece, as by hand they rub the soft yarn on their knees at nightfall, will celebrate the name of Alcmena in song, and among Argive women you shall be honored.

It is unlikely that the reference to the spinning of mortal women does not hark back to Alcmene’s metaphor about the evil spinning of Fate (70). Teiresias takes it up and turns it on its head, projecting the image of encomiastic mortal singers and spinners instead of a terrible immortal who spins inescapable designs. The process will produce glory instead of worry. The seer proceeds to provide few specifics about Heracles’ career, mentioning only twelve labors without any details, and for the rest focusing exclusively, in ring composition, on his deification (79–85): τοῖος ἀνὴρ ὅδε μέλλει ἐς οὐρανὸν ἄστρα φέροντα ἀμβαίνειν τεὸς υἱός, ἀπὸ στέρνων πλατὺς ἥρως, οὗ καὶ θηρία πάντα καὶ ἀνέρες ἥσσονες ἄλλοι. δώδεκά οἱ τελέσαντι πεπρωμένον ἐν Διὸς οἰκεῖν μόχθους, θνητὰ δὲ πάντα πυρὰ Τραχίνιος ἕξει· γαμβρὸς δ’ ἀθανάτων κεκλήσεται, οἳ τάδ’ ἐπῶρσαν κνώδαλα φωλεύοντα βρέφος διαδηλήσασθαι. This son of yours, when he is a broad-chested man, is destined to ascend to the starry sky, and he will be mightier than all beasts and all other men. It is fated that when he has accomplished twelve labors he will live in the house of Zeus, while a pyre on Mt. Trachis will hold his mortal remains; he will be called son-in-law of the gods, who roused these monsters from their lairs to destroy your baby.

This contrasts with the prophecy of his Pindaric counterpart, who also stresses the hero’s help to the gods at Phlegra (N. 1.67–69). The thorny subject of Hera’s enmity toward Heracles, her dispatching of the snakes and naturally her reconciliation with the deified hero are glossed over by both the Pindaric and the Theocritean seer, although the prediction of the marriage of the deified Heracles on

Idyll 24 | 215

Olympus presupposes reconciliation with Hera. Teiresias at least reveals that gods sent the snakes and predicts that the hero’s body will be burned on a Trachinian funeral pyre. The detail, mentioned in passing, is the only allusion to the disturbing story of Heracles’ death. As it is not necessary in an account of the hero’s future glory, its inclusion qualifies his stellar prospects, although Alcmene is not in a position to grasp its import. Teiresias’ speech ends with detailed instructions, exactly equal in length to his response to Alcmene’s inquiry concerning the plans of the gods, about the disposal of the dead serpents, the purification of the house, and a sacrifice to Zeus (88–100). Such instructions are totally absent from Pindar’s ode and had not been requested by the queen. Apart from striking a typically Hellenistic note,106 this part then indicates that for all her prudent intelligence and thoughtful fortitude, not to mention her potentially presumptuous readiness to instruct even a seer, Alcmene is not in a position to foresee and prepare for everything. Although she wishes to learn about the future, she fails to deal, or to seek instructions on how to deal, with the simpler but urgent contingencies at hand. Besides, there is no indication that she is pious, trusts or feels close to any god, not even Zeus. This is perhaps not surprising, given Zeus’ dealings with her and the attack of the snakes, but it certainly does not do her credit. Unlike her lyric and tragic predecessors, Alcmene has committed no crime, her family is not burdened by internecine crimes,107 and there is no mortal danger in sight for her or her family. As Teiresias reveals, both her son and she through him will become famous for their excellence, a manifestation of which is narrated in the poem. Nevertheless, in contrast to Danae and the Stesichorean royal mother, for instance, she fails to address a prayer to the gods, when putting her babies to sleep, and during or after the attack of the snakes. Totally unlike Clytaemestra (A. Ch. 889–91), Alcmene not only does not ask for a weapon to deal with the emergency but also does not even get out of bed to defend the babies herself, weakened by debilitating fear (35–40). The Pindaric Alcmene, a closer model, is less involved in the aftermath of the snakes’ attack but shows greater courage and readiness to defend her progeny, despite having just given birth (N. 1.50–51, Paean 20 = fr. 52u Maehler). The Theocritean queen does everything through

|| 106 Cf. Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 207. 107 To be sure, no Greek heroic family was free from such crimes, and Amphitryon had killed his uncle and father-in-law Electryon, even if only by accident. He had also killed Comaetho, the daughter of Pterelaus (cf. 4–5), who had fallen in love with him or one of his comrades and was responsible for the demise of her father; see Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 259–60. However, as already noted, the history of the family is glossed over in the poem.

216 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics men, and Heracles’ education is left entirely to them, with only a mere suggestion that she was responsible for the selection of the best trainers (103–4). The poem thus deals on multiple levels of human and divine agency, showcasing excellence and its limitations, especially perhaps the limitations of knowledge and insight. Alcmene is a remarkable lady, but there are limits to her ability to deal with challenges. This is exacerbated by the scarcity of available information, as much is left unsaid and unknown, to the characters and the audience. In contrast to the Stesichorean royal mother and Clytaemestra, Alcmene learns very little about her son’s career or the designs of the gods, and Amphitryon even less. In this light, the poem deals with Heracles’ emerging excellence, associating it with his mother’s rather than his father’s side, but it also strikes a cautionary note and gives the motif of (heroic) education another twist. Despite his inborn might, Heracles apparently needs and receives a stellar education, which is not deficient or interrupted, unlike the education of Lacon or Hylas, for instance, but does not include or guarantee moral training.108 Traditionally, heroic prowess and moral excellence are not distinguished, but the poem describes the boy’s education in such great detail that the failure to mention, or at least allude to, moral training cannot fail to stand out, if indeed the last part is genuine. Heracles was known as the son of the Argive Amphitryon (104), which does not necessarily indicate, but may imply, that he was the son of somebody else. If the hint is there, Zeus appears in the background: he notices everything (21), except, among many other things, the trick(s) of his jealous wife, presented as a man-eating monster (16), an appropriate, hellish mistress of the monstrous snakes. However, if Heracles’ family wishes to vanquish their enemies, they should sacrifice to Zeus (99–100), and the immortalized Heracles will live in his house in heaven (82–83). The hero grows up like a sapling (103–4), in the care of his mother, like short-lived Achilles (cf. Il. 18.56, 437), and is an excellent student of all arts and a powerful athlete, but he will not learn to rein in his passions, which will cause dire predicaments and much grief to his masters and family. His glory will be gory, and he will not spill only the blood of enemies and beastly monsters. He will be immortal and the son-in-law of the gods (79–84), but his mortal frame will be consumed by a Trachinian funeral pyre. The audience know that this will happen because he will have been brought low by his passions and

|| 108 Contrast e.g. 13.9 and cf. n. 68 above. Cf. also the description of Achilles’ education in Pindar’s Nemean 3: the hero does not need education in heroic achievements, but Chiron is said to foster his spirit in all things fitting (57–58). Teiresias describes Heracles as “broad-chested hero, stronger than all beasts and men” (80–81); cf. S. Aj. 1250–52, perhaps an ironic allusion.

Idyll 22 | 217

his failure to understand his father’s prophecies and foresee the terrible end precipitated by his wife’s poisonous reaction to his indiscretions. The poem, then, is not extraordinary, only or primarily, because it combines traditional and novel elements, or because it incorporates echoes of archaic epic, lyric, and classical tragedy. To present a heroic family in a Hellenistic bourgeois setting of quotidian ordinariness, Theocritus does fall back on elite poetic genres, but not only with a view to displaying his ironic, erudite mastery of them. Instead, he chooses and manages brilliantly to deal with some of the dominant themes of the tradition in the framework and scale of a modern epyllion, by means of multiple allusions and elisions. The humanity of Heracles and his family is not emphasized only because they nurse and eat heartily, put babies to bed, sleep soundly or become afraid but also because they do all these things and more with limited understanding, of the workings of the divine and of their own problems. For all their heroic assets, achievements, and brilliant prospects, they are compromised and as much the playthings of the gods as the Stesichorean queen and the Simonidean Danae. In the wake of the terrible and brilliant beginning of Heracles’ career, it is comforting to know the end, on which Teiresias’ prophecy focuses. Before that end, though, Heracles and his family will suffer much more than the hardships of twelve unspecified labors. It is wonderful to think positive thoughts about the future, but the Fate spins the good and the bad, and the glorious future comes at a heavy, even compromising, price. Still, there will be songs about the heroes as well as hymns for those among them that will become immortal.

Idyll 22 Heroic moral limitations become apparent not only in familial and especially erotic contexts, which present special challenges to the heroes involved, but also in connection with victories and (de)feats of heroes in various sorts of fights. Idyll 22, a special sort of hymn, narrates two heroic fights but also stresses the theme of poetic achievement. The Theocritean narrator repeatedly refers to himself in his capacity as singer of a hymn (1, 4, 25–26, 135, 214–23; cf. 115–17), but poetic activity comes into focus only in the envoi (214–23). Poetry features prominently also in the encomiastic pieces, 16 and to a lesser extent 17, in which the narrator exalts the prowess of mythological heroes and contemporary rulers and holds his own in the field of poetry, without claiming superiority, even in the fierce competition for patronage. As argued in the discussion of 13 and 24, in the mythological epyllia his advantage or significant contribution seems to lie in the selection of ambivalent, innovatively presented versions of mythological stories narrated by

218 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics older and contemporary colleagues. Mythological innovations and self-promotion are certainly nothing new in the Greek poetic tradition. Theocritus, though, does not adopt the strategy of Pindar, for instance, who casts his versions as factual corrections and moral restitution of wrongs, with a view to stressing his superiority and deserved success. Instead, the originality of Theocritus’ non-bucolic poetry is due in large part to the presentation of troubled or troubling heroes and a narrator untroubled by concerns to “correct” earlier versions of the heroic stories or to surpass his predecessors’ worth, which he acknowledges openly, presenting his own poetic offering with a consistent even if ironic modesty. The narrator is clear-eyed about his virtues and limitations as well as those of his honorands and their opponents. The Idyll includes four parts, a frame (1–26, 212–23) and an account of the victory of each of the Dioscuri over an opponent (27–134, 137–211). Like 18 and 26, 22 presents major interpretive challenges because of its generic fluidity and the complexity of the poet’s relationship with the tradition and with divinities. The Dioscuri are gods, sons of the supreme god, invincible but also far from blameless. Like 13, the first story, Polydeuces’ boxing match with Amycus, recounts an episode from the Argonautic saga also narrated in Apollonius’ epic (Arg. 2.1– 97).109 Polydeuces, who spares his opponent, does not say or do anything out of line in his conversation and fight with the fearsome, Cyclopean Amycus, a son of Poseidon (97, 133). On the contrary, he equals Heracles in might and Odysseus in craft (cf. 83–86). What is more, he clearly surpasses the latter in not offending his vanquished opponent, a half-brother of the Cyclops, but instead extracting from him an oath in the name of his father that he would mend his overbearing ways and respect strangers (131–34).110

|| 109 The relative chronology cannot be established with certainty; for Theocritus’ priority see e.g. Cameron (1995) 430–31, and Köhnken (2008); for the opposite view see e.g. Sens (1997) 24– 33. The issue does not affect my discussion, but I share the view of Sens (20–21), who refutes suggestions to the effect that the refined first narrative of the boxing match is composed in a modern, “Callimachean” style reflecting civilized values as opposed to the inelegant Castor story critical of archaic values and epic. Hordern (2004) 288 suggests that the choice of stichomythia for the exchange of Amycus and Polydeuces (54–74) may point to a dramatic model, perhaps Epicharmus’ lost Amycus. Cf. next n. 110 For Amycus, the Cyclops and Heracles in Theocritus and Apollonius see Hunter (1996) 62– 63, and Sens (1997) 111–12, 154–55. The Theocritean Argonauts view Amycus as similar to Tityus (94). Bruzzese (2007) argues that the figure of Amycus may be modeled not only on Epicharmus’ Amycus (or Sophocles’ satyr play by the same name) but also on caustic portrayals of athletes as arrogant and gluttonous, reminiscent of the comic portrayal of Heracles, in Theocritus’ contemporary comedy.

Idyll 22 | 219

Still, it is noteworthy that, unlike the Homeric Cyclops (Od. 9.252–55, 273–78) or the Apollonian Amycus (Arg. 2.11–19), the Theocritean Amycus does not address, threaten, challenge or attack the strangers unprovoked. He is not even said to have issued challenges to strangers regularly. His “cauliflower” ears (45) suggest that he had already taken part in several fights, but these are not said to be, and were not necessarily, the result of challenges he had issued, especially impious challenges to foreigners. By epic etiquette standards, his failure to address the strangers is probably meant to be construed as a sign of inhospitality, and he is indeed inhospitable throughout, rude and xenophobic (55, 59, 61, 63).111 He is just as the Dioscuri see him (cf. 59, 69): a man of few words, wary with strangers and ready with his fists, but not boastful or arrogant—he never mentions his name or office, and even the narrator names him only at 75 and refers to him as leader of the Bebryces only once, much later (110). When the Dioscuri approach, the imposing Amycus (44–53) is just sitting quietly by a beautiful local spring (37–43), perhaps a suggestion that he was a herder, as ἐνδιάασκε (44) may imply.112 He is neither in a welcoming mood nor spoiling for a fight.113 It may be that he would not wish to invite or at least allow strangers and other undesirables to join him or just drink from the spring, but this is not eo ipso criminal or murderous. The narrator does not suggest that Amycus sat by the spring in order to control it and enslave, or, much less, fight to death, those who approached. Although the prize in a boxing match with him is the enslavement of the defeated opponent (71), and Polydeuces naturally finds it unworthy of civilized sportsmen (72), Amycus at least does not issue the challenge or wish to kill his opponent(s). Polydeuces’ openness, courtesy, boldness, and gallant behavior as victor obviously contrast with his opponent’s brutishness. However, there is no overlooking the fact that the match takes place because the Dioscuri wandered off for the innocuous but unusual and apparently idle purpose of sight-seeing (34–36), and because Polydeuces wished to chat up a stranger who turns out to be dangerous. Odysseus’ mistake in wishing to meet and enjoy the hospitality of the Cyclops despite his comrades’ discouragement (Od. 9.224–30) is an intertextual pointer to the thoughtlessness of Polydeuces, although the latter covets no presents. The || 111 For Amycus’ violation of Homeric hospitality etiquette see Palumbo Stracca (2000) 175–81. 112 Judging from the Argonauts’ preparations for the evening (30–33), the time is apparently late afternoon, but the sun has not set yet and must still be quite high, as both the stroll of the Dioscuri (34–43) and especially Amycus’ disadvantage in the fight (85–86) suggest. 113 Gow (19522) 389–90 and Sens (1997) 113 note that, despite Amycus’ Cyclopean features (cf. nn. 110 and 111 above), the first word qualifying him, ὑπέροπλος (44), probably means ‘huge’, without the moral connotations of Apollonius’ ὑπεροπληέστατον (Arg. 2.4; cf. 2.9, 792). ὑπερφίαλος (97) may point, but is not limited, to Amycus’ arrogance.

220 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics Dioscuri are apparently impulsive, and they pursue their fancies. This tendency will take a more troubling turn in the second story narrated in the poem, the fight with the Apharids, their cousins (and one-time fellow Argonauts), but their stroll in the Bebrycian woods and Polydeuces’ talk with the Bebrycian king by the spring are early signs of their disposition. It is perhaps not incidental that the narrator specifies the identity of the Bebryces (29) and does not suggest that the Argonauts were unaware of it, which leaves the matter ambiguous. If they knew where they had landed, Polydeuces’ question to Amycus (54) would be used to initiate contact, but talk, small or otherwise, with strangers is dangerous, as Odysseus finds out to his men’s detriment and also hears from the disguised Athena (Od. 7.30–33; cf. 14–17). In a similar vein, Polydeuces’ question about the license to drink from the spring (62) is not motivated by actual thirst or a need to draw water but by indignation and an apparent desire to test the limits of the stranger’s inhospitable disposition. This contrasts with Hylas’ excursion to fetch water for the evening meal, for instance, and with the Callimachean Heracles’ need to secure some nourishment for his baby son Hyllus from the brusque and inhospitable Theiodamas (Aet. fr. 1.24 Harder), perhaps another significant model of Amycus.114 As already mentioned, the Dioscuri take a potentially dangerous walk in the countryside like Heracles and Hylas, separating themselves from their comrades (ἄμφω ἐρημάζεσκον ἀποπλαγχθέντες ἑταίρων, 35),115 who are preparing their camp. The Dioscuri, though, do not have to perform a task but take their walk for the sheer pleasure of sightseeing (παντοίην ἐν ὄρει θηεύμενοι ἄγριον ὕλην, 36). Polydeuces’ match with Amycus takes place after Hylas’ rape and Heracles’ abandonment,116 which hints at the potential danger involved in the stroll, especially if the rape of Hylas is in the background. Unlike Hylas, the Dioscuri approach the wonderful spring together, and Polydeuces subdues Amycus. The comrades also watch the fight and encourage the boxer (78–79, 92–94), perhaps chastened by their failure to assist Heracles. Polydeuces is very young (cf. 34), apparently only a little older than Hylas, but he manages to escape the danger and eliminate a potential threat to his comrades. He even seems to grow on the job, as it were,

|| 114 Cf. Harder (2012) 245–46. 115 Cf. Od. 9.259 (ἡμεῖς τοι Τροίηθεν ἀποπλαγχθέντες Ἀχαιοί), and Arg. 1.1220 (ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν τηλοῦ κεν ἀποπλάγξειεν ἀοιδῆς). The echo of the answer of the Homeric Odysseus to the initial question of the Cyclops and the Apollonian narrator’s eschewing of a digression underscore the undesirability of wandering off, even by necessity, but most certainly by choice. 116 See Hunter (1996) 59–60, and cf. Sens (1997) 96–97.

Idyll 22 | 221

gaining in strength, if not in confidence, during his match against a failing opponent (112–14). In a nutshell, the Dioscuri wander in the woods like Heracles but for no practical purpose, arrive at a spring like Hylas, and meet a figure who has much in common with the Cyclops and Heracles, at least in the latter’s Apollonian incarnation, as a Cyclopean figure. However, for all the danger they run, and bring on themselves, neither they nor any other Argonaut suffers. As with the siblings’ stroll in the woods, the outcome of the match with Amycus demonstrates the ability of the Dioscuri to overcome foes and avoid adversities. This theme becomes more prominent in the second, much more ambivalent story of a fight, the outcome of which remains uncertain until the very end. For all the excellent performance of Polydeuces and his magnanimous failure to insult and finish off his fallen opponent, in the second story he is involved in a very different sort of challenge, which is met by means of a duel between his brother Castor and Idas’ brother Lynceus. While in the encounter with Amycus the Dioscuri had the moral and even aesthetic high ground, they now appear as unprovoked aggressors and probably sly offenders of norms, and Castor does not spare his opponent (201–4). The duel takes place because the Dioscuri had abducted and were carrying off their cousins the Leucippides, already betrothed to the Apharids (137–40; cf. 147–48, 155), cousins to both abductors and abductees. I will return to the blood relationship of the three sets of siblings in a moment. For now, the basis of the offense and the dispute is the wooing and abduction of betrothed girls, although the blood relationship of the male pairs certainly aggravates it. According to Lynceus, the Dioscuri had for some time been ready to use all means to achieve their impulsive end, union with the girls (149–68). This version of the story is not found in literature before Theocritus.117 If he invented the story, or even if he adapted it from a lost source or sources, his choice does not flatter the Dioscuri. As noted above, they and the Apharids had also been fellow Argonauts, even mentioned together in Apollonius’ catalogue (Arg. 1.146–55; cf. 3.516–17). Neither the Apharids nor any other Argonauts are named in the first story (cf. 31), but the Argonautic background may be brought to bear on the Castor story because the Theocritean narrator has just rounded off the account of a major feat of one of the noble Argonauts, children of gods (29) and united in their pursuit, against a fearsome and brutish foreign foe. Lynceus’ brother Idas is a drunken boor in Apollonius’ Argonautica (1.462–74, 485–91, 3.556–64). Nevertheless, despite his arrogance and impiety, he is a brave

|| 117 An Apulian vase of the first half of the fourth century (LIMC s.v. Dioscouroi 203, 217) depicts the abduction of the girls by the Dioscuri and their fight with the Apharids, probably as related events; see Sens (1997) 168–69.

222 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics fighter (1.1044, 2.830, 3.516–17) and suffers no greater setback than becoming enraged at his failure to sway his comrades (3.566, 1170; cf. 1252–53).118 In 22 Lynceus makes a last-ditch attempt at reconciliation with a speech (145–70),119 and Idas suffers a death appropriate for hubrists such as Capaneus (210–11; cf. Pi. N. 10.71–72). Unlike in Iliad (9.556–64), he dies before he has a chance to outrival Apollo, marry a beautiful girl and have a beautiful daughter.120 At 207–9 he seems to violate the terms of the duel (177–80), but his intervention is motivated by grief at his brother’s demise. Be that as it may, the behavior of Idas after the duel, or in his Apollonian incarnation, does not serve to justify the abduction of the Leucippides. The prehistory of the conflict is mainly provided in Lynceus’ speech (145–70), the central part of which is an embedded plea he had allegedly addressed to the Dioscuri in the past (154–66). Several scholars have argued that the speech features various oddities, incongruities, misapprehensions and rhetorical platitudes. According to this reading, such a piece of shoddy rhetoric using standard topoi of forensic oratory should not be taken at face value as an accurate report of the situation.121 This certainly draws justified attention to potential problems in the structure and content of Lynceus’ speech as well as to Theocritus’ treatment of the prehistory of the conflict. I will argue below that the speech is not as riddled with problems as has been alleged. Obviously, the accuracy of a character’s unconfirmed claims is always difficult to determine, especially in drama. It is plausible that if || 118 Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 97 observe that the character of Idas appears as a frustrated reader. 119 It is unclear and a matter of scholarly disagreement whether Lynceus’ speech ends at 170, and the beginning of Castor’s speech was lost in a lacuna, as Wilamowitz (1906) 191–93 suggested, or whether it continues to 180. I find it likelier that ὅμαιμος (173) = ‘full brother’ rather than ‘relative’ and that Castor responds to Lynceus’ speech, but I do not base any argument on the identity of the speaker of 171–80, and it does not affect my discussion. If Castor responds and proposes the duel, he does not effectively refute Lynceus’ charges. 120 The story of Idas and Marpessa is narrated in sch. bT 9.557, Paus. 4.2.7, 5.18.2, and Apollod. 1.7.8; cf. Simon. PMG 563 = 353 Poltera, and Bacch. fr. 20 A Maehler. Idas, a biological son of Poseidon, abducted Marpessa, whose father Euenus, a son of Ares, used to challenge and kill her suitors in the manner of Oenomaus (cf. sch. on Pi. I. 4.92a), in some versions Euenus’ fatherin-law ([Plut]. Mor. 315e). He then defends Marpessa when Apollo tries to take her from him, and the girl, whom Zeus gives license to choose her mate, chooses to marry Idas; see Maehler (1997) 263–65. Plutarch (Thes. 31) also preserves a story reported by Hellanicus (FGrHist 323a F 18) according to which the young Helen was not abducted by Theseus and Peirithous but by Idas and Lynceus, who entrusted her to Theseus. In all stories, the sons of Aphareus are abductors and winners, unlike their situation in Theocritus’ poem. Idas’ success in securing a bride without her father’s consent and in thwarting the advances of a divine son of Zeus, who does not rule in favor of Apollo, is probably a foil to 22. 121 For an overview see Sens (1997) 16–21.

Idyll 22 | 223

a claim is not refuted or proven wrong, then it should be taken at face value as true.122 Although contexts of differing complexity may render claims ambiguous or undecidable, the suggestion is helpful as a rule of thumb. None of Lynceus’ claims is refuted, but the most serious objection to the scholarly case of his unreliability is furnished by the account of the narrator, which confirms the legitimacy and priority of the Apharids’ claim on the girls, not to mention the reason why the Dioscuri needed to abduct them. 22 is not a dramatic poem, and Lynceus’ speech is not the only source of information about the past. The narrator states that the Apharids were bridegrooms-to-be (γαμβρὼ μελλογάμω, 140), in other words that they were the girls’ fiancés. Even if Lynceus had not delivered his speech with the review of the dispute’s prehistory, the promise or betrothal of the girls to the Apharids is the only natural interpretation of the narrator’s report, and an indisputable indication that the Dioscuri had committed a serious offense. The narrator’s specification at 140 is certainly not necessary for the identification of the Apharid brothers and contrasts with the reference to the Dioscuri and the girls, who are identified only through their fathers. The two sons of Zeus abducted the two daughters of Leucippus and were pursued by the two sons of Aphareus (137–39): the introduction could certainly have ended at that point. That choice would not have cast serious doubt on the accuracy of Lynceus’ report anyway, but the narrator proceeds to specify, even before mentioning the personal names of the Apharids, that they were bridegrooms-to-be.123 This crucial specification together with the initial mention of the girls’ abduction guarantee the accuracy of Lynceus’ report, at the very least concerning the basic fact that the Dioscuri abducted girls already promised or betrothed to their rivals.124

|| 122 See van Erp Taalman Kip (1996). 123 The personal names of the Dioscuri are not mentioned, for obvious reasons. A modern audience at least would expect and like to know the names of the coveted girls, their reaction to the events and their ultimate fate, but nothing of the sort is included. The daughters of Leucippus are virtual chattels, although this is not necessarily the reason for their anonymity. They are not the subject of any verb and change hands at the whim of males, which does not do the latter any credit, but the main culprits are certainly the Dioscuri and Leucippus—at least the Apharids had a prior claim as suitors and did not do anything devious or disrespectful. The suppression of any particulars about the girls possibly serves to align the story with traditional disputes over women such as the rape of Helen in which violations of norms between males rather than desire for the females was (allegedly) the main complaint of the aggrieved party. 124 ἀναρπάξαντε (137) perhaps recalls the prayer of the distraught Penelope to Artemis in which she wishes to be snatched by storm winds like Pandareus’ orphaned daughters, who were snatched by the storm winds/Harpies when they were about to get married (Od. 20.61–82). Pe-

224 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics There is nothing strange or difficult to believe and reconcile with the narrator’s report in Lynceus’ speech, including the embedded part.125 The Dioscuri set about thwarting the imminent marriage between Apharids and Leucippides because they coveted the girls. Whether they bribed Leucippus (150–51) or not, the bribe or absence thereof does not change the basis of the dispute, but there is no reason to doubt Lynceus’ relevant claim.126 The frequent use of the bribe motif in forensic oratory does not necessarily make the claim suspect. Lynceus is not addressing an audience of jurors or judges but his rivals, and it is implausible that he would be making false or outrageous accusations in his attempt to sway the offenders. To be sure, a poem is addressed to its audience, and a character may be made to advance claims that might be a mere rhetorical topos or might even violate verisimilitude if it suits the poet’s purposes. No purposes that might be served by a false accusation have been identified, and there is no reason to saddle a character with an implausible claim and a poet with a dubiously motivated choice. If the Dioscuri bribed Leucippus, the abduction of the girls is not implausible in view of their previous betrothal to the Apharids: the venal Leucippus consented to the change of bridegrooms, but the Apharids would never do so. Even if one assumes for the sake of the argument that the Dioscuri did not resort to bribery, abduction would still remain their only means of securing the girls: the original suitors would never accept their sidelining, and Leucippus or the Dioscuri would not have any legitimate or non-violent means of enforcing it. With or without bribery, the Dioscuri behaved impiously as unprovoked aggressors, and if bribery was involved, they were also underhanded offenders. The rhetorical deficiency of Lynceus’ speech with the allegedly problematic invocation of his rivals’ mortal origin and relationship to the Apharids (170; cf. 164) has been much exaggerated. To be sure, Lynceus fails to convince his addressees, but his failure does not necessarily rest on facts or factors he ignores or fails to take properly into account but rather on the addressees’ ruthless intran-

|| nelope fears that she will soon have to betray her husband and marry one of the worthless suitors, a fate worse than death, for which she would gladly opt. If so, then the Dioscuri appear as both Homeric Harpies and suitors. The latter association will come into focus in Lynceus’ speech. 125 Contrast, for instance, Hunter (1996) 68, who suggests that embedding direct speech in direct speech “calls attention to our lack of control over the truth of the report”. The embedded speech is just one part of the report and the story, and no part of the rest contradicts or casts serious doubts on Lynceus’ claims. 126 It may be a nod to a version of the tradition not incorporated in the poem, a dispute of Apharids and Tyndarids over cattle; cf. Pi. N. 10.60, and see Sens (1997) 168–69.

Idyll 22 | 225

sigence. I am not convinced that Lynceus is not aware of his rivals’ Jovian ancestry.127 Even if he is not, his ignorance does not put him at a severe disadvantage, but his level of knowledge is just one of the poem’s several ambiguities. Even if the Apharids are aware of Zeus’ relationship to their rivals, the god certainly does not always favor his progeny or forgive their misdemeanors, as is obvious in the case of Heracles and Apollo, for instance. Equally important, the Dioscuri were Tyndareus’ stepsons. The designation Tyndarids is used in Greek poetry without commitment to the mortal ancestry of the Dioscuri and often side by side with references to their divine parentage. Even in poems in which one or both are presented as sons of Zeus, such as Pindar’s Nemean 10 and the Idyll under discussion respectively, the patronymic Tyndarids is used freely.128 Their relationship to Tyndareus would also determine (the references to) their relations with other mortals. Especially in the context of a speech addressed to the Dioscuri and meant to dissuade them from persisting in their transgressive behavior, the speaker would be very likely to invoke his relation to them, even if he was aware of their divine biological paternity. In any case, Lynceus’ invocation of the twins’ paternal blood (164) has been considered ironically unfortunate because in his alleged ignorance of the biological paternity of his rivals he brings up their main advantage, which is bound to destroy him and his brother.129 The Apharids’ case does not rest on their mistaken || 127 Perhaps πατέρες (164) = ‘ancestors’ or ‘fathers’ is ambiguous, and Lynceus may hint at the two fathers of the Dioscuri, Zeus and Tyndareus. It is not clear that the Dioscuri ignore their divine parentage, either. Their behavior does not seem to be exclusively determined by pride or confidence in their divine ancestry, but the ambiguity over their awareness of it complicates audience reception of their dealings. For Lynceus’ presentation cf. n. 132 below. 128 The narrator refers to the brothers as Tyndarids in the envoi (212, 216), perhaps a significant choice looking back to the hymn, especially as it frames the allusion to their mighty father (213). The honorands are also called Tyndarids in references to their opponents (cf. 89, 136, 202) but sons of Zeus in the introduction (1), in which their mortal patronymic does not appear. It is also perhaps a significant nod to the tradition about the twins’ different fathers that only Polydeuces, traditionally the twin fathered by Zeus (Pi. N. 10.80–82), is called a son of Zeus (95, 115). In Simonides’ Plataea elegy (fr. 11.30–31 W2) the twins are called consecutively sons of Zeus and Tyndarids (cf. HHom. 17.1–2, 23.1–3) and are associated with Menelaus (cf. 215–17) as heroic patrons of the Spartan contingent at Plataea. Helen (216) is referred to as a Tyndarid and a daughter of Zeus in 18 (5, 19). 129 Gow (19522) 402, who obviously thinks of mortal blood, also suggests that the reference is perhaps unfortunate because the distinguished ancestry shared by the three sets of siblings involved in the dispute makes not only the Dioscuri conspicuous among heroes but also the Leucippides among young women and potential brides. Cf. Sens (1997) 186, who suggests that Lynceus’ claim is naïve and self-aggrandizing. There is no doubt that the girls were conspicuous and coveted, but the distinguished ancestry also makes the Apharids unexceptionable bridegrooms,

226 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics identification of their rivals’ biological father but on norms regulating fair play in wooing, which were presumably identical for sons of gods and mortals alike. The moral deficit of the Dioscuri in the third part of the poem is usually attributed to their divine prerogative, which may occasionally be manifested in violent form and contrasts with their benign behavior on other occasions such as Polydeuces’ match with Amycus or in their capacity as protectors of sailors (17–22).130 In this light, the Apharids appear as hapless, ignorant and pathetic mortals who dare oppose divine will and pay a hefty price for their misguided opposition,131 in the manner of Pentheus in Euripides’ Bacchae or Neoptolemus in Andromache. However, the Dioscuri are not invincible gods but potentially vulnerable demi-gods, and the issue of their immortality or divine prerogative is not broached in either story of their fights. They are also quite clearly in the wrong in the second story, and the reaction of the Apharids to the cancellation of their marriage may not be viewed as hubristic or pathetically misguided, especially if they are unaware of their cousins’ divine paternity but even if they are not. The narrator also includes several intertextual links that point to an outcome of the duel less favorable to the Dioscuri. The sidelined bridegrooms-to-be behave nobly and die in the attempt to defend their honor and rights because Zeus protects his sons.132 Gods may indeed be both benign and harsh, even unfair, at least by the standards of mortals, but in the third part of the poem Theocritus chose to narrate an episode that took place before the honorands’ immortalization and demonstrated the justice of their opponents’ case. Lynceus is the advocate of this case and does not fall short in this capacity, as many scholars argue. He claims that he had repeatedly tried to reason with his addressees, even though he is not a man of many words (152–53):

|| and they crucially had a prior contractual claim on the excellent brides. The reasons for Lynceus’ failure to persuade his addressees may best be sought elsewhere. 130 See e.g. Morrison (2007) 237–39. 131 See e.g. Hunter (1996) 69–70, and Sens (1997) 19–20. Contra Palumbo Stracca (2000) 182– 83, who suggests plausibly that Lynceus’ ignorance of his cousins’ divine ancestry may be viewed as a case of pathetic tragic irony rather than pathetic irony. 132 The pathos of the Apharids’ situation is poignantly underscored by the choice of νυμφίοι at the very beginning of Lynceus’ speech (155; cf. 179): the word is Homeric (Il. 23.223, Od. 7.65), used for bridegrooms who perish young. Cf. nn. 135 and 138 below. οὐ κατὰ κόσμον (149) in Lynceus’ complaint about the wooing practices of the Dioscuri also recalls Homeric contexts of bitter disputes in which the agent in question is the aggressor and/or doomed (Il. 2.214, 5.759, 8.12, 17.205, Od. 3.138; cf. 14.363, Sol. fr. 13.11 W2, A.R. Arg. 4.360).

Idyll 22 | 227

ἦ μὴν πολλάκις ὔμμιν ἐνώπιον ἀμφοτέροισιν αὐτὸς ἐγὼ τάδ’ ἔειπα καὶ οὐ πολύμυθος ἐών περ· Many times I told you both these things face to face, though I am a man of few words.

At the conclusion of the inserted speech he repeats that he often said many things of this sort in vain because his addressees are hard and stubborn (167–69): ἴσκον τοιάδε πολλά, τὰ δ’ εἰς ὑγρὸν ᾤχετο κῦμα πνοιὴ ἔχουσ’ ἀνέμοιο, χάρις δ’ οὐχ ἕσπετο μύθοις· σφὼ γὰρ ἀκηλήτω καὶ ἀπηνέες. I spoke such words many a time, but the wind’s breath took them and carried them off to the wet waves of the sea, and they found no favor with you, for you are not to be won over or compelled.

The report of his attempts has also been thought to ironically undermine his selfcharacterization as a man of few words, but the irony is mitigated by the clear suggestion that the speaker abandoned his customary ways in his attempt to make the addressees see sense. As has often been pointed out, the Homeric dis legomenon πολύμυθος (153) recalls the comments of audience members of important speeches by Menelaus (Il. 3.214) and Telemachus (Od. 2.200). The speeches were delivered in connection with disputes over coveted women, Helen and Penelope respectively. Bacchylides evokes the Iliadic incident in 15, which has been partially preserved. Although πολύμυθος is not used in the extant part, the reference to Graces (Χάρισσιν) in the narrator’s introduction to Menelaus’ speech (49) may have been the model for Lynceus’ disclaimer (168).133 Whether Lynceus, who actually says quite a lot, ironically contradicts himself or not, he is on the side of right, like Menelaus and Telemachus, and his association with the pair of Homeric heroes reinforces the portrayal of his rivals as impious aggressors, who would eventually be punished. What is more, a web of intertextual reminiscences incorporated mainly before but also within the account of the duel creates the impression that its outcome will be different. The reference to the countless brides (κόραι...μυρίαι) available to the Dioscuri (159–60), with its reminiscence of Achilles’ reply to Odysseus (Il. 9.395–97), suggests the ineffectuality of Lynceus’ proposal but also perhaps

|| 133 Both the Homeric Telemachus (Od. 2.144–45; cf. 68–69) and the Bacchylidean Menelaus (15.50–55) invoke Zeus as patron of justice and appropriate behavior. In the context of Lynceus’ appeal to the sons of Zeus, this association may perhaps also be relevant.

228 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics some uncertainty over the fate of the addressees.134 Other associations with the Iliadic Achilles are similarly ambiguous. If Lynceus is the speaker throughout, then 171 (εἰ δ’ ὑμῖν κραδίη πόλεμον ποθεῖ), especially in conjunction with 177–78, harks back to Achilles’ stubbornness (cf. Il. 1.491–92, ἀλλὰ φθινύθεσκε φίλον κῆρ/ αὖθι μένων, ποθέεσκε δ’ ἀυτήν τε πτόλεμόν τε), reckless aggression and impious failure to heed the plea of the river Xanthus (Il. 21.223–26; cf. 21.235–36, 343–44), which would have killed him if not for divine intervention at the last moment (Il. 21.284–97), perhaps a foreshadowing of Castor’s rescue (210–11). If Lynceus is the speaker of 171 and the line echoes Telemachus’ assurance to the disguised Odysseus before the fight with Irus (Od. 18.61–62), heavy irony is involved in the echo. Similarly, μεταμώνια θήσειν (181), which probably recalls Agamemnon’s reassurance to the indignant Odysseus (τὰ δὲ πάντα θεοὶ μεταμώνια θεῖεν, Il. 4.363), is teasing: it may refer strictly to the proposal for a duel or to the agency of a god who would allow a compromise and eventual reconciliation of sorts to take place, at the price of only casualty, or, at most, one from each house (177–78).135 If Castor is the speaker, then he in turn adopts the strategy of his rival and casts his opponents in a potentially unflattering mold. The recollection of the duel of Achilles and Aeneas (Il. 20.275) at 184 points to the superiority of Castor but also potentially to a rescue of Lynceus, perhaps by divine intervention. The reference to the helmet crests of both opponents (186) also seems to leave open the possibility that the odds are not as heavily stacked against Lynceus as against Hector (Il. 22.314–16). The Theocritean opponents try to find and strike a spot least protected by the armor (187–88), which contrasts with the successful strategy of Achilles (Il. 22.321, 324–27).136 The spears of both

|| 134 The reference may also contain an echo of the boast of the Euripidean Achilles (IA 959–60), another aggrieved bridegroom-to-be. This boast too recalls the speech of the Iliadic Achilles and perhaps of the suitor Eurymachus (Od. 21.250–52), the speaker who also mocks Telemachus as πολύμυθος (Od. 2.220). Cf. Sens (1997) 181–82, and the discussion of the boast of the Cyclops Polyphemus (11.77–78) above pp. 101–2. 135 For this suggestion cf. n. 138 below. It may also be meant as a tease to the audience about Lynceus’ fate. Although the terms of the proposed duel leave little room for an eventual sparing of the defeated party, the audience may have recalled the magnanimity of Polydeuces in the boxing match with Amycus and wondered whether Castor, the presumed winner in both the tradition and the context of the hymn, might be similarly restrained. If the reference to Idas’ watching the duel while leaning on his father’s tomb (200), another detail that generates pathos (cf. n. 132 above), recalls Paris’ posture before his wounding of Diomedes (Il. 11.371–72), then Idas is given an intertextual chance to wound and incapacitate his opponent. 136 Cf. Il. 12.387–89, Teucer’s incapacitation of Glaucus, who is the companion of Sarpedon, another son of Zeus. Sarpedon is distraught over his friend’s withdrawal but he continues

Idyll 22 | 229

opponents stick and break on their shields (189–90), and the Homeric models of this setback (Il. 13.162, 17.607) also point to equality and lack of decisive outcome. Apart from the epic reminiscences, a precedent from tragedy may prepare for a potential setback for the covetous and aggressive Dioscuri: in Euripides’ Andromache Neoptolemus, the husband of Hermione, comes to grief because he had insulted Apollo and dismissed the plea of Orestes, Hermione’s first suitor (966–81, 993–1008). This is the only such story in surviving Greek literature.137 Menelaus had promised Hermione to Orestes before he left for Troy but then betrothed her to Neoptolemus in exchange for the latter’s participation in the war. After the return of the fighters, the matricide and exile Orestes begged his rival to back off, considering his desperate situation and inability to find a bride outside the family. Neoptolemus not only rejected the request but also dismissed the desperate Orestes with grievous insults over his matricide and pursuit by the Erinyes. The cheated suitor had to withdraw but eventually takes a terrible revenge by plotting to have his rival killed with the cooperation of Apollo and securing Hermione for himself. The situation in the two poems is obviously quite different in several respects, but Neoptolemus behaves despicably, covetously and impiously. His dismissal of the humbled rival, who had a perfectly legitimate former claim and was in desperate straits, manifests insensitivity and borders on impiety, as Orestes’ matricide had been mandated by Apollo. Neoptolemus also further and more grievously insulted the god by having the temerity to ask for compensation for the death of his father Achilles (51–53). Although this hubristic move is not directly related to the rivalry over Hermione, Neoptolemus’ lack of respect for the god leads to his demise. More important in the context of the present discussion, Neoptolemus, the son of the greatest Achaean hero and himself the glorious conqueror of Troy, naturally came home with rich booty, including Andromache, the eponymous heroine, and had his choice of brides. His arrogant refusal to relinquish Hermione in the face not only of Orestes’ predicament but also of his grandfather Peleus’ objections to a union with the daughter of immoral Helen (619–22) bespeaks dangerous stubbornness and insatiable greed, both vices that are virtually bound to incur punishment. The Dioscuri may have bribed Leucippus, or at the very least wooed already betrothed young ladies. They struck a deal with the girls’ father, who showed no moral constancy and was indifferent to honoring his previous commitment or, worse, willing to trade his daughters in exchange

|| fighting, and Zeus does not allow Teucer to wound him (402–3), as he does not allow Idas to kill Castor (210–11). Cf. also Hes. Sc. 334–35. 137 For other lost plays about Hermione’s suitors see Lloyd (20052) 1–2.

230 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics for benefits. This puts the Dioscuri and Leucippus on a similar moral plane with the Euripidean Neoptolemus and Menelaus. Against this background of epic and tragic parallels, the narrator presents the Dioscuri as likely to lose or at least suffer a setback, since it is clear from the introduction and the hymnic mode that they are gods (cf. 223) and cannot have suffered irreparable damage. In this light, the survival of Castor without any injury or disadvantage comes as a considerable surprise, especially if he is the speaker of 171–80.138 Irrespective of the identity of the speaker, the outcome of the duel is very different from what he envisages, which produces bitter irony. Given the common version of Castor’s fate in the tradition, the aggression of the Dioscuri, and their failure to occupy the moral high ground, in contrast especially with the Amycus story, the audience may have expected that Castor would at least be wounded, even if not lethally. In the event, nothing of the sort happens: Castor escapes unscathed, unwounded by Lynceus and saved from Idas’ missile by the intervention of Zeus (207–11), who protects and favors his son, although Castor is an aggressor and transgressor. Indeed, “it is no light thing to fight the Tyndarids, mighty sons of a mighty father” (212–13). This epigrammatic comment serves as a bridge to the epilogue, which turns out to be longer and more complex than archaic hymnic counterparts, touching on the relation of poetic present to past, epic to lyric and the role of the Muses in poetic production (214–23): χαίρετε, Λήδας τέκνα, καὶ ἡμετέροις κλέος ὕμνοις ἐσθλὸν ἀεὶ πέμποιτε. φίλοι δέ τε πάντες ἀοιδοί Τυνδαρίδαις Ἑλένῃ τε καὶ ἄλλοις ἡρώεσσιν, Ἴλιον οἳ διέπερσαν ἀρήγοντες Μενελάῳ. ὑμῖν κῦδος, ἄνακτες, ἐμήσατο Χῖος ἀοιδός, ὑμνήσας Πριάμοιο πόλιν καὶ νῆας Ἀχαιῶν Ἰλιάδας τε μάχας Ἀχιλῆά τε πύργον ἀυτῆς· ὑμῖν αὖ καὶ ἐγὼ λιγεῶν μειλίγματα Μουσέων, οἷ’ αὐταὶ παρέχουσι καὶ ὡς ἐμὸς οἶκος ὑπάρχει, τοῖα φέρω. γεράων δὲ θεοῖς κάλλιστον ἀοιδαί.

|| 138 At 177–78 the speaker envisages one casualty from a single house or one casualty from each house. The formulation is ambiguous, perhaps intentionally. The suggestion of Gow (19522) 403 that the frame narrator has in mind the eventual two Apharid casualties has something to recommend it, although I would not agree that the formulation is the result of narratorial carelessness, or that Idas’ failure to become a bridegroom (205–6) concerns his thwarted marriage to a Leucippid, which would be a given according to the terms of the duel. The reference to his mother, a widow at that, obviously generates pathos (cf. n. 132 above) and may be meant to balance the references to Leda and her children (1–2, 4–5, 214).

Idyll 22 | 231

Farewell, children of Leda; may you always confer fair fame on my hymns. All bards are dear to the Tyndaridae, to Helen and to the rest of the heroes who helped Menelaus to sack Troy. The Chian bard devised excellence for you, lords, when he hymned the city of Priam, the ships of the Greeks, the fighting at Troy, and Achilles, that tower of strength in battle. I too bring you sweet offerings of the clear-voiced Muses as they and my resources provide: for the gods, songs are the fairest gift of honor.

The appreciative reference to the Chian bard, the narrator’s great predecessor, may be thought to serve as a teasing hint to the audience that a poetological statement stressing, or at least implying, the narrator’s superiority would follow. As a matter of fact, the narrator forsakes adversarial or self-promoting claims. This is already apparent from the unusual suggestion that all singers are dear to the Tyndarids, Helen and the rest of the heroes that fought at Troy (215–17). Singers are traditionally dear to Apollo and the Muses (cf. Hes. Th. 94–97 = HHom. 15.2–5), to whom bucolic singers add the nymphs (1.141, 7.91–92). The Tyndarids are not traditionally celebrated as singers or patrons of singers, but in the narrator’s introductory invocation they are hailed as “lyre-players” and “singers” (24), and they may thus be included in the group. In any case, in the epilogue they and the rest of the heroes are primarily celebrated as subjects of songs rather than patrons of singers—the heroes love singers because they celebrate and honor them in their compositions. What is more important, the requests and declarations in this epilogue have no parallel in the tradition.139 This is not a version of a generic poetological statement but of a very specific program: its gist, the narrator’s failure to exalt himself over predecessors and contemporary colleagues, appears consistently in various guises in the collection, in 7, 16 and 17—the last two will be discussed later. The narrator first prays for continuous κλέος ἐσθλόν, counting himself as a member of the group of singers dear to the heroes. He then singles out Homer for praise and returns to himself and his song, which he describes as modest, sweet offerings to his honorands, inspired by the Muses and drawn from his own resources.140 He refrains from praising his song, explicitly or implicitly, as superior to the song of other singers and especially as rivaling that of Homer, his eminent predecessor. He does not dismiss his own piece as unimportant but displays a quiet confidence in his offering.

|| 139 Only the injunction to the honorands to rejoice in and favor the singer’s song is traditional; see e.g. HHom. 25.6, and cf. 6.19–20, 10.4–5; for further parallels see Kowerski (2008) 571. 140 Sens (1997) 22 suggests that the Muses “represent perhaps not just the source of poetic inspiration but also the specific literary models on which the poet draws.”

232 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics On the other hand, Homer’s superiority is indisputable, as is obvious in the declaration that he fashioned κῦδος for his heroes, to which I will return in a moment. For now, Homer’s poetry is described as a hymn (ὑμνήσας, 219). Although the verb ὑμνέω may designate non-lyric poetry, it is hard to read it so in the particular context of the hymn, in which the verbs ὑμνέω and ἀείδω and the nouns ὕμνος and ἀοιδή are emphatically and repeatedly used for the narrator’s activity from beginning to end. Given the hexametric form of Theocritus’ hymn and the combats described in it, the association between heroic epic and hymn becomes easier, but there can remain little doubt that Theocritus seeks to blur generic boundaries and facilitate his association with Homer.141 Still, the mention of the Dioscuri together with the Homeric heroes that conquered Troy assisting Menelaus (215–20) has proved difficult to accommodate in the framework of the coda because, notoriously, the duo did not participate in the war. They are mentioned only once in Iliad (3.236–44), in which there is no report about their father.142 They are already dead at the time of the war (Il. 3.243–44), having perished presumably before the inception of the hostilities but after Helen’s elopement because she is not aware of their demise. Scholars have proposed several answers to the question why Theocritus claims that Homer in Iliad celebrated the twins.143 A single answer may not cover Theocritus’ design, which may, for instance, have been partially informed by patronage concerns and the prominence of the cult of the twins in the Ptolemaic court.144 The association of the twins with the Trojan war and Homer may have been Theocritus’ way of accommodating two desiderata, praise of the Dioscuri as heroic combatants and identification of Homer, the poet of the Trojan war, as his most distinguished

|| 141 See Hunter (1996) 75. 142 Contrast the report about them in Odyssey (11.298–304), which echoes the reference to their death in Iliad but also names Tyndareus as their father and includes an account of their partial immortality in Hades, an honor granted to them by Zeus. The narrator probably knows more than he cares to relate, compressing various traditional stories or parts thereof, which is common in the catalogue. The story of the wooing of Pero related immediately above, for instance, is told in an extremely compressed manner (11.287–97), although some further information is provided in 15 (231–38). 143 For an overview and discussion see Hunter (1996) 75–76, Sens (1997) 218–19, and Gengler (2003) 140. The difficulty remains even if ὑμῖν at 218 and 221 does not refer exclusively to the Dioscuri but to all heroes mentioned in the epilogue. The most expedient solution is to postulate that the narrator does not refer to Homer as poet of the Iliad but of the entire epic cycle, as the Dioscuri were celebrated in the Cypria; see Cameron (1995) 436, and Sbardella (2003) 144. This cannot be ruled out, but the connection of the envoi with the Trojan war, even if not specifically with the Iliad, remains strong, and the Dioscuri had at best an indirect connection with it. 144 Cf. Gow (19522) 385, and Cameron (1995) 433–34.

Idyll 22 | 233

predecessor. One, and perhaps the only, way he could do that was to claim that Homer celebrated the Dioscuri. It is important to note that, although his account is very different from Homer’s in Iliad (and Odyssey), the versions are not incompatible. The twins’ mention in Iliad is very brief. They have standard epic epithets (Κάστορά θ’ ἱππόδαμον καὶ πὺξ ἀγαθὸν Πολυδεύκεα, Il. 3.237; cf. Od. 11.300, Theocr. 22.2, 135–36), which do not appear in the hymn, but Polydeuces is a formidable boxer (2), and Castor a master of swift horses (34, 136). Helen, who is Zeus’ daughter (Il. 3.199, 418; cf. Od. 4.184, 219, 6.229, 23.218), states that they are her brothers, all children of one mother (Il. 3.238). This leaves open the possibility that they are Zeus’ sons, as Hesiod (fr. 24 M–W) recounted. Be that as it may, all versions of their paternity were extant in Theocritus’ tradition. Since the poet wished to include the twins in the company of Iliadic heroes, he might not openly contradict the epic over the twins’ paternity and immortality. Concerning the former, the reticence of the Iliadic narrator about it and Helen’s claim allowed Theocritus to attribute divine paternity to his heroes without contradiction. Immortality is perhaps more difficult to square with the Iliadic account, but the Theocritean twins are demigods and thus not by definition immortal. Demigods may die and be granted immortality after death. The Theocritean Dioscuri may have died and been granted resurrection as a special honor from Zeus after the fight with the Apharids. The fight is not mentioned by Homer, who does not provide any account of the brothers’ death, although it is plausible that they, or at least Castor, died in the fight. The twins were probably granted their peculiar form of immortality, mentioned in Odyssey 11, the Cypria and Pindar’s Nemean 10, on this occasion. The brevity and lack of specifics of the Iliadic (and Odyssean) narrative enabled Theocritus to complete the account and take the liberties he desired. Irrespective of his handling of myth, Theocritus significantly suggests that the Chian bard fashioned κῦδος for the Dioscuri and the rest of his subjects. The narrator structures the entire coda around the notion of competitive excellence, although, as already suggested, he refrains from adopting a confrontational or antagonistic stance. He employs two key terms, at home mainly, though by no means exclusively, in contexts of heroic excellence, κλέος (214) and κῦδος (218). The latter is an epic word denoting one’s superiority, often explicitly and always implicitly god-given, in competitive contexts, mainly war and sports, but also ruling and artisanal pursuits. κῦδος is not a permanent attribute like κλέος and may be lost, withdrawn or withheld by the gods. It is used only of living persons in Homer, but Theocritus’ un-Homeric use is facilitated by the immortality of the addressees. The Dioscuri and perhaps some other heroes such as Menelaus and Helen are literally immortal, and all heroes have become immortalized in poetry. The phrase κῦδος…ἐμήσατο (218) is also un-Homeric, in more than one respect.

234 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics Epic gods are not said to fashion or devise κῦδος for the mortals they favor with victory,145 and epic singers are not involved in awarding κῦδος or even κλέος to the heroes or subjects they celebrate. Gods grant κῦδος to heroes, and the heroes win κλέος. Singers celebrate this κλέος, thereby further embellishing, spreading, and cementing it in the process, but not creating or preserving it.146 In this light, Homer appears as a unique and, indeed, divine bard: he does not only celebrate the famous heroes but also grants them excellence, as only gods do in epic. This power cannot but be connected with his superiority over the rest of singers. Homer too implicitly enjoys κῦδος because he is superior to all other singers, not only his contemporaries but also his successors.147 His poetic immortality and excellence parallel those of his subjects. It goes without saying that the narrator does not imply that the Homeric heroes had not been excellent, or had not enjoyed κῦδος, and that Homer merely presented them so or enhanced their excellence with his song, as Pindar, for instance, suggests in connection with Odysseus (N. 7.20–23). Helen and the male heroes enjoyed indisputable superiority in their respective spheres of competition, beauty and war. Homer comes into this glorious picture as the excellent deviser of competitive excellence in another arena, a deviser of second-order κῦδος, as it were. What he granted his animate, and even his inanimate, subjects is not the license or power to excel over rivals in their spheres of competition, which remains in the remit of gods throughout Greek poetry, but in poetry, the area he exceled in as divine(ly endowed), superior singer. Rather than suggesting that Homer celebrated (the κλέος of) his heroes, or even granted them κλέος in his poetry, the narrator implies that he was divine, or incomparable and unsurpassable, in granting them κῦδος in the competition among poetic subjects. Only a singer who is incomparably endowed and excellent, in other words enjoys κῦδος over his peers, has the ability to fashion κῦδος for his poetic subjects. This becomes obvious from the reference to the ships of the Achaeans, the Iliadic battles, and especially Troy, which, for all their fame, may hardly be thought to have participated and won in any other kind of competition. Troy was

|| 145 The aor. (ἐ)μήσατο takes only misfortunes, crimes, and destruction as object (Od. 3.194, 249, 303, 10.115, 11.429, 22.169; cf. Hes. Op. 49, 95). 146 The idea that song or poetry preserves the achievements of worthy individuals, explicitly contemporaries and implicitly heroes of old, from posthumous oblivion became current in 5th century lyric and specifically epinician poetry, but no explicit association between the poetry and the conferral of κλέος is drawn. The only probable exception is Simonides’ Plataea elegy (fr. 11 W2); cf. n. 149 below. For κῦδος in epic and lyric poetry see Kyriakou (2007). Cf. Jaillard (2007), and Pucci (2010). 147 Apart from Idyll 7 (47–48), this is perhaps also a reminiscence of the excellence of the Chian bard in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (τοῦ πᾶσαι μετόπισθεν ἀριστεύουσιν ἀοιδαί, 173).

Idyll 22 | 235

sacked, and thus could not be said to enjoy any kind of literal κῦδος. Similarly, the ships of the Achaeans, for all their impressive multitude and the glory they eventually received on account of the sack of Troy, may not strictly speaking be said to enjoy κῦδος. Finally, battles cannot literally compete with other battles and thus cannot enjoy κῦδος. Even the famous Achilles, who was a tower of the Achaeans and unbeatable during the siege of Troy, was eventually brought low by Paris and Apollo. Although not narrated in Iliad, his demise, enshrined in the tradition anyway, is predicted by his mother Thetis (18.95–96) and his dying at the Scaean gates by Hector (22.358–60).148 In that final confrontation, Achilles lost his life, and thus the κῦδος of victory. Homer granted it to the heroes and things in question only in the framework and competition of praising song or hymn, in the competition with their peers in poetry, as it were. It is deliciously ironic and markedly innovative that the Iliadic heroes, including the Dioscuri, are said to favor all singers. Nevertheless, this favor is not incompatible with the preeminence of one singer, namely Homer. In this light, the immortal(ized) heroes and demigods, who enjoyed κῦδος in the competition with their rivals in their lifetime on earth, oversee their own winning of another sort of κῦδος through the agency of the incomparable singer who sang their hymns. They also favor all other singers who celebrate them but do not compete with Homer. The choice of designating Homer just as “Chian bard” in 22 (cf. 7.47) implies clearly that he is the bard par excellence.149 His poetry reigns supreme, and the narrator certainly does not even aspire to compete with him. Homer continues enjoying his κῦδος, or, put differently, his κῦδος is constantly reaffirmed or renewed because no poet proves superior to him, and potential competitors fail miserably. Sensible poets refrain from antagonizing him and acknowledge his superiority without a fight, as it were. Similarly, the excellence || 148 For other references to Achilles’ imminent demise in the epic see Edwards (1991) 158. 149 Cf. n. 147 above. Sens (1997) 220, 222 suggests that the narrator distinguishes slavish imitation of Homer from his own refined and original poetry, as Lycidas does (7.45–49). I detect no such implications in either passage: Lycidas refers to would-be competitors and not imitators of Homer, and the narrator in 22 does not denigrate other singers. He celebrates heroes as other bards do (215–17) and he does not seek to emulate Homer, who is unsurpassable. Simonides in his Plataea elegy (fr. 11 W2) attributes the κλέος of heroes who conquered Troy to Homer, and Theocritus may be “correcting” him, although in 17 (115–17) he too may imply that poets grant κλέος to their patrons; cf. below p. 291. Simonides also mentions or alludes to no other poet apart from Homer and himself and even elides the temporal distance between Homer and his heroes, thus making the association between himself and his predecessor much more direct; cf. Kyriakou (2004) 225–29. Theocritus may have modeled his choice to focus on Homer as his model on Simonides, although he certainly mentions other singers. For Homer and Simonides in 16 see the discussion in IV below.

236 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics of his subjects is constantly reaffirmed and renewed. Homer, the divine singer, or virtual god of song, has granted and continues granting victory to the subjects of his song. Theocritus’ claims about his own competence in the epilogue corroborate this view of the excellence of Homer. Theocritus acknowledges the κῦδος of Homer and attributes to him the fashioning of κῦδος for the heroes of the Trojan war. He himself celebrates two of those heroes, and thus he may aspire only to κλέος for his poetry. κλέος is also of course a traditional attribute of both heroes and poets, and indeed any distinguished individual. There is certainly no implication, not to mention indication, that the Homeric heroes and Homer enjoy κῦδος but not κλέος. Archaic κῦδος naturally and automatically ensures κλέος, but the latter does not always or exclusively result from the former. In any case, Theocritus, who attributes poetic κῦδος to Homer’s poetry and by extension to Homer, cannot claim it also for himself and his hymn. Not only does he refrain from doing so, he also suggests that his own resources are not on a par with Homer’s. He prays that the Dioscuri always provide κλέος for his hymns and mentions the Muses, who provide his song. Traditionally, music is in the remit of the goddesses, and, as already noted, poets are said to be their favorites, and/or to rely on them for help. Theocritus, though, says nothing about their role in Homer’s poetry. Again, this may hardly imply that Homer was not favored by the Muses: the endowed poet par excellence enjoyed the goddesses’ favor and the resulting unrivaled excellence virtually by definition. Nevertheless, Theocritus mentions the goddesses only in connection with his poetry, and that twice (116– 17, 221–22), in crucial junctures and in traditional terms, which highlight his pious modesty. His poetic offerings are described as λιγεῶν μειλίγματα Μουσέων (221), which might be taken as a periphrasis for the refined poem, although not with a view to suggesting that it is superior to the offerings of other poets in general and Homer in particular. The sequence specifies that the offerings are such as the Muses provide and his own resources allow (οἷ’ αὐταὶ παρέχουσι καὶ ὡς ἐμὸς οἶκος ὑπάρχει, 222). The juxtaposition of Muses and poet does not limit the responsibility attributed to the Muses by stressing the contribution of the poet’s genius. It is unlikely, and not supported by any parallel, whether in the tradition or the collection, that the poet’s genius or resources may be distinguished from the gift of the Muses.150 The goddesses offer different gifts of poetic material and competence to

|| 150 There is no distinction between poetic content and form, raw material provided by the Muses and fashioned into a charming final product by the poet respectively. Although the Muses

Idyll 22 | 237

different poets, which constitute their resources and account for their poetic capacity. 222 is structured as a sort of hendiadys: the poet’s genius or resources are such as the Muses choose to provide or allow. The sweet song offered to the Dioscuri is the result of this gift. In this light, the end of the poem is not substantially different from the appeal to the goddess at 116–17: εἰπέ, θεά, σὺ γὰρ οἶσθα· ἐγὼ δ’ ἑτέρων ὑποφήτης φθέγξομαι ὅσσ’ ἐθέλεις σὺ καὶ ὅππως τοι φίλον αὐτῇ. Tell me, goddess, for you know. Interpreting for others, I shall utter what you wish in the manner you prefer.

The narrator vows to be ἑτέρων ὑποφήτης and report what the knowledgeable goddess wishes for him to report in the manner she pleases. ἑτέρων ὑποφήτης may be ambiguous. It probably means “interpreter to others” rather than “interpreter of others”, but the use of the genitive in place of the unambiguous and even metrically equivalent dative ἑτέροις (cf. Callim. H. 3.186 εἰπέ, θεή, σὺ μὲν ἄμμιν, ἐγὼ δ’ ἑτέροισιν ἀείσω) leaves open the possibility that the second interpretation may not be ruled out.151 Either way, the image sketched is traditional, and the difference lies in the explicit presence or absence of the audience from it. The second gloss also brings the invocation closer to the envoi and the other passages in which the Homeric hapax ὑποφήτης (Il. 16.235) occurs (16.29, 17.115, A.R. Arg. 1.1311, Arat. Ph. 164; cf. Pi. Pa. 6.5–6, fr. 150 Maehler, Bacch. 9.3, Pl. Ion 534e).152 The narrator then does not change tack from invocation to envoi and does not undermine his own poetry by stressing the agency of the Muses. Instead, he thereby foregrounds its worth.

|| are often said to provide to the poet knowledge of past events, this does not imply that they provide only that. Participants in and eyewitnesses of events have knowledge and may report them, sometimes as engagingly as poets, but such individuals are not poets, as report does not equal song. The paradigmatic enchanting, bard-like narrator is Odysseus (Od. 11.367–68, 17.518–21; cf. 19.203). Nestor is also an enchanting speaker, and Achilles shares many of the attributes of the epic narrator, but none of them is a poet or said to be inspired or assisted by the Muses. For the limitations of human narrators and poets see Ford (1992) 72–89, and cf. Wilkinson (2013) 110–11. 151 The first gloss is probably to be preferred primarily because ἑτέρων would be awkward within the invocation of the goddess; the Callimachean parallel may not be used as a guide because either poet may have echoed but modified the invocation of his predecessor. 152 For Apollonius’ prayer at the end of his proem (Μοῦσαι δ’ ὑποφήτορες εἶεν ἀοιδῆς, Arg. 1.22), also probably ambiguous, see Kyriakou forthcoming.

238 | Chambers of echoes: bucolic song and little epics Homer’s poetic excellence also does not diminish it, especially since Homer is presented as a divine(ly gifted) figure, enjoying supremacy over all his colleagues—nobody is supposed or qualified to compete with Homer, whose heroes enjoy unrivaled supremacy as subjects of his unrivaled poetry. Unlike the Dioscuri (cf. 145–46), the narrator does not wish for, or engage in, any battle. His praise of Homer and deference to the Muses leave little doubt that the hymn from his store is in the remit of the goddesses and well placed to be a most beautiful prize offered to gods (cf. 17.8). The narrator, who does not antagonize any colleague, does not aspire to κῦδος but to god-given perpetual κλέος ἐσθλόν. Even so, it is probably not incidental that poetry is said to win in the competition for the fairest gift of honor to gods—the poem closes with an assertion of the excellence of poetry (223): gods receive and presumably value it as the best gift. Pious celebration of gods and heroes is also prominent in 18 and 26, which are generically and narratologically more challenging than 22 but also tackle the excellence of Zeus’ children manifested in opposing contexts. The narrators, who appear very briefly, say nothing about their musical competence or even capacity, naturally mention no predecessors and provide no information about the past or future of the heroes. The elision of the background and sequence of the events narrated, which finds no parallel in the literary tradition and only a partial parallel in the story of Hylas and Heracles in 13, results in the depiction of mythological characters in a single frame, snapshot-like. This complicates audience reception and potential allocation of blame and is arguably the boldest choice in Theocritus’ treatment of mythology.

IV. Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage Idylls 18 & 26 In 18, a wedding song for Helen and Menelaus, neither the frame narrator nor, more significantly, the girls who sing the song include any praise of themselves. By contrast, Alcman’s famous partheneion (PMGF 1), one of the main surviving intertexts of 18, features extensive praise of the chorus members, mainly of their physical beauty but also their musical excellence. The thorny problems bedeviling the comprehension of this fragmentary song far exceed the scope of this discussion, but it is worth pointing out that the song may have included the myth about the attempted rape of Helen and/or Helen’s status as Spartan goddess.1 Irrespective of such issues as the number of chorus members or the role of the two principal girls, Agido and Hagesichora, the narrator says much about the girls, their finery and their relationships. By contrast, the narrators of 18 say nothing of the sort except that the girls had hyacinth flowers in their hair (2) and are aristocratic Spartans (4) and age-mates of the bride (22), whom they praise as far superior to themselves and indeed a goddess-in-the-making. Helen’s history and even the background of the marriage are also almost totally suppressed (cf. 17). This differentiates the Idyll also from its other intertext noted in the scholia, Stesichorus’ Helen, although its loss makes secure associations impossible. Still, if Stesichorus’ poem contained a description of the wedding (fr. 88 Finglass), the story of Tyndareus’ oath (fr. 87 Finglass) and/or the abduction of Helen by Theseus (fr. 86 Finglass), Theocritus’ selectivity becomes clearly apparent.2 Even the ironies that several scholars have detected in the Idyll are couched in terms that eschew pronounced ambiguity.3 It goes without saying that the external audience || 1 See Bowie (2011) 36, and cf. Tsantsanoglou (2012) 21–22, 40. 2 According to the Homeric scholia (A and D on Il. 2.339) and Pausanias (2.22.6), Stesichorus treated Tyndareus’ oath and Helen’s abduction in his poetry. It is possible that Helen’s patronymic (Τυνδαρίδα) and the specification that Menelaus was the younger son of Atreus (5–6) are meant as pointers to the background of the wooing; cf. 16–17. If so, the allusion is quite oblique and of limited dramatic significance, since it is the silences rather than the pointers that matter in the narration of the notorious story. In any case, Zeus’ children are often mentioned interchangeably as offspring of their mortal stepfathers (cf. III n. 128 above), and the kinship terms in the frame do little to differentiate its narrator from the girls. 3 For ironic readings see e.g. Effe (1978) 74–76, Stern (1978), and Michon (2005) 215, but cf. De Sanctis (2007) 36–37, and Hunter (2015) 154–56.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615272-005

240 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage would not erase or disregard their knowledge of the couple’s calamitous future, narrated, sung and dramatized repeatedly from Homer onwards. On the other hand, the irony, if this catchall term is (the most) appropriate in this context, does not consist in quoting the song of an archaic, “innocent” chorus addressed to an “innocent” or “naïve” audience. Rather, the song is fashioned in such a way as to frustrate the expectations of tragic irony of the frame narrator’s contemporary audience. This audience, and all subsequent audiences, expect that the girls will unknowingly evoke or touch on the troubling future, but this expectation never materializes, as is obvious from various scholarly attempts to locate it in the poem, which have met with limited success at best. The absence of irony does not even involve rhetorical gymnastics or awkward choices and silences.4 Audiences are then led or made to review their expectations and reconsider their stance as recipients of old poems and the latest product of a long tradition, which the narrator presents as an old song. The poet has chosen to mention and celebrate facts and emotions that (may) remain unchanged and unchallenged with a view to Homer’s or Stesichorus’ Helen, the heroine of epic and lyric, and even to the much-maligned Helen of tragedy. Perhaps Sappho, the canonic composer of wedding songs, was a major influence in this respect too.5 The poem celebrates a Spartan, athletic Helen, the object of communal Spartan veneration and a Greek girl excellent in all traditional spheres of female competence: beauty, handiwork and musical gifts applied in the worship of female, in particular virginal, goddesses. Irrespective of her future, there is literary support for the claims, entirely plausible in themselves anyway, that Helen was an athletic teenager (cf. Eur. Andr. 595–601) and a skilled weaver (cf. Hom. Il. 3.125–28). Naturally, it is her beguiling beauty that is stressed first (28) and last (37–38), in ring-composition. It is supreme and irresistible, and the suffering that external audiences know it will cause does not change or qualify the fact. Menelaus did lock her in on their wedding night (5), and the irony of the suggestion that he should have done that later on too is irrelevant in the present and inapplicable in the future context. Helen is not even called Menelaus’ || 4 The most awkward choice is probably the simile comparing the girls longing for their companion Helen to lambs longing for the teat of the mother ewe (41–42); cf. Gow (19522) 358, and Rosenmeyer (1969) 253. This may point to the poet’s bucolic penchant, or the girls’ feeling that marriage has turned their companion into a matronly figure. It may also faintly echo reports of female homosexuality in Sparta; cf. Fantuzzi (2012) 303–4. In any case, this does not alter the poem’s presentation of Helen. 5 For debts to Sappho in 18 see e.g. Gow (19522) 348–49, Dagnini (1986), and Acosta-Hughes (2010) 29–38. De Sanctis (2007) discusses the connections of the Idyll to epic and stresses the importance of the theme of song.

Idylls 18 & 26 | 241

wife but his bride (νυός, 15), and her future elopement with Paris will not unmake her capacity as Menelaus’ bride—locking of wives is absurd anyway. Even the prayer to Aphrodite to grant the couple equal love (51–52) is not eo ipso ironic in view of Helen’s attraction to Paris because Aphrodite’s sponsoring of Paris had little impact on Helen’s feelings toward Menelaus, at least as suggested in Iliad (cf. 3.173–75, 428–36). Such examples might be multiplied. The important thing is that Helen’s history is suppressed, and her career after the marriage with Menelaus is glossed over. This is not so much a consequence of the choice of an archaic setting or of the view of a heroine from the perspective of a community’s shared cultural memory but of the deliberate choices of the narrator(s), picking and choosing not only episodes but also terms suitable to the dramatic context. The first line seems to set up an antiquarian narrator, who picks up a thread and narrates an ancient event.6 Despite his remoteness from the event and the participants, he harmonizes his voice with theirs and theirs with his, in a narratorial counterpart of the harmony depicted in the description of the girls’ singing and dancing (7–8). This unified voice of celebration is diachronic, unassuming and unambiguous. The veneration of Helen as a tree goddess (39–48) follows smoothly upon and merges with the epithalamium. Needless to say, this stance does not necessarily shut out irony or congruence with Ptolemaic propagandistic concerns but constitutes a framework that does not necessarily include them.7 The emphasis on the uniqueness of the couple and especially the excellence of the bride (18–20, 25, 32, 33, 35; cf. 28, 37) makes it first and foremost a unique song of harmonious celebration (cf. 7). Harmonious unity in worship and celebration is also the ideal in 26, in which a first-person narrator appears only, and uniquely, in the transitional passage (27–32) between myth (1–26) and envoi (33–38). The poem is one of the most intriguing pieces of the collection: it admits of no easy generic classification, beginning as a mythological epyllion about Pentheus’ sparagmos but ending in the

|| 6 I find it plausible and likely that the narrator assumes a pose of responding to a request or marking a transition from another story, probably about the mythic past, but not specifically that he has just “discovered” a copy of a Spartan song, as Morrison (2007) 240–41 suggests. The probably spurious 25 is a similar narrative experiment; cf. II n. 40 above. 7 For the association of Helen with Arsinoe and the Spartan royal couple with the Ptolemaic counterpart see Griffiths (1979) 86–91, and Hunter (1996) 163–64. For the depiction of royal couples in Apollonius and Theocritus cf. Caneva (2014). Noussia-Fantuzzi (2017) 267–68 draws attention to the different temporalities in the girls’ song and the narrator’s control over his narrative.

242 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage manner of a hymn, although it may not be taken as such stricto sensu, since Dionysus is not the addressee, nor can the Bacchants count as divinities.8 The intrusion of the narratorial voice between epyllion and envoi is an unexpected tour de force, qualifying the previous narrative and coloring the subsequent conclusion. The narrator assumes the stance of a pious devotee rather than a poet and, as already indicated, he does not name any poetic or other authority.9 He thus unsurprisingly fails to present the mythological story as his own version of a traditional tale or to claim that he is correcting blunders of predecessors. He attaches no direct blame to anybody and associates himself with pious groups (32), including female fans or devotees of beautiful Semele and her sisters (χαίροι δ’ εὐειδὴς Σεμέλα καὶ ἀδελφεαὶ αὐτᾶς, Καδμεῖαι πολλαῖς μεμελημέναι ἡρωίναις, 35–36), with a hint of celebration in epic song or hymns.10

|| 8 Semele was worshiped along with Dionysus (see Dodds [19602] 202), but her sisters were not. The poem has been thought to have been composed on the occasion of some Dionysiac festival or initiation ritual, the name or content of which are beyond recovery. See Gow (19522) 475, and cf. Cusset (2001) 26–27, 122, Ambühl (2005) 219–20, and next n. Such cultic background, if there, does not bear on the issues discussed below. Similarly, political allusions to the Ptolemaic veneration of Dionysus, an ancestor and patron of the royal family, may partly inform the poem, but its interpretation does not depend on their detection and elucidation. For such allusions see e.g. Griffiths (1979) 98–104. 9 Cairns (1992) has argued that the narrator of the poem is a chorus of boys, which might explain the puzzling references to nine or ten years (29), the children of the pious and impious (32), and especially the harsh, almost fanatic, stance of the narrator, who seems to lack compassion. Cf. Morrison (2007) 242–45, 270. 29 may not refer to children (cf. n. 30 below), but even if it does, the features singled out are scarcely enough to suggest a boy chorus. The most serious objections are that the poem is not a hymn and includes no element reliably revealing the identity of the narrator. If, as a heuristic hypothesis, one assumes that it was a hymn sung by a chorus of boys, one must also assume that the original audience would rely on extra-textual evidence for such an identification. Such evidence may not certainly be ruled out (cf. previous n.) but it may not be taken for granted, either. In the following, I assume that the narrator is a pious adult male, perhaps specifically a devotee of Dionysus, who strongly discourages criticism of the god and his initiates. 10 The “heroines” whose object of care are Semele and her sisters may be members of Dionysiac bands, but μεμελημέναι perhaps recalls Argo and her fame (Ἀργὼ πασιμέλουσα, Od. 12.70). Cf. Gow (19522) 484, and 24.76–78. Heroines are naturally said to be celebrated by fellow heroines; cf. Dover (1971) 269. The emendation πολλοῖς…ἡρωῖναι (Graefe) is fairly plausible but not necessary. Cusset (2001) 127 follows several other editors in adopting πολλαῖς…ἡρωῖναι, but πολλαῖς is too isolated and abrupt and thus πολλοῖς preferable. Although without complement too, the masculine plural is idiomatically, and culturally, privileged, as several male singers or poets are much easier to assume than several female poets or singers. πολλοῖς gives a smoother text, but in the context of Dionysiac cult a reference to female devotees would be easier to accept. In any case, two emendations in a passage without real problem seem excessive.

Idylls 18 & 26 | 243

The story of Pentheus’ sparagmos is narrated quite succinctly. For modern audiences and critics, the poem’s primary intertext is Euripides’ Bacchae. The pathos of the situation of the tragic Pentheus, both as delusional transvestite spy of the Bacchants and as sane victim of their frenzy, has been limited, and so have the ecstatic elements of the women’s worship. If no other information about the latter or Pentheus’ story had survived, it is unlikely that a narrative along the lines of Euripides’ drama would have been reconstructed on the basis of 26, in which both the Bacchants and Pentheus are sane, no one is disguised, and no one mistakes anyone for someone else. The god is also not present, although his agency is indicated at the end (37–38). No figure of wise authority such as Teiresias or conciliatory voice such as Cadmus’ is there either. The impious hostility of Semele’s sisters toward her and Pentheus’ refusal to recognize the god are glossed over, as are his reasons for spying on the Bacchants. On the other hand, his spying suggests a dark background of impiety and probable hostility to the god’s devotees, and thus presumably (the cult of) the god himself, minus the theme of repressed or confused sexuality in Euripides’ Bacchae. Spying on a god’s initiates can only have spurious motives and is certainly an act bound to induce the god’s vindictive wrath, even if no other act of impiety has preceded or accompanied it. Pentheus observes everything from a steep rock, hidden in an ancient mastic bush (10–11): Πενθεὺς δ’ ἀλιβάτω πέτρας ἄπο πάντ’ ἐθεώρει, σχῖνον ἐς ἀρχαίαν καταδύς, ἐπιχώριον ἔρνος. Pentheus observed everything from a high rock, hidden in a mastic bush, a plant that grew in those parts.

The couplet is remarkable in both sketching a spy that seems to differ from his Euripidean counterpart and in incorporating intertextual pointers that set the stage for the upcoming disaster.11 Euripides has Pentheus spy on the women from the top of a tall fir tree, bent to the ground and restored to height with wondrous ease and great care by Dionysus (Ba. 1061–74). The delusional Pentheus twice envisages spying on the maenads hidden beneath fir trees (Ba. 816, 954), and the chorus envisage his mother seeing him perched as a spy on a sheer rock and alerting the maenads (Ba. 982–91):

|| 11 For the theatricality of Pentheus’ act of voyeurism and its setting see Sistakou (2016) 118–19.

244 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage μάτηρ πρῶτά νιν λευρᾶς ἀπὸ πέτρας †ἢ σκόλοπος† ὄψεται δοκεύοντα, μαινάσιν δ’ ἀπύσει· Τίς ὅδ’ ὀρειδρόμων μαστὴρ Καδμειᾶν ἐς ὄρος ἐς ὄρος ἔμολ’ ἔμολεν, ὦ βάκχαι; τίς ἄρα νιν ἔτεκεν; οὐ γὰρ ἐξ αἵματος γυναικῶν ἔφυ, λεαίνας δέ τινος ὅδ’ ἢ Γοργόνων Λιβυσσᾶν γένος. First of all his mother will spot him as he peers from some precipitous rock or pinnacle, and will shout out to the maenads, “Who is this who has come to the mountain, come to the mountain, o bacchae, tracking the mountain-running women of Cadmus’ race? What creature gave him birth? For he was not born from women’s blood but from a lioness, he, or from the race of Libyan Gorgons.” (transl. Morwood)

None of these scenarios will materialize, as Pentheus will wish to climb on a fir to see the maenads, and they will spot him only after repeated prompting from the god—humans cannot (fore)see or achieve anything without divine assistance. Theocritus constructs a sort of alternate history. His choice of a rock as Pentheus’ spying spot may take up the Euripidean chorus’ projection, especially as line 10 recalls 982, and the specification about hiding is added in apposition at 11. Nevertheless, the Theocritean Pentheus is more careful than the foolish or naïve transgressor envisaged by the Euripidean chorus,12 and the Theocritean Autonoe (12–15, 19) will prove more perceptive and proactive (and less talkative) than her sister Agave in Euripides (cf. Ba. 1106–9). Actually, the Theocritean Pentheus chooses both a rock on high as a spying spot and a plant as a hiding place, which may recall the hiding spot of Homeric Sleep (Il. 14.287–89), the apparent model of the fir tree of the Euripidean Pentheus.13 In 26 both Pentheus’ precaution and the “window reference” to the Homeric passage suggest relative security for the spy, temporarily at least. The choice of verb for his activity promotes the impression of a calm observer, as θεωρῶ is a prose word used regularly in contexts of

|| 12 Herodotus (9.37) narrates the extraordinary escape of a seer, who amputated his own leg to break free and fled to Tegea by walking at night and hiding in the woods during the day (τὰς δὲ ἡμέρας καταδύνων ἐς ὕλην), perhaps another reminiscence. 13 See Dodds (19602) 212, and Seaford (2001) 234. The steep rock and the plant may also recall an elaborate Homeric simile, in which a hunted animal escapes to wooded heights (τὸν μέν τ’ ἠλίβατος πέτρη καὶ δάσκιος ὕλη/ εἰρύσατ’, οὐδ’ ἄρα τέ σφι κιχήμεναι αἴσιμον ἦεν, Il. 15.273–74; cf. 21.494–95), unlike Pentheus, who has hidden himself before he becomes the quarry of the Bacchic huntresses.

Idylls 18 & 26 | 245

(official) visits to oracles, games, and cities for state business as well as in connection with scientific and philosophical investigations.14 The effect of calm observation and relative safety is undermined by ἐπιχώριον ἔρνος, which may be in apposition to the plant or to Pentheus himself. The ambiguity is probably intentional. The phrase associates Pentheus with the locality but also recalls the common metaphor of a child as a young plant nurtured lovingly by the parents, mainly the mother,15 a poignant echo in view of Pentheus’ fate. ἐπιχώριος occurs first in Pindar,16 and two instances are most relevant, one about Jason’s origin (Αἴσονος...παῖς ἐπιχώριος, P. 4.118) and the other concerning the transgression of Coronis (P. 3.22). Like Pentheus, Jason is a scion of the local ruling family. He returns home from mount Pelion, where he had been secretly evacuated as an infant and grew up under the care of wise Chiron, to recover his inheritance from Pelias, his usurper uncle (P. 4.111–19). Jason is also said to wear the native garb of Magnesians (Μαγνήτων ἐπιχώριος, P. 4.80).17 Pentheus goes to the mountain to observe his mother and aunts, but he has (had) no wise instructor and no divine mentor. The only instructor mentioned is Dionysus but he teaches his aunts to honor him and his mother as he pleases (9, quoted and discussed below). The other Pindaric instance is part of a famous gnome about humans who scorn things close at hand and covet (literally, peer at) things far away, chasing the impossible in delusional hopes (P. 3.21–23): ἔστι δὲ φῦλον ἐν ἀνθρώποισι ματαιότατον, ὅστις αἰσχύνων ἐπιχώρια παπταίνει τὰ πόρσω, μεταμώνια θηρεύων ἀκράντοις ἐλπίσιν. For there is among mankind a very foolish kind of person, who scorns what is at hand and peers at things far away, chasing the impossible with hopes unfulfilled. (transl. Race)

Coronis had an affair with her father’s guest Ischys while pregnant by Apollo. She was a victim of divine promiscuity like Semele, but she is presented in the darkest possible colors, as a devious, foolish transgressor and a worthless daughter (P. 3.13), whose promiscuity destroyed several of her innocent countrymen || 14 Cf. Cusset (2001) 78. 15 First attested in Thetis’ lament (Il. 18.56, 437); see Gow (19522) 142. 16 It also occurs in his contemporary Empedocles (ἐπιχώριον ἀνδράσι, DK 31 B 62.8), for the human voice (γῆρυν) or the male organ (γυῖον), but the line is textually corrupt. 17 At the beginning of an ode in honor of a Theban pancratiast, Pindar also includes a catalogue of local glories of old (πάρος...καλῶν ἐπιχωρίων, I. 7.1–2), the first of which is the raising of Dionysus (3–5).

246 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage (P. 3.35–37). Most strikingly, Coronis is punished, and severely castigated by the poet, for seeking something that did not transgress human boundaries, as other sinners did, most notably Asclepius (P. 3.47–58), her son by Apollo, who saved the fetus from his mother’s funeral pyre (P. 3.43–44). Coronis’ abuse by Apollo, who perceives everything (P. 3.27–30), alienated her from her very humanity and rendered it hopelessly inaccessible to her.18 The theme of human suffering runs through the poem and is exemplified also by Cadmus, the misfortunes of whose three daughters plunged him in sorrow (P. 3.96–98; cf. O. 2.19–30, P. 11.1–2). Pentheus, a local “sapling” hiding in an ancient plant of the locality to observe everything, may also be thought to foolishly scorn things close at hand (cf. Ba. 331– 32) and impiously chase the impossible; he will meet with a terrible punishment, which will also involve others, in his case his own family, although their predicament will not be part of the narrative. Female members of the family have a prominent role in the narrative from the very beginning, as devotees of Dionysus. The vignette of the spy as a calm observer fits in with the delightful description of these Bacchants, who went to the mountain in orderly fashion and raised plant altars to Semele and Dionysus in a pure meadow (1–9): Ἰνὼ καὐτονόα χἀ μαλοπάραυος Ἀγαύα τρεῖς θιάσως ἐς ὄρος τρεῖς ἄγαγον αὐταὶ ἐοῖσαι. χαἲ μὲν ἀμερξάμεναι λασίας δρυὸς ἄγρια φύλλα, κισσόν τε ζώοντα καὶ ἀσφόδελον τὸν ὑπὲρ γᾶς, ἐν καθαρῷ λειμῶνι κάμον δυοκαίδεκα βωμώς, τὼς τρεῖς τᾷ Σεμέλᾳ, τὼς ἐννέα τῷ Διονύσῳ. ἱερὰ δ’ ἐκ κίστας πεποναμένα χερσὶν ἑλοῖσαι εὐφάμως κατέθεντο νεοδρέπτων ἐπὶ βωμῶν, ὡς ἐδίδαξ’, ὡς αὐτὸς ἐθυμάρει Διόνυσος. Ino, Autonoe and white-cheeked Agave, themselves three in number, led three groups of worshippers to the mountain. They cut wild greenery from the densely growing oak trees, living ivy and asphodel that grows above ground, and made up twelve altars in a pure meadow, three to Semele and nine to Dionysus. Taking from their box the sacred objects made with care, they laid them reverently upon the altars of freshly gathered foliage, just as Dionysus himself had taught them, and just as he preferred.

Like Pentheus, who is not said to scorn the god or be delusional, the women seem to have nothing to do with Bacchic frenzy, animals or dismemberment, which makes their later behavior all the more shocking. The reference to the worship of || 18 For the myth of Coronis in Pythian 3 and Hesiod (fr. 59–60 M–W) see Medda (1981) 297–300, Kyriakou (1994) 32–40, and D’Alessio (2005) 234–35.

Idylls 18 & 26 | 247

Semele (6) is perhaps meant to suggest that the Bacchants, especially Semele’s sisters, the leaders of the three bands (1–2; cf. Eur. Ba. 680–82), had nothing against Dionysus’ mother, and had not fled to the mountain in frenzy, inspired by a vindictive Dionysus. What is more, the women follow the instructions and pleasure of Dionysus (9), which also suggests a sane context. They take the holy offerings that they had fashioned into specific shapes out of the mystic basket19 and put them reverently on the plant altars they had set up (7–8).20 The middle perfect passive participle at 7 (πεποναμένα) occurs also in the account of Heracles’ thorough training of the boy Hylas to his mind (ὡς αὐτῶι κατὰ θυμὸν ὁ παῖς πεποναμένος εἴη, 13.14).21 The self-quotation, if such it is, captures different stages in the educational program of the competent instructors: Heracles was still in the process of “shaping” Hylas (cf. 13.8–9) while Dionysus had finished his task, which creates an effect of holy thoroughness and order. On the other hand, although there is no overt suggestion that the instructions of Dionysus contained anything whimsical or potentially dangerous, it may not be ruled out that 9 sets side by side two divergent points of view: ἐδίδαξ(ε) suggests detailed and beneficial instruction (cf. e.g. Callim. H. 6.19–21), but ἐθυμάρει may be more ambivalent, hinting at less sane pleasures and less pedantic instruction of the god.22 What is more, Pentheus will suffer like the unfortunate Hylas, but Dionysus’ pupils are his aunts and their followers, which opens up the ominous possibility that they will suffer too. Tellingly, the narrator next designates Dionysus as “manic Bacchus” (13, quoted below), and at the beginning and end of the second part of the poem as

|| 19 χερσίν is probably in common to πεποναμένα and ἑλοῖσαι, but even if it qualifies only the latter, there is little doubt that the offerings were fashioned by devotees of Dionysus, obviously the women themselves. 20 In extant literature only Odysseus’ companions on Thrinacia use oak leaves in a sacrificial context: they lack barley and sprinkle the cattle of the Sun with leaves before sacrificing the animals (Od. 12.356–58). The setting is very different, mainly with regard to the presence of animals and the eventual punishment of the sacrificers, but if the association is relevant, it is ominous; cf. n. 22 below. 21 McKay (1967) 16 also associates line 1 (Ἰνὼ καὐτονόα χἀ μαλοπάραυος Ἀγαύα) with the information about the three nymphs that abducted Hylas (Εὐνίκα καὶ Μαλὶς ἔαρ θ’ ὁρόωσα Νύχεια, 13.45). 22 The verb θυμαρέω is an absolute hapax, but θυμαρής occurs twice in Homer (Il. 9.336, Od. 23.232), for a man’s sexual partner or wife. This may insinuate a sexual undertone in Dionysus’ instructions. Callimachus uses it in the hubristic reply of Erysichthon to the disguised Demeter (H. 6.55). If this is not an incidental similarity, it enhances the ambivalence of the instructions.

248 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage the god hostile to transgressors like Pentheus (27) and the instigator of his punishment (37). The calm of the meadow scene and the orderly, quiet process of the devotees’ rites are disrupted when Autonoe spots the spy (12–15): Αὐτονόα πράτα νιν ἀνέκραγε δεινὸν ἰδοῖσα, σὺν δ’ ἐτάραξε ποσὶν μανιώδεος ὄργια Βάκχω, ἐξαπίνας ἐπιοῖσα, τά τ’ οὐχ ὁρέοντι βέβαλοι. μαίνετο μέν τ’ αὐτά, μαίνοντο δ’ ἄρ’ εὐθὺ καὶ ἅλλαι. Autonoe, the first to see him, gave a dreadful yell and with a sudden movement kicked over the sacred objects of frenzied Bacchus, which the profane may not see. She became frenzied herself, and at once the others too became frenzied.

ὄργια may be the objects placed on the altars or the rites observed. If the first, Autonoe kicked over the altars, perhaps in order to prevent (further) profanation.23 If the second, her reaction upset the ritual order.24 There is no cogent reason to believe that ὄργια is used in the narrower sense: the ritual objects were certainly part of the disturbed rites, but the ὄργια of manic Bacchus did not include only the altars and objects. In any case, the rites were interrupted, and the women turned to the persecution of the spy. The abrupt transformation of the dutiful devotees into frenzied pursuers and killing Bacchants is accentuated by a stylistic transformation: the rhythm becomes asthmatic, with short noun-verb clauses, and the repetition at 18–19 draws the narrator into this vortex of rapid pursuit, which allows for little sophisticated variety (16–19): Πενθεὺς μὲν φεῦγεν πεφοβημένος, αἳ δ’ ἐδίωκον, πέπλως ἐκ ζωστῆρος ἐς ἰγνύαν ἐρύσαισαι. Πενθεὺς μὲν τόδ’ ἔειπε· ‘τίνος κέχρησθε, γυναῖκες;’ Αὐτονόα τόδ’ ἔειπε· ‘τάχα γνώσῃ πρὶν ἀκοῦσαι.’

|| 23 The Euripidean Agave, perceiving Pentheus as a beast and a man, calls on her fellow Bacchants to eliminate the “wild animal” so that he may not report the secret rites of the god (Ba. 1106–10; cf. 987–91, quoted above), although Pentheus had little opportunity to observe anything (cf. 1075). The Theocritean Pentheus apparently had more time (cf. 10), but Cusset (2001) 82 is right that his spying would make Autonoe’s attempt to prevent him from seeing the objects pointless. Still, Autonoe, on the brink of Bacchic frenzy, would not necessarily react in a cool and calculated manner. Cusset argues that only Autonoe’s cry is the reaction to the detection of the spy and the rest the beginning of the next, manic part of the rites, but this is hard to substantiate. 24 Autonoe’s reaction may have a parallel in Cassandra’s throwing off her priestly robes and insignia because of the insults she has received and the final indignity awaiting her (A. Ag. 1264– 78, Eur. Tr. 451–54). The reaction of the defiled virgin priestess and of the pure devotee of a cult profaned by a non-initiate is very similar. If so, Autonoe does not try to protect the secrecy of the rites but reacts to their profanation.

Idylls 18 & 26 | 249

Pentheus fled in terror and they pursued him, hitching up their robes into their belts kneehigh. Pentheus spoke: “What do you want, women?” Autonoe spoke: “You will know soon enough, and before we tell you.”

The style becomes again more expansive only when the women get a hold of their prey and start dismembering him, with the relatives of the victim getting choice parts and their companions the rest. As already suggested, the women do not mistake Pentheus for a beast or even for someone else, but Agave is likened to a lioness with cubs (21; cf. Eur. Ba. 989–91, 1107–9, 1139–43, Md. 187–88), and they all return to Thebes covered with blood, bringing back not Pentheus but πένθημα from the mountain (20–26): μάτηρ μὲν κεφαλὰν μυκήσατο παιδὸς ἑλοῖσα, ὅσσον περ τοκάδος τελέθει μύκημα λεαίνας· Ἰνὼ δ’ ἐξέρρηξε σὺν ὠμοπλάτᾳ μέγαν ὦμον, λὰξ ἐπὶ γαστέρα βᾶσα, καὶ Αὐτονόας ῥυθμὸς ωὑτός· αἱ δ’ ἄλλαι τὰ περισσὰ κρεανομέοντο γυναῖκες, ἐς Θήβας δ’ ἀφίκοντο πεφυρμέναι αἵματι πᾶσαι, ἐξ ὄρεος πένθημα καὶ οὐ Πενθῆα φέροισαι. The mother gave a roar like a lioness with cubs as she carried off her son’s head; Ino tore off his great shoulder, shoulder blade and all, by setting her foot on his stomach; and Autonoe set to work in the same way. The other women butchered what was left and returned to Thebes all smeared with blood, bearing back from the mountain not Pentheus but lamentation (penthêma).

The memorable, epigrammatic end of the sparagmos story grimly echoes and restores the initial Bacchant unison, not least by means of the contrast with Euripides’ account, in which only Agave returns to Thebes, carrying what she exultantly believes to be the head of a lion (Ba. 1168–99). The word-play πένθημα καὶ οὐ Πενθῆα (26) echoes the end of Teiresias’ concerned statement (Ba. 367–69; cf. 508, Chaeremon TGF I fr. 4). Belated understanding, one of tragedy’s thematic mainstays, is naturally prominent in Euripides’ Bacchae. The Theocritean Pentheus dies before he learns anything, without even supplicating his mother or exchanging any word with her.25 Only Autonoe’s savage response to Pentheus’

|| 25 The Euripidean Pentheus realizes his predicament before his death, and he has certainly heard his mother’s call to her fellow Bacchants (Ba. 1106–10). His recovery from his madness, apparently instigated by Dionysus (859–61), just as his madness had been inspired by the god (850–51), even brings about a concern for preventing his mother from filicide, caused by his own

250 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage futile question (τάχα γνώσῃ πρὶν ἀκοῦσαι, 19), perhaps not accidentally in the very middle of the poem, ironically highlights the speedy acquisition of belated understanding. If this echoes the most prominent references to the theme of late learning in Bacchae, to Pentheus’ understanding (859–61, 1113, 1120–21) and Agave’s realization of her plight, (1296; cf. 1285 and 1345–46), then not only Pentheus’ predicament but also his family’s sharing in it and their presumed eventual enlightenment in grief are suggested obliquely. However, mourning or lamentation, not insight, is taken up in the reference to what the women bring back to Thebes, a thing to be grieved over, not Pentheus. πένθημα is a very rare word (A. Ch. 432; cf. Eur. Suppl. 1035, in emendation) used in the context of severe family troubles. To be sure, there is no report of anyone who might grieve for Pentheus back home, although Cadmus may be assumed to be present,26 and the women do not regret their crime, as they are not even said to recover from their Bacchic frenzy. United in cult and hunt, they bring back the product of their ritual dismembering of Pentheus, another holy offering fashioned by them.27 This offering, though, is something to be lamented, not least, perhaps, eventually by them. The narrator intervenes to discourage the assumption that the perpetrators might experience regret, or at least pity, for their victim and that some mourners, including perhaps the audience, would potentially grieve for the plight of Dionysus’ enemies. The intervention is introduced in a lapidary manner (27–32): Οὐκ ἀλέγω· μηδ’ ἄλλος ἀπεχθομένω Διονύσῳ φροντίζοι, μηδ’ εἰ χαλεπώτερα τῶνδε μογήσαι, εἴη δ’ ἐνναετὴς ἢ καὶ δεκάτω ἐπιβαίνοι· αὐτὸς δ’ εὐαγέοιμι καὶ εὐαγέεσσιν ἅδοιμι. ἐκ Διὸς αἰγιόχω τιμὰν ἔχει αἰετὸς οὕτως. εὐσεβέων παίδεσσι τὰ λώια, δυσσεβέων δ’ οὔ. This is no concern of mine; nor should anyone else care about an enemy of Dionysus, even if he suffered a worse fate than this, even if he were nine years old or just embarking on his tenth. May I myself act piously, and may my actions please the pious. The eagle gains honor in this way from Zeus who bears the aegis. It is to the children of the pious, not to those of the impious, that good things come.

|| folly (1120–21). The Theocritean Pentheus dies in ignorance and silence, and there is not even a mention of cries or sighs on his part; contrast Ba. 1132. 26 He only appears obliquely in the qualification Καδμεῖαι (36) for his daughters. 27 Cf. Cusset (2001) 98, who compares lines 7 and 20.

Idylls 18 & 26 | 251

There are various uncertainties as to text and meaning of 27b–29, but the enemies of Dionysus may be viewed as a rather extended group, which may include Pentheus’ mother and aunts, and by extension the rest of the Bacchants. τῶνδε (28) is commonly interpreted as neuter but it may neuter or masculine. This ambiguity, which is likely intentional, leaves open the possibility that all the characters in the story were sufferers and victims, especially Pentheus’ relatives. This would be a remarkable nod to the story as dramatized in Euripides’ play, incorporated in a hostile declaration of indifference toward the god’s enemies. The reference to their labors and the narrator’s pitiless asyndeton (27a) would echo the triumphant song of the chorus following the messenger’s report of Pentheus’ dismemberment (Ba. 1153–64). The women rejoice at the news and celebrate Bacchus’ annihilation of the disguised Pentheus (1153–59) but then apostrophize the Theban Bacchants, who have accomplished a triumph bound to be glorious, in lament and tears (βάκχαι Καδμεῖαι,/ τὸν καλλίνικον κλεινὸν ἐξεπράξατε/ ἐς γόον, ἐς δάκρυα, 1160–62).28 The messenger had also mentioned in bitter or horrified irony Agave’s triumphant celebration of Bacchus, her fellow-hunter, the splendid victor, through whom (or in the service of whom) she wins tears as her victory prize (τὸν καλλίνικον, ᾧ δάκρυα νικηφορεῖ, 1147). The possible ambiguity and oblique allusions to Pentheus’ relatives at 27–28 unfortunately do not shed light on 29, the most obscure line of the poem. It apparently refers neither to Pentheus nor to his relatives. If it refers to young children of nine or entering their tenth year of age, the dismissive tone would be cruel but appropriate to the attitude of the narrator. Still, apart from the improbability of postulating child enemies and victims of the god, it is not clear why the narrator might choose to mention children of a particular age, taking care to specify it with precision. It cannot be ruled out that a proverb or standard expression is used or adapted, as perhaps at 31, but in the present state of our knowledge such an assumption would merely replace one unknown with another. If the text as printed by Gow is accepted, I find the suggestion that associates the puzzling specifications with initiates, or perhaps religious officials of Dionysus’ cult,29 less fantastical and implausible than the rest. This proposal is also subject to the stricture just mentioned, as there is no evidence that there were such officials and that attainment of a Dionysiac initiatory rank took nine or ten years. However, if one accepts the proposal as a heuristic hypothesis, the narrator would indicate that

|| 28 The chorus may address Cadmus’ daughters in particular; cf. 1163–64. The laments are also much more germane to the family of Cadmus and their predicament than to the rest of the Theban Bacchants. 29 See McKay (1967) 23–24, and cf. next n.

252 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage he would feel little pity even for an associate or initiate of the god who somehow might suffer worse toils than those just narrated.30 All in all, the safest critical course at present would be to consider the passage a hopeless locus obscurus. It certainly does not contain or imply unease over or condemnation of Pentheus’ gruesome murder, let alone any mention of its background. On the other hand, throughout Greek literature, even crimes sanctioned by the gods and mandated by them or determined by fate cause pollution and motivate sanction and penalties for the perpetrators, who also often suffer emotional distress on this account. Internecine crimes such as those committed by Oedipus and Orestes are particularly polluting and difficult to (for)bear. Apart from the fact that according to the tradition Cadmus’ daughters and family were not innocent of wrongdoing—indeed they were guilty of impiety—Agave and her sisters killed their close relative. No perpetrator of such a crime might get away scot-free, be exonerated and avoid the anguish it entailed, even if no moral blame may be attached to the crime, and even if the victim is guilty of impiety. The poem does not probe the moral or ritual background of the murder and does not include any clue as to the fate of Cadmus’ daughters following the report of the Bacchants’ blood-covered return to Thebes (25–26). However, like the narrator’s declaration (27–28), the end of the poem seems to point in such a direction (35–38): χαίροι δ’ εὐειδὴς Σεμέλα καὶ ἀδελφεαὶ αὐτᾶς, Καδμεῖαι πολλαῖς μεμελημέναι ἡρωίναις, αἳ τόδε ἔργον ἔρεξαν ὀρίναντος Διονύσω οὐκ ἐπιμωματόν. μηδεὶς τὰ θεῶν ὀνόσαιτο. Farewell, too, to beautiful Semele and her sisters, daughters of Cadmus, honored by many heroines, who carried out this deed impelled by Dionysus, so that they are not to be blamed. Let no one criticize the actions of the gods.

|| 30 This does not rule out the suggestion of the potential victim’s youth. The text may (also) echo the standard epic toils of nine years, with completion finally coming in the tenth, such as the siege and capture of Troy (Od. 3.118–19, 5.106–7, 14.240–42, 22.228–30) or Odysseus’ wanderings (cf. Od. 16.206 = 24.322) and the gods’ exile in Hesiod (Th. 802–3). This would suggest the temporal length of the victim’s torture, but it is not very plausible that the epic adverb εἰνάετες would be replaced by ἐνναετής. Molinos Tejada (1992) 115–16, relying on the text of the papyrus that features ἐπιβαίην and thus presumably εἴην, suggested that ἐνναετής should be read as ἐνναέτης = ‘inhabitant’ and indicate a member of citizen choruses in honor of the god; the narrator would then pray to be one of their number and attain justice (with δικαίω for δεκάτω), but justice is vague in the context, and the theme is not broached in the poem. There is no parallel for the use of ἐνναέτης without any explanatory complement in the ritual sense proposed or even in the geographical sense.

Idylls 18 & 26 | 253

“This deed” (τόδε ἔργον, 37) is qualified by the litotes “not blamable” (οὐκ ἐπιμωματόν, 38), but in between the narrator inserts “by the instigation of Dionysus” (ὀρίναντος Διονύσω, 37).31 These qualifications may have a closer connection than usually assumed and should perhaps be separated from the verb with a comma. The meaning of the sentence would then be “who did this deed, which should not be blamed, as Dionysus instigated it.” This is not much different from the usual interpretation, but it makes clearer that Semele’s sisters may escape blame only because of the agency of the god. The last injunction (μηδεὶς τὰ θεῶν ὀνόσαιτο, 38) would then not be a general encouragement to the audience to avoid criticizing god-inspired acts, in other words an amplification of οὐκ ἐπιμωματόν. The narrator urges the audience not to blame anything that has to do with the gods, not (only) because atrocities committed by humans with divine instigation should not be blamed as morally repugnant but (also) because the preceding statement might encourage the audience to absolve Cadmus’ daughters and instigate them to question the morality of Dionysus’ instigation.32 In any case, the narrator had earlier made clear that he wishes to belong to the community of the pious and to be pleasing to the pious (αὐτὸς δ’ εὐαγέοιμι καὶ εὐαγέεσσιν ἅδοιμι, 30). This apparently recalls, or has inspired, as the case may be, the speech of the unborn Apollo in Callimachus’ Hymn 4, in which the god prophesies the bloody punishment that he will inflict on Thebe and her eponymous city, the homeland of the children of hubristic Niobe (95–98). At the end he stresses his purity and expresses the wish to be in the care of the pure (εὐαγέων δὲ καὶ εὐαγέεσσι μελοίμην, 98). Gow suggests that Callimachus’ mention of Cithaeron (97), which is not required in the context, may be an indication that he is the imitator.33 Another indication is perhaps the focus on an impious Theban family, and especially on the children who will be punished because of their mother’s transgression, although Agave did not err as Niobe did, and Pentheus was by no means innocent. The fourth stasimon of Euripides’ Bacchae, mentioned earlier in connection with Pentheus’ hiding place, may also be a relevant intertext. Unfortunately, the || 31 αἳ τόδε ἔργον ἔρεξαν (37) may recall Od. 11.272 (ἣ μέγα ἔργον ἔρεξεν ἀϊδρείῃσι νόοιο), from the account of the story of Epicaste, the mother of Oedipus, who unwittingly married her son, the killer of his father. Cf. the castigation of the suitors’ behavior (οἳ μέγα ἔργον ἔρεζον ἀτασθαλίῃσι κακῇσι, Od. 24.458; cf. 426) in a speech addressed to their foolish parents, and n. 87 below. Tellingly, the reference to Dionysus’ instigation takes the place of the epic qualifications that denote folly. 32 Cf. Hutchinson (1988) 162. 33 Gow (19522) 483. He also suggests that both poets may echo a ritual formula and cites several other similar passages from hymns. See also Cusset (2001) 116–17, with earlier bibliography.

254 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage text of the antistrophe is a notorious locus desperatus, but Pentheus, who rejects the worship of Bacchus and spies on his frenzied mother and fellow Bacchants, is condemned in the strongest possible terms (997–1001), and at the end the chorus do express a wish for purity and piety (1005–10).34 The Theocritean narrator may then not only look forward to the envoi but also backward to the punishment of Pentheus and the transgression of his mother and aunts. Similarly, the mention of Zeus (31), the supreme god, in connection with the reward of the pure may look backward to the Theban story and forward to the birth of Dionysus, another Theban native, in the envoi.35 At 32 the narrator asserts that blessings belong to the “children of the pious” and not to “those of the impious” (εὐσεβέων παίδεσσι τὰ λώια, δυσσεβέων δ’ οὔ). As McKay notes,36 this may be simply a periphrasis for “pious and impious people”, but the choice of mentioning children just before the reference to the birth of a divine child and following references to impious children is probably not accidental. Zeus opened (lit. loosed) his great thigh and put the baby Dionysus down on snowy Dracanum (33–34): Χαίροι μὲν Διόνυσος, ὃν ἐν Δρακάνῳ νιφόεντι Ζεὺς ὕπατος μεγάλαν ἐπιγουνίδα κάτθετο λύσας· Farewell to Dionysus, whom Lord Zeus set down on snowy Dracanus when he had opened his mighty thigh. (transl. Gow)

The specific locale and more generally a mountain as the god’s place of delivery are not unique or extraordinary, but the attribute “snowy”, which suggests the height of the mountain, certainly renders it an unlikely nursery. Zeus, the highest god, is at home on high, including upon steep mountains, and Dionysus too is a mountain god. Nevertheless, neither in the first Homeric Hymn to Dionysus nor in Euripides’ Bacchae is there any mention of snow. Zeus looses his thigh as women about to give birth loose their girdles, and this is probably the reason why the verb occurs in this connection. Unlike new mothers, and specifically those of other divine or heroic infants, the puerperal Zeus shows no particular concern for

|| 34 For the stasimon see Schein (2016) 270–72. 35 As already suggested, 31 may be an adaptation of a proverb or allusion to a story about a childhood companion of Zeus honored with transformation to the god’s bird; see Dover (1971) 267. It may also be an allusion to Ptolemaic imagery as well as to the sign sent by Zeus at the birth of Ptolemy II on Cos (17.71–73); see Griffiths (1979) 100–1, and cf. Cairns (1992). Such issues do not affect my discussion; cf. n. 8 above. 36 McKay (1967) 27–28; cf. Cusset (2001) 121.

Idylls 18 & 26 | 255

the comfort of the newborn, and no nurse, or any care for, him is mentioned.37 This is perhaps no indication of neglect, and the maternal father’s choice of delivery place may suggest the endowment of the son with his divine qualities. However, in such a succinct account the choice of attribute may hardly fail to strike an attentive audience as paradoxical and unsuitable for the context—Dionysus was gestated and born in most extraordinary, and rather uncomfortable, circumstances. Zeus’ thigh is unsurprisingly said to be sizable, but the choice of designation is a tour de force. The phrase occurs first in Odyssey, in Melanthius’ tirade against the disguised Odysseus (17.225), and a similar one is used in the suitors’ banter before the fight of the beggar Irus and the disguised Odysseus (18.74). His thigh, which indicated his nobility, delighted the suitors and struck terror in the hubristic and doomed Irus. Both in the Homeric episode and 26, as well as Euripides’ Bacchae, the themes of disguise, abuse, hubris, punishment of the impious and retribution are eminent. The Theocritean Pentheus and all those of his ilk are presented as bound to suffer the fate of Irus, the disloyal Melanthius, and the impious suitors, but the punishment of these transgressors is foreshadowed through the ironic reference to the “womb” from which the future avenger is born. Just before the punishment of the suitors and his restitution, the disguised Ithacan king, flashing his thigh, defeats a despicable beggar, and the highest god, loosing his great thigh, gives birth to a god who will crush the impious by instigating his followers to kill them. The killing of Pentheus is presented as a graphic parable for the ruthless punishment of all transgressors, whose fate remains unmourned by the narrator. As already pointed out, the succinct narrative includes no account of any background and no reference or allusion to Pentheus’ delusion or his family’s transgressions, unlike the story as dramatized in Euripides’ Bacchae. This also, and crucially, eliminates the possibility that the characters might realize their folly, however belatedly. For his part, the narrator does not mention or allude to his

|| 37 This is also the case in the narratives about the birth of children sired by gods and born of mortal women such as Ion in Euripides’ homonymous play and Euadne and Iamus in Pindar’s Olympian 6. The unmarried mothers, though, were under great pressure and forced to expose their children. Creusa, at any rate, swaddled the baby Ion and hoped that his father would take care of him, as he actually did. Apollo also took care of Iamus. The infant Aristaeus is taken by Hermes to the Horae and Earth who admire the infant on their knees (ἐπιγουνίδιον…βρέφος, Pi. P. 9.62) and make it immortal; cf. P. 3.45–46. The nurses of Dionysus are mentioned in the first reference to the god in Homer (Il. 6.132–37; cf. 14.325, Od. 11.325, 24.74), and thus the earliest in surviving literature, in a story about the punishment of Lycurgus, another enemy of the god like Pentheus.

256 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage poetic capacity, and fails to blame others, whether poets or non-poets, as obtuse or suspect propagators of lies, inaccuracies and misplaced sentimentalism, although he apparently alludes to the latter at 27 and 37–38. On the other hand, the claims about the role of Dionysus in the worship of the Bacchants and the punishment of Pentheus as well as the ambiguities, the allusions to the plight of the victim, and the gentle irony in the account of the god’s birth qualify the narrator’s one-sided stance, bringing him closer to predecessors by presenting a nuanced view of the divine. Gods have their own agenda and do as they please, teaching what they like and killing whom they dislike. Mortals should honor and avoid insulting them, hoping for the best (reward). In this light, the poem takes on a tragic coloring, even though it eschews direct imitation and glosses over the central tragic theme of belated understanding or gaining wisdom through suffering. The asyndetic οὐκ ἀλέγω (27), which introduces the second part of the poem, is indicative of the narrator’s not only religious but also narratorial concerns. Before Theocritus the phrase occurs twice in Homer, in contexts of dismissal of actual or threatened injury. Diomedes abuses Paris, who injured him, claiming that the wound is as slight as one inflicted by a woman or a mindless (ἄφρων) child (Il. 11.389). Eumaeus responds to the abuse of Antinous (Od. 17.375–79), occasioned by the report of Melanthius (370–73), by countering that he does not care as long as prudent (ἐχέφρων) Penelope and god-like Telemachus are alive (389– 91). The second passage involves arrogance and potential punishment, so it may be thought to be closer to 26,38 but the connection is quite loose. Both speakers, especially Diomedes, are too confident of their opponents’ worthlessness. The wound inflicted by Paris was not fatal but it forced Diomedes to withdraw, and the abuse of the opponent, although unsurprising given his role in the war and the fighting superiority of the speaker, is excessive and meant to show Diomedes’ irritation at Paris’ success. Eumaeus is a much more agreeable character and does not insult the arrogant suitor, but his dismissal of the danger he faces involves wishful thinking rather than cold facts, as Antinous should certainly not be dismissed lightly (cf. 17.568).39 || 38 The role of Melanthius, who abuses Odysseus (Od. 17.225), and of Antinous, the son of Eupeithes, the speaker of Od. 24.426 (cf. 458, and n. 31 above), makes it part of a web on intertextual pointers to the impiety and punishment of Homeric transgressors, on which see Reece (1993) 173–78. 39 οὐκ ἀλεγίζω occurs in Iliad 1 (180; cf. 160), in Agamemnon’s response to Achilles’ irate castigation of his ingratitude and the champion’s threat to abandon the expedition and sail home because Agamemnon threatened to take away his prize (162). Agamemnon certainly was in no position to make light of Achilles’ potential departure, although his statement may be due to lack of prudence and foresight rather than arrogance. οὐδ’ ἀλεγίζω (12.238), Hector’s dismissal

Idylls 18 & 26 | 257

The Theocritean narrator, who emphasizes the helplessness of the victim of frenzied women, may have wished to underscore his distance from the Homeric characters through his omission of any reference to prudence or mindlessness.40 He does not castigate Pentheus’ folly or praise the wisdom of the god and his devotees, whether the Bacchants or those indifferent to Pentheus and his ilk. Pentheus, though, did behave like a foolish child, and the narrator’s borrowing of a Homeric statement of unconcern may suggest that his own stance is also excessively dismissive, in the emotional rather than the factual realm. At the end of the narrative of Erysichthon’s story in Callimachus’ Hymn 6, the narrator also declares her abhorrence for enemies of Demeter (116–17), but the difference from the narrator of 26 is significant, and not only because she includes the account of the epiphanic appearance of Demeter (40–64).41 Erysichthon turns from a violent, hubristic aggressor (50–55) into a child in the space of one line (ὁ παῖς, 56), and ultimately into an automaton, a living dead, who can only consume the food prepared by others, neither understanding nor regretting anything (87–93). His failure to realize the background of the offense extends to his family and female servants, who, unlike his attendants (61–62), experience the consequences of Demeter’s wrath (94–95). On the other hand, the narrator’s comments about and description of the plight of the family and especially the prayer of his father Triopas sketch a picture of a family in extreme distress but trying desperately to close ranks and deal as best they can with an impossible predicament.42 Triopas appeals to his father Poseidon, complaining bitterly about the god’s failure to assist his progeny and plaintively exposing the extent of the family’s difficulties. The reference to Erysichthon as “this hapless baby” (τοῦτο τὸ δείλαιον...βρέφος, 100) underscores the rapid progress of his loss of identity, from child (56) to infant, but also the affection of the father toward his monstrous offspring, the infantilized eating machine perishing miserably in the innermost part of the house while annihilating his family’s wealth and standing. The Euripidean Cadmus, much concerned with the reputation and solidarity of the family (Ba. 333–36; cf. 181–83), also never loses his affection for his grandson or daughters (Ba. 1305–24, 1352–54, 1372–73). No sign of such emotional or familial closeness appears in 26. The family members do not mourn for Pentheus or regret his

|| of an eagle portent, is a much graver failure of judgment; contrast Zeus’ declaration of justified unconcern (8.477; cf. 15.106). 40 Cf. 37, and n. 31 above. 41 The punishment of Erysichthon includes not only insatiable hunger but also thirst, inflicted by Dionysus, who shared Demeter’s wrath (70–71). 42 For the narrator and the depiction of the family cf. Morrison (2007) 173–75.

258 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage demise. Pentheus and his relatives are never even said to have slighted Semele or insulted her son while engaging in a familial brawl. In view of the above, among the mythological epyllia, 26 features the least informative and the most strident narrator, who deals in extremes. Nevertheless, the intriguing intertextual web of the poem, spun in a seemingly univocal framework, qualifies the narrator’s failure to pose uncomfortable questions. This intricacy exacerbates the difficulty of placing the narrative in any clearly identifiable context, whether generic or political. As already noted, political or Ptolemaic associations have been detected in several poems, including 26, but first-person narrators tackle politics and patronage only in 16 and 17. In contrast to 26, these pieces are expansive, and the focus on modern rulers and patrons does not hinder or obscure the incorporation of major themes of the rest of the collection, most prominently the relationship of the narrator to his poetic predecessors and contemporaries and the rewards of piety under the tutelage of benevolent patron gods.

Idyll 16 In Idyll 1643 the cardinal themes of poetic excellence and the immortality conferred by poetry are combined with the unique treatment of the narrator’s prospects of securing patronage. Unsurprisingly, the narrator’s heritage, the yardstick of his poetic identity, is traced all the way back to Homer, the patron of epic poetry, and also includes encomiastic lyric. The narrator sketches a version of the affiliations of the two genres by presenting his version of the association of two illustrious representatives, Homer and Simonides. Throughout, whether in his references to Muses and Graces, poetic predecessors or modern prospective patrons, the narrator eschews claims to superiority or unique excellence in comparison with older or contemporary poetic colleagues. The proem sets the stage for the delineation of the narrator’s poetic identity and project by focusing right away on praise singers, divine and mortal, and the subjects of their song (1–4): Αἰεὶ τοῦτο Διὸς κούραις μέλει, αἰὲν ἀοιδοῖς, ὑμνεῖν ἀθανάτους, ὑμνεῖν ἀγαθῶν κλέα ἀνδρῶν. Μοῖσαι μὲν θεαὶ ἐντί, θεοὺς θεαὶ ἀείδοντι· ἄμμες δὲ βροτοὶ οἵδε, βροτοὺς βροτοὶ ἀείδωμεν.

|| 43 This section is based on Kyriakou (2004).

Idyll 16 | 259

It is always the concern of the daughters of Zeus, and always the concern of poets, to hymn the gods and to hymn the glorious deeds of good men. The Muses are goddesses, and goddesses sing of the gods; we here on earth are mortals; as mortals, let us sing of mortals.

The apparent simplicity of the proem conveys an impression of fixity and finality (cf. Hes. Th. 44–50, 100–1, Ar. Pax 774–80), but the sequence will alter this impression. As a matter of fact, the proem is not as straightforward as might appear at first sight. First, the Muses, the daughters of Zeus,44 are associated with mortal poets in their capacity as encomiasts of gods and the glories of worthy men (1–2).45 Then a distinction is drawn between the subject of the Muses’ song, gods (3), and the subject suggested as appropriate for the mortal singer, mortal men (4). Scholars have made several attempts to explain the conundrum of the conjunction and disjunction.46 Before turning to them, it is important to note that, in my view, a convincing solution to the problems raised by the beginning of a poem fashioned, ostensibly at least, in a broadly traditional thematic and formal mold is unlikely to be found in radical assumptions about the narrator’s provocative, or programmatic, as it were, choice of subject and his relationship to the Muses in the proem. First-time audiences or readers may reach provisional conclusions about the import of the proem, but an overall appreciation of it may not be achieved until the end. It is implausible that in the proem the narrator suggests a tripartite division of poetic subjects into divine, heroic and mortal, choosing the last category for himself and relegating the first to the Muses and the second to epic poets. Apart from the objection that the noble men designated at 2 are not necessarily or exclusively epic heroes, there is no indication that the narrator distinguishes himself, clearly and irreconcilably, from the singers mentioned at 1. Besides, he will

|| 44 Zeus is a major divine presence in 16. He is invoked once (82), but most references to the Muses include specification of their paternity (1, 70, 101–2). The Graces (6, 104, 108–9) are also his progeny, as is Athena (82) and Persephone, his daughter by Demeter (83). This emphasis on Zeus, the patron of kings and poets as well as hospitality, may serve to bolster the epic, perhaps specifically Hesiodic, and lyric associations of the poem. 45 The phrase κλέα ἀνδρῶν is emblematic of heroic epic (Il. 9.189, 524, Od. 8.73; cf. 1.338). To cite just one contemporary parallel, a very similar phrase is used at the very beginning of Apollonius’ epic (παλαιγενέων κλέα φωτῶν/ μνήσομαι, Arg. 1.1–2; cf. HHom. 32.18–20). ἀγαθῶν κλέα ἀνδρῶν may serve to expand the range of referents (and possible intertexts). War is not the only arena of excellence that will be dealt with in the poem. On the other hand, the prospective patron Hiero II, the ruler of Syracuse, will be presented as a competent general-to-be (78–81, 103), whose hoped-for victory over the Carthaginians will establish lasting peace and prosperity for his people (82–97). 46 For an overview see Kyriakou (2004) 231–33, and cf. González (2010) 74–75.

260 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage soon collapse distinctions between genres and poets (34–57), so a rejection of heroic poetry at the beginning would serve little purpose and would have to be revised anyway. A poet that will associate himself with Homer and Simonides, and will associate Hiero II with the heroes of old (80–81), would hardly exclude heroic subjects from his repertoire. In any case, even if 2b refers exclusively to heroes, which is a big if, they are either immortal or mortal. Immortality or immortalization is not implausible in view of the divine ancestry and posthumous fate of many heroes but it certainly annuls the tripartition, as the alleged heroic category collapses with the divine: if heroes are included in the category of gods, they are praised by the Muses. If they are mortal, they are an appropriate subject for mortal singers, including the narrator. In either case, only a bipartite distinction of poetic subjects obtains, that between gods and mortals. This distinction, though, is not rigid, as both Muses and mortal poets praise gods and good men, presumably heroes and/or mortals as worthy as heroes.47 Traditionally, the Muses inspire the mortal singers who praise gods and mortals— I will return to inspiration in a moment. The Muses also praise gods and occasionally heroes (e.g. Achilles at his funeral [Od. 24.60–62] or Cadmus and Peleus at their weddings [Pi. P. 3.89–92; cf. N. 5.22–25]) directly, in their capacity as divine singers. The distinction between the subjects of divine and mortal singers shifts the focus exclusively to the mortal sphere and specifically to subjects unlikely to be praised directly by the Muses. However, in view of the reference to the praise of noble men at 2b, line 4 seems to suggest that the mortals the narrator would choose to sing of are worthy of praise and presumably eager for it, but it will soon turn out that they are neither. What is more, the poet will turn out to need patronage and will try to secure it by falling back on the practices of his poetic predecessors, which secured material rewards to them and glory to their patrons. The mortal narrator’s material needs necessitate the choice of mortal subjects, who care little for praise and are thus not worthy of it. The poet will evoke the Muses again (68–70) before he locates a worthy prospective subject and patron (71–81).

|| 47 There is no indication that the reference to worthy mortals is a cipher for civic poetry, and in particular Theognis’ elegy, as González (2010) argues. ἀγαθός and ἐσθλός (14) may designate martial and, more generally, heroic or aristocratic excellence. ἀγαθῶν κλέα ἀνδρῶν may be an expanded version of the heroic epic κλέα ἀνδρῶν or a signal that the narrator intends to suggest heroic and encomiastic poetry. The phrase certainly does not exclude heroic epic. Civic virtues such as piety, generosity and hospitality as well as their rewards are emphasized, but these themes are ubiquitous in encomiastic poetry in general and epinician poetry in particular, so the association with Theognis’ poetry is unduly limiting and thus difficult to accept.

Idyll 16 | 261

Patronage constitutes the poem’s first of many unexpected turns and reversals, but before he tackles it, the narrator includes another puzzle in the proem: he says nothing about the role of the Muses in his song, or any song sung by mortal singers. This does not automatically indicate that the goddesses have nothing to do with mortal singers, as silence does not equal denial. On the other hand, the narrator’s reticence, in association with the disjunction between the subjects of immortal and mortal singers, may be viewed, provisionally at least, as a revision of the traditional view of the relationship between singers and their divine patronesses, in other words as a suggestion that mortal singers may operate without divine help. The revision of the relationship between poet and Muses appears to become more trenchant below, when the narrator suggests that he seeks, and wishes to visit, any patron, in the company of the Muses and Graces (68–70, 104– 9). Traditionally, the gifted poet enjoys his goddesses’ continuous favor, or is always in their company, but he is never said to be in a position to choose to take them with him. Pindar, for instance, who regularly invokes Muses and Graces, bids the goddesses be at a certain place and sing the praises of his victors (e.g. P. 4.1–3, N. 3.1–8, 9.1–5), but the prayer is a way of stressing the divine auspices of his song, and the goddesses’ presence is not controlled by the poet. The Theocritean narrator falls back on the traditional assumption that the poetic capacity of mortal singers is contingent on the favor of the Muses at two important junctures, the beginning of the part on the fame (κλέος) conferred to patrons by poets (29) and the assertion that a multitude of poets praise Hiero II (101–2). At 58 the fame of all mortals, obviously including the poets, is attributed to the Muses. As already suggested, the references to mortal and immortal singers in the proem turn out to be ambiguous: they seem to point to a break with the tradition, but this will not be confirmed, although the narrator will return to apparent novelty at the end (104–9). The references to the goddesses of poetry, including the untraditional claims about the narrator’s choice to take them with him, do double duty. When they highlight the narrator’s connection with the tradition, they reassure the prospective patron that his commission will be a good investment. When the focus shifts to the poet’s choices and initiatives, which ensure his fame, they hark back to and highlight the miserable choice of the misers: while the latter fail to welcome the Muses and Graces and make a sound investment, he chooses to be always in the company of the goddesses who confer immortal glory and all lovely things to mortals. These choices will be discussed again below. For now, immediately following the proem, the narrator laments that his Graces have repeatedly returned home angry with him, barefoot and empty-

262 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage handed, and retaken their position in their empty chest, cold and forlorn (8–12).48 This is a great, lapidary shift from the idyllic poetic harmony or innocence of the proem, and an abrupt revision of the expectations of the audience. The mortal singer’s modest or natural(ly expected) choice to sing of mortals morphs into a precarious potentiality: he is not currently singing of mortals, and seems to have little prospect of doing so, because his aspirations have repeatedly been thwarted by the terrible obstacle of a lack of willing patrons. No promising candidate is in sight. The narrator’s need and quest for a commission also annul the possibility of his praising worthy mortals of old, as they cannot be his patrons. He frankly admits that his poetic appeal and powers of persuasion are completely bankrupt: his potential patrons are covetous and stingy, pursuing only their own material profit and neglecting contemporary poetry (13–21).49 The quoted claims of the prospective patrons (18–21), introduced with the exasperated complaint that these misers would not even give the rust of their money to anybody (17), are reminiscent of comedy or mime, which enhances their sharpness. The misers not only flaunt their stinginess and covetousness but also undercut the presumed basis of the petitioners’ appeal, their invocation of their poetic worth and the honor, i.e. commission, it deserves (cf. 29, 66). Thus the crucial connection between poetic worth and remuneration for it is severed. The pithy statements “gods honor singers”, “Homer is enough for all” and “the best poet is the one who gets nothing from me” (19–21) cut to the quick and are very difficult to refute, as they touch on the essence of a poet’s self-perception, his relationship to gods, the tradition and his aspirations to excellence. In fact, the narrator will devote almost ten times as many lines, a little more than one third of the poem,

|| 48 This elaborate metaphor, which casts the Graces as goddesses, poems and papyrus rolls, may be meant to put the audience in mind of the anecdote about Simonides’ two chests, one for gratitude (χάριτες), which is of no use to him, and one for money (Σ Arg., Stob. 3.10.38 = T 75 Poltera). If so, it foreshadows the importance of the archaic poet’s figure and career later on in the poem. Whether the anecdote is alluded to or not, the metaphor indicates the connection of the poem with other genres. Some scholars have suggested that these include popular songs by bands of children going door to door and asking for gifts; see Merkelbach (1952), and Dover (1971) 218; cf. Griffiths (1979) 23, and Furley (1994) 20–21. There is no clear sign that the Graces are portrayed specifically as children, and most Greek bands in question were all-male bands anyway, as is still the case in modern Greece. It would be unusual, if not shocking, for a male poet to cast himself as a leader of a group of beggar girls or young women, but he perhaps casts himself as a mendicant bard, like Hipponax, Homer in the “Herodotean” Life of Homer (33 = Epigr. 15) or Phoenix of Colophon (Ath. 359e-360a = CA 233); see Hunter (1996) 93–94, and Hopkinson (2015) 229. 49 This is a reversal of, and a more bitter complaint than, Pindar’s lament over the state of his contemporary poetry in comparison with his predecessors’ in Isthmian 2. Not only are the poets seeking money but also the patrons are far from generous, in contrast to Pindar’s patrons.

Idyll 16 | 263

to his attempt to refute the claims of the misers and persuade them to patronize him (22–59), before admitting defeat (60–65) and parting company with them to turn to the prospect of a worthy patron (66–75). However, his repeated attempts to secure the patronage of the misers do suggest that he is closer to them than he cares to admit, which may add self-ironic insult to injury. It is unlikely that the record of such men would include many distinguished deeds worth celebrating, although the narrator does not indicate that his problems stem from his prospective patrons’ lack of distinction. His explanation of his failure to secure patrons and his dismal prospects is that contemporary men are not keen on receiving praise for worthy deeds because of their love of profit (14–15). The most natural interpretation of this claim is that the men in question do not lack distinction. Nevertheless, as becomes clearer from the sequence, the prospective patrons have little else to be praised for besides their wealth. In this light, the poet shifts his ground and compromises more conspicuously than he did when he acknowledged the dire necessity of patronage, as he seems to operate on the principle “the best patron is the one that will reward me.” To be sure, the narrator does not openly repudiate worthy deeds as the subject of his songs of praise, unlike the misers who have plainly and unabashedly abandoned the tradition of generosity honored by their forebears. Still, the narrator’s appeal to them to mend their ways leaves little doubt that the pool of prospective patrons includes men of means, who may be, but are not necessarily, otherwise distinguished.50 His paraenetic attempt to instill some sense into such men begins with a rhetorical question about profit, paradoxically suggesting that accumulation of inert riches confers no benefit to men of good sense (22–23): they should spend their money on themselves and give some of it to a poet, too (24). The picture of pious generosity and benefaction toward gods and mortals, family and strangers, that he goes on to sketch ends in ring composition with the admonition to the addressees to honor above all the sacred prophets of the Muses (25–29) so that they may ensure the crucial benefit of posthumous, i.e. eternal, praise (30–33).51 This plau-

|| 50 The narrator’s final admission of defeat in the face of his addressees’ pathological avarice is couched in terms of an adynaton (60–63): it is impossible to persuade a man damaged by covetousness (φιλοκερδείᾳ βεβλαμμένον ἄνδρα παρελθεῖν, 63). The choice of παρελθεῖν is intriguing, as the most common meaning of the verb is ‘to deceive, trick’, and so Σ interpret the line. It is quite likely used ambiguously, with an eye to suggesting wryly that, for all his self-righteous protests and the esteemed precedents he adduces, the narrator surpassed the miser in avarice and aimed all along at getting past his obsession by tricking him; cf. Hunter (1996) 104. 51 For the advice cf. 17.108–20, and the discussion below pp. 290–91.

264 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage sible and weighty argument about a cardinal Greek ideal often celebrated in poetry is unlikely to find favor with men pathologically attached to the pursuit and accumulation of wealth, as the narrator will soon have to admit (60–65), but it is the only one available to him. He will (try to) bolster it through an appeal to the past, with examples of older poets and rich patrons and their mutual benefits. The first to be mentioned are Simonides and his Thessalian patrons, the great families of Aleuadae and Scopadae (34–47). The choice is particularly fitting given the wealth of the patrons (and the notorious stinginess of Scopas, discussed below) and possibly the notorious love of money of Simonides. Homer, the paradigmatic poet invoked by the misers (20), will be mentioned at the end (51–57), a less obvious but richly suggestive choice. What is of greater importance in this connection is that Theocritus does not merely provide a list of examples to illustrate and corroborate his point but presents his two illustrious predecessors in a manner that involves some remarkable revisions, in parallel with, and in support of, his pursuit of patronage. As is to be expected, the wealth of the Thessalians is emphasized (34–39), but Simonides’ benefaction to them, as it were, is strikingly couched in terms reminiscent of the celebration of heroic deeds (42–46): ἄμναστοι δὲ τὰ πολλὰ καὶ ὄλβια τῆνα λιπόντες δειλοῖς ἐν νεκύεσσι μακροὺς αἰῶνας ἔκειντο, εἰ μὴ θεῖος ἀοιδὸς ὁ Κήιος αἰόλα φωνέων βάρβιτον ἐς πολύχορδον ἐν ἀνδράσι θῆκ’ ὀνομαστούς ὁπλοτέροις. Leaving behind those many blessings, they would have lain unremembered for long ages among the wretched dead if the inspired bard of Ceos, with his varied songs performed on a lyre of many strings, had not made them famous among later generations.

This goes back to Simonides’ praise of heroic deeds in his Plataea elegy (fr. 11 W2), which associates the heroes of Plataea and the poet with Achilles and Homer respectively. In the first part of the elegy (1–20), addressed to Achilles and only partially preserved, the poet recounts the hero’s death, the capture of Troy and the glory Homer poured on its heroic conquerors, making them famous to posterity (ἐπώνυμον ὁπ[λοτέρ]οισιν/ ποίησ’ ἡμ]ιθέων ὠκύμορον γενεή[ν, 17–18).52 Simonides then addresses an appeal to the Muse to help him too fashion a sweet, orderly || 52 This is probably the only extant archaic instance of an attribution of heroic κλέος to divinely inspired poetry. Even if the pouring of κλέος may be thought to be a metaphor for the celebration of the κλέος the heroes won on account of their achievements in Homer’s inspired song, the statement about the renown they enjoy among later generations is explicitly attributed to Homer

Idyll 16 | 265

song that will celebrate the brave heroes who defended the freedom of Sparta and Greece (21–26):53 their prowess has gained them great renown, and their fame among men will be immortal (οὐδ’ ἀρε]τῆς ἐλάθ[οντο, φάτις δ’ ἔχε]ν οὐρανομ[ήκ]ης/ καὶ κλέος ἀ]νθρώπων [ἔσσετ]αι ἀθάνατο, 27–28). After Simonides has suggested an apparently novel view of epic poetry’s crucial role in the celebration of heroes, he draws a parallel between Homer and himself but delicately and significantly refrains from stressing that the posthumous fame of the heroes of Plataea will be immortal because of (his) poetry. Nevertheless, his association of epic and contemporary heroes as well as the glossing over of any poets other than Homer and himself in the preserved part of the elegy highlight the parallels between the two encomiasts and their subjects. The temporal distance separating Homer from his heroes is downplayed, and his similarities with Simonides emphasized. In this light, rather than, or in addition to, Simonides appearing as a new Homer, Homer appears as an old Simonides, a contemporary bard favored by the Muses and thus in a position to glorify the heroes he sang of for all eternity, as Simonides hopes to do. Since Simonides attributes the κλέος of epic heroes to the poetry of Homer, in effect suggesting that without his poetry the heroes would not have become famous, at least to posterity, poetry is crucial in the preservation of their memory, including, apparently, commemoration in later poetry.54 This background is extensively exploited by Theocritus with multiple parallels and dissonances, a virtual panorama of poetic concordia discors. The Thessalians gained hippic victories in Panhellenic games (46–47), so their distinction or fame during their lifetime was not only limited to their wealth. Epinician poetry

|| (17–18). This is certainly a bold deviation from the traditional view of the relationship of heroes and poets, as never before in extant literature had the posthumous fame of epic heroes been traced back to a single poet. If Simonides echoes Tyrtaeus’ celebration of the posthumous fame of the brave man (οὐδέ ποτε κλέος ἐσθλὸν ἀπόλλυται οὐδ’ ὄνομ’ αὐτοῦ,/ ἀλλ’ ὑπὸ γῆς περ ἐὼν γίνεται ἀθάνατος, fr. 12.31–32 W2), which echoes the report on the fame of the epic Achilles (ὣς σὺ μὲν οὐδὲ θανὼν ὄνομ’ ὤλεσας, ἀλλά τοι αἰεὶ/ πάντας ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπους κλέος ἔσσεται ἐσθλόν, Ἀχιλλεῦ, Od. 24.93–94), his revision gains in associative depth. For κλέος in archaic poetry see further Kyriakou (2004) 222–29. 53 ἔντυνο]ν καὶ τόνδ[ε μελ]ίφρονα κ[όσμον ἀο]ιδῆς/ ἡμετ]έρης (23–24) may be an appeal to the addressee to fashion another orderly song (of the narrator), but even so, the proximity of the reference to Homer certainly colors the appeal. 54 The Muses as goddesses of memory could have certainly informed a post-Homeric bard about forgotten achievements of old and could inspire him to praise the champions, but there is no indication that Simonides suggested any such revision of the traditional view of the Muses. Cf. the discussion below pp. 267–69.

266 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage associates victors with the heroes of epic, but the Theocritean narrator places little emphasis on the Thessalians’ agonistic achievements.55 Instead, the horses that returned from the holy games with victory garlands are said to have enjoyed their share of honor, and thus the victories of Simonides’ patrons are mentioned as an adjunct to their wealth in flocks and cattle. Alternatively, and not mutually exclusively, the honor attributed to the horses was an indication that Simonides was willing to glorify beasts if he received adequate compensation and did not necessarily emphasize only or mainly the athletic glory of their owners.56 What is more, the national and moral record of the Thessalians was far from spotless: the Aleuadae collaborated with the Persians (Hdt. 7.6, 130, 172; cf. 9.58), and later authors report that Scopas and several members of the Scopadae clan were destroyed because of Scopas’ impious and miserly refusal to adequately reward Simonides for a commissioned poem in which the Dioscuri featured prominently (Cic. De orat. 2.351–53, Quint. Inst. 11.2.11–16 = PMG 510 = T 80 Poltera). The poet, saved by the twin gods, was able to identify the dead and also composed a lament for them (PMG 521, 529 = 244, 247 Poltera).57 “The divine Cean bard” had been the encomiast of contemporary heroes as well as men distinguished for their wealth but not their piety, whom he (is presented as having) associated, implicitly and perhaps explicitly, with epic heroes. It is conceivable || 55 Contrast e.g. Herodotus (5.102.12), who notes that Eualcides, the Eretrian general at the battle of Ephesus (498 BC), was prominent among many distinguished (ὀνομαστούς) casualties and a victor at the Panhellenic games (στεφανηφόρους τε ἀγῶνας ἀναραιρηκότα) highly praised by Simonides. 56 According to an anecdote (Arist. Rhet. 1405b23–27), Simonides refused to sing of mules but relented when offered a greater fee by the victor in a mule-cart race (PMG 515 = 2 Poltera). See Molyneux (1992) 211–14, Nicholson (2005) 82, and Poltera (2008) 273–74; cf. n. 66 below. Horses were far more prestigious than mules, and Pherenicus, the horse of Hiero I, is repeatedly celebrated by Pindar (O. 1.18–23, P. 3.74) and Bacchylides (5.37–49, 182–86, fr. 20 C 7–11 Maehler), but in these poems the glory the victorious stallion brought to Hiero is the focus of the references. 57 The Dioscuri story may have been biographical fiction; see V n. 41 below. Simonides also composed a famous lament for the Thessalian Antiochus (PMG 528 = 246 Poltera), and even the Plataea elegy has been considered a lament; see González (2010) 103 n. 162. González (104) suggests that Theocritus alludes to Simonides’ lament for the Scopadae, which would commemorate blame, flagging the danger thereof to Theocritus’ prospective patrons. It is not clear that the Simonidean laments focused on blame. The allusion to these laments, if present, might also, and perhaps primarily, serve to underscore the readiness of the Cean “divine bard”, Theocritus’ model, to serve his rich patrons, and probably their readiness to employ him, irrespective of attendant circumstances. Damnation to oblivion rather than blame is the danger stressed by Theocritus. It is also, mildly put, a stretch to claim that an echo of the Plataea elegy would be inserted in a warning over undying blame. For Callimachus’ fragment on the tomb of Simonides (Aet. fr. 64 Harder), which briefly touches on similar issues, see below pp. 317–21.

Idyll 16 | 267

that Simonides had associated his Thessalian patrons with Iliadic heroes, perhaps fellow athletic Thessalians such as Eumelus and, crucially, Achilles. The Thessalians’ patronage of Simonides perhaps antedated the Persian wars, but this detail, even if known to posterity, i.e. Theocritus and his audience, would not eliminate ambivalence toward the relationship of a divine, pious and inspired bard to his affluent but flawed patrons, especially given the patriotic subject of the Plataea elegy. Simonides appears as a bard who glorified all his patrons, warriors and herders, pious and impious alike.58 While Simonides had celebrated Homer and his heroes, primarily Achilles, before turning to himself and the Plataea heroes, Theocritus turns from Simonides and his patrons to epic bards and heroes (48–57). Unlike Simonides, Theocritus does not mention only the Ionian bard (57) but also “singers who celebrated battles of old” (φυλόπιδας προτέρων, 50), in a final persuading push, as it were, to convince his addressees to patronize the poet and reap the benefit of κλέος (48–50). Cycnus is not mentioned by Homer, and neither he nor the champions of the Lycians or the Priamids (48–49) belong to the victors of the Trojan war. Homeric but only Odyssean characters and their encomiast appear at the end (51– 57)—Iliadic heroes will appear only in connection with the narrator’s prospective patron Hiero II (74–75). The allusion to the foppishness of the Priamids and the feminine beauty of Cycnus’ complexion is likely meant to indicate that even in martial epics the subjects’ non-martial advantages held a place as prominent as that of fighting prowess, or possibly substituted for it, and guaranteed their carriers the coveted κλέος, another enticement for the Theocritean narrator’s prospective patrons. The reference to the poetic celebration of old battles again points to a collapse of distinction between encomia of old and contemporary glories and especially between the celebration and the generation of κλέος in poetry. The battles of old may have been old already for epic poets who sang of them or are old for Theocritus and his contemporaries. Even if the former, it is unclear how, in the framework of Theocritus’ view of κλέος and poetry, the earlier singers would have known of the old

|| 58 It is ironic that Pausanias, the Spartan general at Plataea, who possibly commissioned Simonides’ elegy, perhaps on behalf or with the agreement of his city, was eventually accused of treason and killed by exposure, but at least he had had an important achievement to his credit. Theocritus’ patrons were unlikely to match such a record, even remotely, but a commission would facilitate the associations between older poets and patrons and modern counterparts that Theocritus tries to draw in 16. For Pausanias and the commission see Kyriakou (2004) 230, and cf. Currie (2005) 198–99, Nobili (2011) 26, and Cartledge (2012).

268 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage glories without songs that celebrated them when they were recent.59 In the framework of glossing over of generic and even temporal distinctions, Homer appears as the poetic “benefactor” of Odyssean characters, first Odysseus himself, then his herdsmen, and finally his brave father. As already indicated, the fighting prowess of none of them is recorded, with the possible and rather surprising exception of Laertes. Odysseus’ participation in the Trojan war (or other martial expeditions) is not mentioned. Remarkably, even his killing of the suitors is only obliquely indicated through the references to his herdsmen and his father.60 Instead, the temporal length and geographical breadth of his wanderings are stressed with the claim, by now expected, that he would not have enjoyed lasting κλέος (δηναιόν, 54) without the benefit of Homer’s song.61 The specification suggests posthumous and eternal κλέος, perhaps with a nod to the traditional view of heroic renown—apparently Odysseus’ adventures enjoyed wide recognition during his lifetime and perhaps shortly thereafter, but its preservation and endurance for posterity are attributed to Homer’s ministrations.62 Not even his loyal herdsmen have sunk into oblivion. Their probity, although not elaborated upon, may contrast ironically with the immorality of many a rich man and may perhaps glance specifically at the servants of the Thessalians, who had probably not been celebrated in Simonides’ poems. Ithacan masters and their servants alike became famous for all eternity because of Homer, who celebrated only good men but is also cast in the role of a contemporary encomiast. Although patronage is out of the question in his case, especially as the poor and lowly herdsmen would not have been in a position to hire any encomiast, the association with Simonides’ Thessalian career and Theocritus’ bid serves to blur the difference. || 59 Cf. n. 54 above. The reference to Lycian champions and the bards that celebrated them may be an echo of the end of Pindar’s Pythian 3 (112–15). 60 Cf. n. 67 below. 61 The selectivity of the Odyssey proem (1.1–10) is probably relevant in this connection: the epic poet appeals to the Muse and refers to the hero’s wanderings among many peoples, his war service and his delinquent companions. His persecution by Poseidon (20–21) and the reason for this hostility, the blinding of Polyphemus (68–75), are mentioned later. Theocritus also obviously picks and chooses, and his choice of Odysseus’ catabasis and the Cyclops episode (52–53) highlight his priorities, non-martial and perhaps bucolic (cf. 90–93). 62 The emphasis on Odysseus’ wanderings and their celebration by Homer may hark back to Pindar’s suggestion that their fame was enhanced by Homer’s skill (N. 7.20–21). Sbardella (2004) argues that Theocritus alludes to Pindar in order to distance himself from Homer, as both Pindar and Theocritus present a refined, elitist alternative to the popular verse of their predecessor. There is little credible indication in 16 or elsewhere that Theocritus wishes to present himself as superior to Homer, or indeed any predecessor.

Idyll 16 | 269

Theocritus sums up his appeal and introduces the next part of the poem with the suggestion that “from the Muses comes good repute to men” (ἐκ Μοισᾶν ἀγαθὸν κλέος ἔρχεται ἀνθρώποισι, 58).63 This echoes the proem (1–2), with a significant variation obviously associated with the preceding exhortation to the misers: the reference to the glories of good men celebrated by the Muses (2) is replaced by a reference to the good reputation men gain from the Muses. These men may be worthy but they are accorded no specification: a fine reputation is apparently available to all those celebrated by the Muses, and no criterion on the basis of which the goddesses make their choice is offered or implied.64 This leaves open the possibility that the men celebrated by the Muses are those willing to patronize the goddesses’ sacred interpreters, or at least that the rich patrons of the poets are among those celebrated by the goddesses, especially as it immediately becomes obvious that the narrator refers to rich contemporary men (59–67). The reference to κλέος at 58 might have introduced a renewed or a different bid for patronage but it turns out to belong to a turning point in the poem’s narrative of the narrator’s journey from poetic hawker to confident encomiast. The transitional couplet (58–59) includes no explicit reference to the narrator, and the remainder of the poem will present a different view of him, which will develop in terms much more radical than those used to sketch the shift in the case of the Muses. The narrator now abandons his bid to show the prospective patrons the folly of their ways, as he realizes that covetousness is an incurable disease. He adds the last stinging barb directed at the stingy addressees, the squandering of the inheritance by the heirs of the deceased (χρήματα δὲ ζώοντες ἀμαλδύνουσι θανόντων, 59; cf. 40–46, 17.116–20), which perhaps demolishes a potential claim that men accumulate wealth for the sake of their heirs. The narrator finally admits || 63 “Muses” may be used metonymically for poetry, but the poem’s repeated references to the actual goddesses and the prominence of the poetic tradition, represented by famous poetic predecessors, leave little room for an assumption that the narrator merely invokes a tradition that has become fossilized and quite irrelevant in his day. It is true that the Muses play a relatively minor role in the rest of his collection, and their traditional place has been taken over by other divinities such as the Nymphs, probably as a statement of poetic innovation and a marker of the new genre of bucolic, but 16 does not necessarily share these concerns, at least not in the same manner. 64 The men chosen by the Muses obviously include poets, but no group is singled out. This is in keeping with Theocritus’ failure to provide any explicit praise of his poetic skills in a poem partly at least designed as an advertisement of (his) poetry’s worth to prospective patrons. The favor and κλέος the Muses confer on the poet are presented indirectly, filtered through his associations with favored and famous epic and lyric poets of old. This indirectness and fallback on the tradition work as both a reassurance over the poet’s credentials to prospective patrons and a show of modesty that might attract them.

270 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage defeat: his task has proved as pointless as counting waves on a beach or washing mud-bricks. He proceeds to take his ironic leave from such men, wishing them countless silver and ever greater desire for more (60–65; cf. 22–23). This is meant to be the last nail on the coffin of those incurably obsessed with wealth and irrevocably condemned to oblivion. He salutes them as the singer of a Homeric hymn salutes his divinity at the end, before his recitation of heroic epic, but in the third person (χαιρέτω ὅστις τοῖος, 64), and then uses the transition formula introducing the promise of a future song (αὐτὰρ ἐγώ, 66).65 Immediately, though, he switches to a personal statement reminiscent of choral lyric or epinician first person statements. Assessing his situation he claims that he would much prefer the favor and honor of men over wealth in mules and horses (66–67). The particular kind of wealth mentioned is quite unsuitable for a poet, especially a contemporary one, but it is clearly the kind enjoyed by Simonides’ patrons and celebrated by him.66 This makes the statement applicable to poets patronized by rich men willing to spend part of their wealth on them. Since it has become obvious (to the narrator) that such men no longer exist, the statement turns out to (also) mediate the transition to the next part of the poem and the poet’s career. The search for patrons in the company of the Muses continues, but now the poet expresses confidence that some patron will seek him out (71–73). Unsurprisingly, this person will have nothing to do with the incorrigible misers courted earlier. Less expectedly, he is described as a man not merely generous and noble but as a hero of the caliber of the epic Achilles and Ajax (74–75; cf. 80, quoted below). The choice of heroes harks back not only to Homer and the epic cycle but also, in view of the earlier allusions, to Simonides’ Plataea elegy. Achilles and Ajax were the best and second-best of the Achaeans at Troy respectively. They did not survive the war, as the heroes mentioned earlier (48–50) did not, but they were incomparable in prowess and achievements. Like Simonides, the narrator shifts his focus to a contemporary war, which has the potential of acquiring fame comparable to that of the epic battles (76–81):

|| 65 For the formula cf. 17.7, and see Hunter (2003) 103. It is probably not accidental that Simonides in the Plataea elegy uses the same formula to introduce his appeal to the Muse for help with his song (fr. 11.20–23 W2) after he salutes Achilles (19–20), immediately following the reference to Homer’s glorification of the Trojan war heroes to posterity (15–18); cf. Obbink (2001) 69. Since Theocritus has no respect or tolerance toward the misers, his wish χαιρέτω is perhaps meant to evoke the curse ἐρρέτω, metrically equivalent and, by the standards of Hellenistic koine pronunciation, phonetically very close. 66 The anecdote about Simonides’ celebration of mules (see n. 56 above) may also be relevant in this connection. If so, this would be a final ironic nod to the great predecessor.

Idyll 16 | 271

ἤδη νῦν Φοίνικες ὑπ’ ἠελίῳ δύνοντι οἰκεῦντες Λιβύας ἄκρον σφυρὸν ἐρρίγασιν· ἤδη βαστάζουσι Συρακόσιοι μέσα δοῦρα, ἀχθόμενοι σακέεσσι βραχίονας ἰτεΐνοισιν· ἐν δ’ αὐτοῖς Ἱέρων προτέροις ἴσος ἡρώεσσι ζώννυται, ἵππειαι δὲ κόρυν σκιάουσιν ἔθειραι. Already the Phoenicians beneath the setting sun, who inhabit the farthest edge of Libya, tremble with fear; already the Syracusans grasp their spears by the middle and load their arms with their wicker shields; and among them Hiero prepares himself like the heroes of old, a horsehair crest shadowing his helmet.

The impressive tableau includes the Syracusan troops poised to fight67 and distressing their foes, and Hiero II arming himself. The detail about the horse-hair crest of Hiero’s helmet visually seals his parity with the heroes of old. The impressive headgear may recall Achilles’ divinely wrought helmet, mentioned in his arming and just before the killing of Hector (Il. 19.380–83, 22.314–16). ζώννυμαι occurs at the beginning of the great battle of the epic in Agamemnon’s order to the troops to arm (Il. 11.15) before his arming for his aristeia. Hiero is then depicted as the Achaean commander about to lead his troops out and as the emblematic Achaean warrior about to kill the best enemy leader. However, Hiero II is not said to be the leader of the Syracusans, in contrast to Hiero I. Pindar’s praise of the latter and prayer for his wellbeing (P. 1.69–75) are probably echoed in the prayer for the success of the Syracusans (82–89, quoted below). The audience are aware of the office of Hiero II, and the narrator will soon signify it more clearly (98–103), but he never states it explicitly. He may wish to conform with Hiero’s and the Syracusans’ possible political concerns.68 Simonides’ praise of the Spartans in the Plataea elegy (fr. 11.29–32 W2) and his subsequent reference to Pausanias (fr. 11.33–34 W2) may also be a model. Just before the fight, as it were, the narrator addresses a prayer for the success of the Syracusans to Zeus, Athena and the local goddesses Persephone and Demeter (82–89):

|| 67 βαστάζουσι (78) may recall the completion of Odysseus’ examination of his bow just before he passes the bow test and exterminates the suitors (αὐτίκ’ ἐπεὶ μέγα τόξον ἐβάστασε καὶ ἴδε πάντῃ, Od. 21.405). If so, the Carthaginians are intertextually bound to perish. Although the task is onerous, the war-like Hiero II and his Syracusans will be heroes like Achilles and Odysseus, and new songs will celebrate him and them (102–3). 68 See Looijenga (2014) 230.

272 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage αἲ γάρ, Ζεῦ κύδιστε πάτερ καὶ πότνι’ Ἀθάνα κούρη θ’ ἣ σὺν μητρὶ πολυκλήρων Ἐφυραίων εἴληχας μέγα ἄστυ παρ’ ὕδασι Λυσιμελείας, ἐχθροὺς ἐκ νάσοιο κακαὶ πέμψειαν ἀνάγκαι Σαρδόνιον κατὰ κῦμα φίλων μόρον ἀγγέλλοντας τέκνοις ἠδ’ ἀλόχοισιν, ἀριθμητοὺς ἀπὸ πολλῶν. ἄστεα δὲ προτέροισι πάλιν ναίοιτο πολίταις, δυσμενέων ὅσα χεῖρες ἐλωβήσαντο κατ’ ἄκρας. Most honored father Zeus, and Lady Athena, and you, maiden who together with your mother have as your lot the great city of the wealthy Ephyreans by the waters of Lysimeleia—may stern necessity drive the enemy from this island over the Sardinian Sea bearing news to wives and children of the deaths of men dear to them, a small number of messengers from a great army. May all those towns utterly ravaged by the hands of the enemy be settled once more by their former citizens.

Persephone and Demeter are obvious choices in a prayer for Syracusan victory and so is the warrior goddess Athena. Besides, Athena’s help to Odysseus was vital in the killing of the suitors, and Zeus thundered in support of Odysseus following the stringing of the bow (Od. 21.413–15), the possible intertext recalled in the reference to the spears of the Syracusans (78; cf. Od. 21.405). The formula αἲ γάρ, Ζεῦ τε πάτερ καὶ Ἀθηναίη καὶ Ἄπολλον occurs in both Iliad and Odyssey, most often but not exclusively in martial or competitive contexts, and the wish in optative following it is in most cases unrealistic or as good as unrealistic (Il. 2.371–72, 4.288–89, 7.132–35, 16.97–100, Od. 4.341–46 = 17.132–36, 7.311–14, 18.235–38, 24.376–82). Of these wishes, the only ones that will be fulfilled are, significantly, those concerning the killing of the suitors (Od. 4.341–46 = 17.132– 36, 18.235–38). Apart from substituting the local goddess Persephone for Apollo, the narrator inserts the honorific superlative κύδιστε before πάτερ. This recalls the formula Ζεῦ πάτερ, Ἴδηθεν μεδέων, κύδιστε μέγιστε, which occurs in Homeric prayers before two major duels, of Paris and Menelaus (Il. 3.276, 320) and Hector and Ajax (Il. 7.202), and in the prayer of old Priam for his safe passage to Achilles’ tent (Il. 24.308). Although both duels end inconclusively, the Trojans will eventually be defeated, but before that the prayer of Priam will also be fulfilled. Beside the auspicious epic prayers recalled through the invocation of Zeus, the reference to Syracuse recalls another victory, also imminent in its context. Lake Lysimeleia is a fairly unusual choice of landmark,69 but it is mentioned by Thucydides

|| 69 For the name of the lake, which may indicate that it was sacred to the chthonic goddesses Demeter and Persephone, revered at Syracuse and Sicily, see Rawles (2015). In archaic poetry

Idyll 16 | 273

(7.53) in the narration of a turning point in the Sicilian expedition. Following a slight and inconsequential reprieve at an engagement by the lake (7.53), the Syracusans and their allies started gaining the upper hand over the enemy alliance (7.54–56). In this light, the imminent hoped-for victory of the Syracusans, piously put under the auspices of four divinities, is virtually guaranteed by means of epic and historical precedents. Even so, the rewards for Sicily and her people will include not only victory and all that it entails, e.g. revenge on the enemy and safety from future incursions, but also a lasting and bountiful peace (90–96). The projection of the idyllic peace in a liberated and restored Sicily concludes with the image of the spider-strewn weapons of the happy citizens (96–97). This probably recalls the praises of peace in Bacchylides (fr. 4.61–80 Maehler) and/or Euripides (fr. 369 Kannicht), the earliest extant poets that have used the image. If so, then the recollection includes song, as both Bacchylides and Euripides suggest that it will blossom in the blessed community and will fill the time blissfully left free.70 In 16 too poetry appears immediately after the blessings of peace, in the narrator’s wish for poetic encomia to Hiero II that will spread his high κλέος far and wide (98–103): ὑψηλὸν δ’ Ἱέρωνι κλέος φορέοιεν ἀοιδοί καὶ πόντου Σκυθικοῖο πέραν καὶ ὅθι πλατὺ τεῖχος ἀσφάλτῳ δήσασα Σεμίραμις ἐμβασίλευεν. εἷς μὲν ἐγώ, πολλοὺς δὲ Διὸς φιλέοντι καὶ ἄλλους θυγατέρες, τοῖς πᾶσι μέλοι Σικελὴν Ἀρέθοισαν ὑμνεῖν σὺν λαοῖσι καὶ αἰχμητὴν Ἱέρωνα. May poets carry the lofty fame of Hiero beyond the Scythian sea and where Semiramis used to reign within the broad walls she had built using pitch for mortar. I am only one poet, and the daughters of Zeus love many others too. May they all celebrate Sicilian Arethusa together with her people and Hiero the warrior.

|| λυσιμελής is an attribute of sleep (Hom. Od. 20.57, 23.343) and love (Hes. Th. 121, 911, Sapph. fr. 130.1 V, Archil. fr. 196 W2, Alcm. PMGF 3.61; cf. Thgn. 838). Euripides uses it of death (Suppl. 47). 70 Euripides’ fragment includes a reference to the enjoyment of poetry in old age, a sort of prelude to an allusion to Euripides’ Heracles (673–77) that will conclude the Idyll (104–109, quoted below). For Hesiod’s list of the blessings of the just city and the misfortunes of the unjust (Op. 225–47), a model for Theocritus, see Hunter (1996) 87–88. Another major song containing prayers to Zeus and benedictions for a just city is the great stasimon of Aeschylus’ Supplices (630–709), which contains, among other things, on a much larger scale, all the major themes of Theocritus’ poem, guest-friendship, Zeus, the destructive turmoil of war, and the benefits of peace. In any case, whether Theocritus had all or some of these models in mind, he has naturally adjusted his references to the scale of his poem and relied on subtle allusions rather than extensive echoes.

274 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage Hiero II is now singled out as subject of poetic praise, apparently implying his distinguished position as the warrior leader and good king of his people. The poet identifies himself as a prospective encomiast of the great hero-to-be but points out that he is one among several favorites of Zeus’ daughters. The high κλέος (98) is ambiguously attributive or predicative, and λαοί (103) may designate the people but also the army of a leader. The poet avoids attributing Hiero’s κλέος to poetry, but the role of poetry has been paramount in 16. The reference to mortal poets celebrating the achievements of worthy men harks back to the very beginning of the poem. A significant factor is also introduced, the favor of the Muses, which had been only alluded to earlier. Nevertheless, the poet does not present himself as the chief contemporary favorite of the goddesses, although his focus on Hiero II, his earlier bid for patronage and the evocation of his poetic predecessors may predispose the audience to expect that he would. As Hiero II is poised to distinguish himself with the favor of the gods, the poet might have claimed or wished that he would too but he claims for himself only the favor of the Muses, which he shares with many colleagues, and no particular distinction.71 He wishes that all the numerous favorites of the Muses, obviously the current poetic generation, care to praise Sicily and Hiero (102–3). This perspective brings the narrator very close to his counterpart in 22. As already suggested, these choices are presumably bound to please Hiero. The last reference to him includes another highly flattering Odyssean allusion, to old heroes, universal fame and possibly pre-Homeric song. τοῖς πᾶσι μέλοι (102) recalls the fame of Argo (Od. 12.70), from a passage that also mentions Hera’s favor to Jason and the Argonautic expedition (Od. 12.71–72) and harks back to Odysseus’ exaltation of his κλέος (Od. 9.19–20; cf. 264, 19.108). Both the Argonautic and the Odyssean fame may be also linked to poetry and are explicitly designated as universal. The narrator’s modesty notwithstanding, he returns to himself for the last time in the envoi of the poem, tying up gracefully, as it were, all major themes of the poem in a piously dignified conclusion (104–9): ὦ Ἐτεόκλειοι Χάριτες θεαί, ὦ Μινύειον Ὀρχομενὸν φιλέοισαι ἀπεχθόμενόν ποτε Θήβαις, ἄκλητος μὲν ἔγωγε μένοιμί κεν, ἐς δὲ καλεύντων θαρσήσας Μοίσαισι σὺν ἁμετέραισιν ἴοιμ’ ἄν.

|| 71 It is noteworthy that one of the poetic predecessors evoked in the praise of the blessed peace, Bacchylides, also eschews explicit, competitive or polemical, contrasts between himself and his laudandi and their rivals: the god-given superiority of both poet and victor go unchallenged and are recognized by all in a community governed by justice and least disturbed by envy; see Kyriakou (2001b).

Idyll 16 | 275

καλλείψω δ’ οὐδ’ ὔμμε· τί γὰρ Χαρίτων ἀγαπητόν ἀνθρώποις ἀπάνευθεν; ἀεὶ Χαρίτεσσιν ἅμ’ εἴην. O Graces, goddesses of Eteocles, O you who love Minyan Orchomenus which in the past was hated by Thebes, if I am not summoned I shall stay at home, but when I am invited I shall go confidently in company with my Muses. You, too, I shall not leave behind. Without the Graces what is there for mankind to desire? May I always be with the Graces.

The Graces are invoked in a final ring-composition, and the final, most explicit declaration of the poet’s revised worldview. They are now the goddesses exquisitely praised in Pindar’s Olympian 14. Their attributes guarantee the modest singer’s worth and success and his prospective patron’s benefit. The narrator’s final prayer that he may always be with his Graces recalls the fervent prayer of the chorus of old Thebans in Euripides’ Heracles (673–77), bringing another strand of the poetic tradition and another hero into the panorama of the poem.72 It also, and perhaps primarily, suggests that the narrator plans to remain a poet throughout his life, irrespective of the availability of worthy patrons, although he has expressed confidence about the latter. He will no longer court prospective patrons but will expect their invitation: his barefoot Graces used to return home from their courting errands empty-handed and cower shivering at the bottom of the chest (8–12) but from now on he will stay contentedly at home with his Muses and Graces and visit only welcoming patrons with the goddesses (106–9). The narrator’s stance has some affinities with its counterpart in Callimachus’ Iamb. 3, which survives in a very mutilated form, but the outlook of the two poems is very different. The best-preserved part of the Iamb combines a lament reminiscent of Hesiod (Op. 174–75) for the moral decline of contemporary society, which values wealth over virtue, or more likely poetry, with a lament for the predicament of the narrator, a poor poet, who has likely lost the affections of the boy Euthydemus to a wealthy rival. According to the Diegesis the boy was lambasted as venal, introduced to a rich man by his meretricious mother, for all intents and

|| 72 This intertext is a paean to the achievements of Heracles, a son of Zeus, and offers a wealth of parallels with Hiero II and his prospective encomiast. Heracles’ glorious youth is contrasted with the chorus’ old age and associated with their gift in song, which remains unaffected. Heracles, the benefactor of mankind, appears as the model of Hiero II, the prospective benefactor of Sicily, the location of Aetna mentioned at the beginning of the stasimon (637–41). (This is also recalled in Callimachus’ prologue of the Aetia [fr. 1.33–36 Harder], a possible poetological intertext.) Both the reference to the rivalry of Orchomenus and Thebes and even the designation of the Graces as Eteokleioi may recall Heracles’ victory over the Minyai and his κλέος; see Gow (19522) 323.

276 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage purposes her son’s pimp, who also appears in the remnants of lines 24–29.73 The Diegesis does not mention any affair between the narrator and Euthydemus, and thus a rivalry between the narrator and the rich suitor of the boy.74 The presumed rival does not appear beyond doubt in any part of the fragment, but if he did, it is unlikely that he would have escaped the narrator’s attacks, especially if he had been aware of the narrator’s relationship to Euthydemus and had used his wealth to lure the boy. The narrator expresses regret for his foolishly wanton dedication to the Muses (ν̣ῦν δ’ ὁ μάργος ἐς Μούσας/ ἔ̣ νευσα, 38–39), and this may suggest ironic self-criticism, which would clash with and qualify the previous reference to the narrator’s good education, suggesting a defeat of culture at the hands of incorrigibly wanton nature. The choice of μάργος may hardly be incidental. The word and its cognates denote lack of control over one’s appetites, especially for food, drink and sex, and unmitigated foolishness. The narrator apparently implies that his appetites, including the inclination to the Muses, have been excessive, and that his devotion to the goddesses also cut off his chances of enjoying the pleasures he coveted, primarily the favor of the boy.75 The last surviving line of the preserved fragment (τοίγ̣α̣[ρ] ἣν ἔμαξα δεν[..].σω, 39), perhaps a reminiscence of Archilochus (fr. 2 W2) and/or Sappho (fr. 31.17 V), points to his wretched fare. It signals resignation, or acceptance of the situation that the narrator’s own passions largely brought about, but also points to self-deprecation or -mocking. The narrator elaborates on his own discontents and regrets while the framework and terms of the narrator’s attack on Euthydemus, and possibly others, are irrecoverable. Still, the fact that he does not sublimate poetry or poverty and

|| 73 The name Euthydemus is common and does not allow much room for intertextual speculation. Clayman (1980) 21 has associated it with the Platonic namesake and the ideal of homoerotic education. It may also be pointed out that, according to Xenophon (Mem. 1.2.29–30), the corrupt and immoral Critias was in love with a boy Euthydemus, aggressively pursuing him in a manner Socrates castigated as undignified and unworthy of a good lover. No rivals are mentioned, but Critias is compared to a beggar, and the references to crass sensuality may have had a parallel in Callimachus’ attack on his rival and/or the boy and possibly his mother. 74 Lelli (2004) 92–100 argues that the narrator was an instructor of the boy in poetry, lured away by a rich suitor, but this speculative reconstruction can find no support in the poem or the Diegesis. 75 Cf. Acosta-Hughes (2002) 247–48, although I do not share his view that the narrator, unable to satisfy his desires because of his poverty and to find relief in ecstatic worship, has channeled his energies into composing iambic poetry. The sexualized image of the Muses as inspirers and recipients of the narrator’s passion is perhaps too bold for comfort (cf. n. 77 below), but the main objection is that the turn to the Muses apparently took place early on, probably before the unfortunate affair with Euthydemus.

Idyll 16 | 277

acknowledges his unprofitable choice of profession does not alleviate his castigation of the immorality or venality of others. The difference from Theocritus 16 and the main focus of association with the archaic iambic tradition is the narrator’s failure to tackle the benefits of poetry such as immortal renown, which might compensate for the hardships of a life of poverty. In effect, the narrator succumbs unconditionally to one passion and has thus to forego all prospect of satisfying other desires or of securing other benefits. Nevertheless, even if he does not elevate himself above others, claiming or pretending that he disparages wealth and the advantages it procures, his stance does not elevate or absolve others, and it is possible that the passions of others, which secure the material comforts he too covets, also condemn them to the loss of other benefits, at the very least by implication.76 On the other hand, not only does he praise the innocent and virtuous past of a Hesiodic Golden Age—even if he does this only because it would have afforded him the benefits of which present immorality deprives him—but he also presents himself as loyal to the Muses and probably Apollo, the addressee of his diatribe. Although his profession condemns him to poverty and sexual frustration, he does not pledge to abandon it. Perhaps he is unable to,77 but no such impediment or allusion to it is detectable beyond reasonable doubt. He dedicated himself to the Muses and Apollo and remains their devotee, although the gods have done noth-

|| 76 In a similar vein, in Iamb. 5 the advice offered by a friend or acquaintance of an unnamed schoolteacher, the addressee, is probably cast in the mold of a friendly or disinterested admonition, but there are serious doubts as to the position or situation of the counselor, his motives and the development of the piece. If the model is Hipponax (fr. 118 W2), then the tone of the Iamb may have been abusive. There is naturally no indication as to the success of the advice, and given that the subject is probably pedophilia or at least uncontrollable erotic urges, it is unlikely to have been very effective. Good and actionable advice is absent in Theocritus’ genuine Idylls too, but the narrator of Iamb. 5 may be sly, mocking, supercilious or self-interested. No Theocritean counselor features such attributes. 77 Cf. Kerkhecker (1999) 82. He also suggests (78–79) that the narrator’s wish to have been a follower of Cybele and to sing for Adonis is meant to be an insult to the Muses as custodians of dance and song. There is no indication that musical performances for various divinities were (thought to be) falling outside of, or encroaching on, the remit of the Muses. Maybe the narrator wishes to have been a devotee of a lucrative cult, but the Adonis part does not fit in well with such longing. The advantage of the cults is likelier to be their ecstatic nature and disregard for conventional social norms, perhaps in the manner of the Aristophanic Agathon in Thesmophoriazusae (146–72), although he claims that his feminine attire and appearance, and possibly his castration, helps him in his work. The Callimachean narrator may suggest that a choice of oriental ecstatic cults would provide some relief from the misery inflicted on poets by an immoral society that cares little for intellectual sophistication.

278 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage ing to help him in his plight. His noble education and upbringing, perhaps another asset his immoral targets are said or implied to lack, do not allow him to change course, even though he does not draw any pleasure from his loyalty or entertain any hopes of gaining compensatory benefits. At least he is not fickle, devious or immoral, abandoning the Muses or trying to lure the boy with promises or intrigues of his own. He is frustrated, disillusioned, betrayed by gods and men, but still adhering to the principles of his education and resigned to suffer the consequences of his life choices. In this light, the two iambic masks detected in the poem, of the moralizer and the poor lover-poet, are combined into, or give way to, a new composite mask of the poor and frustrated, yet morally superior, lover-poet: he regrets his contemporary decadence, acknowledges the disadvantages of his choices and yet accepts his wretched condition. This is a Hipponactean voice balking but not begging, a poet who protests but does not pimp out his poetry. He claims the moral high ground, down on earth, not up in the heaven, and with no hopes of compensatory benefits for his deficits. The poem features no change or movement. By contrast, 16 sketches, among other things, a spiritual journey of the narrator in his quest for rewards: he starts out as a free-lancing, self-advertising encomiast of any willing patron, with some similarity to the rich men he fails to court; he tries his best to convince them to patronize him by falling back on Simonides’ relationship to his rich Thessalian patrons, who were not paragons of virtue or unfailing generosity but who at least patronized him, and on Homer’s similarities to Simonides. This ambivalent take on the tradition involves reworking the relationship of the predecessors to their subjects and colleagues. He then reflectively reconsiders or coolly rationalizes his situation and ends up abandoning self-promotion, at least of the overt kind. He has acquired poetic selfknowledge and casts himself as a confident prospective singer of the praises of the worthy, although not the only competent one. Poetic journeys, the rewards of poetry, and singers’ relationship to their tradition, contemporaries and divinities are sketched in other defining pieces of the collection such as 1, 7, and 11, but 16 is unique in presenting a poet first dedicated to the pursuit of patronage and eventually to the practice of his profession irrespective of patronage. In this light, one might have expected that the poet would have chosen to associate Hiero II with his great namesake and predecessor, the Syracusan tyrant Hiero I, who was a patron of poetry, distinguished in war, including against the Carthaginians, and the founder of the city of Aetna. The victories and praises of Hiero I in Pindar’s Pythian 1 and 3 do belong to the intertexts of the second part of 16, but Theocritus chose the Thessalian patrons of Simonides, who had also been a beneficiary of the generosity of Hiero I along with Pindar and Bacchylides,

Idyll 16 | 279

as the primary models of the addressees of the first part. This suggests that 16 is not only or primarily a prospective encomium of Hiero II in the mold of archaic epinician or encomiastic poetry. Theocritus embarks on an ambitious project of depicting the journey of a contemporary poet, who needs to praise men of means against a background of heroic and encomiastic poetry. The tradition offers rich material for associations and precedents thereof but may also turn out to put him at a disadvantage: “who would listen to another poet? Homer (or Pindar etc.) is enough for all.” The weight of a tradition full of great masters is as heavy as the weight of old age or of Aetna or Sicily (cf. Eur. Her. 637–41, Callim. Aet. fr. 1.33– 36 Harder), and a contemporary poet may neither ignore nor (wish to) throw it off. He must find a way to indicate that the tradition is not enough for all, and the likeliest ways of doing so is to suggest its shortcomings, tout one’s superiority, or both. Theocritus avoids ostentatious and competitive self-praise but indicates creatively and confidently that his worth, divine gift, and professional commitment are not inferior to the virtues of his great predecessors. His innovative review of their careers and relationships to their heroes and patrons allows him to associate his situation and prospective contributions with the encomia of his predecessors. Last but not least, he does not claim that his assets are superior to those of his contemporary colleagues. Through this sober assessment he manages to carve a comfortable position for himself vis-à-vis poetic past and present. He comes to gain and register confidence that someone will need his services. Hiero II is one of his prospective patrons but certainly not the only one. His patronage, if it materializes, will be rewarded with an encomium both similar to those composed by contemporaries and in the mold of earlier encomiastic poetry such as Simonides’, presented as going back to Homer’s praise of his heroes. Theocritus does not choose one strand of his poetic tradition, encomiastic over heroic, or civic over encomiastic, but offers a blend of major strands, including mendicant poetry, and even a bucolic version of the prospective encomium. Heroes and rulers, rich, generous men and good citizens are associated in a framework favored by benevolent divinities and imbued with heroic and civic values. This contrasts with a worthless community unable to appreciate and reward poetry for the immortal κλέος it offers. The encomium of Ptolemy II in 17, seemingly more traditional than 16, is constructed along similar lines, but at the end the prospect of the favorable reception of the encomium, or the poetic future, comes succinctly but elegantly to the fore, completing the panorama of a poetic journey through time and poetic wisdom.

280 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage

Idyll 17 The difference between Hiero II in 16, the prospective patron singled out and apparently preferred on account of his noble prospects, and Ptolemy II, the honorand of 17, is too obvious to need comment. Irrespective of the status of Hiero II, not to mention any other potential patron in 16, and the praise he might receive, he simply does not compare with Ptolemy II, the son of deified parents and ruler of an ancient country vast in size and resources. On the other hand, the difference between Hiero II and Ptolemy II notwithstanding, the narrator in 17 appears quite similar to his counterpart in 16. There is no explicit emphasis on his superiority, and he mentions his colleagues, both predecessors and contemporaries, without ironic disparagement. Nevertheless, unlike 16, 17 highlights the theme of wisdom or skill, a virtue attributed not only to poets and Ptolemy II but also to the king’s Egyptian subjects (81; cf. 97).78 In other words, the excellence of the honorand and its praise are presented in terms of expert skill or wisdom. In 16 patronage of poets or generosity toward them is certainly billed as the best use to which mortal men of means may put their wealth. Nevertheless, the advantage is not explicitly said to be the fruit of their wisdom (cf. 23), except insofar as one may think that the poet implies an archaic idea of unity of virtues in the framework of which piety and generosity are forms or manifestations of wisdom. Rich men unwilling to spend and patronize poets may be thought to be imprudent or indeed foolish, but the narrator stresses their shortsighted stinginess, a specific manifestation of folly, rather than their general moral/intellectual deficiency. The emphasis on wisdom, including the skill of the narrator, in 17 brings the poem in closer thematic alignment with choral lyric encomia for powerful rulers, especially the epinician songs of Pindar and Bacchylides, which extol the excellence of both laudator and laudandus. Similarly, the association between heroes and their parents and the Ptolemaic ruling couple and their shared ancestors is reminiscent of a common epinician trope. The honorand of 17 is cast as an exceptional figure on the cusp of immortality, and the narrator as a fitting encomiast, although not explicitly as unique or exceptional. The remarkable constancy in Theocritus’ presentation of the narrator contrasts with the exceptionality of the praise he lavishes on Ptolemy II, a virtually blameless son, ruler and patron. However, some ambiguities and especially the envoi ensure the avoidance of unctuousness.

|| 78 Cf. Hamm (2009) 97.

Idyll 17 | 281

The greatness of Ptolemy II is indicated from the very beginning through association with Zeus, the supreme god celebrated in every song, a traditional marker of poetic “piety” (1–4): Ἐκ Διὸς ἀρχώμεσθα καὶ ἐς Δία λήγετε Μοῖσαι, ἀθανάτων τὸν ἄριστον, ἐπὴν † ἀείδωμεν ἀοιδαῖς· ἀνδρῶν δ’ αὖ Πτολεμαῖος ἐνὶ πρώτοισι λεγέσθω καὶ πύματος καὶ μέσσος· ὃ γὰρ προφερέστατος ἀνδρῶν. From Zeus let us begin, Muses, and with Zeus you should end whenever we are minded to sing, since he is best of the immortals; but of men let Ptolemy be mentioned first and last and in the middle, since of men he is the most excellent.

As the proem begins with a reference to Zeus, the poem ends with another one (137), as if the Muses followed the initial injunction of the narrator. The references to Zeus are followed and preceded respectively by a mention of Ptolemy’s eminence (3–4 and 135–36). In the proem Zeus is the best (ἄριστος, 2) of gods, and Ptolemy is the greatest of men and the best of kings by means of the divine favor he enjoys (11–12, quoted below).79 The narrator refers to himself in the first-person singular, after having used the first-person plural at the beginning (1–2), as an encomiast of the modern powerful worthy, whom he associates with ancient counterparts: he fashions a hymn for him, just as his wise predecessors praised the heroes of old, the progeny of demigods,80 and doers of beautiful deeds (5–12): ἥρωες, τοὶ πρόσθεν ἀφ’ ἡμιθέων ἐγένοντο, ῥέξαντες καλὰ ἔργα σοφῶν ἐκύρησαν ἀοιδῶν· αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ Πτολεμαῖον ἐπιστάμενος καλὰ εἰπεῖν

|| 79 For the possible echo and reworking of the beginning of Aratus’ Phaenomena at 1 and Callim. H. 1 see Fantuzzi (1980), and Hunter (2003) 98; cf. Fakas (2001) 5–11, 22–32. For Orphic parallels cf. PDerv. col. 17, Pl. Lg. 715e7, 716a2 and [Arist.] Mu. 401a28–29, and see Kouremenos, Parássoglou and Tsantsanoglou (2006) 219–20. 80 For the use of ἡμίθεος, often synonymous with hero, in Greek poetry and Theocritus see Gow (19522) 328, and Hunter (2003) 101. The present instance may indicate the exalted parentage of heroes, with a suggestion of the semi-divine status of the parents of some among them. Alternatively, and not mutually exclusively, it may be a preliminary allusion to Heracles (20–33), the ancestor of the Macedonian kings, some of whom such as Alexander and Ptolemy I have already become immortal, and others such as Ptolemy II are in the process of achieving immortalization. For Heracles as ancestor of the Ptolemies see Stephens (2002) 248, and Acosta-Hughes and Stephens (2012) 168–70. Fantuzzi (2001) suggests that at 5 Theocritus offers his own interpretation of Simonides’ reference to the heroes Homer glorified (ἐπώνυμον ὁπ[λοτέρ]οισιν/ ποίησ’ ἡμ]ιθέων ὠκύμορον γενεή[ν, fr. 11.117–18 W2) = “the short-lived progeny of demigods” rather than “the short-lived generation of demigods”.

282 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage ὑμνήσαιμ’· ὕμνοι δὲ καὶ ἀθανάτων γέρας αὐτῶν. Ἴδαν ἐς πολύδενδρον ἀνὴρ ὑλατόμος ἐλθών παπταίνει, παρεόντος ἄδην, πόθεν ἄρξεται ἔργου. τί πρῶτον καταλέξω; ἐπεὶ πάρα μυρία εἰπεῖν οἷσι θεοὶ τὸν ἄριστον ἐτίμησαν βασιλήων. Past heroes, the sons of demigods, found skillful poets to celebrate their fine deeds, but my skill in praise will make a hymn for Ptolemy: hymns are an honor given even to the immortals themselves. When a woodcutter comes to forested Ida he looks everywhere in all that abundance for a place to begin his task. What should be my first subject? Countless to tell are the honors that the gods bestowed on the best of kings.

The genitive σοφῶν ἀοιδῶν (6) may be masculine (“wise singers”) or feminine (“wise songs”). This is perhaps intentionally ambiguous, especially as wise singers by definition fashion wise songs. The following couplet, introduced by the traditional formula of transition (αὐτὰρ ἐγώ, 7),81 announces the honorand of the present song and points to the similarity between the subjects of ancient and modern songs, the heroes and Ptolemy, and their skillful encomiasts. Πτολεμαῖον, the object of ὑμνήσαιμ(ι), may be construed also as object of καλὰ εἰπεῖν, a synonym of εὖ εἰπεῖν (cf. 16.13). This too may be ambiguous on purpose, but whether ambiguous or not, it certainly points to the refined wisdom of the narrator’s praise, as will be argued below, although he certainly will not present himself as the only or even the most skillful encomiast of Ptolemy.82 ἐπιστάμενος καλὰ εἰπεῖν apparently harks back not only to the narrator’s wise predecessors but also to the achievements of their subjects (ῥέξαντες καλὰ ἔργα, 6), which of course are the model of Ptolemy’s achievements: fine deeds deserve and receive fine praise. The association of word and deed, or song and achievement, is another prominent theme in epinician poetry, which stresses the power and authority of song to confer immortality to present and, by implication at least, earlier achievements. On another level, the choice of καλά points to the beauty or grace of the hymn, yet another ubiquitous motif of earlier poetry: wisdom and beauty, or skill and charm, are the main virtues of any work of art, but also of poetic subjects such as heroes and athletes. In this light, the poet and his hymn appear respectively as a gifted encomiast of the honorand and a gift worthy of his virtues, which also may be thought to hark back to earlier poetry. Later on, Ptolemy will be

|| 81 For the formula cf. n. 65 above. 82 ἐπιστάμενος καλὰ εἰπεῖν may also suggest the truthfulness of the praise, if it echoes Il. 4.404 (ἐπιστάμενος σαφὰ εἰπεῖν).

Idyll 17 | 283

praised as a competent warrior and wise ruler, a defender of his vast realm and a son preserving and augmenting his father’s possessions (102–5): τοῖος ἀνὴρ πλατέεσσιν ἐνίδρυται πεδίοισι ξανθοκόμας Πτολεμαῖος, ἐπιστάμενος δόρυ πάλλειν, ᾧ ἐπίπαγχυ μέλει πατρώια πάντα φυλάσσειν οἷ’ ἀγαθῷ βασιλῆι, τὰ δὲ κτεατίζεται αὐτός. Fair-haired Ptolemy, skilled at wielding the spear, is established in those broad plains. As a good king should, he is most concerned to keep safe his paternal inheritance, and he acquires more himself.

103 (ξανθοκόμας Πτολεμαῖος, ἐπιστάμενος δόρυ πάλλειν) and 7 (αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ Πτολεμαῖον ἐπιστάμενος καλὰ εἰπεῖν) mirror each other prosodically and syllabically, which highlights the congruence between the great king and his wise encomiast. There may also be a flattering suggestion of the king’s comely appearance in ξανθοκόμας, traditionally an attribute of heroes, all in their radiant prime and brave as tawny lions, irrespective of the actual color of Ptolemy’s hair. I will return to 103. Before this piece of eulogy, the narrator praises the king’s excellence by relating the glories of his ancestors and then his heroic models. The praise of the honorand begins in a traditional mold, with his father (13– 19), but the narrator precedes it with an alleged aporia caused by the vastness of his praise material (9–12, quoted above). The narrator’s aporia too is a traditional motif (cf. Od. 9.14–15, 7.241–42). The paratactic simile (9–10) has no epic parallel, but the reference to wooded Ida recalls unpleasant stories from the tradition: Paris, who was exposed and grew up on Ida, cut from it the timber for the ship that brought Helen and eventual destruction to Troy. The timber for Patroclus’ pyre was also cut on Ida (Il. 23.114–26). The verb used for the woodcutter (παπταίνει, 10) occurs only in unpleasant Homeric contexts of routing and imminent destruction, including the killing of the suitors and its aftermath (Od. 22.43; cf. 22.24, 381). Perhaps this background indicates ironic self-deprecation on the narrator’s part, especially since the verb is also used for the fearful distress of the herald Medon and the singer Phemius (Od. 22.380). The paratactic simile may also recall Bacchylides’ comparison of the narrator reviewing the abundance of his praise material with the eagle of Zeus soaring high (5.16–36). The ode begins with an encomiastic address to the honorand, Hiero I, including praise of his intellectual refinement and hospitality (5.1–8), and continues with references to the poet’s skill (9–16). Heracles, the ancestor of Alexander and Ptolemy I (20–26), is

284 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage prominent in the mythic part of the ode (56–175), and Zeus appears as the patron of the victor at the end (200).83 The god has pride of place in the part on Ptolemy I, which naturally emphasizes his immortalization and his coveted place on Olympus next to his relative and erstwhile leader, the deified Alexander (13–19): Ἐκ πατέρων οἷος μὲν ἔην τελέσαι μέγα ἔργον Λαγείδας Πτολεμαῖος, ὅτε φρεσὶν ἐγκατάθοιτο βουλάν, ἃν οὐκ ἄλλος ἀνὴρ οἷός τε νοῆσαι. τῆνον καὶ μακάρεσσι πατὴρ ὁμότιμον ἔθηκεν ἀθανάτοις, καί οἱ χρύσεος θρόνος ἐν Διὸς οἴκῳ δέδμηται· παρὰ δ’ αὐτὸν Ἀλέξανδρος φίλα εἰδώς ἑδριάει, Πέρσαισι βαρὺς θεὸς αἰολομίτρας. Ptolemy son of Lagus inherited from his ancestors the power to accomplish any great deed when once he stored up in his mind a plan such as no other man could have devised. The Father made him equal in honor even to the blessed immortals, and he has his own golden throne in the house of Zeus. At his side, favorably disposed, sits Alexander, destroyer of the Persians, the god of the glittering diadem.

The virtues and assets of Ptolemy I will be praised again (38–42, 56–57, 104–5), but the first quality singled out is his two-pronged ability to conceive and bring to fulfillment great plans, which no other mortal could have conceived.84 This unique efficiency is said to be a hereditary trait (13) and is thus bound to be bequeathed to his son. The reference to the ancestors of Ptolemy I does not dim the luster of the praise, as the excellence of families is a common encomiastic trope. The excellence of Ptolemy I is traced back not only to his father Lagus, who appears only in the patronymic Lageidas (14), but apparently all the way back to Zeus, the master of all planning and divine ancestor of the Macedonian kings. In recognition of this connection “the father”, Zeus, bequeathed on his descendant honors equal to those of the immortals, and Ptolemy I has a golden throne in the house of Zeus.

|| 83 Bacchylides 3, also for Hiero I, may be another model for the praise of Ptolemy, a generous patron of poetry as well as a pious benefactor of temples (108–9; cf. 121–28). Bacchylides’ honorand is praised for his wealth and piety: he was the greatest Greek benefactor of Delphi, as Croesus was the greatest benefactor among all mortals (61–66; cf. 10–21). The favor of gods toward Hiero is stressed throughout. Theron too in Pindar’s Olympian 2 may be a model for Ptolemy II; see Hunter (2003) 95–96. 84 For the praise cf. Callim. H. 1.85–87 and for its pharaonic background see Stephens (2003) 112–13.

Idyll 17 | 285

The praise of Ptolemy I also echoes the praise of Odysseus by the disguised Athena (οἷος κεῖνος ἔην τελέσαι ἔργον τε ἔπος τε, Od. 2.272), which makes Ptolemy II the counterpart of Telemachus, the addressee of the speech of Athena/Mentor. As a true son of his father, one of very few such men (Od. 2.276), Telemachus is bound to be resourceful and successful (Od. 2.270–80), and Ptolemy II, a true son of his father (40–44, 63–64; cf. 104–5), shares the same assets. Ptolemy I, a worthy scion of a great family, like his wife, a great boon to her parents (35), even outdoes Odysseus: he apparently did not bother with words, traditionally ranked beneath deeds, especially with respect to men of action, and he was superior to all men in conceiving and executing his great deeds.85 A great, arguably the main, plan conceived and magisterially executed by Ptolemy I was the appropriation of, and control over, the body of Alexander (Diod. 28.3.5), with whom he shares Heracles’ companionship on Olympus.86 In any case, μέγα ἔργον (13; cf. 26.37) is a phrase often used in the context of outrages in the epic.87 There may be some irony in the oblique allusion, if such it is, to the fate of Alexander’s body, but it is possible that Ptolemy II would interpret it as just a manifestation, and implicit praise, of his father’s wondrous skills: able to conceive plans no other man could, he was like Odysseus, a master of wiles and father of a worthy son. || 85 “All men” obviously would not include men of his own family, both ancestors and, crucially, descendants, mainly his son, who shared his competence. Theocritus manages to reserve a badge of true, unqualified uniqueness among men of the previous and current generations for the children of the great Ptolemy I, the only mortals who piously founded temples and a cult for their parents (121–34). As Stephens (2003) 166–67 argues, this act of filial piety is also a continued benefaction to mankind and thus guarantees the children’s eventual deification. 86 For Ptolemy’s appropriation of the body and its importance for the Prolemaic dynasty see Vasunia (2001) 251–52, Mori (2008) 24–25, and Stephens (2010) 50. Alexander was honored as a god with the state cult of Alexander the Founder and an eponymous royal priesthood. Alexander’s benevolence toward Ptolemy I (18–19), which apparently stems also from the king’s posthumous honors instituted by his one-time general, promotes Ptolemaic propaganda by suggesting Alexander’s endorsement of the initiatives of Ptolemy I. According to Pausanias (1.6.2; cf. Curt. 9.8.2), the Macedonians believed that Ptolemy I was an illegitimate son of Philip II and halfbrother of Alexander. If the rumor became current early enough, it would certainly boost Ptolemy’s standing. According to another tradition, Ptolemy I was a son of Zeus, like Heracles and Alexander; see Acosta-Hughes (2012a) 248. 87 These include e.g. Epicaste’s incest (Od. 11.272) and the suitors’ behavior (24.458; cf. 426); cf. 3.261, 275 (ἐκτελέσας μέγα ἔργον, for Aegisthus’ seduction of Clytaemestra), 4.663 = 16.346 (ἦ μέγα ἔργον ὑπερφιάλως ἐτελέσθη, Antinous and Eurymachus respectively refer to Telemachus’ trip), 12.373, 19.92, Hes. Th. 209–10, A.R. Arg. 1.662. The phrase is also used for huge, heavy objects that Diomedes and Aeneas lift in order to hurl at their enemies but two men of the epic narrator’s generation could not handle (Il. 5.302–4, 20.285–87).

286 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage The service of Ptolemy I and Alexander to Heracles (28–33) is also not what one would expect a great general and a conqueror to perform, as it combines the functions of a page, a revel companion, and a chamber-maid.88 It is usually suggested that the service is reminiscent of Leto’s waiting on her son in the introduction to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (5–9).89 The god, though, enters his father’s halls to join the feasting while Heracles is leaving after the evening’s revel to join his wife in her chambers. The only precedent for an attendant escorting masters to their bedroom is the service of Eurynome, who escorts Penelope and Odysseus (Od. 23.293–95). A more significant model may be the Iliadic Aphrodite, who took Helen to Paris’ bedroom after his duel with Menelaus. This passage contains the specification that Helen sat on a stool, which Aphrodite had placed opposite Alexander (Il. 3.424–26), as Heracles’ throne is opposite Alexander and Ptolemy I. The reminiscence may mediate the section on Berenice’s immortalization by Aphrodite (36–52). No irony or ambivalence is detectable in this section, a telling choice with respect to the praise of the honorand’s mother and Ptolemaic queens in general. Aphrodite snatched the woman away before she crossed Acheron and set her in her temple as a goddess sharing her prerogatives. This is usually associated with the abduction of various heroes such as Ganymede and Pelops by gods, but Aphrodite saves Berenice from death, as she had saved Paris and transported him to his bedroom (Il. 3.373–82) before taking Helen there to join him. Berenice I also holds a prominent place in the association of her son with the great heroes Diomedes and Achilles, and thus in the transition from the familial to the heroic models of Ptolemy II (53–57):

|| 88 For the irony in the choice of the predicate κενταυροφόνοιο for Heracles (20) and the reminiscences of his propensity for drink and of his promiscuity (28–29) see III n. 65 above. It is perhaps not to be ruled out that the image of the harmonious symposium on Olympus, at which nobody drinks to dangerous excess and Heracles retires escorted and probably helped by his attendants, may be a “correction” of the notoriously riotous, and occasionally murderous, revelries of Alexander. At Bactra some of his young pages, whose duties included accompanying the king in his hunts and guarding him when he slept, conspired to assassinate him in his sleep after a night of revelry, but the king never went to bed that night, and the conspirators were executed; see Carney (1981), and Holt (2005) 95–96. If this background is relevant, Alexander himself and Ptolemy I may now appear as loyal, divine pages of their great, restrained ancestor, who drinks quite a few cups of nectar but then sensibly goes to bed. 89 Leto’s waiting on her son is probably also the model of Heracles’ self-serving usurpation of Apollo’s role as Artemis’ attendant in Callimachus’ Hymn 3 (144–61). An ironic presentation of Olympus as a hierarchic place, in which seniority confers privileges, and newcomers are given tasks or secure plum assignments, as the case may be, was probably unlikely to offend Ptolemy II.

Idyll 17 | 287

Ἀργεία κυάνοφρυ, σὺ λαοφόνον Διομήδεα μισγομένα Τυδῆι τέκες, Καλυδωνίῳ ἀνδρί, ἀλλὰ Θέτις βαθύκολπος ἀκοντιστὰν Ἀχιλῆα Αἰακίδᾳ Πηλῆι· σὲ δ’, αἰχμητὰ Πτολεμαῖε, αἰχμητᾷ Πτολεμαίῳ ἀρίζηλος Βερενίκα. Dark-browed lady of Argos, uniting with Tydeus, the man from Calydon, you bore Diomedes, killer of men, and deep-bosomed Thetis bore to Peleus, son of Aeacus, the spearman Achilles; you, warrior Ptolemy, glorious Berenice bore to warrior Ptolemy.

In this vein, the part on the heroes highlights their relation to their excellent mothers, who bore these worthy sons to their husbands. Diomedes is perhaps an unexpected choice, given the fact that his father was a notorious, loud-mouthed hubrist (cf. A. S. 380–94), who got his just deserts at Thebes. Nevertheless, Tydeus’ prowess is nowhere in doubt in extant literature, and Diomedes’ paternity is the basis for his claim to heroic worth in Iliad (14.113–25). Both Agamemnon (4.370–400) and Athena (5.800–13) chide Diomedes as inferior to his father, reciting the exploits of Tydeus at Thebes before the attack of the Seven, but both rebukes are not meant as serious allocations of blame but as stinging exhortations. There is no doubt that Diomedes is equal to his father and probably superior, as Sthenelus, the son of the hubrist Capaneus, protests on behalf of the Epigonoi (4.405–10). Like Ptolemy II, Diomedes was the son of a fair mother and a great father, irrespective of the morality and fate of the latter. What is more, Diomedes was not only brave on the battlefield but also prudent and superior to all his age-mates in counsel, as Nestor suggests (Il. 9.54–56), although he proceeds to point out that he is young and his advice is not satisfactory. In 17 he is also associated with the spearman (ἀκοντιστάν) Achilles, not only as a model of Ptolemy II but also by means of the rare attribute λαοφόνος. It is found in literature before Theocritus only in Bacchylides (13.120), for the spear of Achilles, who is characterized as αἰχματάς a little later (133–34; cf. the characterization of the Ptolemies at 56–57). Perhaps not accidentally, the ode of Bacchylides also focuses on the heroes’ mothers. In any case, the demigod son of Thetis is certainly superior to Diomedes and his own father Peleus in prowess, but the focus of the reference is on the spear: in his generation only Achilles could wield this wondrous weapon (ἀλλά μιν οἷος ἐπίστατο πῆλαι Ἀχιλλεύς, 16.142 = 19.389), which had been bequeathed to him by his father Peleus, who had received it as a gift from Cheiron (Il. 16.140–44, 19.387–91). Achilles’ ability to wield the spear is the model of the later reference to the prowess of Ptolemy

288 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage (ξανθοκόμας Πτολεμαῖος, ἐπιστάμενος δόρυ πάλλειν, 103), a worthy successor to his father (104–5).90 After the description of Ptolemy’s birth and his being hailed by the island of Cos as a new Apollo (58–70), and before the praise of Egypt (77–85) and the vastness of the king’s realm (86–105), another reference to the favor of Zeus occurs (71–76): ὣς ἄρα νᾶσος ἔειπεν· ὁ δ’ ὑψόθεν ἔκλαγε φωνᾷ ἐς τρὶς ἀπὸ νεφέων μέγας αἰετός, αἴσιος ὄρνις. Ζηνός που τόδε σᾶμα· Διὶ Κρονίωνι μέλοντι αἰδοῖοι βασιλῆες, ὃ δ’ ἔξοχος ὅν κε φιλήσῃ γεινόμενον τὰ πρῶτα· πολὺς δέ οἱ ὄλβος ὀπαδεῖ, πολλᾶς δὲ κρατέει γαίας, πολλᾶς δὲ θαλάσσας. So the island spoke; and high above a great eagle shrieked three times from the clouds, an auspicious omen. This no doubt was a sign from Zeus: revered kings are watched over by Zeus son of Cronus, and that king is preeminent whom Zeus has loved from the moment of his birth. Great prosperity attends him, and great is the expanse of land, great the expanse of sea that he rules.

Zeus is mentioned at the beginning, middle, and end of the poem, as Ptolemy should be named first, last and in between (3–4). The god sent the favorable omen of the eagle (71–73),91 which indicated that Ptolemy II is his special favorite, blessed with great wealth (πολὺς…ὄλβος, 75) and power over huge realms of land and sea (76). The praise of the king’s wealth, a cardinal theme, creates an effect of flattering distance not only between the king and his fellow kings but also between the king and his epic models, although nothing to that effect is stated explicitly. Alexander was the model of a world ruler, but the Greek epic heroes ruled over puny territories, and their material assets would be an embarrassment in comparison to Ptolemy’s. At 95 the key word ὄλβος, emphatically positioned, marks in ring composition the end of the previous section of the praise and introduces the epigrammatic and concluding comparison between Ptolemy and other kings: in wealth he would outdo all of them (ὄλβῳ μὲν πάντας κε καταβρίθοι βασιλῆας; cf. 65, 75, 117). Ptolemy’s superiority is usually thought to be described

|| 90 For the demigod Achilles as a model for Ptolemy II mediated by the hero’s prominent position in Simonides’ Plataea elegy (fr. 10 and 11.19–10 W2) see Acosta-Hughes (2010) 193–95. For the importance of the spear in Hellenistic royal ideology see Looijenga (2014), esp. 228–29 (on Ptolemy II in Theocritus). 91 The eagle was a symbol of the Ptolemies; see Stephens (2003) 158–59, who also discusses parallels with Callimachus’ Hymn 1.

Idyll 17 | 289

in terms of weighing on scales, but the wealth of the king’s poorer rivals, the losers in the competition, would in such case rise rather than sink.92 The metaphor may hark back to Homer’s account of Zeus’ weighing of souls or fates (Il. 8.69–72, 22.208–13), or to Aeschylus’ Psychostasia (278 Radt), in which the losing side is the heavy, in effect conflating two metaphors, weighing and sinking or drowning.93 If so, Ptolemy is again obliquely compared to Achilles, the vanquisher of Hector and Memnon. In any case, the heroes are not forgotten but make a marked comeback (118–20), at the end of the section dealing with Ptolemy’s lavish generosity toward the artists, a manifestation of liberality and refinement (106–20). Already before that, Ptolemy is called ἀγήνωρ (85), a kingly general surrounded by a vast, rich army (93–94),94 and skilled at wielding the spear (103). Both references associate him with Achilles, and the latter also with the poet (7; cf. 113). The association of the Hesiodic favorites of Zeus and the Muses, kings and poets (Th. 80–103), takes up the proem themes. The king’s wealth is not just piled up uselessly at home (106–8) or even used for the fortification and protection of Egypt but is spent liberally, in generosity and benefactions. Ptolemy’s gifts (are said to) piously go first to temples of the gods (109–10), then to kings (110), cities and his companions (111), in a brilliant blend of Greek/Macedonian and Hellenistic/Egyptian traditional codes of principles governing the behavior of great men/rulers. Finally, artists and especially poets (are said to) benefit from his lavish patronage, in a mutually, and traditionally, beneficent relationship (112–20). Not only the order of beneficiaries but also the number of lines devoted to each category shows graphically their relative importance: two to gods (108–9), two to mortals (110–11), three to singers (112–14) and six to poets (115–20), alt-

|| 92 Cf., though, Shakespeare, Richard II 3.4.93 (“and with that odds he weighs King Richard down”). 93 The metaphor more likely evokes piling rather than weighing, as if the rivals competed with their wealth in piles, and Ptolemy diminished or “buried” his rivals with the “mountain” of his wealth. The weighing of verses in Aristophanes’ Frogs (1382–1406), in which the winner’s verses are heavier and Achilles (1400) and even Egyptians (1406) are mentioned, may also have been a more distant model. Cf. Harder (2012) 38–39. 94 The image of a king among his army is a reminiscence of the resources and eminence of Agamemnon (Il. 2.476–83; cf. 576–80), set in a pharaonic and Egyptian setting; see Griffiths (1979) 76, and Hunter (2003) 169. The attribute ἀγήνωρ is used for Achilles in the same metrical position in a speech of Diomedes addressed to Agamemnon (Il. 9.699; cf. 9.398, 20.174).

290 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage hough poetry already appears prominently in the song of the skillful singer taking part in the contests of Dionysus (112–13).95 Patronage of the arts, which includes only music and poetry, is given nine lines out of 13, more than double the praise of the other benefactions, a little more even than the praise of the royal couple’s parental cult (121–28). By comparison, in the advice to the misers (16.24– 29), the admonition to offer sacrifices to the gods (26) comes between the references to mortals. One-third of the advice is devoted to poets, but they are singled out at the beginning and end (24, 29) in ring-composition, and the entire next section is devoted to the benefits of their patrons (30–57). Obviously, there is some similarity of scale between the two poems, but unlike the misers or even Hiero II, Ptolemy II needs no advice or persuasion: he is already a great, famous king and patron, and the most pious among mortals. Significantly, κλέος, another key term, comes in at this point, in connection with the theme of ὄλβος, which appears for the last time, and epic heroes, the Atreids, who won rich spoils (116b-20): τί δὲ κάλλιον ἀνδρί κεν εἴη ὀλβίῳ ἢ κλέος ἐσθλὸν ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν ἀρέσθαι; τοῦτο καὶ Ἀτρεΐδαισι μένει· τὰ δὲ μυρία τῆνα ὅσσα μέγαν Πριάμοιο δόμον κτεάτισσαν ἑλόντες ἀέρι πᾳ κέκρυπται, ὅθεν πάλιν οὐκέτι νόστος. For a man of substance what could be finer than to win noble renown among mankind? That remains for the sons of Atreus, too, while all that countless wealth which they gained in capturing the great palace of Priam is hidden somewhere in darkness from which there is no return.

The best thing for a prosperous man is to win fine renown among men. As a wealthy, liberal patron, Ptolemy is praised in poetry (115–16a), like the laudandi of Pindar and Bacchylides, especially victorious rulers and patrons such as Hiero I of Syracuse, and epic heroes. The phrase κλέος ἐσθλόν (cf. 22.214–15) occurs a couple of times in the Homeric epics (e.g. Il. 9.415, 17.43, 23.280, Od. 3.380, 18.126; cf. Tyrt. fr. 12.31 W2). κλέος ἐσθλὸν ἀρέσθαι is a formula used in speeches delivered by Diomedes (Il. 5.273; cf. 3) and Achilles (18.121). It is also said of Telemachus (Od. 13.422), as is the phrase κλέος ἐσθλὸν ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν (Od. 1.95). This

|| 95 Acosta-Hughes (2012b) 399–400 rightly draws attention to the fact that the two groups of artists are different. The former may include participants in competitive dramatic performances, but the emphasis on song does not seem to point exclusively to drama, although dithyrambic performance is a possibility; cf. Hunter (2003) 182.

Idyll 17 | 291

background recalls the heroic models suggested or mentioned earlier, but the formula per se is a variation of the commoner κῦδος ἀρέσθαι, which occurs in battle and other epic/agonistic contexts. Gods grant κῦδος to mortals, and their favor is obviously crucial in connection with the κλέος it generates. κλέος is also often associated with poetry and enjoyed in life and posthumously, as the eternal imperishable prize of heroic virtues and achievements.96 The prosperous Ptolemy appears as the equal of heroes, who win renown on account of their victories along with the rich spoils these procure. The Atreids were prominent in several heroic spheres, ruling, war, wealth (in spoils), and κλέος (in song). The narrator picks the last two for explicit mention, obviously as most relevant to Ptolemy, suggesting that only the κλέος of the Atreids is preserved while their spoils have been concealed in a place of no return. This probably alludes to Hades, certainly to a pall of permanent and impenetrable darkness, which is equal to annihilation. The narrator indicates that riches, no matter how vast and nobly gained, are transient while only glory, including the glory of riches, is imperishable.97 There is no way for any mortal to preserve his riches, and their size should not lull the rich man with a false sense of permanence. Ptolemy is a Zeus-beloved king enjoying wealth and power, both inherited and acquired by conquest (τὰ δὲ κτεατίζεται αὐτός, 105; cf. ὅσσα μέγαν Πριάμοιο δόμον κτεάτισσαν ἑλόντες, 119). The narrator’s implicit warning to him not to become complacent is unmistakable but also softened by the preceding praise, which extolled the king’s wise insight into the best way of allocating his wealth. In contrast to the misers of 16, Ptolemy knows how a rich man should behave toward gods and mortals, and his liberality has secured the immortality of his κλέος in poetry. A hymnic envoi (135–37), quoted below, follows the capping praise of the filial piety of Ptolemy II and his sister-wife as well as their marriage (121–34).98 Griffiths argues that the praise of filial piety is the poet’s answer to his rhetorical

|| 96 Cf. above pp. 233–34. Perhaps the phrase κλέος ἐσθλὸν ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν ἀρέσθαι following the reference to poetic praise (115–16a) may imply that poets not only celebrate κλέος but also grant it to their patrons, as gods grant κῦδος to those they favor. 97 Homer does not emphasize the plunder of Troy (cf. Il. 1.127–29, 9.135–38, 24.543–46), but the epic cycle probably did (cf. PEG 89), as did other genres such as lyric and tragedy. Certainly, Troy was a wealthy city (Il. 18.288–92, 24.543–46; cf. 9.401–3, 17.225–26, A. Ag. 820, Eur. Tr. 18–19), and Paris is said to have dazzled Helen with his luxurious appearance (Eur. Tr. 991–97, IA 73–74; cf. Cycl. 182–86). It is not the glory or memory of the spoils that has vanished but the spoils per se. The fame of the rich spoils is part of the fame of heroic conquerors, which is eternal, unlike the material objects and, naturally, the mortal heroes themselves, unless they become immortalized. 98 This union may have been a delicate matter; see e.g. Schwinge (1986) 61. Stephens (2003) 168–69, though, argues that Theocritus’ praise has parallels with the presentation of divinities

292 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage question at 116–17: there is actually something better than poetic renown, the immortality the Ptolemaic couple have achieved by uniting in sacred marriage and establishing cults for their parents. In this light, the poet’s voice and authority retreat to the background, and Ptolemy is presented as the only one qualified to pray for the community and speak to (and for?) the gods (137).99 No mention of the community is made at 137, and the authority of the poet hardly diminishes. By definition, divinities are in no need of immortalizing services, and if Ptolemy II is a god in all but name, he would neither need nor be urged to ask his colleague Zeus for anything, least of all excellence, an attribute divinities also enjoy by definition. The main theme of the envoi is the reception of future encomiastic song, bringing together for the last time the honorand and the encomiast. It also mentions the demigods and Zeus and thus harks back to the proem (135–37): Χαῖρε, ἄναξ Πτολεμαῖε· σέθεν δ’ ἐγὼ ἶσα καὶ ἄλλων μνάσομαι ἡμιθέων, δοκέω δ’ ἔπος οὐκ ἀπόβλητον φθέγξομαι ἐσσομένοις· ἀρετήν γε μὲν ἐκ Διὸς αἰτεῦ. Farewell, lord Ptolemy! I shall make mention of you just as much as of the other demigods, and I think my account will not be rejected by future generations. As for excellence, you should request that from Zeus.

Ptolemy II is now included in the company of demigods, at least in the realm of song, providing as worthy a subject as the heroes of old, descendants of demigods. The poet quite confidently claims a position as promoter and warden of his subject’s fine renown (cf. κλέος ἐσθλὸν ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν, 117), although the favorable reception of the narrator’s future songs, which will apparently spread the king’s renown, is described with a (modest?) litotes (ἔπος οὐκ ἀπόβλητον… ἐσσομένοις, 136–37; cf. οὔ τοι ἀπόβλητον ἔπος ἔσσεται, ὅττί κεν εἴπω, Il. 2.361). The songs will then apparently mirror those of the wise bards (σοφῶν...ἀοιδῶν, 6), who sang of earlier heroes, descendants of demigods (5). The narrator associates

|| in contemporary prose writers such as Hecataeus and Euhemerus, whose approach emphasized divine benefactions to mankind (cf. 17.124–25) and was at odds with the mythology of the hymnic tradition. Cf. Hunter (2003) 192–93, who points out that, apart from Sotades (fr. 1 Powell), there is no contemporary evidence about strong Greek disapproval of the marriage, in Alexandria or elsewhere. Contrast Hazzard (2000) 39–40, and Radke (2007) 246–47. Certainly no disapproval is implied in any poem of Theocritus. The praise of the marriage in 17 recalls the loving and harmonious union of the couple’s parents (34–46). The union of Zeus and Hera (131–34) is the great model of a brother-sister marriage, but Heracles and Hebe (32–33) are also half-siblings. 99 Griffiths (1979) 80–82; cf. Goldhill (1991) 280.

Idyll 17 | 293

himself with his predecessors also in his promise to sing of demigods and Ptolemy, thus both claiming a place in the line of earlier wise bards and reaffirming his capacity as encomiast of the contemporary worthy (cf. 7–8), apparently as a member of the cohort of modern interpreters of the Muses that celebrate the liberality of the great patron of poetry (cf. 115–16). This elegantly restrained summing up of the position of the king and his encomiast contains the last refined ambiguity of the poem, which concerns the status of Ptolemy as one of the demigods, the subject of the poet’s future songs. Already before that, the salutation at 135 (χαῖρε, ἄναξ Πτολεμαῖε) evokes archaic models (cf. HHom. 31.17, 32.17; cf. also 15.9, 19.48, 21.5) but has no exact parallel among them or among Callimachus’ hymns (cf. 2.113, 4.325). Ptolemy is addressed by office and name, but without mention of his divine parentage or any request to him to confer anything. He is addressed as a lordly mortal, although ἄναξ is often used for gods, and the audience may be meant to expect a clarification. The subsequent mention of demigods harks back to Homeric Hymns, but again it does not replicate them, as the poet does not promise to start from (a divine) Ptolemy (cf. HHom. 31.18–19, 32.18–20) and sing of (heroic) demigods but “to remember (i.e. honor in song) you equally and other demigods.” Ptolemy is then nowhere unambiguously hailed as a divinity in a hymn that starts with Zeus and ends with a salutation that does not confer or confirm divine status. On the other hand, the promise may indeed count and be interpreted as confirmation of Ptolemy’s inclusion in the coveted ranks of heroes, descendants of demigods and famous in song for their worthy deeds—after all, Ptolemy, like his sister-wife, was the offspring of excellent parents rewarded with divine honors for their virtues. Still, the formulation of the poet’s promise leaves open the possibility that Ptolemy is not explicitly included in the ranks of the demigods, as ἄλλος may be used with substantives in enumerations in the sense ‘besides, as well’. If so, the poet promises to remember equally in future songs “you and the demigods” rather than “you and other demigods”. To be sure, even so, Ptolemy, in case he cared to entertain the possibility, is not disparaged and might not feel slighted or cheated of what he might consider his birth right, but the poet might thereby strike a prelude to his final suggestion to the king, the request for excellence. The beautiful deeds of the heroes, the manifestation of their excellence, have been celebrated in excellent song. The great Ptolemy II, whether a demigod or not, is still living on earth, and his record is subject to the fluctuations of fortune, or even divine favor. The poet claims that, as he believes, his word will not be rejected by posterity, securing his glory and especially Ptolemy’s. As already indicated, even if Ptolemy is hailed as a demigod, the poet’s failure to follow the hymnic tradition and make any request (cf. HHom. 15.9, 20.8, CEG 334; cf. also

294 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage Call. H. 1.93, which will be discussed below) indicates that the king is not addressed as a god: the poet does not ask him for excellence or favor toward his song, which are certainly in the remit of the gods.100 Rather than ask the king for anything, the poet enjoins him to ask Zeus for excellence (ἀρετή), instead of ὄλβος and ἀρετή, as is common at the end of hymns. Ptolemy has an abundance of ὄλβος, and Zeus’ favor virtually guarantees that he will never lose it, but a Greek poet might without prejudice have urged a powerful ruler to pray for wealth and excellence. In terms of conventional Greek piety, divine favor, and indeed disfavor, are not, and should never be assumed to be, guaranteed for the span of a mortal’s life. The poet does not state explicitly that Zeus’ favor will never diminish or cease, and so potential divine nemesis is thwarted. As a mortal, Ptolemy is not immune to adversity, but from birth and by birth he enjoys credentials as secure as any mortal could hope for. By glossing over prosperity, the poet implies that it is both reasonably secure and especially less important than excellence. More important, patronage of poets has secured Ptolemy κλέος for his ὄλβος, or the true ὄλβος of κλέος in song. The narrator has sung the praises of the king’s wealth and power but he has also celebrated his piety and generosity, traditional manifestations of Greek elite excellence. In other words, the king’s excellence has also been “conferred” in encomiastic, glorifying song, so this may hardly be the reason why ἀρετή but not ὄλβος is mentioned at the end.101 This choice crowns the balance that the narrator has managed to strike. First, although he celebrated the king’s wealth and liberality as well as his moral, administrative and martial virtues, he avoided using the key word ἀρετή, which now appears very prominently. The only thing then left for Ptolemy, the greatest mortal (cf. 4), to ask for from Zeus, the greatest immortal (cf. 2), is excellence, not least because this is a prerequisite or the basis for god-given ὄλβος and will presumably result in future praise songs.102 Continued, Zeus-granted excellence will afford the means for continued patronage and guarantee more songs of glory. Excellence, presented mainly as a form of wisdom in the poem, is to be secured by pious prayers to Zeus,

|| 100 Ptolemy could confer prosperity (ὄλβος) but he has already done so, although a request for continued patronage, which would be inelegant to state explicitly, may be implied. 101 Pace Hunter (2003) 198. 102 If ἀρετή is taken in the original, narrower sense ‘fighting prowess, bravery’, the prayer might be inspired by Ptolemy’s lack of military distinction. For this shortcoming see Cairns (1972) 110–12, and Martin (2013), with other references. However, on conventional and practical grounds it seems very unlikely that the encomiast would hint at a defect of the royal laudandus at the very end of the encomium. The tenor of the poem so far favors a less restricted interpretation. Still, the admonition for a prayer for excellence is a daring move, and a sobering piece of advice, on the part of the poet.

Idyll 17 | 295

the Hesiodic patron of kings, and the beginning, middle and end of all songs. Second, the final admonition to Ptolemy may count as one of the most indicative markers, if not the most telling, of the poem’s avoidance of excessive praise of both encomiast and laudandus. This highlights not only the virtue of Hellenic restraint as opposed to oriental excess but also an allegiance to one of the prominent topoi of encomiastic lyric. In this vein, the traditional coupling and equation of wealth and excellence has been replaced by an equally traditional privileging of excellence over wealth,103 in a less provocative, and potentially offensive to Ptolemy, form of a hierarchization of the two precious assets. This may be contrasted with the end of Callimachus’ Hymn 1. The poem may plausibly be viewed as one of Theocritus’ main intertexts.104 Addressed to Zeus, it also praises “our ruler” (85), perhaps Ptolemy II, using praise language reminiscent of pharaonic texts.105 The narrator asks the god for excellence and wealth (ἀρετήν τε ἄφενός τε, 93). The request and its explanation (94–95), which have partial parallels in archaic epic and lyric,106 do not explicitly include the ruler, as the narrator avoids identification throughout the hymn. The ruler is apparently included in the broad category of men but he certainly enjoys supreme divine favor, presumably in both excellence and wealth, manifested in his superiority. He might then be pleased, whether he considers himself a mortal in need of continued divine favor or whether he believes that unlike the rest of mortals, including his inferior colleagues (84–89), he enjoys constant divine favor, i.e. that he has already moved one grade above mortals on his presumed way to immortalization. The tone of the end of the hymn echoes its beginning: the poet began with Zeus, the best subject of song (1–3), and provided the answer to a puzzle (4–10), to which I will return; at the end he asks for the best boons and volunteers the explanation to the implicit puzzle of why tradition has associated the pair. In this manner, all the best subjects have been given due praise and all puzzles the best solutions. The deeds of the supreme god and best subject of song are such that the narrator pronounces them beyond the capacity of past or future poets to praise (91– || 103 See West (1978) 235. 104 17 was probably composed in the second half of the 270s, and Callimachus’ hymn perhaps in 285, for the festival of the Basileia in celebration of Ptolemy’s ascendancy to the co-regency with his father. See Hunter (2003) 7, and Stephens (2015) 51; cf. III n. 99 above. 105 For the identity of the ruler see Lüddecke (1998) 29–30, and Stephens (2003) 77–79. For the praise cf. n. 84 above. 106 The request occurs at the end of HHom. 15 and 20 with no elaboration; for the association of wealth and excellence and their benefits see e.g. Hes. Op. 313, Sol. fr. 13.1–9 W2, and Pi. O. 2.10–11, P. 5.1–4; cf. H. Od. 11.358–61, Alc. fr. 360 V, Thgn. 525–26, and S. fr. 88 Radt.

296 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage 92).107 Theocritus also omits mention of the present, and even the past, at the end. The claim that his encomiastic poetry will be appreciated by posterity certainly situates the esteem in the future and indeed leaves little doubt about it. On the other hand, as already suggested, the mention of the praise of demigods and Ptolemy in future songs casts the poet as a continuator of the epic tradition and a member of the group of contemporary royal encomiasts. Ptolemy has won the bet of excellence and his concomitant glorification in present song (cf. 115–16). This is a pledge for immortalization, but future fame depends not only on the existence or even the abundance of current poetic encomia but also and primarily on their favorable future reception, the ultimate guarantee of future fame for the honorand. In this light, neither Theocritus nor Ptolemy is inferior to counterparts in past, present or future, by the grace of Zeus. The narrator of Callimachus’ hymn is more provocative. At the beginning, for instance, he expresses uncertainty about Zeus’ birthplace. He cites the different opinions of different sources, although Cretan Ida is not elsewhere attested and may be his invention,108 and finally settles on Arcadia because the Cretans are liars (4–10). Further, he castigates old poets who suggested that the realms of the three divine sons of Rhea were determined by lot (57–66). Stephens claims that in the proem of 17 Theocritus confidently proclaims his competence in song and chooses Ptolemy as his subject.109 So he does, but he also expresses doubt as to the proper choice for the beginning of his encomium because of the abundance of divine favor Ptolemy enjoys (9–12). The main difference between Callimachus and Theocritus is not located in their narratorial confidence or their attitude toward their subjects but in their posture toward other poets. Callimachus polemically disparages the tale of the ancient poets as false, again on seemingly, or ironically, pedantic and dubiously rational grounds, as the casting of lots for unequal prizes (61–63) is far from self-evidently absurd. The passage contains yet greater irony, which has gone unnoticed: Olympus (61), the presumed lot of Zeus, is not the one mentioned in Homer (Il. 15.192), and

|| 107 Stephens (2003) 150–51 suggests that Callimachus reserves the omitted temporal category, the present, for himself. This is far from certain, and the hymn deals much more extensively with the birth and growing up of Zeus than with his works. Cf. Hopkinson (1988) 131. The omission of the present is also evident in Xenophanes’ fragment about mortal ignorance of all matters divine (DK 21 B 34). The audience may observe the present more easily than either past or future. Seers, like poets, surveyed, and provided insights in, all three temporal categories, but in matters that did not require mantic powers, some knowledge of the past and even insight into the future would not be beyond the grasp of laymen. 108 Cf. McLennan (1997) 33, and Morrison (2007) 123. 109 Stephens (2003) 148–51.

Idyll 17 | 297

Callimachus accuses his most ancient predecessor for a blunder he has not committed.110 Just as indicatively, the rejection of the ancient tale fails to include any mention of, or allusion to, Hesiod (Th. 881–85), the only surviving predecessor that presents the version of the narrator, who is thus cast as not only superior, even if only in lying persuasively,111 but also as highly original, the only propagator of a story worthy of the god. At the end of 17 Theocritus includes the crucial promise of a well-received song for the (divinized) ruler and the (other) demigods. In contrast to Callimachus, who blames poets and non-poets alike as untrustworthy, Theocritus’ encomium is not billed as the best or truest song, or as better than the competition, but as good enough to immortalize the worth of the honorand by means of its favorable reception. Equally important, as already suggested at the beginning, the skillful encomiast of a ruler (praised as) unique in power, assets and chances of immortalization, including by virtue of his ancestry, does not present himself as unique among poets, older or contemporary, whether on account of his wisdom, divine favor he enjoys, or the truth and accuracy of his claims. Instead, he positions himself in a long tradition of wise bards, but also in the company of competent, blameless contemporary colleagues, who all celebrate Ptolemy in return for his patronage (115–17; cf. 16.98–103). Theocritus does not name any sources or models but denigrates none and incorporates as intertexts at least Homer, Hesiod, Simonides, and the epinician poets. He eschews aggressive self-advertisement,

|| 110 Lots are also mentioned in HHom. 2.84–87; cf. Pi. O. 7.54–57. It is not clear why Callimachus substitutes Olympus for the sky. In the Homeric passage under discussion (Il. 15.187–93), Olympus is unambiguously distinguished from the sky, and thus the two cannot be used interchangeably, although in other passages Olympus and the sky are not clearly differentiated (e.g. Il. 5.759–51, Od. 6.41–47; cf. 15.523). For the controversy and the views of ancient scholars and philosophers see Kouremenos, Parássoglou and Tsantsanoglou (2006) 189–91. Callimachus may allude to this controversy, but whether he does or not, the discrepancy with Homer points to the theme of persuasive lying (64) and possibly includes ironic undermining of the narrator’s authority. Cf. next n. 111 The attack on the hapless ancient poets is double-edged, disparaging them as propagators of stupid and ineffectual lies. According to Hutchinson (2014) 45, Callimachus does not openly mock the earlier poets. There may be little doubt that the narrator does not reject lying outright but endorses persuasive lying, another echo of Hesiod (Th. 27). The narrator’s distancing from the tales of his predecessors is reminiscent of Pindar (O. 1.25–35), who, nevertheless, presents a possibly original version and acknowledges the charm of the version he rejects. It has also been suggested that Callimachus’ rejection of the tale of his predecessors lacks the moralistic slant of Pindar’s revision of the story of Pelops or Ajax; see Fuhrer (1988), and Morrison (2007) 121–22. Pindar elsewhere acknowledges the majestic power of Homer’s skill and craft, despite the lies in his poetry (N. 7.20–23).

298 | Once upon a time and nowadays: song and patronage and his novelties and ambiguities are not shattering. All in all, in comparison with the rest of his poems discussed earlier, 17 does celebrate the honorand with few if any qualifications and expresses greater confidence in the narrator’s poetic skill and the favorable reception of his poetry. This major theme is also prominent in the hymnic envoi of Apollonius’ Argonautica (4.1773–75), which may count as a more illuminating intertext of 17 than Callimachus’ hymn. It harks back to the epic’s hymnic proem (Arg. 1.1–4; cf. 18– 22) and is a prayer for reperformance and deepening appreciation of the song from year to year.112 At the beginning and end of their poems both Theocritus and Apollonius look to the future and the past in their capacity as singers and heirs of a long tradition of praise poetry. There is no explicit or implicit disparagement of predecessors or contemporary poetic colleagues, and both subject(s) and poets are slated to enjoy fame in posterity. However, the same, traditionally sanctioned motif, which is handled in a similar manner, creates a quite different effect in each poem. Theocritus focuses on the esteem his song will enjoy in posterity, apparently as source and repository of κλέος. This is a last tribute to the virtues of the honorand, but it is also congruent with the activity of other encomiasts, whose skill and success he has freely acknowledged. Apollonius addresses his already famous heroes of old (cf. 1.1) as divinities, hinting at their cult, and highlights the incantatory effect of the transformation of harsh toil into pleasing song. He does not promise another, different song but offers a prayer for an increasingly favorable reception of the same song. In a way, the song will be the same and different, becoming ever sweeter to recipients, as the ever more attractive celebration of the famous toils. Like Theocritus, Apollonius encompasses past, present and future, and situates the crucial guarantee of greatest fame in the future. His song, an epic hymn or hymnic epic, is another song about the glories of the old heroes, different from those of his predecessors, and already appreciated by contemporaries, as the comparative implies. It will also hopefully be more deeply enjoyed in the future, perhaps as the only one deserving reperformance and offering deepening enjoyment. Theocritus promises another, similar song praising old heroes and Ptolemy in the manner of the Homeric Hymns and declares his confidence about its favorable reception, avoiding an explicit praise of the present song but elegantly suggesting it. Rather than the berating, eristic or self-promoting, if not self-aggrandizing, attitude of a Pindar

|| 112 For the complexity of this envoi see Clare (2002) 283–85.

Idyll 17 | 299

or a Callimachus,113 Theocritus adopts the calm and confident attitude of a Simonides or Bacchylides, the divinely granted excellence of whose laudandi is freely acknowledged by all, duly praised, and bathed in the light of immortality. Whether soaring high as Zeus’ eagle or working in a forest as a woodsman, the wise encomiast’s ways and material of praise are truly vast. So are the wealth and, hopefully, the excellence of his subject, guaranteeing his κλέος ἐσθλόν in present and future song (cf. 115–17), which will enjoy fame (cf. 136–37), or κλέος ἐσθλόν (cf. 22.214–15).

|| 113 Callimachus (Aet. fr. 7.13–14 Harder) too prays to the Graces to favor his song with their touch so that it may survive for a long time; cf. Hec. fr. 80 Hollis. However, there is no mention of change—Callimachus may hardly ever claim or imagine that his song may be receptive of any kind of amelioration, even that of greater appreciation.

V. Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new The quiet confidence and confident modesty of the Theocritean narrator inform also his epigrams on poets, which take the form of inscriptions for honorific statues or funerary inscriptions. Since there is no cogent reason to doubt the genuineness of the epigrams, and there are signs that they were composed in Theocritus’ time, I will treat them as genuine, although certainty is impossible.1 If they are spurious, they seem to be the work of a poet or poets clearly familiar with Theocritus’ stance toward his predecessors and contemporaries. Epigrams on poets were quite common and virtually bound to touch on the honorands’ poetry and especially their legacy. The subject allowed room for pungent irony and sophisticated mockery or even devastating low blows of satire. No abusive epigram ascribed to Theocritus has survived. This may be due to the vagaries of transmission, but it is indicative that his epigrams about the controversial predecessors Archilochus (AP 7.664 = 21 Gow), Anacreon (AP 9.599 = 17 Gow) and Hipponax (AP 13.3 = 19 Gow), whom other poets caricatured or ironically deconstructed, contain no scurrilous reference and hardly any sting in their poetic tails. The spurious epigram in Theocritus’ voice, which stood at the head of an early collection of his work, highlights his stance toward his and other poets’ work (AP 9.434 = [27] Gow): Ἄλλος ὁ Χῖος, ἐγὼ δὲ Θεόκριτος ὃς τάδ’ ἔγραψα εἷς ἀπὸ τῶν πολλῶν εἰμὶ Συρακοσίων, υἱὸς Πραξαγόραο περικλειτᾶς τε Φιλίννας· Μοῦσαν δ’ ὀθνείαν οὔτιν’ ἐφελκυσάμαν. The Chian is another, but I, Theocritus, the author of these works, am a Syracusan, one among many, the son of Praxagoras and renowned Philinna, and I have taken to myself no alien Muse. (transl. Gow)

The epigram has generated lively scholarly discussion, focused mainly on the first and last lines. I agree with Gow and Rossi that the epigram was not an inscription at the base of a statue, that the Chian is probably not Homer but the fourth-century sophist Theocritus, and that the end is not meant to guarantee the

|| 1 For the genuineness of the epigrams on poets see Rossi (2001) 358–59. A prominent spurious example is the epigram that I quote and discuss next.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615272-006

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 301

authenticity of the poems in the collection.2 The distinction between Theocritus and his Chian namesake does not make the author of the epigram an incompetent versifier, as Rossi suggests. The Chian sophist Theocritus is now obscure, but Gow correctly points out that the Suda entry (s.v. Theocritus) indicates that its source considered him illustrious enough to list first. Whether the epigrammatist was inspired by a lexicographical entry or not, he perceptively captured and chose to stress a cardinal feature of Theocritus’ poetic persona, a modesty that eschews arrogance and self-promotion but is compatible with pride in his achievement. The speaker identifies himself by name, taking care to eliminate the possibility of confusion with a namesake, which may plausibly be taken as the first sign of restraint. By zeroing in on the possibility of confusion, the author implies that he is not (considered as) very famous, unlike, for instance, Theognis (22–23), or the author of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (169–73). The identification of his place of origin is also cast in terms of a community of fellow citizens, among whom the narrator claims no special, exalted position. Gow thinks that he points to the greatness of Syracuse, but there is no parallel for stressing a city’s importance in this manner. Pace Gow I believe that the author of the epigram recalls 16.101–2 (εἷς μὲν ἐγώ, πολλούς δὲ Διὸς φιλέοντι καὶ ἄλλους/ θυγατέρες), the poet’s acknowledgment of the multitude of competent contemporary poets. If the author of the epigram indicates the greatness of Syracuse, this would pertain to the size of the community rather than any distinction it and/or he enjoys.3 A Greek who registered his name and place of origin, especially perhaps in the context of a short epigram, would not as a matter of course exalt himself. However, it is also quite unusual, and indicative of the narrator’s stance, that he would explicitly point to his lack of distinction.4 || 2 Gow (19522) 549–50 and Rossi (2001) 343–47; see also Hunter (1996) 91–92, and cf. Cameron (1995) 424–25. Keeline (2017) 473–74 argues that Theon composed the epigram for his edition of Theocritus’ poems. 3 Rossi (2001) 347 also interprets the second line as indicating the illustriousness of the Syracusans, and thus the poet, by associating it with the reference to the Syracusan narrator’s burial in a foreign land in a funerary epigram (ἀντὶ δὲ πολλᾶς/ πατρίδος ὀθνείαν κεῖμαι ἐφεσσάμενος, AP 7.660.3–4 = 9.3–4 Gow). οἱ πολλοί/τὰ πολλά was widely used for multitudes, and the epigram probably recalls mainly Theognis 428 (καὶ κεῖσθαι πολλὴν γαῖαν ἐφεσσάμενον = Sext. PH 3.231.5; West prints καὶ κεῖσθαι πολλὴν γῆν ἐπαμησάμενον). If it does, πατρίδος and ὀθνείαν qualify the implicit γαίας and γαῖαν respectively. πολλᾶς would then be a quantifying qualification of πατρίδος γαίας. The speaker indicates that, instead of lying buried, apparently honorably and comfortably, deep in the earth of his country, he was destined to lie in a foreign grave. 4 Praise, even on the hyperbolic side, of the greatness of Syracuse is clearly included in the epigram for Epicharmus (πελωρίστᾳ πόλει, AP 9.600.5 = 18.5 Gow). The difference is telling: an epigram in the voice of Theocritus eschews explicit praise, a restriction that does not apply to an

302 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new The inclusion of his parents’ names may be construed as a sign of pride, especially because of the predicate he attributes to his mother.5 On the other hand, it also, and perhaps primarily, serves to distinguish him from his fellow citizens in the manner of a modern identification card or encyclopedia entry: Theocritus [disambiguation], Syracusan writer, son of Praxagoras and the renowned Philinna. Finally, the reference to his failure to take on an alien Muse shows pride, but this may be thought to be located in the homeliness of the collection rather than, or as much as, in its sophistication: Theocritus calls himself a Syracusan among many and declares that he is the author of the collection and that he did not plunder other poets’ work, apparently for inspiration, themes or any background. He wrote this (τάδ[ε], 1), and it is all his, whatever its worth: his work receives no qualification, laudatory, celebratory or even generic, beyond the claim to authenticity or originality. The collection is not even called ἀοιδά/αί or μέλος/η, and the author is not designated as ᾠδοποιός or μουσοποιός, for instance, or as favored by poetic divinities. The failure to compare or associate the work with the production of any other poet is a feature that distinguishes the epigram from Theocritus’ poetry. By contrast, the failure to register particular pride in the poet’s work or country and the choice to include only a hint of pride in his family, perhaps ironic or humorous, certainly and significantly reflect a key feature of Theocritus’ work. As already indicated, in the epigrams about old poets, Theocritus chooses to focus mainly on famous aspects of the honorands’ great legacy but suppresses all negative or ambivalent traits such as substance or iambic abuse. In the epigrams about Archilochus (AP 7.664 = 21 Gow) and Anacreon (AP 9.599 = 17 Gow), for instance, Theocritus eschews mention not only of Archilochus’ abusive vein6 but also of his, and especially Anacreon’s, love of wine, failing to focus on the excesses mentioned by other poets such as Leonidas (Pl. 306, 307, on which more below; cf. AP 7.27–28, 31, 33). Even Callimachus’ short funerary epigram about himself (Βαττιάδεω παρὰ σῆμα φέρεις πόδας εὖ μὲν ἀοιδήν/ εἰδότος, εὖ δ’ οἴνῳ

|| epigram celebrating an old master in the voice of his grateful fellow-citizens who dedicate a statue of him to Dionysus. For the epigram see below pp. 305–7. 5 Hunter (1996) 92, who reads the epigram as humorous, thinks that the mother was presumably obscure but was accorded a qualification attributed to Berenice (17.34). This is plausible, and the choice may also be a sort of “self-quotation”: if the adjective, especially the feminine, which occurs first in the passage just mentioned, was as rare as it now appears to be (cf. Gow [19522] 550; the masculine occurs first in Bacchylides [11.81; cf. 5.120, 9.8, 10.19]), then the use of one of Theocritus’ trademark words, as it were, enhances the Theocritean flavor of the epigram. 6 Contrast, for instance, Dioscorides (AP 7.351), and cf. next n. For an early attack on Archilochus see Heraclitus (DK 22 B 42).

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 303

καίρια συγγελάσαι, AP 7.415 = 35 Pf.), although quite restrained, especially by his standards, apparently contains an ironic reworking or “correction” of Archilochus’ famous self-identification as adept in performing dithyrambs when his brain is thunderstruck by wine (ὡς Διωνύσου ἄνακτος καλὸν ἐξάρξαι μέλος/ οἶδα διθύραμβον οἴνωι συγκεραυνωθεὶς φρένας, fr. 120 W2).7 Song and wine traditionally go together, but in Callimachus’ epigram about himself the connection is made looser or ambiguous. Instead of designating wine as a prerequisite for song, Callimachus indicates that it is a prerequisite for laughing in company, perhaps by means of composing amusing or scurrilous verses performed at pleasant symposia. The most obvious interpretation of the epigram is that Callimachus knows well how to hold his own in song and wine, unlike Archilochus, who was notoriously prone to drinking, which inspired his song. Callimachus never missed a bit even in his cups, he was a great singer and a Socratic symposiast, drinking and laughing in season, showing his composure even in drink or mockery. Either way, whether praising himself for composing poetry without the help of wine or for not being overwhelmed by the thunderous influence of the mighty substance, Callimachus apparently presents himself as a poet that might surpass even the venerable Archilochus in poetic dexterity and sophisticated banter.8 Theocritus’ Archilochus epigram takes the form of an inscription for a statue of the poet or a funerary inscription (AP 7.664 = 21 Gow): Ἀρχίλοχον καὶ στᾶθι καὶ εἴσιδε τὸν πάλαι ποιητάν τὸν τῶν ἰάμβων, οὗ τὸ μυρίον κλέος διῆλθε κἠπὶ νύκτα καὶ ποτ’ ἀῶ. ἦ ῥά νιν αἱ Μοῖσαι καὶ ὁ Δάλιος ἠγάπευν Ἀπόλλων, ὣς ἐμμελής τ’ ἐγένετο κἠπιδέξιος ἔπεά τε ποιεῖν πρὸς λύραν τ’ ἀείδειν.

|| 7 Archilochus’ partiality to drink and the vehemence of his iambic attacks are mentioned in Callimachean fragments (544 Pf.; cf. 380 Pf.), unfortunately now without context. 8 The succinct praise of the mastery of his art and his sophistication is reminiscent of the tone of the so-called companion epigram (AP 7.525 = 21 Pf.), quoted and discussed below, in which the deceased father of the poet emphasizes the fame of his son and his own father, also named Callimachus. For the designation Battiades in 35, which may not be an actual patronymic, see Tsantsanoglou (2010) 108–9. The narrator of 21 claims that his son sang songs beyond the reach of envy, apparently an allusion to the complete vanquishing of his rivals in his secure mastery of his art. Cf. II n. 83 above. Bing (1995) 126–28 argued that the two epigrams were composed in the manner of epitaphs on adjacent tombstones, which explained each other; cf. Kirstein (2002) 117–21, and Bettenworth (2007) 78–79, who points out that any information the reader may gather is supplied by a second literary source: the incompleteness, often a characteristic of funerary inscriptions, which may be remedied by location, ornaments and similar, ironically stresses the literary character of the epigrams.

304 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new Stop and look on Archilochus, the ancient iambic poet, whose infinite fame has spread both to the East and the West. He was indeed a favorite of the Muses and of Delian Apollo, endowed with musical ability and skilled at making poetry and performing it on the lyre.

Rossi suggests that the epigram was probably not commissioned for an actual statue because of the absence of any mention of the dedicatee(s) and the location.9 If so, then the significance of Theocritus’ failure to dwell on abuse is enhanced. Archilochus, possibly the oldest master celebrated, receives the most fulsome praise, for musical inventiveness, divine favor and universal fame, a crucial element not mentioned in the rest of the epigrams. Specifics about his thematic or lifestyle choices, his abusive vein and any related biographical information are apparently not deemed relevant or important enough to be included in the celebration of this poetic grandee.10 Alternatively, and not mutually exclusively, the failure to include them implies that the poet’s great fame makes them useless, as everybody would certainly be familiar with his biography. By contrast, Pisander, the other very old master celebrated, perhaps even older than Archilochus, is a more unusual choice (AP 9.598 = 22 Gow): Τὸν τοῦ Ζανὸς ὅδ’ ὑμὶν υἱὸν ὡνήρ τὸν λεοντομάχαν, τὸν ὀξύχειρα, πρᾶτος τῶν ἐπάνωθε μουσοποιῶν Πείσανδρος συνέγραψεν οὑκ Καμίρου, χὤσσους ἐξεπόνασεν εἶπ’ ἀέθλους. τοῦτον δ’ αὐτὸν ὁ δᾶμος, ὡς σάφ’ εἰδῇς, ἔστασ’ ἐνθάδε χάλκεον ποήσας πολλοῖς μησὶν ὄπισθε κἠνιαυτοῖς. This man, Pisander of Camirus, was the first of the old-time poets to write for you about the son of Zeus, who fought against the lion, good at using his hands, and about all the labors that he accomplished. You should know that many months and many years later the people set up this likeness of him here in bronze.

The praise in 3 (πρᾶτος τῶν ἐπάνωθε μουσοποιῶν) associates Pisander with both Anacreon (τῶν πρόσθ’ εἴ τι περισσὸν ᾠδοποιῶν, 17.4) and Hipponax (ὁ μουσοποιὸς || 9 Rossi (2001) 329–30. For the memorialization of Archilochus and the allusions to his metrical and musical originality see 325–26, and cf. Acosta-Hughes (2002) 283–84, and Rosen (2007) 461. 10 Cf. Tueller (2008) 183–84, who suggests that the “real” Archilochus the viewer is invited to look upon is to be found in the poetry typical of him composed in a meter likely used by the poet. Perhaps meter was also an important consideration in the choice of Archilochus as a foil for Posidippus in the so-called seal (SH 705 = AB 118), but the narrator certainly presents himself as potentially superior to the great master, in morals, fame and commemoration; see Klooster (2011) 179–83.

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 305

ἐνθάδ’ Ἱππῶναξ κεῖται, 19.1). The final specification that the bronze statue of the poet was dedicated by his city a long time after his death may imply that now finally justice has been done, in the form of a proper monument in his honor.11 There may have been political reasons for the praise of the author of a Heraclea, who was allegedly the first to celebrate the labors of the great hero, an ancestor of the Ptolemies.12 Rossi argues that Theocritus takes sides in the ancient debate on the identity of the poet who first presented Heracles as a lone fighter with non-traditional weapons, rooting for Pisander (Strabo 1.15.9) over Stesichorus (Ath. 512e-f). In this light the choice of λεοντομάχας, a hapax, and ὀξύχειρ (2), a word suggesting power but also quickness with the hand, or rapacity, may point to the origins of the negative portrayal of Heracles, which later became canonical and focused on the hero’s lack of restraint or control and especially his gluttony.13 It is likely that Theocritus implicitly records his opinion on the matter of Heracles’ portrayal, but it is implausible that the praise of Pisander and his epic hero would include negative or ironic hints, which might potentially be thought to compromise the praise and might possibly interfere with its favorable reception by Ptolemy. Even if Pisander was the first to present Heracles with non-traditional weapons, the emphasis on the first, emblematic labor would suggest that the portrayal was a great tribute to, rather than a diminution of, the hero’s worth. Much more lavish praise is reserved for Epicharmus, perhaps on national but also generic grounds (AP 9.600 = 18 Gow): Ἅ τε φωνὰ Δώριος χὠνὴρ ὁ τὰν κωμῳδίαν εὑρὼν Ἐπίχαρμος. ὦ Βάκχε, χάλκεόν νιν ἀντ’ ἀλαθινοῦ τὶν ὧδ’ ἀνέθηκαν τοὶ Συρακούσσαις ἐνίδρυνται, πελωρίστᾳ πόλει, οἷ’ ἄνδρα πολίταν. σοφῶν ἔοικε ῥημάτων μεμναμένους

|| 11 This may be the nuance of ὡς σάφ’ εἰδῇς (6). Gow (see next n.) favors the view that the object of the verb is τοῦτον…αὐτόν, but the specification next to the phrase is ὁ δᾶμος, and it is probably the piety of the city that the phrase stresses, although the information provided concerns all the particulars of the dedication. Cf. S. Phil. 989 (Ζεύς ἐσθ’ ἵν’ εἰδῇς, Ζεύς) Eur. IT 1361–62 (Ὀρέστης, τῆσδ’ ὅμαιμος, ὡς μάθῃς,/ Ἀγαμέμνονος παῖς), Hl. 997 (ὅρκοις κεκλῄμεθ’, ὡς μάθῃς, ὦ παρθένε) Ph. 1656 (ἄταφος ὅδ’ ανήρ, ὡς μάθῃς, γενήσεται), Or. 534–35 (ὡς...ἂν εἰδῇς, Μενέλεως, τοῖσιν θεοῖς/ μὴ πρᾶσσσ’ ἐναντί[α]), IG II2 222; in these instances the speaker implies a moral advantage or claims the moral high ground. For the lack of praise of Camirus see n. 14 below. 12 Cf. Gow (19522) 546, and Rossi (2001) 334; cf. Acosta-Hughes (2012a) 245, 249. 13 Rossi (2001) 332–33.

306 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new τελεῖν ἐπίχειρα· πολλὰ γὰρ ποττὰν ζόαν τοῖς παισὶν εἶπε χρήσιμα. μεγάλα χάρις αὐτῷ. The dialect is Dorian, and so is the man: Epicharmus, the inventor of comedy. Those who inhabit Syracuse, an awesome city, have set up here for you, Bacchus, a bronze statue of the man, since he was their fellow citizen. It is fitting that those who remember his wise words should recompense him: he expressed a great deal of useful guidance for young lives. He deserves great thanks.

This is the longest of the extant epigrams on poets and of all dedicatory epigrams. It includes motifs found also elsewhere but it celebrates Epicharmus and even Syracuse as exceptional.14 First of all, Epicharmus is hailed as the inventor of a genre, a distinction no other poet enjoys, although Archilochus was credited with the invention of the iambic trimeter and other meters,15 possibly by Glaucus of Rhegium, and Hipponax was traditionally considered the inventor of the choliambic verse. At the same time, and perhaps mainly for this reason, the Dorian claim to the invention of comedy (cf. Pl. Tht. 152e, Arist. Poet. 1448a29–34; cf. 1449b5–7) is buttressed, enhancing Dorian pride in the great master. Similarly, the question of Epicharmus’ homecountry, Cos (D.L. 8.78) or Sicily, is settled in favor of the latter. The culmination of the praise of the poet is the celebration of his wise words and precious precepts to the young. It would perhaps be expected and more plausible in an honorific context that the beneficiaries of the great master’s wisdom would be a much more inclusive group, indeed everybody. The variant τοῖς πᾶσιν (Anth.) is printed by Gallavotti but produces awkward Greek.16 Naturally, the young are most in need of, and are most likely to benefit from, wise moral instruction, as individuals and future citizens. Perhaps, though, Theocritus also meant to stress the superiority of Epicharmus over Anacreon (προσθεὶς δὲ χὤτι τοῖς νέοισιν ἅδετο, AP 9.599.5 = 17.5 Gow), especially if the two epigrams had an original or early association, in circulation or publication, mirrored in their selection

|| 14 For the praise of Syracuse see n. 4 above. The epigram on Pisander (AP 9.598 = 22 Gow) contains no praise of Camirus, although it probably suggests that his fellow citizens dedicated the statue as an act of piety; cf. n. 11 above. The epigram on Anacreon (AP 9.599 = 17 Gow) says nothing about Teos, its citizens or the dedicator(s). The epigrams on Hipponax (AP 13.3 = 19 Gow) and Archilochus (AP 7.664 = 21 Gow) do not even contain a mention of the poets’ origin, which may point to their fame, especially in the case of Archilochus. The celebration of the Syracusan community creates an effect of laudatory fullness inscribed in a moral and civic framework. 15 Cf. n. 9 above. 16 Cf. Gow (19522) 543.

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 307

as contiguous pieces in the extant collections: Anacreon delighted in youths, a selfish or self-centered inclination, but Epicharmus benefited them with wise maxims useful in the ordering of their lives. In any case, wisdom (σοφία) often denoted mastery or excellence in poetic and technical/artistic contexts, and this is probably the nuance that the audience would initially detect in lines 7–8: the Syracusans remember the excellent poetry of Epicharmus (σοφῶν…ῥημάτων μεμναμένους)—in other words, his poetic fame is alive and well in his native city. Moreover, the citizens are properly, i.e. fittingly, rewarding Epicharmus for his wisdom.17 The end of the epigram enhances the praise by explaining that Epicharmus deserves gratitude not only qua excellent poet but also qua great moralist, particularly beneficial to the most malleable and important section of the population, young boys. As already suggested, the fulsome praise of Epicharmus quite likely had a national/tribal motivation but it may also be thought to demonstrate Theocritus’ appreciation for the poet as a model, either generic or specific.18 Unfortunately, given the present state of our knowledge, such assumptions are difficult to substantiate. Taking the epigram as an indicator of Theocritus’ literary debts to Epicharmus, none of which has been convincingly demonstrated, entails the danger of cyclical reasoning. Epicharmus enjoys a place of honor among the poets of old celebrated in the epigrams, and this distinction was the result of a number of factors, which perhaps included his excellence as a poet of drama. Be that as it may, Anacreon too, neither a compatriot nor a fellow Dorian or a generic model, is presented with no ironic hint (AP 9.599 = 17 Gow): Θᾶσαι τὸν ἀνδριάντα τοῦτον, ὦ ξένε, σπουδᾷ, καὶ λέγ’ ἐπὴν ἐς οἶκον ἔνθῃς· ‘Ἀνακρέοντος εἰκόν’ εἶδον ἐν Τέῳ

|| 17 Cf. another inscription on a statue of Epicharmus at Syracuse (εἴ τι παραλλάσσει φαέθων μέγας ἅλιος ἄστρων/ καὶ πόντος ποταμῶν μείζον’ ἔχει δύναμιν,/ φαμὶ τοσοῦτον ἐγὼ σοφίᾳ προέχειν Ἐπίχαρμον,/ ὃν πατρὶς ἐστεφάνωσ’ ἅδε Συρακοσίων, D.L. 8.78). ἐπίχειρα, a mostly prosaic word, occurs in a short fragment of a paean by Pindar (14 = fr. 52o Maehler). No case for an echo can be made, but if there is a connection, it is important that the wages Pindar mentions consist in renown (εὐδοξίας…ἐπίχειρα, 31) and that poetic wisdom is involved; see Rutherford (2001) 407–10, who argues that the conclusion of the song, which includes the mention of wisdom (σοφίᾳ, 40), is likely equivalent to a poetic seal, extolling the excellence of the song and guaranteeing its authenticity. In Aristophanes’ Wasps (581–82) a flute player who won a trial is said to regale the departing jurors with a tune (ἐπίχειρα…τοῖσι δικασταῖς...ηὔλησ’ ἀπιοῦσι). In both cases, artistically accomplished individuals provide rewards, possibly an inverted model for Theocritus. 18 For the former see Bing (1988b) 118 and for the latter Rossi (2001) 291–92.

308 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new τῶν πρόσθ’ εἴ τι περισσὸν ᾠδοποιῶν.’ προσθεὶς δὲ χὤτι τοῖς νέοισιν ἅδετο, ἐρεῖς ἀτρεκέως ὅλον τὸν ἄνδρα. Look carefully at this statue, stranger, and when you reach home say, “In Teos I saw an image of Anacreon, who was preeminent among the lyric poets of old.” If you add that he took pleasure in young lads, you will describe the whole man exactly.

As already suggested, his notorious love of wine might have provided food for satire,19 as it does elsewhere. In two epigrams for the poet, apparently two versions of the same theme, Leonidas, for instance, presents him as a burlesque Jason, appearing with only one shoe (Pl. 306 and 307). The old Anacreon is tottering in deep inebriation and about to fall flat on his face if Bacchus does not take pity on him. He is engaged in singing the praises of two handsome beloved youths, Bathyllus and Megistes, but Leonidas says nothing about his skill or fame. The only indication of his poetic capacity is the narrator’s appeal to Bacchus to protect the elder, a servant of his, from an unseemly and potentially fatal fall. If no other information about Anacreon had been available, the audience would have hardly imagined that the drunken, disheveled elder strumming a lyre with trailing robes and leering eyes had been a great poet. The choices of Theocritus are too obviously different to need extensive comment. However, their drift has been debated, and no consensus has been reached. Anacreon had been the focus of lively scholarly and literary interest in the Hellenistic age, and it is possible that Theocritus aimed at improving on, or ironizing, contemporary and conceivably earlier depictions of the poet in literature and art.20 If he did, his aim is firmly inscribed in the wider framework of his references to older and contemporary colleagues, irrespective of any connection with current scholarly activity. He highlights Anacreon’s poetic excellence and his love for youths, as he chooses to list the most important factors in the poetic production and the influence of the master Epicharmus. Similarly, as the epigram on Epicharmus creates the momentary impression that the Syracusans reward the poet for his poetic excellence only, in the epigram on Anacreon the injunction to the stranger to look at the statue closely might foster an expectation that a description incorporating standard features of the drunken elderly lover and poet || 19 The portrait of Anacreon as an effete Ionian, a symposiast and a lover, of both women and boys, had become standard in literature by the second half of the fifth century, and already in the first half vase-painting had popularized the standard elements of his depiction; see Rossi (2001) 282–83, and cf. Acosta-Hughes and Barbantani (2007) 442–44, Radke (2007) 74, and Kyriakou (2013) 144. 20 See Rossi (2001) 281–82, 284–85, and cf. next n.

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 309

would ensue. The rest of the injunction, though, passes seamlessly from the statue to Anacreon’s musical excellence.21 The last suggestion to the stranger to report the poet’s sexual (and thematic) orientation so as to offer a full description of the man is certainly striking and may have surprised readers familiar with different representations. Nevertheless, in my view the narrator is not aiming at a tongue-in-cheek nod to the readers’ knowledge “of the complete poet”22 but rather invites them to reconsider a view he implicitly rejects as inaccurate and irrelevant. The narrator’s failure to mention Anacreon’s substance abuse or even wine in any connection with the poet indicates quite clearly that he is taking a very specific position with respect to the poet’s lifestyle choices and especially his poetic production: Anacreon may or may not have been partial to wine, and the statue may or may not have represented an inebriated poet and symposiast. The stranger and the audience are invited to scrutinize the image, the literal and possibly the metaphorical, and see behind and beyond specifics of little relevance to poetic production such as representational context and fidelity or Anacreon’s physical features and sartorial choices. This will result in the formation of an accurate, precise view and report of the essence of the man, a great old poetic master and a lover of boys, in effect a reconsideration of the image of the drunken, immoderate elder poet of homosexual love. The specification that the statue was set up in the poet’s native city may be meant to suggest that his pious fellow citizens have not commissioned a tribute that would represent him in a compromising or ambivalent manner, and were unlikely to have done so in any case. The presumed decent representation would initiate the (re)formation of the viewer’s image of the poet, and the narrator’s suggestion would complete it. The fact that the addressee is a stranger rather than a native contributes to the universalization, as it were, of the reformed picture: the good citizens of Teos set up the decent image, apparently as a tribute to their distinguished compatriot of old, and the stranger is enjoined to report it back home. Actually, the epigram might have been an inscription on the base of the statue, presumably in the voice of the Tean dedicator(s). Alternatively, the narrator of the epigram might be thought to have been a native of Teos conversing with a visiting foreigner. However, the Doric dialect is

|| 21 Prioux (2007) 12–18 discusses the references to the statues of the poet in the epigrams of Leonidas and Theocritus and argues that the latter’s failure to include any pictorial description aims at creating an effect of distance and a game of mirrors in which the word takes precedence over image and Anacreon becomes an image of an image. 22 Bing (1988b) 121.

310 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new an unlikely choice for such scenarios and perhaps allows for a glimpse of a Dorian narrator (a “Theocritus” addressing his readers and/or educated tourists).23 In any case, the image of Anacreon that the epigram sketches may be reductive, or elusive, as a verbal depiction of a statuary representation of an old poetic master. Cultural memory or the archaeology of one’s predecessors does involve a degree of reduction, but this virtual inevitability accommodates different choices indicative of each successor’s concerns. Rather than being distorting or misleading, Theocritus’ portrayal of Anacreon is corrective and thus perhaps meant to be innovative. In a similar vein, the sepulchral epigram on Hipponax, the shortest and only funerary one in the collection, lacks ergo-biographical information but manages to incorporate novelties (AP 13.3 = 19 Gow): Ὁ μουσοποιὸς ἐνθάδ’ Ἱππῶναξ κεῖται. εἰ μὲν πονηρός, μὴ προσέρχευ τῷ τύμβῳ· εἰ δ’ ἐσσὶ κρήγυός τε καὶ παρὰ χρηστῶν, θαρσέων καθίζευ, κἢν θέλῃς, ἀπόβριξον. Here lies the poet Hipponax. If you are a rascal, don’t come near the tomb; but if you are honest and from decent people, sit down with confidence and, if you like, take a nap.

As in the case of Archilochus, the epigram’s tribute to the old master, in other words the capture of his poetic essence, is mediated by the use of the trademark meter and perhaps the attribute κρήγυος.24 The poetic capacity of Hipponax is explicitly conveyed only through μουσοποιός, apparently an honorific attribute,25 also accorded to Pisander (22.3). The epigram focuses on morality, as might well be expected in the case of an iambic poet, but not explicitly the morality of the poet or with abusive intent. Instead, wicked passersby are urged to stay away from the tomb while noble ones are invited to approach and make themselves comfortable if they wish. The failure to make any mention of the scathing abuse, let alone obscenities, prevalent in the work of Hipponax is not accompanied by any denial or justification of his asperity. There is also no sign of his posthumous

|| 23 The meter, though, iambic trimeters alternating with phalaecian hendecallylables, may hark back to Anacreon’s poetry; see Bing (1988b) 120. 24 Cf. Gow (19522) 543. The quite rare ἀποβρίζω (Od. 9.151 = 12.7, Callim. Ep. 18.3 Pf.) may also have been used by Hipponax. Since the Odyssean passages occur in contexts of looming disasters, Theocritus may use the verb ironically: Hipponax invites the good passerby to take a nap before going on to confront what fate has in store for him. 25 Cf. Rossi (2001) 298.

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 311

repudiation of attacks on his enemies unlike the stance of his counterpart, a revenant, in Callimachus’ first Iamb. In this light, Theocritus’ Hipponax is different and the epigram intriguing because the deceased does not abuse or dismiss all passersby, as misanthropes or other inhospitable dead often do in epigrams,26 but is quite hospitable to honest wayfarers of good family. This is certainly a “correction” of the image of a widely abusive Hipponax, a scourge virtually to one and all in life and death. However, the distinction upon which he bases his instructions to the passersby perhaps conceals more than may be detected at first sight, at least by modern audiences: would any passerby care to believe, or admit even to himself, that he belongs to the first category? If everybody thinks that he is noble, or if one’s self-image is all the deceased cares about, would that make Hipponax universally welcoming? Alternatively, if a passerby makes the wrong self-assessment, is in denial, or dissimulates, would the deceased detect the misjudgment or deception and behave accordingly, abusing or punishing the fool or fraud? Finally, might the moral distinction allude to a poem or poems of Hipponax that dealt with or decided the issue, or similar issues? Obviously, none of these questions may be answered confidently. What is beyond doubt is that Theocritus manages to be novel and perhaps innovatively allusive against a background of generic conventions and contemporary poetry that uses them quite differently. Even in miniatures such as the epigram under discussion he avoids explicit irony or satire, opting for elegant praise and reappraisal by means of his focus on the excellence of the old masters. The epigrams do not resemble encyclopedic entries or accounts but are honorary tributes reflecting a contemporary perspective, which privileged and encouraged appreciation for the poets’ achievements rather than interest or curiosity for the particulars of their lives. The narrator glosses over and thus implicitly rejects most biographical and even thematic elements that he apparently considers of no direct or cardinal relevance to the poets’ excellence: whether Archilochus was engaged to Neoboule, Hipponax hated Bupalus, or Anacreon could avoid drunken || 26 The main example is Timon; see Rossi (2001) 296–97, 301. Cf. Posidip. AB 102, and Obbink (2005) 112–13. Gutzwiller (2016) discusses Meleager’s funerary epigram on the philosopher Heraclitus (AP 7.79; cf. 7.479). Rosen (2007) 471 suggests that epigrams on iambic poets do not so much criticize the poets’ temperament as gently mock the reader, who should flee the tomb because the dead poets will certainly detect some moral foible and abuse him. There might be some such irony, but the danger of indiscriminate abuse by the dead misanthropic iambographers, which Rosen discusses in some detail (466–68), blunts the ironic sting. By contrast, it is much more plausible to detect such irony in Theocritus’ epigram, although the speaker threatens no abuse, as will be argued below.

312 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new falls or not, for those living many centuries after the masters’ death they were among the greatest poets of old: they became famous, glorified their homelands and were duly appreciated by generations of readers, including their contemporary fellow citizens, because the Muses, Apollo and Bacchus favored them. In other words, they were excellent poets, inventive, versatile and good moralists. The gap with other contemporary portraits of old masters is wide and virtually impossible to bridge. Even poems about old poetic masters that contain no abuse or mordant irony are much more ambivalent or compromising than Theocritus’ epigrams. Two examples will be enough to demonstrate my point. Posidippus mentions one of Sappho’s poems, but the focus and honorand of the epigram is not Sappho. Posidippus celebrates the courtesan Doricha, a contemporary of Sappho, active in Egyptian Naucratis (Ath. 13.596c-d = AB 122):27 Δωρίχα, ὀστέα μὲν σὰ πάλαι κόνις ἦν ὅ τε δεσμὸς χαίτης ἥ τε μύρων ἔκπνοος ἀμπεχόνη, ᾗ ποτε τὸν χαρίεντα περιστέλλουσα Χάραξον σύγχρους ὀρθρινῶν ἥψαο κισσυβίων. Σαπφῷαι δὲ μένουσι φίλης ἔτι καὶ μενέουσιν ᾠδῆς αἱ λευκαὶ φθεγγόμεναι σελίδες. οὔνομα σὸν μακαριστόν, ὃ Ναύκρατις ὧδε φυλάξει ἔστ’ ἂν ἴῃ Νείλου ναῦς ἐφ’ ἁλὸς πελάγη. Doricha, your bones became dust long ago, and your hair-band, and your fragrant tunic, in which you once held lovely Charaxus close in all-night revelry. But the radiant resounding lines of Sappho’s song remain, and will remain. Blessed is your name, which Naucratis will preserve as long as ships sail from the Nile to the open sea.

Doricha was a lover of Charaxus, Sappho’s brother. Sappho mentioned them in her poetry and deplored the relationship, praying to Aphrodite to thwart the desires of Doricha (fr. 15 V; cf. 5 V, 7 V, the so-called Brothers poem, and perhaps 3 V, 9 V, 17 V, 20 V). Herodotus (2.134–35) narrates the story of Rhodopis, a slave freed by Charaxus at great expense, and records details, including Sappho’s abuse of her brother.28 Rhodopis reportedly wished to immortalize herself by

|| 27 Acosta-Hughes and Barbantani (2007) 439 adopt the view that the epigram celebrates the preparation of the edition of Sappho in the Alexandrian library. If so, then the choice of focus becomes even more remarkable. Cf. n. 30 below. 28 The identification of the two ladies has been called into question by Lidov (2002); for the traditions about Doricha/Rhodopis see Kivilo (2010) 175–77, Bär (2016), and Dale (2016) 136. My discussion does not hinge on this issue. Athenaeus (13.596b-c) also reports that Doricha, who

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 313

making an unprecedented gift to Delphi, turning a tenth of her considerable fortune into iron spits and dedicating them to the temple where they remained visible until the historian’s time.29 Nothing of this story is mentioned or alluded to in the epigram. More strikingly, Sappho’s reviling of Charaxus, Doricha or both is also completely glossed over, although the mention of charming Charaxus and the poetry of Sappho might tease the audience with the expectation that a relevant report or hints would follow. Posidippus declares that Sappho’s ode lives and will live on, and Naucratis will preserve Doricha’s blessed name.30 This touches on two treasured themes of virtually every poet from Pindar onwards, poetic immortality and the crucial role of poetry in its subjects’ immortalization, transient humanity’s ultimate holy grail. Poets never tire of stressing that their poetic excellence guarantees their own immortal renown and that poetic praise (or patronage of poets) is their subjects’ only secure avenue to immortal renown, far superior to all other assets and investments. Posidippus gives notable twists to these clichés. Sappho’s poetic excellence is not explicitly mentioned, although it is implied in the survival of her radiant poetry about Doricha and Charaxus. Most intriguingly, it is Doricha who gains blessed immortality, although Sappho presumably wished for her to be reviled or made notorious for all eternity. Admittedly, from Homer onwards (Il. 6.357–58, Od. 24.200–1; cf. Il. 2.119, Od. 11.432–34, 21.255) notoriety in song is a sort of immortality,31 but Posidippus does not mention or imply Doricha’s notoriety. Although the audience know the story, Posidippus celebrates Doricha’s fame and offers a fresh view Sappho’s poetry. The epigram falls neatly into two equal parts. The first two couplets focus on the annihilation of Doricha’s body, indeed the pulverization of her very bones long ago, but especially the disappearance of the tools of her trade, her hair-band and fragrant tunic, under which she held lovely Charaxus close in all-night revelry. The audience get to glimpse the courtesan at her trade and even breathe in her sweet perfume, but the dust mentioned at 1 falls like a pall on the lovely, or voyeuristic, as the case may be, vignette. Charaxus is called charming while Doricha is not graced with any word describing her physical beauty or attractiveness. || appeared also in Posidippus’ Aethiopia, cost Charaxus a lot of money and that Sappho abused her on this account. 29 Cf. Ath. 13.596c, who reports that Cratinus also mentioned them. For this extraordinary dedication see Keesling (2006) 60–63, and Raaflaub (2016) 128–29. 30 Rosenmeyer (1997) 132 suggests that Naucratis will do that by means of her maritime trade in papyri, which preserves and disseminates the literary heritage of Greece; cf. Bing (2009) 263, Yatromanolakis (2007) 326–27, Acosta-Hughes (2010) 3, and Klooster (2011) 29. 31 Cf. Stoevesandt (2008) 118–19, and I n. 98 above.

314 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new She may or may not have been lovely, but she was certainly an astute professional, plying her trade with attractive attire, which ensnared her infatuated and inebriated lovers, caught and held close, in her delicate web. However, the participle used for the physical intimacy of the couple under the fragrant tunic (περιστέλλουσα) is regularly used for the care of the dead (e.g. H. Od. 24.293, S. Aj. 1170, Ant. 903, Eur. Al. 664, Md. 1034, IT 628). Perhaps not accidentally, 3 may (be meant to) be taken as the beginning of a reference or allusion to the funeral care of Doricha for Charaxus, and although 4 eliminates this possibility, the choice and certainly the context suggest that Charaxus too is long dead and gone. The second part of the epigram offers (the expected) rationalization and consolation. Although the courtesan, the tools of her trade and obviously her customers have long ceased to exist, her name will remain blessed because of Sappho’s ode. Following the graphic vignette of sexual intimacy, the consolation may be considered threadbare, as it were, but what is most notable is that Doricha’s immortality is not associated with her beauty, skill or wealth, as she may have hoped and strived to ensure in her lifetime. Instead, she is remembered because Sappho chose to mention her in her poetry.32 Sappho’s skill, largely implicit though it remains, guarantees that the name of everybody she mentions, whether for good or ill, will remain immortal. In this light, though, not only Doricha but also Sappho appears different from what she was or what she may have intended to be(come), at least in connection with Doricha. The immortalizing ode is called φίλη (5), which may mean “Sappho’s own”, the epic and archaic usage of the word as possessive pronoun, “pleasant” or “kindly”. If the latter, the probable beneficiaries of the kindness in question are Doricha herself, the audience or both. Doricha’s benefit is obvious, irrespective of Sappho’s intentions. The audience may also be thought to derive aesthetic pleasure from and treasure the ode because of its artistic virtues, irrespective of the abusive content. If so, Posidippus’ choice of φίλη turns out to be ambiguous and certainly significant, as it points in the direction of what may be viewed as the ultimate poetic kindness toward Doricha, irrespective of her career or even Sappho’s references to it—Sappho’s own abusive ode about Doricha turns out to be a pleasing celebration of the subject it immortalizes. The papyrus columns of the ode or the pages on which the ode is written are λευκαί = ‘white’ or ‘radiant’, which suggests the brilliance of the poetry and a virtual whitewashing of its subject. There is no ambivalence over or disparagement of the content of the ode,

|| 32 Cf. Sappho’s reference to a woman who will die and be forgotten because she had nothing to do with the Muses, either as poet or subject of poetry (fr. 55 V).

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 315

and no suggestion that Sappho’s poetry will be lost and known through references such as Posidippus’. Nevertheless, the second part of the epigram revises Sappho’s poetry by reporting the narrator’s, or a post-Sapphic, view of her poetry. Although this is not criticism, it is a radical reappraisal. For all its revering acknowledgement of the immortalizing power of Sappho’s brilliant work, it disregards the actual content of the ode and the historical circumstances, given that the poem dealt with actual events in the life of Sappho and her relationship with her brother. The agent that immortalizes Doricha’s name is a poem rather than a historical poet of flesh and blood, who objected to her brother’s getting involved with a gold-digging loose woman she despised. In Posidippus’ reception and tribute nothing of the ode’s background is relevant or important to readers centuries after the people in question have turned to dust, and only poetry remains, to be treasured for its aesthetic value.33 This may be viewed as similar to Theocritus’ glossing over of old poets’ biographical details, but the similarity, if any, is tenuous at best. Posidippus makes a very different choice from Theocritus: he does not completely ignore biography but “rewrites” it on new, or white, pages, as it were. He focuses on the impact of Sappho’s poetry by evoking an episode of her life and her poem about this episode while ignoring specifics, including, crucially, Sappho’s view of her subject. It is perhaps also boldly telling that Doricha and Charaxus and even Naucratis are named, but Sappho appears only in the form of an adjective identifying the speaking pages of her ode, called λευκαί and φίλη respectively.34 Sappho has become indistinguishable from (the reception of) her poetry. Scholars have suggested that the final image of ships sailing down the Nile to the sea evokes the Egyptian export trade in papyri, which will be used for new editions of Sappho’s poetry that will perpetuate the glorification of Doricha’s name.35 This is possible, but in my view another element is more intriguing. The image may be a parting reflection on Sappho’s poetry and Posidippus’ reception of it. Charaxus sailed to Naucratis on business and there met Doricha to the distress of his sister, who prayed in her poetry for his safe return and disengagement from the despised courtesan. Ships and merchants will continue their journeys, and Naucratis will preserve and exult in Doricha’s name, immortalized in poetry, Sappho’s and by || 33 Cf. the envoi of Apollonius’ Argonautica (4.1773–75), which, among other things, celebrates the survival and increasing appreciation of his song in posterity, or the transformation of heroic labors into ever more pleasing art; cf. above pp. 298–99. 34 Cf. Acosta-Hughes and Barbantani (2007) 447, 452, who suggest that Sappho is recalled as both poet and text inscribed in epigram. Nevertheless, the content and especially the occasion of Sappho’s poetry are not recalled. 35 See n. 30 above; see also n. 37 below.

316 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new implication Posidippus’, as safely as Doricha held Charaxus wrapped in her fragrant tunic. On the other hand, the temporal limit of the blessedness of Doricha’s name in Naucratis is unusual: the limit is not the regular occurrence of a natural phenomenon or the durability of the universe or of a landmark but the maritime trade of a powerful city or even a country.36 It is not certain that Posidippus wished to imply the transience of such power. It is quite likely, though, that (thoughtful members of) his audience would (be meant to) entertain the thought that the power and wealth of Naucratis and Egypt are impermanent and eventually subject to decay, similar to the persons of Doricha, Sappho, and their friends. By contrast, no temporal limit for the survival of Sappho’s ode, and, by extension, poetry in general, is mentioned, although the limit of Doricha’s blessedness in Naucratis may contain a hint of a qualification of the previous statement about the survival of Sappho’s ode.37 Be that as it may, the ode has been and will be doing things that Sappho never wished for it to do, as she cannot control her reception, especially by readers who are also poets such as Posidippus. There is no doubt that Doricha’s name is glorified, or that its glorification is perpetuated, in Posidippus’ reception of Sappho’s ode in his epigram. The bright pages of Sappho’s ode will continue speaking, but her/their voice or brilliance has become different, in and

|| 36 Cf. Lapini (2007) 313–14. Posidippus may have had in mind a poem of Simonides (PMG 581 = 262 Poltera), in which he excoriates a boast ascribed to the sage Cleobulus (D.L. 1.89; cf. Pl. Phdr. 264c–d) to the effect that the immortality of a funerary monument will be coeval with the order of the natural world. It is not clear that the castigation implied exultation of poetry, but Simonides was the famous composer of various kinds of poems that dealt with and ensured the fame of their subjects, and his own. It is then plausible that he would point to poetry as the safest and longest-lasting means of glorification, as he does in the Plataea elegy (fr. 11 W2) and in the encomium for the dead at Thermopylae (PMG 531 = 261 Poltera). Cf. Poltera (2008) 479. On the other hand, in another fragment Simonides may suggest that fame (δόξα) too sinks at last into the ground (PMG 594 = 305 Poltera), or that not even repute is imperishable; see Ford (2002) 107. For Callimachus’ reception of Simonides’ attack on Cleobulus see below pp. 320–21. 37 Dale (2016) 138 argues that the story of Charaxus and Doricha is immortalized in Sappho’s poetry, but the name of Doricha, Naucratis’ “most famous daughter”, will remain blessed because “Naucratis, a focal node in the ancient sex-trade, cherishes and perpetuates the name of Doricha through the continued activity and renown of its hetairai and pornai, whose renown in turn is disseminated by the merchants on board their seagoing ships.” It is plausible that the reputation of Naucratis’ sex workers in general and Doricha in particular was disseminated in various ways, not least by means of the maritime trade, but Posidippus chose to stress the role of Sappho’s poetry in connection with Doricha: there is no distinction between the affair of Charaxus with Doricha and her reputation, which Posidippus attributes to Sappho. It will last as long as ships sail from the Nile to the sea but not because they do.

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 317

through the poem of Posidippus, which may include even a hint of temporal limitations. The fame of a poetic predecessor and the survival or memory of his name and voice are handled more elaborately in Callimachus’ fragment about the grave of Simonides in Sicilian Acragas, unexpectedly a desecrated and destroyed monument (Aet. fr. 64 Harder): Οὐδ’ ἄ]ν τοι Καμάρινα τόσον κακὸν ὁκκόσον ἀ[ν]δρός κινη]θεὶς ὁσίου τύμβος ἐπικρεμάσαι· καὶ γ]ὰ̣ρ̣ ἐμόν κοτε σῆμα, τό μοι πρὸ πόληος ἔχ[ευ]αν Ζῆν’] Ἀκραγαντῖνοι Ξείνι[ο]ν̣ ἁ̣ζόμενοι, …κ]ατ’ οὖν ἤρειψεν ἀνὴρ κακός, εἴ τιν’ ἀκούει[ς Φοίνικ]α̣ πτόλιος σχέτλιον ἡγεμόνα· πύργῳ] δ’ ἐγκατέλε̣ξ̣ε̣ν ἐμὴν λίθον οὐδὲ τὸ γράμμα ᾐδέσθ⌋η τὸ λέγον τόν [μ]ε Λεω̣πρέπεος κεῖσθα⌋ι̣ Κήϊον ἄνδρα τὸν ἱερόν, ὃς τὰ περισσά …..] μ̣νήμην πρῶτος ὃς ἐφρασάμην, οὐδ’ ὑμ⌋έας, Πολύδευκες, ὑπέτρεσεν, οἵ με μελά⌊θ⌋ρου μέλλο⌋ντος πίπτειν ἐκτὸς ἔθεσθέ κοτε δαιτυμ⌋όνων ἄπο μοῦνον, ὅτε Κραννώνιος ⌊αἰ⌋αῖ ὤ⌋λ̣ισ⌊θ⌋ε̣⌊ν μεγ⌋άλο⌊υς⌋ οἶκος ἐπὶ ⌊Σ⌋κ⌊ο⌋πάδ⌊α⌋ς. Not even Camarina would bring so much disaster on you as the tomb of a pious man if it is moved from its place. For my tomb too, which the people of Acragas built outside the town, honouring Zeus the god of strangers, was once destroyed by an evil man, if you have heard of a certain Phoenix, the town’s headstrong leader. He built my tombstone into the city-wall and had no respect for the inscription which said that I, the son of Leoprepes, was lying here, the holy man from Ceos, who first invented the extra letters…and the art of mnemotechnics. He did not shrink back from you, Polydeuces, who once, when the house was going to fall down, brought me outside as the only one among the guests, when—oh dear— the Crannonian palace collapsed on the mighty sons of Scopas. (transl. Harder)

The generic affiliation of the fragment and its connection with aetiology are not easily detectable. Perhaps it was part of an explanation about the reason why there was no tomb of Simonides and/or why his tombstone was embedded in the ruins of the walls of Acragas.38 The fragment starts out as rueful reflection or lament: the deceased Simonides, once a guest of the citizens of Acragas, complains that a certain Phoenix, a wicked leader or general of the city, destroyed the tomb

|| 38 For speculation about the genre see Harder (2012) 514–15. The lost part may have included an appeal to the Dioscuri (ὤνακες, 15), the narrator’s protectors in the past, to punish the offender. If so, the extant part, seemingly a funerary poem, is an introduction to a prayer, although the connection with aetiology still remains difficult to establish.

318 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new his hosts had piously erected for him.39 The ruthless criminal embedded his tombstone into a tower,40 showing no respect for the inscription, which commemorated the venerable deceased and his important inventions, or for the Dioscuri, his protectors.41 While Posidippus’ epigram about Doricha creates a tension between old and new poetry, eliding Sappho’s personal name and concerns, Callimachus has the dead poet himself speak his grievance. However, since Simonides is dead, his tomb destroyed, and he laments events after his death, his voice has no identifiable carrier or source other than Callimachus’ (poem).42 The name of the deceased is also not mentioned, although his father’s name, country and achievements are duly recorded, reproducing the information on the tombstone, although perhaps not all of it. It is not entirely beyond doubt that the relative clause about Simonides’ achievements (9–10) reproduces a part of the inscription and is not an informative addition of the narrator. If the Acragantines recorded only the non-poetic achievements of their great guest, this choice would be surprising in the context of funerary inscriptions and in comparison with Theocritus’ epigrams on poets. If 9–10 belonged to the inscription, perhaps there was a reference to poetry in the missing word at the beginning of 10.43 “Holy” (ἱερός, 9; cf. 2) elsewhere qualifies poets (Pl. Ion 534b2–3, Theocr. 16.29), but it is unlikely that it would by itself indicate a poet, especially with no other explicit or implicit reference to poetry. If poetry was not mentioned, as most scholars believe, the inscription does not diminish the worth of the deceased and may even suggest that his poetic excellence

|| 39 It has also been suggested that Phoenix is not a personal name but an ethnic and that the desecration of the tomb took place during a Carthaginian invasion of Sicily in 406; see D’Alessio (1996) 470, and Bruss (2004) 63–64, and cf. Livrea (2006), and Kowerski (2008) 579. 40 λίθον (7) may indicate the tomb, but even if it does, the narrator focuses on the tombstone (8–10). Still, the impious destruction of the tomb seems to be the narrator’s focus of distress because it is not clear that the tombstone has been broken. If not, the inscription on the stone with the information on the achievements of the deceased may still be legible, although its removal from its proper, now desecrated, place is a criminal act of impiety toward an honored guest, his pious hosts, and Zeus, the god protecting hospitality. The possible preservation of the tombstone with the inscription may be viewed as a focus of Callimachean irony. 41 The story of the protection of Simonides by the Dioscuri and their punishment of Simonides’ impious Thessalian hosts is found in later sources (Cic. De orat. 2.351–53, Quint. Inst. 11.2.11–16 = PMG 510 = T 80 Poltera) and may have been biographical fiction. Quintilian asserts that there was no mention of the story in Simonides’ work, but it does not seem to be Callimachus’ invention and perhaps goes back to Chamaeleon; see Harder (2012) 525. 42 Cf. Bing (1988a) 67–68, Harder (1998) 96–97, and Acosta-Hughes and Stephens (2012) 139–40. 43 See Harder (2012) 523.

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 319

is so great as to need no recording. That said, the choice may be part of the complex web of irony in the poem’s presentation of the narrator, his poetry and its subjects. The main achievement singled out is Simonides’ art of mnemotechnics, coupled perhaps with another invention useful for recording and memory, the additional letters of the alphabet. Mnemotechnics has been plausibly associated with the major theme of memory in connection with poetry in general and Callimachus’ work in particular.44 The narrator also stresses his piety and close relationship to the gods (2, 9, 13), which did not deter the evil Phoenix from desecrating his monument. Actually, the theme of piety and its rewards informs the fragment from beginning to end: not only does the narrator present himself as a paragon of piety, calling himself ὅσιος at the very beginning (2), but the Acragantines also showed their piety toward their guest and Zeus Xenios. Besides, the Dioscuri, sons of Zeus and perhaps significantly venerated in Acragas and Ptolemaic Alexandria,45 rewarded the pious poet. The impious Scopas and his family suffered for his insult to the Dioscuri and his guest, and, as already noted, the narrator may appeal to the gods to punish the outrage of Phoenix, whom he excoriates and virtually curses. The audience would perhaps know of the man because they may have been familiar with poetic or prose narratives of the story of his crime against the famous poet. If so, the record of the crime in Simonides’ voice, recorded in Callimachus’ poem and perhaps echoing other records, is reminiscent of Posidippus’ treatment of Doricha’s immortality, guaranteed through the mention of her name in the poetry of Sappho and Posidippus. Although, naturally, the narrative voice of the injured poet does not speak of glory or immortality, the latest record of the name, office and crime of Phoenix serve to immortalize him, even if only as a villain. However, Posidippus records his view of Sappho’s ode and the treatment of Doricha in it, in effect his reception of Sappho. Callimachus “records” Simonides’ view of Phoenix by composing a poem in the voice of the old master, in effect reversing the process of reception. His reference to Simonides’ Thessalian hosts is also subversive, not only in the narrative but also in the moral sense, perhaps primarily in the latter. The interjection αἰαῖ (13) included in the narrative of the punishment of the Crannonian Scopadae, whose crime is not narrated, may be an echo of the lament composed by Simonides for the miserly and impious dead (PMG 521, 529 = 244, 247 Poltera). Earlier, he had also rendered them the important service of identifying their bodies, which had been crushed beyond recognition, because he was || 44 See e.g. Klooster (2011) 34. 45 See Harder (2012) 526.

320 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new able to remember their position at the table—an impressive demonstration of the importance of mnemotechnics. As already pointed out, it is intriguing that Simonides’ poetry is probably not mentioned in Callimachus’ fragment. Instead, the poetry is only indirectly suggested through the reference to the Sicilian hosts, who had honored the poet, and especially the “great Scopadae”, his Thessalian patrons and hosts. The greatness of the Thessalian clan may be thought to refer to their wealth, athletic victories, status, or all of the above. The poet’s association with this family and the related powerful clan of Aleuadae, who collaborated with the Persians (Hdt. 7.6, 130, 172; cf. 9.58), is morally problematic, but of particular interest in the context of the present discussion is the resulting suggestion that the narrator Simonides, a great and pious man, immortalized impious subjects. In contrast to Posidippus’ celebration of the immortalization of Doricha by Sappho, the Thessalian hosts of Simonides were glorified in his poetry, including in the lament for their demise, rather than in its reception. Although the content of the lament may not have been unqualifyingly positive, it is unlikely that Simonides would blame the dead for impiety or immorality. Finally, but no less importantly, the Callimachean Simonides, who does not emphasize his poetic achievements and whose poetry immortalizes at best controversial and at worst impious men, shows great concern for his funeral monument and the inscription of his tombstone. This would not have been particularly surprising if a Simonidean poem on the perishability and limited impact of such monuments had not survived (PMG 581 = 262 Poltera; cf. PMG 531 = 261 Poltera). Simonides castigates the Rhodian Cleobulus, one of the seven sages, who had composed a funeral inscription that boasted of the indestructibility of a funerary statue (D.L. 1.89–90; cf. Pl. Phdr. 264c-d).46 Nevertheless, the destruction of his tomb distresses him greatly, an ironically unexpected reaction on the part of a man whose posthumous fame is guaranteed because of his poetry and achievements. As already suggested, even the record of the latter on his desecrated tombstone may still be legible, but the narrator may be disturbed by the destroyer’s impious insult toward Zeus, which also affected the pious Acragantines. Even so, the insistence on the contents of the inscription seems to betray anxiety over loss of a crucial record, set up by others, that would ensure the fame of the deceased in stone. Callimachus’ poem in the voice of Simonides, which restores the record of his fame and even his funerary inscription, ironizes Simonides’ poem about

|| 46 Cf. n. 36 above. Poltera (2008) 480 suggests that the end of Simonides’ attack on Cleobulus (μωροῦ φωτὸς ἅδε βουλά) puns on the sage’s name.

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 321

Cleobulus,47 which the narrator Simonides seems to disregard, or “forget”. The irony perhaps encompasses Simonides’ Acragantine hosts, who piously put up a funerary monument but failed, or “forgot”, to record the poetic excellence of the inventor of mmemotechnics. Such irony in reception is a very different strategy from Theocritus’ manner of dealing with illustrious predecessors, including Simonides in 16 and the other archaic poets in the epigrams. In a similar vein, the irony in two epigrams on votive dedications by contemporary intellectuals, Xenocles (AP 6.338 = 10 Gow) and Nicias (AP 6.337 = 8 Gow), is gentle and restrained. Although the epigrams are not as clearly celebratory as those on old poetic masters, they are not denigrating or harsh, as may be expected in view of Theocritus’ stance toward colleagues in the rest of the collection.48 Xenocles, who is otherwise unknown and calls himself μουσικός, dedicates a marble offering to the nine Muses (AP 6.338 = 10 Gow): Ὑμῖν τοῦτο, θεαί, κεχαρισμένον ἐννέα πάσαις τὤγαλμα Ξενοκλῆς θῆκε τὸ μαρμάρινον, μουσικός· οὐχ ἑτέρως τις ἐρεῖ. σοφίῃ δ’ ἐπὶ τῇδε αἶνον ἔχων Μουσέων οὐκ ἐπιλανθάνεται. Xenocles set up this marble image to please all nine of you, goddesses, since he is a musician, and no one will say otherwise. Having gained a good reputation for this skill, he does not forget the Muses.

His professional capacity is not clear beyond doubt: it is likely that he is a musician but he may be a poet, a cultured person, or all of the above. He claims that he enjoys praise because of his wisdom (σοφίῃ, 3), presumably his artistic skill, and he does not forget to honor the Muses, whose favor apparently guaranteed his renown. This scenario would be quite unremarkable, although slightly on the self-indulgent side, if not for the assertion that no one will deny his capacity as μουσικός (3).49 || 47 Cf. Bruss (2004) 63, and Klooster (2011) 34. Callimachus may also focus on the tension between orality and literacy, but if he does, this is not his primary concern. 48 Nicias is not even designated as a poet in the epigram, but I include it in my discussion because he is the only contemporary poet named by the Theocritean narrator elsewhere and because of the epigram’s affinities to Xenocles’ dedication. The only other famous contemporaries, Asclepiades and Philitas, are mentioned by Simichidas/Theocritus (7.39–40). The addressee Aratus in 6 (2) and Simichidas’ friend in 7 (98, 102, 122) is probably not the famous poet; cf. I n. 197 above. Even if he is, his poetic capacity is not mentioned. 49 οὐχ ἑτέρως τις ἐρεῖ may refer to the identity of the dedicator, but the proximity with μουσικός and the final declaration of his gratitude to the Muses make it much more plausible that the reference is to his professional rather than votive capacity. For the epigram see Rossi (2001) 209–11.

322 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new There is no indication as to the identity of such potential detractors, but the need and care of the narrator to silence their claims (through his dedication and/or fame?) in a relatively short dedication suggests that his praise was not (yet) universal. There is no recording of abuse or asperity and no ironic implication that Xenocles, a self-proclaimed pious devotee of the Muses, is actually a self-conceited professional aspirant. Nevertheless, the assertion at 3 clearly distinguishes the contemporary artist, who may enjoy (some) success but not (yet) the status of an undisputed master, from the famous poets of old. Theocritus may include this qualification as a sober(ing) reminder that contemporary success and even piety toward the divinities that grant it do not automatically guarantee universal or eternal fame, which is still, in the artist’s lifetime at least, a work in progress and an ambitious aspiration. The other votive epigram praises Nicias for not sparing the considerable expense of commissioning from the accomplished sculptor Eetion a wooden statue of Asclepius, to whom the dedicator reportedly prays and makes offerings daily (AP 6.337 = 8 Gow): Ἦλθε καὶ ἐς Μίλητον ὁ τοῦ Παιήονος υἱὸς ἰητῆρι νόσων ἀνδρὶ συνοισόμενος Νικίᾳ, ὅς μιν ἐπ’ ἦμαρ ἀεὶ θυέεσσιν ἱκνεῖται καὶ τόδ’ ἀπ’ εὐώδους γλύψατ’ ἄγαλμα κέδρου, Ἠετίωνι χάριν γλαφυρᾶς χερὸς ἄκρον ὑποστὰς μισθόν· ὁ δ’ εἰς ἔργον πᾶσαν ἀφῆκε τέχνην. The son of the Healer has come to Miletus, too, as associate with a man who cures illnesses— Nicias, who every day without fail prays to him with offerings and has had this statue carved from fragrant cedar-wood. He agreed to pay Eetion a high price on account of his skilled craftsmanship, and Eetion put all his art into the work.

As already noted, Nicias’ poetic gifts are not mentioned, and even his medical skill receives no praise that might compare with that of the old poetic masters. As in the epigram on the dedication of Xenocles, the focus is on the dedicator’s piety and his close association with his patron god, Asclepius.50 The identification and praise of the sculptor and his work ground the epigram in contemporary reality, including the transactions between successful, well-heeled professionals: because of his close relationship to the god, the pious and obviously successful doctor Nicias was both willing and able to commission a statue of precious wood,

|| 50 It is not clear why Asclepius came to Miletus to meet Nicias; for different suggestions (investiture, honor, compliment) see Rossi (2001) 195–97. Irrespective of the god’s motive(s), the epigram stresses his favor toward the pious doctor.

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 323

hire the best artist to fashion it and perhaps pay for daily sacrifices to the god. The praise of the piety of the dedicator and the excellence of the dedication are standard in votive and ecphrastic epigrams. On the other hand, the reference to the sculptor’s fee may be in a lower register than that used for the beginning of the epigram.51 Besides, the final declaration that Eetion poured all his art in the work, an expression reminiscent of references to emotional outpourings, suggests that the effusion might come in installments relative to fee and that the highest honorarium unlocked the greatest installment. Humility was not a Greek virtue, and expenses for good causes, especially religious offerings, are regularly extolled, but the particular emphasis on an artist’s fee is exceptional, and apparently chosen with a view to conveying friendly irony. As in the case of the praise of the old masters, the epigrams on the dedications of Nicias and Xenocles may be better assessed in juxtaposition with Callimachus’ laudatory epigrams for the contemporary poets Heraclitus (AP 7.80 = 2 Pf.) and Theaetetus (AP 9.565 = 7 Pf.), the former explicitly an old friend and the latter possibly a friend or acquaintance.52 These epigrams include qualifications and display ambivalences absent from Theocritus’ pieces. Callimachus praises the poetic accomplishment of both men, and in the case of Theaetetus specifically the purity and sophistication of his work, which are reminiscent of Callimachus’ own poetic principles as expounded and extolled in his programmatic pieces. The epigram about Heraclitus, one of the most, if not the most, sensitive in the surviving collection, includes neither clever and obscure allusions nor searing comparisons or irony: Εἶπέ τις, Ἡράκλειτε, τεὸν μόρον, ἐς δέ με δάκρυ ἤγαγεν· ἐμνήσθην δ’ ὁσσάκις ἀμφότεροι ἥλιον ἐν λέσχῃ κατεδύσαμεν. ἀλλὰ σὺ μέν που, ξεῖν’ Ἁλικαρνησεῦ, τετράπαλαι σποδιή,

|| 51 Cf. Gow (19522) 534–35. 52 Praise of a friend’s work is probably found also in a fragment by Posidippus (AB 117), who specifies that the man is “like a brother to me”. See Obbink (2005) 114, and Klooster (2011) 148– 49. The state of the fragment prohibits interpretive speculation, especially as the wise work mentioned may be Posidippus’ own poem, which praises the friend. If so, it may contain primarily self-praise or praise of the narrator and his close friend, who may for all we know have been a prose writer, although this does not affect any reading of the fragment. The most intriguing part of the fragment is the brother-like relationship of the two men, which may affect the assessment of Posidippus’ willingness to bestow praise. It is unlikely that Posidippus would state or imply that he praises the man only or primarily because he is a dear friend, and the relationship might not even be personal but professional. Still, knowledge of the man’s identity and the biographical background might alter the appreciation of Posidippus’ praise.

324 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new αἱ δὲ τεαὶ ζώουσιν ἀηδόνες, ᾗσιν ὁ πάντων ἁρπακτὴς Ἀΐδης οὐκ ἐπὶ χεῖρα βαλεῖ. Someone, Heraclitus, mentioned your death, and he moved me to tears. I remembered how often in company we two brought the sun down. But you, my friend from Halicarnassus, are, I guess, ashes four ages long. But your nightingales are alive, and Hades, who snatches everything, will not lay his hand on them.

Composed not only in praise but also in memory of a man dead for some considerable time (τετράπαλαι σποδιή, 4), the poem exhibits no small degree of sophistication. Apart from the fusion of inscriptional and literary epitaphic motifs, the sympotic imagery, and the importance of memory, the promise and hopefulness of immunity from destruction are underscored by Odyssean reminiscences, especially as Odysseus seems to be a model for the narrator.53 Two Homeric hapax legomena, λέσχη (Od. 18.329) and σποδιή (Od. 5.488), placed in consecutive lines, remind the audience of two different stages in the travails of Odysseus, the great survivor, and his family and friends, all of whom lament different extensive losses at various points but eventually manage to overcome their terrible ordeals. Not incidentally, the echoes belong to parts of the epic describing moments just before the final deliverance, when the characters are on the cusp of recovering from their losses but have not yet been out of the woods, as it were. The first, probably with a slightly different meaning, occurs in a highly unpleasant context, the insults of the disloyal maid Melantho to the disguised Odysseus the night before the test of the bow. Callimachus recalls a very different situation, pleasant conversations between friends stretching into the night, but the weeping of the narrator over his loss fits in with the Odyssean context. Paradoxically, the sorrow starts giving way to hopes of survival with the second hl, used for the incineration of the dead friend’s body. σποδιή occurs in the narrative of another difficult night. Landing naked and half-drowned at Scheria, the hero reaches a very low point, which nevertheless marks the beginning of his salvation and reclamation of his life and status. He spends this first night sleeping rough, but he manages to survive by covering himself with leaves, as one preserves fire by hiding a brand in ashes. Heraclitus too will survive, although not physically, but through his poetry, his nightingales, which are alive and well. || 53 Cf. Hunter (2008) 125. Magnelli (2007) 166 (cf. 169) notes that τετράπαλαι and ἁρπακτής are either very rare forms or Callimachean coinages, which do not advertise their novelty. For ἁρπακτής see the discussion below. Magnelli discusses the epigram’s surface plainness of language and style, which disguises its innovative narrative and generic subtlety. Cf. Hopkinson (1988) 249. Gutzwiller (2017) 329 suggests that the irrelevance of precise temporality and setting associates the poem with modern lyric.

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 325

This quite unusual designation of his poetry may be the title of (some of?) Heraclitus’ poems or a metaphor for poetry used by the deceased. In any case, it may, among other things, recall the situation of Penelope: she laments and feels as dejected as the nightingale, the daughter of Pandareus, who was transformed into a melodious bird (Od. 19.518–24). Penelope wishes to be snatched by harpies and die like the (other) daughters of Pandareus, just before the end of her travails (Od. 20.63–78). The reminiscence underscores again the sorrow over Heraclitus’ loss, which may be further enhanced by the reminiscence of the Homeric hl ἁρπακτήρ (Il. 24.262), from the outburst of the bereaved father Priamus, who laments the loss of his worthy sons, especially Hector, and the survival of their worthless brothers. Callimachus may “correct” this distinction, pointing both to Hades as the ultimate equalizer-snatcher and to the consolation of the survival of Heraclitus’ poetry, which will allegedly be immortal, as not even Hades will touch it. Nevertheless, the immortality in question is still a potentiality. To be sure, Heraclitus’ poetry has not become lost or forgotten yet, but a degree of uncertainty over its long-term survival remains, especially if the designation is also meant to recall the Hesiodic fable of the hawk and the nightingale, in which the fate of the musical bird hangs in the balance (Op. 202–12). What is more, Heraclitus’ poetry lives on in, and its survival is mediated by, the poetry of the narrator, which thus appears to play a privileged or crucial role. In any case, it is also perhaps relevant that Callimachus composed his elegant poem complimenting a colleague and old friend some time after the death of the latter, when he would no longer be a competitor or potential rival of his surviving guest-friend. Unlike Theocritus, Callimachus apparently did not dedicate epigrams to famous old poetic masters, with the ironic exception of the Cyclops, on which more below. His attitude toward his (alleged) rivals and some predecessors is eristic, and his praise of contemporaries ambivalent or qualified. In this light, his praise of the deceased Heraclitus may not be as unambiguous as might appear at first sight. The epigram about Theaetetus, another contemporary, exemplifies Callimachus’ stance more clearly, as the honorand is still living. Unusually, the epigram is composed on the occasion of Theaetetus’ failure to secure a crown, perhaps in a dramatic competition (AP 9.565 = 7 Pf.): Ἦλθε Θεαίτητος καθαρὴν ὁδόν. εἰ δ’ ἐπὶ κισσόν τὸν τεὸν οὐχ αὕτη, Βάκχε, κέλευθος ἄγει, ἄλλων μὲν κήρυκες ἐπὶ βραχὺν οὔνομα καιρόν φθέγξονται, κείνου δ’ Ἑλλὰς ἀεὶ σοφίην. Theaetetus took a pure road. If this path does not lead to your ivy, Bacchus, heralds shall voice the names of others for a short time, but Hellas his wisdom forever.

326 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new The little piece may be deemed patronizing and perhaps somewhat forced, or even insincere. Its occasion is not beyond doubt, as Theaetetus may not have been a dramatist or may have switched genres. He may have composed dithyrambs, for instance, and competed in dithyrambic competitions.54 The crown may be a metaphor for artistic success rather than the prize in an actual competition. The “clear path” Theaetetus took, which apparently evokes Pindar (O. 6.22–27, I. 5.22–25; cf. Paean 7b = fr. 52h.11–12 Maehler),55 may suggest that his work was too innovative for conventional tastes. However, its purity, which the narrator commends, does not guarantee unqualified universal fame, let alone contemporary success. The epigram turns all conventions of praise poetry on their head, and not necessarily or obviously with a view to celebrating the virtues of Theaetetus’ work. Apart from success, agonistic victory and proclamation, even divine favor is not attributed to Theaetetus. Either Dionysus did not consider him good enough for his ivy or the competition, actual or metaphorical, was not really endorsed by the god. If the latter, then it is unclear why the ivy should be designated as his. If the former, then it is likely that some other god(s) would favor the clear path of Theaetetus, but there is no such indication. The pure path then remains precariously unendorsed by any divinity.56 Moreover, it is not clear why or how the names of the winners will be proclaimed only for a short time, especially if actual competitions under royal/divine aegis are implied. If they are not, the heralds may not be the officials proclaiming the names of the victors in those competitions but fans of the victorious poets, whose taste and judgment are found wanting and condemn their favorites to transient repute. Even so, the prediction of Theaetetus’ fame appears to be qualified.

|| 54 Livrea (1989) argues that he was a poet, perhaps a Cyrenean, some of whose epigrams have been preserved in the Palatine Anthology and by Diogenes Laertius; cf. Cameron (1995) 59, and Acosta-Hughes (2016) 239, who also suggests that the name may hark back to Plato’s Theaetetus. For Callimachus’ hostility to dithyrambs see Prauscello (2011) 300. 55 For the metaphor cf. Asper (1997) 53–65, and D’Alessio (2007) 222. 56 Fantuzzi (2007b) 484–85 suggests that Theaetetus is presented as a pure initiate who has nothing to do with the mob, a fellow traveller of Callimachus himself, but the latter stressed the favor shown to him by Apollo and the Muses, as indeed did, for instance, Posidippus in the socalled seal (SH 705 = AB 118). Cf. Hunter (2008) 332–36. Besides, Fantuzzi points out that Callimachus may have known an epitaph for the Pleiad poet Philicus (SH 980), who is celebrated as an initiate of the god, possibly with the implication that his devotion guaranteed his poetic success. If so, Theaetetus was no such fortunate devotee.

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 327

Finally, the prospects of Theaetetus may be further undermined if the epigram is read against the next one in the Anthology, also addressed to Dionysus in a competitive context (AP 9.566 = 8 Pf.): Μικρή τις, Διόνυσε, καλὰ πρήσσοντι ποιητῇ ῥῆσις· ὁ μὲν ‘νικῶ’ φησὶ τὸ μακρότατον, ᾧ δὲ σὺ μὴ πνεύσῃς ἐνδέξιος, ἤν τις ἔρηται ‘πῶς ἔβαλες;’ φησί· ‘σκληρὰ τὰ γιγνόμενα.’ τῷ μερμηρίξαντι τὰ μὴ ἔνδικα τοῦτο γένοιτο τοὖπος· ἐμοὶ δ’, ὦναξ, ἡ βραχυσυλλαβίη. The speech of the successful poet is short, Dionysus. The longest he says is “I won”, but the man you do not inspire, if someone asks him “How did you do?”, he says “It is being harsh.” Let those be the words of a man dabbling in wickedness, but mine, Lord, short syllables.

The narrator asks Dionysus for victory in dramatic or poetic competitions, laying a claim to justice or fairness.57 This undermines the praise and merit of Theaetetus, for whose poetic wisdom he predicts compensatory perennial fame in Greece. To be sure, there is no cogent reason to read the epigrams in conjunction or against each other, and it is possible that in 8 Pf. Callimachus wishes to celebrate his ideal of brevity rather than genuinely pray for a dramatic crown.58 Be that as it may, Callimachus’ prediction of the lasting fame of Theaetetus’ wisdom in Greece is far from overly generous, especially if compared with Theocritus’ praise of Archilochus (AP 7.664.2–3 = 21.2–3 Gow).59 Promises of eternal fame commonly include references to land and sea (e.g. Thgn. 237–39, Pi. I. 4.58–60). Callimachus’ prediction may be thought to echo the end of Pindar’s Olympian 1 (115–16; cf. fr. 70b.23–25 Maehler), in which the poet prays that he may be conspicuous for his poetic wisdom among

|| 57 The Suda (test. 1.12 Pf.) attributes dramatic works to Callimachus, and he chooses to answer his detractors in Iamb 13 by adducing the authoritative model of Ion of Chios, a prolific and diverse poet, who belonged to the Alexandrian tragic canon. Cf. Cameron (1995) 60–62, and Livrea (1996) 63–66. Cusset (2011) 465–71 argues that Callimachus did not shun tragic intertexts but used them primarily on the lexical level, finding common ground in a special fondness for language, especially in Aeschylus, and the reworking of epic tradition in different generic vehicles. 58 Cf. Fantuzzi (2007b) 486–87, and Cairns (2016) 224–33. 59 Contrast also, for instance, Ovid’s prediction of the universal fame of Hesiod, Callimachus and Sophocles (Am. 1.15.11–15): although Callimachus is said to have excelled in poetic skill rather than genius, it is also said that he will be sung throughout the earth. In other words, although Ovid states explicitly a limitation of Callimachus or at least a specific difference from his predecessors, he also leaves no doubt about, and predicts no corresponding limitation of, Callimachus’ fame.

328 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new the Greeks. Even so, Callimachus’ reference to Hellas is perhaps an elegant, seemingly innocuous way of avoiding mention of Alexandria, Egypt, the world of the Hellenistic new centers of learning, or indeed the whole world. It is perfectly natural and uncompromising for Pindar to refer to his prominence among the Greeks or in Greece, as his audience were all ethnic Greeks. Hellas, though, is not necessarily interchangeable with Hellenes in a poem composed in third-century BC Alexandria. It is interesting, and likely relevant, that in Ptolemaic Egypt in general and a multi-cultural center such as Alexandria in particular Greekness or Hellenic identity was a matter of negotiation. Ethnic Greeks of different localities and backgrounds tended to identify themselves as members of the community of their city of origin rather than a collective ethnic community; “Hellene” was not necessarily or exclusively an ethnic identity marker but designated also ethnic non-Greeks who had received a Greek education, adopted Greek ways or held posts in the administration and even enjoyed some tax benefits.60 In this light, it may not be ruled out that the reference to the glory Theaetetus will enjoy in Hellas is ambiguous: it may be meant to indicate the great sophistication of the judges in question, perhaps in contrast to other, potentially less refined, future detractors or even admirers, but this too is a limitation, although arguably less compromising than the alternative. Remarkably, greater ambivalence is reserved for the praise of Aratus’ achievement in one of Callimachus’ best-known epigrams. Among other things, it holds a special place because it deals with a well-known contemporary poet whose work has survived and is also celebrated in other surviving epigrams (AP 9.507 = 27 Pf.): Ἡσιόδου τό τ’ ἄεισμα καὶ ὁ τρόπος· οὐ τὸν ἀοιδῶν ἔσχατον, ἀλλ’ ὀκνέω μὴ τὸ μελιχρότατον τῶν ἐπέων ὁ Σολεὺς ἀπεμάξατο· χαίρετε λεπταί ῥήσιες, Ἀρήτου σύμβολον ἀγρυπνίης. Hesiod’s is the song and the manner. The man from Soli has not copied the best, but it seems that he has imitated the sweetest verses. Hail, subtle discourses, token of Aratus’ vigilance.

Callimachus actually begins with the model of Aratus’ work, specifying that its subject matter and manner are indebted to Hesiod. The beginning might even mislead the audience into thinking that the epigram will be about Hesiod. Not

|| 60 See Stephens (2003) 183, 241–44, 251, Thompson (2003) 111, and Strootman (2010) 37; cf. Gruen (2006) 312, and Pontani (2014) 167.

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 329

until the third line at a major caesura does it become clear that Aratus is the honorand. The last sentence, which could indeed be attached to the beginning to form a nice, celebratory couplet, salutes the refinement of the work. It features the key word λεπτός, which may reference not only a revered Hellenistic ideal in general but Aratus’ work in particular, as his anthology Κατὰ λεπτόν (no longer extant) and the famous acrostic λεπτή (Phaen. 783–87) indicate.61 In between, though, Callimachus inserts a sting in his seemingly innocuous praise discourse: Hesiod is not the best poet, and/or Aratus just chose one part of his model’s work, although allegedly the sweetest. Alternatively, he chose the sweetest epic poet, i.e. Hesiod, rather than the grandest, Homer. Interpretation hinges on deciding between the reading ἀοιδόν (AP) or Scaliger’s ἀοιδῶν and the meaning of ἔσχατον. Ancient scholars disagreed over whether Homer or Hesiod was Aratus’ main model, and Callimachus may be taking sides, although it is quite hard to believe that he would qualify the worth of Hesiod.62 In any case, the epigram seems to be meant to convey an impression of ironically qualified, or reserved, praise of Aratus. First of all, irrespective of Hesiod’s ranking and his worth as a model, a declaration prominently placed at the beginning of the epigram to the effect that Aratus has taken over the subject and even style of an archaic poet is not necessarily an article of celebratory faith in Aratus and his work.63 The attributes “sweetest” and “subtle” do not point exclusively to stylistic refinement but they may well do so in part. The praise certainly encompasses style, and Callimachus’ failure to list other distinctions reinforces the stylistic component: there is no praise of the excellence of Aratus, the importance of his discourses or his superiority over other authors. Aratus is a subtle imitator of (a part of) Hesiod’s work, and his poem is sweet but not necessarily excellent or important in other respects.64 The poem is hailed as “discourses” (ῥήσιες), a prosaic attribute, which || 61 See Klooster (2011) 155–57. 62 For the ancient debate about Aratus’ model and the Hesiodic work to which Callimachus refers see Hunter (2014b) 295–96, 300. Cf. Volk (2010) 199, and van Noorden (2015) 172. For Homer see Wilamowitz (1924) I.206, and Reitzenstein (1931) 42; see also the discussion in Gow and Page (1965) 208–9. 63 Tsantsanoglou (2009) suggests that Callimachus as member of the Ptolemaic court would be most unlikely to praise Aratus, a member of the rival court of Antigonus Gonatas. Perhaps the political background is relevant, although unfortunately hard to ascertain. Callimachus is, to put it mildly, very reserved with praise of the work of any living contemporary, but the epigram is not savage by his standards, which it might easily have been, had Ptolemy wished to have the work vilified. 64 Things might have been somewhat clearer if the famous Reply to the Telchines (Aet. fr. 1 Harder), which extols sweetness and brevity in connection with Mimnermus and Philitas, had survived in its entirety. As things stand, it is likely that the sweetness of Mimnermus’ poetry is

330 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new may point to Eudoxus. However, no celebratory comparison or even appreciative reference or allusion to Eudoxus is included.65 Last but not least, there is not even an explicit reference to stars. This may be a sign of Callimachean sophistication, which eschews explicitness, but may also be construed as laudatory exiguousness or obfuscation. Even the famous “intense vigil(ance)” of Aratus may be easily interpreted as a double-edged apposition, an encomium of the author’s diligence or an ironic hint of armchair astronomy, which necessitated not observation of the stars but, at most, staying up until late at night to refine the discourses, possibly with mixed or prosaic results. The end of the epigram with the choice of ῥήσιες and the Ionic form of Aratus’ name next to it has been thought to allude to Aratus’ alleged pun on his own name in the second line of his proem (ἄρρητον).66 The possibility that Aratus punned on the Ionic form of his name is quite remote, however, as there is no evidence for such a pun, and the syntax of the sentence makes it highly unlikely. At most, the pun may be mediated by the model, Hesiod’s proem of Works and Days (ῥητοί τ’ ἄρρητοί τε Διὸς μεγάλοιο ἕκητι, 4), which would end up suggesting that Aratus lacks fame, and this on account of Zeus, through whom everything happens in both Hesiod’s and Aratus’ poems. Despite all these problems, Aratus’ contemporaries allegedly picked up his allusive pun and alluded to it in their turn. Such a scenario is not impossible, but it involves intertextual acrobatics, which limit its interpretive value. It is truly hard to believe that any Greek poet, and especially a Hellenistic poet, would associate his name with a word that would recall silence or obscurity in order to paradoxically allude to his divinely

|| shown in and by the work of Philitas (his Demeter) and not by the work of Antimachus (his Lyde). The other possibility is that the short and “sweet” poems of Mimnermus and Philitas are contrasted with their long poems. For literature and discussion see Harder (2012) 32–36; cf. III n. 64 above. Tsantsanoglou (2007) argues that lines 9–10 contrast favorably Philitas’ Demeter with a poem about the Argonautic expedition and 11–12 Mimnermus’ Nanno with his Smyrneis. Whether the praise of old and contemporary masters or their poems is qualified, Callimachus’ use of similar key terms for his own program and Aratus’ Hesiodic poem indicates his appreciation, even with qualifications. Kirichenko (2008) 200 argues that Callimachus in his Hymn to Zeus and his praise of Aratus’ poem suggests that both works are inspired by Hesiod but much more sophisticated than their model. 65 The patron of Aratus, the king Antigonus Gonatas, reportedly urged him to versify Eudoxus’ work with a pun on his name (εὐδοξότερον ποιεῖς τὸν Εὔδοξον, Vit. Arat. I.8 Martin). 66 For the pun see Hunter (2008) 155, and Klooster (2011) 158–59. For Callimachus’ allusion to the pun see Cameron (1995) 322. Echoes of the proem (1–18) or, more cautiously, points of contact with it have also been detected in Callimachus’ Hymn 1, the beginning of Theocritus’ 17 (1–2), and Leonidas’ encomiastic epigram of Aratus (AP 9.25), which I will discuss below.

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 331

and traditionally sanctioned future fame. If his contemporaries echo Aratus—and it is far from certain that Theocritus in 17, for instance, does, as Aratus’ poem may be later—then the allusion would be simply to speaking or expounding in praise of Zeus (and all he was the source and regulator of), not to Aratus’ name. In any case, an allusion to Aratus’ alleged pun on his name would be a compliment to his ingenuity or stylistic sophistication similar to the use of the attribute “subtle” but would not alter or add to his praise. Be that as it may, the most celebratory praise of Aratus is found in the epigram attributed to a king Ptolemy, who was, perhaps tellingly, not a professional poet (Vit. Arat. I.10.4–7 Martin = AP App. 59): Πάνθ’ Ἡγησιάναξ τε καὶ Ἕρμιππος κατ’ αἴθρην τείρεα καὶ πολλοὶ ταῦτα τὰ φαινόμενα βίβλοις ἐγκατέθεντο †ἀπὸ σκοποῦ δ’ ἀφάμαρτον†· ἀλλ’ ὅ γε λεπτολόγος σκῆπτρον Ἄρατος ἔχει. Hegesianax and Hermippus and many others wrote books about the stars in the sky and †missed the mark† but the subtle Aratus holds the scepter.

Ptolemy compares Aratus with other authors of astronomical works and awards to him the scepter of sophistication, a fitting and gallant praise from the pen of a king, who thus elevates the poet to his own level. A similar appreciation of Aratus’ superiority is found in one of his Lives, which may echo the opinion of Boethus of Sidon, a second-century BC Stoic, who had written on Aratus (II.12–13 Martin): πολλοὶ μὲν γὰρ καὶ ἄλλοι Φαινόμενα ἔγραψαν…ἀλλ’ ὅμως λαμπροτέρα γέγονε πάντων ἡ Ἀράτου δύναμις ἐπισκοτήσασα τοῖς ἄλλοις. Many others wrote Phaenomena…but Aratus’ power is the most brilliant and overshadows the others.

Leonidas’ epigram, longer than both Callimachus’ and Ptolemy’s, is less reserved or ambivalent than Callimachus’ but also eschews direct comparison with other authors, unlike Ptolemy’s, thus holding a middle position (AP 9.25): Γράμμα τόδ’ Ἀρήτοιο δαήμονος, ὅς ποτε λεπτῇ φροντίδι δηναιοὺς ἀστέρας ἐφράσατο, ἀπλανέας τ’ ἄμφω καὶ ἀλήμονας, οἷσιν ἐναργὴς ἰλλόμενος κύκλοις οὐρανὸς ἐνδέδεται. αἰνείσθω δὲ καμὼν ἔργον μέγα, καὶ Διὸς εἶναι δεύτερος, ὅστις ἔθηκ’ ἄστρα φαεινότερα.

332 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new This is the writing of learned Aratus, whose subtle mind explored the long-lived stars, both fixed and wandering, by which the bright revolving heaven is bound in circles. He is to be praised for the great work he has labored at, and should be ranked second to Zeus, who has made the stars brighter.

Leonidas celebrates the subtlety of Aratus and the scope of his work, ranking him second to Zeus. It is immediately plain that all the motifs discussed above, the subject matter, the sophistication and the worth of Aratus appear in the epigram, and the praise is more inclusive and generous than Callimachus’. Nevertheless, Leonidas probably pokes some fun at Aratus’ subtlety: λεπτῇ/ φροντίδι (1–2), which parallels Callimachus’ λεπταὶ ῥήσιες and Ptolemy’s λεπτολόγος, may recall the claim about the subtle mind of Socrates (τὴν φροντίδα/ λεπτήν, Ar. Nu. 229–30; cf. 359), the devotee of the Clouds, the goddesses who have replaced Zeus in the pantheon of the new intellectuals (Ar. Nu. 365–69). Instead of the Stoicizing Zeus of Aratus, in many respects similar to Cleanthes’ supreme being, Leonidas begins with a possible humorous or tongue-in-cheek reminiscence of a subversive examiner of things above (τὰ μετέωρα πράγματα, Ar. Nu. 227; cf. 360), standing on a platform to put some distance between his subtle mind and the earth. The epigrammatist eventually comes around to Zeus, noting piously that Aratus is second to him, which of course may hardly be taken as a diminution of the poet’s praise. Like Callimachus, Leonidas does not mention other authors of astronomical works but the ranking of Aratus below Zeus leaves little doubt that other authors would be below Aratus. For all this appreciation, paradoxically, the epigrammatist apparently manages to undermine his own credibility through a conspicuous blunder: he praises Aratus’ dealing with the fixed stars and the planets, although the latter are explicitly left out of Aratus’ exposition (460–61). This has naturally led to assumptions that Leonidas had not read Aratus’ poem or had read it perfunctorily.67 Such assumptions may not be ruled out, but it should at least be kept in mind that first-hand knowledge of a famous and relatively short poem is not really necessary for the avoidance of such mistakes. The blot of negligence or ignorance may be removed if Leonidas does not refer to two classes of celestial objects, namely fixed stars and planets, but to the fixed stars from two points of view, as immobile and mobile.68 The relative clause

|| 67 See Kaibel (1894) 122, Gow and Page (1965) 396, and Cameron (1995) 324. 68 It is also conceivable that Leonidas actually refers to planets and hyperbolically suggests that Aratus’ brief mention of them and his recusatio (454–61) are learned and significant, taking the place of full exposition. This is less easy to accept, especially in view of the crucial reference

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 333

(οἷσιν ἐναργὴς/ ἰλλόμενος κύκλοις οὐρανὸς ἐνδέδεται) may only refer to fixed stars (see Arist. Cael. 290a18–20 ὅπερ αἴτιον ἴσως καὶ τοῦ στίλβειν φαίνεσθαι τοὺς ἀστέρας τοὺς ἐνδεδεμένους, τοὺς δὲ πλάνητας μὴ στίλβειν, 289b32–33 τὰ δὲ ἄστρα ἠρεμεῖν καὶ ἐνδεδεμένα τοῖς κύκλοις φέρεσθαι, and cf. 292a14). After a moment’s reflection, or through a careful reading of Aratus’ and Leonidas’ learned poems, one should come to realize that the stars in question are fixed with respect to their angular distance from one another but also perform a diurnal revolution around the axis of the celestial sphere: they are conceived as bright points of this diurnally rotating sphere, the heaven, and they move in circles (or, as Leonidas puts it, they bind the revolving heaven in their circles, thereby indicating its spherical shape, which is suggested by ἰλλόμενος; cf. Pl. Ti. 40b8–c1). Due to the (apparent) motion of the sun toward the east, itself a wandering celestial object like the planets, the rising and setting of the stars because of the diurnal revolution “wander” relative to sunrise and sunset throughout the year, marking the season and furnishing weather signs, as in the calendar of Hesiod’s Works and Days and in Aratus’ Phaenomena (748–51). Leonidas then highlights synoptically the content of Aratus’ poem, also drawing attention to the circles that bind up the bright, revolving heaven, i.e. the rotating celestial sphere.69 Actually, it is this detail that mediates the solution to the puzzle. Leonidas’ epigram is composed as a clever little riddle, perhaps in honoring imitation of Aratus’ famous λεπτότης. Its structure is similar to Callimachus’ epigram about his dead father, and it may not be ruled out that one poet modeled his piece on the other’s (AP 7.525 = 21 Pf.): Ὅστις ἐμὸν παρὰ σῆμα φέρεις πόδα, Καλλιμάχου με ἴσθι Κυρηναίου παῖδά τε καὶ γενέτην. εἰδείης δ’ ἄμφω κεν· ὁ μέν κοτε πατρίδος ὅπλων ἦρξεν, ὁ δ’ ἤεισεν κρέσσονα βασκανίης. You who walk past my tomb, know that I am son and father of Callimachus of Cyrene. You must know both: the one led his country’s forces once, the other sang beyond the reach of envy. (transl. Nisetich)

The deceased states in riddling form that he is the child and father of Callimachus. It then turns out that the two (ἄμφω, 3) are naturally not the child and father of the same Callimachus but Callimachus the father and Callimachus the son || to circles, which point to fixed stars (cf. ἀπλανέων...κύκλα, 461). The zodiacal motion of the planets, to which Aratus (454–59), is not circular due to the phenomenon of retrogradation. 69 There is no reason to adopt Kaibel’s conjecture οἷσι τ’ ἐναργής, since οἷσιν ἐναργής is perfectly understandable, and the connective is unnecessary.

334 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new of the deceased.70 Similarly, in Leonidas’ epigram ἄμφω (3) does not qualify two classes of celestial objects, stars and planets, but one class, stars, from two points of view, fixity and mobility. Knowledge of Aratus’ work and the reference to circles of the fixed stars lead the audience to reconsider their first reading, facilitated by the teasing choice of ἄμφω, which ironically turns out to be ambiguous. The audience should be as knowledgeable as Callimachus’ readers and as subtle and perceptive as Aratus and Leonidas, avoiding interpretive pitfalls, by not being simultaneously ἀπλανεῖς and ἀλήμονες, i.e. fixed on a single, careless reading and uncomprehendingly wandering far and wide. If this reading is correct, a full appreciation of Leonidas’ cleverness or playfulness depends on the assessment of the choice of the rare and striking attribute ἀλήμονας for the stars or even the planets. The word occurs twice in Homer (Od. 17.376, 19.74) as a qualification of poor, wandering beggars, forced to seek alms for their sustenance, and nowhere in classical literature, surfacing again much later, especially in Nonnus. The association of venerable, primeval celestial objects with unfortunate wretches of Homeric society is entirely paradoxical, but what makes things even more intriguing is the occurrence of the word in Aratus (1101). Remarkably, it is not an attribute of beggars or other unfortunates but of humanity as a whole, forced to seek different employments or types of living for their sustenance, fearing and suffering many adversities in (illusory) hopes of success. The wretchedness of the human condition is only alleviated by the eagerness or diligence of all men who observe “signs” made available by Zeus’ wise kindness, both at present and in the future (cf. 768–77).71 The lines may also imply that the interpretation of the signs contains an element of improvisation or perhaps wishful thinking and/or self-fulfilling prophecy. In any case, the sorry state of humanity, observed with sympathy from the point of view of an intelligent, knowledgeable and pious fellow mortal, is the focus of the utterance. If Leonidas took the passage into account, as is quite likely, then he implies that the stars too are paradoxically roaming like the humans that observe or should observe them in order to counteract their wretchedness (cf. Arat. Phaen. 10–13, 408–30, 740–51). This may be an ironic twist. Leonidas may gently mock Aratus’ comment or correct him by suggesting that roaming is not an exclusive attribute of

|| 70 For the epigram and its companion (AP 7.415 = 35 Pf.) cf. n. 8 above. 71 For the types of life, mentioned in Hesiod (Op. 17–26) and Solon (fr. 13.43–62 W2), see Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 236, who also suggest that there is a quasi-pun in ἀλήμονες and τὰ πὰρ ποσί (1102). For the significance of signs in Aratus’ poem see Volk (2012). Leonidas may suggest that the available signs are up in heaven and human wandering may be remedied by observation of the movement of stars, the celestial “wanderers”.

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 335

humans but in a sense pertains also to the stars, as Aratus implies (748–751): although the stars do not literally roam, their “roaming” helps regulate human roaming by means of signs they make available.72 The irony, the first notes of which were struck with λεπτῇ/ φροντίδι and which continued with ἀλήμονας, culminates in the last couplet, which takes up in ring composition and expands on the praise of the first. Aratus’ poem is indicated as a laudable ἔργον μέγα. The phrase occurs once in Herodotus (8.90) but otherwise only in imperial and later literature. On the contrary, the equivalent μέγα ἔργον is very common from Homer onwards and occurs mostly in contexts of fighting, or eliminating enemies, but also in connection with crimes and impiety such as Aegisthus’ transgression (Od. 3.261, 275), the suitors’ outrages (24.458; cf. 426) and Melantho’s behavior (19.92),73 significantly perhaps a passage a little below the second occurrence of ἀλήμονες in the epic (Od. 19.74). It would be simplistic and conceivably unfair to Leonidas to suggest that he drew a parallel between Aratus and Homeric characters who did not care or manage to control their appetites and committed crimes or between the Phaenomena and heavy boulders about to be hurled at the enemies of Homeric heroes (Il. 5.302–4, 20.285–87), especially given the switch of noun and adjective. Still, it is equally hard to believe that the choice would not have at least an ironic tinge, even if good-humored or playful. As already suggested, the comparison with Zeus is a tribute to Aratus, who celebrates the god’s benevolence in helping men prosper by his favorable arrangement of the stars and the signs he reveals. Aratus is second to the god in making the stars brighter, i.e. in explaining their arrangements and the signs men may detect in them. The subject of the last sentence of the epigram, though, is ambiguous, as ὅστις may refer to Zeus. If so, then the chief recipient of praise is the god, who made the stars brighter for the benefit of humans, i.e. arranged them and allowed the detection of the signs so as to help humans. Aratus is second, the creator of a huge work, which does not illuminate the stars, as it were, but just diligently or perceptively explains the work of the divine illuminator. As already suggested, this is no small praise for a mortal poet. On the other hand, even Leonidas, who is much more generous than Callimachus and refrains from mentioning any debts of Aratus to other poets, inserts in all three couplets of his laudatory epigram gentle irony of the laudandus, chiefly by means of sophisticated ambiguity, indicating his own poetic mastery.

|| 72 Alternatively, if the planets are meant, then their wanderings and the difficulty of predicting their irregular motions share in the inconstancy of human existence and the confounding of human striving. 73 For the phrase see IV n. 87 above.

336 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new Praise and blame in Greek poetry are hardly ever uncomplicated issues, especially when colleagues and/or friends are the recipients. Poets may refrain from denigrating or even mentioning the work of other poets, whether older or contemporary, and they may avoid self-praise, even acknowledging their own controversial or outright wrong choices. Nevertheless, a background of self-promotion or self-justification, in equal measures ironic and petulant, is almost always present. Another of Callimachus’ riddling epigrams exemplifies this strategy. It is often associated with the pair on dramatic competitions discussed at the beginning of this chapter (AP 9.565 = 7 Pf. and AP 9.566 = 8 Pf.) and deals with friendship, drama or dramatic competitions (AP 11.362 = 59 Pf.): Εὐδαίμων, ὅτι τἆλλα μανεὶς ὡρχαῖος Ὀρέστας, Λεύκαρε, τὰν λίαν οὐκ ἐμάνη μανίαν οὐδ’ ἔλαβ’ ἐξέτασιν τῶ Φωκέος, ἅτις ἐλέγχει τὸν φίλον· ἀλλ’ αἰ χἢν δρᾶμ’ ἐδίδαξε μόνον, ἦ τάχα κα τὸν ἑταῖρον ἀπώλεσε· τοῦτο ποήσας κἠγὼ τὼς πολλὼς οὐκέτ’ ἔχω Πυλάδας. Orestes the ancient was happy, Leucarus, because, although he was mad in all other respects, he did not suffer from the worst madness and did not put the Phocian to the test that proves a friend. Had he staged but one drama, he would soon have lost his friend. I did that and I no longer have my many Pyladeses.

The epigram has been variously emended and interpreted.74 Leucarus is otherwise unknown and perhaps fictitious. The identity of the narrator is also not revealed beyond doubt. He may be the persona of the poet Callimachus or just an anonymous dramatist who talks about his predicament. In any case, the epigram suggests that staging dramas is pure madness, more extreme and dangerous than the notorious madness of the hero Orestes, presumably chosen for the comparison because of the innumerable dramatizations of his affliction. He at least was spared the horror of producing dramas, which is a test of friendship. The narrator claims that he has lost several Pyladeses by producing a drama or dramas,75 unlike Orestes, who preserved the affection of his Phocian friend. The thrust of the epigram is not immediately apparent and does not become clear until the last couplet. It is unlikely for anyone to surmise that the test of friendship, especially in the case of friends in the heroic age, would involve the production of dramatic plays. Why would dramatic production have a detrimental impact

|| 74 The text quoted is Pfeiffer’s; for differences in the text of Gow and Page see Klooster (2011) 165. 75 For Callimachus’ dramatic production see n. 57 above.

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 337

on the relationship of the playwright with his friends, even apparently very close ones such as Orestes and Pylades? A likely answer is that the narrator implies the rivalries and resentment generated by dramatic competitions such as those sponsored by Ptolemy II (cf. Theocr. 17.112–14). If two or more friends participated in such competitions and one of them won, the other(s) would resent his success, and the friendship would be destroyed. However, it is not clear why only dramatic, as opposed to other or all poetic competitions, would have this effect, and there is certainly no indication that Pylades is envisaged as a rival of Orestes in a hypothetical dramatic contest. It is also quite unlikely that the narrator would present himself as winner in several dramatic competitions or in one in which several of his friends also participated, lost and became resentful. Even if a playwright Pylades may not be deemed a grotesque invention in a poetic context, and reference to many Pyladeses may be viewed as a poetic exaggeration, pointing to a couple of smarting friends, the absence of any credible suggestion of competition makes this reading of the epigram quite unlikely. Instead, it seems likelier that the epigram deals with the genre or contents rather than contests of dramatic poetry. The madness of the narrator more likely consists in composing dramatic poetry, which is likely to alienate the poet’s friends, even the closest ones. In a clever twist, Orestes, one of the most famous mythological and dramatic heroes, now appears as potential author of dramas: if he had staged even one single drama, Pylades would have certainly become offended, and the friendship would have been put to an intolerable test. Realistically, if the hero Orestes had conceived the plan of composing poetry, then he would have composed an epic. Nevertheless, if Orestes somehow had become the first playwright and had staged a historical, as it were, play, presumably dramatizing the story of his matricide with the help of Pylades, then the latter would have been likely to take some offense in the manner of his representation, especially if the play had been a comedy or a satyr play. Even if the dramatist Orestes had chosen another mythological or a fictitious plot, again the choice might have displeased Pylades because the play did not include him or included perceived unflattering or ungracious allusions to himself. If Pylades, a paradigmatic heroic friend, was likely to (re)act in this manner, then the narrator’s contemporaries, who might also be poetic colleagues and potential rivals, or at least tuned to detecting allusions and attacks, would be all the more likely to be offended. In this light, drama is chosen because of its mythological subject matter, which might be quite unlikely to be considered amenable to personal attacks or interpretations. Even if a poet chooses such an innocuous genre, which he might consider impregnable to personal or professional squabbling, again he cannot be certain that his friends would not take offense.

338 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new As noted above, the epigram has also been read in association with the pair on dramatic competitions (AP 9.565 and 9.566 = 7 and 8 Pf.) as condemnation of contemporary drama, uninteresting in its rehashing of tired plots such as the story of Orestes.76 Although it is not clear that Callimachus attacked and repudiated drama, the friends of the narrator would perhaps be alienated by his perceived old-fashioned choice, which had scant chance of competitive success, and they might even consider him a traitor of their poetic avant-guard cause. The narrator has thus come to realize and regret his madness. Whether a background of contemporary generic preferences and literary polemics is implicit or not, the epigram seems to present the other side of the quarrels mentioned in the Aetia prologue or Iambs 13 and 1. The narrator is abandoned and presumably attacked by erstwhile friends on account of his poetic choices but, unlike his counterparts in Callimachus’ programmatic pieces, he is not aggressive or bilious. Instead of vilifying accusers as spiteful sorcerers and boorish enemies to the Muses and himself, the narrator complains about the reaction of friends and companions, who apparently take offense at his (perceived) allusions to themselves and/or his choice of an antiquated genre and reciprocate by abandoning him. The narrator not only does not vilify the offended parties or even defend his own choice but he also admits that it is sheer madness to compose drama, although it is not clear that the activity will or should be (definitively) renounced. However, even this non-polemical, self-accusatory complaint contains a sting in the tail in the form of a dig at the supposed friends. The plural (and plurality of) “Pyladeses” at the end probably expresses contemptuous dismissal.77 The many (self-styled) Pyladeses, once considered by the poet as real friends, immediately turn out to be nothing of the sort when subjected to a seemingly simple and innocuous test, which was probably not even conceived of as such to begin with. The false friends immediately and unjustifiably abandon the narrator, who does not attack but simply dismisses them, apparently as they deserve, in his view. Callimachus may or may not dismiss drama as old-fashioned and obsolete in favor of his own generic and poetological choices, but the association of the narrator’s personal mishap with the friendship of Orestes and Pylades is also an oblique, ironic revision of a hallowed legend. Even the paradigmatic pair of friends Orestes and Pylades would have quarreled if one of them had composed poetry. Actually, the ironic or subversive twist of the epigram in the reference to Orestes becomes apparent from the very first line and word: Orestes, commonly || 76 Cf. Fantuzzi (2007b) 485–86. 77 See Fraenkel (1950) on A. Ag. 1439.

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 339

called τλήμων and similar in drama, is unexpectedly called “fortunate” (εὐδαίμων, 1) but also “the ancient” (ὡρχαῖος, 1), which may point not only to the great antiquity of the hero but also ironically to the antiquated genre(s) that dealt with his madness. It is interesting that ἀρχαῖος occurs in crasis only once again in extant literature,78 as an attribute of the Cyclops Polyphemus, a hero very different from Orestes but whose story was also told in archaic, classical and Hellenistic poetry: Theocritus calls the Cyclops, infatuated with his Galateia to the point of insanity but finding some (transient) relief in serenading her on the seashore, ὡρχαῖος Πολύφαμος (11.8). Both Callimachus and Theocritus obviously engage in subversive literary “archaeology”, a neoteric, as it were, take on antique themes and genres. If Callimachus’ epigram echoes the Idyll of Theocritus or vice versa, then the echo would incorporate, in a sort of window reference, the “digs” of the echoing poet’s contemporary colleague.79 The Cyclops Polyphemus, the emblematic cannibalistic monster shepherd of epic, transmutes into Theocritus’ musically gifted and infatuated bucolic youth: he does not succeed in love but paradoxically manages to “shepherd” his erotic madness and thus become an ironic model for sophisticated contemporary lovers, poets and doctors. By contrast, the Callimachean Orestes, the emblematic mad hero of drama, turns out to be a reverse model for the narrator because he managed to preserve the affection of his dear friend. He thus avoided the worst consequences of his madness, paradoxically not by composing poetry like Theocritus’ new “ancient” Polyphemus, but by eschewing it.80 The Callimachean Orestes realized that poetry not only cannot win a man affection but it is also bound to destroy it. If Theocritus echoes Callimachus, then the echo also involves humorous oneupmanship: although poetry does not guarantee affection and rewards, as older singers unanimously (or self-servingly) asserted, it is possible even for someone madly in love to reap benefits from song. In fact, a man should not forsake song,

|| 78 τἀρχαῖον as an adveb = ‘originally’ occurs at A. Suppl. 326 and S. Aj. 1292 (ἀρχαῖον L); cf. Hdt. 1.56.2, Thuc. 2.99.3, Xen. An. 1.1.6, and Pl. Ion 541d. 79 The association of Callimachus’ epigram with Theocritus has been made long ago by Spiro (1893); see Gow and Page (1965) 211, who reject it, and cf. Tarán (1979) 11. If Callimachus’ epigram on the young beloved Theocritus (AP 12.230 = 52 Pf.) refers to the poet, it says nothing about his work, but there is no plausible reason to assume that the beloved is the poet. For the epigram see above pp. 67–69. 80 To be sure, Orestes did not choose not to become a poet in order not to alienate Pylades, nor could he choose the form and manifestations of his madness, but Polyphemus could not, either. He certainly hoped and tried to attract Galateia with his song, but he did not choose to become a singer.

340 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new as it is the only (palliative) remedy for the terrible, insanely painful wound inflicted by Aphrodite. The echo, if such it is, highlights a humorously outrageous commonality: by means of a nod to the work of a poetic colleague, two antique heroes suffering from two different kinds of madness are presented as managing, even if not by choice, to handle their situation and keep things under some control, Polyphemus by singing and Orestes by not producing poetry. The Cyclops as model for poet lovers is mentioned explicitly in another Callimachean epigram (AP 12.150 = 46 Pf.): Ὡς ἀγαθὰν Πολύφαμος ἀνεύρατο τὰν ἐπαοιδὰν τὠραμένῳ· ναὶ Γᾶν, οὐκ ἀμαθὴς ὁ Κύκλωψ· αἱ Μοῖσαι τὸν ἔρωτα κατισχναίνοντι, Φίλιππε· ἦ πανακὲς πάντων φάρμακον ἁ σοφία. τοῦτο, δοκέω, χἀ λιμὸς ἔχει μόνον ἐς τὰ πονηρὰ τὠγαθόν· ἐκκόπτει τὰν φιλόπαιδα νόσον. ἔσθ’ ἁμὶν †χ’ ακαστασ ἀφειδέα πρὸς τὸν Ἔρωτα τοῦτ’ εἶπαι· ‘κείρευ τὰ πτερά, παιδάριον, οὐδ’ ὅσον ἀττάραγόν τυ δεδοίκαμες· αἱ γὰρ ἐπῳδαὶ οἴκοι τῶ χαλεπῶ τραύματος ἀμφότεραι.’ How fine an incantation for the lover Polyphemus discovered! By Earth, the Cyclops was no ignoramus. The Muses, Philip, reduce the swelling of love, and poetry is indeed a remedy for every ill. I believe that this too is the only benefit hunger offers: it cuts out the disease of boy love. We can say this to Love: “Clip your wings, little boy. We are not afraid of you at all. We have at home both charms against your terrible wound.”

The epigram fairly certainly pays a tribute to Theocritus and perhaps his source(s).81 The addressee Philip was perhaps a doctor, possibly also a fellow poet, like Nicias.82 More important, it is not clear whether the Callimachean poetnarrator implies a definitive cure for love or relief from it, in agreement with Theocritus’ view, but the language seems to point rather to cure. The epigram suggests tongue-in-cheek that the Cyclops was really intelligent, and hit on a fine

|| 81 Cf. Fantuzzi (2016) 283. Interestingly, Nicias, the addressee of Theocritus’ 11 and 13, also seems to engage in a similar “capping” game with a poem (SH 566), the first two lines of which have been preserved in the scholia of 11. The scholiast cites not only Nicias but also Philoxenus and Callimachus as poets who took up the theme of the Cyclops’ handling of love by means of poetry. For Nicias’ poem cf. Hunter (1999) 221. 82 For the possible identification of Philip with a Coan doctor practicing in Alexandria see Cairns (2016) 220–21, who discusses the medical terminology of the epigram.

Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new | 341

charm for lovesickness.83 The first part closes with a gnomic statement about the universal healing power of σοφία, which in the context is a gloss for poetry but does not exclude other areas of expertise.84 Indeed, the epigram does not exhaust its arsenal in the ironically lofty praise of the ogre’s intelligence but proceeds with the bathetic or wryly humorous suggestion to the effect that there is also another charm for the terrible wound of lovesickness, namely hunger.85 Each charm may benefit different groups of people, the poets and the poor respectively, but both are readily available to the poet(s). In fact, the pointe is probably an implicit association of the two charms in their case: poetry alleviates love because it also condemns poets to hunger or by means of also condemning them to hunger. To be sure, many, and probably most, poor lovers are not poets, and in real life all poets are not necessarily poor, as for instance their ingenious “model”, the Cyclops, was not. However, in Callimachus’ poetry the idea of the poor poet-lover is predominant, and thus poetic poverty is conventionally universal. In this vein, the claim that hunger also alleviates love and the defiant challenge to the boy Eros turn two major motifs on their head, that poetry is the only charm for the terrible affliction inflicted by a ruthless boy god, and that poor poets, lacking the resources of their rich rivals (and doctor friends), are at a disadvantage in the pursuit of love.86 The poet’s profession condemns him to hunger, but this now turns out to be a blessing in disguise with regard to love. He cannot win his boy(s) but at least he can medicate the terrible wound inflicted by the naughty divine boy. As a poet and a poor man, the narrator is doubly protected from love because his desire abates (lit. becomes skin and bones) with the double charm of poetry and hunger, a paradoxical embarrassment of palliative riches. The connection between poetry and hunger is not made explicit in the epigram but appears more clearly through || 83 The praise both echoes and “corrects” Theocritus, who cautioned that “it is not easy to find” anything of the sort (11.3–4). Callimachus’ exclamation ναὶ Γᾶν (2) may hark back to the exclamation of Epops (Ar. Av. 194), another “revised” dramatic hero, Tereus: he turned into an expert musician by becoming an actual bird and by association with his wife, the avian Nightingale. 84 Goldhill (1986) 42 notes the ironic over-exaggeration of the claim. 85 Cf. the use of δοκέω before the identification of the cure (6), perhaps a deliberate echo of Theocritus (11.2). Fantuzzi (2016) 285 points out that hunger, if indulged on for too long, would eliminate the lover along with his love. 86 The latter is more amply and quite differently dealt with in the fragmentary Iamb 3, in which the narrator laments the state of contemporary society and his poverty but declares his dedication to the Muses and regrets his inclination and professional choice. It is unlikely that the regret would be mitigated by vows of devotion to the goddesses or even by any prospect of securing eternal fame or at least patronage by means of it. For the Callimachean narrator, dedication to the Muses may be fine and even inevitable but it does not put food on the poet’s table or boys in his bed. For the differences of the poem from Theocritus 16 see above pp. 275–78.

342 | Masters and colleagues: epigrams on poets old and new the thematic association with Iamb 3. In this light, the madness or foolishness of composing poetry or of dedication to the Muses, over which even ecstatic states induced by music and dance would be preferable (34–38), at least leads to some relief from the terrible wound of love, paradoxically and hilariously mediated also by the hunger the devotee of the Muses suffers. Callimachus mocks both Theocritus and himself by asserting that madness may be treated only with madness: the poet turns to the Muses and gets nothing good except for the charm for love. Theocritus suggests that the Muses love the poet and grant him all good things, even in poverty, including a palliative for the madness of love.

Bibliography Acosta-Hughes, B. 2002. Polyeideia. The Iambi of Callimachus and the Archaic Iambic Tradition. Berkeley. Acosta-Hughes, B. 2006. “Bucolic Singers of the Short Song: Lyric and Elegiac Resonances in Theocritus’ Bucolic Idylls”, in: Fantuzzi and Papanghelis, 25–52. Acosta-Hughes, B. 2010. Arion’s Lyre. Archaic Lyric into Hellenistic Poetry. Princeton. Acosta-Hughes, B. 2012a. “Miniaturizing the Huge: Hercules on a Small Scale (Theocritus Idylls 13 and 24)”, in: Baumbach and Bär, 245–257. Acosta-Hughes, B. 2012b. “Nor When a Man goes to Dionysus’ Holy Contests (Theocritus 17.112): Outlines of Theatrical Performance in Theocritus”, in: K. Bosher (ed.), Theater Outside Athens: Drama in Greek Sicily and South Italy, Cambridge, 391–408. Acosta-Hughes, B. 2016. “A Little Studied Dialogue: Responses to Plato in Callimachean Epigram”, in: Sistakou and Rengakos, 237–252. Acosta-Hughes, B. and S. Barbantani. 2007. “Inscribing Lyric”, in: Bing and Bruss, 429–458. Acosta-Hughes, B., L. Lehnus and S. Stephens (eds.) 2011. Brill’s Companion to Callimachus. Leiden/Boston. Acosta-Hughes, B. and S. Stephens. 2012. Callimachus in Context. From Plato to the Augustan Poets. Cambridge. Ambühl, A. 2005. Kinder und junge Helden. Innovative Aspekte des Umgangs mit der literarischen Tradition bei Kallimachos. Leuven. Anagnostou-Laoutides, E. and D. Konstan. 2008. “Daphnis and Aphrodite: A Love Affair in Theocritus Idyll 1” AJPh 129, 497–527. Argentieri, L. 2003. “I piedi di Bombica (Theocr. Id. 10.36)” in: Nicolai, 347–55. Arland, W. 1937. Nachtheokritische Bukolik bis an die Schwelle der lateinischen Bukolik. Dissertation Leipzig. Arnott, W.G. 1996. “The Preoccupations of Theocritus. Structure, Illusive Realism, Allusive Learning”, in: Harder et al., 55–70. Asper, M. 1997. Onomata allotria. Zur Genese, Struktur und Funktion poetologischer Metaphern bei Kallimachos. Stuttgart. Athanassaki, L. and E.L. Bowie (eds.) 2011. Archaic and Classical Choral Song. Performance, Politics and Dissemination. Berlin/New York. Bär, S. 2016. “‛Ceci n’est pas un fragment’: Identity, Intertextuality and Fictionality in Sappho’s ‘Brothers Poem’” SO 90, 8–54. Barigazzi, A. 1974. “Per l’interpretazione e la datazione del carme IV di Teocrito” RFIC 102, 301–311. Barrett, W.S. 1964. Euripides, Hippolytus. Edited with Introduction and Commentary. Oxford. Baumbach, M. 2012. “Borderline Experiences with Genre: The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite Between Epic, Hymn and Epyllic Poetry”, in: Baumbach and Bär, 135–48. Baumbach, M. and S. Bär (eds.) 2012. Brill’s Companion to Greek and Latin Epyllion and its Reception. Leiden/Boston. Belloni, L. 2004. Teocrito. I pescatori. Introduzione, testo e traduzione, commento. Como. Berman, D.W. 2005. “The Hierarchy of Herdsmen, Goatherding, and Genre in Theocritean Bucolic” Phoenix 59, 228–245. Bernsdorff, H. 1994. “Polyphem und Daphnis. Zu Theokrits sechstem Idyll” Philologus 138, 38–51. Bernsdorff, H. 1996. “Parataktische Gleichnisse bei Theokrit”, in: Harder et al., 71–90.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615272-007

346 | Bibliography

Effe, B. 1988. “Das poetologische Programm des Simichidas. Theokrit, Id. 7.37–41” WJA 14, 87–91. Ehrhardt, N. 2003. “Poliskulte bei Theokrit und Kallimachos: Das Beispiel Milet” Hermes 131, 269–289. Fakas, C. 2001. Der hellenistische Hesiod. Arats Phainomena und die Tradition der antiken Lehrepik. Wiesbaden. Fantuzzi, M. 1980. “Ἐκ Διὸϛ ἀρχώµεσθα: Arat. Phaen. 1 e Theocr. XVII 1” MD 5, 163–172. Fantuzzi, M. 1998. “Textual Misadventures of Daphnis. The Pseudo-Theocritean Id. 8 and the Origins of the Bucolic ‘Manner’”, in: Harder et al., 61–79. Fantuzzi, M. 2001. “Heroes, Descendants of ἡμίθεοι: The Proemium of Theocritus 17 and Simonides 11 W2”, in: Boedeker and Sider, 232–241. Fantuzzi, M. 2006. “Theocritus’ Constructive Interpreters, and the Creation of a Bucolic Reader”, in: Fantuzzi and Papanghelis, 235–262. Fantuzzi, M. 2007a. “The Importance of Being Boukolos: Ps.-Theocr. 20”, in: M. Paschalis (ed.), Pastoral Palimpsests. Essays in the Reception of Theocritus and Virgil, Heraklion, 13–38. Fantuzzi, M. 2007b. “Epigram and the Theater”, in: Bing and Bruss, 477–496. Fantuzzi, M. 2012. “Achilles at Scyros, and One of His Fans: The Epithalamium of Achilles and Deidameia (Buc. Gr. 157–58 Gow)”, in: Baumbach and Bär, 283–305. Fantuzzi, M. 2016. “Novice Pastoral Eros and Its Epigrammatic Critics”, in: Sistakou and Rengakos, 281–295. Fantuzzi, M. 2017. “Theocritus’ Shepherdly Eros”, in: Cusset et al., 331–346. Fantuzzi, M. and R.L. Hunter. 2004. Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry. Cambridge. Fantuzzi, M. and T.D. Papanghelis (eds.) 2006. Brill’s Companion to Greek and Latin Pastoral. Leiden/Boston. Faraone, C.A. 1999. Ancient Greek Love Magic. Cambridge, Mass./London. Faraone, C.A. 2006. “Magic, Medicine and Eros in the Prologue to Theocritus’ Id. 11”, in: Fantuzzi and Papanghelis, 75–90. Farr, J. 1991. “Theocritus: Idyll 11” Hermes 119, 477–484. Faulkner, A.T. 2011. “The Collection of Homeric Hymns. From the Seventh to the Third Centuries BC”, in: A.T. Faulkner (ed.), The Homeric Hymns. Interpretative Essays, Oxford, 175–205. Finglass, P.J. 2011. Sophocles, Ajax. Edited with Introduction and Commentary. Cambridge. Finglass, P.J. 2015. “Stesichorus, Master of Narrative”, in: Finglass and Kelly, 83–97. Finglass, P.J. and A. Kelly (eds.) 2015. Stesichorus in Context. Cambridge. Ford, A.L. 1992. Homer. The Poetry of the Past. Ithaca/London. Ford, A.L. 2002. The Origins of Criticism. Literary Culture and Poetic Theory in Classical Greece. Princeton. Foster, J.A. 2016. Reading Voices. Five Studies in Theocritus’ Narrating Techniques. New York. Fountoulakis, A. 2017. “Rethinking Gender Roles and Generic Identities: Sexual Jealousy in Theocritus, Id. 14 and Lucian, Dial. Meretr. 15 and 8”, in: Cusset et al., 267–294. Fraenkel, E. 1950. Aeschylus, Agamemnon. Edited with a Commentary. Oxford. Fries, A. 2014. Pseudo-Euripides, Rhesus. Edited with Introduction and Commentary. Berlin/Boston. Fritzsche, A.T.A. 18702. Theocriti idyllia. Leipzig. Fuhrer, T. 1988. “A Pindaric Feature in the Poems of Callimachus” AJPh 109, 53–68. Furley, W.D. 1994. “Apollo Humbled: Phoenix’ Koronisma in its Hellenistic Literary Setting” MD 33, 9–31. Furusawa, Y. 1980. Eros und Seelenruhe in den Thalysien Theokrits. Würzburg. Garson, R.W. 1971. “Theocritean Elements in Virgil’s Eclogues” CQ 21, 188–203.

Bibliography | 347

Gengler, O. 2003. “Héritage épique et lyrique dans la poésie alexandrine: les Dioscures et les Apharétides d’Homère à Lycophron”, in: M. Guglielmo and E. Bona (eds.), Forme di comunicazione nel mondo antico e metamorfosi del mito: Dal teatro al romanzo, Alessandria, 135–147. Giangrande, G. 1968. “Théocrite, Simichidas et les Thalysies” AC 37, 491–533. Giangrande, G. 1971. “Theocritus’ Twelfth and Fourth Idylls: A Study in Hellenistic Irony” QUCC 12, 95–113. Giangrande, G. 1976. “Victory and Defeat in Theocritus’ Idyll V” Mnemosyne 29, 143–154. Gioia, T. 2006. Work Songs. Durham, NC/London. Goldhill, S. 1986. “Framing and Polyphony: Readings in Hellenistic Poetry” PCPhS 212, 25–52. Goldhill, S. 1991. The Poet’s Voice. Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature. Cambridge. González, J.M. 2010. “Theokritos’ Idyll 16: The Χάριτες and Civic Poetry” HSCPh 106, 65–116. Gow, A.S.F. 19522. Theocritus. Edited with a Translation and Commentary. Cambridge. Gow, A.S.F. and D.L. Page 1965. The Greek Anthology. Hellenistic Epigrams. Cambridge. Grethlein, J. 2012. “A Slim Girl and the Fat of the Land in Theocritus, Id. 10” CQ 62, 603–617. Griffiths, A.H. 1996. “Customising Theocritus. Poems 13 and 24”, in: Harder et al., 101–118. Griffiths, F.T. 1979. Theocritus at Court. Leiden. Gruen, E.S. 2006. “Greeks and non-Greeks”, in: G.R. Bugh (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Hellenistic World, Cambridge, 295–314. Gutzwiller, K.J. 1983. “Character and Legend in Idyll 8” TAPhA 113, 171–182. Gutzwiller, K.J. 1991. Theocritus’ Pastoral Analogies. The Formation of a Genre. Madison. Gutzwiller, K.J. (ed.) 2007. A Guide to Hellenistic Literature. London. Gutzwiller, K.J. 2016. “Style and Dialect in Meleager’s Heraclitus Epigram”, in: Sistakou and Rengakos, 253–268. Gutzwiller, K.J. 2017. “Lyricism in Hellenistic Epigram”, in: Sistakou, 317–38. Haber, J. 1994. Pastoral and the Poetics of Self-Contradiction. Theocritus to Marvell. Cambridge. Halperin, D.M. 1983. Before Pastoral. Theocritus and the Ancient Tradition of Bucolic Poetry. New Haven/London. Hamm, U. 2009. “Zum Phänomen der Ironie in höfischer Dichtung oder: Ironie ist, wenn der Herrscher trotzdem lacht”, in: R.F. Glei (ed.), Ironie. Griechische und lateinische Fallstudien, Trier, 77–105. Harder, M.A. 1998. “‘Generic Games’ in Callimachus’ Aetia”, in: Harder et al., 95–113. Harder, M.A. 2012. Callimachus. Aetia. Vol. I, II. Oxford. Harder, M.A., R.F. Regtuit and G.C. Wakker (eds.) 1996. Theocritus. Groningen. Harder, M.A., R.F. Regtuit and G.C. Wakker (eds.) 1998. Genre in Hellenistic Poetry. Groningen. Harder, M.A., R.F. Regtuit and G.C. Wakker (eds.) 2004. Callimachus II. Leuven. Harder, M.A., R.F. Regtuit and G.C. Wakker (eds.) 2008. Gods and Religion in Hellenistic Poetry. Leuven. Harder, M.A., R.F. Regtuit and G.C. Wakker (eds.) 2014. Hellenistic Poetry in Context. Leuven. Harder, M.A., R.F. Regtuit and G.C. Wakker (eds.) 2017. Past and Present in Hellenistic Poetry. Leuven. Hatzikosta, S. 2005. Θεοκρίτου Ειδύλλια I–VII. Εισαγωγή, Μετάφραση, Σχόλια. Athens. Hazzard, R.A. 2000. Imagination of a Monarchy. Studies in Ptolemaic Propaganda. Toronto. Heerink, M. 2015. Echoing Hylas. A study in Hellenistic and Roman metapoetics. Madison, WI. Henrichs, A. 1980. “Riper than a Pear. Parian Invective in Theokritos” ZPE 39, 7–27. Heubeck, A. 1973. “Einige Überlegungen zu Theokrits Thalysien” ZAnt 23, 5–15. Holt, F.L. 2005. Into the Land of Bones. Alexander the Great in Afghanistan. Berkeley.

348 | Bibliography

Hopkinson, N. 1988. A Hellenistic Anthology. Cambridge. Hopkinson, N. 2015. Theocritus, Moschus, Bion. Cambridge, MA. Hordern, J.H. 2002. The Fragments of Timotheus of Miletus. Oxford. Hordern, J.H. 2004. “Cyclopea: Philoxenus, Theocritus, Callimachus, Bion” CQ 54, 285–292. Hubbard, T.K. 1998. The Pipes of Pan. Intertextuality and Literary Filiation in the Pastoral Tradition from Theocritus to Milton. Ann Arbor. Humphreys, S.C. 2007. “Social Relations on Stage. Witnesses in Classical Athens”, in: E. Carawan (ed.), Oxford Readings in Classical Studies. The Attic Orators, Oxford, 140–213. Hunt, J.M. 2009. “Bucolic Experimentation in Theocritus’ Idyll 10” GRBS 49, 391–412. Hunt, J.M. 2011. “The Politics of Death in Theocritus’ First Idyll” AJPh 132, 379–396. Hunt, J.M. 2017. “Tradition and Succession in Theocritus’ Bucolic Poetry”, in: Harder et al., 83–100. Hunter, R. 1989. Apollonius of Rhodes. Argonautica, Book III. Cambridge. Hunter, R. 1996. Theocritus and the Archaeology of Greek Poetry. Cambridge. Hunter, R. 1999. Theocritus. A Selection (Idylls 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 13). Cambridge. Hunter, R. 2003. Theocritus. Encomium of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Berkeley. Hunter, R. 2005. “The Hesiodic “Catalogue” and Hellenistic Poetry”, in: Hunter (ed.), 231–265. Hunter, R. (ed.) 2005. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions. Cambridge. Hunter, R. 2008. On Coming After. Studies in Post-Classical Greek Literature and its Reception. Berlin/New York. Hunter, R. 2010. “Language and Interpretation in Greek Epigram”, in: M. Baumbach, A. Petrovic and I. Petrovic (eds.), Archaic and Classical Greek Epigram, Cambridge, 265–288. Hunter, R. 2012. “The Songs of Demodocus: Compression and Extension in Greek Narrative Poetry”, in: Baumbach and Bär, 83–109. Hunter, R. 2014a. “Theocritus and the Style of Hellenistic Poetry”, in: Hunter, Rengakos and Sistakou, 55–74. Hunter, R. 2014b. Hesiodic Voices. Cambridge. Hunter, R. 2015. Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, Book IV. Cambridge. Hunter, R., A. Rengakos and E. Sistakou (eds.) 2014. Hellenistic Studies at a Crossroads. Exploring Texts, Contexts and Metatexts. Berlin/Boston. Hutcheon, L. 1995. Irony’s Edge. The Theory and Politics of Irony. London/New York. Hutchinson, G.O. 1988. Hellenistic Poetry. Oxford. Hutchinson, G.O. 2001. Greek Lyric Poetry. Oxford. Hutchinson, G.O. 2014. “Hellenistic Poetry and Hellenistic Prose”, in: Hunter, Rengakos and Sistakou, 31–54. Huttner, U. 1997. Die politische Rolle der Heraklesgestalt im griechischen Herrschertum. Stuttgart. Jacob, D. 2012. Ευριπίδης, Άλκηστη. Ερμηνευτική έκδοση. Athens. Jaillard, D. 2007. “kûdos arésthai (emporter le kûdos): Le kûdos des rois, des guerriers et des athlètes au miroir des dieux” Gaia 11, 85–99. Jameson, M.H., C.N. Runnels, and T.H. van Andel. 1994. A Greek Countryside. The Southern Argolid from Prehistory to the Present Day. With a Register of Sites. Stanford. Kaibel, G. 1894. “Aratea” Hermes 29, 82–123. Kaiser, E. 1964. “Odyssee-Szenen als Topoi” MH 21, 197–224. Kaloudis, N. 2017. “Daphnis’ Folksong: The Euphonist’s Effect on the Creation of a Textual Performance”, in: N.W. Slater (ed.), Voice and Voices in Antiquity. Orality and Literacy in the Ancient World, Leiden/Boston, 208–230.

Bibliography | 349

Kampakoglou, A. 2014. “Cowherd or Athlete: Aegon’s Ambiguous Status and the Erotics of Genre in Theocritus Idyll 4” Phoenix 68, 1–26. Kania, R. 2016. Virgil’s Eclogues and the Art of Fiction. A Study of the Poetic Imagination. Cambridge. Karanika, A. 2014. Voices at Work. Women, Performance, and Labor in Ancient Greece. Baltimore. Keeline, T. 2017. “A Poet on the Margins: Vergil and the Theocritean Scholia” CPh 112, 456–78. Keesling, C.M. 2006. “Heavenly Bodies: Monuments To Prostitutes in Greek Sanctuaries”, in: C. Faraone and L.K. McClure (eds.), Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World, Madison, 59–76. Kirichenko, A. 2008. “Nothing to Do With Zeus? The Old and the New in Callimachus’ First Hymn”, in: Harder et al., 181–201. Kerkhecker, A. 1999. Callimachus’ Book of Iambi. Oxford. Kirstein, R. 1997. “Zu Theokrit Id. 13.5 χαλκεοκάρδιος” Hermes 125, 380–382. Kirstein, R. 2002. “Companion Pieces in the Hellenistic Epigram (Call. 21 & 35 Pf.; Theoc. 7 & 15 Gow; Mart. 2.91 & 2.92; Ammianos AP 11.230 & 11.231)”, in: M A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit and G.C. Wakker (eds.), Hellenistic Epigrams, Leuven, 113–135. Kirstein, R. 2007. Junge Hirten und alte Fischer. Die Gedichte 27, 20 und 21 des Corpus Theocriteum. Berlin. Kivilo, M. 2010. Early Greek Poets’ Lives. The Shaping of the Tradition. Leiden/Boston. Klooster, J. 2011. Poetry as Window and Mirror. Positioning the Poet in Hellenistic Poetry. Leiden. Klooster, J. 2014. “Between (unbearable) Lightness and Darkness: Trends in Scholarship on Hellenistic poetry” AC 83, 159–69. Köhnken, A. 1980. “Komatas’ Sieg über Lakon” Hermes 108, 122–125. Köhnken, A. 1996. “Theokrits Polyphemgedichte”, in: Harder et al., 171–186. Köhnken, A. 2008. “Hellenistic Chronology: Theocritus, Callimachus, and Apollonius Rhodius”, in: T.D. Papanghelis and A. Rengakos (eds.), Brill's Companion to Apollonius Rhodius, Leiden/Boston, 73–94. Kolde, A. 2005. “La chienne de Polyphème. Théocrite, Idylle 6” BAGB 1, 95–112. Kossaifi, C. 2002. “Le poète de Pan. Les raisons de la victoire de Comatas dans l’Idylle V de Théocrite” REG 115, 75–109. Kossaifi, C. 2017. “Et in Theocrito ego…Death in Theocritus’ Bucolic Idylls” Mnemosyne 70, 40–57. Kouremenos, Th., G.M. Parássoglou, K. Tsantsanoglou. 2006. The Derveni Papyrus. Florence. Kowalzig, B. 2007. Singing for the Gods. Performances of Myth and Ritual in Archaic and Classical Greece. New York. Kowerski, L.M. 2008. “A Competition in Praise: An Allusion to Simon. fr. 11 W2 in Theoc. Id. 22.214–23” Mnemosyne 61, 568–585. Krevans, N. 1983. “Geography and Literary Tradition in Theocritus 7” TAPhA 113, 201–220. Kutzko, D. 2007. “The Bemused Singer and Well-Versed Audience: The Use of Polyphemus in Theocritus” SIFC 5, 73–114. Kyriakou, P. 1994. “Images of Women in Pindar” MD 32, 31–54. Kyriakou, P. 1995. Homeric hapax legomena in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius. Stuttgart. Kyriakou, P. 2001a. “Warrior Vaunts in the Iliad” RhM 144, 250–277. Kyriakou, P. 2001b. “Poet, Victor, and Justice in Bacchylides” Philologus 145, 16–33. Kyriakou, P. 2004. “Κλέος and Poetry in Simonides fr. 11 W2 and Theocritus, Idyll 16” RhM 147, 221–246. Kyriakou, P. 2006. A Commentary on Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris. Berlin/New York. Kyriakou, P. 2007. “Epidoxon kydos: Crown Victory and its Rewards” C&M 58, 119–158. Kyriakou, P. 2011. The Past in Aeschylus and Sophocles. Berlin/Boston.

Bibliography | 351

Méndez Dosuna, J. 2008. “The Literary Progeny of Sappho’s Fawns: Simias’ Egg (AP 15.27.13– 20) and Theocritus 30.18” Mnemosyne 61, 192–206. Merkelbach, R. 1952. “Bettelgedichte (Theokrit, Simonides und Walther von der Vogelweide)” RhM 95, 312–327. Messi, M. 2007. “La memoria letteraria nelle vie dell’Alessandria tolemaica. L’idillio III di Teocrito” Acme 60, 31–51. Michon, S. 2005. “Une lecture de l’Epithalame d’Hélène de Théocrite”, in: A. Kolde, A. Lukinovich and A. L. Rey (eds.), κορυφαίῳ ἀνδρί. Mélanges offerts à André Hurst, Genève, 213–21. Molinos Tejada, M.T. 1992. “Sur les Bacchantes de Théocrite” Kernos 5, 109–117. Molyneux, J.H. 1992. Simonides. A Historical Study. Wauconda, IL. Mori, A. 2008. The Politics of Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica. Cambridge. Morrison, A.D. 2007. The Narrator in Archaic Greek and Hellenistic Poetry. Cambridge. Moscadi, A. 2007. “L’idillio 7 di Teocrito: La doppia investitura” Prometheus 33, 214–230. Mülke, M. 2004. “Wortwiederholungen in den Kallimacheischen Epigrammen”, in: Harder et al., 185–205. Neal, T. 2006. The Wounded Hero. Non-Fatal Injury in Homer’s Iliad. Bern. Nicholson, N. 2005. Aristocracy and Athletics in Archaic and Classical Greece. Cambridge. Nickau, K. 2002. “Der Name “Simichidas” bei Theokrit” Hermes 130, 389–403. Nicolai, R. (ed.) 2003. ΡΥΣΜΟΣ. Studi di poesia, metrica e musica greca offerti dagli allievi a Luigi Enrico Rossi per i suoi settant’anni. Rome. Nobili, C. 2011. “Threnodic Elegy in Sparta” GRBS 51, 26–48. Noussia-Fantuzzi, M. 2017. “‘Lyric’ Atmosphere in Apollonius Rhodius and Callimachus (With an Analysis of Theocritus 18)”, in: Sistakou, 248–80. Obbink, D.D. 2001. “The Genre of Plataea. Generic Unity in the New Simonides”, in: Boedeker and Sider, 64–85. Obbink, D.D. 2005. “New Old Posidippus and Old New Posidippus: From Occasion to Edition in the Epigrams”, in: K. Gutzwiller (ed.), The New Posidippus. A Hellenistic Poetry Book, Oxford, 97–115. O’Hara, J.J. 1996. True Names. Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay. Ann Arbor. Olson, S.D. 2002. Aristophanes Acharnians. Edited with Introduction and Commentary. Oxford. Ott, U. 1969. Die Kunst des Gegensatzes in Theokrits Hirtengedichten. Hildesheim. Ott, U. 1972. “Theokrits “Thalysien” und ihre literarischen Vorbilder” RhM 115, 134–149. Palumbo Stracca, B.M. 2000. “Tre note a Teocrito XXII” RCCM 42, 175–189. Parry, H. 1987. “Circe and the Poets: Theocritus IX, 35–36” ICS 12, 7–21. Pasquali, G. 1986. Scritti filologici. Edd. F. Bornmann, G. Pascucci and S. Timpanaro. Florence. Pausch, D. 2011. “Lebst Du noch oder schreibst Du schon? Ptolemaios II. und die Dichtung in Theokrits 14. Idyll” A&A 57, 18–38. Payne, M.E. 2007. Theocritus and the Invention of Fiction. Cambridge. Payne, M.E. 2011. “Iambic Theatre: The Childhood of Callimachus Revisited”, in: AcostaHughes et al., 493–507. Pelliccia, H. 2009. “Simonides, Pindar and Bacchylides”, in: Budelmann, 240–62. Piacenza, N. 2010. “‘Come una rana contro i grilli’: note in margine ad una metafora teocritea (Id. 7.37–42)” Lexis 28, 369–376. Poltera, O. 2008. Simonides lyricus. Testimonia und Fragmente. Basel. Pontani, F. 2014. “‘Your First Commitments Tangible Again’ — Alexandrianism as an Aesthetic Category?”, in: Hunter, Rengakos and Sistakou, 157–184.

352 | Bibliography

Porro, A. 2000. “A proposito di Teocrito XXIV”, in: G. Arrighetti and M. Tulli (eds.), Letteratura e riflessione sulla letteratura nella cultura classica. Atti del convegno, Pisa, 7–9 giugno 1999, Pisa, 171–185. Postlethwaite, N. 1998. “Akhilleus and Agamemnon: Generalized Reciprocity”, in: C. Gill, N. Postlethwaite and R. Seaford (eds.), Reciprocity in Ancient Greece, Oxford, 93–104. Prauscello, L. 2006. Singing Alexandria. Music between Practice and Textual Transmission. Leiden/Boston. Prauscello, L. 2007. “A Homeric Echo in Theocritus’ Idyll 11.25–7. The Cyclops, Nausicaa and the Hyacinths” CQ 57, 90–96. Prauscello, L. 2011. “Digging up the Musical Past. Callimachus and the New Music”, in: AcostaHughes et al., 289–308. Pretagostini, R. 1992. “Tracce di poesia orale nei carmi di Teocrito” Aevum(ant) 5, 67–87. Pretagostini, R. 1997. “La ripresa teocritea della poesia erotica arcaica e tardoarcaica (Idd. 29 e 30)” MD 38, 9–24. Pretagostini, R. 2003. “Il miniencomio di Tolemeo II in Theocr. 14.59–65”, in: Nicolai, 357–364. Pretagostini, R. 2006. “How Bucolic are Theocritus’ Bucolic Singers?”, in: Fantuzzi and Papanghelis, 53–74. Prioux, É. 2007. Regards alexandrins. Histoire et théorie des arts dans l’épigramme hellénistique. Leuven. Pucci, P. 2010. “The Splendid Figure of Κῦδος” Lexis 28, 202–225. Purchase, P.H. 2003. “The Life of Objects: Bounds of Creativity in Theocritus’ First Idyll” Ramus 32, 85–101. Raaflaub, K.A. 2016. “The Newest Sappho and Archaic Greek-Near Eastern Interactions”, in: A. Bierl and A. Lardinois (eds.), The Newest Sappho. P.Sapph. Obbink and P. GC inv. 105, frs. 1–4, Leiden, 127–147. Radici Colace, P. 1971. “La tecnica compositiva dell’ERASTES pseudo-teocriteo (Idillio XXIII)” GIF 23, 325–346. Radke, G. 2007. Die Kindheit des Mythos. Die Erfindung der Literaturgeschichte in der Antike. Munich. Rawles, R. 2007. “Simonides and Theocritus 4: Intertextual Readings” MD 59, 9–34. Rawles, R. 2015. “Lysimeleia (Thucydides 7.53, Theocritus 16.84): What Thucydides Does Not Tell Us About The Sicilian Expedition” JHS 135, 132–146. Reece, S. 1993. The Stranger’s Welcome. Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality-Scene. Ann Arbor. Reed, J.D. 1997. Bion of Smyrna. The Fragments and the Adonis. Cambridge. Reed, J.D. 2006. “Continuity and Change in Greek Bucolic between Theocritus and Virgil”, in: Fantuzzi and Papanghelis, 209–234. Reed, J.D. 2010. “Idyll 6 and the Development of Bucolic after Theocritus”, in: Clauss and Cuypers, 238–50. Reitzenstein, E. 1931. “Zur Stiltheorie des Kallimachos”, in: Festschrift Richard Reitzenstein zum 2. April 1931 dargebracht, Leipzig, 23–69. Rist, A.T. 1978. The Poems of Theocritus. Chapel Hill. Rosen, R.M. 2007. “The Hellenistic Epigrams on Archilochus and Hipponax”, in: Bing and Bruss, 459–476. Rosenmeyer, P.A. 1991. “Simonides’ Danae Fragment Reconsidered” Arethusa 24, 5–29. Rosenmeyer, P.A. 1997. “Her Master’s Voice: Sappho’s Dialogue with Homer” MD 39, 123–149.

Bibliography | 353

Rosenmeyer, T.G. 1969. The Green Cabinet. Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric. Berkeley/Los Angeles. Rossi, L.C. 2001. The Epigrams Ascribed to Theocritus. A Method of Approach. Groningen. Rossi, L.E. 1971. “Mondo pastorale e poesia bucolica di maniera: l’idillio VIII del corpus teocriteo” SIFC 43, 5–25. Rudoni, E.R. 2015. “Idyll 7 and the Hymn to Hermes” CCJ 61, 99–110. Ruggi, F. 2011. “Sull’identità di Licida (Theocr. Id. VII)” Maia 63, 240–244. Rutherford, I.C. 2001. Pindar’s “Paeans”. A Reading of the Fragments with a Survey of the Genre. Oxford. Sbardella, L. 2000. Filita. Testimonianze e frammenti poetici. Rome. Sbardella, L. 2003. “Mogli o buoi? Lo scontro tra Tindaridi ed Afaretidi da Pindaro ai poeti alessandrini”, in: Nicolai, 133–150. Sbardella, L. 2004. “Chios aoidos: l’Omero di Teocrito”, in: R. Pretagostini and E. Dettori (eds.), La cultura ellenistica. L’opera letteraria e l’esegesi antica. Atti del Convegno COFIN 2001, Università di Roma “Tor Vergata”, 22–24 settembre 2003, Rome, 81–94. Schein, S.L. 2016. “The Language of Wisdom in Sophokles’ Philoktetes and Euripides’ Bacchae”, in: P. Kyriakou and A. Rengakos (eds.), Wisdom and Folly in Euripides, Berlin/Boston, 257–273. Schmidt, E.A. 1974. “Der göttliche Ziegenhirt. Analyse des fünften Idylls als Beitrag zu Theokrits bukolischer Technik” Hermes 102, 207–243. Schmiel, R.C. 1993. “Structure and Meaning in Theocritus 11” Mnemosyne 46, 229–234. Schmitz, T.A. 2012. “Heracles in Bits and Pieces: Id. 25 in the Corpus Theocriteum”, in: Baumbach and Bär, 259–82. Scholl, W. 2014. Der Daphnis-Mythos und seine Entwicklung. Von den Anfängen bis zu Vergils vierter Ekloge. Hildesheim. Schroeder, CM. 2008. “‘To Keep Silent is A Small Virtue’: Hellenistic Poetry and the Samothracian Mysteries”, in: Harder et al., 307–34. Schwinge, E.R. 1986. Künstlichkeit von Kunst. Zur Geschichtlichkeit der alexandrinischen Poesie. Munich. Seaford, R. 2001. Euripides, Bacchae. With an Introduction, Translation and Commentary. Warminster. Segal, C.P. 1981. Poetry and Myth in Ancient Pastoral. Essays in Theocritus and Virgil. Princeton. Sens, A. 1997. Theocritus: Dioscuri (Idyll 22). Introduction, Text, and Commentary. Göttingen. Serrao, G. 1971. Problemi di poesia alessandrina, I: Studi su Teocrito. Rome. Serrao, G. 2000. “La poesia bucolica: realtà campestre e stilizzazione letteraria”, in: R. Bianchi Bandinelli (ed.), Storia e civiltà dei Greci, vol. 9, Milan, 180–99. Shaw, C.A. 2014. Satyric Play. The Evolution of Greek Comedy and Satyr Drama. Oxford. Sherwin-White, S.M. 1978. Ancient Cos. An Historical Study from the Dorian Settlement to the Imperial Period. Göttingen. Sider, D. 2001. “Theokritos 27: Oaristys” WJ 25, 99–105. Sistakou, E. 2016. Tragic Failures: Alexandrian Responses to Tragedy and the Tragic. Berlin/Boston. Sistakou, E. 2017a. “Theocritus’ Idylls: On the Verge of Modern Lyric”, in: Sistakou, 281–316. Sistakou, E. 2017b. “From Present to Presence: Modes of Presentification in Hellenistic Poetry”, in: Harder et al., 1–22. Sistakou, E. (ed.) 2017. Hellenistic Lyricism. Berlin/Boston. Sistakou, E. and A. Rengakos (eds.) 2016. Dialect, Diction, and Style in Greek Literary and Inscribed Epigram. Berlin/Boston.

354 | Bibliography

Spanoudakis, K. 2002. Philitas of Cos. Leiden. Spiro, F. 1893. “Ricerche alessandrine I: Teocrito e Callimaco” RAL 5.2.1, 616–618. Spofford, E.W. 1969. “Theocritus and Polyphemus” AJPh 90, 22–35. Stanzel, K.-H. 1995. Liebende Hirten. Theokrits Bukolik und die alexandrinische Poesie. Stuttgart. Stanzel, K.-H. 1996. “Selbstzitate in den mimischen Gedichten Theokrits” in: Harder et al., 205–225. Steinmetz, P. (ed.) 1990. Beiträge zur hellenistischen Literatur und ihrer Rezeption in Rom. Stuttgart. Stephens, S.A. 2002. “Egyptian Callimachus”, in: F. Montanari and L. Lehnus (eds.), Callimaque. Sept exposés suivis de discussions, Vandoeuvres-Genève, 3–7 septembre 2001, Vandoeuvres-Genève, 235–262. Stephens, S.A. 2003. Seeing Double. Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London. Stephens, S.A. 2006. “Ptolemaic Pastoral”, in: Fantuzzi and Papanghelis, 91–118. Stephens, S.A. 2010. “Ptolemaic Alexandria”, in: Clauss and Cuypers, 46–61. Stephens, S.A. 2015. Callimachus. The Hymns. Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. Oxford. Stern, J. 1975. “Theocritus’ Idyll 14” GRBS 16, 51–58. Stern, J. 1978. “Theocritus’ Epithalamium for Helen” RBPh 56, 29–37. Stoevesandt, M. 2008. Homers Ilias. Gesamtkommentar. Herausgegeben von A.F. Bierl and J. Latacz. Band IV Sechster Gesang Fasz. 2. Kommentar. Stuttgart. Strano, M. 1976. “Considerazioni sull’idillio X di Teocrito” Helikon 16, 454–460. Strootman, R. 2010. “Literature and the Kings”, in: Clauss and Cuypers, 30–45. Swift, L.A. 2011. “Epinician and Tragic Worlds: the Case of Sophocles’ Trachiniae”, in: Athanassaki and Bowie, 391–413. Swift, L.A. 2015. “Stesichorus on Stage”, in: Finglass and Kelly, 125–144. Tarán, S.L. 1979. The Art of Variation in the Hellenistic Epigram. Leiden. Telò, M. 2005. “Due casi di ‘archeologia’ intertestuale: Apoll. Rh. 3. 1293–1295 e Theocr. 14. 66–67” SemRom 8, 5–11. Thomas, R.F. 1979. “New Comedy, Callimachus, and Roman Poetry” HSCPh 83, 179–206. Thomas, R.F. 1996. “Genre through Intertextuality. Theocritus to Virgil and Propertius”, in: Harder et al., 227–246. Thompson, D.J. 2003. “The Ptolemies and Egypt”, in: A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World, Oxford, 105–120. Todd, S.R. 1990. “The Purpose of Evidence in Athenian Courts”, in: P. Cartledge, P. Millett and S. Todd (eds.), Nomos. Essays in Athenian Law, Politics and Society, Cambridge, 19–39. Trovati, G. 2001. “Gli ultimi sviluppi della poesia bucolica greca” Acme 54, 35–72. Tsantsanoglou, K. 2007. “Callimachus Aetia fr. 1.7–17, Once Again” ZPE 163, 27–36. Tsantsanoglou, K. 2009. “The λεπτότης of Aratus” TC 1, 55–89. Tsantsanoglou, K. 2010. “Callimachus Ia. XIII, fr. 203 + 204a Pf. (POxy 1011 fol. VI): A New Reading” TC 2, 77–114. Tsantsanoglou, K. 2012. Of Golden Manes and Silvery Faces. The Partheneion 1 of Alcman. Berlin/Boston. Tsitsibakou-Vasalos, E. 1989. “The Homeric ἄφαρ in the Oedipus Myth and the Identity of the Lille Mother” Glotta 67, 60–88. Tueller, M.A. 2008. Look Who’s Talking. Innovations in Voice and Identity in Hellenistic Epigram. Leuven.

Bibliography | 355

Van Erp Taalman Kip, A.M. 1996. “Truth in Tragedy. When Are We Entitled To Doubt A Character’s Words?” AJPh 117, 517–536. Van Noorden, H. 2015. Playing Hesiod. The ‘Myth of the Races’ in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge. Van Sickle, J.B. 1969. “The Fourth Pastoral Poems of Virgil and Theocritus” AMArc 5, 129–48. Vasunia, P. 2001. The Gift of the Nile. Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London. Volk, K. 2010. “Aratus”, in: Clauss and Cuypers, 197–210. Volk, K. 2012. “Letters in the Sky: Reading the Signs in Aratus’ Phaenomena” AJPh 133, 209–40. Vox, O. 1985. “II contrasto di Batto e Coridone nell’Idillio IV di Teocrito” MD 15, 173–178. Vox, O. 1990. “Appendice: lo scudo di Eraclino” AION(filol) 12, 65–67. Walker, S.F. 1980. Theocritus. Boston. Walsh, G.B. 1985. “Seeing and Feeling. Representation in Two Poems of Theocritus” CPh 80, 1–19. Walsh, G.B. 1990. “Surprised by Self. Audible Thought in Hellenistic Poetry” CPh 85, 1–21. Weber, G. 1993. Dichtung und höfische Gesellschaft. Die Rezeption von Zeitgeschichte am Hofe der ersten drei Ptolemäer. Stuttgart. Weber-Pallez, C. 2016. “L’Argolide, un territoire grec défini par l’emboîtement des frontières?”, in: H. Berthelot et al. (eds.), Vivre et penser les frontières dans le monde méditerranéen antique: Actes du colloque tenu à l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, les 29 et 30 juin 2013, Bordeaux, 55–65. West, M.L. 1978. Hesiod, Works and Days. Oxford. White, H. 1979. Studies in Theocritus and Other Hellenistic Poets. Amsterdam. White, H. 1981. “Four Textual and Interpretative Problems in Theocritus’ Idyll XVI”, in: G. Giangrande (ed.), Corolla Londiniensis 1, London, 137–147. Whitehorne, J.E.G. 1974. “The Reapers: Theocritus ‘Idyll’ 10” AUMLA 41, 30–49. Whitmarsh, T. 2009. “An I for an I: Reading Fictional Autobiography” CentoPagine III, 55–66. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von. 1906. Die Textgeschichte der griechischen Bukoliker. Berlin. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von. 1924. Hellenistische Dichtung in der Zeit des Kallimachos. Berlin. Wilkinson, C.L. 2013. The Lyric of Ibycus. Introduction, Text and Commentary. Berlin/Boston. Williams, F. 1971. “A Theophany in Theocritus” CQ 21, 137–145. Yatromanolakis, D. 2007. Sappho in the Making. The Early Reception. Washington/ Cambridge, MA. Zagagi, N. 1984. “Self-Recognition in Theocritus’ Seventh Idyll” Hermes 112, 427–438. Zanker, G. 1983. “The Nature and Origin of Realism in Alexandrian Poetry” A&A 29, 125–145. Zanker, G. 1987. Realism in Alexandrian Poetry. A Literature and its Audience. London. Zimmerman, C.L. 1994. The Pastoral Narcissus. A Study of the First Idyll of Theocritus. Lanham, MD.

Index of passages Theocritus Epigrams AP 6.337 = 8 Gow AP 6.338 = 10 Gow AP 7.660 = 9 Gow AP 7.664 = 21 Gow AP 9.434 = [27] Gow AP 9.598 = 22 Gow AP 9.599 = 17 Gow AP 9.600 = 18 Gow AP 13.3 = 19 Gow Idylls 1 1.1–11 1.12–14 1.14 1.15–18 1.21–23 1.23–24 1.25–26 1.27–56 1.57–58 1.59–60 1.62–63 1.65 1.66–69 1.68–70 1.71–93 1.80 1.82–85 1.82–91 1.85–91 1.86–88 1.93 1.97–98 1.97–113 1.103 1.105–10 1.112–13 1.115–30 1.117–18 1.123–29 1.128–9

322–23 321–22 301 n. 3 300, 303–4, 327 300–2 304–5 300, 307–10 305–7 300, 310–11

162–75 165–68 155, 165–66, 169 82, 166 166, 169, 173 169 166 154, 167 162–65 167 167 169–73 97, 171 105, 173 104 167 173 104, 173 116 173 96 174 104, 123 167 172, 204 167 167 23 104 173 5

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615272-008

1.128–30 1.129 1.132–36 1.138–39 1.139–40 1.141 1.144–45 1.146–48 1.149–51 2.15–16 2.79 2.118–26 2.164 3 3.1–5 3.6–11 3.12–14 3.18–20 3.25–27 3.28–30 3.31–33 3.34 3.34–36 3.35–36 3.37–39 3.40–51 3.52–54 3.54 4 4.1–11 4.12–27 4.17–19 4.23–25 4.26–28 4.29–31 4.32–37 4.38–40 4.41–43 4.44–45 4.50–57 4.58–63 5 6 6.1–5

105, 172 171 104 167 174 105, 171, 173, 231 158 153, 168 168 5 135 91 204 82–96 82–86 86–88 88–90 90–91 92–93 87 87 87–8 82 88 93–94 82, 94–95, 138 91, 93, 96 130 18–32 18–23 19 23, 25 23, 25 23–24, 30 24–25 24–25, 29 20, 24, 30 30 25, 31–32 26 27–28 32–42 111–21 112–13

358 | Index of passages

6.6–10 6.13–14 6.15–19 6.17 6.18–19 6.22–24 6.31–33 6.34–40 6.42 6.43–46 7 7.1–9 7.27–9 7.37–38 7.39–41 7.40 7.42 7.42–44 7.42–48 7.43–44 7.44 7.47 7.47–48 7.49–51 7.50–51 7.51 7.52 7.52–56 7.65–66 7.69 7.72–77 7.72–89 7.78–82 7.80–82 7.83–89 7.86–89 7.87 7.88–89 7.91–93 7.91–95 7.94–95 7.96–97 7.96–127 7.98 7.98–102 7.99–100 7.99–102

116 115 119 118 118 121 88, 120 118–19 112, 149 112 175–93 186–88 172, 176 97, 172, 175–76 175–76, 192 186 175, 177 175–76 177–79 158 178 171, 235 191 158 10 182 181 179–81 189 179 181 179, 189 181 97 171, 181–82 41, 155, 166, 189 82 97 172, 175 183 177 31, 182 182 321 n. 48 183 185 182

7.100–1 7.102 7.103–14 7.104 7.115–19 7.120–21 7.122 7.122–25 7.126–27 7.127 7.128–29 7.131–57 7.139–41 7.148–55a 7.155–57 8 9 10 11 11.1–6 11.8 11.10–16 11.12–13 11.13–18 11.15 11.16 11.17 11.17–18 11.19–79 11.22–24 11.38–40 11.52–3 11.54 11.54–56 11.55–56 11.67–71 11.72–76 11.77–79 11.80–81 12 12.1–2 12.3–9 12.10–16 12.12–13 12.13 12.14 12.16

185 321 n. 48 183 183 183 144, 184 321 n. 48 184 113, 184 118 158, 176–77 182 191 188–99 50, 175, 189, 193 147–55 155–61 43–51 96–111 106–11 339 98 99 96–97 77, 135 144 109 98 96 100 4, 98 121 99 89 90, 130 91, 99, 101, 121 101 86, 101–2, 121 97, 107 55–71 56–57 58 58, 61 70 70 70 70, 183

Index of passages | 359

12.17–21 12.20 12.23 12.23–26 12.27–29 12.30–34 12.35–37 13 13.1–4 13.5–15 13.16–17 13.16–18 13.19 13.36–39 13.48–51 13.58–75 13.73–74 13.75 14 16 16.1–4 16.8–12 16.13–21 16.22–33 16.34–47 16.48–57 16.59–67 16.68–70 16.71–81 16.82–89 16.90–97 16.98–103 16.101–2 16.104–9 17 17.1–4 17.5–12 17.13–19 17.28–33 17.35 17.36–52 17.53–57 17.58–70 17.71–76 17.81 17.85 17.93–94

56, 58, 61–62 70 56 62–63 63–64 64–65 65–67 193–204 193–95 195–99 202 195 196 198–99 197 199–201 195, 203 201–2 12–18 258–79 258–61 261–62 262–63 263–64 264–67 267–68 269–70 260–61 270–71 271–73 273 273–74 301 274–75 280–99 281 281–83 283–85 286 285 286 286–88 288 288 280 289 289

17.95 17.102–5 17.106–8 17.106–16a 17.116b–20 17.121–34 17.135–7 18 20 21 22 22.1–26 22.27–134 22.115–17 22.135–36 22.137–40 22.145–70 22.171 22.177–78 22.181 22.184 22.186–90 22.201–4 22.207–9 22.210–11 22.212–13 22.214–23 23 24 24.1–10 24.16 24.21 24.25–26 24.35–40 24.56–59 24.64–74 24.73 24.75–85 24.88–100 24.103–4 24.105–33 26 26.1–9 26.10–11 26.12–15 26.16–19 26.20–26

288–89 283 289 289–90 290–91 291–92 291–99 239–41 132–40 51–54 217–38 218 218–21 237 233 221, 223 222–27 228 228 228 228 228 221 222 222, 228 218, 230 230–38 122–32 204–17 206–9 216 216 208 215 208 210–12 213–14 212–15 215 216 205 241–58 246–47 243–46 247–48 244, 248–50 249–50

360 | Index of passages

26.27–32 26.33–34 26.35–38 27 29 30

250–54, 256–58 254–55 252–53 140–47 71–75 75–81

Other authors Aeschylus Agamemnon 218–21 79 414–26 79 Choephori 33–41 209 n. 94 432 250 527–39 209 n. 94 889–91 215 Supplices 630–709 273 n. 70 1050–51 144 1052–53 144 1062–73 144 Alcaeus fr. 366 V

71, 73

Alcman PMGF 1

239

Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica 1.18–19 1 1.18–22 298 1.20–22 1 1.131–32 195, 198 1.1172–1357 195 1.1207–10 198 1.1311 237 2.1–97 218 2.11–19 219 3.975–79 145 3.990–92 145 3.997–1004 145 3.1000–1 145 3.1008–10 145 3.1013–14 146 3.1015–16 146

3.1019–24 3.1077–78 3.1079–80 3.1097–101 3.1100–1 3.1105–8 3.1128–30 3.1131 3.1132–33 3.1140–41 3.1147–48 3.1161–62 4.1444–46 4.1773–75

145 145 145 145 145 145 146 145 145 145 145 145 187 298

Aratus Phaenomena 10–13 334 164 237 216–23 187 408–30 334 454–61 332 748–51 333, 335 768–77 334 783–87 329 1101 334 Archilochus fr. 2 W2 fr. 114 W2 fr. 120 W2 fr. 196a.15 W2 SEG xv 517

276 16 303 91 177

Aristophanes Aves 194 341 n. 83 Nubes 227 332 229–30 332 365–69 332 Ranae 1382–1406 289 n. 93 Thesmophoriazusae 146–72 277 n. 77 701 211

Index of passages | 361

Vespae 581–82 Aristotle Cael. 289b32–33 290a18–20 292a14

6 Iambs 3

307 n. 17

Bacchylides 3.108–9 284 n. 83 3.121–28 284 n. 83 5 283–84 9.3 237 13.120 287 13.133–34 287

Bion 1.17 1.45 1.48–49

Cleanthes SVF I.526 159 SVF I.570 79 n. 135

273 7

135 129 131

Callimachus Aetia fr. 1 Harder fr. 7.13–14 Harder fr. 24 Harder fr. 64 Harder

275–78, 341

Fragments 544 Pf. 2 n. 4, 303 n. 7 380 Pf. 2 n. 4, 303 n. 7

333 333 333

fr. 4.61–80 Maehler fr. 5 Maehler

188, 257

160, 275 n. 72 298 n. 113 29, 220 317–21

Epigrams AP 7.80 = 2 Pf. 323–25 AP 7.415 = 35 Pf. 302–3 AP 9.507 = 27 Pf. 2, 328–31 AP 7.525 = 21 Pf. 333–34 AP 9.565 = 7 Pf. 325–26, 336, 338 AP 9.566 = 8 Pf. 327–28, 336, 338 AP 11.362 = 59 Pf. 336–40 AP 12.150 = 46 Pf. 340–42 AP 12.230 = 52 Pf. 67–69 Hecale fr. 80 Hollis 170 n. 16, 298 n. 113 Hymns 1 295–96 4 253

Euripides Andromache 229 Bacchae 243–44, 249–51, 257 Med. 78 Troades 207 Hesiod Opera 4 330 202–12 325 373–75 51 695–703 51 703–5 51 Theogonia 22–32 160 27–28 178 30–31 177 80–103 289 94–104 160 100–1 259 881–85 297 fr. 24 M-W 233 fr. 25.20–25 M-W 193 fr. 26.31–33 M-W 193 fr. 43a.55–64 M-W 187 Homer Iliad 1.180 1.491–92

256 n. 39 228

362 | Index of passages

2.22–25 2.361 2.597–600 3.125–28 3.214 3.236–44 3.276 3.320 3.373–82 3.424–46 4.363 6.145–49 6.357–58 6.358 9.186–92 9.323–24 9.388–400 9.395–97 9.524 9.556–64 11.15 11.389 11.403 11.407 11.462 11.463 11.464–71 14.283–353 14.287–89 15.187–93 15.192 15.504–5 16.156–66 16.167 16.235 16.744 17.90 17.91–93 17.97 18.54 18.56 22.22 22.385 24.262 Odyssey 1.1–10 1.20–21

151 292 169 n. 14, 170, 172 240 227 232–33 272 272 286 286 228 80 59–60, 313 196 94 16 102 102, 227 259 n. 45 222 271 256 77 77 200 200 200 143 244 297 n. 110 296 203 n. 82 17 17 237 136 77 77 77 213 216, 245 n. 15 76 77 325 268 n. 61 268 n. 61

1.68–75 2.200 2.272 4.406 4.413 4.441–46 5.488 9.432 9.447–60 10.305 10.305–6 12.70 12.71–72 17.225 17.370–73 17.375–79 17.389–91 18.74 18.329 19.518–24 20.63–78 24.60–222 24.93–94

268 n. 61 227 285 152 152 152 324 83 115 n. 200, 148 n. 60, 150 159 108 242 n. 10, 274 274 255 256 256 256 255 324 325 325 60 59, 265 n. 52

Homeric Hymns 3.169–73 301 5 143–44 Ibycus PMGF 287.5–8 PMGF 288

75 80

Leonidas AP 9.25 331–35 Pl. 306 302, 308 307 302, 308 Meleager AP 7.79 311 n. 26 12.117 78 Ovid Amores 1.15.11–15 327 n. 59

Index of passages | 363

Pindar Isthmian Odes 5.22–25 326 6.26–56 199 Nemean Odes 1.50–51 215 1.60–61 210 1.67–69 214 Olympian Odes 1.25–35 297 n. 111 2.86–88 2, 178 6.22–27 326 Pythian Odes 1.69–75 271 2.52–56 2 3 44, 245–46 4 245 8.92–96 80 8.96–100 80 Paeans 7b = fr. 52h.11–12 Maehler 326 14 = fr. 52o Maehler 307 n. 17 20 = fr. 52u Maehler 215–16 Encomia fr. 123 Maehler 76 n. 128, 80 Posidippus AB 102 311 n. 26 AB 118 2, 326 n. 56 AB 122 2, 3117

288 n. 90 264–65, 281 n. 80 80 266, 319 266, 319 316 n. 36, 320 208–9 316 n. 36, 320 170 n. 18, 316 n. 36

Stesichorus fr. 86, 87, 88 Finglass fr. 97 Finglass

239 209–10

Theognis 237–54 1263–66

184 n. 45 312 57–58 138 n. 34

59–61, 74 59

Thucydides 7.53 272–73 7.54–6 273 Tyrtaeus fr. 10.31–32 = 11.21–22 W2 fr. 12 W2 fr. 12.16–17 W2 fr. 12.31 W2 fr. 12.31–4 W2 Vergil Eclogues 2.23–24 8.16

Ptolemy AP App. 59 331 Sappho fr. 1.21–24 V fr. 3, 5, 7, 9, 15, 17, 20 V fr. 48 V fr. 168b.4 V

Simonides fr. 10 W2 fr. 11 W2 fr. 19–20 W2 PMG 521 = 244 Poltera PMG 529 = 247 Poltera PMG 531 = 261 Poltera PMG 543 = 271 Poltera PMG 581 = 262 Poltera PMG 594 = 305 Poltera

4 n. 7 159 n. 81

16 153 16 290 54, 59

Index of names Acheron 286 Achilles 5, 16–17, 59, 62, 70, 74, 76, 94, 102, 117, 131, 136, 200, 216, 227–29, 235, 260, 264, 267, 270–72, 286–90 Acragas/Acragantine 317–21 Acrotime 126, 140–47 Adonis 92, 95, 139 Aegisthus 335 Aegon 8, 18–32, 51, 54, 84 Aeneas 228 Aeschinas 9, 12–18, 20, 47, 51, 76, 131, 158, 175 Aetna 278–79 Agamemnon 79, 136, 151, 228, 271, 287 Agave 241–58 Ageanax 82, 86, 158, 175–93 Ajax 78, 200, 270, 272 Alcmene 194, 204–17 Aleuadae 264, 266, 320 Alexander 283–86, 288 Alphesiboea 95 Amaryllis 18–32, 82–96, 103, 125, 130 Amphitryon 204–17 Amycus 6, 18, 217–38 Anacreon 300, 302, 304, 306–11 Anchises 143–44 Andromache 206–7, 229 Antagoras 187 Antigenes 187 Antinous 256 Apharids 217–38 Aphrodite 48–49, 78–80, 91–92, 123, 143–44, 167–68, 173, 241, 286, 312, 340 Apollo 1, 92, 136, 160, 185, 209, 222, 225, 229, 231, 235, 245–46, 253, 272, 277, 286, 288, 301, 312 Apollonius Rhodius 1–2, 6, 188, 195, 197, 199, 298 Aratus 2, 83, 111–21, 175–93, 328–35 Archilochus 16, 91, 177, 276, 300, 302–4, 306, 310–11, 327 Ares 79 Argo/Argonautic 1, 193–205, 217–38, 242, 274, 30

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615272-009

Argolis 197 Argos/Argive 197, 205, 214, 216 Aristis 175–93 Artemis 29, 142, 144–45 Asclepiades 175, 190, 192 Asphalion 51–5 Astyanax 207–8 Athena 135, 139, 207, 220, 271–72, 285, 287 Atreids/Atreus 239, 290–91 Autonoe 241–58 Bacchants 241–58 Bacchylides 7, 80, 193, 227, 266, 273, 278, 280, 283–84, 287, 290, 299 Bathyllus 308 Battus 7, 18–32, 50 Bebryces 219–20 Bellerophon 187 Berenice I 286–87 Bias 95 Bion 58, 62, 107, 124, 129, 131, 135, 140, 143, 147 Boethus of Sidon 331 Bombyca 43–51, 107 Bucaeus 9, 43–51, 53, 84, 107 Burina 186–87 Cadmus 246, 250–52, 257, 260 Callimachus 1–2, 29, 111, 122, 152, 160– 61, 178, 188, 192, 247, 296–99, 303, 318–19, 321, 323–42 Capaneus 222, 287 Castor 217–38 Cerberus 72–73 Chalciope 187 Chalcon 187–88, 192 Charaxus 312–16 Charites See Graces Chiron 191, 193, 216, 245 Chromis 166–67 Circe 5, 158–61 Cleanthes 79, 159 Cleobulus 316, 320–21

366 | Index of names

Clytaemestra 60, 206, 209, 215–16, 285 Clytia 187 Comatas 4–5, 8, 32–42, 47, 50, 84, 113, 117, 154, 158, 166, 169, 171, 181–82, 189–90, 193 Coronis 44, 245–46 Corydon 18–32, 44, 50, 84 Croesus 49, 284 Croton 18, 29 Cyclops 4–6, 8–10, 28, 41, 52, 55, 76, 78, 81–84, 86–90, 94, 96–121, 124–25, 130, 135, 139, 142, 148, 150, 153–55, 158, 175, 177, 179, 182, 184, 187–92, 198–200, 204, 218–21, 228, 268, 325, 339–41 Cynisca 12–18, 20 Cypris 81, 85, 104, 106, 109, 144 Cyrnus 56, 59–60, 63, 69, 125 Damoetas 4, 81, 83, 111–21, 144, 166 Danae 206–9, 215, 217 Daphnis 4–11, 23–26, 28, 42–44, 46, 55, 81–83, 91, 98, 103–6, 109–21, 123, 140–75, 192–93, 203–4 Delphis 91, 135, 138, 146 Demeter 48, 50, 95, 169, 175, 186–93, 209, 247, 257, 259, 271–72 Diocles 63–70 Diomedes 167, 169, 228, 256, 285–90 Dionysus 177, 191, 241–58, 290, 302, 326–27 Diophantus 51–5 Dioscuri 5, 201, 217–38, 266, 318–19 Doricha 312–20 Dracanum 254 Dryopean 197 Eetion 322–23 Endymion 95 Epicharmus 190, 301, 305–8 Erinyes 208, 211, 229 Eros 48, 77–9, 84, 122–32, 144, 167, 172, 193–98, 204, 341 Erysichthon 175, 187–93, 247, 257 Eudoxus 330 Eumaeus 41, 57, 136, 256 Eunica 132–40, 144–45

Eurypylus 187 Eurystheus 195 Euthydemus 275–76 Fate(s) 174, 210–14, 217 Galateia 6, 78, 86, 88, 90, 94, 96–121, 339 Ganymede 57, 65–69, 139, 286 Glaucus 228, 306 Graces 143, 227, 258–62, 275, 298 Hades 61, 80, 169–72, 204, 232, 291, 325 Hector 77, 105, 130, 136, 203, 207, 213, 228, 235, 271–72, 289, 325 Hecuba 206–7, 213 Helen 59–61, 142–43, 145, 152, 196, 222–23, 227, 229, 231, 233–34, 239– 41, 283, 286, 291 Hellas/Hellene 325, 328 Hera 72, 143, 204–17, 292 Heracles 5–6, 20–21, 29–30, 41, 46, 72– 73, 187–218, 220–21, 225, 238, 247, 275, 281, 283–86, 292, 305 Heraclitus 2, 302, 311, 323–25 Hermes 108, 207, 255 Hermesianax 94, 148, 155 Hermione 229 Hesiod 2–3, 50, 61, 73, 160–61, 177–78, 186–87, 193, 233, 246, 252, 275, 297, 327–30, 334 Hesperides 72–73, 87, 187–88 Hiero I 266, 271, 278, 283–84, 290 Hiero II 7, 258–80, 290 Hippocrene 187 Hippolytus 105, 123, 125, 144 Hippomenes 95 Hipponax 2–3, 262, 277, 300, 304, 306, 310–11 Homer 2–3, 6–10, 16–17, 40, 58, 60, 62, 69, 80, 83, 88, 100–2, 105–6, 109–12, 115, 120, 124, 130, 136, 139, 143, 148, 151, 161, 169–72, 178, 186–88, 196, 203, 209, 213–14, 219, 220, 224, 226– 28, 231–40, 244, 247, 254–60, 262, 264–70, 272, 274, 277–78, 281, 283,

Index of names | 367

286, 289–91, 293, 296–8, 300–1, 313, 324–25, 329, 334–35 Hylas 6, 8, 188, 193–204, 216, 220–21, 238, 247 Iasion 95 Ibycus 60, 75–76, 80, 144 Ida 80, 143, 283, 296 Idas 217–38 Iolcus 195–96, 202 Ionia/Ionian 267, 308 Iphicles 204–17 Irus 228, 255 Ischys 245 Jason 108, 123, 145–46, 196, 199, 201–2, 245, 274, 308 Lacon 8, 32–42, 47, 50, 84, 103, 150, 154, 158, 167–69, 216 Laertes 268 Lageidas 284 Lagus 207, 284 Leonidas 2, 302, 308–9, 330–35 Leto 286 Leucarus 336 Leucas 92 Leucippides 217–38 Leucippus 223–24, 229 Libya/Libyan 166, 187 Lityerses 46, 171 Lycidas 3–4, 6–7, 41, 82, 97, 110, 113–14, 155–56, 159, 166, 171, 175–93, 235 Lycus 12–18, 20 Lynceus 217–38 Lysimeleia 272 Magnesia/Magnesian 245 Maron 191 Medea 5, 78, 117, 145–46 Megara/Megarian 63–67 Megistes 308 Melampous 95 Melanthius 41–42, 136, 187, 255–56 Melantho 42, 324, 335 Meleager 78, 311 Menalcas 10, 147–61

Menelaus 77–78, 152, 200, 225, 227, 229, 232–33, 239–41, 272, 286 Mestra 187 Milon 8–9, 18–32, 43–53, 76, 84, 147– 55, 183 Mimnermus 2, 80, 329–30 Morson 32–42 Muses 1, 5, 9, 42, 48–49, 63, 97, 106, 109–10, 155, 157–61, 167–78, 185, 190, 230–31, 236–38, 258–79, 281, 289, 293, 312, 321–22, 326, 338–42 Myrmidons 62 Mytilene 82, 158, 179–81 Nais 121, 147–55 Naucratis 312–16 Neoboule 184 Neoptolemus 207, 226, 229 Nestor 237, 287 Nicias 6, 83, 106, 193–94, 321–23, 340 Niobe 253 Odysseus 16, 42, 82, 100–1, 106, 108, 120, 159, 161, 188, 191, 193, 200, 218, 220, 227–28, 234, 237, 255–56, 268, 272, 285–86, 324 Olympia 18–19, 21 Olympus 29, 66, 193, 215, 284–86, 296–97 Orestes 60, 208–9, 229, 252, 336–40 Orpheus 22 Pan 33, 105–6, 110, 148, 162–75, 177, 181, 183–84 Paphos/Paphia 143 Paris 59–60, 142–45, 235, 241, 256, 272, 283, 286, 291 Patroclus 5, 16, 56, 62, 70, 77, 94, 131, 136, 170 Peleus 123, 260, 287 Pelias 245 Pelops 57, 63, 286, 297 Penelope 42, 60, 106, 142–43, 206, 223, 227, 256, 286, 325 Pentheus 5, 226, 241–58 Persephone 259, 271–72 Perseus 208, 213 Phaon 92

368 | Index of names

Phasis 198, 202–3 Phemius 283 Philinna 300–2 Philinus 86, 118, 175–93 Philitas 175–78, 186–93, 321, 329–30 Philoxenus 86, 340 Phoenix 262, 317–19 Pholus 190–3 Phrasidamus 187 Pindar 2–3, 44, 56–58, 61, 63, 68, 76, 78–80, 111, 161, 166, 178, 186, 196, 199, 204, 210–11, 213–18, 225, 233–34, 245, 254, 261–62, 266–68, 271, 275, 278– 79, 280, 284, 290, 297–98, 307, 313, 326–28 Pisander 304–6, 310 Polybotas 43, 49, 84 Polydeuces 6, 18, 217–38 Polyphemus see Cyclops Poseidon 125, 143, 187, 218, 222, 257, 268 Posidippus 2, 100, 304, 312–20, 323, 326 Praxagoras 302 Priam 136, 272 Priamids 267 Priapus 44, 116, 169 Proteus 151–2 Ptolemaic 49, 204–5, 232, 241–42, 254, 258, 280, 285–86, 292, 319, 328–29 Ptolemy I 193, 207, 281, 283–86 Ptolemy II 7, 9, 13, 254, 279–99, 337 Pylades 337–39 Rhea 296 Rhodopis 312 Sappho 47, 57–58, 71, 73–74, 77, 92, 100, 138, 184, 186, 201, 204, 240, 272, 276, 312–20 Scheria 324 Scopas/Scopadae 264, 266, 319–20 Selene 95 Semele 242–47, 253, 257 Simaetha 5, 12, 54, 91, 113, 134–35, 138, 146, 204

Simichidas 4, 6, 31, 84, 110, 113–14, 118, 156, 158, 175–93, 321 Simonides 2, 4, 7, 18, 59, 80, 112, 170– 71, 186, 208, 225, 234–35, 258, 260, 262, 264–72, 278–79, 281, 288, 297, 299, 316–21 Simus 13, 16 Sparta/Spartan 17, 59, 208, 225, 239–41, 265, 267, 271 Sthenelus 287 Syracuse/Syracusans 97–98, 259, 271– 73, 278, 290, 300–2, 306–8 Teiresias 204–17, 243, 249 Telchines 161, 191–92, 329 Telemachus 57, 61, 227–28, 256, 285, 290 Telemus 121 Thamyris 162–75 Theaetetus 2, 323, 325–28 Theiodamas 29, 197, 220 Theognis 56–60, 63, 68–70, 74, 171, 260, 301 Theoxenus 76, 80–81, 196 Thessalus 187 Thessaly/Thessalian 70, 112, 264–68, 278, 318–20 Thetis 206, 213, 235, 287 Thucydides 44, 273, 339 Thyonichus 9, 12–18, 21, 44, 47, 76, 183 Thyrsis 4, 9, 52, 82, 95, 97, 105, 114, 153–55, 162–75 Timotheus 109 Titormus 19 Tityrus 41, 82–97, 114, 155, 166, 171, 175–93 Triopas 257 Tydeus 287 Tyndareus 142, 225, 232, 239 Tyndarids 224–25, 230–31 Tyrtaeus 16–17, 59, 153, 265, 290 Xenocles 321–23 Zeus 30, 67–69, 72, 78, 105–6, 143–44, 151, 178, 193–96, 202, 205–10, 213, 215–16, 222–33, 254, 259, 271–75, 281, 283–85, 288–96, 318–20, 330–32, 335