Greek Literature in the Hellenistic Period 9781136541070

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Greek Literature Volume 7

creek Literature in the Hellenistic Period

Edited with introductions by

Gregory Nagy Harvard University

Series Content Volume 1

THE ORAL TRADITIONAL BACKGROUND OF ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE

Volume 2

HOMER AND HESIOD AS PROTOTYPES OF GREEK LITERATURE

Volume 3

GREEK LITERATURE IN THE ARCHAIC PERIOD: THE EMERGENCE OF AUTHORSHIP

Volume4

GREEK LITERATURE IN THE CLASSICAL PERIOD: THE POETICS OF DRAMA IN ATHENS Volume 5

GREEK LITERATURE IN THE CLASSICAL PERIOD: THE PROSE OF HISTORIOGRAPHY AND ORATORY

Volume 6

GREEK LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY

Volume 7

GREEK LITERATURE IN THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD

Volume 8

GREEK LITERATURE IN THE ROMAN PERIOD AND IN LATE ANTIQUITY Volume 9

GREEK LITERATURE IN THE BYZANTINE PERIOD

Acknowledgments

The editor wishes to thank the following scholars for their help and encouragement: Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, Victor Bers, Emmanuel Bourbouhakis, Casey Due, Mary Ebbott, David Elmer, Corinne Pache,Jennifer Reilly, Panagiotis Roilos, David Schur, Roger Travis, T. Temple Wright, Dimitrios Yatromanolakis.

Published i n 2001 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue , New York, NY 1001 7 Published i n Great Britain by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4R N Routledge i s an Imprint of Taylor & Francis Books, Inc . Copyright e 2001 by Routledge All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical , or other means, now known o r hereafter invented, includin g an y photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing fro m the publishers . Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Greek literature / edited with introductions by Gregory Nagy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references . Contents: v. 1. The oral traditional background of ancient Greek literature -v. 2. Homer and Hesiod as prototypes of Greek literature — v. 3. Greek literature in the archaic period : the emergence of authorship - v . 4. Greek literature in the classical period : the poetics of drama in Athens ~ v. 5. Greek literature in the classical period: the prose of historiography and oratory - v . 6. Greek literature and philosophy -y. 7. Greek literature in the Hellenistic period — v. 8. Greek literature in the Roman period and in late antiquity -- v. 9. Greek literature in the Byzantine period. ISBN 0-8153-3681-0 (set) - ISB N 0-8153-3682-9 (v . 1) - ISB N 0-8153-3683-7 (v . 2) - ISBN 0-8153-3684-5 (v . 3) - ISB N 0-8153-3685-3 (v. 4) -ISBN 0-8153-3686-1 (y. 5) - ISB N 0-8153-3687-X (v. 6) - ISB N 0-8153-3688-8 (v . 7) - ISB N 0-415-93770-1 (v. 8) - ISB N 0-415-93771-X (v. 9) -ISBN 0-8153-2 1. Greek literature—History and criticism. I . Nagy, Gregory. PA3054 .G7 4 2001 880.9~dc21

2001048490

ISBN 0-8153-3681-0 (set) ISBN 0-8153-3682-9 (v.l) ISBN 0-8153-3683-7 (v.2) ISBN 0-8153-3684-5 (v.3) ISBN 0-8153-3685-6 (v.4) ISBN 0-8153-3686- 1 (v.5) ISBN 0-8153-3687-X (v.6) ISBN 0-8153-3688- 8 (v.7) ISBN 0-4159-3770-1 (v.8) ISBN 0-4159-3771- X (v.9) Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of thi s reprint but points out that some imperfections i n the original may be apparent.

Contents

vu 1x 1 57 62 75 85 107

129 135 153 205 213 241

265 291

Series Introduction Volume Introduction Section A. Conventions and Realities 1. The Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios: Part I, The Epilogue of Kallimachos' Hymn to Apollo Elroy L. Bundy 2. The Future of Studies in the Field of Hellenistic Poetry RudolfPfoiffer 3. Monody, Choral Lyric, and the Tyranny of the Handbook Malcom Davies 4. Text or Performance: Alan Cameron's Callimachus and His Critics Peter Bing 5. The Future of a Hellenistic Illusion: Some Observations on Callimachus and Religion Anthony W Bulloch 6. Mimesis and Aetiology in Callimachus' Hymns Mary DePew Section B. Varieties of Literary Interests 7. The Nightingale's Refrain: P.Oxy. 2625 = SLG 460 Ian Rutheiford 8. Alexandrian Sappho Revisited Dimitrios Yatromanolakis 9. Callimachus: Victoria Berenices Peter]. Parsons 10. The Epilogue to theAetia Peter E. Knox 11. TheN aive and Knowing Eye: Ekphrasis and the Culture of Viewing in the Hellenistic World Simon Goldhill 12. Apollonius Rhodius as a Homeric Scholar Antonios Rengakos Section C. Poetic Virtuosity 13. Theocritus' Seventh Idyll, Phil.etas and Longus Ewen L. Bowie 14. Callimachus and the Muses: Some Aspects of Narrative Technique in Aetia 1-2 Annette Harder v

v1

305 333 359

Contents

15. Callimachus' Lock of Berenice

Kathryn Gutzwiller 16. Writing the God: Form and Meaning in Callimachus, Hymn to Athena Richard Hunter 17. Gods in Action: The Poetics of Divine Performance in the Hymns of Callimachus

Albert Henrichs

381

Copyright Acknowledgments

Series Introduction

This nine-volume set is a collection of writings by experts in ancient Greek literature. On display here is their thinking, that is, their readings of ancient writings. Most, though not all, of these expens would call themselves philologists. For that reason, it is relevant to cite the definition of "philology" offered by Friedrich Nietzsche. In the preface to Daybreak, he says that philology is the art of reading slowly: Philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow- it is a goldsmith's art and connoisseurship of the word which has nothing but delicate cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it Iento. But for precisely this reason it is more necessary than ever today; by precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an age of "work," that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste, which wants to "get everything done" at once, including every old or new book:- this art does not easily get anything done, it teaches to read well, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate fingers and eyes. (This translation is adapted, with only slight changes, from R. ] . Hollingdale, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices ofMorality [Cambridge, 1982].) Nietzsche's original wording deserves to be quoted in full, since its power cannot be matched even by the best of translations: Philologie namlich ist jene ehrwiirdige Kunst, welche von ihrem Verehrer vor Allem Eins heischt, bei Seite gehn, sich Zeit lassen, still werden, Iangsam werden- , als eine Goldschmiedekunst und -kennerschaft des Wortes, die Iauter feine vorsichtige Arbeit abzuthun hat und Nichts erreicht, wenn sie es nicht Iento erreicht. Gerade damit aber ist sie heute nothiger als je, gerade dadurch zieht sie und bezaubert sie uns am starksten, mitten in einem Zeitalter der "Arbeit," will sagen: der Hast, der unanstandigen und schwitzenden Eilfertigkeit, das mit Allem gleich "fertig werden" will, auch mit jedem alten und neuen Buche:- sie selbst wird nicht so Ieicht irgend womit fertig, sie lehrt gut lesen, das heisst Iangsam, Vll

Vlll

Series Introduction tief, riick- und vorsichtig, mit Hintergedanken, mit offen gelassenen Thi.ien, mit zarten Fingern und Augen lesen ... (Friedrich Nietzsche, Morgenrothe. Nachgelassene Fragmente,Anfang 1880 bis Frnhjahr 1881. Nietzsche Werke V.1, ed. G. Colli andM. Montinari[Berlin, 1971], 9.)

This is not to say that the selections in these nine volumes must be ideal exemplifications of philology as Nietzsche defined it. Faced with the challenge of describing their own approaches to Greek literature, most authors of these studies would surely prefer a definition of "philology" that is less demanding. Perhaps most congenial to most would be the formulation of Rudolf Pfeiffer (History of Classical Scholarship I [Oxford, 1968]: "Philology is the art of understanding, explaining and reconstructing literary tradition." This collection may be viewed as an attempt to demonstrate such an art, in all its complexity and multiplicity. Such a demonstration, of course, cannot be completely successful, because perfection is far beyond reach: the subject is vast; the space is limited, and the learning required is ever incomplete. Finally, it is important to keep in mind that disagreements persist in the ongoing study of ancient Greek literature, and thus the articles in these nine volumes necessarily reflect a diversity of opinions. There is ample room for disagreement even about the merits of representative articles, let alone the choices of the articles themselves. It is therefore reasonable for each reader to ask, after reading an article, whether it has indeed been true to the art of philology. The editor, a philologist by training, has his own opinions about the relative success or failure of each of the studies here selected. These opinions, however, must be subordinated to the single most practical purpose of the collection, which is to offer a representative set of modern studies that seek the best possible readings of the ancient writings.

Volume Introduction

Greek literature in the Hellenistic period, as represented primarily by the scholarpoets of the new city-state Alexandria, is well known for its formalism and stylization (a premier study is that of Bundy 1972, article 1). Rudolf Pfeiffer (1955, article 2, p. 73) describes the Hellenistic poets this way: I expect many a modern ami de lettres will approve Jane Austen's wise decision to aim at perfection within the limited sphere of "her few square inches of ivory," as she said, and not to be lured into any grand literary adventure; so he may understand at least the conscious self-limitation of Hellenistic poets and may appreciate the perfection reached by the few masters of the third century, who had a lightness of hand, an indefinable touch of irony and that imperishable charm which is a divine gift of the Kharites, the Graces whom they implored so often. At an earlier point (p. 73), Pfeiffer says defensively: "for Hellenistic poetry, nonclassical as it was, was still genuinely Greek." And yet the Hellenistic scholar-poets were largely responsible for the definitions of the classical and archaic genres as we know them to this day (Davies 1988, article 3). They clearly knew the rules and conventions of classical poetics, displaying this knowledge in their own poetry by generally observing the same rules and conventions- but occasionally violating them in ostentatious gestures that serve to highlight their artistic mastery (Rossi 1971). The self-conscious stylization of Hellenis~ic poetry has led to lively debates about the occasionality of the poems (Bing 2000, article 4) and even about their functionality (Bulloch 1984 and Depew 1993, articles 5 and 6). Although there is disagreement about the circumstances of composing and performing Hellenistic poetry, there is general agreement about the learning and precision of the poets themselves in their use of earlier literary forms (articles 7-12: Rutherford 1995, Yatromanolakis 1999, Parsons 1977, Knox 1985, Goldhill 1994, Rengakos 2001). The poetic virtuosity of the Hellenistic poets is evident in the evocative power of their choices in wording (Bowie 1985, article 13), the deftness of their narrative technique (Harder 1988, article 14), and their seemingly effortless applications of past conventions to present realities (Gutzwiller 1992, article 15). Hellenistic artistry, it can be argu~d, confers seriousness and even sublimity to traditional themes that would otherwise be lost to indifference (Hunter 1992 and Henrichs 1993, articles 16 and 17). IX

X

Volume Introduction

Further Readings Andrews, N. E. 1996. "Narrative and Allusion in Theocritus, Idyll2." In A. Harder, R. F. Regtuit, and C. G. W akker, eds., 1heocritus: Hellenistica Groningana II, 21-53. Groningen. Cairns, F. 1992. "Theocritus, Idyll26." Proceedings ofthe Cambridge Philological Society 38:1-38. Davies, M. 1988. "Monody, Choral Lyric, and the Tyranny of the Handbook." Classical Quarterly 38:52-64. Depew, M. 1992. "Iambeion kaleitai nun: Genre, Occasion, and Imitation in Callimachus, frr. 191 and 203 Pf." Transactions ofthe American Philological Association 122:313-330. - - - . 1993. "Mimesis and Aetiology in Callimachus' Hymns." In A. Harder, R. F. Regtuit, and C. G. W akker, eds., Callimachus: Hellenistica Groningana I, 5777. Groningen. - - - . 1998. "Delian Hymns and Callimachean Allusion." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 98:155-182. Haslam, M. W.1993. "Callimachus' Hymns." InA. Harder,R.F. Regtuit, and C. G. W akker, eds., Callimachus: Hellenistica Groningana I, 111-125. Groningen. - - - . 1994. "The Contribution of Papyrology to the Study of Greek Literature: Archaic and Hellenistic Poetry." Proceedings ofthe 20th International Congress ofPapyrologists, Copenhagen, 23-29 August 1992, 98-105. Copenhagen. Janowitz, N. 1983. "Translating Cult: Hellenistic Judaism and theLetterofAristeas." SBLA Seminar Papers 22:347-356. Richardson, N.J. 1994. "Aristotle and Hellenistic Scholarship." In F. Montanari, ed., La Philologie grecque l'epoque hellinistique et romaine, 7-28. Entretiens sur l'antiquite classique XL, Fondation Hardt. Vandoeuvres and Geneva. Rossi, L. E. 1971. "I generi letterari e le lora leggi scritte e non scritte nelle lettere classiche." Bulletin ofthe Institute of Classical Studies 18:69-94.

a

ELROY L. BUNDY

The "Quarrel Between Kallimachos and Apollonios" Part I The Epilogue ofKallimachos's Hymn to Apollo I The history of the interpretation of Call. h. Apoll. 105-113 begins with the scholium to line 106: eyKccA€t ~H~ 'TOV'TWV 'TOVS UKW'IT'TOV'TCXS > \

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•EK&.>..Tlv· To the significance of this statement and the question of what prompted it we shall return, but it is sufficient to note here that according to the scholiast, Phthonos and Momos in the epilogue of this hymn refer to alleged critics who were mocking Kallimachos for his inability, real or imagined, to compose a long poem. Interpreters of Kallimachos have never moved far from this view; and the efforts of modern criticism, which began with Isaac Voss, have been largely directed toward refining the interpretation of the scholiast. Voss, in 1684, annotating Catullus 115.2, found occasion to comment on Call. h. Apoll. 106: ponto nempe comparabat Apollonii Rhodii magnum poema, quale volebat credi suum quod scripserat Argonauticon, alludens simul ad nomen Ponti Euxini, qui

This essay was first composed in the year and a half which followed the publication, early in 1962, of my Studia Pindarua and rewritten during the latter half of the following year, 1964. The notes remained unwritten until quite recently. In adding them I have attempted not only to support and clarify the text, but to heal the separation between the paper as it is written and as I should write it now, if the choice to do so seemed to me practical. References to Kallimachos look to Pfeiffer; those to Pindar to Turyn, in the case of the Epinicians, but in the case of the Fragments, to Snell.

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Elroy L. Bundy

velut operis argumentum constituit.l Thus 7TovToS' in Call. h. Apoll. 106 is in Voss's view an allusion to Argon. 1.2 in which Kallimachos supposes Apollonios to have announced in the word 7ToVToto the "theme" of his Argonautica; and although the 7TOVTOS' Ev~€LVOS' can in no sense be taken as the theme of Apollonios's epic, and although Kallimachos could not with any poetic gain or show of elegance have so referred to that poem, this mode of interpretation laid under its spell succeeding generations of scholars. For if the supposed verbal play on 7TOVTOS' seem riddling enough, many more since Voss's day have been moved to enrich our history of the period with lore more enigmatic still. M. T. Smiley, as late as 1917, approved Voss's guess and accepted h. Apoll. 105-113 as an attack on Apollonios's Argonautica.2 He went on (after Linde) to explain Argon. 3.932, in which a crow chides the seer Mopsos in language conventionally similar to that of h. Apoll. 106: aKA€l7JS' 08€ p.cWrtS' OS' ov8' oaa 7TIXW€S' tUIXUtV I OW€ vocp cfopcfuuau{}at as Apollonios's counterattack inserted into the second autograph of the poem obscurely alluded to in the scholia.J In this way, h. Apoll. became (for Smiley) the official organ of a conspiracy that drove the young pupil of Kallimachos and unfortunate author of the Argonautica into voluntary exile at Rhodes, there to await his opportunity for revenge in the covert allusion of Argon. 3.932f. H. J. Rose was at length able to thank E. A. Barber for a subtle refinement of Voss's and Smiley's guesses: Pontos is the father of the Telchines I Isaac Voss, Catullus (London 1684). 2M. T. Smiley, "The Quarrel between Callimachus and Apollonius," Hmnathetuz 17 (1912-1913) 280-294. 3 Wilamowitz had adequately refuted the notion that there is a circumstantial relation between h. Apoll. 105 and Argon. 3.392, but had unfortunately suggested that Argon. 3.39 was an imitation (without malice) of the Hekale. See Wilamowitz, "Ueber die Hekale des Kallimachos," NGG (1893) 731-747 and cf. alsoj. Neumann, De Epyllio Alexandrino (Diss. Konigsee 1904) 14ft'. So Knaack (Paulys Realencyclop4die der classischm Altmumswissenschaft, Bd. 2, col. 128) went on to argue that the Hekale rather than h. Apoll. 105 was the object of Apollonios's attack in the speech of the crows (some find parallels in another "quarrel," making use of the jackdaws and crows ofPindar and the "songbirds" ofBacchylides): "In Wahrheit will Apollonios die Erzlihlung der geschwiitzigen Krahe liicherli&h machm." In the words "licherlich machen" we meet the leitmotif of this low form of criticism. Gercke (Rh. Mus. 44 [1899] 140), for example (who began his article by summing up the "contributions" of Voss and Spannheim), comparing Theocr. 7.126 and Argon. 3.6-ID644, had earlier argued, "In der That ist das komische, von Simichidas vorgetragene, von Lykidas mil hm:.liehem Lachm und einem Geschenke belohnte Lied eine k.Ostliche Parodie auf eine etwas kindliche AOsserung des Apollonios." (Italics mine.) This interpretation is patently wasted ingenuity, since the logic of neither passage will accommodate that of the other, and the poetic processes at work in the two passages are both personal and traditional in ways that escape detection by these methods.

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"Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios"

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pilloried for their ignorance in the prologue to the Aitia. This relationship, Rose thought, explained the recalcitrant ou8' of h. Apoll. 105, since o~' here, Rose assumes (and perhaps rightly), should have the full sense that it has in Argon. 3.932, although on his showing the line is in truth profoundly alienated from its context, contradicting in anticipation the point of lines 108-112.4 While few scholars today would approve Voss's illogical and poetically ugly equation of 1TOVTOS' in h. Apoll. to the Euxine and even fewer would find in the words ocJ>8.&vos i11r&Mwvos an eponymous allusion (in violation of the grammar of the passage) to "the envy of Apollonios," 5 or in the phrase ituavpiov ?ToTapmo a malicious reference to the Halys River, at the mouth of which the Argonauts cast anchor briefly on their journey through the Pontos, 6 or in Apollo's spurning of Envy a mocking reminder of Apollonios's rumored defeat and retirement to Rhodes, 7 yet scarcely anyone would deny that the words oua 1TOVTOS allude in a polemical manner to the making of long poems, cJ>8.&vos to their heterodox authors (or their champions), and d:\tYTJ M{3as to the polished productions of Kallimachos and his orthodox school.S The entire passage is in short universally regarded as polemical, whether or not Phthonos and Momos refer allegorically to Apollonios (or other specific literary opponents of Kallimachos ?) .9 The 4 H. J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Literature 2nd ed. (New York 1942) 325 and n. 38. Sec also Barber, CR (1932) 163 and E. A. B., OJf!ord Classical Di&tWnar,, s. 11. Callimachus. Rose seems to take trOI'TOS as subject of !kl&c understood (does the sea sing?), but Mair gives the proper sense: "things for number as the sea." Probably o.l3' is idiomatic as were we to say, "I cannot admire a poet who doesn't even exhaust his subject," and portrays the petulance of Phthonos who feels himself stinted of his infinite appetite for praises. 5 See Knaack, Berlin Ph. W. (1886) 877. 6 See Smiley (supra n. 2). 7 See Knaack (supra n. 3) col. 127, "Der Fusstritt des Apollo diirfte syrnbolisch fi.ir die Ausstossung aus dem alexandrinischen Kreise stehen." See also Studniczka, Hermes 28, 15. Some equate Apollo with Ptolemy (cf. lines 26f). SeeM. A. Weichert, Ueber das Leben und Gedit;ht des Apollonius von Rhodus (Meissen 1821) 79, n. 105, who cites Coussin for this view. 8 Conservativism reflects itself mostly in loathness to identify the person or persons alluded to in the word 8ovos. The most conservative statements I have found are those of W. Wimmel, "Kallimachos in Rom," Hermes Einz:.elschriften 16 (Wiesbaden 1960) and H. Erbse, Hermes 83 (1955) 80-84. 9 That Kallimachos sets forth and defends a theory of style is undoubted. So did Pindar; and so did Wyatt, and Donne, and Jonson set forth theories of style which were also theories of the comportment oflife. All existence is polemical in this sense; but the struggle to define is serious, and although squabbles are the intvitab1e by-product of any

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possibility that the lines are intended more generally to please a learned audience perhaps disposed to appreciate a qualitative theory of poetry aimed at correcting general poetic abuses flattering the popular taste seems not to have been entertained; yet even so much is open to grave initial objections. Without at once challenging this line ofinterpretation or attempting to unravel the complex fabric of rumor and fact upon which it rests, one may call attention to a difficulty which scholarship cannot in all fairness be claimed to have solved: the verses have little or no connection with what precedes, and this lack of connection seems unnatural on any interpretation thus far advanced. Ahlwardt, aware of the difficulty, concluded that the passage was interpolated from another poem, whether of Kallimachos or of another poet, at some time after the genuine epilogue had fallen out of the tradition, tO and Merkel (followed by Couat) conjectured that Kallimachos himself added the passage in a later edition of the hymns, but failed (mysteriously) to adjust it to its surroundings.ll (As Cahen justly points out, the inconcinnity is no more pleasing in a second edition than in a first.l2) Hecker, on the other hand, assumed a lacuna after line 104 and thought that the lost verses described a scene on Olympos in which Phthonos had attacked Apollo in the style employed by Kallimachos's unnamed enemies.l3 This critical reliance upon wholly invented external circumstances must be held to account as an evasion of the interpreter's first duty; yet to dismiss them is not to dismiss the difficulty which their inventors sought to avoid, and which Cahen well states as follows: "le rapport de cette clausule a tout ce qui la precede n'apparait pas de prime abord evident; et il peut sembler que serious enterprise, the goal of the endeavor is truth, and we shall scarcely arrive at this by keeping our eye fixed on personalities and our ears attendant upon rumor, which is all that the famous" Quarrel," or its surrogate, "schools," is. That it is, in fact, an invention oflater interpreters of the text I shall attempt to show in the second installment of this work. Were we to concentrate instead on defining the issues in terms of tradition, the remaining questions would eventually clarify themselves. Accordingly, I am concerned to define the tradition in which Kallimachos's theory of style and temper must be set. That this has not yet been adequately done seems to me plain. 10 C. W. Ahlwardt, Kallima&hus Obersetz.t {Berlin 1794) 167, cited by Weichert (supra n. 7) 80. 11 R. Merkel, Prolegomenon in Apollonium Rlwdium {Leipzig 1854) xix; A. Couat, La polsie Alexandrine sous les trois premiers Ptolemies, tr.J. Loeb {London 1931) 539, n. 1. 12 E. Cahen, "Callimaque et son oeuvre poetique," Bibl. des koles ftan;aises d'At/Ww el de Rome (Paris 1929) 134-, 75. 13 A. Hecker, Commentalionum Callima&heanan capita dUD (Groningen 184-2) 4-8.

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cette proclamation litteraire termine singulierement un hymne religieux/'14 Unfortunately, to say with Cahen that the hymn is a "large invocation" of Apollo Karneios, who is for Kallimachos both the god ofhis fatherland (line 69) and the patron ofhis poetic career (lines 105113), is to have feeble resort to the obvious in order to explain what is painfully unobvious-an instance of historicism in its most naively tautological application,lS Yet Cahen's statement of the problem is in a way noteworthy: what confounds scholars in the passage is precisely its akymnal character when it is taken in what appears (to one whose critical instinct is laid to rest by the scholium) to be its natural programmatic sense. So Dilthey, who agreed in substance with Merkel, supposed that the reason why the verses were added in the second edition of the hymn was that Apollonios had criticized it as unworthy of Apollo, the patron of poets.I6 The only virtue of this guess is that it tacitly concedes to the lines a hymnal sense (they record Apollo's verdict on the hymn), although the fact that one who had both editions before him would still be unable to read the second as a logical and esthetic whole proves that the second is in truth, on this assumption, fully deserving of any criticism which a reader may have levelled against the first; 17 the breach remains: only the illusion of explanation is achieved through the historicist's excogitation of extraneous remedies. Schneider's imported solution of the difficulty was to read ~ ( = propterea) for & in line 105.18 The unavailing criticism of Phthonos is then directed against the brevity of the Delphic 'enkomion (l17 l17 7Tatfiov) on the occasion of Apollo's victory over Python. Against this interpretation it is sufficient to point out that the spontaneous shouts of the Delphians are far from the considered art of the &otSOs which is in fact the object in line 105 ofPhthonos's criticism.19 No more convincing Cahen (supra n. 12) 75. Idem. Cf. also E. Cahen, Callimaque (Paris 1948) 221, n. l. Cahen's error is to have abstracted the personal (or local) element from two universal conventions and to have used it as an historical datum with which to explain the conventions. This is the method of historicism in general. 16 C. Dil they, Analecta Callimachea (Bonn 1865) 32. 17 What is interesting in this fabrication is that since Phthonos does represent Kallimachos's "fear" of the god's criticism (and, through him, of that of the audience), all we need do is strip away the special circumstances by which Apollonios is substituted for Apollo and the true meaning of the passage is laid bare. 18 0. Schneider, Callimachea I, 189. 19 Cf. the contrast between the spontaneous cry of congratulation and the formal celebration in song at Pindar 0. 9.lff. 14

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Elroy L. Bundy

is Smiley's confident claim that the epilogue follows naturally on line 104 because lines 97-104 are "a quiet contradiction of Argonautica II, 705-713," since even if one could take it on faith that this conception of the relation between the two passages is accurate, it is still true that in h. Apoll. 105-112, even on this view, Apollo must be held to rebuke Apollonios ( = Phthonos) not for aetiological inaccuracy, but for his championship of long poems; and it is likewise true that the hymn is "unified" on the level of rugged and difficult allusion while the rationale of its smooth and easy surface remains obscure.20 These interpretations of the passage are unsatisfactory precisely because their authors, obsessed with the "quarrel," and losing sight of the poem, seek to remove from Kallimachos's hymn what is in fact a generic property of rhapsodic hymns-the discontinuity in sense between the envoi or sphragis and the main body of the hymn-and because they do further violence to Kallimachos's version of this envoi by their failure to accord it a hymnal sense. It is therefore gratifying to find in the latest treatment of the passage an adumbration of its true hymnal character. Walter Wimmel speaks of" die sichtbare Zweiteilung des Hymnus in Hauptteil und apologetischen Schluss," and a little farther on he implies that this division is conventional when he suggests that Kallimachos decided to make a hymn the vehicle of his polemic and thereby turn to account "die alte Lizenz der Sphragis." 21 Yet the word "Lizenz" is ill-chosen, for we shall find, I think, that whereas the rhapsodic sphragis is regularly disconnected from the main body of the hymn, it is never ahymnal, but is rather devoted to prayers or apologies to the god involving wholly or in part the singer's hope to please the god with his song.22 There is thus no question of "poetic license" in the hymnal sphragis, since in all of its manifestations the singer is scrupulously observing the proprieties of hymnal form. This becomes clear when we compare the rhapsodic hymns with hymns of the ritual or cult type in which the hypomnesis plays a subordinate role and has not developed into the long narrative of the secular rhapsodic hymn.23 In 20 The relationships between passages which are the object of all these investigations are formed substantially by each poet's fidelity to the tradition as he reworks it according to his own needs which, in tum, are in part shared by other poets ofhia own time. 21 Wimmel (supra n. 8) 70. He seems to bC relying on Wilamowitz, Hll-

lmistische Dichtung I, 215; II, 77.

See infra pp. 49-54. The rest of the essay will develop this point. On the distinction between the rhapsodic and the cult hymn, see H. Meyer, Hymnische Stilelemmte in der ~ Didtung (Diss. Koln 1933); on the hypomnesis see pp. 4f, 9. 22

23

6

"Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios"

45

the cult hymn, the prayer is the most important feature and the hypomnesis serves the magical function ofbinding the god to the will of the suppliant, whereas the rhapsodic hymn is primarily a hymn of praise in which the hypomnesis, the record of the god's exploits, becomes the "Hauptteil" of the hymn, and the prayer, a disconnected formal appendage in which the singer reestablishes the tone of the invocation and thereby his relation to his theme.24 "Lizenz," then, in any proper sense, is severely limited in the hymnal sphragis, if not totally absent from it, since the sphragis, though always discontinuous from the main body of the hymn is always scrupulously hymnal in form and content, so that if h. Apoll. 105-113 are indeed a Kallimachean version of the traditional envoi, then we may properly question whether the lines are polemical at all or at any rate insist on discovering in them a hymnal purpose. This is at least to hope that Kallimachos in this hymn is a more conscientious workman than readers have previously allowed him to be. II I have always read the passage as hymnal in the sense I shall define here. Coming to the lines from the Homeric hymns and from certain adaptations of the hymnal envoi in the odes of Pindar, I saw in them from the first a sophisticated elaboration of an already familiar form. That they do belong to the envoi is clear from their position at the end of the hymn, and from the fact that Phthonos, who figures in the parable oflines 105-112, reappears in the formal clausula ofline 113, thus making of lines 105-113 an indissoluble unity independent of the main body of the hymn. That, moreover, the topic of lines 105-112, is hymnal will appear at once from their closest formal analogue in Kallimachos's own hymns. In h. Del. 7f we read:

ws Mowa£ TOV ao£8ov ;; 1-'~ lllp.7TA€tav &ttc:ru lx{Jovow, TWS' C/>oif3os OTtS' .d~'Aoto 'Aat'h}Tat In these lines, which are intended to justify Kallimachos's choice of Delos as his theme, as h. Apoll. 105-112 are intended to justify a curtailing of his praise of Apollo, lx{Jovotv thematically and metrically corresponds to the litotic OVI( ayap.at, as TOV &otSov ;; 1-'~ lllp.7TA€!ClV 24

See Meyer.

7

46

Elroy L. Bundy

a£lcrn corresponds thematically and metrically (even to the words and

" OVO ·~· oact " 1TOV'TOS ' • '~ we Sha11 1ater . . . ) tO 'TOV ' ctOLOOV ' ~' OS WOrd -d lVlSlOnS ct£LO£L, (in the second part) have occasion to ask what significance may be attached to the verbal resemblances (they are, in fact, conventional and of similar order to the repetitions in Homer) among these two passages and Argon. 3.932, but for the present it seems not unreasonable to suppose that h. Del. 7f will prove more revealing than Argon. 3.932 for the interpretation of h. Apoll. 105-113.25 H. Del. 7-10 are, as I shall show, a conventional hymnal apology, and if we take seriously the almost verbatim similarity of these lines to h. Apoll. 105, we must conclude that h. Apoll. 105-113 dramatize such an apology in a kind offable or parable.26 Indeed, Wimmel, who, as we have seen, does not view the passage as specifically hymnal, has seen in it the archetype of all Hellenistic and Roman literary apology,27 But before we go into this question, let me here define what we shall mean by the terms "apology" and "apologetic." 28 Apologetic are all devices whereby an author seeks to enlist the sympathies of the person or persons to whom his work is addressed.29 We may include under this heading all attempts to justify, defend, or render esthetically pleasing an author's selection or rejection of a topic or manner of treating it. As will become apparent in the course of the discussion, the techniques of atJg7Ja's (amplificatio) are adaptable to apology.JO For the reader's convenience I give here an illustrative list of apologetic techniques: 2S With Apoll. 3.932 cf. further Theocr. 3.43, 6.21, 24.64 (position of 1ubms). It seems clear enough, on reflection, that to follow out very far the complexities of such relations (as many are now doing with Homer) is shortly to plunge into a behavioristic abyss and to leave meaning behind. See also Appendix. 26 See A. W. Mair, Callimachus and Lycophron (London and New York 1921) 22: "Finally lines 105-113 contain the remarkable parable of envy." Wimmel (supra n. 8) 61-&l interprets the passage along the lines of a fable, comparing, as did Dilthey (supra n. 16), Babrius 59. 27 Wimmel (supra n. 8) 59-70. 28 On the entire question of" Apologetik" see Wimmel. 29 I deal often with this matter in my earlier "Studia Pindarica," Universif1 of California Studies in Classical PhibJklgy (Berkeley and Los Angeles.J962) 2 vols. See, e.g., pp. 4lf. 30 The contrary of alJE-r/a•s is p.«lwa•s, which theorists naturally make a type of alJE-r/a•s. It, too, may have apologetic force. In the long history of these terms alJka•s or amplijicatio came often to signify mere digressive expansion or the filling out by artful elaboration of given forms for the ingenious display of the technique itself.

8

47 1. Many (perhaps all) forms of praeteritio, including recusatio.31 2. All aporetic passages in which a speaker reveals himself at an advantage or disadvantage before his theme.32 3. Break-off formulae in which an author abandons a theme whose merits call for greater or lesser elaboration than has been given it.33 4. All protestations intended to counter real or imaginary objections or to allay suspicion.34 5. Ascriptions of poetic inspiration in prooimia, transitions, or epilogues to the Muse or other patron of song or to the theme itself.JS "Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios"

31 Many such passages (see Bundy [supra n. 29]) are selection priamels in which a number of themes (whether listed or summarized) are explicitly passed over or rejected in order to focus on a theme of commanding interest. 32 Many priamels are aporetic. For thropltu which are neither praeteritiorles nor recusationes cf. Aesch. Supp. 438-454, 468-479, Apoll. Argon. 4.1-5, Antagoras 1 (Powell, Coli. Alex., 120). The usual point of rhropla is to plead the difficulty of the theme as selfprotection, but at the same time to enhance the audience's appreciation of it as a theme. To plead embarrassment before a theme is often the best means to stress its worthiness as a theme. This technique and the others which we are here describing are forms of a~"'a•s (amplificatio) and can be conveniently employed to enlarge a theme or topic about which little of real importance could otherwise be said. Clearly, as with all rhetorical forms, it can be abused. 33 "Break-off" formulae, from the simple types which conclude a number of the Homeric hymns (cf. 2.495, 5.293) to the elaborate Pindaric versions (e.g., P. 10.51-54, N. 4.69-72, P. 11.38-40, N. 10.19f, P. 1.81-84, 0. 2. 105-110, P. 8.30-33) are at least tacit praeteritio. CC. further Hes. Tmog. 35, Bacch. 5.176ff, Apoll. Argon. 3.314, and the like. Such passages, if they do not conclude a work, are regularly followed by the introduction of a new theme which justifies the tacit omission and is itself emphasized thereby in much the same manner as the capping theme in a selection priamel is emphasized by the themes passed over. 34 See Bundy (supra n. 29) 40f and cf. further Dem. 60.12 (p."'8ds •.• &.,.,p,Bp."'Klva&), Isocr. 9.73, Apoll. Argon. 4.984f, Call. h. Apoll. 31 (Tls civ ou ;,€a ~oiflov &d&&), Pind. 0. 2.101, 6.20f, N. 7.64, P. 9.90f, 96-99, Call. h. Apoll. 25ff, h. Dion. 1 (this passage is like h. Apoll. 31 and both might be placed in category 5), Pind. 0. 1.35, 52ff, P. 1.81-84, I. 1.60--64 (cf. Sim. 9802. 5), N. 5.14-18, 0. 9.38-44, Apoll. Argon. 3llf, Pind. P. 10.4, Isocr. 11.30. 3S Cf. the addresses to the Muse in Homer, Pindar, and later epics, the appeal to the emperor in Roman times, and, e.g., Oppian's use of Artemis in Cyn. 16-46. Cf. further Dem. 60.12 (.j 'IC£lvwv ap~ ... Janv), Call h. Apoll. 31 (&vp.vos ••• ;,€a), Pind. /. 1.45 (~a 8oa•s &vapl aotf>{jJ: very much like P. 9.90f, included under category 4 inn. 34), N. 7.77 (J>.atf>pclv), P. 9.92ff, N. 3.10ff, Call. h. Dian. 186, Apoll. Argon. 1.20ff, Theocr. 22.116. In Homer invocations of the Muse are circumstantially apologetic and, therefore, apologetic in the sense that they allow the singer to gain time for the ordering of his material. Singers must soon have noticed (if that was not the original motivation shaping the style) that the device offered the further rhetorical advantage of relieving them of the full burden of the responsibility and according the bulk of it to the tradition to which they belonged.

9

48

Elroy L. Bundy 6. The use ofexempla (cf. Sappho's Ode to Anaktoria) and quotations from authority. 7. Any programmatic passages not included in the above categories.36

This list is by no means exhaustive, and it is besides artificial, since the suggested categories overlap, but it will give the reader some idea of the range of poetic attitudes and stances which we shall here regard as potentially apologetic.J7 My reasons for grouping all these types under this single heading will, I hope, become clear in the course of the discussion itself. If, now, ovK ciyap.w in h. Apoll. 106 is prompted by that impulse which caused the poet to write ex&ouaLV in h. Del. 8, then it is not difficult to discern the direction of the poet's thought. As the rhapsodes were concerned in the sphragis to avert the rfo&&vo> of the god and to secure his favor for their song, so Kallimachos's lines are an objectification of an internal dialogue wherein Apollo decides that the offense offered to his dignity through the poet's omissions is outweighed by his delight in the purity of the song. Were Apollo to disapprove, it would be because his jealous nature has prevailed, so that he resents (r/J{}ove'i) the hymnist's failure to praise him exhaustively by rehearsing all his attributes, functions, powers, and exploits. Kallimachos himselfis, after all, now breaking his promise of lines 30f: '~,

OIJO

t

0

' ' " ' ...Q '..I..' xopo> 'TOY 'POL,.-OV E't'

C\

EV

' ., , , fl-OVOV TJf'Ctp Ct!LU!L

which he had undertaken precisely to please the god (lines 28f) : 'TOV xopov Jnr&Mwv,

c; .,., oi

ICCt'T~ {}vp.ov ael8eL,

'TLf'~UeL 36 Whether the poet programs his work in general, a single poem, or a portion of a poem makes litde formal difference. In any case he defends his choice of themes or his manner of treating them. Cf. Pind. fr. 205, 0. 6.1-4, P. 10.53f (this is not apraeteritio: that task is taken care of by vv. 51f; nor does it provide a new proem: that task is performed byvv. 51ff; rather, itisaprogrammaticjustification of variety in planning),N. 7.77ff, 0. 9.52f (this partakes of the nature of recusatio, but as a gnomic statement justifying a new proem programs ahead-dismissing crude old tales of Herakles-mo_dern songs relevant to Opous and purified of such gross elements as speak ill of the gods: ef. a. 351f, Call. fr. 1.23f, Vergil Eel. 6.3, Hor. Serm. 2.6.14), P. 9.7~2, Call. fr. I, Isocr. 10.1-15, the epigram with which Ovid introduces the Amores, Hor. Carm. 3.30, and the like. 37 Comparison of the passages cited supra nn. 31-36 will reveal many common patterns.

10

"Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios"

49

and out of his own awareness of the vastness of his theme (€C1'T, yap

EiJvJLVOS, line 31). The clause oM' oaa '7TOVTOS cUlaE, would seem then

to provide a measure both of Kallimachos's theme and of his failure to exhaust it. The impulse in hymns and enkomia to exhaust the theme is very great, as we may see from the long lists of epithets in the Orphic hymns where the literary compulsion to omit is not uppermost, and therefore does not conflict with the religious requirements. The single words eiJvJLvos and ?To>.v~VVJLOS are in themselves apologetic, since they abbreviate topics and lists of epithets respectively but still acknowledge their claim to recognition. In enkomia the rhapsode's eiJvJLvos often becomes JLVp{a, apE-ra{, ?TOAVp.v&os, or the like and informs the hearer or reader that the eulogist is aware of the dimensions of his theme but must abbreviate it.38 If line 106 suggests the dimensions of Kallimachos's theme and criticizes his omissions, then the poet's apology (honored by Apollo himself in his reply to Phthonos) depends on the propriety of his selection and treatment. This is, in brief, the thesis which I shall maintain, and in support of it I shall seek to demonstrate the ubiquity of the theme in hymns and enkomia, but would first review the character and purpose of the traditional hymnal envoi in order to determine whether h. Apoll. 105-112 may reasonably be regarded as part of the envoi of the hymn, as is suggested by the requirements of form. As scholars have observed, the real, or at least original point of the imperative xa'ipE (xalpE-rE} in hymnal endings is to petition the god's blessing; or more precisely, this xa'ipE expresses the wish that the god may feel pleasure rather than pain as a result of the suppliant's sacrifice, offering, dedication, prayer, praise, or the like, and that the suppliant may accordingly escape the god's anger.39 This is already apparent in Iliad K. 462f: xa'ipe, Oea, -ro'ia8eaa,, where xa'ipe -ro'ia8eaa' is not "Hail! These gifts are yours." (cf. Lattimore) but "Take pleasure in these gifts." That even in formal salutations the imperative is no 38 Cf. Bacch. 5.31, 9.48, 19.1, fr. 11.3f, 20C.20, 14.8, 11.126, Theocr. 17.9-12, Pind. N. 10.3, 4 (p.aKpa), 5 (1ro.Ua), 19 (oawv), 45, 46 (p.aKpcrr are often frozen stereotypes but sometimes, as in Pind J. 5.1, have extraordinary power.

39 See K. Keyssner, "GottesvorsteJlung und Lebensauffassung im griechischen H ymnus," Wilr zburger Studien zur Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart 1932) Zweites Heft, 131 ff.

11

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Elroy L. Bundy

mere "Hail!" may be seen in the following conversation from the Alcestis of Euripides (lines 509-511) : AnMETOS: HERAKLES: AnMETOS:

xaip€ ... :4.8p:rrr€, Kai UV xaip€ ... OtA.otp.' av . . .

and Theocr. 15.149, besides making this point clear in a hymnal salutation, shows the reciprocity of good cheer aimed at in the formal xaip€ of the hymnal envoi.40 Hymnal wishes for the god's pleasure, good health, prosperity, and bliss may be salutations, but they are so in the literal sense, since the suppliant will suffer or prosper according as the god suffers or prospers. When Aeneas salutes Venus in Aen. 1.330 with the words sis felix, it is clear from the context that this is no mere formal salutation, but the hero's attempt to propitiate the favor of a person who is manifestly a goddess; and this must be the sense also of Pind. P. 10.21f.41 So in Greek hymns €Valwv and other words are used to wish the god felicity (e.g., E. Ion 126 walwv €00LWV I E'l'T}s. wAa-rovs 1rai), and countless passages wish him joy.42 Besides xaip£ (xalpE-rE) in numerous places, the Homeric hymns offer aV s~ t/Jplvas ap.t/JtyeyTJa.c!Js I Slga,' (3.273f), and in the Orphic hymns the place of xaip€ is taken by a number of expressions, some employing other forms of xalpw. We find epxw 'Y'T}Ooavvos (27.14), {Jaiv€ 'Y€Y1J0c!Js (6.10), e>..Oots ••• KaAcp YJ10ovaa 7Tpoac!Jrrcp (16.10),43 JLOA€'ill K€XaP1JO'Ta p.ua-rats (18.19), xap€is Aot{Ja'iat St8ov ( 19.20) '44 K€xaptap.lva S' Z€pa Slgat (29.2) '45 e>..OotT' .•• a€i K€XaP1JOT£ a.vp.

..0€ .•. 'Y€Y1J0viats 7TpmrlSeauw( 4 7.6), and the like. Corresponding to xa'ip€ • •. &otSfi in h. [Hom.] 14.6 (9. 7) we find in h. Zeus Dikt. D2,3 EP1f€ Kai ylyaa.t p.o>.7T~, in G. Kaibel Epigr. Gr. (1878) 10271ine 6 (to Asklepios) eypEo Kai TEOV vp.vov l~LE KEK'Ava., xalpwv, and in Pind. 0. 2.14/5 lava.Eis &otSais.46 Forms of yE'Aaw are frequently used in prayers 40 cr. also Call. h. Lav. Pall. 14lf xaip£ Kal ,,fAao&aa, Kal Js 1TaNV atns 41 &p>.a{J;,s Km &vOPYTJTos ••• Ei'l & 8£os (schol.). SeeP. Friedlander and H. B. Hoffieit, Epigrammata: Greek Inscriptions in Verse (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1948) 134f. 42 See Keyssner (supra n. 39) 132ff. 43 Cf. also 49.7, 55.15f, 75.4, 53.9 {Jai.,' •• • / ,.....wm ,.poa.Imq>, Sappho A.l.S-14 if>.8£s ••• p.Et8&alaaw' &Baw&-q> ,.poa.fmq>, P. Maas, "Epidaurische Hymnen," Schrijlm tin KOnigsberger gekhrtm Gesellschaft, Geistesw. Klasse, 9 Jahr, Heft 5 (Halle 1933) 152, vv. 32f a.l )'€ Y'18oau[vo•s] 1TEtX ~ 1Tp0UW1Ta yl.\w-ra xlEIS UpEii[aw]. 44 Cf. h. [Hom.] 15.9 xaip€, A .OS vU· 8&8ov 8' apEnjl' T( Kal o>.{Jol'. Cf. 46.8 ~paw J>.Ol, ,.4Kap, K~&a,.lva 8' lEpa 8l~a.. -46 See Bundy (supra n. 29) 78, n. 102.

4'

a..ae.

12

"Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios"

51

for the song, e.g., in Aristoph. Vesp. 979f tmyEAaaa' 1rpot/>p&vws I Tais ~fLETlpa,s xaplvra xopEla£s, and Pindar employs the adjective yEACW7}s at 0. 5.2. In a hymnal hypomnesis in /. 7.If the same author creates an historical background for a present prayer: Tlv, Twv 1rapos, .ap&s, ( = E~Xfopwv), is used, as are a number of verbs formed from the same stem. In the Homeric hymns we find Et}p.~s in 22.7 (E?lfLEVES ~Top lxwv; cf. KEXaprJp.lvov ~rap lxovras in h. Orph. pr. 43), iAaos in 29.10, 7rpotf>pwv in 30.18 and 31.19, (cf. 32.18). The Orphic hymns have E?lp.~s {E?Ip.EVewv)~ften supporting forms of xalpw (cf. pr. 43, 1.10, 3.14, 20.6),48 forms of yr]t?w (16.10), or forms of ~Sus (30.8f)-iAaos in 35.6 (supporting KEXaprJ&ra in 18.19), ~Sus in 30.8, 50.1 0, 85.9, Evcfvrr]ros in 41.1 0, 1TpOC17JvrJS' in 60.7, 1rpot?Vp.ws in 84.7, and E~Xfopwv (supporting KEXap,ap.lva in 46.8 and supporting KEXap7Jp.lvos in 79.11). Many other adjectives of a kindred meaning are used to supplicate the god's favor. The use of verbs in this connection ( = "be gracious" or "I seek your favor") is equally old and is prevalent throughout the tradition. In h. [Hom.] 21.4 the rhapsode wishes the god joy and in evidence of his goodwill offers his song: Ka£'

' C1V

' fLEV

.. OV'TW

1!...-l: !'"\ xa£pE 1 ._.""S, f.I\(Xp. OE C1• aoWlJ

Of the near equivalence here of xaipE (objective) and iAap.a' Sl a' &o£8fj (subjective) 14.6 ( = 9.7) is secure evidence: Ka' cro J.'Ev ourw xa'ipE 8Ea{ 8' ap.a 'TTaCJa£ acn8fj, and that the imperative Of iA7]fL£ is virtUally synonymous with that of xalpw will appear from a comparison of 22.8 with 15.9:

22.8 15.9

«A,\' iATJt?', "Htf>a£CJTE' StSov S' apm]v

xa'ipe,

Civ~,

.d£OS' vU· StSov S'

apET~V

TE

'TE

Ka' oA{Jov Ka' o>..fJov

On /. 7.1-15 as hymnal hypomnesis see infra pp. 65f and on lines 1-21 see Bundy, pp. 6f, n. 22. For the passing over of ancient themes (in some forms n~auls and apxaios become synonyms for "hackneyed," as in Aeschines 3.53 in a praeteritio) in vv. 16f, cf. Ovid Am. 2.6.10 magna, sed antiqua causa doloris ltys, Ibycus 302.1().....45 (foil for Polykrates), Prop. 4. 1.119 Hactenus historio;:;;;n; ad tua devehar astra, 2.1.19-24, Pind. P. 8.3lff, P. 6.43, N. 6.55-59. See Bundy (supra n. 29) p. 19. 48 In 27.14 'Y'/8ot:nii'Os supports l€p€u&at, lp.~v 8' hTvvov aot8~v 25.6 xalp€T€ ••• Kai. EJL~V TLJL~UaT' aot8~v 24 .5

I

~,

fl

,

The basic sense of these formulae is the same as that of 7.58f: "inspire my song; take pleasure in it; be its source, its theme." All of these forms are dedicatory, all are apologetic, all are propitiatory, and the hints supplied by this collection of hymns will be developed and spelled out in many ways in the long course of the tradition to follow. In Call. h. Apoll. 105-113 many strands of this tradition have been woven together. As is well known, each genre tended to develop and maintain its characteristic formulae of opening and closing; at the same time, there was maintained from the beginning a more or less close relationship among typical beginnings and endings between genre and genre. From our brief examination of the envoi of the Homeric hymns we have seen how consistent the patterns are and have observed that they remain in force, with adaptations, throughout the tradition in both hexameter and melic poetry. Nor would it be difficult to show that they turn up in other types of poetry (elegiac and iambic, for example) and even in prose: the De Corona of Demosthenes and the Phaedrus of Plato have hymnal closes. Among the formulaic closes in later Attic tragedy is the following salutation to the Dioscuri from the Electra of Euripides: XCI.Lp€7€" xa{petv l)'oUTLS 8VVCI.TCI.L KCI.t ~WTlJXLCf. JL~ TWL KcXJLV€L IJvrrrwv, W8alp.ova 1TpcXUU£L.s2 52 The appeal to vicissitude (1ro&K&Al« in human life, as ground for choice amid variety in literature) was already known to choral poetry. Cf. Pind. 0. 7.94f, P. 12.28-32, N. 11.43-48. In all these passages the antiromantic point iS, "Live in the present (cf. f. 443ft" lo6&f, &u,.Ov&f f€tv-, ..ul TIP"£0 Toio&,/ ofcx ...dp€an· o.;,~ ~,.;, ,.& &:.a€&, .,..$8' l&.na,/ Jrra Ko .P 8v,.

{}6vo~ of heaven. Ailios preserves for us such a form: • \:>I VVV 0£ 1

{}

\

£0£

I

f'a.Ka.p£~,

t __(H>I .J..{} t 'TWV £U11'1\WV a.'l' OVO£I f(]Tf

in which the prayer does not mean simply, "Grant us the good things of life in abundance," but "Do not begrudge the bounty that is (now) ours (Twv}." In the epinikion and in other genres of choral poetry such prayers were conventional appendages to praise of good fortune. In Pind. 0. 13.23-28 appears the conventional blending of a prayer for the song with a prayer for the general well-being of the singer (here, as regularly in enkomia, of the laudandus) or his polis: "

, ,,,,

U1TaT £vpv avaaawv '0'I\Vf'1T£a~, I '.J..{}I >I a'l' OVTJTO~ £7T£C1C1£V ')'fv0£0 xp6vov ct1TavTa, Zfii 1TrXT£p, million stories in the naked city; this has been one of them." These forms are not unrelated to the rhapsodic "break-off" formula in which the singer passes on to another theme. Choral poetry has its versions also of the comic close (Aristoph. Av., Eccl., Acham.). Cf. N. 5.53ff, N. 2.24f, P. 9.127/Bff, /. 5.69f, /. 4.90. For "break-off" formulae in comedy cf. Nub. 1510f, Thesm. 1227-1231 (in Aesch. Pers. the dispersion of the chorus to their homes is dramatized; Cf. also Dem. 60.37). 53 But see h [Hom.] 30. 7f. For a brief discussion of some of these epi1ogic forms see E. Stemplinger, Das Plagiat in der griechischen Literatur (Leipzig and Berlin 1912) 227f.

17

56

Elroy L. Bundy Kat TovS~: AaOV af3>.afJii v{p,wv EEVo!f>wVTo&ovos. 0. 8 closes with the following prayer: VftVOt&ovos of Delos whom he must slight in order to please Theba.ss S4 Xenophon's success is the latest of his city's glories and vv. 23-30 which are devoted to it caps the list of them. ,\..0, and BCIIOWvros in the prayer link the traditional glory of the city with Xenophon's recent success. C£ P. 8.25-35, I. 7.1-22. S5 On this passage see Bundy (supra n. 29) 36-43.

18

"Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios"

57

It is clear that such prayers are apologetic in enkomia as they are in hymns. But whereas the singer of hymns is fearful he may displease the god by the inadequacy of his praise of him, the singer of enkomia fears that his praise of men and cities may provoke the displeasure of the god and bring on a change of fortune, 56 In either case, however, it is a matter of doing injustice to the god. Sometimes, again (see infra, pp. 83f), the composer of enkomia fears the phthonos of his human audience, and this fear, too, must be taken into account in the epilogue of Kallimachos's Hymn to Apollo.

III We have seen that in the envoi of the rhapsodic hymns the singer's primary concern is that his song give pleasure to the god. The apotropaic prayer or wish in which he expresses this concern may be positive (as always in the Homeric hymns) or negative (as in the rhapsodic epilogue cited by Eustathios on the authority of Ailios Dionysios) -in the later hymnal tradition such litotic prayers are common. Of the various words which refer to the god's displeasure-vtp.eats, «fo&&vos, ---l.-Cl' • not narrowIy " envy, " ovK ayap.at, OfYYTl, p.YJvts and t h e l'k 1 e-----rovovos 1s or "jealousy," but any inkling of displeasure or reluctance on the part of the god to accept the song or grant the blessings that flow from his gratified presence. If the god is stinting in his admiration of the hymnist's efforts, then the song has failed of its purpose. For this reason, the singer cannot take leave of the god without displaying his solicitude for -the god's well-being. We shall eventually apply these findings to complex epilogic apologies such as h. Apoll. 105-113, but in view of the close relation between epilogue and prooimion in the Homeric hymns, and more particularly of the nearly verbatim parallel between h. Apoll. 106 and h. Del. 7f, the former epilogic and the latter prooimial, it may be well at this point to shift our attention from epilogic to prooimial apology. We may thus discover what means are at the singer's disposal for allaying the god's ill-will and courting his favor. What precisely does the singer regard as pleasing to the god and how does he seek to a-ccomplish it ? •

"

•

'

A

~6 In the enkomion a much greater fear of the displeasure of the human audience is likewise made manifest. Cf. 0. 8.54-f, P. 8.30-33, N. 7.52f, P. 1.81-84 and often. Many such passages will he found also in !socrates and others among the Attic orators. Cf., e.g., Isocr. Helen 29f, Dem. 60.6, 13f, 23, 61.27, Lys. 2.lf, and the like.

19

58

Elroy L. Bundy

We have noted above (p. 45) that the rhapsode reestablishes in the epilogue the tone of the invocation and thereby his relation to his theme. The prooimion and the epilogue are subjective and the central narrative, objective, although rhetorical interruptions of the narrative do occur.S7 The god as theme (or addressee) of the hymn is named and dignified by his epithets both at the beginning and at the end. Forms of cildSw, of p.v-rlaop.ctt, and )..rot&avop.cu, of 'l)..ap.at and )..1-rop.at, of apxop.at, and A~yw, of KAdw, P,f:Ta{Jalvw and Koap.lw and the like in openings and closes relate the singer to his theme. Neither in his announcement of this theme nor in his surrender Qf it at the close does the singer employ an ample rhetoric; the forms are stereotyped and brief, although, as befits the singer's natural reluctance to curtail his praises of a god, the epilogues are on the whole more elaborate than the opening statements. Were these the only examples available to us of hymnal prooimia and epilogues, we should be hard put to document from the Homeric hymns Kallimachos's technique at the close of his hymn to Apollo. But in two places-h. [Hom.] Apoll. 19-27, 207-216-occurs a prooimial device which is an elaboration of the simple initial announcements apxop.' ~t8f:w, p.v-rloopm oM£ >..tWwpm, &.:taop.a& and the like and allows us to measure the difficulties which force the singer to adopt an apologetic stance before his theme. That the simple announcement of the theme in the rhapsodic hymn is potentially apologetic will appear from a consideration of developed forms of two simple rhapsodic formulae of announcement. The singer frequently begins his hymn with vp.v€t (apx€o f •) II Jl t ) I~ ) I (" ) I ) I~ ) W vp.vnv , apxwp.at, apxop. af:wf:w, af:taop.at cr-aop.at, af:taf:o, af:low , f:Wf:7Tf: and the like. In h. [Hom.] 21.3f this becomes UE 8' aat80S' ••. I ... 7TpWTOV 'Tf: Ka~ VaTaTOV alEv af:{8f:t (cf. Theognis 3f), a form which is already

openly aporetic and apologetic in the Odyssey (d4ff) ;58

S1 In the Homeric hymns these are few. In Iliad and OqysyY they are much more frequent as they are also in lyric and in later hexameter hymns. In the Homeric hymns cf. 3.140-150,207-215 (all addr~es to the god as in, e.g., 239 constitute subjective interruptions), 385ff, 441 (the simile: the simile, answering the question, "How?," is regularly a subjective element). On the whole, save at the beginning and end the subjective elements are confined to the reporting of speech and the like. The late date of the hymn to Apollo may account for the comparative richness in it of these elements. I do not here take sides on the issue whether this is two hymns or one, although it is fair to n~te that the style is homogeneous throughout and that all is likely by the same poet. sa Cf. 1.18 dpxofi&O' >.>fyo,../s T£ which in Theocr. 1 becomes ¥x•n and A.jy£Tf in the two refrains; and from the same source are descended the refrains of Tbeocr.

20

"Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios"

·59

'TL 1rpWTOV 'TOL E1rELTCt 1 'TL a VO"TCtTLOV KCtTCUI.Er,W i K1]8E' ETrEl JLOL Tro.Ua 8&uav {}Eo~ ovpavlwvEs viiv 8' ovop.a 7rpWTOV p.vlh7uop.etL ••• The vastness of his theme (1ro.U&) is sufficient excuse for Odysseus's I

~

I

01

I ~·


/yw motive (the idyll begins with wpaTo> 8' &p~aTo .datf>v•s) at the end of Theocr. 6: Daphnis and Damoetas begin each to play the instruments which they have exchanged. This goes back to the "break-off" form p.£Tap.]aop.a& /lMov €; vp.vov and the same may be said for Milton's "Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new." See supra n. 52. p.VIjaop.a• oM€ .\a8wp.a• is another version of the "beginning and end" formula roughly equivalent to the "first, last, and in the middle" ofThgn. 3 which glosses the words OWOT< a£io I .\~aop.a• apxop.£Vo; ov8' awo1TavOp.£VO> of vv. lf. All the idylls can be studied as reworkings of basic rhapsodic structures and this is true of lyric and drama as well: in lyric and drama these origins are fused with cult origins (see supra n. 23), but then the rhapsodic hymn is a secularized cult hymn and the epics a further secularization of these; and the origin of drama from lyric is well known. Beginnings, middles, and ends: the meaning ofliterature resides in its transitions; for it is these which establish the relation between subject and object in the idea. Of no single authors in my acquaintance is this more obviously true than of Pindar and, in the odes, of Horace. On the latter seeJ. V. Cunningham, The Journal ofJohn Cardan (Denver 1964) 34f. 59 cr. the frequent use in oratory of forms of the apologetic and aporetic &oJw to make explicit the rhetor's embarrassment before one or another exigency of his theme. Such hesitatory interludes can achieve great power, since they can directly portray the actual process of thought in arriving at its goal. Pindar's use of such embarrassment is extraordinarily effective in defining his moral and esthetic ends. The most copious examples of this hesitatory technique in early oratory are to be found in !socrates, in whom their effect is often dulled through lack of intellectual power and precision. Evagoras 8-11, however, is instructive, as is the entire introduction. 60 The best place for students of Greek poetry to study the aporetic mode of this passage and of many in Pindar and Kallimachos is Attic oratory, especially in its epideictic forms. To study these forms would help to place a bridle on the rampant subjectivity characteristic of most modern studies of Greek and Roman poetry. Compare, for example, the passage cited from Demosthenes (infra p. 62). All such forms in Pindar are at present minimally understood, and yet they point to the gist of what he has to say. This is true in Kallimachos as well. Cf. further Isocr. Helen 29f, Hypereides Epitaphios 4--9, Dem. Ep. 2.13-16, Isocr. Ep. 2.13f, 4.lf (cf. Pind. P. 2.65ff), Panegyricus 74 (here the difficulty resides in the hackneyed nature of the theme, which must nevertheless once more be broached: this is a common type). A wealth of subject matter may equally well be treated as an embarrassment or as a source of ease in composition as circumstance and truth require. Thus, e.g., xa.\£wov and V.cu/>pov are common in apology. wpoxnpov, a8waTov, ,l4810v, f>€ia (;,Ea), a1ropa and many other words are used. Pindar has Kovtf>a Boa•> at I. 1.45. See Bundy (supra n. 29) 64 and seen. 66.

21

60

Elroy L. Bundy alrrtt.p lyw 11-ro>.ep.a'tov l1rtcrrap.evo~ KaAtt el1re"iv vp.VT/acttp.'· VfLVOt 8£ Kcti. a&ctva-rwv y(pa~ ctVTWV. "18av l~ 1To>.V8ev8pov avf]p v>.a-rop.o~ lA.&wv I I _!!~ l_(l ~-/: " 1TC%1TTcttVEt 1 1TctpEOVTO~ ao7JV1 1TOVEV ct~ETctt epyov. I ,... -· \ 1/: t ' I I t .., Tt 1TpWTOV KctTW\EfiWj E1TEt 1Tctpct p.vptct Et1TEtV 1' _(l \ \ " t I Q _\ I OtUt VEOt TOV ctptUTOV ETLfL7JUctV fJctU1.11.7JWV.

Again, the source of the poet's embarrassment is the vastness of his theme. He arbitrarily begins in line 13 with Ptolemy's lineage.61 This technique of announcing a theme with an aporetic question is a form of aiJfqat~ (amplificatio), as is at once evident from the words 1ro>.>.a in t.15 and p.vp{a in Theoc. 17.11; it is also apologetic in that the manifest difficulty or impossibility of exhausting the theme is a tacit excuse for an incomplete or inadequate treatment of it. 62 So the l". la p.V7Jaop.at ovae Acr.vwp.at Lll " vanants ' (e.g., fl-OOfLEV apxop.evot t 10rmu and Its >.~yov-r€~ -r", h. [Hom.] 1.18) is also potentially apologetic. In this simplest form the theme reflects the singer's fear of omitting the god from his song, and in a developed form such as Pind. 0. 10.1-6, in which the hymnal technique is adapted to enkomion, it is possible to measure the embarrassment which a rhapsode avoids in his avowal of attentiveness to the god's pleasure: I

'""' \

_!!""'

\

I

-rov 'O>.vp.1TtovlKav &vayvw-r€ p.ot 14pxecrrpa-rov 1Tctwa, 1ro&, cf>pevo~ ep.a~ y(ypct1TTctt" y>.VKV yttp ctW~ fLEAO~ ocf>e{>.wv • _'\ !'\ __(lt .,. l l l - • .!\\' E1Tf.II.EJ\Q;V 'W lY.lOtU 1 W\1\ct UV' Kctt'.Q.._,I v vyctTTJp 14Aa&eta ..::M~. op&~ xepl t I ,f,---"" I EpvKETOV "t'e;uoEWV lvt?Ttt.v &>.t-roeevov. 61 Thus yielding to the urge, deeply rooted in the tradition, for origins and fint principles of any kind as well as for primary excellence in any category of experience. Thia is what gives all focusing forms (priamcls) their power to convince and lay the mind open to instruction as well as to delight: it favon the perception of relation in the understanding and provides a principle both of exclusion and inclusion-a norm or standard by which to measure truth. Hierarchy and cleconun rule the judgments of a mind so disposed, which delights in and takes instruction from the distinctions and the shared qualities of things and refuses to allow nature to beeome a blur. In Theoc. 22.25 the poet counts on our rectifying his arbitrary choice of Polydeukes as fint theme of the song through our recognition that of the two brothers he alone is son of Zeus. See supra p. 59. 62 ~f is quantitative (the theme is vast or important) or qualitative (it is rare, privileged, and excellent). Every word in the proems of Ililul and Otfyss9 is instructive in this regard and neither V ergil nor Milton failed to observe this.

22

"Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios,

61

These openly apologetic lines are a combination and adaptation to a specific enkomiastic situation of two rhapsodic techniques (amplification and apology) for announcing a theme: the laudator appeals to the Muse not only for inspiration but for the power to refute the charge of inattentiveness to the laudandus.63 The source of his embarrassment is the presumption that he has been dilatory in the execution of a contract which in fact lay close t.o his heart. Similarly, it is the fear of being thought remiss in service of the god that prompts the rhapsode's asseverative p,V7}aop,at oM€ >..&.{}wp,C%', a formula whose implicit sense is the thought that the god is beginning, middle, and end of the song: a thought which, like the fear of remissness itself, leads easily into aporia and apology. We see, then, that the rhapsodic prooimion is potentially apologetic, and we may turn to consider the more elaborate "prooimia" of the Homeric hymn to Apollo. Although both are of the same aporetic type as ,,14ff, Theoc. 17.7-12, and Theoc. 22.23-26, lines 207-216 are the simpler of the two treatments and may be considered first: 7TW) 7' ap a' vp,V7}aw 7TaVTW) divp,vov €6vTa; -~-··· 7JE a EVt -;;-

07T7TWS

~\.J.\1--

f-LVT)aT[)paLV CCELOW KCCL 't'LI\OrY)TL, A

I

f-LVWOf-LEVO)

"

EKLE)

~T ' ~CT)(V

.. ' ' .0. I CC(-L CCVTLVEa 8oo•s theme in Pindar on which see Bundy (supra n. 29) 64. 67 I shall discuss the method of geographic aiifqo•s (ampli.ficatio) elsewhere in connection with Pindar. For its use in eulogies of Rome. see F. Christ, "Die romische Weltherrschaft in der antiken Dichtung," Tiibinger Beitrage zur Altertumswissenschaft (StuttgartBerlin 1938) Heft 31, 4-59 and passim. 68 For 11anws, 11aVT!I, 11 -,..- ; - , \ - ' - , - CJ'T01XTJY0P0£'T}VJ OVIC av EK1T 7JU«.LJLL CTOL.

EJ yap ToS' 'tutJ,, f'7Jsaf'· ~'"''~ '"''~

TTAfjt?os ToCJoVTaptt?f'Ov &vt?pW7rwv t?ave'iv.

Here the ten tongues have become ten days, and if Aischylos's and the messenger's purpose is to suggest the magnitude of the Persian losses, they are also concerned to bring the tale to a close and to excuse the incompleteness of the account.69 69 Cf. Lysias 2.1 where the ten days have become all men and the whole oC time. On B. 488-492 cf. further M. 175-178.

26

"Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios"

65

We have seen that the simple formulae of announcement in the Homeric hymns are potentially apologetic and we have considered a number of examples of aporetic questions which allow the rhapsode to select his manner of treating a theme while suggesting the difficulties inherent in it. Since all of these passages emphasize the vastness of the theme, it is clear that the rhapsode's problem is two-fold: to omit any item in the muster of the god's glories is to risk his disfavor, and yet it is humanly impossible to do justice to him; his only recourse is therefore to acknowledge his limitations and to rely on pleasing selection and arrangement, and yet he may inadvertently include an offensive topic or omit what is most certain to please. The aporetic technique allows him to confess his inability to match his theme (thus indirectly praising it to the full) and to give an impression of exhaustiveness by listing potential themes which it is impossible for him to develop. Any disjunctive list, or even a bare aporetic question followed by an immediate choice, is a conventional representation of the entire theme: it gives the illusion of exhaustiveness, while it in fact focuses on one theme and one alone. Pindar, in one of the most masterful of all aporetic selection priamels, realizes fully the possibilities of this technique and even reaches beyond it by fusing the rhapsode's disjunctive list with the potent hypomnesis of the cult hymn. In /. 7.1-21 the rhapsodic formula, "How shall I praise you? In this way, or this, or this, or (my preference) this?," becomes, "In which of your former glories, Theba, do you take particular (implying the need for selection) delight (EiX/>pavas) ?"70 Six alternatives (introduced by ~pa = the rhapsodic ~' and punctuated by a series of disjunctives) follow. In the break-off formula of lines 16-19 these themes are formally dismissed on the ground that their ancientness detracts from their pleasure (1TaAata goes back to TCiJv 1rapos in line 3 as xapts goes back to Evcppavas) and that the forgetfulness of men makes necessary the celebration "to times in hope" of present greatness. 71 Strepsiadas can now be introduced as the theme of the song. Remarkably perceptive is the comment of the scholiast, who sees that mxpos (line 1) makes of lines 1-15 a hypomnesis: 1rpos -r7}v 1roAtv (i.e., Q

(:I

C0

>

.J_..

1TpOS rT)V lt:f7Jt'CXV = TCXS I

I

"~Q...

I

\

~

(line 16) are manifestly the rhapsodic a8ov, 146; cf. Call. h. Dian. 183, 185). In this subtle

Cf. JL&}.urr' ETTI'TEp1t~a• ~Top, h. [Hom.] 3.146. Cf. Isocr. Evagoras 5ff.

27

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Elroy L. Bundy

passage Theba is appeased by her own desire for fresh distinctions which will provide her with a sharp and immediate pleasure undulled by the passage of time.72 In Pindar's hands the implicit praeteritio of h. Apoll. 19-27 and 207-216 becomes an explicit recusatio of ancient themes. Before turning to Kallimachos's handling of prooimial apology, it may be well to touch briefly on a common technique for introducing an ostensibly offensive theme. The words ?TaAcwx ..• / EvSEt xapts in I. 7.16f are apologetic: they excuse the omission of historical themes. Another technique of dismissing themes from the past is to allow that ancient contemporaries have done them satisfactorily or that other authorities are more qualified to treat them or even that one will be better qualified to treat them on another occasion; this technique apologizes for omission of pleasant themes.73 But one may equally well apologize for including offensive themes from the past by ascribing them to the authority of ancient singers in the tradition thus disclaiming direct responsibility for them. Such are Arat. Phaen. 637 7lpTEfl.tS ZA~Kot · ?TpoT,pwv Aayos oi p.w Eavro ••• , Pind, 0. 1.35f, Call. h. Lav. Pall. 55f I , >A_Q___ , \ \ "l: {) I .I.- ~· , I ~· _,_Q ~· • 1T01'V£ .t1VtWCXtCX1 CTV JLEV E!lt &"JLEU'I"" o eyw T& 'TCXWo EpEW"JLVVOS o OVIC EJLOS, aM' ET,pwv. Cf. also Pind. P. 3.2 (the apology rests in ICowov). A

'

,

t

,

The simplest of Kallimachos's aporetic selection priamels is h. Del. 28-33 which (to ignore the intermediate influences on Kallimachos's diction) is a formal paraphrase of h. [Hom.] 3.207-215. Line 28 = ?TaVTws Evvp.vov EoVTcx (h. [Hom.] 3.207); ?Totfi ivmMgw aE = 1TWS T 1 ap a' vp.~aw (h. [Hom.] 3.207); the amplificatory Tl TO£ Dvp.fjpES a/Covaa:t = thematically aSov (h. [Hom.] 3.22, 146; cf. Pind. I. 7.3, Call.' h. Dian. 183, 185) ; ?Totfi (Tt), ~ JJs Ta ?TpWrtaTa = h. [Hom.] 3.207, 214 1rws, ~ JJs To 1rpwTov. Kallimachos deems the summary ?ToMEs &o,Sa:t a sufficient apologetic background for his choice and declines

71 Pindar is thinking of the constant need to renew the tradition in order to keep awake the true meaning of the ideal forms created by the past. The same point, with a different emphasis, is at the bottom of 0. 1.97-103. But this is one of Pindar's leading ideas. Cf. also I. 4. 19-24. 73 In N. 4.90 (where .Ulan"IU is the correct reading) Pindar gives over the celebration of Kallikles' Olympian victory (he hazards a few words on the Isthmian) to his father (the victor's grandfather) Euphanes. This rtQISatio had begun in lines 79ft'," If you bid me still to erect for your uncle Kalliklcs a stele whiter than Parian marble, then (there follows a long concessive clause); still your ancient grandfather, Euphanes, child, will sing him." There follows a justification of the recwatio on the ground that a man best praises his contemporaries (those whose deeds he bas actually witnessed). Pindar knows Melesias and can praise him. For futures in recusationes, cf. Hor. Carm. 1.6.1, 7.1, 4.2.33, 41, Stat. Tlleb. 1.32. The forms I have described in the text arc too common to require illustration.

28

"Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios"

67

to amplify it by either a disjunctive or a copular list in the manner of h. [Hom.] 3.20-24, 208-214.74 More complicated is h. Dian. 183-190:

Again, Kallimachos is concerned to select the theme most pleasing to Artemis. Instead, however, of presenting tentative themes as alternative answers to a single aporetic question, he directs a series of questions to the goddess, each of which poses a (geographical) category of pleasing themes within which Artemis will have a favorite. Each of the categories to be passed over-islands, mountains, harbors, cities (cf. h. [Hom.] Apoll.)-is subordinated to the verb ~:ila8~: (cf. &vp:ijp~:s in h. Del. 29, a8ov in h. [Hom.] 3.22, bmlp-rr~:at in h. [Hom.] 3.146). The capping category-nymphs-is given its own verb (tfol>..ao) synonymous with To' ••• ~:ilcro~:. Conjoined to the category of nymphs is that of heroines who have been admitted to intimacy with Artemis (1rolas EU](ES eTalpas = Tlva tfol>..u.o vv~lwv). Both because it comes last in the list and because the verbs tfol>..u.o and EU](ES balance it against all the categories controlled by ~:vcroE, we know that this category is the one which will be developed. Yet Kallimachos, determined to give the goddess her due, answers each of the questions in turn, but sets off the question-series from the answer-series-a kind of thematic punctuation-by an ancient apologetic formula which absolves him of responsibility for any of his selections but sets them beyond criticism by requiring Artemis to stand surety instar Musae for the theme of the song. In the answer-series the verbs ~:vcroe (line 187), tfol>..u.o (line 189), and eTaplaaaTo (line 206) preserve the structure of the question-series with its already implicit selection of feminine attendants of Artemis as the theme to be elaborated. A single nymph (Tlva vvt«f>lwv)-Britomartis-and four heroines 74 The varieties encountered in Pind. fr. 89a, P. 7.1, I. 7.If, Call. h. Jov. If, h. Ger. !Sf, 22 are offshoots of~ w~ with or without comparative or superlative.

29

68

Elroy L. Bundy

(1rolas)-Kyrene, Procris, Antikleia, and Atalanta-take up thirty-six lines to two for the themes passed over-islands, cities, mountains, and harbors. Kallimachos. has suggested the magnitude of his theme and given us (and Artemis) the illusion of strict fidelity to its dimensions while developing only a select portion of it. The technique which Kallimachos here employs was familiar to him from a number of early sources including Pind. 0. 2.1-8-a series of aporetic questions, addressed to Hymnoi, who substitute for the Muse, and building to a Cap (Tlva iJoEOV, T{v' fipwa, Tlva 8' av8pa), followed by a SerieS Of answers building to a cap (Lhos, 'HpaKAETJS', e~pwva). These questions and answers, if they assign special importance to "the man," yet list god and hero before him and so acknowledge them as the apxal of the hymn. That they are mentioned only to be passed over is thus no slight to their dignity. Both Kallimachos and Pindar are concerned to create the illusion of a comprehensive treatment of a theme. Pindar aims to please Theron without slighting such relevant themes as Zeus and Herakles; Kallimachos, to do justice to the theme of Artemis's attendants without omitting other themes that might please the goddess. The technique is both amplificatory and apologetic. More elaborate still is k. Dian. 110-161. A series of statements controlled by anaphora of the word xpvae(,)os (cf. h. Apoll. 32-35) isolates Artemis's deer-drawn chariot (i.e., Artemis as huntress) as the theme of the song. To develop this theme, Kallimachos resorts to the technique of alternating question and answer (ratiocinatio). There are three questions, each of which fills a single line and is followed immediately by its answer. The first two answers fill two lines, but the third, suggesting the theme which Kallimachos has chosen to treat at some length, is given four. The pattern is thus 1: 2, 1:2, 1 :4, with the weightier four-line answer announcing the aspect of the theme which is to be developed. That the third question is the capping question is signalled by a new interrogative (1rov • •• 1rov ••• 7ToaaaJC') which breaks the strict anaphoric pattern and implicitly calls for amplification by a list. So, the third answer builds to its own cap through a series of ordinal numerals: 7Tp{lYrov, TO 8( 8eV.,.epov, TO TplTov aJ.r' and TO TET«P'f'OV (numerical ®f'TJa,s). The narrow theme thus isolated for full treatment is the Huntress's harsh handling of those who offend her (cf. A48-52) and her gentleness toward those who please her. (The general theme, completed in line 161, is still her hunting sallies in her deerdrawn chariot.) Mter detailing the misfortunes of those upon whom

30

"Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios,

69

Artemis looks with disfavor (xa.\n~v ... omv, 124) and the blessings of those who enjoy her good will (£vp.Ew~s TE K«t i'Acxos, 129), the poet prays that he may be counted among the latter (cf. Pind. P. 1.29, after the description in the preceding lines of the effect of the lyre's music on Zeus's friends and his enemies; cf. also Hes. Erg. 225-247 and see n. 105) and, after praying that song may be his study forever, promises that themes. pleasing to Artemis will be its concern-a conventional rhapsodic promise. 75 After listing a number of these in praeteritio, he settles on the last of them and develops it. As it turns out, this theme is Artemis's return from her hunting sallies and the welcome which she receives-in particular, from Herakles, who retains his fabled appetite even on Olympos. From this we see that the theme chosen for development in lines 124-135 is in fact a digression, motivated by feelings of piety which the singer could not well suppress, from the main line of the argument. TO TplTov aJT' J1r~ ~pa (line 121) rather than TO TtTapov ••• f • . . Els &8lKwv €{3a.\Es 1roAw contained the logically capping idea. In the words O){tTA'o'• ols roVIJ the religious imagination of the singer "carries him away" from his routine praises into an expression of his "own feeling." The rhapsodic selection priamel (lines 136-141) whereby he returns to his theme proper is very artfully adapted to the theme of the digression, since the purpose of these hymnal selection-priamels is precisely to enlist the sympathy and allay the anger of the god. It is important to observe the numerical aiJ~cns of the phrases £v SE C1V 'ITo>.>.~ and £v 8' ol uEo 'ITcXvTES cUO->.o, which promises hymns of considerable length and volume, and in the hymn itself gives, together with the list, an impression of comprehensive treatment. We may note in conclusion that the question of line 113 (1rov Sl CJE TO 1rpCYrov), which is formally modeled on the rhapsodic Tls 1rpwTos (cf. 8. 509, E. 703, 8. 273, A. 299, II. 692, '· 14) reflects the concern for origins evidenced in h. Del. 30, h. [Hom.] 3.25, 214, 216. In h. Iov. 1-10 occurs a form of aporetic selection priamel in which the singer is confronted with two and only two alternatives. This aporetic type (Jv 3o,fj. ooufuuaTo) appears first in Homer (cf. e.g., N. 455-459, 8. 20-24, II. 646-655, E. 465-475, '· 141-146, u. 90-94, K. 151-155, w. 235-240 [note 1rpwTov in line 240], 1r. 235-239 [note Kcm}.>.E~ov in line 235]; and for the phrase Jv 3o,fi cf. I. 230 and for oo,cfua~:To cf. Bacch. 11. 87 and Apoll. Argon, 3. 771, 819) and is clearly a variant realization of the technique which we have been 15

Cf. h. [Hom.] 1.17ff, 3.177f, 7.58f.

31

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Elroy L. Bundy

studying. Kallimachos's version has its closest formal parallel in Antag. 1 (Powell. Collectanea Alexandrina, p. 120) ev OoLij p,ot tfvp,6s / ... I 7j ... I 7j .•• 7j£ ••• I 7j where four alternative genealogies of Eros are reviewed. In Call. h. lov. there are only two rival claims: \Vas Zeus born in Arkadia or in Krete? The poet decides that the former alternative has the greater claim to recognition on the ground that the Kretans are liars (cf. h [Hom.] 1.1-6, Epimenides fr. 1) and erected a tomb for one who is in truth immortal. Kallimachos is concerned to name the god correctly: Is he Zeus Diktaios or Zeus Lykaios? 76 For to name the god incorrectly is to invite his enmity (cf. h. Apoll. 69ff). We note the aporetic interrogatives (Tl and 1rws) and the typical comparative or superlative (AwLov; cf. 1TAEtO'TOV and egoxa in h. Dian. 183, 184).77 The geographical av~ats is modeled on h. [Hom.] 3.20-24 and similar passages in the tradition.78 H. Ger. 17-23 combines the rhapsodic technique with a "corrective" technique common in Pindar and elsewhere. In 0. 1.26f Pindar refers to the legend which claimed that the gods were served a dish made ofPelops's flesh. Now, Pindar introduces this story in order to mark the time (e1r£l, line 26) of Poseidon's falling in love with Pelops (cf. the emphatic corrective ToT' in line 40); Poseidon's love is important because the poet wishes to speak of Pelops's translation (note that Ganymedes is only a second to him) as a consequence of this love, to Olympos. In order, then, to set the scene for Pelops's sojourn on Olympos, he appeals to the popular version of the story. But once he has given his audience a familiar frame of reference, he can find this version not to his liking and dismiss it for another (more likely a less-widely known version than one of his own making). He is thus led to comment in lines 35f:

.,

" .,;,• • .,;, \ .I. , • ' • .I.' .,;, , --\ , , ' €0'TL a avopL 'l'«fJ-EV €0LKOS' «fJ-'1'' o«LfJ-OIIWV Kai\ct' fJ-€LWV yap

«LTL« • .. ,., ~\ ' .,;,• ' , ' .1..-0.' l: VLE .1. avTai\OV, O'E o avna 1TpaTepwv 'l'vey,.op,at, •••• 76 Perhaps there is no need to point out how far we have here come from the Z.W, &ms 116-T' Jvn, n.\. of Aesch. Ag. 160f. 77 On the usc of comparatives and superlatives in these rhetorical forms see Bundy (supra n. 29) 33. For the combination of comparative (or superlative) and the rhetorical question ct. e.g., Pind. P. 10.1-6 where d>.flla, p4tCa>pa. &p•rrro,.&xov, and (kal1~& all serve as superlatives preceding the rhetorical question ofv. 4,_whichintroduces the program ofvv. 4ff; and cf. also I. 1.1-6: lnrlpr~pcw and (in the question) #}.TEpov. 78 For geographical auxesis in Pindar consult the following passages: N. 6.47-55 (ct. Lys. 2.2), I. 2.41f (cf. Anacreont. 25.1-5), I. 4.41, I Iff, I. 5.33-56, I. 6.20/1-33, N. 7.50f, N. 4.25-72, N. 9.46f, N. 5.50ff, N. 3.18-30, N. 1.61f, P. 10.22-54, 0. 3.44-48. On I. 6.20/1-33 ct. Martia11.3.

32

"Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios,

71

Two techniques are employed here: that of assigning an offensive tale of one's own telling to men of former time and that of broaching a theme only to abandon it with the explanation that it violates custom, natural right, or decorum. 79 The former is employed, as we have seen, by Kallimachos in h. Lav. Pall. 56; the latter he resorts to in h. Ger. 17 in order that he may use the offensive tale as foil for another theme of his own choosing: Taiha Alywp.es ~ MKpvov ~yaye .:j'l]oi· IC&Mtov, WS 7TOAlECJCJ£V eaMTa T~p.ta ~WKE' K«Mtov, ws KMap.av TE Kal iepa 8payp.aTa 1rpaTa J > J Q ~f7TCXXVWV CX7TEKO'I'E KCX£ EV tJOCLS 'IKE 7TCX'T7jCJCL£ avlKa TpmTo>..ep.os aya&w l8t8&CJKE'TO Tixvav· \ < • < .Q _>_ \ KW\1\tov, ws, wa KCX' ns V7TEptJaa,as W~.E'I]TCL',

p.~ p.~

I

I

,/,

\

I

~

~

1

~\

I

f

7T [

I

]

lSia&a,

The whole is a selection priamel in which, after the dismissal of a theme which it is feared may renew Demeter's ancient grief, alternative themes are introduced neither by aporetic interrogatives nor by disjunctives, but by Ka>..>..tov, ws • •• in anaphora, clearly an adaptation of the rhapsodic ~ ws.so The list, as always, gives an impression of 79 See supra p. 66. Although Pindar's purposes here require that he rejecu this version, yet the detail of the ivory shoulder is too good to spare, both·for enhancing the beauty of Pelops as inspirational of Poseidon'alove and for making us aware of the power of art irrationally to persuade men's minds by directing them toward outward beauty and away from inner truth. Cf. 0. 9.29-44, on which cf. X. 202ff and J:. 107ff. so Rhapsodic also is Pindar's use of Kd.UIOTov in P. 7.1 (note the rhetorical question which follows in line 5, supported by the comparative £.,,.pavoOT£pov); cf. also fr. 89a. In both these passages, as in Call. h. Cer. 18f, decorum as opposed to mere esthetic beauty is meant. Note by contrast the pure (relativistic) estheticism of Sappho's ode addressed to Anaktoria: to Sappho morality is no issue; each is caught by whatever strikes his fancy and to him that is most beautiful. She drives this point home with the example of Helen, herself a standard of absolute beauty and therefore an authority in this realm to those who quest for absolutes. Yet what was most beautiful to her? Not herself, surely, but another; and he, whom she rejected, as men measure such things, was far more worthy than him she chose (ap•OTov, not Kd.UIOTov). Thus are men helpless against Aphrodite when love is not recognized as a cognitive act. In Pindar the moral (I do not mean didactic) element bulks large in his con· ception of beauty; in Kallimachos the moral force resides chiefly in the seriousness with which he seeks to rwnnalize, as a defense against vulgarity and boredom, a narrow range of public and personal experience. There is a type of man for whom esthetics largely presides over religion and morality and this is the man of"taste," but when taste is severed from judgment it is on iu way to becoming a religious mystique. The reader is free to supply his own examples in degree from among modern esthetes from the time of Shaftesbury down to our own day.

33

72

Elroy L. Bundy

thematic richness and culminates in an announcement of that aspect of the theme which the singer, preserving decorum, has chosen to develop-here Demeter's punishment of Erysichthon's desecration of her sacred grove. Kallimachos includes as apology for this theme a fabula docet (iva Kai ns V1Tf.p~aaias &A.brrat).Bl Such is Kallimachos's prooimial use of aporetic amplification and apology. From it we deduce, as we have from earlier examples, the nature of the singer's a1Topia: to omit any item in the muster of the god's glories (and to include them all is humanly impossible) is to risk his disfavor; and yet, if the singer acknowledges his limitations and relies on pleasing selection and arrangement, he may inadvertently include an offensive topic or omit what is most certain to please. The choice is, in short, between quantity and quality. To reject the methods of the cataloguer is in itself pleasing apology, since to imply that one may tell, even in the whole of time, the tale of a god's greatness is certain to offend him. A hymnist, or indeed any eulogist, will therefore rarely claim, and can never hope to execute, a comprehensive treatment: only one who is insensitive (however well intentioned he may be) to the merits of his theme would attempt to enumerate them. One's aim must be to accomplish an appropriate selection and treatment (see infra pp. 89ff on Pind. 0. 2.105-110). We may observe these principles at work in two Kallimachean passages which have special bearing on the interpretation of h. Apoll. 105-113. These are h. Apoll. 28-31 and the subtle h. Del. 1-10. The possible implications of h. Apoll. 28-31 for the interpretation of h. Apoll. 105 we have already briefly considered (supra pp. 48ff). Let us now examine the passage in its context. In lines 12-15 (a formal &va~oA~) the singer urges the youths who make up the choir to break silence if they expect to live to a ripe old age and if the wall of the temple is to stand upon its ancient foundations-if, in other words, they are not to experience to their sorrow the wrath of the god. (This motive, in more obviously rhapsodic language, appears at h. Dian. If.) In line 16 he congratulates them for their prompt response. Next, he Sappho herself seems to have been a pure Romantic with no illusions (unlike the nineteenthcentury Romantics and unlike most of her critics-Page is an exception) as to her own profundity. She merely, with varying degrees of charm, expressed.herself. The famous ode to Aphrodite reveals, as Page says, a slight degree of self-understanding, which, although quite ingenuous and almost involuntary, as it seems to me, is nevertheless real. The poem has charm, but it is far from great. 81 For the form ofthefabula docet cf. Pind. P. 4.92. Cf. alsoP. 2. 21-24, 4lb.

34

"Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios"

73

addresses the audience in order to command the religious silence that should greet the hymn (cf. Macedonius Pa. in Apoll. lf Coil. Alex. ed. Powell, p. 138, Mesomedes 2.1-6), persuasively pointing to the examples of the sea, which becomes hushed on hearing of Apollo's bow and lyre, and of the two legendary mourners, Thetis and Niobe-of-stone, who give over their laments for their offspring when singers acclaim these attributes of Apollo. These corroborating exempla are followed by an exhortation to the choir, itself corroborated in turn by a gnome which is amplified in lines 26f in such a way as to suggest (glancing tactfully at Ptolemy) the existence of a harmony between the religious and secular orders.82 There follows a promise, to complement the warnings of lines 14f and 25f, that the choir may expect honor from Apollo (he will accept their hymn) in so far as they sing according to his heart. In line 32 the actual hymn-a catalogue of Apollo's gloriesbegins,83 but between the singer's promise to his choir and the beginning of the catalogue occur the lines in which we are chiefly interested.84 With lines 28f they form in themselves a complete hymnal prooimion which combines features of both the cult and the rhapsodic hymns; to see this we have only to imagine the verb T£p.-,jaE£ replaced by an imperative, the third person indicatives c~hi'vo:To:£, ~aTa£, and EO'T£ converted to second persons, and the nouns and pronouns referring to Apollo replaced by some forms suitable to the direct address. The ritual character of lines 28f is dictated by the epiphany of lines 1-27 and the poet's appeal to the choir and to the audience to observe the proprieties ofsong and silence respectively. The rhapsodic character of lines 30fis dictated by the poet's need, in a hymn of praise, to comment on the richness ofhis theme before undertaking it. Lines 30fare in the manner of B. 488-493 and h. [Hom.] 3.19-29 and 207-216. ean yap Ewp.vos explaining line 30,' is exactly 7TrWrWS EiJvp.vov eoVTa explaining the 82 This poem (especially through line 31) should be closely compared with the first of Pindar's Pythians both in order to understand it and to judge with precision its value as a poem. 83 The chief of these in the economy of the hymn is his foundation ofKyrene, his worship in that city, and his kindnesses to its citizens. After this climax the cry r'lj r'lj 'ITadjov is raised (in ringform with vv. 21, 25) and its etymology accounted for in a briefaetiological narration. The etymology, coming after the raised signal of the cry (the final mark of personal and public enthusiasm for Apollo, as it were in justification and proof ofvv. 95f) is allowed to assume a lightly digressive tone in preparation for the "break-off" (or praeteritio) ofvv. 105112 (see Bundy [supra n. 29] 43). Both the topic of the foundation and that of the etymology are conventional. 84 Cf. A. 472f on which see immediately below. Cf. also Statius Silv. 1.1.6lff.

35

74

Elroy L. Bundy

aporetic 7TWS in h. [Hom.] 3.19 and 207, and the rest oflines 29fpresent a modification of the convention of B. 488ff where Homer entrusts his theme to the Muses on the ground that his physical powers are inadequate to the task. We have seen that Homer's "ten mouths, ten tongues, a voice not to be broken, and a heart of bronze" becomes in Aischylos's Persians "ten days"; in Lysias 2.1 the theme is stated as follows: £7TEt8~ S€ 7TaO'LV avt'Jpcfmots 0 7Tas xp6vos ovx i~eavos ,\6yov LO"OV 7T«p«/011 to express both negatively and positively the pleasure theme, which will take a more openly rhapsodic form in vv. 28ff. So the minor Cyclades are amplification here for Delos, who most perfectly satisfies the god's pleasure, as she does also, setting many other places in the shade, in the Homeric Hymn w Apollo. See supra n. 65.

=

37

76

Elroy L. Bundy

The singer who would not devote himself to Herakles in an ode for one who has been a victor in the Herakleia is Kw#s-brutish and insensitive to the proprieties of song. Pindar gets in his homage to Herakles in an ode for a victor whose community is anxious to hear new praises and avoids the latter's ill will (cp&cwos) by making the occasion one of high selective decorum. 89 The technique of h. Del. 1-10 is noteworthy. The lines are a selection priamel in the manner of h. Dian. 183-189, h. [Hom.] 3.19-27, 207-215, h. Del. 28-33, h. Dem. 17-24. Formally, the passage is a modification of a prooimion to a hymn to Apollo, since it is his pleasure which the poet seeks to secure in his choice of theme. He might have begun in the manner of lines 28ff had he intended a straightforward hymn to Delos. Instead he announces Delos as his theme and presents his apology for the choice in terms of Apollo's own preference as if the hymn were addressed to him.90 Since he has elected to write a hymn to Delos and has settled on this manner of making his apology, his aporetic opening cannot take the form of h. [Hom.] 3.207, nor can he present the Kyklades in a disjunctive list capped by Delos. Further, since he cannot appear to be in doubt about his theme (Apollo entertains no doubt about what will most please him) the opening "-rlva vfjaov" is precluded. Kallimachos accordingly hits on the device of professing a temporal Ct1Topta: Tlva xpovov ~ 7TOT a~:laE£s,91 which is resolved by vw in line 9. He is thus enabled to display the conventional disjunctive and the conventional interrogative list,92 The Kyklades he can now present 1

89 This passage provides a clear formal analogue for both h. Del. 7-10 and h. Apoll. 106: Keucls &vr)p TIS renders the same judgment as otlK ayap.a• TOv ao&Sov and ;xfJoua&v

(Movaca) Tov &o.s&v; while os 'HpaK>.£i OTop.a p.~ KTA. equally with os otlS' oaa KT,\. and o p.~ lllp...&p.ma Swp.a-r• €xovuat, OS TtS s~ 7TpCI.rros {3poTO£V'T. avSpaypt' )txatwv Tjpa-r•, ETT£l p' €~eAw£ p.&X"Jv ~e>..v-ros bvouiyatos.

is answered at once

There follows a brief catalogue of Greek warriors and the opponents whom they killed in battle. The technique need not involve the Muses. In E. 703 occurs the direct question: "E'-__ ., 'l: l: vva TWCL 7TpWTOV, Ttv·a oo:,> VUTCLTOV £s£V«p";;av "E~e-rwp T£ flp,&p.oto 1rai's ~ea~ X&AIC£os 7IP1Js; Q__

I

~

I

I

There follows a catalogue of slain warriors in which only the last item, according to the principle which became standard in rhapsodic selection priamels, is developed at any length. In such passages the list implicit in TTpCI.rros (cf. the standard priamel superlatives and comparatives) may be suppressed as at ll. 112ff where the answer to the question mmws ~ 1rpCI.rrov TTiJp EfL7T£U£ V71VU~v )txatwv is not amplified by enumeration. Finally, the poet may dispense with the question technique altogether and resort to a simple list as in Z. Sff (Ara:s ~ TTpCI.rros), introducing a catalogue which leads up to the encounter between Glaukos and Diomedes. Even this "blunt, technique is clearly prooimial. In the lyric too this simple prooimial technique is employed to introduce individual themes within a poem. In P. 9.90-93

40

"Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios"

79

Pindar introduces successive items in a catalogue with prooimial devices epic in descent. The first of these introductions we have mentioned briefly (supra pp. 75f)'; the second (lines 92ff) runs as follows: Xapl7wv Kt:Aa8EVV..€-rw p.E >..H!t.p -rpaxE'i cp&6vo~

"Different themes give pleasure to different people; I trust that in turning from Aiakos to Melesias I shall give offense to no one." We mark the hymnal concern to give pleasure, and it is important to observe that the word cp&6vo~, personified in Call. h. Apoll. 105, reflects the enkomiast's desire both to please his audience and to make Melesias the cynosure of all eyes. Pindar in 0. 8.53f is obeying the principle which he formulates explicitly at P. 10.53f (also in transition) that an ode must offer a variety of themes in order to avoid tedium. Some may have begun to tire of his present theme and to anticipate (cf. P. 1.82f) another. He will accordingly offer them Melesias, hoping (with a modesty which dissembles his true enthusiasm) that this will satisfy even those who are anxious to hear more of Aiakos or to hear sung the praises of young Alkimedon himself. Line 53 is epilogic (setting a punctum to praise of Aiakos) and lines 54ff prooimial (introducing praise of Melesias), but that the theme ofline 53 can be prooimial is evident from Verg. Eel. 4.1ff: Sicelidae Musae, paulo maiora canamus! Non omnis arbusta iuvant humilesque myricae. si canimus silvas, silvae sint consule dignae. Yet even here line 2 clearly surrenders themes previously preferred by the poet. It is clear that 0. 8.53, like I. 7.16ff, is an implicit recusatio of ancient themes and that the passage as a whole abbreviates the rhapsodic selection pattern set by h. [Hom.] 3.19-27. More subtle is the recusatio of I. 5.5.7-61: .?.\\> •

aN\

,

~Q

op.w~ ~eavxap.a ~ea.-rat'PEXE

~

Kal -ra vlp.Et, 0 1TtXV"TWV KVpto~. Ev 8' epanwip

ZEv~ -raTE ZEv~

atylf'

42

"Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios"

81

p./A&T' Kal TOuJ8E Tlp.al __ , , ,

ICW\1\lJ/,ICOI'

,

')(app.

• • '1' ayu7TO:!t01"1''•

Line 57 is epilogic ("hush the lyre" opposed to "wake the lyre" [lines 42ff] is an inversion of the rhapsodic 1rw~ vp.~uw) and dismisses the graver and grimmer theme of warfare both past (lines 43-53) and present (lines 53-56) to take up in the prooimial lines 60f the lighter and more festive theme of athletic success.96 Lines 58f carry the theme of 0. 8.52 and V ergil Eel. 4.2; although the thought is highly condensed, the phrase .,.& TE ~eal .,-& represents a universalizing doublet such as "war and peace," "gravity and gaiety," "work and rest," "foul weather and fair." Even Zeus, the lord of all, is not always serious; sometimes he lays aside his thunderbolts to attend to the festive lyre or to take up his goblet (cf. P. 1.5ff, Laus Pis. 152ff) and nothing is always the same. Variety must rule in art as in all else.97 This abuttment of "epilogue" and "prooimion" (cf. B. 760££), which I have elsewhere termed "diminuendo" and "crescendo," is extremely common in Pindar and may be typified by N. 4.69-79.98 The epilogic lines 69-72 which employ the nautical metaphor that became common in Roman apologetic verses (cf. Hor. Carm. 4.15.3f) abandon the ancient theme (Peleus) singled out for attention by the rhapsodic selection priamel of lines 44-68, as the prooimial lines 73-79 take up the current theme of the Theandridai and their agonistic successes.99 Notable in the epilogic lines 69-72, besides the !16 On this pusage aee Bundy (supra n. 29) 74, n. 100. (The last sentence of my note is not up to the dignity of Pindar's language.) See also Hans-Georg Gerhardt, Zeus in den pintlarischen Epinikien. (Diss. Frankfurt am Main 1959) 66. Ruling here is the principle of decorum (cf. Bacch. 14.8-18, especially vv. 12-18). This theme, often expressed in terms of weather changes, is frequent in Horace (cf. Carm. 1. 7.15-21, 9.9-12, 27.1-8, 2.9, and cf. especially 2. 10.13-24). 97 Laus Pis. 137-208 protracts this theme for seventy-two verses, ringing on it from every quarter of the tradition virtually all the changes to which it has been subject. In the preceding note I have given one example from Bacchylides and several from Horace. Cf. also Pind. N. 11.37-48, I. 5.58f. The need for variety and a rule of times and occasions, of change amid decorum, is one of Pindar's most frequent themes. For variety itself he has few settled words, the most striking of which is 'ITo,KJ.la. (cf. P. 9.80). The bee is an image of variety in P. 10.53f and elsewhere. cr. lsocr. 1.52, Lucr. 3.llf, Hor. Carm. 4.2.27-32, Bacch. 10.10. For the war and peace (festival) doublet cf. further Anacr. 9602, Bacch. 14. 12-16. cr., finally, P. 1. 1-28. 98 See Bundy (supra n. 29) 18f. 99 On this passage cf. especially 0. 13.89-96, I. 6.53-57, 0. 9.86-91, Cr. 94b.31-45, N. 7.61-69, N. 6.55-61. N. 7.61-69 is a much misunderstood passage. For 'ITpofGl~ inN. 7.65 cf. the same word in Cr. 94b.4lff and 'ITpo~Go• in I. 4.8; and for the

43

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Elroy L. Bundy

nautical metaphor, are the summary a1rcwra. (implicit praeteritio) and a1ropa. (cf. B. 488-493) which refers to the incapacity of the eulogist to

exhaust his theme. Similar in moving from past to present through nautical aporia are P. 11.37-45, and for the metaphor cf. also Isocr. Ep. 2.13f.JOO Finally, of great theoretical importance (cf. N. 636ff) is the . N • 7•52f: WIIIpoSlata: which is followed by a summary (eKaaTos) priamel introducing Thearion (line 58) as the new theme. The words y~vKel:a: and TEp7rV' remind us of 0. 8.53, g. 228 (with which the scholia gloss N. 7.54f) and Verg. Eel. 4.2 (iuvant), and llia y&p marks the whole as a version of one of many break-off patterns. Most important, however, is the word Kopov which anticipates and counters boredom, as it does also in P. 1.82 and N. 10.20. To take only the latter passage, lines 19f are epilogic, as lines 21fwith their eyetpE Mpav and 7T~CCLGfL&Twv Acf{3e cppoVTlSa: ( = the rhapsodic VfLVEL and fLvrJGOfLCCL) are prooimial. As we pass on now to the subject of epilogue proper, it should be clear that we may expect to encounter, with some difference of emphasis, prooimial motives in epilogical settings and that we need ,

I

\

'

A

"

I

"

phrase .,pog&tq. 1TE1To&8' cf. P. 10.64 and 0. 1.103. With 8af'6-ra&; the word 1Tpo~&{q. gives us the "strangen and fellow citizens" doublet common throughout Pindar in praise of his patrons. .,poguc'rlov.s on celebratory occasions. If the passages cited at the beginning of this note are studied together, much that has previously remained obscure in each of them and elsewhere in Pindar becomes clear. On 0. 13. 89ff cf. Bacch. 10.5lf. 100 In this passage Van Hook's rendering in his Loeb Library translation of 1rpos 8( To6ro•s 4>oflo6p.ru 'T1}v &Ka&plav as "Besides, I fear that my advice may be inopportune" gives exactly the opposite sense of what is wanted. lsokrates is sure that his advice is opportune. What he fears is that it may go to undue length (cf. Dem. 60.6) and fail to achieve its end (improper use of copia obscures the subject and defeats communication: see infra n. 111). aKCUpla points rather, as regularly in such passages, to a breach of decorum in the adjustment of quantity to quality, and here involves, in the main, undue length. Ka&pO-. (with its compounds) seems to me often mistreated in texts of the classical period and earlier. Its basic sense is "propriety," "tact," or "decorum," sometimes "need," sometimes "full. ness in brief compass." In Pindar it never has any other meaning: "opportunity," "the fitting time," "due season," "chance" all do it very scant justice. See Bundy (supra n. 29) 18, n. 44.

44

"Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios"

83

not confine ourselves in interpreting individual epilogues to the evidence of passages which introduce and conclude entire works. The purpose of an epilogue is to surrender one's theme without giving offense to one's audience whether it be an individual addressee or a group of personages each with different tastes and capacities for appreciation. In the case of a hymn the audience is ideally the god (and no other) to whom the hymn is addressed, although when the hymn is to any degree ·secularized (as are the Homeric hymns) and becomes as much a vehicle for the display of poetical craftsmanship as for supplication and praise of the god, one's principles of selection must in part be determined by the conditions of performance. Yet if the choice of matter and manner be influenced by the presence of an audience representing divergent tastes and interests, all must appear to be done according to the god's wishes, since failure to comply with the proprieties of hymnal form will itself entail criticism. So, in Dilthey's view, Apollonios criticized Kallimachos's hymn to Apollo as unworthy of the divine patron of poets (see supra p. 43). In general the Homeric hymns do not openly display awareness of auditors other than the god, although such hymnal announcements as {jaop,at are addressed not to the god but to an audience waiting to hear his name, and such concluding prayers as xapw 8' ap,' 07TCXUUOV aot8fi doubtleSS expresS COnCern for the pleasure Of a critical audience as well as for that of the god; in h. 3.1 72f, in his address to the Delian maidens, the rhapsode reveals his concern for his critical reputation among men; and in h. 6 the singer's prayer to the god for victory in a contest presumes a critical audience of human judges,lOl In the hymns of Kallimachos, which owe much to the rhetoric of choral poetry, the poet's consciousness of an assembled audience (whether their presence is real or imagined) is at times fully evident, as for example in his address to them in h. Apoll. 4 and 17, and in the conceit of h. Iov. 5-9 which, if it flatters the god, is calculated to win applause for its wit from auditors or readers. I introduce this consideration not merely to prepare the way for the question whether tJ>{}6vos and Mwp,os in the epilogue of h. Apoll. may represent the feared criticism not only of Apollo but also of the general audience, but in order to warn the reader that if I describe the rhetoric of a given passage in no other than its hymnal sense, this is not to be 101 Cf. also h. [Hom.] 30.18, 31.17, 11.5, 2.494. See T. W. Allen, W. R. Halliday, and E. E. Sikes, The Homerie Hymns (Oxford 1936) xciii.

45

84

Elroy L. Bundy

interpreted to mean that I regard the hymnal meaning as the only meaning.102 I am prepared, however, to deny that a given passage may have meanings that get in each other's way, as for example all allegorical interpretations of this poem with which I am familiar obstruct the hymnal meaning. The simplest of epilogic break-off patterns in the hymns of Kallimachos is the simplest also (save for a?rrap E-yw and the like) of those which we encounter in the Homeric hymns. As we have observed, the hymnal xai.p£, which may be employed elsewhere than in epilogue (e.g., in Call. lz. Dian. 225, lz. Ger. 2, lz. e mag. pap. coli. 3.1, 9.1 Heitsch}, is no mere "farewell," although its use in epilogue does frequently mark a break with what precedes and signals the end of the hymn. This is because the proper place for salutation is at the beginning or at the end. When it occurs centrally, as at lz. Dian. 225, it is regularly prooimial or epilogic in the sense defined above.103 Kallimachos employs this imperative (once the optative) epilogically in lz. lov. 91, 94, lz. Dian. 259, 268, lz. Del. 325, 326, h.lav. Pall. 140, 141, h. Ger. 134. As we have seen, its use in h. Apoll. 113 is complicated by the fact that the line is inseparably linked with lines 105-112 by the word ~vo~. In h. lav. Pall. xaip£ in line 140 greets the goddess in anticipation of her emergence from the temple, and signals the end of the hymn.104 102 The hymnal meaning of a given passage in a hymn having been discovered, it will be found to include all" other" meanings. Thus, the prayer for a victory in a contest is a prayer and quite proper in a hymn performed at a festival in which the god is honored by the competition. It has a "personal" meaning for the rhapsode, but this is involved in its public purpose. The same principle should be held to apply to the "personal" clements in Pindar and in Kallimachos's Hymns. 103 Farnell at Pind. P. 2.67 complains that xaipE introduces a note of finality too far from the end of the poem. In this he exhibits a mechanical response to expectations reminiscent of the brief epilogues of the Homeric hymns and fails to respond both to their original prooimial character and to more modem developments in the use of epilogue. xuipE (as T08E ,..& shows) is epilogic to the main body of the ode; while in the words Td KuaT&pE&oP 8' a new and contrasting (8l) proem is announced in language heavily reminiscent of the rhapsodic tradition. Pindar adds, as it were, a "rider" and this, beginning in line 72, runs to the end of the poem. & dB&nu, revealing the desire to please, indicates, the last sentence adapts the concluding prayer of the rhapsodes. xuipE in P. 2.67 is "Hail and farewell," dismissing the main body of the hymn of praise and turning to exhortation (parUJWis). Cf. the epilogic xulfwr' in the b-ansition of /. 1.32 where ~ 8l ••• '"purri)W.w dot8cW yaptJaop.m is prooimial. See Bundy (supra n. 29) 460: 104 He leaves to the maidens, who alone are permitted to view her, the task of receiving her. This is a mark of his tact. He will not be another Teiresias. Thus the ending illustrates the point of the hypomnesis and contains a tacit prayer: "May I never behold you naked!" The show of modesty is effective awtuis expressing the singer's piety and awe of the goddess.

46

"Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios"

85

Beyond this stereotype, Kallimachos's break-off patterns in the epilogues of his hymns are few and relatively simple, save for that of the hymn to Apollo. In h. Iov. 92f, a rhapsodic prooimial motive is employed to justify the singer's taking leave of his theme before he can complete it (see supra p. 74): I Kpo!5:I t'A 'I /LE'Ya v...,., 'TTavtnTEfYT'aTE, OWTOP Eawv, Mnop ci-Tr1J/LOVl"1S· TEa 8' lpy,_,aTa Tls KEV &t:.l~oi; ov ywt:.T'. ovK lCITcu. • Tls KEV J tos lpy,_,aT' &t:.lae';

A xa~pE

This abbreviatory formula is the 1rws T' IJ.p a' ~,.,~aw 1r&.vrws EiJv/Lvov JoVTaofh. [Hom.] 3.19, 207 and theEl~€M"]v1ToAlesaE1TEptTpox&wawam8al, 1ro~fi Jvm>.Egw aE; of Call. h. Del. 28f. Implicit praeteritio is common to all three passages, and as the two last apologize in anticipation, so the first apologizes in retrospect for failure adequately to praise the god. In h. lov. the rhetorical question presumes as its answer the universal negative ov8t:.ls (cf. P. 260f) and therefore counters the god's criticism before he can conceive it. There is, of course, no higher praise than the confession that the laudandus is beyond praise. With Call. h. lov. 92f we may compare Pind. 0. 2.109f Ka~ KEivos oaa x&pp.aT' aAAOIS eth}KEV, I

T~S

..J. t' av .,..paaat avvatTo; ..

I

I

H. Dian. 259-268 is more complex. In form the passage (introduced by the salutation xaipe) is a priamel made up of a series of injunctions against offending Artemis (each in turn driven home by an exemplum) which are capped by the poet's prayer for the favor of the goddess. The poet's feared giving of offense finds analogues in the careers of Oineus, Agamemnon, Otos and Orion, and Hippo, whose various offenses drew to themselves the displeasure of the goddess, which the poet hopes that he has avoided in his song (cf. h. Dian. 110-141 on which see supra pp. 68ff). Lines 260-267 are thus evidendy Kallimachos's amplification (per contrarium) of the concluding hymnal formula ev~aov &ot8fj ;lOS the poet is at once original and squarely in the tradition. The words p.~ ns anl-'~071 (cf. h. Apoll. 29, h. Del. 10) reflect the anxiousness to please and the fear of disapproval which we have already encountered in such passages as h. Del. 7-10. 105 A number of Pindar's odes end on similar warnings, followed or not by a prayer for the song (or singer). Cf. 0. 1.114-116, 0. 3.46/7f, 0. 5.24b, P. 2.88-96, N. 9.4655. cr. also the conclusion to the proem of P. 1: El'), ZEii, Tlv El'J &v8~w. Mter what precedes this amounts to a fabula doctt making use of the prooimial and epilogic motive of pleasing the god.

47

86

Elroy L. Bundy

In h. lav. Pall. the climax of the hymn is the epiphany of Athena, signalled dramatically by the words lpxt:T' 1t8avata in line 137. Now that the goddess prepares to emerge from the temple, the poet bids the companions ofher bath, who await her, to give her a warm reception, for he must now surrender to those whose proper concern it is the burden of praise, prayer, and thanksgiving. The epiphany which he employs in h. Apoll. 1-31 to introduce the main body of the hymn he employs in h. lav. Pall. in order to abandon a tale which, as is clear from lines 55f, he could not narrate in the presence of the goddess (cf. h. Ger. 17-23). In employing the conventional address to the choir in order to surrender his theme rather than to broach it, he converts prooimial into epilogic apology: he may with propriety no longer pursue his tale and must give over to the companions of the Bath of Pallas, who alone are permitted to view her, the formal doxology and the ritual ablutions. The following xaipt: is thus dramatically prepared for: it greets the goddess in anticipation of her emergence from the temple and signals in anticipation of the leave-taking of the poet. Such are the epilogues proper of Kallimachos's hymns. They are on the whole subtler than those of the Homeric hymns. Even the comparatively simple h. lou. 92fhas no exact parallel in the earliest ofhymnal collections but finds a perfect analogue in Pind. 0. 2.109£ We shall presently consider the latter passage in some detail, but we must first confront Call. h. Apoll. 105-113 with the evidence which we have assembled and ask of the passage certain questions. Our review of hymnal form has revealed that between the hymnal envoi and the main body of a hymn no linear connection exists other than that implied by the sequence: invocation, praise, and prayer with salutation, and we have seen the difficulty which scholars have encountered in their efforts to discover such a connection between h. Apoll. 105-113 and the aition which precedes. Then, too, lines 105-112 are linked in sense with line 113, an unambiguous hymnal envoi, by the fact that a personified tfo86vos appears both in line 105 and in line 113. These facts suggest that lines 105-112 belong to the hymnal envoi. Before proceeding further, I must make clear my stand on one point of interpretation. According to some scholars, the hymn to Apollo was actually performed by a chorus of mxwEs at the festival of Karneian Apollo at Kyrene;106 others believe the occasion, as we can 106 For

example Cahen (supra n. 15) 219.

48

"Quarrel between Kallimachos and Apollonios"

87

reconstruct it from the hymn, is fictitious.107 Whatever the truth of this matter, it cannot be gainsaid that Kallimachos throughout adheres to the requirements of actual performance and is at some pains to have us judge his art by his faithfulness to convention in this regard at least. The address to the choir can be interpreted only from the point of view of oral performance (c£ Pind. I. 8.2) at an actual festival. Kallimachos dons the mask of chorodidaskalos and to this degree surrenders his personal identity. We have no choice but to accept this pose (if it is a pose) and interpret the poem as "oral": it contains nothing that would be improper to performance. The "speeches" of Isokrates may serve as an analogy for those who believe that the hymn was not actually performed. Lines 105-113 must, within the hymnal tradition, be heard as an audience composed of Apollo and his worshippers might have heard them. Kallimachos is not breaking the hymnal illusion to address openly an "audience" of prospective reviewers. He is dramatizing a conventional break-off or epilogic pattern which may best be illustrated from the works of Pindar. At P. 8.30-35 Pindar makes a simple use of this pattern: Elp.~ S' aoxo~OS' &va&Jp.£V 7Taaav p.aKpayoplav ~VPC!- TE KCX~ cp{}Jyp.an p.~{}aKcp, p.~ Kopos £~&wv KVlcrn. -ro S' £v 7Toal JLO' -rpaxov iTw 'TEOV xpJos, J, wai, VEW'TCX'TOV K~wv, t' '·••...L.' E/Uf 'ITOTCLVOV CXI"'t'£ JLCXXCLVC!A

\

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'fhese transitional lines (epilogue followed by prooimion) are addressed formally to young Aristomenes, but the epilogic lines 30-33 reveal the poet's sense that to dilate at length on Aigina's legendary and historical glory would be to provoke tedium and consequent criticism from his vexed audience. vEwTa-rov (cf. 0. 9.52f) in line 34 touches on a motive that will become extremely common after Kallimachos: ancient themes are hackneyed; it takes a modern theme (or modern treatment) to awaken interest)OS This motive is in fact already present in Otfyssey For example Wilamowitz (supra n. 21) II, 15, 77. have always been and always will be neoterics (a. 35lf); and for this reason neoterism has its own conventions, which can be studied and mastered in a con· tinuous tradition of search for the modern. Though this mostly becomes the search for the merely novel, it is also one of the ways in which the central tradition renews itself; but in order to achieve a real advance, as Northrup Frye observed, originality must return to origins, just as radicalism, to overturn tradition, must return to its roots. See N. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton 1957) 97f. 107

108 There

49

Elroy L. Bundy 88 , , rt.OLO'T}V • o:>, p.rt.NIOV E1TLKI\ELOVa • , a. I .. • 1•35lf 'T'T}V yap avvpW1TOL 'T} TLS aiCOVOVTEaaL vewTa'T'TJ &p.tfL?TeA'T}TtxL and is employed frequently enough before the time of Kallimachos. In Pin d. I. 7.16 ?TaAaux is already approaching the sense ofvulgata ("hackneyed"), and ap.rt.SLTOV has similar overtones inN. 6.56, in P. 4.24 7, and in Pa. 7b (SnelP). 11.109 The fear of provoking criticism through prolixity is indeed a commonplace of the epinician ode. We have already considered 0. 8.53ff (supra p. 80) and N. 7.52f (p. 82) in this regard: prolixity (Kopas) and pleasure do not mix. N. 10.19f (see supra p. 82) makes this point explicitly: •

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The powers both of poet and of audience are inadequate to a proper treatment of Argive glory. The poet will nevertheless pursue the theme, but now in the area opened up by Theaios's recent victories and those of his clan rather than in the realm of legend. Similar to this passage is I. 1.60-64 in which the hymnist refuses to treat further of Herodotos's skill in chariotry.llO In P. 1.8lff Kc.tLp6v points to the need for brevity, Kopas alc.tv7]s to prolixity and boredom, and p.wp.os to the displeasure of a critical audience; and this I believe, is the point of Mwp.os in Call. h. Apoll. 113. Many other passages in Pindar treat this theme, but it seems to me that in 0. 2.105-110 the older poet comes closest in manner and stance to Kallimachos in the epilogue of his hymn to Apollo: 109 We need an essay on the ancient and modem in Pindar intended to reveal his thought on how the central tradition is or ought to be preserved and developed. It is one of his two or three principle themes and it is probable that all his themes meet in this one, which has, in him, equal application to art and life. One might well begin with a discussion of the commercialization of art and morals as these are viewed in i. 2 where, attacking the journalism ofhis day, Pindar mourns the loss of spiritual values to the sphere of the practical will, yet in truth welcomes the change as having forced on the artist with a conscience a more universal and less purely egoistic definition of value. What envy he has of the impulsive singers of old is thus rejected. · 110 On this passage see Bundy (supra n. 29) 7lff. The word d&p.b.a. is thematically in the rhapsodic tradition. Pindar seeks in quality (selective brevity) rather than in quantity to please and be pleased. The same principle is operating in the epilogue of Kallimachos's Hymn to Apollo.

50

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'TO

.;\~ayiiucu

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ci.Ua ,.,.a.pywv {m' c:W~,oWv Dtf'OI luAwv ~e«Aois

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This passage is widely misinterpreted.lll The first point to grasp is that 111 Most recently Slater, in an excellent article ("Futures in Pindar," CQ. 63 N.S. 19 [1969] 86-94) approves Schadewaldt's equation of tc&pos with fl&vot and seems to misunderstand my note on the passage (Bundy [supra n. 29] 29, n. 71). P. 1.82fmake it absolutely clear that tc&pos ="tedium" or the et~pia which produces it: it hlunts the swiftness with which the expectation of the hearer keeps speeding (in linear and accumulative fashion) toward the goal of pleasurable contemplation. It is this sense of tedium on the one hand and envy (rf>B&vos) on the other which lead to criticism (,W.~JDs). Keep detailing a man's blessings and two dangers arise: the audience becomes bored and in some or all of them envy is aroused. Yet boredom and envy, being different things, must be kept distinct. just as Pindar keeps them distinct in P. 1.82-84. InN. 10.20 the phrase tctlpos avBp.&Ppo•wcryy>.waalac KopaK£S in 0. 2.96). On the dangers of copia in connection with 0. 2.105-110 see Erasmus, De utraque verborum ac rerum copia 1, "Whence we see it befalls not a few mortals that they strive for this divine excdlence (cf. Pindar's i5pv•xa 8£oov), and fall into a kind of futile and amorphous loquacity (cf. 0. 2.94f5f, 106f), as with a multitude ( = Kopos) of inane thoughts and words thrown together without discrimination, they alike obscure the subject (~epvrf>Ov n 8lp.& la>.wv ~ea.\oos lpyo•s) and burden the ears of their hearers." (Tr. by D. B. King and H. D. Rix [Marquette Univ. Press, Milwaukee 1963].) 8lKa in line 106 qualitative equity in praise, "praise to match." 113 The lover of words displays not truth, but the range of his information and technique. On two other occasions Pindar describes the type. Cf. 0. 9. 107/8-112 and N. 3.38ff. The showman is as obnoxious in the realm of action as in that of words; his skills give him no command of knowledge and in his presence the truth is always obscured by facade: he is all methodology (N. 3.39£). His arts, pursued for their own sake in a void, are not rooted in nature and frame but shadow resemblances of the real (&Kpavra, 0. 2.96, U7£>..&yov Ala.Kov TTa.lawv TOV aTTa.VTa. fLO' 8&EA~Etv. 1"1-~~

.1.

But the adynaton may be simply declarative as in /. 6.5356 (cf. also N. 10.19f. and P. 8.30-33): cf. also Dem. 60.1, 37, Bacch. 5.14-33 (seen. 63) where the flight of the eagle, Hieron, in the realm of deeds is to be matched by the flight of the eulogist in words, Hyp. 6.2. us Others think that 7TO'Alaw = numerous other houses the sum of whose successes at the places named falls short of the many claimed by the Oligaithids, but Pindar is rather countering other lautiotores who quibble as to the number specifically of Oligaithid successes at the places named. Pindar puts an end to all controversy as to particulars by extracting the gist. His capping claim, as Norwood saw (Pitular, p. 19 and n. 52) has a gentle ironic edge. Cf. the end of N. 4 where he contends mildly with well-wishers, but harshly with detractors, of Mclesias. Thus understood, 0. 13.42-44-b falls into line with 0. 2.105-110.

53

92

Elroy L. Bundy €p,o' 8£ JLCXKpov 7TcXUC%S avay7}aaat9-' ap£TcXS' tPvAaKl8~ yap ?j'A&ov, JJ Mo'iaa, -rap.las nv&l~ 'Tf Kwp.wv Ev&vp.lv£, .,.£. -rov .:4py£'iov -rp/J7Tov Q I f'fYTJa£-ra'I 7T~ Kav ,..pax,UTo,s. t

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le

University of California Berkeley

56

THE FLTVRE OF STVDIES

1~

THE FIELD OF HELLE:\TISTIC POETRY

WHEN the Chairman ofCoundl asked me to read a paper at the jubilee :1\Ieeting of the Classical .\ssociation, I felt highly honoured by this kind invitation. Twice before I have enjoyed the privilege 11f reading papers at General Meetings of the Association during the last war, when I had been most hospitably received in this country and had found a new home at Oxford. I confess I still feel quite at home here, and it gives me enormous pleasure to come over from JVIunich and to speak to you once more; so I am deeply grateful to you for giving me this opportunity. But I think I owe you at least one word of explanation for the strange title of this lecture. The Chairman of Council said in his letter ' that although one lecture should be given on the history of the Classical Association, the other papers should look forward rather than backward'. Now, I had been doing some work on a Hellenistic poet myself, especially during the years at Oxford; as far as I am concerned, I have finished with studies in that province of learning. :\t the end of the _preface of Callimachus, Volume II, I expressly said that what I offered "·as only the beginnmg of Callimachean studies : ' Studiorum Callimacheorum nihil nisi ini tia olfero; ad ulteriora pervestiganda eruditis magna patet area '-for further investigations a vast area is open to scholars-I meant to other scholars, for whose future work I hope to have provided some useful tools. But when I considered Professor Webster's suggestion that papers to be read at this meeting should if possible ' look forward ', it occurred to me that, after all, I myself might try to say a word or two about the possibility and desirability of such further investigations. So I proposed as the title of my lecture: 'The Future of Studies in the Field of Hellenistic Poetry'. I have not the slightest ambition either of becoming a prophet or of organising a Society for the Promotion of Hellenistic Studies. There will be, I am afraid, no more than some rather casual and personal hints in this paper. It is only natural that Greek post-classical literature is less frequently treated in universities and schools and is far less known to the general _public than the great works of the pre-classical and classical ages. A very generous reviewer of Calhmachus, Volume I, in The Times Literary Supplement in 1950 expressed the opinion: ' it will be a pity if these papyrological discoveries of Hellenistic poetry are confined too much to the University graduate. Students should be encouraged in the higher forms of schools to take the broadest possible sweeps through Greek literature, and a selection of Callimachean poems would be desirable.' I can only hope that this is not mere wishful thinking. Very lively researches were made in this field by scholars of the last two generations; as a contribution to the Jubilee Essays of this Association, the Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, wrote a penetrating article on this subject, and he very kindly allowed me to read through his typescript-a great help which I gratefully acknowledge. It would be indeed a desirable result and a sort of reward for much painstaking labour, if the chief works oflater Greek poetry were more widely known and were one day to please and instruct the modern reader. At the moment we certainly have not come as far as this. There are old, inveterate prejudices, and it may be very hard to overcome them. Let us look back at the study of Hellenistic Poetry and its appreciation in the past, and pick out a few characteristic examples. At the end of the fifteenth century the first western scholar who could rival the eastern immigrants in the knowledge of the Greek language was Politian, Angelo Poliziano. Starting from Latin poetry, Catullus, Virgil, Ovid, he tried to get acquainted with their Greek models, Theocritus, Callimachus, the epigrammatists of the Anthology. He roused the interest of his Florentine circle in collecting and copying the manuscripts of these poets; he translated some of their poems into Latin, he made the first attempt at reconstructing famous lost poems from quotations and imitations, Callimachus' epic poem Hecate and the elegiac Lock of Berenice. He was probably the first Italian scholar to lecture on Theocritus in Florence. But beyond all that, Poliuan was, I should say, a kindred soul; he was a genuine poet and a productive scholar himself who could change and mould all his learning into forms of poetical beauty. Hence he was able to understand and to appreciate the ancient poetae docti, who first had created that new kind of learned poetry. The figure of the scholar poet, the fact of the coincidence of poetry and scholarship is, as you all know, the feature of the Hellenistic age. But the question is what does it really mean. To this eternal problem, we shall come back presently. A second characteristic example of appreciation of Hellenistic poetry after Politian belongs to the beginning of the seventeenth century: Joseph Justus Scaliger said in a letter of the year 1607 to Salmasius that there were in his opinion four ages of Greek poetry: ' the third, the autumn, not inferior to the summer, produced the most outstanding men,' autumnus ab aestate non degenerans praestantissimos homines extulit • . . Quid ingeniosius G_allimacho? . . . Quid Theocrito amoenius? This statement by the greatest classical scholar of his ~tme, and one of the greatest of all times, is indeed remarkable. Ovid had said that Callimachus mgenio non valet, arte valet; intentionally reversing this famous line, Scaliger did not praise Callimachus' art, but his' genius'; it is shown by his own notes and the notes and commentaries of his friends and pupils, Casaubon and Daniel Heinsius, that they all loved the amenity ofTheocritus. The

57

R. PFEIFFER climax of the scholarly work devoted to Hellenistic poetry was Bentley's collection of the Fragments of Calli mach us at the end of the seventeenth century: a performance unique in its own time and a model for posterity. But in the second half of the eighteenth century a sort of revolution took place. Winckelmann conceived his new ideas of the Greek genius not from Greek art, but from poetry and philosophy: Homer, Sophocles, Plato. In his Hiswry of Ancient Art, first published in I 76.4-. he followed, as he said, that indication of Scaliger on the four ages of Greek poetry, already quoted. Winckelmann accordingly distinguished the different periods and styles of Greek art as developing in conformity with the conditions of the whole national life; but, in striking contrast to Scali~er's judgement, he could see nothing but decline in the age after Altllllnder, Scaliger's ' autumn , in art as well as literature. The impression Winckelmann made on the whole of Europe was prodigious; under his influence post-classical Greek productions were regarded as imitative and decadent. Scaliger once had declared: autumnus ab aestate non dege1111ans, but the creed now accepted was this: the Greek genius degenerated and disintegrated in the Alexandrian period. In spite of some adjustments, this 'classical' view, as we may call it, still holds good to a certain degree. I could quote examples from books and articles of most recent date. Winckelmann and his followers may have been entitled to such a depreciation of later Greek poetry, as their knowledge had been very limited; but how is it to-day? Old inveterate prejudices indeed die hard. It was against this theory that Droysen, in the thirties of the nineteenth century, established the historical importance and the specific value of the centuries between Alexander and Augustus; in order to distinguish them from the previous Hellenic times he termed them Hellenistic, taking up a modern Latin word-form; for Lingua Hellenislica had been the name of the Greek language of the New Testament since Scaliger's time, and Droysen had apparently found it in his Greek grammar. There was then no difficulty in his giving his book of I836 the tide Geschichte des Hellenismus, because the word Hellenismus had hardly ever been used in German for the whole complex of Greek language, style, and culture; in French, however, or English the word ' hellenism ' had been used, and is being used in that general sense like the original word lAATJVIC11J6s in Greek, and this may be a source of embarrassment or even confusion in these languages. Droysen himself wrote no more than the political history of the first hundred years after Alexander; but it was not his almost forgotten predecessors, but he, who, with his vision of the ' Hellenistic age ' culminating in the appearance of Christ, became authoritative for historians writing on the post-classical centuries. Hellenistisch and He/lenismus meant much more for him than a mere new terminology; it meant a period with its own ' historical principle' (as he said with Hegel), an epoch of_Progress to new achievements by the Greek genius, while ' Alexandrian ' and ' Alexandrianism ' retamed the flavour of narrowness, decadence, decay. So it was quite natural that scholars who ventured to discover the particular merits of this period in the fields of art and poetry preferred the term Hellenistic art and Hellenistic poetry. Only a few years after the publication ofDroysen's Geschichte des Hellenismus, in I845 Ottojahn, one of the great university teachers of archaeology and classics, transferred the new terminology to literature and art in his writings and still more in his lectures in Bonn; his pupils were Carl Dilthey and Wolfgang Helbig, who then tried to reconstruct lost works of the Hellenistic period in the sixties and seventies of the last century. Erwin Rohde, in the first part of his famous book on the Greek novel, 1876, had to rely on such reconstructions, when he derived the later long love-stories in prose from a purely ima~nary Hellenistic love-elegy; he even pondered the gigantic project of a book on ' Hellenistic Civilisation ', as we learn from a letter of the year I 88I. At the same time the French scholar, Au~uste Couat, responding to a much earlier appeal of the great Sainte-Beuve, wrote a comprehenSive work 'La poesie alexandrine', published m I882. Retaining the old description 'Alexandrian', he tried hard to bring that poetry to life again, not as a dry philologist, but as he claims as un ami des letlres anciennes. The reward for his labours was unique; his book, which was out of date shortly after its appearance, had fifty years afterwards, in I93I, the great privilege of being translated into English by Dr. James Loeb, the i\p~ hrooVVIJOS of the Loeb library and once an honorary member of my univers1ty. This seems to be very odd at first sight; but if we look a little more carefully into the writings ofjahn's pupils and those of Rohde or ofCouat, we realise that they contain a new conception of Hellenistic poetry as a whole. Winckelmann had detested the productions of that age, as he seemed to recognise in them the style of people like Marini or Bernini: now the scholars of nineteenth century from the thirties to the seventies thought they saw a romantic element in Greek post-classical poetry and art, and this led to a new appreciation. 'Romanticism· meant individual passion, erotic sentimentalism, love of nature. So it was not only its elegant form which made Couat's book attractive, but still more its uniform conception which, as 'romantic·, appealed to the modern mind. Nobody after Couat produced anything similar; that explains it.< surprising revival in our own time. Hellenistic poetry, rejected by classicism, seemed to be justified by late romanticism. But new researches and finally the discovery of a large quantity of the original poems by English scholars, Kenyon, Grenfell, Hunt, Lobel, did much to destroy this pleasant pic tun."; there was no such unity in the poetical production of the age, and nothing or very little' romantic about it. Scholars like Wilamowitz, whose brilliant paper on the ' Locx of Berenice ' was written in 1879 and whose first edition of the hymns of Callimachus appeared in I882, attacked and even

58

THE FUTURE OF STUDIES IN THE FIELD OF HELLENISTIC POETRY

71

ridiculed the current opinion and championed a much more realistic view, showing the variety, the individualism and formalism, the modernity, and sometimes even the originality and prow.essiveness pf the epoch. Thus Wilamowitz and his followers maintained very strongly the positive values ae:ainst 'classical' depreciation, but they defined them in a different way. Nevertheless, they were n;:,t quite immune against romantic infection. I should like to give one very curious example of this; from this example we may venture to look inw the future. When Wilamowitz in 1893 reviewed the first edition of the Vienna wooden tablet with about sixty lines from Callimachus' Hecale he rightly guessed that to a great extent an old crow is ~peaking to another bird. 'Both fell asleep', so we are told at the .end of the fragment, ' but not f,,.- long; for soon came a white-frosted neighbour: " Come, no longer are the hands of thieves in quest of prey: for already the lamps of morning are shining; a water-carrier is singing his song somewhere, and the axle creaking beneath the cart wakes the dweller by the highroad, and smithy slaves torment the ear."' Wilamowitz contended that the 'white-frQllted neighbour' crnJ:I{Jet~ arxovpos, as he read with the first editor, must also be a bird, arriving in the early morning frost and ;m akening his two sleeping fellow birds: he ' come on ' ; in his words the early morning work of men and particularly its noise is announced. Not the voices of birds announce the end of night to men; on the contrary, the noise of men rouses the birds. This fanciful bird-story was a success beyond imagination; it seemed to be romantic, ingenious, witty. One scholar even added an erotic note; he boldly translated xeipes ... cpiArrrewv, which means the hands of thieves, by ' le mani drgli amatori '. I had always been one of the few who suspected the whole interpretation to be a s'ort of modern pseudo-romanticism; no ancient poet, let alone Callimachus, would have invented such an absurd description of early dawn given by a bird. The text of the first edition which we all had followed showed no way out of the many difficulties; in this text, however, one letter had been misread by the editor, and another had been misspelt by the ancient scribe. Not he, 'come', was written on the tablet, but che. In the word &yxovpos the o before the v must be emended into a; this was my conjecture, but the correct word &yxavpos is also in Suidas, taken from this very passage of the Hecate. Not a 'white-frosted' neighbour (&yxovpos) came, but the 'rimy dawn' (arxavpos) ; nor does any bird begin a speech with 'come' and so forth, but the poet himself goes on with his epic narrative: ' the two birds fell asleep, not for long; for soon came the rimy dawn when the hands of thieves no longer go hunting, the water-opp.tyya 1Tacca.\ov 1.\ap.{3av1 we are drawn ineluctably on to the next stage of the argument. For even the assumption that Pindar's epinicia, at least, may be safely assigned to the category of choral lyric can no longer be automatically made. 27 Here the stickingpoint for several scholars 28 has proved to be Pythian Four which, with its massive length of nearly 300 lines•• and preponderance of epic-style narrative, 30 looks intended for monodic performance. 11 On internal evidence Wilamowitz deduced that the same was true of Olympians One31 and Two. 33 And Professor Mary Lefkowitz has recently reminded us 34 that 'Outside of the Pindar scholia' (and we know how reliable they can be) 'there is no direct evidence that every ode of Pindar was sung by a chorus'. Aristophanes' Clouds 1355f. is prima facie evidence for monodic performance of at least one of the epinicia of Simonides (11pwTOv p.£v avTov T~v .\vpav .\a{3oVT' iyw 'KEA£vca I teat Ctp.wvt'llov p.l>.oc TOll KptoV we E1TEX(JTJ: the reference is to

a

a

11 See in particular Lefkowitz ap. Pindare (Entretiens Hardt 31 [1985)), pp. 46fT. and in AJP 109 (1988), forthcoming. •• Jurenka, Sitzb. d. Wien. Akad. d. Wiss. I (1986), 44, was so impressed by the length of Pyth. 4 that he concluded it could never have been intended for performance (cf. the counterarguments of lmre Miiller, Quomodo Pindaru.t chori persona u.tus sit[Diss. Freiburg, Darmstadt, 1914), pp. 27f.). Lloyd-Jones, sup. cit. (n. 25), Lefkowitz, sup. cit. (n. 27), p. 49 etc. deduce from the length that it was monodic. •• But to C. Segal ap. CHGL, p. 187 (cf. his Pindar's Mythmaking (Princeton, 1986), pp. 4f. and I0) Pythian 4 is still 'our longest extant choral ode'. •• Identical, in other words, with two of the grounds for deeming Stesichorus monodic. 11 The assumption of choral performance is often written into the definition of the victory ode (e.g. Fraenkel, sup. cit. [n. 24), p. 40: 'l•nv{Kta, poems sung by a chorus to celebrate a victory', R. L. Fowler, The Nature of Early Greek Lyric (Toronto, 1987], p. 100, etc.). For a detailed survey of the evidence as to the performance ofPindaric epinicia see Herington (sup. cit. [n. 19)), pp. 28ft'. and 181ft'., Lefkowitz, AJP 109 (1988), forthcoming. 31 Sup. cit (n. II), p. 233 commenting on 1.7f. (d.Ua Llwp{av a1T..A£T"O KaAov ad8nv ap.tf;. "Ap£0C t/;lAOT"T)T"OC bicT£t/;avov ,.· 'Atf;po8tTT)C KTA.

265

Wilamowitz11 thought this passage might explain why ( TTJdxopoc was so named even if he did not compose for the chorus: he recited his works in the monodic manner, but to the background accompaniment of dancing. Fennell's picture02 of Pindaric encomia 'accompanied by a choric dance' is clearly similar in its attempt to achieve the very best of both worlds. A different sort of compromise bases itself upon another passage of Homer, the lament over Hector's corpse (II. 24.720ff.):

1rapa 8' £Zcav &.o,8ouc 8p-rfvwv £eapxovc, oi T"£ cTovolccav &.o,81Jv oi p.£v tip' £8p~v£ov, £1ri 8£ CT£vaxovTo yvvaiK£c. Not altogether dissimilar to this is Jebb's hypothesis'" that Bacchylides' fr. 18 'is the refrain of a love-song, given, probably in chorus, after a single voice had sung a strophe'. Maehler•t is sympathetically disposed to the idea and believes we may have to do with 'gemischten F ormen des Vortrags' so arranged 'dass Teile des Liedes vom Vorsinger oder Chorfiihrer solo gesungen wurden, wiihrend dazwischen der Chor mit dem Refrain einfiel', and Herington" thinks it 'perhaps ... worth considering the possibility that in this and some other cases the poem was delivered by a solo voice- or an alternation of solo voices- while the corps de ballet (or better, the corps •• A History of Greek Literature, pp. xivf. ("" Geschichte der gr. Literatur• p. ix). Sup. cit. (n. II), p. 238. On this and the following Homeric passage see in general Dale, Collected Papers, pp. 158ff. •• Sup. cit. (n. 23). •• Sup. cit. (n. II), p. 43. 14 Sup. cit. (n. II), p. I and n. 4. " Sup. cit. (n. 19), p. 31. 11

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MONODY

63

de komos) danced in sympathy with the poetry'. Lefkowitz88 has speculated that in

Pind. 01. 6 'the Kwp.acTat that Aeneas· brought [might] be chanting something like KaAMvtKf or hip-hip-hooray. or that the oapot of boys mentioned in Pyth. 3.11 f. 'could ... be humming an accompaniment or providing a rhythmic background like the Delian girls' Kp£p.{3aAtacTvc in H. H. Ap. 162 '. Speculations of this nature cannot be totally excluded. But in the light of the evidence adduced above they may not be necessary. We should certainly not feel obliged to accept this type of compromise out of any desire to save the face of any author, ancient or modern, who subscribes to the distinction under review.

APPENDIX 2: TOWARDS AN ALTERNATIVE CLASSIFICATION? This article has been (designedly) negative and unconstructive, its aim to demolish a still widely accepted orthodoxy. But he who does such demolishing (it might be argued) should also explain what, if anything, he would put in place of the collapsed edifice. Furthermore, the attack was against excessive compartmentalisation (to change the metaphor). But are the compartments unreal, non-existent? Or are they merely wrongly labelled? The poets in the alleged compartments were, it will be remembered: (A) Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon. [One may also include here the Attic scotia and many of the compositions of Archilochus]. 87 (B) Aleman, Stcsichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, Pindar, Bacchylides. Jettisoning the monody/choral distinction, can we differentiate those two groups in any other, more satisfactory, way? Two possibilities occur:

(i) Metrical structure That of poets in the first group is simple: stichic, distichic or monostrophic. The stanzas are short (c. 30-40 syllables)"" andfor narrowly homogeneous. The same stanza may be used for more than one poem (and even by more than one poet). That of poets in the second group is by contrast complex and elaborate. Their poems are usually triadic (though they are sometimes monostrophic). The length of their stanzas varies widely (c. 40-200 syllables) and the metrical structure of every poem is peculiar to that poem. •• (ii) Language Here the position is more complica,ted, and various circumstances, not least the Alexandrian edition of the lyric poets, have produced distortions. Nevertheless, of poets in the first group it can be said that they employ something closely approximating to their own vernacular, while those in the second group Sup. cit. (n. 27), p. 31. See, e.g., W. Rosier, RIJ. Mus. 119 (1976), 302ff. •• Figures from Mr Barrett who observes that the longest would seem to be Pindar, Paean 6 (2 >< 196+ 177 = 565) and Bacchylides 17 (2 x 196+ 172 = 564). Pindar's epinicia (excluding the spurious 01. 5) have stanzas of 60-169 (average 98), triads of 200--390 (average 290). Among the shortest are (strikingly enough, in contrast to Paean 6) Pindar, Paean 5 and the same poet's 11np8ivna. Also the (monodic) encomia of Bacchylides and Pindar. " An exception, as Mr Barrett points out, is Pindar, Is. 3/4. But this obviously constitutes a very special case: even if (as is likely) we have to do with two separate poems, the same victor and (at least in part) the same victory are involved. 11 07

73

64 M. DAVIES display an artificial Doricised international poetic dialect with variations from poet to poet. 70 I do not think it will be denied that in the case of these two modes of differentiation we have to do with criteria far more objective, precise and tangible than any of the extremely vague (if not vacuous) generalisations about the ethos of monody and choral lyric considered above. The case for compartmentalisation of the two groups of poets is a strong one. What labels should we contemplate for them? One possibility that springs at once to mind is to call the first group •eastern', the second 'western'. 71 As we have seen above, the earliest exponents of the monody/choral dichotomy coupled it with a geographical distinction (choral: Dorian; monodic: Aeolian). The tripartite division into Aeolic, Ionian and Dorian traditions is still found useful by as rigorous and intelligent a hand-book as West's recent Greek Metre, 72 from whose pages the choral/monodic differentiation is gratifyingly absent. 73 The eastjwest disjunction is not so portentous or impressive-looking as the monodic/choral dichotomy. But it looks to be more accurate. 70 The case of Aleman is particularly difficult. As is well-known, several scholars are of the opinion that some of the laconisms now present in his text represent later additions due not to the poet but to his Alexandrian editors. See especially Risch, Mus. He/••. II (1954), 20ff. = Kl. Schr. pp. 314ff., J. T. Hooker, The Language and Text of the Lesbian Poets (lnnsbruck, 1977), pp. 63ff. 71 This requires calling the two lyric poets from Ceos (Simonides and Bacchylides) after their genre rather than their actual birthplace. That the Argive poetess Telesilla should be ranked (from the metrical viewpoint at least) as an •eastern' is no very great incongruity. Here, as throughout this article, I designedly exclude the Boeotian Corinna from discussion because of the total uncertainty as to her date. 72 Oxford, 1982. See too his remarks in CQ 23 (1973), 179ff. 73 As it is from Paul Maas's determinedly scientific treatise on the same topic.

74

PETER BING

Text or Performance I Text and Performance. Alan Cameron's Callimachus and His Critics

Discontinuity, change, innovation: These are the terms which most scholars in this century have stressed - one-sidedly, perhaps - in characterizing Hellenistic poetry. Tradition (they argue), though mined, sifted, painstakingly studied and mastered, is deployed not for reproductive ends, but in the service of something different and new:. Alan Cameron now shifts the accent among these tenns, placing it squarely on tradition: «I\:ot only is there no evidence that third-century artists and writers thought of themselves as epigones living in a postclassical age. The real break came two centuries later» tpp. 27-28)". Hellenistic poetry -on his \iew- was not so very different from what preceded it, even in Archaic times. In tendency, then, Cameron's work can be placed alongside G. Hutchinson's Hellenistic Poetry (Oxford 1988) -though to be fair to the latter, the continuity for which Cameron argues in poetic convention, practice, and reception is incomparably more radicaP. From this perspective, Cameron whips up a blizzard of polemic against almost any consensus one might care to name about Callimachus and

1 See especially Wilamowitz' description ; the focus of the passage is rather on the contentious rivalry of the Alexandrian scholars. There can be no doubt that one of limon's points is the quarrelsomeness of the scholars in the Museum. But beyond that, what is gained by moving these creatures from a zoo to a farm, and out of a cage into a nest? At best, it is like comparing free-range chickens with the coop-bred variety. Both are captive, the freer ones still confined within fences; and that is the case even if we admit that xnpaiitm in v. 2 doesn't convey the seclusion of a "cloisterling". Cameron may be right that «the point is not the seclusion of these birds as oddities, but their value as delicacies for the table>> (p. 32). But whether "oddities" or "delicacies", they are kept in a special place, and fed, so as to make an exit for one purpose alone, and that is not for a life as a wandering song-bird". Similarly the young in the nest is scarcely an image of worldliness. These birds are unfledged, confined to the nest, unable to nourish themselves, and so dependent on their parent-bird. As such, the verses still lend potent support to the notion of the Alexandrian museum as an ivory tower. Timon's satirical picture of contentious scholars kept on a special farm, or within the nurturing confines of a nest, is of course an exaggeration. That is the nature of satire. Those working at the Museum were not actually confined, and they plied their craft in a variety of settings. Yet it is clear that its poets, though perhaps occasionally creating works for a broader public, often wrote for an elite group of insiders (incidentally, that does not mean that their audience was all in one place: The ivory tower is not limited to a single location; its manifestations are scattered throughout the world, and there is communication between them)~.

5 Cf. Cameron 1965: Wandering Poets: a Literary Mor•ement ir. By:.antznc Egypt. • Cameron himself, p. 204, imagines the elder NJCander writing regional epic for put>lic performance in competitions at sacred festi\'als, while at the same time suggesting that the Thcrlilca and Alexrpharmaca might not have 'been appropriate to such contexts. They would not ha\"e been any more appropriate at symposia.

77

142

P. Bing

A clear instance of this double-aspect of the poet may be seen in Philicus of Corcyra. On the one hand, this figure might play a very public role as priest of Dionysus, and march at the head of the technitai in the procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus; he might - as one of the tragic Pleias - compose works for that normally very public genre, Drama. Yet he might also adopt a very different pose in his Hymn to Demeter (SH fr. 677): Kcuvo-ypcic~>ou cruv9EOfCJ>> (p. 37). Second, even if they do appear fairly late in Greece, they are not important as a gauge of how the literature of the age was intended for reading. Even the striking acrostichs in Aratus, which include the important programmatic term A.r7ttr\ (vv. 783-787), are denigrated as •>, but that says nothing about a supposed predominance of oral style or culture. , says Cameron (p. 87), «I write that way myself>>. Besides comparing apples and oranges (ancient poetic composition in a traditional genre and modern scholarly prose), the juxtaposition of Euripides, Gibbon, and Cameron is simply breathtaking. Judging from the length and complexity of his book, it must have been a hectic week when Cameron finally put it all on paper. One can only hope that on the seventh day he rested! I want to tum finally to epigram, a genre which for many scholars has embodied pure ''book-poetry" (p. 76), but which for Cameron is a further instance of performance poetry tied to a certain social setting. In his view, epigram (vv. 4-6, trans!. G. Lee). Concerning these verses, Cameron observes: aive3', oi q>iA.ot 7tllVtE~ Kt;>KA.cp, 10 f:v ll&crotcrt o' auto~ O~totov rocr7tEp oi q>iA.ot !lf:v O.crt&pe~, f]A.to~ o' EKEivo~. 0 tou Kpaticrtou 1tai Ilocreto&vo~ 3eou, xaipe, KO.q>pooit11~ 1 • 7

We possess very few literary texts written outside Alexandria whose express purpose was mundane exposition of the divine status of a human ruler, and • An earlier version of this essay was delivered as a paper at Harvard University in October 1982, in London in December 1983, and in Bern in July 1984. I am much indebted to the friends and colleagues who gave generously of their comments and criticisms on each of these occasions. I am especially indebted to Linda A. Colman who prompted me to reflect on the nature of Callimachus' child-gods and was very generous with her own thoughts and ideas on the subject. I J. U. Powell, Co/lectanea Alexandrina (Oxford 1925) 173-175. In v. 3 yap ~TU.LJ1Tpa Kai is a supplement provided by Toup, but is required both by the sense of the following lines (v. 5 xi] ~Jiv ... ) and by the metre. The text is preserved by Athenaeus 253 D--F, quoting from the twenty-second book of the Histories of Duris of Samos, a contemporary of Demetrius (FGrHist 76 F 13). The author of the verses is not given, but it may have been one Hermocles (otherwise unknown): Athenaeus 697 A quotes Philochorus (FGrHist 328 F 165) as saying that in the case of Antigonus and Demetrius 'AS11vaio~ ql>&lV naldvac; Touc; 1t&1t0l111.1Evouc; uno 'Ep1.1innou TOU Kul;lKJlVOU, tq>a1.1iA.A.rov y&vol.l&vrov Tc'ilv natdvac; 1tOlJlO"UVTrov Kai TOU 'Epi.IOKUo~ npoKplSEvToc; where Schweighiiuser corrected uno 'Ep1.1innou to uno 'Ep1.1o14 Museum Helveticum

85

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Anthony W. Bulloch

these lines are therefore invaluable; indeed the whole hymn is somewhat diagnostic for the p1odern reader of early Hellenistic religious poetry, for we see just how direct and uncomplicated the equation of man with god could be. Demetrius is incorporated straightforwardly into the royal Olympian family, with all the familiar concern that the new Hellenistic rulers had for their ancestry: not only is he cast in the role of Dionysus, by the suggestive collocation with Demeter on the occasion of the festival of the Eleusinian mysteiies, but he is made directly the son of Poseidon, and also of Aphrodite 2 . The Athenians were certainly not alone in their treatment of Demetrius: for example, Athenaeus 253 B refers to Polemon for the The ban foundation of a whole temple to Aphrodite Lamia, one of Demetrius' mistresses (L. Preller, Polemonis Periegetae Fragmenta, Leipzig 1838, fr. 15). But it was the Athenians who blurred the distinctions between man and god for Demetrius most extensively, setting up an altar to him as 'Kataibates' on the spot where he first KA.&ouepoucra, Zeu mitep, fJ N u!lq>TJ cre (0evai 8' ecrav &nulh K Vfficrou), t0Ut6.Kl tOl TCEO'E, 8ai!lOY, arc' O!lq>aA.O~· EV~EV EKEiVO 'O!lq>aA.tov !1Etf:rcetta nf:8ov KaA.EouO'l Ku8ffivE~.

This is a bizarre 'aetiological' detail, but one which is thrown into even greater incongruous prominence by that vocative Zeu rcatep in v. 43 addressed to the newly-born infant. 2. In the Hymn to Artemis the young child who wants virginity and hunting-companions cannot even reach her father's beard while sitting on his lap, though she fearlessly enters the terrifying workshop of the Cyclopes to order her bow and arrows (and demands hunting-dogs from Pan), before hunting down deer larger than bulls; when she returns home to Olympus she is met by Heracles demanding beef-steak. The last section of this hymn (vv. 183-268) may detail the patronage of Artemis (her city cults and her followers in myth), but the first 182 lines play constantly on the incongruous contrast between Artemis' tiny size and the huge, brutish company which she keeps. What is particularly significant and telling here is the effect which the first long section has had on two sensitive and acute modern commentators: Wilamowitz and Staehelin both felt obliged to describe this section, on the goddess of myth, as travesty. "Hier ergeht sich die Travestie der Gotterwelt (anders kann man es nicht nennen) am freiesten" said Wilamowitz most emphatically, in Hellenistische Dichtung (Berlin 1924) II 54, referring to it again on pp. 56f. as "eine Travestie der olympischen Szenen" (so too Staehelin in Die Religion des Kallimachos 14ff.). · 3. Finally, the Hymn to Delos is a more than curious text. Its starting point is the Delian section of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo 17 . But whereas the Homeric Hymn merely lists the names of all the places which were reluctant to receive the pregnant Leto for fear of jealous Hera (vv. 30-46) and devotes its major part to a narrative of Leto's acceptance by Delos, her labour, and the birth of Apollo the great patron of Delos (vv. 47-178), Callimachus constructs a wholly different poetic world: Leto chases round the Aegean while every city, river and island scatters (literally) before her (v. 70 q>Ei:\ye !lEY 'ApKa8iTJ, q>Euyev 8' ... , 75 q>EUYE Kat 'AoviT}, 103 q>EUYE 8' "Avaupo~, 105 q>EUYE 81; Kat llTJVEt6~). Even when river Peneius offers sanctuary, Ares threatens to bury him and Apollo's mother has to chase on. The discomfort (or sense of dislocation and disturbance) that any reader feels here is not to be explained ~way by reference to Hellenistic rhetorical characteristics. The plain fact is that the pregnant Leto brings geographical anarchy to the Greek world. This is not just formal 'inversion' of the Homeric text (to use a popular tag), but the product of 17 Fundamental here is U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Die /lias und Homer (Berlin 1920) 440-462.

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The Future of a Hellenistic Illusion

219

a very bizarre, and one might say frenzied, imagination. Furthermore, this hymn contains another equally bizarre feature: the unborn Apollo gives prophecy twice from inside his mother's womb, once to threaten Thebes rather peevishly (vv. 88-98), and once to advise his mother against the island Cos since this would be the birthplace of the mighty Ptolemy Philadelphus (vv. 162-195). We have to ask: What sort of a world is this? Is 'Kleinmalerei' the most important or illuminating thing to say of these texts? or 'wit' or 'humour'? Should we not rather acknowledge that these hymns are very strange indeed, and that the state of mind which they betray towards religious matters and the divine seems very disturbed, even fractured? The almost febrile wit which Callimachus deploys should not mislead-us: for all the amusement that oracular fetuses and falling navels provide, they also signify a distressingly disordered state of things. There is more than a touch of madness in the laughter here. Of course there is a certain comfort to be derived from reducing powerful beings to child-like dimensions. E. R. Dodds, commenting on the sincerity of Hellenistic ruler-worship, remarked 18 : "So far as they have religious meaning for the individual, ruler-cult and its analogues, ancient and modem, are primarily, I take it, expressions of helpless dependence; he who treats another human being as divine thereby assigns to himself the relative status of a child or an animal". We might add that, conversely, to reduce a deity to child-like status may mitigate the fearsomeness of being so helplessly dependent on that divine power; and there may also be some compensation for the elevation of rulers to divine status in Callirnachus' vision of these gods as children. But the relief is only temporary, for behind the childgods the terrifying potency remains, and in any case children, however cute, can have strange demonic powers of their own, as Iris Murdoch has often reminded us recently. If these three hymns, formally cult-texts with a devotional purpose, suggest a troubled religious perception, we should look for further guidance to the 18 E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the I"ational (California U. P. 1951) 242. Dodds is one of the few modem scholars to have attempted .an inquiry into the psychological basis of 'rulerworship' (the last chapter of his book being forthrightly headed 'The Fear of Freedom'). C. Habicht, Gottmenschentum (above n. 5) examines the historical context thoroughly and in Chapter 4 ('Bedeutung des Kultes') considers the political circumstances in which divine honours were accorded to mortals, but although it is true that cities honored men when they had offered significant help (p. 232 "Die Zeitgenossen haben es gelegentlich offen ausgesprochen, dass ein Machthaber deshalb gOttliche Ehren erhielt, weil er der Stadt wirksamere Hilfe gewll.hrte als die GOtter"), this still leaves open one of the most important questions. Habicht remarks (p. 234): "Tritt ein Mensch in der Rolle des Schutzpatrons der Stadt an die Stelle der GOtter, so nimmt es nicht Wunder, dass er bei seinem Einzug in die Stadt wie ein Gott empfangen wird" (my emphasis); I would have thought that the opposite is true. Divinifying political rulers at the least signifies an unhealthy, and potentially dangerous, condition of society. We have to ask why denial of reality was so pronounced at this time, what forms it took and what effects it had.

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works which deal more directly with encounters between man and god, the mimetic hymns, and especially those to Ath~na and Demeter. The most striking characteristic of these poems is the extraordinary degree to which they convey the mounting religious excitement of the celebrants who are awaiting a divine epiphany. We may expect that the issues at stake will be serious. First, the Hymn to Demeter. This poem certainly focusses on powerful sentiments: the pious women have been fasting all day long and await the official break of evening so as to bring their abstinence to a close; while they wait the speaker tells a cautionary tale, the story of Erysichthon who chopped down Demeter's sacred grove to build, appropriately, a dining hall- he was punished, of course, with unquenchable, perpetual hunger and thirst. What is formally significant for the underlying religious concerns of the poem is that the punishment not only fits the crime, but it also befits the worshippers' piety: they will end their fast with a banquet, which will both celebrate Demeter's bountifulness and satisfy their hunger, while he, who refused to acknowledge the goddess, will be condemned to a 'fast' which can never be satisfied. Bounty and gluttony are perfectly juxtaposed for a clear moral declaration. I have suggested elsewhere that although the stated subject of the narrative is a traditional religious one, the narrative form shows the actual issues of the text to be social and human 19 • We may now take the discussion to its next stage: if the real concerns are the human issues (the effect ofErysichthon's punishment on his parents, for one thing) what are the religious implications? The closing section of the narrative is particularly suggestive: J.lScr'tU J.lEV f:v TptVOV lip' Oi.KEiOt lMAaJ.lOt KllKOV fpticr't'llV't'O. uf...J,,' OKil 't'OV ~ll~UV olKOV UVE~TJPilVIlV OOOV't'Ec;, Kilt 't'OX' 6 't'& ~crtf....f]oc; f:vt 't'pt60otcrt Kll~f]cr't'O 115 llhi~rov nKof....roc; 't'E Kilt EK~of....ll AUJ.lll't'll Ollt't'oc;. ~UJ.lll't'Ep, J.lTJ 't'f]voc; EJ.ltV a't', at)'t(lp f:yro !ltV UIJ.El~O!lEVO~ 1tpOOEEt1tOV· "a'i yap on 'lfUXfl~ 'tE Kat ai&v6~ crE Ouvai!lTJV Euvtv Ttotijcm~ 7tE!l'lfat OO!lov ·Aioo~ Eicrro, 525 ro~ OUK oq>SaA.u6v y' iijcrE'tat ouo' f:vocrix.Srov." nn-e; f:q>O.!lTJV, 0 o' E1tEt'ta llocrEtOU(J)Vl avaK'tt E\)X,E'tO, XEip' opeyrov Ei~ oupavov UO'tEpOEV'ta· "KA.uSt, llocrdoaov yatijox.E, Kuavoxa1•a· Ei hEOV YE cr6c dut, 1ta'tiJp o' E!lO~ EUX,Eal dvat, 530 oo~ llil 'Ooucrcrf)a 7t'toA.i7top_Sov oiKaO' iKecrSat uiov Aaep'tEro, 'ISciKTI &vt oiKi' &x.ov•a. aA.A.' Ei oi !lOip' Ecr'ti q>iA.ou~ iOEElV Kat iKecrSat olKov f:uK'ti!lEvov Kai &i)v f:~ Tta'tpioa yaiav, O'lfE KaK&~ &A.Sot, oA.Ecra~ ii1to 1tclV'ta~ &'taipou~. 535 VTJO~ bt' UMo'tplTJ~, Eupot o' f:v 1tTJ!la'ta oiKcp." nn~ Eq>a't' EUXO!lEVO~, 'tOU o' EKAUE KuavoxahTJ~. (Od. 9, 522-536)

Kai o' aU'tO~ Tpt61ta~ 1t0Ataic; E1tt XEipac; &~aA.A.E, 't01a 'tOV OUK aiov'ta llO'tEtOcirova KaA.tcr'tpErov· "wwoom1•rop, loi: •ovOE 'tEou •phov, Ei7tEp bel:> uev crEu 'tE Kai AioA.ioo~ KavciKa~ yevoc, au•ap E!lEio 100 'tOU'tO 'tO OEiAatOV "(EVE'tO ~peq>o~· aiSE yap au'toV ~ATJ'tOV {m' 'A1t6A.A.rovo~ E!lai x.epE~ EK'tEpfi~av· vuv oi: KaKa ~ou~procrn~ f:v owSaA.uoicrt KclSTJ'tat.

(VI 96-102)

Two distraught sons of Poseidon raise their hands and appeal to their supposed father for help; Triopas is grey-haired, compared to Homer's dark-haired Poseidon, but, more important, Poseidon listens to the Cyclops but not to Triopas. What is more, Odysseus' words to the Cyclops immediately before the latter's prayer have an ominous prescriptive significance for Triopas: 9, 525 "for not even the Earthshaker shall heal your eye"; Triopas says in v. 102 that it is in Erysichthon's eyes, f:v oq>SaA.11oicrt, that his terrible hunger sits (scholars 24 K. J. MacKay, Erysichthon: a Callimachean Comedy (Mnemosyne Suppl. 7, 1962) Ill already compared VI 98f. with Od 9, 529. -1 might add that there does seem to me to be an echo in Triopas' prayer of Eumaeus' prayer in Od 17, 238-246, from the Odyssean episode that is used so extensively in the Erysichthon narrative (see my article referred to inn. 19 above and comments in n. 30 below). Both prayers have the same structural lay-out: an 'as surely as' conditional, an optative wish, and reference to the livestock being consumed by gluttonous, uncontrolled banqueters. As throughout, reference to the disguised Odysseus returning home provides an ironical contrast with Erysichthon; Eumaeus' prayer will be answered, unlike that of Triopas.

99

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have sometimes found Callimachus' phraseology here problematical: a reminiscence of Homer could explain his choice of words). The shadow of another son of Poseidon, a half-brother, falls across Triopas as he prays, and if the Cyclops is lawless and grotesque 25, he is also a figure of pathos who earns some of our sympathy for his very vulnerability and for his loss. The second allusion to Homer is at v. 102. The notable expression KaKa ~o6~procrttron, A.ro~lltov tSTIKt.

Kai f: KaKit ~o6~procrttvEt, q>ott~ I)' Otl'tE SEoicrt tEttlJ.&voOV ayay£ 6110'i (17)59. It is better, the speaker says, to tell of how Demeter bestowed laws on cities and of how she instituted agriculture (18-21}-themes which in fact he does not pursue. It is better, as it turns outf!O, to tell of how Demeter punished Erysichthon61. Apparently, this to be a cautionary tale-tva Kat tlC illt£pl3aciac aA.bJtal (22}-but attempts tO unify the myth in theme with the mimetic first section only point up the absurdity of such an expectation62. In the myth the narrator describes the offense in a standard sequence: Erysichthon acts shamelessly by cutting down Demeter's sacred grove63, His suffering is entirely justifiable. What we are unprepared for is that his parents should suffer, especially after line 17 and its prohibition concerning Demeter's maternal grief. If their suffering were ponrayed as Chariclo's is in the fifth hymn, we would find it to be intolerable. But this does not happen: Erysichthon's parents are not mourning so much for their son as they are for their reputation. Unlike their son, they show shame (72), but this shame has not been produced by Erysichthon's transgression, but by the embarrassment he will cause them. They are ready to invent any excuse to keep the neighbors from knowing about the whole affairM.

a

S9 60

61

62 63 64

course connected to Boeotia through her epithet Tpl10"fEvE\a. Pausanias reports the belief that her birthplace was the river Trito near Alalcomenae in Boeotia [9.33. 7]. For discussion see L.R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States 1, New York 1977, 266ff. For the same son of break in the narrative, also instanced by the poet's archly pious pose, cf. Aet. fr. 75.4-5 (Acontius and Cydippe). On Callimachus' self-conscious use of the conventional 'Abbruchsformel', see M.A. Harder, "Untrodden Paths: Where do They Lead?" HSPh 93, 1990,295-303. Kcilltov, 18 and 19, line initial; repeated again line initial, 22. Some such phrase is to be supplemented in the lacuna at 23: such is the story that the narrator goes on to tell. KJ. McKay, The Poet at Play: Kallimachos, 'The Bath of Pallas', Leiden 1962, 65, assumes that the inttp~acia the women will avoid is that of overeating; Hopkinson (n. 1), 5, concludes that in the ritual context the myth will be morally uplifting. He and his companions are called avatllitc (36); he is called civatllia (45, by Demeter). AiOOJJ.EVOI yovitc, npoxava II' tupicKt1o niica, 73. It has been observed that Callimachus' ponrayal of Erysichthon's embarassed parents could be a scene from New Comedy. Zanker (n. 2), 187-9: "In Hymn 6 ... Callimachus again makes extensive use of everyday matter. In the scene depicting Demeter's punishment of Erysichthon we are presented with a domestic comedy of manners". "[Erysichthon's mother's) embarrassment would be entirely appropriate in a scene from the New Comedy". On the other hand, cf. P.B. Falciai, "Per l'interpretazione dell' inno vi di Callimaco", Prometheus 2, 1976, 48ff., who interprets the hymn as a tragedy.

120

MIMESIS AND AETIOLOOY

71

Erysichthon plays out his punishment and eats everything in sight. When the family's stores are utterly depleted, the secret can no longer be kept (cf. lll-2). And now the final shame occurs: the king's son ends up at the crossroads, begging. Erysichthon's aim in cutting down the grove had been to give banquets; now he must beg for the crusts and scraps thrown away from others' feasts65. This is the logical outcome of Demeter's punishment as she has stated it: 9aJ,nval yap Ec: uc'tEpov dA.anivat 'tOt (64). McKay calls this scene the "bourgeois denouement" to the story (71): an account which could have been full of pathos and admonitory atonement for a wicked transgression has become, in effect, a comedy of manners. Callimachus' portrayal of Erysichthon 's punishment plays up its social consequences; the moral claims made at the beginning of the myth, and present in the description of the offense, are entirely forgotten. These are characters who would be at home in comedy and its portrayal of everyday life66, or indeed in mime67. The narrative brings ancient myth into a modem context, that is, it performs the same function that aitia in the other five hymns perform. The contrast between this 'low' material and its generic context has been interpreted in various ways. The most traditional of these views take Callimachus' concerns to be religious68, Howald, for example, recognizes the impossibility of seriously portraying the range and effects of Demeter's power "in die Wirklichkeit unseres biirgerlichen Daseins"69, But the immediacy of the frame, he argues, helps the myth along: we have direct access to the naive emotions of the participants, and therefore we are thrown back ourselves onto a more simple faith. Erysichthon's parents, like Demeter, should be overwhelmed by grief for their child, but they are not. Our emotions cannot be affected by their embarrassment. Bulloch70 admits that the religious formulation of this poem is important only on the surface level, but he takes it that there are "other levels which are of much greater imponance to Alexandrian taste". Callimachus "is ultimately concerned not with a full and total religious view of the world, but with a secular story of social behavior" (101). While he is not seriously consid~ring religious matters, Bulloch argues, Callimachus is quite serious about the non-religious, human implications of Erysichthon's action. On this view 6S

66 67

68

69

70

115, ahiCmv aocoA.ooc u ocal EK~Mx AUj.la~a &moe; like the shameless dog that Demeter calls him at 63 (d. Hopkinson [n. 1], 10). The vocabulary comes from Od. 17.2 I 9-22, where Melantheus speaks to Eumaeus and mocks the 'beggar', Odysseus. The context gives further bite to Erysichthon's condition: unlike Odysseus, who will soon be able to leave aside his disguise, Erysichthon is doomed, presumably, to go on like this. There are no indications here that, as in other versions (e.g. Ovid), he is about to die; actually, his future does not figure at all in Callimachus' version. Cf. Arist. Po. 248a5f. Cf. Theopluastus' definition of mime, XX1V.3.1 ff. Koster. Cf. e.g. F. Altheim, EpocMn der romiscMn Geschichte 2, Frankfurt 1935, 130ff.: "0berhaupt scheint mir Kallimachos weit davon enlfemt, mit dem Mythos ein wie auch immer geartetes Spiel zu treiben. Er nimmt ibn ernst, er erfasst ihn tief und mit sicherem Empfinden filr das Entscheidende"; Fraser (n. 37), 662-3. E. Howald, Der Dichter KallimiJchos von Kyrene, ZUrich 1943, 57. Bulloch (n. 54), 99.

121

DEPEW

72

Callimachus would be using contemporary conventions of realism to examine human psychology. His concerns are not religious-they are ethical. Zanker develops Bulloch's insight concerning Callimachus' use of contemporary conventions of realism, and for him too Callimachus is a conscientious, secular moralist. The everyday elements of the sixth hymn do not for Zanker "necessarily undermine the seriousness of the narrator's moral or the prayer 'May he be no friend or neighbour of mine who is hated by you, Demeter; I hate evil neighbours' (116f.): Callimachus' approach resembles that of spoudaiogeloionliterature .. .''11. But it is just at this point, when the myth ends and the ritual frame is reentered, that we know that we cannot in any way take this poem seriously; nor can we take it to be a hymn in any traditional sense. Nor can we conclude that it is in any way part of Callimachus' intentions to make a moral point or, for that matter, to praise Demeter. What was announced as an admonitory exemplum has turned out to be a comedic portrayal of a bourgeois family and its socially embarrassing son, the closest Callimachus comes in these poems come to the mime's depiction of everyday reality. The speaker exits the myth and utters a tongue-in-cheek prayer: M.J.Ult£p, J.l~ tiivoc EJ.llV (j)lAOC, oc tOl anexe~c I ElTJ J.LTJB' OJ.LOtOL:XOC · e).lolJCaJCoydtovec £:x9poi (116-7). The women are forgotten, and in its crudely simplistic amorality, these words suggest that the speaker is fastidiously i..-·nploring Demeter to spare him from neighbors as socially unacceptable as Erysichthon has proved to be. The verisimilitude of the ritual frame and of the low style of the mythological narrative contrast tonally with more traditionally religious material to facilitate the combination of various traditions whose connections only one so learned as this poet would perceive, and finally, to undermine the assumed aim of any hymn: the praise and glorification of the addressed god. The beginning of the Hymn to Zeus is constructed out of an elaborate play on the conventions that guarantee the poet's ability to tell the truth. The speaker begins by implying that it is because he is present at 'libations to Zeus' that he is led io his choice of theme: ZTJVOC EOL tllCEV ciA.A.o napa cnov&ijclV ad&Etv I AOHOV ii 9eov autov, ad J.Lirav, ai£v civalCta I nTJA.ayovrov EA.atiipa, &t1CaC1tOAOV OUpaviBTJLCL (1-3). The speaker continues and in the poem's first nine lines brings the selection process inherent in a priamel out into the open72: n&c JCai vtv, 6t1Cta'iov adcoJ.LEV i]£ J\uJCaiov; I £v Ootiit ).lttAa eu).LOC, end y£voc flJ.L!ptipLCtOV (4-5) 73. In spite of their disingenuous expression of aporia, these lines are highly allusive and ambiguous. We are reminded, for example, of the opening of Aratus' Phaenomena: ElC 6LOC ap:xroJ.LEC9a, tOY oil&enot' civ&pEC EWJ.LEV I cippTJtov (1-2). That passage's exegete remarks: 7tpE7t£l &£ 1eal 7tOLTJta'ic J.LttALCta a\ltTJ ~ ap:xti. E1td !Cal EV toic CUJ.l7tOclOlC tpEiC !Cpatiipac E!Cipvrov, !Cal tOY ).ltv 7tp&tov 6toc '0AUJ.l7tlOU, tOY Ot &evtEpov 6LOCICOVprov !Cal ~prorov, tOY Ot tpitov 71 72

73

Zanker (n. 2), 189.

5, cr. N. Hopkinson, "Callimachus' Hymn to Zeus", CQ 34, 1984, 141. The 'normal' version or Zeus' binh places lhe event in Crete. Hes. Th. 468ff.; Agalhocl. fr. 2; [Apollod.] 1.1.6.

122

MIMESIS AND AETIOLOGY

73

~toc CCO'ti;poc74 • As Hopkinson points out (140), aporetic questions concerning a god's cult-title are well-known conventions; these lines are modelled on the extant opening lines of the frrst.Homeric Hymn (to Dionysus), and line 5 "is a 'corrected' quotation of a line which Antagoras had applied to Eros in a similar hymnic context of doubtful lineage" (140). At the very point at which he declares his intention to speak the truth, then, the speaker's intentions and the context to which they will be relevant are far from clear. Addressing Zeus in the second person, he 'quotes' two factions: some say the god was born in the mountains of Ida, some say in Arcadia75. The vocative nattp, used here in the context of the god's birth, is incongruous and underscores the passage's arch tone. The answer comes: Kpilt£C ati 1jlci>Ctcu, and Crete is rejected on the a priori ground that since Cretans are always liars, the Arcadian account must be preferable (8-10). The 'fact' that CretanS are liars in this instance is then syllogistically 'demonstrated': Kill yap tcl(j)OV, 00 iiva, ctio I Kpi;t£C Et£Kt,V(lVtO. cu a· ou aavtc, £cci yap aid (8-9). Since Zeus is eternal, he could not have died. The quotation in line 8 is from Epimenides: Kpi;ttc ati 1jl£i>Ctlll, lC(llCCt Eh]pia, yactiptc apyai16, words which themselves recall the Muses' address to Hesiod: xow£vtc iiypauf..ol, KaK' U..£:rx.ta, yactiptc oiov 77. Cretans are not the only liars; the Muses go on to say, of course, ra11tv 1jltuata xoA.A.a A.iyttv EtU1101ClV OI!Ola, lta11£V a·. £i'>t' £9iA.coi!£V, MTt9£a 'Yflpucac9at (27-8). Poetry is true only in and for specific occasions; the insubstantiality of this occasion, created as it is out of a web of allusions, is not unrelated to the ambiguity of the hymn's truth claims. Callimachus has adapted the premise of a priamel-that the poet is telling the truth for a particular occasion of praise-li1J.11 (2.1, 5.194, 10.1). 4 Cf. the ends of Pindar, Nem. 8.51 (Nemean Games; cf. in particular ltaAal Kai ~tpiv); OL 10 (Ganymede).

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I. Rutherford

40

Keos. We do not know the place of performance, or the festivaLS The metre is aeolo-choriambic with the refrain in iambic; the metrical scheme was elucidated by Fuhrer, and it seems to be something like this:6 (verse)

o o - ..., "" -

- ... - ... -

-

v -

...., "" -

v ...., -

""

I

- ...... - ...... - ...... - ... - -I (or

(refrain)

do "

pb&da

gl&da

... - .... - .... -

2iiiM

(or""...,...,-""'-?

docb)

- ... - ... -

[iA.a !tO)!"t' or q>[ti..~a~a Lobel I {a Aajia~Ep}FUhrer, for metrical reasons II 5 ll)~[~o FUhrer II 7 At~) Lobel I airtOICilOt[yvt\)ta (J.Lua) II' au 9-uya[ ~ltJP suggested by Lobel II 8 oA~tat end of line in II 9 refrain written at the end of the previous line in II I 0 )E JCaAOv or EJCaAov Lobel II II !tAou· end of previous line in ll I 1ti..oii[tov or !tAou[atov Lobel I aq>eovi~. E'll~topi~ ] e.g. Rutherford I ay[u]a(a}at FUhrer (for the sake of metre) I fragments of an asterisk in the right margin, according to Lobel II 12 refrain written at the end of the previous line in

n

n

n.

(TITLE: [For a festival ?] of Demeter for the Keians; TEXT: ... in the garden the nightingale sings like this ... the plain of Orchomenus resounds ... Eleusinian lady, with rosy arms ... accept the crown ... at this time. GO chorus, go. Sister of Zeus, the king, and daughter, happy ... both dear to the blessed gods. Go chorus, go. You come to ... fair and rich and ... to accomplish delightful ... Go chorus, go.)

In the first line a nightingale speaks (the word Aii..aJC£ is perhaps imitated from Hesiod,

Op. 207, but it is in any case a common verb for bird-song).7 Lines 4-5 contained a short

invocation to Demeter; lines 7-8 described Demeter's and Persephone's return to the sanctuary. Lines 10-11 suggest that they are greeted by prosperity and wealth, which they themselves have presumably helped to bring about (line 11 ?). The presence of the nightingale suggests that the time (taioo' ev mpa1c; in line 5) is the spring, when the nightingale was thought to return from its winter absence.s According to Alcaeus' hymn to Apollo, cited in Himerius, Or. 48.11, nightingales and other birds welcomed Apollo's return to Delos.9 The refrain is itco, itco xop6c;, restored in part from other fragments of the papyrus (fr. 2 = SLG 461; fr. 3, SLG 462; fr. 6 = SLG 465).10 It is strangely not present in line 3; the explanation for that absence might be that the first verse is an introduction, dissimilar in form to the rest of the song. Perhaps the main part of the song, with the refrain, is represented as being uttered by the nightingale mentioned in line 1. (There is a general appropriateness here, in so far as the nightingale is a famous symbol of human song.) II The first verse would then be a speech-frame with the sense: "the nightingale sang, and the plain of Orchomenus resounded". This is the only refrain surviving from ancient lyric poetry in which a chorus is asked to go. The idea of movement and continuation seems very appropriate to a refrain, which has a formal link with continuity, since it is repeated through the song; so in Pindar, Paian IT, the chorus pray that Paian "never fail".l2 The surface meaning of the refrain is that the chorus 7 The perfect of AciaJCro of birds also at Aleman, PMG 1.86 (yA.au~. Aratus, Phoenomeno 972 (£pc.OIIt~). Homer,/1. 22.141 (!tUEta~. Aristotle, HA 618b31. 8 A. Steier, REs. Luscinia, col. 1856. 9 If j11Jv[ I in line 3 indicates that the events are happening at night, we can perhaps connect this with the tendency for the nightigale to be represented as a nocturnal performer (Steier [above, n. 8], col. 1859). 10 It also occurs above the column (i.e. above the surviving section of the first song), perhaps in misplaced scholion; Campbell makes this part of the text of the first song, but it seems very unlikely that the first song had the same refrain. II Steier (above, n. 8); A. Pischinger, Der Vogelzug bei den griechischen Dichtem des klassischen Altertunis (Eichstiitt, 190 I). 12 Cf. e.g. the refrain in Catullus 64: currite ducentes subtegmino, currite, fusi.

131

42

I. Rutherford

should perform the song as they walk, or at least that they are imagined as walking (if the poem is Hellenistic, the performance-scenario may be fictional). If the performance is processional (or represented as such), the song is probably meant to be interpreted as a prosodion.I3 However, there is also a secondary meaning, and that is that the song itself should "go", i.e. that it should continue. I want to suggest that the precise form of this refrain is due to the fact that the words t'tm, t'tm sound like the song of the nightingale. We know that to educated Greeks, the nightingale's song was interpreted as "~l'tuv, ~ITuv", Procne's lament for the son whom she had murdered to revenge herself on her husband Tereus for the rape of her sister Philomela.I4 I would argue that the sequences "l't'llv, ~l't'llv and t'tm, t'tm are close enough in sound that the second could have represented the nightingale's song also. This would be the only refrain based on bird-song in Greek poetry, as far as I know, though Aristophanes' sportive use of the croaking of frogs (Batrakhoi 209-210; 220 etc.) shows that Greek poets were capable of using animal-refrains. The equivalence of the verbal form t'tm and a bird-cry is illustrated and confirmed, as Gregory Nagy pointed out to me, by the song of the hoopoe in Aristophanes' Birds (227ff.): EltOltO!tOi ltO!tOi, ltO!tOltOltOi ltOltOi ' \ t' t ' \(J) \'t(J)f t't(J) t'tm 'tt~ ae 'tmv EJ.W>V OJ.lO!t'tepmv· lO)

I

(epopoi popoi popopopoi popoi, io io ito ito. Let one of my wing-men come)

A hoopoe is not a nightingale, but this hoopoe is supposed to be Tereus, Procne's husband, reconciled to her in their bird-incarnations. Shortly before, Tereus had woken up his wife, and asked her to sing of Itus. Perhaps the loving husband welcomes his wife with a fond imitation of her song. Or perhaps it is Procne who sings t'tm, t'tm off-stage, and Tereus joins in. At any rate, it is clear that part of the point of this passage is to set up the verbal joke which resides in the equivalence of the nightingale's cry and the verbal form t'tm.1S The only other case of the repeated t'tm attested in Greek poetry comes later on in the Birds. This is the short ode of jubilation usually attributed to the khoros (85lff.):16 OJ.loppo9&.auv9£Nm OUJ.lltapatveaa~

£xro

13 So Lobel (above, n. 2), 116, who also raises the possibility that it might be from the special form of poetry associated with Demeter called the iou~ (on which see H. Flirber, Die Lyrilc in der Kunsnheorie der Antike (Munich, 1936), 1.43; 2.62 14 Attested in Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 1144; Sophocles, Electra 148; cf. also Euripides fr. 775 (Phaethon) =line 70 in J. Diggle, Euripides. Phaethon (Cambridge, 1970), discussed pp. IOOff. IS A. Haury, "Le chant du rossignol ou buffon mystifit! par Aristophane", BAGB 13 (1960), 323-326. 16 The lines are needlessly assigned to a priest by F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart, Aristophanis. CotnMditJe (Oxford, 1900), who attribute the emendation to Wieseler.

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The Nightingale's Refrain

43

7tpooo~ta !lE'YcV..a aej.Lva 7tpoatevm 9eoic; ~eai 7tpo~an6v tt &Uew.

i:tro i:tro. \tm ~E Hu9uxc; ~oo.

CT\lVa'UA.ettm ~E Xaiptc; cj>~q

(I applaud, I am willing, I agree and have great and holy procession songs to approach the gods and to sacrifice a little sheep walking in front. Ito, ito, let the Pythian shout go! Let Chaeris play an accompaniment on the au/os.)

Everything here is about moving forward: great and holy prosodia, the action of approaching the gods, even a sheep that according to its etymology "walks in front". The "Pythian shout" is presumably the paean-cry, often a sign of celebration; saying "let the paean-cry go!" amounts to an instruction both that people should utter paean-cries, and that people singing the paean-cry should advance in processions.J7 It is possible that all three instances ofltm could be interpreted as the imperative; alternatively, only the third need be an imperative, and the first two could be the bird-cry, as earlier in the Hoopoe's song. IS In any case, the reference to the prosodion in this passage seems to corroborate the link between that genre and the \tm-refrain suggested earlier. Whereas in Aristophanes the nightingale's song \tm, \tm .•• is uttered only by birds, in SLG 460 the borderline between bird-song and human song is less distinct, and the nightingale provides not only a frame for the poem, but also a model and a cue for the singers. It is because one meaning of song of the nightingale is "let it go" that the chorus who perform the song "goes" (literally), and that the song "goes" (metaphorically). Thus, the poet seems to be offering an ornithological aetiology for processional song, and for song in general. If SLG 460 is Hellenistic, I suppose its \tm-refrain could be modelled on the passages of Aristophanes Birds that I have mentioned. Alternatively, if it is by Bacchylides, it would be possible that Aristophanes has imitated it.19 But, whatever the relative dating, it is equally possible that both passages draw on some lost folk-song with a similar refrain, perhaps also involving nightingales, and perhaps also performed processionally. The Rhodian swallow song (PMG 848), and its ritual-scenario of xeA.t~ovtaj.Loc; (sketched by the local historian Theognis whose views are summarised by Athenaeus),20 provide a suggestive parallel for the possible significance that might have been attributed to birds and birds-song in cultic or quasi-cultic contexts. Harvard University

Ian Rutherford

17 The same construction occurs at the end of an ode in Euripides, Phaethon (\tm uA.da yci110>v aolSci), the ode which earlier on mentioned the nightingale's song for Itus (above, n. 14); at Sophocles, Trachiniai 208: itm ltMyycl 10V E"i>cppap£-tpav 'Ano'Um npocnatav ..., and at [on, fr. 27: itm lha vuno~ aOlmj ... ; cf. also Aeschylus (7), Septem 964: 'itm y~. 'itw lici1tp-u. 18 Most MSS have three instances ofitm, but one (the Vaticanus) has only two. 1911 seems unlikely that this was one of the motifs he borrowed from the Tereus of Sophocles. 20 A. Tresp, Die Fragmente der griechischen Kultschriftste//er (GieSen, 1914), n. 106 =FgrHist 526Ft; Athenaeus 8, 360b.

133

ALEXANDRIAN SAPPHO REVISITED* DIMITRI OS

Y ATROMANOLAKIS To Alexandra

T HE

aim of this article is to reconsider the editorial reception of Sappho's poems by the Alexandrians in the third and second centuries B.c., 1 that is, to focus on that determinative stage when the first known scholarly enterprise towards a definitive textual fixation of Sappho's poetry took place. 2 What we indirectly know about Alexandrian editorial activities on the poems of Sappho is based on sources 'I would like to thank Dr. R. A. Coles of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, for kindly letting me examine P.Oxy. XXI 2294. I am especially grateful to Gregory Nagy, Peter Parsons, and Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, who read various drafts of this paper, and from whose thought-provoking suggestions I have, as always, greatly profited. Thanks are also due to Maura Henrichs for her comments and advice. My gratitude equally goes to Charles Segal for suggestions on the final draft. To Albert Henrichs I owe a special debt for his unstinting advice and invaluable criticism. 1 The following bibliography will be throughout cited by author's name only: D. A. Campbell, Greek Lyric I (Cambridge, Mass. 1982); E. Contiades-Tsitsoni. HymefUJios und Epithalamion. Das Hochzeitslied in der friihgriechischen Lyrik (Stuttgart 1990); J. M. Edmonds. "Sappho's Book as Depicted on an Attic Vase," CQ 16 (1922) 1-14; C. Gallavotti, "Auctarium Oxyrhynchium," Aegyptus 33 (1953) 159-171; A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, The Greek Anthology. The Garland of Philip and Some Contemporary Epigrams (Cambridge 1968); J. T. Hooker, The Language and Text of the Lesbian Poets (Innsbruck 1977); A. S. Hunt, "[P.Oxy.] 1800. Miscellaneous Biographies," in The O:ryrhynchus Papyri 15 (London 1922) 137-150; G. M. Kirkwood. Early Greek Monody. The History of a Poetic Type (Ithaca 1974 ); F. Lasserre, Sappho. Une autre lecture (Padua 1989); E. Lobel, J:ampouc; }lEAry. The Fragments of the Lyrical Poems of Sappho (Oxford 1925); D. Page, Sappho and Alcaeus. An Introduction to the Study of Ancient Lesbian Poetry (Oxford 1955); A. Pardini, "La ripartizione in libri dell' opera di Alceo. Per un riesame della questione," RFIC 119 (1991) 257-284; M. Treu. Sappho. Lieder 7 (Munich 1982); E. M. Voigt [=V], Sappho et Alcaeus (Amsterdam 1971); U. von WilamowitzMoellendorff [ = Wilamowitz] Die Textgeschichte der griechischen Lyriker (Berlin 1900). 2 Here 1 do not touch on the issue of the reception of Sappho in the Hellenistic era. I examine the diverse receptions of Sappho 's poetry from the sixth century B.C to late antiquity in a forthcoming book entitled Sappho in the Making.

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Dimitrios Yatromanolakis

whose significance is hard to determine, and, for this reason, these sources should he examined as critically as possible. The editorial reception of Sappho by the Alexandrian scholars is closely related to questions regarding the number of books their edition included, and the (alleged) partial generic classification of Sappho's oeuvre by them; it is, thus, these questions that will primarily concern us here. SAPPHO: EIGHT OR NINE BOOKS? It seems that Sappho's poems were arranged by the Alexandrians in books mainly according to their meter, in contrast to the works of other poets, such as Pindar and Bacchylides, which were classified according to literary genre or occasional context. Along with Sappho's poetry, the poems of Aleman, Alcaeus, Ihycus, and Anacreon are usually quoted hy their hook numbers. The evidence about the number of books of Sappho is scant as well as perplexing. 3 In analyzing this evidence we should attend to the possibility that the Alexandrian scholarly edition (assuming that there was only one, possibly by Aristarchus 4 ) was not necessarily the only edition that existed in later antiquity. 5 ·1 The bibliography on this issue includes Wilamowitz 71-73, Lobel xiii-xvi, Page 112-119, 125-126 (on the distribution of the epithalamia). Cf. also C. Gallavotti, Saffo e A/ceo. Testimonianze e frammenti 13 (Naples 1962) 9-11. The testimonies to the various books of Sappho are conveniently collected in Voigt T 226-236. 4 Unfortunately there is no evidence for Sappho. We only know that for Alcaeus an edition by Aristarchus replaced an earlier one by Aristophanes (see Sappho T 236 V). However, this does not necessarily entail that Sappho's poems were similarly edited twice; although Aristophanes was well known for his edition of lyric poetry, it is not certain how many of the lyric poets he edited (R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship: From the Be!(innin!(s to the End of the Hellenistic Age [Oxford 1968] 184-185). Thus, M. Williamson's conviction (Sapplw's Immortal Daughters [Cambridge, Mass. 1995) 40; cf. B. C. MacLachlan, "Sappho," in D. E. Gerber ed., A Companion to the Greek Lyric Poets [Leiden 1997 (Mnemosyne Suppl. 173)] 166, influenced by Hooker II) that Sappho"s poems went through two Alexandrian editions, may or may not be right. 5 It is only an a priori assumption that all the subsequent generations of readers of Sappho 's poetry indulged in it by obtaining a copy of a Sapphic edition which reproduced the book division and structure of the "ancestral" Alexandrian edition. Hephaestion and several grammarians, metricians, and lexicographers of the first and the second (and even the fourth) centuries A.D., for example, could certainly have enjoyed access to a copy of such an edition, but others might not have: should we assume that less "official" editions and collections of Sappho, used in environments very different from the working place of grammarians and scholars, were not available during these centuries? A response to such a question should take into account evidence which suggests the possibility of parallel

136

Alexandrian Sappho Revisitt•d

181

What exactly do we know about the Alexandrian books of Sappho? Occasional references to book numbers in late sources suggest that the edition of Sappho prepared hy the Alexandrians included at least eight books of poems. Indeed, references up to the eighth book of Sappho occur. 1\vo or more of these books contained a number of epithalamia, probably added at the end of the books in question on account of their metrical identity or affinity. 6 But in recent times, especially after D. L. Page's treatment of the subject, a nine-book edition of Sappho has been postulated. 7 Since the evidence adduced by the modem defenders of this view seems equivocal, a re-examination of all the available literary and papyrological references to the total number of Sappho's Alexandrian books will prove helpful. SOURCES AS EVIDENCE Our earliest source is an epigram of the first century H.C. hy Tullius Laurea, who has been identified with Cicero's freedman (AP 7.17). 8 The speaker here is imagined to be Sappho, involved in dialogue with a hypothetical passerby who happens to walk past her Aeolian tomb. It is in lines 5-7 that she refers to nine books of poetry written by her: ilv o£ Jlf Moumxmv ftaons xapt v. !hv aOiat. All these scattered pieces of information about Sappho's literary production, along with the alleged existence of nine books of J.1EA11, had to be included in the Suda entry. Does this not imply a kind of oversimplification of methodological criteria and a reliance on disparate data? PAPYROLOGICAL ECHOES Another ancient source can now be drawn into our discussion about the number of Sapphic books edited by the Alexandrians. In his fourthcentury commentary on Virgil Georg. 1.31 Servius refers to a certain book of Sapphic epithalamia ( = Sappho T 234 V): generum vero pro marito positum multi accipiunt iuxta Sappho, quae in libro qui inscribitur' Em8aA.&.p1a ait ( ... ). It has most often been thought that the book in question must be identified with the last book of the Alexandrian scholars' edition. 34 This last book has been envisaged as a separate one, easily differentiated on the basis of its subject matter and metrical diversity from the other eight, and referred to only by its title 33 Note that he repeats xalpE twice in the same sentence, as Sappho usually does: xalpE, VUJ.lqi(X, xalpE, nJ.IIE yclJ.lj}pE, ltOAMx (fr. 116; cf. fr. 117). 34 See. e.g .• Page 116.

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Dimitrios Yatromanolakis

and not by a number. 35 Since several epithalamian songs were apparently included in other books, this entails, according to Page's widely accepted theory. that "Sappho's epithalamian poems were arranged according to two different principles: those whose metres qualified them for inclusion in the metrically homogeneous books (esp. the first four books) were added at the end of such books; the miscellaneous remainder were put together to form a separate book." 36 Further evidence in favor of this view has been adduced from Sappho fr. 103 L-P ( = P.Oxy. XXI 2294, published by Lobel in 1951), 37 the so-called "new bibliographical fragment." 38 This second-century A.D. papyrus fragment contains ten incipits of Sapphic poems (1. 3 ] . of: (OEKa) K(ai) eKaCJtlltOai K[ ec:paA.ai