Theocritus 9069800645, 9789069800646

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HELLENISTICA

GRONINGANA

II

HELLENISTICA

GRONINGANA

PROCEEDINGS OF THE GRONINGEN WORKSHOPS ON HELLENISTIC POETRY

THEOCRITUS

EDITORS

M.A. HARDER R.F.

REGTUIT

G.C.

WAKKER

THEOCRITUS

EDITED BY

M.A.

HARDER

R.F. REGTUIT

G.C.

WAKKER

Egbert Forsten Groningen 1996

OMSLAG0NTWERP

Studio Bert Gort, Zevenhuizen (Gn)

© 1996 Copyright Egbert Forsten 1996

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,

retrieval system, or transmitted,

stored in a

in any form or by any means, electronic,

mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the holder of the copyright.

ISBN 90 6980 064 5

CONTENTS ntE DORICOFTHEOCRITUS, A LITERARY LANGUAGE J.GJ. Abbcnc.,

1-19

NARRATIVEAND ALLUSION IN THEOCRITUS,IDYLL 2 N.E. Andrew!!

21-53

THE PREOCCUPATIONSOF THEOCRITIJS: STRUCTURE, ILLUSIVE REALISM, ALLUSIVE LEARNING W.G. Amott

55-70

PARATAKTISCHEGLEICHNISSEBEJ THEOKRIT Ham Ba1lSdorfT

71-90

FRAME AND FRAMED IN THEOCRITUS POEMS 6 AND 7 EwenBowie

91-100

CUSTOMISING THEOCRITIJS: POEMS 13AND 24 Alan Orimlhs

101-118

ntE EVIDENCE FOR THEOCRITEANPOETRY BOOKS KathrynGul7.willcr

119-148

MIME AND MIMESIS: THEOCRITIJS, IDYLL 15 RichardHunter

149-169

ntEOKRITS POLYPHEMGEDICHTE A. KOhnkcn

171-186

A MAN OF MANY WORDS: L YNCEUS AS SPEAKER IN THEOC. 22 AlexanderSens

187-204

SELBSTZITATEIN DEN MIMISCHENGEDICHTENntEOKRITS K.-H. Stanzcl

205-225

GENRETHROUGHINTERTEXTIJALITY: THEOCRITUS TO VIRGIL AND PROPERTIUS Richard F. Thomas

227-246

THE DISCOURSE FUNCTION OF PARTICLES SOME OBSERVATIONSON THE USE OF µav/µ~v IN ntEOCRITUS GenyWakkcr

247-263

INDEXES I. lndt!xefPa.r."",:c.r di.mmed 2. lndcxof Greek.words 3. lndt!xof Names and Suh1cr.ts

265 265 266

Preface

In 1992 the Department of Classics at the University of Groningen (Netherlands) began a series of workshops on Hellenistic Poetry to be held every two years. The fonnat of these workshops is that the papers offered by the speakers are sent to the participants of the workshops in advance of the actual meeting, so that during the workshops there is ample opponunity for detailed discussion. The workshops focus on individual Hellenistic authors as well as on more general aspects of Hellenistic poetry, such as the implications of developments in modem literary criticism for research on, for example, genre or narrative technique and the implications of linguistic studies for the interpretation of the texts. Attention is also given to the social and cultural background of Hellenistic poetry and the ways in which this can be related to fonn and content. The workshops also intend to offer room for the presentation of research by young scholars and graduate students. The proceedings of the workshops are published in the series He/lenisticaGroningana(published by Egben Forsten Publishers [Groningen]) Following this format the first of the 'Groningen Workshops on Hellenistic Poetry', on Callimachus, was held at Groningen in 1992; the second, on Theocritus, took place in 1994. Both proved to be very profitable. The papers presented were discussed and commented on by an international group of specialists in the field of Hellenistic poetry and then revised. for publication in the proceedings of the workshop. Funhermore, the workshop offered ample opportunity for the development of ideas and the establishment of many fruitful contacts between scholars working on the Hellenistic period. When organizing the workshop we aimed at including a variety of approaches to Theocritus' poetry, which may be thought to be representative of recent developments in modern literary criticism and linguistics. At the same time attention has been given to matters of textual criticism and transmission. Thus the anicles of Andrews, Bemsdorff, Stanzcl and Thomas focus on aspects of Theocritus' literary technique. They draw attention to the possibilities of using the narratological concept of 'focalisation' (Andrews), to Thcocritus' treatment of the old epic device of the Homeric simile (Bemsdorff), to the ways in which Theocritus occasionally quotes his own poems (Stanzcl) and to matters of genre and intertextuality (Thomas). The articles of Abbenes and Wakkergive an indication of the impact that modem linguistics can have on the study ofTheocritus: Abbenes discusses the Doric of Theocritus, while Wakkcr shows how attention for the discourse function of particles can help us with the interpretation of individual passages. A vigorous attempt to 'customise' Theocritus 13 and 24 is made by Griffiths and represents textual criticism in this volume. Finally, matters of transmission arc discussed by Gutzwiller in her anicle on the earliest editions of Theocritus. In addition to methodological variety we have also included articles which focussed on the interpretation of individual poems and aimed at a representative selection in which bucolic, urban and mythological poems were all represented by at least one example. Thus bucolic poems arc discussed by Bowie (on framework and embedded songs in 6

and 7) and Kohnken (on the Polyphemus-poems 6 and 11); urban mimes by Andrews (a narratological analysis of Simaetha's story in 2) and Hunter (about 15 as a selfconscious poemin a Ptolemaic context); and mythological poems by Griffith (textual criticism of 13 and 24) and Sens (on Lynceus as a post-Homeric hero in an epic setting in 22). The closing lecture of the workshop was given by Amott, who "as a confirmed idolater" (55) discussed three important aspects ofTheocritus' poetry: structure, illusive realism and allusive learning, thus providing a picture of Theocritus as a typically Hellenistic poeL In spite of these attempts to provide a broad spectrum and to include as many aspects of Thcocritean studies as possible, we feel that this volume contains only a fraction of all that can be said and investigatedabout Thcocritus. This was also the feeling with which the participants of the workshop went home: a sense that there was much more to Thcocritus than they had been aware of before they came and an urge to go on working on this fascinating poet We hope that this collection of papers may transmit some of this inspiration to its readers. Groningen, May 1996

Annette Harder

TIIE DORIC OF THEOCRITUS,A LITERARYLANGUAGE J.G.J. Abbenes

In the study of the dialect of Theocritus,1 Magnien's study of 1920 has had a profound influence. In this article, Magnien tries to show that Theocritus used a literary dialect which had its origins in fifth-cenrury Syracuse (or even earlier), an idea which ultimately goes

back to Meillet (1955). He accepts virtually all Doric 2 poetry and prose, ranging from Epicharmus to Theocritus and Callimachusand from Archytas of Tarentum to Archimedes, as having been written in this literary Syracusan; in fact, according to Magnien, only the poets of the Doric 'choral lyric' (as understood by Magnien; a better term would now be 'poets of the western school')3 use an independentdialect. In manuals of Greek dialects Magnien's hypothesis is virtually ignored: in Thumlr Kieckers (1932: § 175) Theocritus' language is assigned to 'Sicilian' Doric, although they have to concede that sometimes Theocritus simply ignores the Sicilian standard in order to give his language a more general Doric (or even non-koine) appearance.4 Callimachus' language is apparently considered as belonging to the dialect of Cyrene. It is admitted, though, that his language sometimes shows the same dialectal features as Theocritus (1932: § 176). Whether this is to be regarded as the result of the admixture of artificial forms (or forms of a more general Doric appearance) with on the one hand a Cyrenaean-, and on the other hand a Sicilian-based dialect, or whether they are to be seen as using the same dialect mixed with artificial forms after all, remains unclear. In the light of their assigning Theocritus to the Sicilian Doric group and Callimachus to that of Cyrene, the former explanation is probably intended. The possibly genuine works of Archytas and Philolaus, as well as the works of the so-ailed pseudo-Pythagorean authors are considered to belong to the Laconian-Tarentinian group (1932: § 107). To the same group Thumlr-Kieckers (1932: § 108) assign POxy. 410. Ruijgh (1984) also rejects Magnien's view, arguing that the only basis for our knowledge of the Syracusan dialect in the time of Theocritus consists in the works of Archimedes, who uses a dialect which differs in a great many respects from the dialect used

2

3 4

Gow (1952) distinguishesbetween (i) genuine poems in Doric: Theoc. 1-7, 10, 11, 14, 15, 18, 26; (ii) dubious or spuriouspoems in Doric: Theoc. 8, 9, 19-21, 23, 27; (iii) poems prevailinglyin epic dialect wilh an admixlUJ'C of Doric: Theoc. 13, 16, 17, 24; (iv) poems in epic and Ionic; (v) poems in Aeolic. In lhis study I will concentratesolely on lhe poems belongingto Gow's group i. In this anicle I use lhe r.enns 'Doric' and 'West-Greek' indiscriminately. Cf. die elaboratediscussionoflhe distinctionbetween 'choral lyric' and 'monody' in Davies(1988). Thus Thumb-Kieckers are well aware thal the genitive singular of lhe masculine 0-stems in Thcocritus regularly ends in •(I), against the -ou of 'Sicilian' Doric.

2

ABBENES

by Thcocritus, as was already seen by Thumb-Kieckcrs (1932). To take an example, Archimedes consistently writes the accusative plural of the masculine ~stems as -ooc;, whereas Theocritus writes -we;. Ruijgh therefore looks for the basis of Theocritus' Doric in another dialect. that of Cyrcnc. In doing this, Ruijgh follows the lead of Risch (1954), who tried to prove the major importance of this dialect for the constitution of the text of Aleman. Ruijgh, however, goes one step beyond Risch in stating that the Cyrcnaean elements found in the language of Theocritus arc not to be attributed to subsequent editors, who used the dialect of Cyrcnc as some son of standard Doric on the basis of which they made decisions about textual problems (a hypothesis advanced by Risch to explain the Cyrcnaean elements in the language of Alcman), 5 but that these elements go back to the poet himself. However, in order to explain those features of the dialect of Thcocritus which cannot be attributed to the Cyrenacan dialect as it is known at present, notably the distinction between two long E-vowcls, /c:/ and /e:/, 6 as against only one long ~vowel, Ruijgh makes the interesting suggestion that Theocritus did not use the actually attested Cyrcnacan dialect, but rather a dialect reconstructed by him for the 'Cyrcnaean community' in Alexandria. Ruijgh (1984: 75-6) also tries to explain a number of other characteristics of the language of Thcocritus, which have traditionally been explained by assuming the admixture of Acolic (or rather epic-Aeolic) fonns, as having arisen in this hypothetical Cyrcnacan dialect of Alexandria. Thus, according to Ruijgh, the particle IC£ which is used by Thcocritus instead of (or parallel to) the usual West-Greek particle or should not be explained as an Acolic clement in Thcocritus' language. Rather it arose in the Cyrcnacan dialect of Alexandria. or it may have been introduced by Thcocritus himself, due to a false to Ruijg~amc from 1Ca,but supplementing of the elided fonn ic', which-according was felt as coming from IC£ (as 6' from 6i and t' from te). In short, according to Ruijgh's theory, Thcocritus wrote in a more or less unaltered dialect, to wit Alexandrian Cyrcnaean. 7 One of the more important reasons for this choice, be supposes, was the fact that Thcocritus' main public, resident in Alexandria, could be expected to recognize this dialect from personal experience as 'Doric'. More recently this view has been challenged by Molinos Tejada (1990), who argued convincingly against some of Ruijgh 's arguments in favour of a Cyrcnaean Alexandrian origin of the dialect ofThcocritus.

m m

s 6

7

For some arguments against this theory, see Cassio (1993). Magnien (1920: 63-5) accepted, on the strength of the manuscripts, di> and c:O>as the correct result or the isovocalic coniractions and the various compensatory lengthenings. Since then the publication of the Antinoe Papyrus (POry. 2064) has radically alrercdthe picture emerging from the manuscripts. For a detailed description of the readings of this and other papyri on this mauer, cf. Molinos Tejada (1990: 71-8). Of course. this does nocmean that Ruijgh denies the occmional use of epic forms.only that there can be no questionof a 'mixed' artificial dialect.

•

TIIE DORICOF TIIEOCRITUS

3

Thus, Ruijgh's argument (1984: 60n.9) that the ablatival adverbs of the type AtPua8ein Theocritus (1.24) arc found only in an inscription coming from Cyrene, but arc not attested in other West-Greek dialects was rightly rejected by Molin~Tejada (1990: 341-3) on the grounds that these adverbs arc in any case found in Pindar (where they arc explained by Ruijgh as being due to the influence of the epic language). That she is right is proved-«> my mind-by the fact that against the seven ablatives in -8ewhich occur in the first seven poems, there arc more than founcen examples of ablatives in -8ev.In Theoc. 10, 14 and 15, which belong to the genuine Doric poets, we have only ablatives in -8ev (4 examples). In addition, an ablative in -8e is apparently also found in Theoc. 24.116, 8 a poem which is written in a dialect which is based upon the epic diction with a slight admixture of Doric. Clearly, Theocritus decision to write -8eor -8evdepended primarily upon the metre, and we should allow the same explanation to cover the occurrence of the ablatives in -8e in Theoc. 1-7 and 24, and of -8evin 1-7, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 24. These fonns cannot be used, therefore, as independent evidence for a Cyrenaean origin of Theocritus' language. Only after it has been shown that Theocritus writes in a distinct specific literary dialect can we use these fol'l'hsas evidence for a Cyrenacan dialect Alternatively, we may assume-with Molinos Tejada-that Tbeocritus simply used forms be found in Pindar and in epic poetry. Another point mentioned by Molinos Tejada is that of the distribution of the two long E-vowels in Theocritus against only one long 0-vowel. It will be remembered that Ruijgh explained this distribution as a very characteristi~. >.u8tiaa mpoc;.~iv~ £qllA.£L, mtA.OUtaL

f:4lEV,tcrtf:\A.a to,¼, >.u8tiaa mpoc;. ~ivoc; EqllA£L, mtA.OU'taL

~µ.£\',

~9\v~ £1110..Tt, mti.cirtaL

crrouoa.

crrouoa.

Of course, in practice matters arc more complicated than this threefold distinction suggests. Thus, in some dialects we encounter short vowels as a result of the development of the cluster Nns/ (2nd compensatory lengthening) when word-final, type (e.g. in Cos and Rhodes); in others we encounter the preservation of the original nasal when not wordfinally, type ciyovoa (e.g. in Cretan). A long vowel as a result of the 3rd compensatory lengthening was in fact something of an exception: we encounter much more often

to~

8

-niA.08t in PAnlin., also conjecturedby Ahrens for T11A8L of ms. D.

4

ABBENES

simplification of the original group (as in •1e6pFa, •~ivFoc;) to te6pa, ~ivoc;. In Cyrenacan the 2nd compensatory lengthening did not take place. Instead we encounter a rule of diphthongization, so that from an original •ago,uya we have «lOlGa. Word-finally the original group Nns/ was simplified to Ns/ without lengthening of the vowel, type toe;,

lu8ic; etc. According to Ruijgh's theory, the dialect used by Theocritus was Alexandrian Cyrenacan, which was based upon a 'severe' Doric dialect to judge from the results of the 1st and 3rd compensatory lengthenings. This dialect. the original Cyrenaean dialect which is attested in inscriptions, is supposed to have undergone some drastic changes in its phonological structure under the influence of speakers of Attic, or better, of the Hellenistic lcoine.One of these changes was the adaption of the original Cyrenacan vowel system with three degrees of opening (/a/; /e, -:,:/;/i, u/) to a system with four degrees of opening (/a/; /e, -:,:/;/e/; Ii, u/). Thus, under the influence of the Hellenistic koine two distinct E-vowels came into being for the original one which is found in Cyrenacan. Furthermore, under the influence of the long vowel in Hellenistic touc; M>YOUc;, a long vowel was introduced in the accusative plural of the 0-stems instead of the original Cyrenaean short vowel in 't~ AO"YOc;. The fact that the quality of this long 0-vowel did not differ from that of the inherited long 0-vowel, /-:,:/, is to be explained-according to Ruijgh-by assuming an asymmetrical vowel triangle for this hypothetical Alexandrian Cyrenacan, in which the front axis had four degrees of opening, against only three on the back axis. This, in turn, could easily be explained by assuming that in this dialect.the original diphthong /ei/ had already undergone monophthongization to /e:/, whereas the original diphthong /ou/ was still preservedin Ptolemaic Cyrenaean. The assumption that the diphthong /ei/ had already been monophthongized to /e:/, whereas the diphthong /ou/ remained intact, is motivated convincingly by Ruijgh by pointing out that, generally speaking, there is more room for distinctions on the front axis of the vowel triangle-due to the agility of the tip of the tongue-, than there is for distinctions on the back axis of the vowel triangle--Vl.£1., tlµi and (a hybrid formation with the long vowel of the Cyrenaean dialect, but the vowel quality of the Hellenistic koine) ~eivoc;. On the back axis of the vowel triangle, however, there still existed only one long 0-vowel, the inherited /-:,:/. Consequently, a restructuring according to the Hellenistic pattern was not possible, and only the length of the Hellenistic touc; ¼ouc; was taken over, to yield t~ A.O"(Q)C;. As proof that an original severe-Doric dialect underlies that of Theocritus, Ruijgh cited the West-Greek form of the verb l3ouA.oµa1, to wit a'1AOµa1 with a long E-vowel originating from compensatory lengthening (from *yWiA.voµa1),but with the same vowel quality as the inherited long E, /e:/.

TIIE DORIC OF TIIEOCRI11JS

s

As an alternative to this phonological adaptation of a severe Doric dialect to the Hellenisticlcoine,Molinos Tejada (1990: 74-6) developedan explanation-which I would like to call, in contrast with Ruijgh's 'phonological' adaptation,a 'categorial' adaptation-by pointing out the imponance of morphology in the distribution of the long E- and 0vowels:both the accusativeplural and the genitivesingularof the 0-stems belong to a very productive and strictly circumscribed category, both written with severe Doric vowelquality. Another category is the thematicinfinitive, which is found, in all early Theocritus papyri, ending in -TIV,like Aleman's aYOO\l'lV, only later to be replaced by the -nv of the mediaevalmanuscriptsin the transmissionof both Aleman and Theocritus.In the indicative forms of the contract verbs in -£CO, and in the 'Doric' futures, on the other hand is the regular form. Another category is nominal in flexion, where we have once again , as shown by the nominative plural of the u/ew-stems, cf. n:w1Ceu;Theoc. 2.128. Therefore, Molinas Tejada concluded that the exact result of a given sound change in Theocritus depends primarily upon the morphologicalcategoryin which it occurred. In agreementwith this hypothesis are the genitive fonns MEA.l~ou~2.146, Muptou~ 7.97 belonging to another,and far less productivecategorythan the masculine0-stems, a form which cannot readily be explained in tenns of Ruijgh's theory, as this fonn has instead of the single long 0-vowel , which is accountedfor by this theory. In short. the original severe-Doric dialect which also in Molinas Tejada's view underlies that of Theocritus, was consciously adapted to the Hellenistic lcoine in some morphologicalcategories,whereasthis adaptationdid not take place in other categories. The evidence adduced by Molinos Tejada which might lead us to accept her explanation is, however, very slight In fact, it boils down to the genitive forms MMlQ>'U~ and Mupt~ which, being unique may well be explained by assuming that an explanatory OY

gloss in the form MEAIEQt was taken to be a correction.9 We are left with two alternative explanations: Ruijgh takes as a starting point an entirely hypothetical Alexandrian Cyrenaean, which as a reconstruction is plausible enough. It is to be expected that the language of immigrants from Cyrene changed under the influence of the Hellenistic koine which was the official language in Alexandria. Furthermore, the asymmetrical vowel triangle with four degrees of opening on the front axis against only three degrees of opening on the back axis is by no means an implausible reconstruction. The only problem is that we do not have the slightest evidence for this combinationin Alexandria. On the other hand, we have an alternativeexplanation,that of a categorial adaptation of a severe-Doric dialect to the Hellenistic lcoine.This adaptation, it should be stressed, cannot have occurred in a living dialect, and should be seen therefore as evidence that the languageused by Theocrituswas in fact a literarylanguage. In this paper I want to reexamine the question of the origin of the distribution of the long E- and 0-vowels in Theocritus, drawing on evidence not adduced by Molinos 9

As suggcsu:dby Ruijgh.personalcommunication.

ABBENES

6

Tejada. In order to arrive at a conclusion, I will compare the data from Thcocritus first with those found in Callimachus and Aleman, and subsequently with those from the other known representatives of severe Doric.

1 Thcocritus

In view of the great amount of data, I will not cite the evidence in full, unless there is reason to doubt a ccnain phenomenon. With we have: (1) the genitive singular of the ~stems, xtµeipcoTheoc. 1.6; -cw fiptftxm 1.21; 'tW1.29, 57; TT11vetii> 1.67; fiiv6m 1.67; 'Avaxm 1.68; airtii>1.92 etc.; (2) 1.88, 91; 'tAOU~ 2.163 have rightly been corrected by the cdilOrS. er.the data collectedby MolinosTejada (1990: 173-5). It is of course unclear whether this stands for /eisa/, with a true diphthong, comparable 10 the Lesbian and Cyrcnacan formations in /oisa/, /aisa/, or whether lhis stands for /e:sa/ with an 'Awe· orthography.

TIIE DORIC OF TIIEOCRITIJS

7

The results of the 3rd compensatory lengthening (not very frequent) are found only with . cf. ~e1v- Theoc. 2.154. 162; 7.119; erpia 5.50; 8etpa.v 18.57. We also encounter forms with a short vowel: ~ev- 5.2. 11.61; ipimv 5.26. Again. this hesitation between forms with a long and fonns with a short vowel is to be explained as due to melricalconvenience. With . we find above all the infinitive of the verb 'to be': ~µev Theoc. 2.41. xapii1,1£Y2.116 etc. consistently written with in the older papyri. although the 1st person plural is written ei~ in the oldest papyri. 13 Besides. we encounter the Doric parallel of the Attic Po{>A.Oµa.t. &f\Mµa.t 5.27 etc. The demonstrative pronoun 'tllVO, which is in -outcx1.,cf. 1tepcx1.out«1.Philolaus, de anima p. 150.14; 1t1.atoi>t«1. Occllus p. 129.15; Theages p. 191.8; p1.~oi>tcx1. Callicratidas p. 104.28 etc. (7 cases); 38 the active indicative 3rd plural civaitMXpoi>vtt Ecphantus p. 81.20; the middle infinitive which is in -oi>o8«1., cf. ei..attouo8«1 Ecphantus p. 81.16; ip11µoi>a8«1 Hipparchus p. 90.1; 1toi..1.0i>o8a1. Melissa p. 115.26 etc. (6 cases) and the infinitive active in -oi>v, 61op8ouv Archytas, vir.bon. p. 14.23; il;oµo1.oi>vArchytas u princ. p. 19.13; 0µ01.oi>v Ecphantus p. 82.27. Of course, Theocritus has only xi..11poi>o1.v 8.46, a form which-with its Ionic-Attic -ouo1.v-cannot be used as evidence for his dialecL Unfortunately, the papyri of Aleman have also failed so far to producetherequired forms.

u

a

a

4.2 The DissoiLogoior Dialexeis The same distribution of the long E- and 0-vowcls is found in the anonymous Dissoi Logoi, something of a shorthand version of a sophistical lecture held around 400 B.C., and written-for some reason or another-in a kind of Doric.39 The dialect of this treatise, to be sure, does not resemble that of Theocritus or Aleman very closely. However, exactly the same distribution of , on the frontal axis and , on the back axis of the vowel triangle holds good here, too: we have for inherited /c:/, cf. it«'tllP 3.5; cii..«8,;~ 4.5; 4.6 etc. vs. the present fonns ocpeii..e1.~1.12; 61.«cp8eipev 3.4; the aorists ix:6£ipa1. 2.11; iK6£ipa; 2.13: the participles il;£MX8ei; 2.14; cix8ro8ei; 3.4; i..um,8ei~ 3.4; cicpe8ei; 3.6; A.cxcp8ei; 3.6; the feminine participles 61«i..i..cxyeia«; 5.11;

37 38 39

M, «yEi'ta1 MSS. SA); iinµd.i\'t'ta1,xuA. Atoe; fr. 1.24; oPoAco fr. 2.28; xpovm fr. 3.10; v6m fr. 5.17; aya8 fr. 6a.3; eu8u6{1emfr. 6a.3; the accusative plural 1eav8coc;fr. 3.2, and the infinitives ~µev fr. 2.29, £XTIV fr. 1.30, interspersed with mild Doric, or Hellenistic, fonns, e.g. the genitive oA.oufr. 2.10; the accusatives xoiouc; fr. 1.24; toutouc; fr. 1.29; the infinitives Aiyetv fr. 1.23; £1CA.£-y£\V fr. 2.12; atp£q>£\Vfr. 6b.6; ci8u1tA.O£\Vfr. 2.14; tp[ \A.UalC£\V fr. 6b.3; 1tot£~v(which is betrayed as a corruption by the Hellenistic ending -ci>v)fr. 3.6 and 6µa8dc; fr. 3.1. Clearly, the fonns 6µa8eic; and 1tote~a8a[1] against ~µev, t,aya8ci> etc. can be interpreted as supporting the hypothesis of a 'categorial' adaptation of a severe Doric text. But in view of the fact that we have no evidence for the finite forms of the contract verbs in -Em,-6m, and in view of the fact that this text has evidently suffered badly from corruption, this evidence should be judged with some reserve. Concerning P.Oxy. 410, a small fragment of a rhetorical treatise written in Doric, and believed to be written in the dialect of Tarentum,41 we lack the forms required for a proper evaluation of the distribution of the long E- and 0-vowels. We encounter forms belonging to severe Doric, e.g. the genitive singular of the 0-stems, a.1COA«atm col. iii.75; )..6ym col. iii.79; the accusative plural of the 0-stems, twc; ... xovTJpcoc; col. iv.9~; twc; oµo{mc;col. iv.101. There is only one case of tuc;. Also we have the infinitive ~µev. The thematic infinitive on the other hand ends in -EV,e.g. Af:fEVcol. iv.111; autoaxrotci~ev

40 41

POxy. 1082, herecited after Livrca (1986). Of course, Magnien (1920: 52) welcomes this fragment ::is evidence of a Syracusan rheioric. In view of the perfect ending -iiµEV, however. it is more probable that Taremum is 10 be seen as the origin.

11IE OORIC OF TIIEOCRITIJS

15

col. iv.I 18. The form cpruyt:ivcol. iii.76 is therefore cenainly a corruption, to be corrected into cpruytv. Apart from the future uxoAaµ'lfou(v)tat col. iv.99, which is problematic in itself in view of the active o:~u.ooovttcol. i.2, there occur no contract forms whatsoever.

5 Discussion We have seen that the dialect used in Theocritus, Callimachus, Aleman and the main prose authors, Archytas of Tarentum, Philolaus of Croton show a remarkable consistency in their distribution of the long E- and 0-vowels. In addition to the forms found in the severe Doric poets however, the prose texts mentioned offer a remarkable parallel to the separation of the and on the front axis in their separation of and on the back axis of the vowel triangle. This is the more remarkable because in a text which adheres to the usage of strict Doric we would expect forms in -ii>tat, -roa8at, as we would expect forms in -fytat, -iio8at for the contract verbs in -ico.Again, the avoidance of confusion of the indicative and subjunctive may have played a role here, but not necessarily. The use of -outat, -ouo8at parallel to the use of -t:itat, -t:ia8at in the contract verbs proves, in my opinion, the hypothesis of a categorial modernization at least for the pseud, acc.plur. in ~- Again, compensatory lengthening in a productive rule such as the formation of the aorist stem in the 'sigmatic' aorists of the liquid stems could be treated differently from compensatory lengthening in a fossiliz.cd verbal form 61,AOµat. It is important to note that the distinction between -outat, and -ii>tat on the back axis, parallel to the distinction between -£itat and -iitat disproves decisively Ruijgh's hypothesis of a phonological adaption of the strict Doric dialect of Cyrene to the Hellenistic lwiM. For as soon as is admitted as result of /o/ + /o/ and /o/ + /e/, we would expect to touc; Aoyouc;, as the argument that the dialect in question the adaption of e.g. toe;A6-yoc; had only three degrees of opening on the back axis against four degrees of opening on the front axis can no longer be maintained .. The same problem, in fact, arises when it is admitted that -iiv was the original infinitive morpheme in Theocritus, as we would expect-according to Ruijgh's theory-a restructuring of this infinitive morpheme to -£iv, parallel to the restructuring of ap0..11to Eq>V..tt.

6 Conclusion The distribution of the long E- and 0-vowels in Theocritus which Ruijgh attributed to a 'phonological modernization' of the dialect of Cyrene which had taken place in the (hypothetical) dialect of Alexandrian Cyrenaean, is better explained by the hypothesis that

16

ABBENES

Thcocritus imitated this distribution from a text originally wrincn in severe Doric, but modernized during the process of µetaxapalC'tTlptaµ6;. In this adaptation of a text originally written in a fonn of severe Doric the ancient editors did not therefore take the true, unaltered dialect as the sole base on which to decide writing , or and , or . Their concern seems to have been just as much to avoid confusion for the reader. It is for this reason that e.g. the results of contraction in one particular morphological category, as in the thematic infinitive in -TtV,or in the nominal stems oii>AO;, A.cotpo-could differ from the results of contraction in the indicative forms of the contract verbs. As a result of this 'categorial modernization' we find a mixture of severe Doric forms with forms belonging to the Hellenistic koine. In the endings of the genitive singular and accusative plural of the 0-stcms, but also in a few nominal and verbal stems, like &ii>.oc;, OT)AOµal and others we find severe Doric fonns. As to verbal morphology, in the contract verbs in -icoand -6co,in the Doric futures, but also in the passive participles in -ei;, -8tiaa we find fonns having the same vowel quality as the corresponding forms of the Hellenistic koine. In the verb 'to be' we have infinitive ~µ£V, but indicative £iµi, dµa;. The 'sigmatic' aorists of liquid stems, and the corresponding yod-prescnts of the same etc. arc all written with . The thematic infinitive on the other stems, the fonn ep£lA.O> hand seems, to judge by the data collected by Molinos Tejada (1990: 70) to have been wrincn originally with -1,v,or, when a short vowel was required., -r:v. As the same distribution recurs in the text of Aleman, the anonymous Dissoi Logoi, the genuine texts of Archytas and Philolaus and the pseudo-Pythagorean texts, it follows that this distribution should be seen as a traditional clement in the language of Thcocritus, as a set of rules devised for all texts wrincn in strict Doric, but edited fa- an 'international• public. As we cannot assume a process of µctaxapalC'tTlptaµ.6; for Thcocritus, it also follows that the distribution of the long E- and 0-vowcls as we have it forms part of a literary severe Doric tradition. In other words, in the distribution of the long E- and 0vowcls Thcocritus follows the lead of (among others) Alcman's transliterated text, taking over distinctions which were not at home in Aleman' s dialect, nor-in this form-in any spoken West-Greek dialect. Likewise, the pseudo-Pythagorean texts must have followed the lead of the genuine texts of Archytas and Philolaus (which also must have undergone a process of µct..£1t«c;v6oro, 95) as her erotic possession by Delphis: ,cuoav £I£\ µ£ 'tcUa\vav oMiv6\oc; (96).54 Although she immediately defines the cure as fetching the cause (Delphis), his arrival will of course be a cure which does not alleviate but instead compounds her problem. Most relevant to this discussion of the appearance of epicisms in Simaitha's speech is that the wording of her command to Thestylis indicates Simaitha's perception that her love 'illness' was a problem of epic magnitude requiring an epic solution or cure. 55 Simaitha introduces her instructions to Thestylis about the message for Delphis with another speech formula involving yet another level of embedding: she embeds her own brief speech within her own embedded speech: nicp' &n ('tell him that'), followed by the (101). This quotation sustains Simaitha's actual brief message: Itµai8a n> 1eµ.oc; (the outward trappings of love) to musings phrased in more elevated language on the power of Eros (the internal, emotional aspects of love) just before he seduces Simaitha. One critic has described Dclphis' comments about love (epcoc;,133) in this section as 'patently insincere' and their tone as 'suspiciously high-flown'.94 The change in subject-matter and tone is immediately conspicuous in other ways. Dclphis begins the second section of his speech by repeating that Simaitha, and not he, was the initiator of the relationship. But in this second reference to her invitation, far from commenting on her behavior unflatteringly, Delphis profusely thanks Kypris and Simaitha for Simaitha's ovcrturc.9 5 This focalization of Dclphis' embedded speech illustrates how Simaitha re-fashioned what some critics have construed as an unacceptable overture by a woman into an action for which Delphis expressesgratitude. Another measure of Dclphis' change of tone and attitude in the second section of his speech is his newly respectful address to Simaitha: ooyuvat (132); in the first section of his speech, he sat on her bed and familiarly referred to her as 'Simaitha'. In Homeric epic, 91 92

93 94 95

See Copley (1956: 1-27) on doors as lhc traditional point of entry. See 100 Segal(1985: 106-7) on doors, lhresholds and door magic. The discussionby Segal (1985) on inner and outer space is invaluable in supporting this argumenL See also While (1979: 17-21), who argues very convincingly for Simaitha's location inside the house. On lhc unnecessaryaspect of Delphis'commentsunderthe circumstances,see Walker (1980: 97). Hopkinson (1988: 164) on 130-8.He also comments on his use of high poeticisms,ad loc. Gross (1985: 58) argues that the expression vuv 6i: xa:pw indicates that Delphis is approaching his peroration. I do not agree with him that the inclusion of this peroration indicaies that this pan of Delphis' speech lacks amatory intensity.The phrase is instead a way of inuoducing the appearanceof greater erotic intensity with lhc inclusionof the moreelevated languageof love.

NARRATIVEAND ALLUSION

45

yuvut is a respectful form of address made by a man to his wife (e.g. Hektor to Andromache, II. 6.441), or it can be used in a non-marital relationship (e.g. Antenor to Helen, II. 3.204; Odysseus to Nausikaa, Od. 6.168). The use of the vocative in Theoc. 2 n:calls the dignified epic usage and contributesto the impressionof the elevated tone of the passage. LeGrand (1898: 118) persuasively describes the change in tone as Theocritus' deliberate contrast of sentimentaljargon and the powerful language of love, but he does not provide a rationale for the juxtaposition of such apparently contradictory emotions within Delphis' speech. I think that this contrast can be explained in the following way. In the first section of Delphis' speech, creating a negatively critical image of Delphis was a primary objective; in the process of creating this picture, panly through Delphis' claims that he would have played the comastic lover, Simaitha's frustrated desires for an ideal lover also were able to surface subtly. In contrast, the second section of the speech has a different aim: it leads directly into their sexual liaison and must establish a convincing explanation for Simaitha' s, not Delphis', initiation of sexual contact (she pulls him down on the bed (139)). The speech therefore continues to reflect Simaitha's focalization, but the focalization has a different end The shallow coldness of Delphis depicted in the first section would not justify her rapid response (138,.9) or her impression of the heat of their encounter (140-1) For this reason, in the second section of Delphis' embedded speech the descriptions of love mirror her activities and passionate emotions, not his.96 Internal evidence suppons this suggestion.The section of Delphis' speech describing the power of Eros is replete with imagery of fire, warmth and melting (2.131, 133, 134, 137), the very images that played such an integral part in the dramatic opening of the poem: in Simaitha's magical practices aimed at Delphis (2.18, 24, 28, 33, 54), her descriptions of love (2.40) and her fantasy of the pain or reciprocal passion she hoped to provoke in Dclphis with her magic (2.26, 29). Fire also figures powerfully in her retrospective narrative supplying the backgroundfor her magical incantations:fiery heat is symptomatic of the love-sickness that afflicts her after her first sight of Delphis (2.82, 83, 85).97 Likewise, the subject of madness, fundamental to Delphis' final statement about the power of Eros-Eros frightens a maiden with evil madness from her bedchamber and a 96

97

For this~. I do not agree widl Hopkinson(1988: 164) on 130-8 that Dclphis' comments about Erosare 'patently insincere'.since I think these comments are filrercd through Simaitha's narrative lenses. I think, instead, they are reflections of Simaitha's emotions. Griffiths (1979: 86 n.6) says "Simaitha's rhetoric apes that of Dclphis", but surely dlis cannotbe correct 1 think it is imponant to keep in mind not just the chronologyof the fabula (events as they happened in the fictional story) but events as they are narrated. We are viewing lhese events through Simaitha's filter, as she recollects them, not as dley occur. I think therefore that Griffiths has invened the relationship between Simaitha's and Delphis' speech. Dclphis' speech in actuality 'apes' hers becauseshe is narratingboth! On fire as die common denominatorin Simaitha'sdesaiptions of magical incanralionsand her erotic feelings, see Segal (1985: 108-12).

46

ANDREWS

wife from the warm bed of her husband (136-8)-forms an important element of her 98 magical incantation, and comprises part of the emotionaVphysical illness induced by her first glimpse of Delphis, before she ever hears him speak (Theoc. 2.82).99 Finally, Delphis' overall treatment of the topic of Eros seems to reveal Simaitha's focalization. Extolling the power of Eros is not uncommon in the final moments of Homeric seduction scenes. For example, in both Iliad 14 and Iliad 3, Zeus' and Paris' declarations of the overpowering nature of Eros precede their explicit suggestions that they go to bed and make love (which they do). 100But, in Theoc. 2, that kind of a declaration develops a more sinister aspect to Eros: sexual desire combines with madness to frighten women, according to Dclphis' examples. Why would Delphis be professing just before they make love that Eros is in essence the enemy? 101 And furthermore, instead of declaring, as Paris and Zeus do, the power of Eros over him, why does he attest to the power of Eros to ruin the lives of married and unmarried women? His timing and comments seem inexplicable unless we assume that his words are filtered, as throughout, by Simaitha the narrator, and that she rewms full cin:le to Odysscan allusions in this final part of Dclphis' speech.102 Dclphis' vocative address a,yuvai introduces his meditations to Simaitha on Eros' power, and the genitive 1tei0itc; reaction as a character to bis speech at the time of the event, not the actual emotional reaction that compelled her to initiate the sexual liaison directly after he finished speaking. This final speech formula also serves as a strong indictment of Delphis' speech: she does not evaluate the truthfulness of bis speech, as she did with her own; rather, she implies that if she was too easily persuaded, then he was too persuasive, and not necessarily truthful. But ironically, if what I have argued above about Delphis' speech is true, Simaitha is in reality too easily persuaded by her own emotions which focalizc Delphis' speech. The implicit condemnation of Dclphis, however. achieved through her self-critique of herself as taxu1tei0itc;.is an effective rhetorical device for the narrator to win sympathy for herself, which she needs to do to deflect attention from the fact that she herselfwas culpable: as I noted above, she did not after all play the virtuous Nausikaa to Delphis' failed Odysseus by manifesting Nausikaa's awareness of public reputation: she, and not Delphis, made the decisive seductive move here. Ul6

a

so overwhelmed each of lhcm as at that momenL All three Slatements begin with oi>')1ipKeo.For a discussion of these passages, sec GroM(1985: 35-9). 105 Griffiths (1970: 83), citing Simaitha's complaint at 41, where she says that he made her a wretched non-virgin instead of his wife, believes that Simaitha misunderstood and thought she was to be Delphis' wife when he addressed her as yuva1. I think instead that her particular focalization as reflected in Delphis' speech gives her the grounds for her later complaint at 41. 106 This was also true of her invitation 10 Delphis to visit her. In the analysis of that scene, I suggested that she momentarily played Paris to Delphis' Helen: interestingly, that parallel is maintained to some extent here. Simaitha narraacsDelphis' speech on tp~ and then with a physiC:l.lgcslW'Cinvites him to bed, as Paris invited Helen verbally.

48

ANDREWS

3.4 Embedded Indirect Speech 2: Mother of Philista's Speech to Simaitha Simaitha embeds a fourth and final speech (the second indirect speech) after her account of the actual affair near the end of the poem (145-54). She uses the indirect speech of a minor character to signal the end of the affair, just as she used a minor character's (the nurse's) speech to signal the beginning of the affair. 107 Simaitha relates that the mother of Philista explained Delphis' long absence by telling Simaitha all she knew about Delphis' new love interest. While this reported speech contains more details than the nurse's speech, Simaitha does not report it as direct speech, which suggests that it is not as important as the direct speeches of herself or of Delphis. Nonetheless, as with her even briefer report of the nurse's speech, Simaitha accentuates the impact of Philista's mother's speech. She introduces it with a Homericizing time frame: she did not just hear about Delphis' infidelity 'today', but 'today, when the steeds galloped toward heaven, bearing the rosy dawn from Ocean' (147-8). 108 Tbis epicism, although described by Fabiano as the most 'shocking' and 'out-of-tune' epicism in the poem, in fact allows Simaitha to grant the speech event large-scale significance.109 Consequently, she communicates as well the monumental nature of her emotions and the devastating blow dealt to them by hearing this painful speech. 110 Three speech formulas, unaccompanied by additional information, are used to introduce the information that Philista's mother's conveys: 1Cd1te, OUKtcpa't', and Kai 111 cpa.'to. All of the verb forms occur in epic although these precise phrases do not; again, their occurrence adds subtly to the Homeric effect. A speech formula with a decidedly ~eiva µu&naa'to (154). This Homeric ring caps the reported speech: 'tau'ta µol formula is closely followed by an evaluation of Philista's mother: ian 6' a11.a8nc;.112 Simaitha's highly poetic epic introduction, the capping formulas and the closing emphasis on Philista's mother's veracity suggest that Simaitha wants to confer on this embedded speech an authority and dignity far surpassing that of Delphis' longer speech which directly precedes this final speech. The weight and truth-value granted to this speech and to the speaker by the introductory and closing speech formulas invite a closer examination of the framework in

a.

107 On this point see Segal (1985: 113). 108 This phrase is not precisely Homeric but has Homeric ovenones to iL On pol>6£oauv,see Gow (1952: ad loc.) for pol>6eaauv as an alternative to pol>6xuxuv (h.Hom. 31.6 of Dawn) and pooc>ooim>AO(j (ll. and Od.). l09 Fabiano (1971: 535-6) agrees with LeGrand concerning vv. 147-8. LeGrand, in Fabiano's words, "rightly pointed out the eXlremeimproprietyof such an epic locution". 1JO Clearly the entire first half of the poem was triggered by Philista's mother's speech. which also l 11 112

illustratcS its impact These fall into the category that De Jong (1987: 201) tenns 'locutionary speech acts'. On ciA.110,i; Gow (1952: ad loc.) notes that "the strict meaning is, of course. she is a trlll/rfulperson. but the implied me:ining what she said is true is required 10 explain the following -yap". The verb form µu0,iacno is however common in epic.

NARRATIVEAND ALLUSION

49

which they appear and of the information Philista's mother gives Simaitha. In the text, the speech of Philista's mother comes directly after the following framing statement by Simaitha about Delphis: mute tt ti;voc; 6' &t' OXO>plvoc; l3op£11c; cpOp£UO'lV ci1Ca.v8ac; exµx£6iov, Jt'UIC\Val 6e xpoc;cillftlnatv £XOV'ta\. we; 'tTlVaµxD..ayoc;oc;... , femer 13.43-4 ... Nuµcpat xopov cipdCov'to, Nuµcpat ciicoiµ11'tot)zu halten. Doch bei alien von ihm angcfilhnen Parallelcn wircidie Wicdcrholung vorgenommen, um cin zunllchst ohne Bciwort gcsctztcs Substantiv mit einem Epitheton oder einer andercn Bestimmung zu versehen; an der vorliegcnden Stelle wircidcr L6wc abcr schon bci der crstcn Erwllhnung in 61 11uyivetoc; gcnannL Die bci dcr Beibchaltung von 61 cntstchcnden Probleme mit dcm Indcfinitpronomen in 62 wcrden durch Fritzsches Bcispiclc cbenfalls nicht ausgerllumL Einc GUlttung durch Einfiihrung cincs rclativischcn Pronominaladvcrbs vcrsucht Madvig durch seine Konjcktur in 62 (wobei 61 athctien wird): ve~pou cp8eyl;aµivac; 6' o>µocpti-yoc; lie;. Wie Vahlen (1907: 307) bcrcits herausgestcllt hat, ist diescr Eingriff in den iibcrliefertcn Text wcgen der zahlrcichcn Beispielc fUr paratalctische Vcrgleichsformen nicht vertrctbar. Gleiches gilt fur Sedlmaycrs (1880: 149) il; rova.c;ci>c; a11:eu6£t (bei Athctesc von 61), desscn einzigcr Einwand die paratalctischc Form ist. Madvigs Vorschlag cmpfiehlt sich meines Erachtens aber auch dcswcgen nicht, weil kcinc der zahlrcichen lokativischen Angaben von opoc; bei Theokrit (anders als in II. 13.471 u.O.) im blo8en Dativ stcht 11 Zu Bcginn von Theoc. 14.39 bieten die Kodiz.es µaa'taica 6' ota, liefem also ein Relativum als zweites Won des Gleichnisses. Doch bei dieser Lcsan hinge µaa'ta1Ca in der Luft, und cs miiBteder Ausfall cines Verses vor 39 angenommen werdcn, wie cs Paley (vgl. Oiolmelcy [1919: Apparat zur Stelle]) gctan hat. Die Mehrzahl dcr Editorcn ala.cptiert Waldcers Konjektur 6oiaa, die durch die Paraphrase der Scholien ( ... 'tpoqn1V6ovaa 'to~ vroaoo~ ... ) gestiitzt wird. Theoc. 17.9-10, das krasseste Beispiel filr das hicr untersuchtc Phllnomen, ist von den Tcxtzcugen einhellig in seincr paratalctischen Form iibcrliefcn. Zweifel an der Richtigkcit dcr Obcrlicferung in diesem Punlct kommen gcradc von Vahlen, dem doch das Verdienst gebiihn, vcrschiedene Beispiele fur paratalctischc Gleichnisse aus Theokrit und andercn Dichtcm zusammengcstellt, crstmals ausflihrlich crlauten und dabei gegcn konjckturalkritische Anderungsvcrsuchc verteidigt zu habcn. Vahlen (1907: 31~1) hilt den verbindungsloscn Obergang zwischcn den Versen 10 und 11 filr hart, aber an sich nicht fur uncrtrllglich. Dennoch kommt er auf Grund eincs andercn Ansto8es zu der Annahme, dazwischen sei ein Vers ausgefallen, welcher auch ein Demonstrativpronomcn enthaltcn habc, daseincn AnschluB des So-Tcils herstclltc. Vahlens Einwand gegcn die ilbcrlicfertc Tcxtgestalt geht von 13 £IC m'tiprov aus, das nicht mit dem Folgenden verbunden werdcn diirfe. Es konne sich nicht auf Ptolemaios Soter bcziehen, da dessen Tugend als eigcnstandig dargestellt werde. Vielmehr seien die Worte als Antwon auf die vorausgegangenc Fragc nach dem Ausgangspunkt des Hymnos zu beziehen (sie betrafen also die

11

In diesemZusammenhangist es wichlig anzumericen,da8 Madvigversehentlichdas unmetrische«ix; i:vouptaw vorgeschlagenhat.vgl. dazu Vahlen(1907: 307).

76

BERNSDORFF

Vorfahren des Ptolemaios Philadelphos). Da aber die Frage ti ,cpii>tov,cat«At;m; (11) formal nicht mit der Angabe £IC xatiprov iibereinstimme,nimmt Vahlen den Ausfall eines Verses zwischen 10 und 11 an, der die passende Fragefonn enthielt und zudem ein Demonstrativpronomen aufwies, e.g.: 'tOlOVal,ayaµai te tffi1l1tCX te, aeia1a a• alVO)v auµxcivtO>V A.\yucp..11oc.ov.

PARATAKTISOIE GLEICHNISSE

87

Fallen wini damit don der Tod eines Heiden auf dem Schlachtfeld illustrien. 50 Diescr durch die Tradition vorgegebeneBeiklangdes Destruktivenbewirktcine Tendenz.die dem auf der Hauptebene Gesagten entgegenlliufLDenn der Dichter will das. was er aus den unzihligen Vorzilgendes Heiden Ptolemaiosals Thema fur seinen Hymnos auswahlt.nicht vernichten. sondern vielmehr durch seine Darstellung bewahren. und doch zieht er zum Vergleich einen Vorgang heran. der durch Homer als Illustration filr die endgiiltige Vcmichtungeincs Heiden gleichsamvorbelastetisL Die parallelen Formulierungentliuschenalso einen engen inhaltlichen Parallelismus nur vor. In Wahrheit lliBtTheokrit bier einen Zug besonders stark hervonrctcn. der der Ausdrucksform des Gleichnisses gcncrcll cigcn ist und mit Hunter (1993: 131) "inadequacy of the simile" gcnannt werdcn kann.51 Die von Hunter (1993: 130-1)zu zwci Apolloniosgleichnisscn(2.278-86 und 4.1682-8) vorgetrageneDeutung trifft auch auf die vorliegendeThcokritpassagezu: "When the two parts [d.h. Wic-Teil und So-Tell] arc very closely matched structurallyand/or verbally,the parallelism (paradoxically)alerts us to the artficiality of the 'likeness• and to the very reality of difference that the purely linguistic construct of the simile cannot contain. The over-determinedness of the simile in fact emphasizesits inadequacy." Da dicse inhaltlichen Schwierigkciten also den kilnstlichcn Charaktcr von Gleichnisscn ilberhaupt veranschaulichen, liegt die Vcrmutung nahc. daB Theokrit in diescm Punkt dassclbc Ziel wie mit dem Verzicht auf die Vcrglcichsw1C01voA.£I11c; AtyiaOoc; muoc; 6puv UA.OtOl&O\ axi~OUCJ\mpa cpoviq,1t£A,£1C£\. Schon DrOgemiiller(1956: 147) hcbt den thematischen Uncerschiedzwischen dem homerischenund dem theokriteischenGebrauch des Holzfllllerstoffes hervor. Sein SchluB,Theokrit babe "an die altepischen Vergleichsbilder... kaum gedacht", kann angesichts der von DrOgemllller(1956: 147) selbst betoncenGelllufigkeitdes Motivs aus Homer nicht llberzeugen. Slrikt betrachcet wird in den Thcokritversen im Gegensatz zu den genanncen Homergleichnisscndas Fllllen selbst nicht beschrieben, sondem der Schritt davor. Aber in dieser Differcnz ist kein Hindemis fllr die oben angenommenc Assoziation zu sehen; worin das in 10 erwlhnte EP"fOV besceht,bringt das SubsWltivµevo~? We could. of course, deny the identity of the Arati since that of poem 7 is within the song of Simichidas,who is at least to some degree a fictional character.But that Simichidasalso in someway reflects Theocritus himself. and in a small corpus of poems the disjunction of the two appearancesof an Aratus becomes implausible.So I would accept the view that the Aratus of 6 is the same as that of 7, and suggest either (as did Ott} that we arc to suppose that the Aratus of 6 is a couple of yearsyounger than that of 7-a hypothesisthat would fit the likely order of composition of these two poems-or that a shift from the role of is in itself unproblematic.12 ipacm,~ to ipcoµ£Voc; But the more interesting question is the bearing of my reading of poem 6 on our reading of poem 7. I shall make no attempt to sketch the numerous conflicting lines of interpretationthat have been offeredof poem7. Let me focus rather on an clement in all that I have encountered-including my own discussion of 1985-that now seems to me 11

12

OU (1969: 70 n.207):..Aratos bekommt Thcoltrits Liebe zu ihm und seine eigcne Kokcueric dun:b die Blume, am Excmplum von Polyphcmos und Galaiea vorgchaltcn; nadlrlich SlCClttcin gutcs StOclt schcrzhaftcr Sclbstironic, wcnn sich Thcoltrit sich dcm Kyltlops vcrglcicht (cf. 11); als positives Bcispicl client die Einmutigkcit von Daphnis und Damoctas. Dass sic nicht crotisch dargestellt ist.muss als Delika1essedes Wcrbendcngeltcn, dcr seine Wllnschcnicht in Wortc fassl". er.Dover (1978: 86-7).

96

BOWIE

unsatisfactory. The journey to the harvest festival at Haleis, in the middle of which Simichidas' encounter and exchange with Lycidas are set, concludes appropriatelyenough with a long and lush description of the locusamoenusin which the celebration takes place. The festival has been interpreted by Lawall (1967: 102) as an "allegory of poetic inspiration" in which the fruits in some way stand for the Theocritean poetry whose collection Lawall takes this poem to conclude and celebrate. I find this notion difficult, but do not regard it as one that need be refuted in order to justify further probing. What seems to me positively to demand such further probing is the point well made by Pearce (1987: 276-87): when Greek writers of poetry or prose present an encounter with a divinity of the sort upon which Simichidas' encounter with Lycidas appears to be modelled, that encounter is regularly followed by some consequential action-in many cases taking the form of more facile or impressive composition of literary works. Pearce also holds (1987: esp. 296, 300), as have most interpreters, that the locus amoenus of 7.132-57 must be of great importance for the poem's overall interpretation. However I am not persuaded by his view that Simichidas' encounter with Lycidas has made him receptive to the intimations of divinity regularly present in a locusamoenus,and that consequentlyhe is now enabled to compose a true Pou,c:ol1,c:aa:0180.which the reader can see to be different to his earlier song with its urban features (96-127). The chief arguments against this view arc the following. First, both Lycidas (49) and Simichidas (36, 92) seem to regard the song Simichidas sings earlier as a representative Pou,c:ol1,c:a.0µocpayo; il; EUVO~ £01t£U0£V t'CO\µO'tv; Thuc. 3.113.5. 7.71.1; Paus. 3.23.3. Latte tried palaeographical manipulation, but his 'tov 1tapEOA.1tEt, 'waited in vain for him' ( 1956: 26-7) is unconvincing. er.A.R. 1.525, where Argo is CttOltEPXOUOa VEEmlat;3.685 0uiEvEVlOltElV. Or perhaps µEM.£ viEa8at. 'wasdelaying her departure'.

CUSTOMISINGTHEOCRITIJS

107

Here is a further problematic section of the text: PassageD

alla 6u:~,il~£!3a8uv6' eiaropcxµ£aa1.v, aiero~ ihc;,µi-ya lcxii:µcx,acp' ot>i:6-texo1.pa6~ roi:cxv.

(13.23-4)

These lines arc from a preliminary anticipation of the Argo's trip, and describe her passage through the Clashing Rocks. 'She did not touch them,' (says the previous line) 'but shot out through, and ran on into the deep Phasis eagle-like lhe mighty ocean (since when then they stood fast, reefs).'

So much is wrong with these two lines that it is difficult to know where to start. First, if you shoot through the Symplegades, you run not into the Phasis, the Argonauts' destination at the far end of the Black Sea, but the Pontus itself, which is indeed what Apollonius says in his equivalent passage.1° Secondly, 61.e~cxiaaco doesn't naturally take an object of the space rushed into, as seems to be required here-for µ£"(ex lcx'itµcxcan only be construed in the sentence as the object of that verb. Thirdly, µtycx ACX'ii:µa itself is an Apollonian phrase for the open sea, 11 and could hardly refer to a river, however large. Fourth Iy, 'since when then• is no more Greek than 'ex quo tune tempore', with which Rumpel glosses it in his Lexicon, is Latin. Fifthly, the Phasis is never 'deep' in Apollonius ('broad': 2.401, 1261). Sixthly and finally, the whole sentence is a hyperbatic jumble.12 A solution adopted by some editors (e.g. Wilamowitz) is to adopt the clever, if desperate, suggestion of Jacobs and transpose the second halves of the two lines after their caesurae. 'But she shot out through, since when then they stood fixed as reefs, like an eagle into the vast ocean, and ran into the deep river Phasis.' This docs not seem to me much of an improvement. If we keep the text as it is transmitted, surely, for starters, TT6v,:ovshould replace 001.v at the end of 24. The Black Sea is indubitably deep, and the Black Sea is what you enter when you pass the Clashing Rocks. 'Since when then they stood firm as fixed rocks'. with its horrible Greek, looks to me like another remnant of annotations. acp' 01> itself might be all right-at least, Simaetha is twice allowed to use the expression in poem

10

11 12

A.R. 2.579: as the heroes are in the middle of the rocks, 'already the broad Pontus was visible on either side'. er.also Theoc. 22.27-8. 4.980, 1694; cf. Lobeck on S. Aj. 475. Campbell (1974) explicates the main structure as follows: Argo 'shot through and clear of (-t~-) and so ran into Phasis' deep water [reached her destination], like an eagle a vast expanse of sea'. Wonderful things can be demonstrated with the help of three kinds of brackets.

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2-but it requires a present verb, not an aorist,13and can hardly cohabit with 't0't£. Koine, however, uses the barbarous phrase axo 'tO't£. 'from that point on' (three times in Matthew); that is what I think appeared in the interlinear commentary, and it has taken advantage of its position at the end of the paragraph to tag itself on. Once there, the new line needed to be filled ouL What of the rest? 'Like an eagle a mighty ocean' looks poetic enough-µtyn Mii-rµa is an Apollonian phrase, as we have seen, and the eagle sounds like the one in B. 5.16-9-but it might just as easily be someone's stopgap. After all, eagles may soar over great tracts of earth and sea, but they hardly dash into them. As for µcyaMi-rµa, my Theocritus would have avoided the use of the phrase precisely because it had been used by Apollonios, whom he is here putting righL I prefer to believe that Theocritus wrote

allcx 6lt;ch;e pa&uv 6' eiawpaµ£ TI6vtov. 'but she shot out through, and ran on inlOdeep Pontus.•

-that and no more; finishing the paragraph, and the introductory section of the poem, with a straightforwardimage of triumphantliberation. There may be another example of the Hellenistic commentator in his would-be helpfully versificatory,rather than helpfully exegetic, mode: Pass~gcE 1ecpxt:e'"YMX~0 ;av8o~ u&op bn66p,nov 0\0'(l)V au-rep8' 'Hpad..i;l 1eal acnqupe:i T£A.aµO>Vl, Olµiav ciµq,co i:taipol ae:i 6aivuvto 'tp(X1t~QV' X«A.1C£0V ayyo~ £XO>V.

(13.36-9)

'BlondicHylaswas off to fcu:bwater for dinner, for Hcracleshimselfand wibudgingTelamon,comma, mates who alwaysusedbothIO banquet a single table, comma, canying a bronzebuclceL'

I don't like the third line. I don't specially object to the expression 'banquet a table•, though that seems to be new; LSJ gives 6aita, yaµov, -rcicpov,as well of course as the food consumed, as regular objects. and cites this passage as unusual-it docs rather sound as if they were gnawing at the furniture, like refugees from the Aeneid. What I dislike is that it is slack, explaining something to us that we do not need explained. More seriously. it seems to me to interpose too much material between the two participles referring to Hylas, breaking the back of the sentence with a second end-stopped line; we thought the narrative

13

On the form icnav sec Veiich (1887: 300): Pi. (Doric!) N. 1.19; II. 1.533 civimav I 'SIOOd up', resumed two lines laicr with the simplexform (sec Reneban 1985:28-9,with references10 his earlier work) foi:av iixavu;.

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was taking a different direction, .only to be jolted back to the boy with the bucket after an interval of two lines. And it repeats a verbal conceit that was used only five lines before, where n:olAoi heroes shared a single, µiav, bed.14 Here again, then, I suspect the interfering presence of our A-level tutor making explicit and wordy what had been terse and allusive in Theocritus' original; he has recycled the •many sharing a single' idea from line 33, explaining to his class exactly what Telamon's relationship with Heracles was. There is at least one other case where a long-recognised problem looks explicable on the assumption of intrusive paraphrase-verse 15, which seems to be an explanatory alternative to 14. But I don't wish to push the argument further, for fear of undennining my ow.n case. Obviously the last example is less strong than the others, and perhaps the Bentley in me is beginning to get out of hand. I hope though that A, B and C have established a prima facie case for the hypothesis of interference with the author's text, a case strong enough to enable us to return to my main target, the last line of Passage B: (13.75) It will be remembered that the whole thrust of the second part of the poem seems to be to shatter the image of the tutorial Heracles we met at the outset, and replace it with a beastHeracles, reviled by his shipmates. This last line seems to want to correct that picture, but succeeds only in leaving behind an impression of half-cocked and half-beaned confusion.IS Now that we have evidence for the intrusion of prosaic material elsewhere in the poem, are we any funher on? Yes, because the adverb n:e~~. •on foot', is an unpoetisches Wort. 16 Poets use the adjective n:e~oc;-32 times in Homer, 23 in Nonnus, again at Theocritus 17.99. Poets never use the adverb-that is, not proper poets. The TLG provides two fragments from Attic comedy, and one example in Kerkidas, writing in that most prosaic of all verse-forms, skazons. (Callimachus, incidentally, would have savoured the fact that n:e~~is not only the prosaic expression for 'pedesnian' but also the technical Greekfor the word •prosaic' itself.) Now, it would be easy enough to emend -~ to -6c;, but I'm not proposing that solution. I'm proposing to delete the line, not this time as an accidental intruder, but as a quite deliberate interpolation. But who could possibly have had a motive for tacking this feeble appendage on to the poem? Let us take a short break from the programme and watch some more commercials for thegeneralidea of idiosyncratic visions of texts and authors. This time, though, I want 14

IS 16

Cf. IOO22.30. also Argonautic: 'many came down a single ladder'. J.L~ 1toA.A.Ol mta 1CA.iµa~. The conceit is examinedby McKay(1991). See the discussionin Mastronarde(1968: 287-8 with n33). arguing against Gow's comma.in favour of a colon. Caution is needed in deploying this criterion,for the poet certainly admits prosewords and idioms10 some degree, in some cases; sec e.g. Masuonarde (1968: 282 n.22), on~ ~tl.oc; n. I have tried 10 employ it only as an ancillaryargumenL

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to emphasise not private obsessional visions but public, shared ones, in which critics and editors collude with their audience to produce sometimes bizarre distortions of familiar texts. In 1826, Thomas Bowdler produced his edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of tM RomanEmpire.The title page identified the market he was aiming at: FOR THE USE OF FAMILIES AND YOUNG PERSONS, REPRINTED FROM THE ORIGINAL TEXT wrrn THE CARERJL OMISSIONS OF ALL PASSAGES OF AN IRRELIGIOUS OR IMMORAL TENDENCY Bowdler had predecessors. Nahum Tate's perversion of King Lear, which he brought out in 1681, remained the standard British performing version until W.C. Macready restored Shakespeare's text in 1838. It reflected the fact that the meat of Lear was too strong for eighteenth century taste. To correct this, it omits the Fool, introduces a love affair between Edgar and Cordelia, and finally commits Lear, Gloucester, and Kent to peaceful retirement Staying with Shakespeare, back to Bowdler's edition. 17 He offers us a Bard (the title page again) IN WHICH NOTIIING IS ADDED TO THE ORIGINAL TEXT BUT THOSE WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS ARE OMI I IED WHICH CANNOf wrrn PROPRIETY BE READALOUDIN A FAMILY Our ancient lecturer on Theocritus, it seems, was not so scrupulous. He was quite prepared to 'add to the original text', in order to present a less shocking picture ofHeracles to his students. In fact, oddly enough, he seems precisely to invert Bowdler's estimation of the offence involved in editorial tinkering-he leaves the objectionable lines standing, but appends an apologetic afterthought Heracles is still a deserter, a raging lunatic-but later on he calmed down and returned to the colours. At any rate, what is involved here is clearly anxiety about a1tpt2t~. improper activity, behaviour unbecoming to gods and heroes. My Theocritus, I conclude, has been interfered with by some busybody of the school of Aristarchos, forever fretting about poetic propriety, and not caring whether the poem's point was destroyed in the process. Nor indeed about its elegance: it meant nothing to him that verse 74 was cruelly deprived of its position as last line, a fine, weighty verse that

17

Twenty plays had been edited by his sister Henrietta in 1807; I.herest were completed by him forthe second edition in 1818.

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rounds off its paragraph (and the poem) with a ouvtictv-clause, a common tenninating device in Hellenistic poetry.IS I leave 13 leaner, fitter and sharper than I found it and pass on to poem 24, in which the baby Heracles strangles the murderous snakes sent by the jealous goddess Hera. This is a piece in which The Greek Hero is seen at bay in his last defensible redoubt-infancy. The poem's adult hero, the cuckolded Amphitryon, is presented as an ineffectual character, it is not the head of the household to whom Teiresias issues his instructions, but his wife Alcmene. Amphitryon's great moment comes when the cries of the servants are heard during the night and it becomes obvious to Alcmene that something is up. She digs her husband in the ribs and tells him to get up and son out whatever is wrong. The king gets out of bed, reaches for his inlaid sword, grabs his sword-belt in one hand, his scabbard in the other, and is all set to face the putative burglars when, suddenly, the magic light with which the palace had been mysteriously filled vanishes, and Amphitryon is plunged into obscurity. There is no-one to fight, and no light to see by. All that remains for him to do is to admire the baby's deed, pull Heracles' blanket back over him, and return to bed. There is no longer a role for swashbuckling heroes in Theocritus. The monstrous baby, the mother and the geriatric prophet Teiresias have squee1.Cdhim out Our next passage establishes that this poem has been subjected to the same kind of attentions that we saw in the case of 13. Teiresias is forecasting Heracles' future to his mother, and has been saying unsurprising things like 'he will be a broad-chested hero, a match for any monster or human warrior; he will perform twelve labours and go to heaven from a pyre on Trachis; there he will become the son-in-law of the gods who have sent these snakes'. (That is, Hera, though 2.eus is rather oddly included.) The peroration of this predictioncomes at 86-9: Passage F £0't(Xt 611 'tOU't' &µexp 07tT1VtlCCX VE~pov iv £'\lV~

iccxpxcxp66c.ov aivta8cxt i6ci>vA.uicoc; ouic £8£A.riatt. , '\ '\. L

,

CXII.II.U, "(\)VCXt ..• 'Yea, that day shall come, when the razor-fange.dwolf, catching sight of a fawn in its bed, shall have no desire to hann iL'

18

er.Theoc. 7.82, the bees brought food to Comatas ouvna oi. YA1'1CU Moiaa ICU'ta a-r6µ.a-r~ xu vh:-rap; Call. h. 3.45, the river Caeratus was glad, and so was Tethys, ouvt1Ca Oi,ya-ripa; A1ttC11i61 itiµnov ciµopJ3oi¼:Call. fr. 51 (probably the last line of Aetia 2), ouve1CEV oilC'tEipEwot& µ6Vll 1toA.iC1JV; A.R. 3.470 (end of a seven-line speech by Medea) ouv£1CEV oooi. £YC11YE icaitji ix1yaioµa1 a-rn: cf. 1.615, 3.246. At Call. h. 4.247f., Hera is cross with Delos, but still respects her ouvt1C'iµtio I 6iµv1ov ou1C£7tttffla£,At~ 6' civ8tiu-ro itov-rov.As Ewen Bowie points out to me, the pair of clauses in this last passage would offer a fonnal parallel to the text here as punctualedby Gow: but theretheclausesoffereach other reciprocalreinforcementratherthan making two separate points.

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And he goes on to tell Alcmene how to dispose of the dead dragons. But what of rock or stone is all this about wolves and fawns? It has nothing whatsoever to do with the future of Heracles, or anything else, and I am surprised that some critics are still prepared to give it house-room.19 It is a typical all-purpose fragment of Sibylline prophecy, which had no doubt been quoted in a Hellenistic commentary for illustrative purposes. Actually, since Teircsias had just been praising Alcmene by saying •Aristotokeia, you will become an object of reverence for all Argive women', it may be that the similarity to the wording of Gabriel's annunciation to Mary there caused a later Christian reader to append the couplet, with its Isaiah-like prophecy. Either way, note once again that it is at the end of a speech or paragraph that new material finds it easiest to gain a foothold, as in Passages Band D. 20 Earlier in the poem come a couple of lines of which I am also suspicious: Passage G

tnµo; cip' aivci 1t£A0>pa 6uoo1t0Auµ11xavo;"Hpa, c; t£A.i801te." cpi\, x:ai tproTtOCl~ v..eq,avnvovcheto 6iq,pov Te1peoia~100lloiot ~exp{>~ 1tepro,v iv1autoi~ · 'Hp«ICA£11~ 6' U7CO µatpi VEOV qrotov~ iv MCI)~ itpicpet'. 'Apyeiou IC:£1CAT1µ£VO~ 'Aµqntpt>(l)VO~. ypaµµata µh, tOVn:a'i6ayrprovAivo~i!;e6{6a!;EV... 21

(24.100-5)

// it was an editorial decision; this manuscript(Vat. 1311)gives badly defective texts of otherpoems IOO,as Peter Hicks reminds me. Yet while elsewhere its stopSand starts look random, as if the result of physical damage, this is a clear section-end.

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Teiresias,the ancient ecclesiasticnear the end of his days, finishes his speech, pushes back his chair, and totters off into the Theban sunlight As he departs, we return for a moment to the infant hero with all his future before him: 'While as for Hcracles, he grew up at his mother's knee like some young plant in a garden, known to the world as the son of Amphitryonthe Argive.' A perfect note on which to end the poem, recalling (just in case we had forgotten) the dominant mother and the helpless pseudo-father. Here at last he is given the prominencedue to a hero-but it is, of course, tongue-in-checkand ironical. This µiv ... 6i type contrast (old Teiresias, young Heracles) is exactly the way (as we have seen) in which Theocritus brought poem 13 to a close: 'That's how Hylas comes to be ranked among the immortals; but as for Heracles, the heroes reviled him as a deserter, becausehe abandonedthe thirty-benchedArgo.•22 It is also the technique that became standard for ending a poem in what I may cautiouslycall the genre of 'Hellenisticepyllion'. We know how abruptly Apolloniussnips off the narrative thread at the end of the Argonautica.Two similarlycrisp closures come to mind. First, the Pasiphae story in Book 1 of Ovid's Ars Amatoria, where a 36-linc story is brisklyconcludedat 3~ by a birth-announcement: bane tamen impleuit,uacca deceptusaccma, dux gregis, et partu proditus auctor crat

And second, Moschus' Europa, which is rounded off not just with a birth but the prophecy of a birth: ntv 6' &6e 1tpoaecprovuvT\'l>1Cepcoc; Pouc;· "8apaet 1tap8evt1CT1 · µTl6ei6t8t JtOV"Cl.OV ol6µa. autoc; tOl Zruc; eiµt, 1C£iiyyu8ev eiooµat etvat 6uvaµai re cpaVTJµevat Ottl 8V..otµl. ta-upoc;,£11:el aoc; 6e 1t68oc;µ' avirrice t6a11v aA.a µetP110aa8at taupcp ££t66µevov. Kp11t11 6i 0£ 6i~etal 11611 11µ' ffip£'1jf£IClltautOV, 01t"(lVUµq>TJl« 0£t0 (j)lt'l>0£a~av civ' ci>pea ~ouicoA.iov-ta. 'Nymphs taught me too as I was cowherding on the mountains', 7.92). While I do not dispute the presence of the so-called bucolic metaphor in this poem. the existence of a metaphorical connection between herding activity and poetics is not, in and of itself, evidence for generic conceptualization. Not only had the analogy of poet to herdsman existed in Gree.lethought from at least the time of Hesiod without generic implications,12 but poets who were Theocritus' contemporaries used the same metaphorical connection to define their position within various poetic traditions. Callimachus introduced the new form of aetiologicalelegy through the story of his discussions with the Muses on Helicoo (scboL Flor. 15-20);a surviving couplet malcesit clear that his model was the shepherd Hesiod (fr. 2.1-2 Pf.). Elsewhere, in an epigram (36 G-P = 22 Pf. ""AP 7.518), Callimachus pictures himself as one of a group of shepherds who will sing of Astacidcs, a Cretan goathenilost in the mountains. As yet another example, Herondas in Mimiambus8 repons a dreamin which goatherds rip apart his goat and he himself is victorious in a rustic contest involving jumping on a wine skin. He then interprets the dream to mean that critics will pluck apan his poetry but his artistic superiority will assure him future fame. Though the analogy of the herdsman and his animals to the poet and his poetry is here made explicit, the references to Hipponax make it clear that Herondas considers his dramatic sketches the generic heirs of archaic iambography. It appears, then, that Theocritus' contemporaries did not interpret

11

12

Van Sickle (1975: 57: 1976: 24) found it difficult to understand why in Idyll Sa goatherdanda shepherd should be called j3ou1COA.La0t11i with an apparent etymological reference to cowherding. But the difficulty disappears when we recognize that the etymology of ~ov1toA.ui~oµ11land ~ulCOA.uiotcic; was explained by legends about the cowherd who invented this type of singing. The exiensionof lhe term to songs sung by shepherdsand goatherds wasas simple and traditional as the extension of j3ov1t0Aicoto herding of various kinds (see, e. g., /I. 20.221;Ar. Pax 153;E. Pia. 28; Eupolis PCG V 19; Call. Dian. 101, Del. 176). Gutzwiller (1991: 29-44). On the unusually complex form given the traditional analogyof poet 10 herdsman in ldyll 1, sec Guczwillcr(1991: 159-71);Naura (1990: 129-33).

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Simichidas' cowherding and exchange of songs with a goatherd as in any way a generic marker for a new literary kind. If they had, they would not have chosen to use the same metaphoricalidentificationof poet and herdsman to mark their achievementswithin other generic forms. Since the current topic is not the bucolic genre itself but evidence for early Theocriteanpoetry books, this is not the place to discuss either those literary aspects of the Idylls that encouraged their later conceptualization as a new genre nor details about the historical developmentof that concept 13 It is importantto recognize,however,that at least by the time of Moschus in the second century B.C. bucolic poetry was defined by the presence of the bucolic metaphor,that is, the representationof the poet as a cowherd.14 For this reason, we find among the so-called bucolic poems attributed to Moschus and Bion pieces that have nothing to do with herdsmen but concentrateon erotic subjects and lighthearted mythicalthemes.

2 Editionsof Bucolica We tum now, more directly, to the evidence for early Theocriteanpoetry books, working back chronologicallythrough the first two centuries after the compositionof the Idylls. The grammarian Artemidorus issued the earliest documented edition of bucolic poetry during the first half of the first century B.C.15 A native of Tarsus, he was apparentlythe father of Theon, who wrote an authoritativecommentaryon Theocritus during the early principate. Anemidorus' collectionis documentedby an epigram bearinghis name that was transmitted in the bucolic manuscripts with the superscription ixl tft a8pota£1 tmv f3ouicol1icmv ,co1T1µ6.tcov:

Bou1COA.\1Cal Moiaa1 a1topa6£C;,COICO., WV 6' aµa ,cnaa1 ml µ1a; µav6pa;, £Vtlµ1a; cry£A«; 'TheBucolic Muses,oncescatterm, are now all 10gether here in one fold, in one herd' (AP 9.205)

The epigram shows clearly the importance of the bucolic metaphor for Artemidorus' understanding of the nature of bucolic poetry, since here the editor in th~ guise of a herdsmangathers the once scatteredpoems, as if they were herd animals,into one fold. It is much less cenain what poems Anemidorus included in his edition. Since the ancient concept of bucolic had been extended by this time to nonherdingpoems, we cannot 13

14

15

On the historical development of I.hebucolic concept, see Van Groningen (19S8); Van Sickle (197S, 1976); Effe-Binder (1989: 37-48); Nauta (1990: 133-7); Gutzwiller (1991: 17S-82). As pointed out by Gallavotti (1946: xiv). Not only is nonpastoral poetry by Moschus and Bion labeled Bucolica in I.he manuscripts and in Stobaeus, but I.he poet is expressly represented as a cowherdin Bion, fr. 10 and in I.heEpitaphios Bionos. For what is known of Anemidorus, see Wentzel (189S); Van Sickle (1976: 28-31).

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assume that Anemidorus limited himself to Idylls 1, 3-9, and 11.16 We find, for instance, Idyll 13, the Hylas poem, included among Theocritus' bucolic compositions (iv 1:0~ BouJCoA.uc:ot~ by a scholiast commenting on Apollonius Rhodius 1.1236, andAelian (NA 15.19) speaks of Theocritus' iunx song, a clear reference to Idyll 2, as one of his 'pastoral trifles' (voµeu1:t1Ccxxai"fVta). It is also significant that Vergil, who may have been working from Artemidorus' edition in composing the Ecwgues, imitated Idyll 2 extensively and other nonpastoral poems to a lesser extenL 17 Artemidorus' collection li.lcelyalso included non-Theocritean bucolics, particularly the poetry of Moschus andBion.18 About the beginning of the first century B.C. a prominent precedent for anthologizing poetry belonging to a single genre, as opposed to poetry by a single author, had been set by Meleager's Garland. A direct parallel between the epigram collection of Melcagcr and the bucolic collection of Anemidorus exists in the use of a metaphor to define the genre being edited-the plaiting of flowers into a garland for one and the herding of Bucolic Muses into one fold for the other. The similarity to Meleager's anthology, together with the lack of any author's name in Artemidorus' epigram, makes it more likely than not that his edition did in fact include non-Theocritean bucolic poems. We may also be able to deduce something about the order of the Theocritean poemsin Artemidorus' edition, as well as in other ancient editions. Although Gow (1952: I lxviii-iv) claims that the order of the archetype "was in no sense canonical in the early centuries of our era," the arrangement of the poems in the three families of manuscripts (as identified by Gallavotti) and in the Theocritean papyri is not entirely random (see Tables I and It is often noted that certain herding poems-namely, Idylls 1, 3-9-appear first in all the manuscripts except that in the Vatican family the urban Idyll 2 has moved fcxward to follow Idyll 1, which it resembles in structure. None of the papyri, whether early or late, book rolls or codices, offers any evidence to contradict the precedence given to these purely pastoral pocms. 19 It is particularly significant that the manuscripts (with the exception noted above for the Vatican group) agree with POxy. 2064 + 3548, a papyrus of the late second century A.O. and our fullest papyrological evidence for the pastoral Idylls, in surrounding a central core of Idylls 3-7 in various orders with Idyll 1 in first position and Idylls 8 and 9 in last position. Since the consistency that exists in this grouping is probably quite old, stemming from at least the first century B.C., what needs to be explained is how there developed such variability in the order of the internal poems. A number of scholars have argued that Idylls 8 and 9, which are almost certainly spurious, consistently appear after 1-7 because they occupied the concluding positions in

m.

16 17

As Gow (1952: l lxi) asserts. For a list of Vergilianallusions to Theocriws, see Posch (1969, especially 19-27).

18

So Wilamowitz (1905: iii-iv; 1906: 127). See also Gallavoui (1946: xiv) for the possibility of nonTheocriteanpoetry. For instance, Bingen (1982: 312), in an importantreexaminationof the late antique codex published by Wesscly (Plouvre 6678), notes that Idyll I begins at the top of a page and so probably headedthe

19

collection.

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an early book of bucolic poetry. 20 The eighth Idyll, which is commonly dated to the late third or early second century B.C., already displays the mannerism that is characteristic of later Greek bucolic. 21 Idyll 9, probably written somewhat later than Idyll 8, was composed as the concluding piece in a collection. The narrator, who represents himself as present at an exchange of songs between Daphnis and Menalcas and so as a cowherd/poet, begins his coda with an obvious closure device:

Bou1eoA.t1cal Moiaat, µai..a xaipE'te,cpaivE'te6' cp5civ "tcivn:01e'i:yo:,'tT)VOtat n:apo:,vcietaa voµeiat · 'Farewell, Bucolic Muses, and reveal the song that I once sang in the presence or those herdsmen' (9.28-9)

The bucolic poet of ldy/19 was thus writing at a time when it was fashionable to combine editorship of earlier Hellenistic poets with original composition. Although Meleager is our earliest known example of such a composing editor, the process may have begun some decades before the masterful Garland. A terminusante quernfor this early collection of bucolic poetry is offered by Vergil's Eclogues, since Vergil certainly knew Idylls 8 and 9. But he also imitated extensively Idylls 2 and 11, which were not included in the early libel/us. If the Theocritean edition known 10 Vergil was that of Artemidorus, as seems likely, we may assume that Anemidorus used the earlier collection of Idylls 1, 3-9 as an introductory core to his more comprehensive collection of bucolic poetry. How, then, we may ask, did the variability in order in Idylls 3-7 develop? The papyri show that Theocritus' pastoral Idylls circulated in antiquity in an order different from that of any of the three families of manuscripts. The order offered by POxy. 2064 + 3548-1, 6, 4, S, 1, 3, 8, 9-is consistent with the placement of 5 before 7 in POxy. 1618 and with the placement of 4 before 5 in Perg. Rainer (although the latter agrees as well with the Ambrosian and Vatican traditions). Vaughn (1981: 51) has further observed that the author of the hypothesis to Idyll l apparently had a text in which Idyll 6 followed directly after Idyll 1, as in POxy. 2064:22

CXU'tTI ft i>1t68eo1c; eic; .1.ciq>vtv yiypa1t'tCX\, oc; 6ux 'tOU'tOU µev 'tOUei6ulliou -riev,,ice,6ux 6e 'tOUt!;iic;roe; ~O>V'toc; CXU'tOU µv11µoveuet. 'The story here concerns Daphnis,who is dead in this idyll but in the following is treated as living' (Id. 1 arg. b)

20 21

22

Ahrens (1874: 389-91);Christ (1903: 398); Van Sickle (1976: 33). Arland (1937: 64) dales it before 150 B.C.• while Rossi (1971: 25) places it within the third century. See also Gow (1952: 1 lxviii, n.4); Gallavotti (1986a: 16 n.22, where V should be readas VI). But earlier scholars sought to avoid this conclusion: Wendel (1914) prints Meineke's emendation 6ui 't6>Vtl;iii;. while Wilamowitz(1906: 14 n.l) rerained 6ui 'tou tl;iii; but translated it "im folgenden" as a reference to Idylls 6, 8, and 9. Vaughn(1981: 51) prints Wendel's 'tii>v(by mistake, I presume) but reads 'tOl>.

126

GUTZWII.LER

It seems likely that the author of this hypothesis, who immediately goes on to justify the position of Idyll I first in the collection ('tou'to 1tpO'ti'taK'tal 6ux 'to xaplia't£pOv ml 't£XVlKCO'tEpov 'tci>va>..A.COv µ..ucal headed Artemidorus' collection of bucolic verse, so the Chian epigram had been placed before an edition of purely Theocritean poems arranged by his son Theon. Gow (1952: I lxi) has pointed out, however, that Theon's commentary cannot be shown to have been accompanied by an edition. I will argue that for a number of reasons the epigram beginning cilloc;oXioc;must be older than the first century B.C. The first known commentaries on Thcocritus were written by Asclepiadcs of Myrlea probably in the middle of the first century B.C. and by Theon in the Augustan age. 50 Any genuine biographical information about Theocritus included in these commentaries would surely have come down to us in the scholastic tradition. But both the Suda entry on Thcocritus and the yivoc;preserved in the manuscripts present a series of 'facts' that were clearly surmised from the poetry itself.-that Theocritus was the son of Simichus (cf. Simichidas in Id. 7), that he was a Coan by birth (again, Id. 7), that he was a pupil of Philetas and Asclepiades (Id. 7.40). Apart from his floruit, the most convincing biographical information preserved in these two sources-that his homeland was Syracuse and his parents Praxagoras and Philinna-comes directly from the Chian epigram. The edition headed by this epigram must, then, have been issued at a time when some genuine knowledge of Theocritus' life was still circulating, and this was clearly before the first century B.C. Since it is unlikely that scholarly research on Theocritus' biography was conducted during the second century, the most likely date for the composition of the epigram is the third. 48

49

so

So Gow (1952: II 549). But Gallavotti (1986b: 122-3) has now arguedthat the poemwasccmposcd for inscriptionon a commemorativestatue of the poet in Syracuse. He accepts the alternative reading too'found in lhc Anthologyas a reference to a volur,umheld by the poeL Parsons (1987: 85) finds hints of meter and dialect fonns and decides that "what little survivescan be reconciledwith elegiaccouplets." On Asclepiades, see Millier (1903) and Wendel (1920: 78-80); on Thcon, see Wendel (1920: 80-3; 1934: 2054-9).

1HEOCRITEAN POETRY BOOKS

135

In addition, it is surely significant that the Chian epigram does not refer to Theocritus as a bucolic poet. The phrase £t~ cixo 1:ii>vxollii>v £iµi. Iupa.icoa{mv (2) echoes Idyll 16.101-3 (£{~ µ£V e:yo>, 1tollou~ 6£ 6l0~ «p1.A.£0V't\ lCO.lallou~ 8uya.1:ep~, 1:0~ lt«Ol µiloi Iucu:i1v 'Ape8oiaa.v uµv£iv auv ).a.oia\ ica.i. a.iXJLTtntV'Iipmva.), and the description of his mother as 1t£pucA£i1:a~(3) recalls the use of the same rare adjective to describe Berenice I in Idyll 17.34 (see Gow 1952: Il 550). But the epigram contains no linguistic echoes of the herding poems, which were grouped first in the ancient editions from which our manuscripts and papyri descend. Abundant evidence from antiquity indicates that from the second century B.C. Theocritus was thought of first and primarily as a bucolic poet The logical conclusion to be drawn, then, is that the Chian epigram was composed at a time before Theocritus was so viewed, that is, before the development of the bucolic concept 51 A common interpretation of the epigram's last line poses, however, a possible obstacle to my suggested date in the third century B.C. Prominent scholars have understood the claim 'I have drawn in my wake no foreign Muse' to signify that the collection to follow contained no spurious compositions; 52 the epigram would therefore belong to a period when various nonauthentic works were circulating under Theocritus' name. But the adjective 68v£ia.v (4) refers simply to the Sicilian character of Theocritus' compositions, not to authorial authenticity. The word appears in two of the Theocritean epigrams, once with reference to 'foreign' currency exchanged by a banker (14.3 Gow= AP 9.435.3)53 and once, significantly, to refer to 'foreign' as opposed to Syracusan soil (9.4 Gow= AP 1.660.4). The latter line (1ta.1:p{60~ o8v£ia.v 1e£iµa.iecp£Oacxµevo~bears a considerable structural resemblance to the last line of the Chian epigram (µ.oooa.v 6' o8veiav oiS'ttv' ecpd1CUaaµ.a.v)and was probably the model for it 54 Nor is there any reason to assume that the epigram's Sicilian Muse is a synonym for bucolic poetry, as in the later tradition. The author of the epigram is simply referring to the native tradition of Sicilian poetry on which Theocritus drew in many of his Idylls. Examples include Stesichorus' Daphnis song, Epicharmus' interest in the ~ouico).ia.aµ.6~. Sophron's mimes on male and female characters (see schol. Id. 2 arg. a-b; Id. 15 arg.). An assumption that this epigram headed an edition of Theocritus' £i6ullta. issued in the third century B.C. before the development of the bucolic concept accommodates as well 51

52

53 54

er.Halperin (1983: 251): "The

epigram, if not actually by Thcocritus, was composed by someone familiar wilh his poetry and dates to a period before the mimetic conception of the bucolic 'genre' had taken over." Wilamowitz (1906: 125) translates "bier steht nichts Unechtes drin"; Gow (1952: II 550, ad 4) considers lhis the most probable interpretation. Or is perhaps a more general reference to 'foreign business' conducted at night by the banker; see the note of Gow (1952: II ad loc.). Stadrmoller(1896: 60) claimed that epigram 9 was isopscphicand so by Leonidasof Alexandria.But Gow (1952: II 535) points out that lhe textual changes needed to produce the correct totals make StadrmOJler'sconclusion "highly improbable."There is no sttong reason to doubt the authenticityof the epigram or at least its early ascription to Theocritus.

GUTZWD.LER

136

the reference to the other Thcocritus, the one from Chios. Wilamowitz ( 1906: 125) rejected the most obvious meaning of the opening phrase a.lloc; oXioc;on the basis that "es ist zu dumm, das auf Theokrit von Chios zu beziehen, als ob der in den Verdacht kommen konnte, das Buch verfasst zu haben." He concludes that Theocritus is compared instead to Homer, who is named the Chian bard in Id. 1.41 (Xtov ciol66v) and 22.218 (Xtoc; ciol66c;).Although Wilamowitz's interpretation was rejected by Gow and othcrs, 55 Halperin (1983: 250-53) has revived it to argue that the epigram defines ThcocriblS' bucolic poetry negatively, epic that differs from Homeric epic. 56 But such an inteiprCWion violates the most obvious meaning of the opening line, where the noun to be supplied with Xtoc;is 9£6icpttoc;which is present, not ciol66c;which is not. M. Pohlenz (1911: 90, n. 2) long ago pointed out a striking similarity in wording between the epigram and the Suda entry differentiating the two Theocrituscs (Xioc;,pfitc.op,µa&rrrric;Mtrtpoocopou tou

as

1aoicpanicou. . . . ron ical £t£poc;8t6icpltoc;, Ilpa~ay6pou ical C,tliVV11c;, oi 61: Ilµµixou · Iupaicoucnoc;).In the Hellenistic tradition of witty book labels, om epigram plays with this sort of scholarly entry in which homonymic authors were distinguished by a recounting of biographical facts, especially the names of both parents and homeland. Rudolf Blum (1991: 202) points out that ..the differentiation of authors with the same names was one of the biggest problems of Greek literary historians." He (1991: 231) further claims, with great plausibility, that Callimachus must have performed this task in compiling his pinalces,and that he may often have entered such information directly on to book labels affixed to the scrolls in the Alexandrian Library. Our Theocritean book label may thus have been written as a literary version of the sillyboi on which scholars contemporary with the poet laborcd. The epigram descends, then, from a time when the Chian Theoaitus was better known than the Syracusan one. Theocritus of Syracuse gained his fame from his bucolic poetry, as his yivoc;tells us (1tq>l6e -rllvtii>vPv xoirialv tuqn>flack21492)

Berlin 10 (1968) 126 = J. O'Callaghan (ed). "Theocrite 131-35, 73-78". CE1 (1975) 192 = Ed. H. Maehler. "Griechische literarische Papyri". ZPE 4 (1969) l14-6 = M. Gronewald (ed.). K~lntr Papyri 5 (1985) 65-7 = B. Kramer-D. Hagedorn (eds). GriechischePapyri der Staats- IUld Universitlltsbibliotht/c Hamburg. 1984, 42-8 = K. Wessely. "Bericht iiber griechische Papyri in Paris und London". WS 8 (1886) 221-30; Mitteil1U1gen aus der Samml1U1gder Papyrus Erzhtrwg Rainer. Vienna. 1887 = B.P. Grenfell-A.S. Hunt (eds). TM Oxyrhynchus Papyri 4 (1904)

POxy. 1618 (= Pac1t2 1490) POxy. 1806 (• Pack 2 1495)

= B.P. Grenfell (ed.). Tht OxyrhynchusPapyri 13 (1919) 168-79 = B.P. Grenfell-A.S. Hunt (eds). Tht Oxyrhynchus Papyri 15 (1922)

POxy. 2064 (• J>ack21489) POry. 2945 POxy. 3545-52 POry. 3726 PPetr~ II 49b (= Pack2 1594)

= A.S. Hunt-I. Johnson (eds). Two Thtocrilus Papyri. London. 1930 = E. Lobel (ed.). Tht Oxyrhynchu.sPapyri 41 (1972) 8 = P. Parsons (ed.). Tht OryrhynchusPapyri SO(1983) 100-34 = P. Parsons (ed.). Tht Oxyrlrynchu.s Papyri 54 (1987) 85-6 = I. Mahaffy (ed.). Tht FlindersPetm Papyri II. Dublin. 1893

PBerol. 17073 PBerol.21182 PColon. V.212 PHamb11rg ill 201 PLouvreff:,18/PRainerll 78-9 (• Paclc2 1488)

139

180

ScholarlyWor/csCued Abel, E. (ed.) 1891 Scholiarecentiain PindoriEpiniciaI. Budapest Ahrens, H.L 1874 "Obereinige alte Sammlungen der theokritischen Gedichte". Philologus33, 385-417, 577-fn}

Ancher,G. 1981 "Les Bucoliques de Theocrite". REG 94, 295-314 Arland,w. 1937 NachthtolcritischtBulVl,Kai.iv8a6£ itµ{8£0>V,ci>c; q,avti, µovtato~

lCTl~ 'Axepovta (vv. 136-7)

You,dearAdonis, alone of demigods,as men say, visit both earth and Acheron.

Many of the same nuances which surrounded the previous use are also visible here: 'as men say' is at one level encomiastic, at another perhaps curiously incongruous at this moment of high praise. The 'myth' of the royal house is linked to that of Aphrodite and Adonis--Arsinoe, as the person staging the festival and thus responsible for Adonis' annual re-appearance, is indeed cast in the role of Aphrodite-but both are subject to this pattern of different readings. Nor should this surprise us, for both cultic 'myth' and royal apotheosis arc areas where symbols and forms of language convey different things to different people and 'truth' consists in social function. Both the Adonis-myth and the apotheosis of Berenice are ideas to be exploited in various ways; both do depend crucially on 'what men say' for their significance. The trick of style which links these two ideas, therefore, points to a real affinity between them. The versesdescribing Aphrodite's deification of Berenice (vv. 106-8 cited above) have a number of close analogues which the commentators cite, but Thetis' action to preserve Patroclus' body is particularly suggestive:64

63 64

Cf. Hunter (1993a: 157). er.Griffiths (1979: I:?.2).

162

HUNTER

Ilatp6dq, 6' a~t' aµppoo{11v1ea1.V£1C'tap ipu8pov O'tCX~E 1CatnplVWV, iva oxproc;eµx£6oc;£i11.

(II. 19.38-9)

Through Pattoclus' nosttils she dripped ambrosia and red nectar to preserve his flesh.

So too Rector's body is preserved by Aphrodite (/I. 23.184-90) so that it avoids corruption: tov 6' a~tE xpoouutE 6tci1Ctopoc; 'ApyEtcpOV't'l'lc;· ..wyipov, ou11:(1) 'tOVYEiruve.c;6i µlV EUA.al. ro8oua', at pci 'tE cpci>tac; toc;£JCEA.8rov otov ££f)1t11 · 1COA.££c; yap EVautcp XUA.ICOV a«aaav. me; tot 1CT16ovtat µci1eap£c; 8£01.utoc; tijoc; 1CEpl 1CT1Pl." 1ea1. V£1CU6c; 1CEp rovtoc;, i,c£i acptcpO..oc;

(II. 24.410-23)

Then Hennes the guide, the slayer of Argos, answered him: 'Old man. he is not eaten yet by dogs or birds, but he still lies there in Achilleus' hut beside his ship, just as he fell. This is the twelfth day he has lain there, but his flesh is not decaying, nor the wonns eating him, which feed on the bodies of men killed in war. Yes, Achilleus does drag him ruthlessly arolDldthe tomb of his dearcompanion every day, at the showing of holy dawn, but he cannot disfigure him. If you went thereyou could sec for yourself how he lies there fresh as dew, and all the blood is washedfrom him, and there is no stain on him. All the wounds have closed where he was slrUdc • there were many who drove their bronze into him. Such is the care the blessed gods have for your son, even for his deadbody,• he is very dear IO their hearts'. (trans. Martin Hammond)

Despite Achilles' maltrcannent,Hector lies in Hecuba's palace £pa11£tc; 1ea1. xp6acpacoc;, •pristine and fresh, like one slain by the gentle darts of Apollo of the silver bow' (II. 24.755-6). In his note on 23.184--91 Richardson observes that those verses and the parallel passages 'have been taken as evidence for Greek knowledge of the practice of embalming'. Be that as it may, Theocritus' evocationof Thetis' preservationof thebodyof Patroclusdoes suggest to me that v.108 has a reference in the world of Ptolemaicfunerary practice. Perhaps it merely gratifies Alexandrian Greeks with their own familiarity with Egyptian mummification, brilliantly finding Homeric precedent for this practice, but perhaps also there is more. Alexander's body must have been preserved in some way,

MIME AND MIMESIS

163

whatever uuth lies behind the extant accounts, 65 and it is hardly bold to imagine that the early Ptolemies (and their queens) followed suiL We know little of the burial arrangements of the early Ptolemies. but Fraser ( 1972: 1.225) noted that. before Philopator built the central Sernaof the royal house, 'it seems likely that ... the sanctuaries of the individual deified members ... were in close proximity to the Serna of Alexander'. We must remember that it was the deification of Arsinoc herself which seems to have marked a major turning point in the development of the royal cult. and the deification of her mother may have been an altogether less grand, 'more Greek' affair. 66 Nevertheless. we arc dealing here not with the documentary history of that cult. but with poetic evocations of iL This evocation of funerary practice is, of course, encomiastic of Arsinoc as well as her mother, as the current queen is credited with this arrangement and thus fulfils at the 'real• level the function of Thetis and Aphrodite in Homer and of Aphrodite at the most straightforward level of Theocritus' poem. Here too light is shed upon the description of Berenice made 'immortal from mortal' (v. 106), for such an endless continuation of how the 'dead' looked when 'alive' is precisely the point of mummification (cf. D.S. 1.91.7). Here too, however, Theocritus forges links between Adonis and the royal house. Patroclus and Hector are the most obvious examples of what Jean-Pierre Vemant (1991: 60-74, 84-91) has termed the 'beautiful death' of the warrior, that death in battle which guarantees perpetual youth and beauty. In the case of the slain warrior 'all is beautiful' (xav-ca ica>..u,ll. 22. 73); he lies, an object of wonder and desire in death as he was in life (cf. ll. 24.410-23, Tyrtaeus fr. 10.21-30 West). Adonis 'the beautiful', who is always both bridegroom and lost lover, is not a martial hero, indeed in some ways is the very antithesis of such a hero for whom hunting and warfare are two sides of the same coin; 67 nevertheless in death he lies, like Hector and Patroclus-and in another way like Berenice-in perpetual youth, his beauty, like theirs, preserved forever by divine grace. Like Hector and Patroclus also, Adonis' death brings particular grief to those who loved him. Hector indeed is the subject of the most famous scene of organised female lamentation in Greek literature (II. 24.719-76), and thus a comparison with Adonis is not created ex nihilo. It may even be that the description of Hector as 'Eiccxpac; oy£paitatoc; eiicat1 xai6rov 'the eldest of Hecuba's twenty sons' (v. 139), is a specifically Hellenistic 8uµ4"> ,ccxvtrov,co).u variation of Hecuba's address to Hector in her lamentation as eµ4">

65

66 67

Cf. esp. Quintus Cunius 10.10.9-13, Strabo 17.l.8. We may compare the story of Agesilaostaken back to Spana preserved in wax 'because there wasno honey' (Plut Ages.40.3, cf. Cartledge (1987: 334). Evidenceand bibliographyin Weber (1993: 252--4). Cf. Detienne (1977: 66- 7); Griffiths (1981: 255): "Adonis .. . surpasses paragons of assertive masculinity like Ajax and Agamemnon ... for he alone panicipates in lhe triumph of the cyclic female principle over death". It is obviously tempting to relate Dctienne's whole construction of lhe 'anthropology of spices' to Egyptian practices of mummificationin which the body was filled with spices; I have resisted the temptation.

164

HUNTER

cpil.:ta'te11:ai6wv,'by far the dearest of all my sons in my heart' (/l. 24.748).68 As for Patroclus, in this very same lamentation Hecuba notes that, despite his effons, Achilles was unable to raise Patroclus from the dead, and Patroclus' ghost appears to plead for burial in a famous scene of Iliad 23.69 The catalogue of demigods 70 has attracted critical censure principally becausethe heroes listed do not really fall into a category of ftµt8iot comparable to Adonis. 71 We can, of course, never expect strict comparability when the great figures of the past are evokedas exempla, but the apparent difficulty here is that, whereas consolation usually works by invoking greater figures who have suffered equally or more (Achilles citing Niobc, for example), here it may be thought that Adonis' status is already qualitatively different (and higher) than the other figures listed. The more usual procedure may be well illustrated from a very interesting epitaph in choliambics (Bernand 71) for a young man, probably from Alexandria, and to be dated to the late Hellenistic or early imperial period. 72 In the first, unfortunately broken, section the young man is praised as 'alone among men (cf. 15.137) ... he surpassed in virtue all those of his age ... a child who seemed an old man in his wisdom•. In the better preserved section of the poem his mother is told to stop grieving for the most familiar of reasons:

ou6et; yap i;filu;e 'tOVµhov Motpiov OU8v11'to;,OUIC a8civa'to;, ou6' b 6eaµCO'tl'I;, ou6' ai 'tupavvo; ~aatA.tlCTlV laxci>vnµ11v 8eaµou; a'tpmou; 6tacpuyeiv11:o't'ci>rt~ · 68

69 70 71

72

Homer's Priam explicitly says that he had 19 sons 'from one womb', i.e. by Hecuba, but die Theocritean scholiast cite Simonides for the number 20 (PMG 559); for discussion andcal8logucsof known names cf. Van der Kolf (1954: 1844-7); Richardson on II. 24.495-7. I suspect that 20 arose by a (J humorous) interpretation of the Homeric verses in which Hector is counted sepal'lllClyfrom 'the 19'; thus tiiJv 1t0Utov is taken on this view not as 'correct[ing] die emotional exaggeration of 494' (Macleod) but as meaning 'these many'. Leaf ad Joe. indeed seems to exclude Hector fromthe grand total of 50. If we do have an allusion 10 a scholarly dispute, then this would be anotherreason to be cautious about dismissing the Adonis-song as mediocre haclcworlc. I record as a curiosity Legrand's suggestion (Legrand 1898: 95 n.l) that 20 has replaced the Homeric 19 for mebical

reasons. Gow (1952: 302) notes the possible influence of the ghost scene, but not of Iliad 24. It may be thought somewhat surprising that, as far as I know, deletion of vv. 136-42 has neverbeen proposed.for v. 143 would follow perfectly well after v. 135. After death Adonis is a 'demi-god' in one sense, but as applied 10 die figures of thecalaloguethis tenn must principally denote 'heroes', 'figures of the heroic age',a usage perhapsderivingfromHes. Op. 160. Dover refers 10 13.69, although the Argonauts as a group -rt notoriously'sons of gods'. Cf. funher Hunter (1993: l03, 127-8). The discussion or die catalogue in Atallah (1966: 130-2) is too general 10 be helpful. Bernand gives a full bibliography and many parallels from other epigrams; I will not repeat that material here. It would obviously be nice to believe that the young man died at the age of eighteen (cf. Theocritus' Adonis), but the interpretation of .1EXOKTOon the stone in line 6 is disputed,cf. Bernand (1969: 287,289).

MIMEAND MIMESIS

165

cl>ai0ov'ta Tt'tav ouic ldaua', O't' eic 6{q,p(l)v a,c' oupavou 1Ca't£1t£CJ£V £i; 7Ct6ovya{Tt;; 'Epµi\; 6' o Maia; ouic ldaua' rov ,cai6a Mup't\A.OV C11t06{V ov 't\ict£V"Aµµrov8iµevo; £i; oq,Lvµopq,,iv; No one escapes the thread of the Moirai. no monal, no immortal, not even the prisoner,75 not even the tyrant with his kingly power has ever thought to flee from the laws which cannot be changed. Did not Titan weep for Phaethon, when he fell out of the chariot from heaven to eanh? Did not Hennes, the son of Maia, weep for his son Mynilos carried away by the waves out of his chariot? Did not Thetis grieve for her mighty son, when he was killed by the arrows of Apollo? Did not the lord of all men and gods weep for Sarpedon, did he not lament? Did not the Macedonian, King Alexander,theson of Ammon who took the form of a snake to beget him?

Adonis has, however, escaped death, at least partially; although it is not strictly ttuc that his regular alternation between earth and the Underworld is a unique privilege,76 the hymn suggests that even 'dying' for part of the year redounds to Adonis' glory. Theocritus' mythological catalogue turns the rhetoric of the epitaph on its head. while evoking its simple, repetitive style. It measures Adonis' glory against the heroes of epic and tragedy: not just Hector and Patroclus from Homer, but £2ta8' (v. 138) hints at representations of Agamemnon's fate on the tragic stage, where pazlws was critical, and papuµciv10; is clearly chosen to point to the circumstances of Ajax's suicide, most famous in antiquity from Sophocles' tragedy. Notable by his absence is the greatest hero of them all, Achilles, whose consolations to Priam in II. 24 hover over the epitaph quoted above, in which he himself becomes a consolatory example. The presence of his son, Neoptolemus/Pyrrhus, 77 however, is presumably dictated by more than the desire for alliteration with Patroclus. His beauty is praised to his father in the Odyssey (Od.11.522),

73

I do not think that the senseof this line implies corruption despite the 'faulty' metre,for which cf. civu; three lines below and perhaps civ,ip at the end of v.3 (although cxv,ip might there have been intended); I am inclined to attribute the trimeiers to thepoet. Cf. previous note. The sense 'goaler' is not, I think, impossible here, cf. Kassel-Austinon Cratinus fr. 201. Cf. Gow (1950) on v.137. The name Pyrrhus is first attested for the Cypria (fr. 16 Davies). We are perhapsto be conscious of the etymology of Ibis name, 'ruddy', just as is the colour (iruppci) of the down around Adonis' lips (v. 130). It is, moreover,at least a strange coincidencethat Deucalion's wife was callednuppa. Kavt(l)V

74 75 76 77

HUNTER

166

and after his death he became the object of cult at Delphi;78 there are. therefore. points of contact with Adonis. By escaping safe from the war (v. 140) Ncoptolemus did not enjoy 'the beautiful death• to which Adonis has laid claim. For a Greek theIliad is the obvious text from which consolatoryexemplamay be chosen. as in the epitaph quoted above, but in the context ofThcoc. 15 as a whole. we can hardly fail to read this list in mctaliteraryterms also. A poem that began as a reworking of Sophron has opened out to embrace the whole of human history ('the Lapiths and the Dcucalions of an earlier age'), just as the epitaph ranges from the pre-Olympian legend of Phaethon to Alexander. As the coun of Philadclphus and Arsinoc is the telos to which Greek history has been moving, as Adonis surpasses the heroes of the past. so Thcocritean mime lays claim to unexpected literary grandeur. Not for long, though; and not perhaps with complete seriousness. When Gorgo and Praxinoa have had their glimpse of another world, of a different kind of rnuMSis, they withdraw back to their own realm to wait for another year. Mime. after all. can never replace the centre. whetherthat be literary(Homer)or political (the Ptolemaicpalace);mime must always live at the edge, on the margins (cf. vv. 7-8). because it needs the centre in order to define its own place.79

78

79

One source indeed, Pausanias 1.4.4, reponsthat cult honoms were first paid to him afterhe brought assislance against the Gaulish invasion in 278; it may, therefore, be that there is an element of topicality in the referenceto him in Theoc:.15. This paperhas benefiu.edfrom the constructivecriticisms of Albio Cassio, Marco FanlUZZi, md the participants in the GroningenWorkshop.An expanded vcrsion is incorporatedas chapcer4 in Hunter (1996).

MIMEAND MIMESIS

167

REFERENCES Atallah, W. 1966 Adonisdans la lilliratlll't!ttt r art grttcs.Paris Bechld,F. 1923 Die griec/ascht!nDialdattII. Berlin

Bermmd,lt 1969 InscriptionsmitriqlleSde r Egyplt! grico-romoint!.Paris Buck, C.D. 1955 Tht!Grt!d:Dialects.Chicago BUIUIII,J.B. 1992 "The function or the symposiumthemein Thcocritus' Idyll 14". GRBS 33, 240-2 Cairns, F. 1992 '"Theocritus,Idyll U!'. PCPS 38, 1-38 Cartledge.P. 1987 Aguilaos and tht!Crisisa -rciJLiiAa otoc;n:01µaivta1CEV (vgl. 9.220, 226, 239, 244, 341). S. Theoc. 11.12 mi ou:c;(vgl. 20-1 und 74, s. auch 24 und 75) und zu den Hincnkategorien z.B. Theoc. 1.80 und 86; die 'Verjilngung' des Kyklopen hat offenbar erst Theokril eingefllhrt: noch bci Philoxcnos trill auch Odysseus auf (s. z.B. fr. 10 • 823 P.): Polyphem ist bci ihm also wie bci Homer und Euripides viel lllter gedacht. Theokrit hat scinen Polyphem im Alter an seine ilbrigcn Hincn angeglichen. Bei Philoxenos spielle Polyphem die Kilhara (fr. 6 ==819 P.). Filr die Syrinx als Instrument dcr Hincn bei Theokril s. z.B. 1.3; 4.28; 5.4; 6.43-4 (mit •Aulos'); 7.28. - Filr die aufffllligen Wicderholungen signifikantcr Versc und Versteile innerhalb dcr bulcolischen Gedichte Theolaitsvgl. den Beitrag von Stanzel (dieser Band); scinen Belegen kllnnte dcr oben erwahnte hinzugefllgt wttden; s. auch weiter unten zu Theoc. 3.52 = 11.29. S. die Vergleiche Theoc. 11.20 und 24; vgl. 11.35-7 oder 65--6 (Galateia werdesichetgem mil ihm hilten, melken und Kaseproduzieren wollen); s. auch 11.75. Vgl. bes. Theoc. 5.31-4 und 45-9 oder 7.6-9 und 135-7 (s. auch SchOnbeck 1962). Auch bier hat Theokrit homerische Ansatze (Od. 9.182, die Gro~ des Kyklopen) sciner Bulcolik entsprcehend

wngesetzL 16

Vgl. auch Cairns (1971: 143, bes. 146-7), sowie Horstmann (1976: 88 mit Anm. 320: MBesuchbei dcrGeliebten", und324 "Kopfweh").

174

KOHNKEN

in einer Paraklausithyronsituation vor (der Ziegenhin singt vor der ihm verschlosscnen Grottc der Amaryllis wie Polyphem vor der ihm unzuglnglichen Mecrcswohnung der Galateia): 17 die besungenen Mikichen sind jeweils nicht grcitbar und nicht sichtbar; in bciden Fallen erwlihnt der Sanger seine HliBlichkeit(Theoc. 3.7-9 und 11.30-3, vgl. 503) und die Gleichgiiltigkeit der Besungenen (Theoc. 3.52 tiv 6' µM = 11.29 tiv 6' µeA£t;diesc Formeln nur an diesen bciden Stellen bci Theokrit); in bcidcn Gedichten wtlnschen sich die Liebhabcr, in die Sphllrcder Geliebten eintauchen zu kOnnen(Theoc. 3.12-4: 'wiirde ich doch zu einer Biene und kOnntein deine Grottc gelangen' und 11.54-5 'o daB meine Mutter mich nicht mit Kiemen geboren hat, daB ich zu dir tauchen kOnnte ... '); und in beiden Fallen hat der Slinger am Ende KopfschmCl7.Cn(Theoc. 3.52 und 11.70-1), bcvor er seine 'Serenade' abbricht (Theoc. 3.52-3, vgl. 11.72-9). Die auktorialen Rahmenpartien in Theoc. 11 (1-18 und 80-1) machcn einerscits Polyphems Solo zu einem paradoxen Paradeigma filr die therapeutische Wirkung von Musik und Gesang (die Adresse an Nikias 1-6 enthfilt die These, die Verse 7-79 oihco youv ..., vgl. 80, bringen den Beleg), andererseits sorgen sic filr die Distanzierung der Gegenwart des Autors und des Adressatcn von dcr mythischcn Vcrgangcnhcit des K{nu..w'lf 1tap' ciµiv, c'oPXaio 6'tCio1&al s.a. Ar. V. 977; A.R. 3.884; von Kindem im Schlaf Theoc. 2.109. Theoc. 6.33 avTa J.IOlemphatisch zum vorhergehendcn61&6aan:ein Postilion d' amow wirclibm nicht genOgen.Mit dem Schwur will 'Polyphem' verhindem,da8 die wankelmOtigeGalateia sich, entsprechend6.17a. wiedervon ihmabwendet sobalder sein Intercssezu ertennen gibt.

TI-IEOKRITSPOLYPHEMGEDICHI'E

179

gespiegelten Hilndin aus dem ersten Lied (11-2 Pa-ua6e1 ei~iUa 6ep1Coµiva und 'ta 6i 1C'Uµa'tacpaivei ... 8ioloav) im zweiten Lied durch Polyphems Blick in den VlV ICCXA.a Meeresspiegel aufgegriffen und funktional umgesetzt wird (35--8 ~ 1t6V'toviaiPMXov und 1CaM1 µh -ea yivela, ICaAa6i µ£U a.µia 1C0>pa... 1Caucpaiv£"to). Oberraschend ist nicht, wie Hutchinson (1988: 185) annimmt, das zweite Ued- auf das der Leservielmehr durch die doppelte Anrede an Polyphem sorgfliltig vorbeJCitet wird ilberraschend ist das erste. Das Erstaunen des anonymen Zeugen ilber das Verhalten Polyphems und Galateias in der Szene, die er beobachtet, ist nur verstlndlich vor dem Hintergrund von Theoc. 11,33 dessen paradoxe Umkehrung durch die dramatisierte Situationsbeschreibung des ersten Liedes in Theoc. 6 suggeriert und im zweiten Ued aus der Pcrspektive Polyphems begrilndet wird. Personen, Thcma und Szenerie sind in Theoc. 6 und 11 die gleichen, doch in 11 wird der Leser in den auktorialen Rahmentcilen erst mit ihnen vertraut gemacht (zur Einfilhrung dienen die Verse 1-18), in Theoc. 6 dagegcn muB er sie schon keMcn: Polyphem und Galateia wcrdcn nicht mehr vorgestellt; sic treten 6.6 unvermittclt als die bekanntcn Protagonistcn des aus Theoc. 11 gcl!iufigen crotischen Scharmiltzels auf. Weshalb Galateia den Schafhirten Polyphem als ai1t6AO~ und als 6uaip~ bezeichnet (6. 7), ist nur vcrstlndlich, wenn man aus Theoc. 11 weiB, wic sehr er sich zuvor um ihre Uebe bemilht hat (wie seltsam deshalb, daB er jetzt auf ihr Angcbot nicht reagicrt); 6.8-9 heiBt es von Polyphem: 'du sitzt da und spielst ruhig auf der Syrinx' (aUa ica8T}aat a.6ia aupia&w); wo wir ihn uns vorzustellen haben, wissen wir aus Thcoc. 11.17-8 (vgl. 134 38-9): er sitzt auf cinem Fels am Mecrcsufer (Theoc. 6.26 q,cxµiund afotaa zeigen, da8 er, wie in 11, ncben dem Spiel auf der Syrinx, etwas singt, da8 sic b6rcn soil). Die auftrumpfcnde Selbstermunterung am Ende seincs Gesangs in Theoc. 11 (76-9), er werde viclleicht noch cine anderc Galateia finden (eupt1CJ£l~fY£~; 75 Polyphem zu sich selbst: tav xcxproiacxvaµd-y£;ti tov cproyovta6uo1C£1Q. Der zitiertc Schlilsselvcrs6.17 bezieht sich also auf 6 und 11 zugleich; er 7.Cigt,da8 Thcoc. 6 mit 11 zusammengesehen werden mu8. Dern Rollenspiel von Theoc. 6 liegt die Vorstcllung zugrunde,da8 Polyphem die in 11 als Selbstaufforderungfonnuliene Einsicht, niemandem nachzulaufen(11.75), auf unerwartctc Weise in die Tat umsetzt und damit den Erfolg hat, der ihm in Theoc. 11 versagt geblieben war; (2) Damoitas in der Rolle Polyphems kilndigt in 6.32-3 an, er (qmbetont) werde seine Tilr solange vor Galatcia verschlossen halten, bis sic ihm ausdrilcklich geschworen babe, in Zukunft auf dem Land mit ihm zusarnmenzuleben. Diese auffiillige Vorsichtsma8regel ist eigendich nur zu verstehen, wenn man aus Theoc. 11 weiB,da8 sie sich ihm entzog, solange er sich um sic bemilhtc (vgl. Theoc. 6.17a und den vorigen Punkt) under bisher vor ihrer verschlossenen 'Tilr' sa8 (vgl. bes. 11.42-4 und 63). Die Pointe liegt in der Umkehrung der Paraklausithyronsituation. (3) Prominenter gemeinsamer Bestandteil von Theoc. 6 und 11 ist das charaktcristische eine Auge Polyphems. In jedem der beiden Gedichtc kommt es zweimal vor (11.30-3 und 53 tOVev' ocp8CXA.µ6v, tm µo1.YA.U1C£pcotepov ou6iv, sowie 6.22-3 tov eµov tov evcxyAUICUV und 36-7), davon jeweils einmal in einer pointierten Anspielung auf die Odyssee (Theoc. 11.50-3 das Ausbrennen des Auges: vgl. bes. Od. 9.389-90; Theoc. 6.22-4 die Telemosprophezeihung: s. Od. 9.508-12). Wlhmtd jedoch in Theoc. 11 das Auge zugleich Sccindes Anstol3esist und Polyphem selbst die HW31ichkcit seiner zottigen Augenbraue so sehr als Hindemis fUr seine Werbung um Galateia betrachtct, da8 er sich zu dem grotesken Zugestlndnis verstcigt, sic kOnneihm die Braue mitsamt dem Auge verbrennen (50-3), fiihrt er in Theoc. 6 genau umgelcehrt sein eines Auge (neben Bart undZihnen) als Beweis fUr seine ihm durch den Meercsspiegelbestltigrc SchOnheitins Feld (36-7). Auch wenn man berilcksichtigt, da8 Polyphem/Damoitas bier auf denim Lied des Daphnis (6.19) impliziertcn Vorwurf der Hli8lichkeit antwortct, gewinnt doch die verblilffende Betonung der SchOnheitgerade des einen Auges erst vor dem Hintergrund von Theoc. 11 ihre eigentliche Schlirfe:Was er don entschuldigen mu&e, ja sogar, sich selbst verleugnend,fast schon aufzugeben bereit war, um nur Galateias Liebe zu gewinnen, kann er jctzt, in der in Theoc. 6 fingierten Situation, ennutigt durch GalalCias Annliherungsvcrsuche,selbstbewu6tund in der Oberhand als Argument fur die Attraktivit!il seiner Person ins Feld ftihrcn (s. das doppeltc yap,34 und 35). (4) Nur ein einziges Element ist in der im Rollenspiel von Theoc. 6 evoziertcn Szene gegenilber 11 neu: die Hilndin. Sic win! in beiden Gesangseinlagen relativ ausfiihrlich berilcksichtigt (9-14 im Daphnislied; 29-30 im Damoitas/Polyphemlied) und ist fur die

THEOKRITSPOLYPHEMGEDICIITE

18i

Stellung von Theoc. 6 zu Theoc. 11 besonders aufschluBreich.Eincrseits win! namlich nur sic, im Unterschicd zu den ProtagonistenPolyphcm und Galateia. cigcns vorgcstellt (10a, die Hilndin, 'tOl'ta.Voimv metal ,36 und ihr frfiheres Vcrhalten wirci mit ihrem jetzigen konfrontien. um die Um.lcehrungin der Liebcsbeziehungzu dokumentieren(6.29 'jetzt aber babe ich ihr befohlen, sic anzubellen', vgl. 6.1~1): erst unter den vcrlnderten Voraussctzungen von Theoc. 6 kann die Hiindin als Tell dcr neuen Liebesstrategie des Kyklopen auftreten und aktiv werden.37 Auch das neue Element 'Hilndin' rechnet also beimLeser mit dcr Kcnnmisvon Theoc. 11. Wenn aber Theoc. 6 und 11 zusammengehfiren und 11 die Voraussctzung fUr 6 bildet, ist dann die gerade in jilngster Zeit so nachdrilcklich vertretene Auffassung, Polyphem werde in Theoc. 11 durch scinen Gesang von sciner Liebe zu Galateia 'gcheilt', wirklich noch plausibel?Theoc. 6 prlisentiertihn doch noch immerals verliebt, noch immer ist es sein Ziel, Galateia zu gewinnen, wenn sich auch seine Strategic und die Einstellung der Galateia gclndert haben. Hat dcr in Theoc. 11 so prominente und in der Forschung so hlufig herausgcstellte Begriff cpcipµa1eov38 wirldich die Bcdeutung 'Heilmittel '? Diescs Wonverstlndnis hat dazu gcfilhrt,daBman einen Widerspruch zwischen 11.13--6('Singcn als Krankheitssymptom') und 11.17-8 (' Singco als cpcipµaKov ') glaubte konstatieren·zu milsscn (Gow (1950: 122 z.St.), auf Grund dessen die jilngsten Interpretationen (Deuse (1990: 75), Manuwald [1990: 89), Farr (1991: 48~1])39 zu dem Ergebnis kommen, Polyphem milsse ein oder mehrere erfolglosc und ein erfolgreiches Lied gesungen haben und 11.13 cirloo,v meine etwas anderes als 11.18 ael6e. Gibt es dafUr abcr irgendeinen Anhaltspunktim Text? 1stilberdiesdie Frage "song: sympton or cure?" (Hopkinson [1988: 149-501)40 richtig gestellt? Zeigt nicht schon in Theoc. 11 sclbst die Kontrastierung des cpapµaKov 'Mosen' (11.3) mit den cpapµaKa 'Salbe' (11.2 £YXPlKudmv Kudm'lf, it~

tai; q,pivai; £1C1t£ltOtaCJal ... tav xapeoiaav ciµtl:ye· ti tOV q,£Uyovta 6lC01C£t~; ia~ ... cillav). 45 11.17 ulla to qxipµalCOV rope hei8t nicht £UpTltovatµa. £IC1ta'tp6~.In thus emphasizing the quality of the twins• paternal ancestry. Lynceus in 164 clearly has in mind Tyndareus and his forebears both immediate and remote. The attention he here calls to the Dioscuri's ltcxt£P~ and xatpci>wv atµa. however. points out how sadly unaware he is of the fact. made explicit both in the opening line of the poem itself and in the first verse of the Castor narrative. that the Dioscuri's real father is not the mortal Tyndareus but the god Zeus (cf. 1. 12 Indeed. in a speech addressed to the twins, even the plural xatip~ may 137 &to~ui.ci>).

9 10

11

Fortheintenextual significanceof oi, 1t0luµ~. see Sens (1992: 341-3). ci,c; clearly explains the sta1emeruof the precedingline (' since many would wish... ') and is not (pace Laursen [1992: 88-91) 10 be understood10 mean 'many would wish 10 be your father-in-lawbecause they think you good.• We need hardly assume, however, that lynce,u' ineptitude is a mark of sloppiness on his creator Theocritus'

12

pan.

CasU>ris addressed as Tw&xpWTIin 136, but this clearly is not to be talcento mean that Tyndareus was his natural father.

190

SENS

itself contain a touch of wry irony. Lynceus clearly understands the word only in its figurative sense 'forefathers,' or perhaps more specifically 'parents' (cf. LSJ s.v. VIl.2), but the reader will recogni~specially when required to distinguish between m-tip~ and axav 1ta'tpco1ovatµa-that even in the cont.ext of the poem Castor and Polydeuces do in fact have two different fathers: their 'genetic' father Zeus and supposed father Tyndareus. 13 In precisely the same way, Lynceus' final appeal to his consanguinity with the twins (169-70 £'tl Kal vuv / 1tEi8m8'. ciµcpcoa· ciµµ1v a.V£'jt1.0> £1C Jta'tp0~ t.O"tOV)again exposes how badly off the mark he is about the nature of his adversaries. Commentators regularly note that the version presupposed here is attested already in Stesichorus (PMG 227), who makes Tyndareus, Aphareus, and Leucippus (as well as lcarius) all sons of Perieres.14 Critics regularly speak of the Dioscuri simply as Lynceus' cousins, IS but surely we miss some of the point if we fail to draw a distinction between Lynceus' own insistence that he is related to Castor and Polydeuces m'tpoc; and what the reader knows to be the truth, at least in the context of this poem: Lynceus' adversaries arc no mere mortals, but 610~ uico, whose blood relationship to Lynceus at least is thus entirely illusory. 16 To be sure, in cases where there is a real divine father and a supposed mortal one (the Dioscuri, Heracles), it is natural that the mortal father be called 1ta'tTlp as well, and Lynceus is therefore not in the broad sense wrong. t 7 What is imponant here, however, is that Lynceus' repeated reference to the twins' parentage calls attention to his ignorance of his rivals' real ancestry: significantly, it is precisely on the point that Lynceus (like many readers) thinks his most compelling rhetorical weapon-his blood relationship to the twins-that he is most tragically misguided. Such considerations shed helpful light on 173, where the speaker refers to Polydcuces as oµatµo~ £µ6~. Kpa'tEpO~ noiuarolC'll~- The phrase has caused £110~ must mean 'my significant critical difficulty. Wilamowitz believed that oµat~ brother, mighty Polydeuces,' which it clearly cannot if Lynceus is the speaker. This view of oµatµo~, together with the variation between Ka.a'tmp and AU'Y1(ro~in the manuscript tradition of 175 and Wilamowitz' larger assumption that in a hymn purporting to honor them the twins ought to appear in a favorable light, led him to posit a lacuna after 170 and to assign 171-80 to Castor (1906: 191-3). Though Wilamowitz' alteration of the text has

au.·

a

13

14 IS 16 17

Pindar (N. 10.80-2: cf. Cypria fr. 6, p. 120 Allen), on the other hand, made Zeus the father of Polydeucesand Tyndareusthe farherof Castor. Cf. Gow (1952: 2.400). I myself have done so: Sens (1992: 338). The point is made, briefly, by Laursen(1992: 89 n.49). At 200 the narrator does call the fight betweenCastor and Lynceus iµcpu>..1~.thoughtherethe e,ipressionµaX"lviJ.UPliAiov is focalizedby the specworldas, and thus may ~t his perspeclivc on the nature of the relationship(on such focalizationsin Homer cf. DeJong 1987: 102-10); in any case, though they are not related by blood, Lynceus and Castor do belong to thesamefamily in the broad sense (for EJ.UPllAu:,c; 'of one'sfamily' cf. LSJ s.v. iµc,u~ II), since LyN:CUS' uncle Tyndareus is Castor's step-father.

A MAN OF MANY WORDS

191

been accepted by most editors in this century, in m:ent years scholars have offered strong argumentsagainst iL18 These critics point out that oµatµo(i is not restricted to siblings but has the more general sense 'kinsman,' 19 and that Lynceus has a good rhetorical reason for emphasizinghis relationship to the Dioscuri.20 I would add that if spoken by Lynceus, the slightly odd description of Polydeuces as oµa1µo(i iµ6(i continues the pattern well esrablishedearlier in the monologue:once again, Theocritus goes to special pains to make his Lynccus use languagethat directs attentionto the actualblood connection(oµatµo~ he wrongly believes he has with Polydeuccs,whose descent from Zeus can, for the reader, be in no doubt21 A more complex example of Lynceus' misjudgmentof his competitionis to be found in his expecrationthat neither side should suffer a complete loss. This expectation,I would suggest, is exposed as deluded by a series of allusions that intenextually connect the Dioscuri, and Castor in particular, to the Homeric Achilles.Lynceus' proposal of a duel in 171 ei 6' uµiv icpa6iT1x6Aeµovxo8ei, which thematically and verbally evokes Paris' proposal of a duel with Menelaus,22 also suggests a link between the twins and the cpU.Ov ICi\p/ «-081 wrathful Achilles, who sits alone pining for war: ciUa cp81vu8roice µ£VCllV, '1Co8UV £X£V£UOV i8£tp«t and the final battle between Achilles and Hector: ic6pu8t6' £JC£V£'1>£ cpaetvft/ tctp«cpaAQ>·ic«A«i6e1tep1aa£iovto£8e1pa1(II. 22.314-5).23 The allusion 18

19 20

21

22 23

Esp. Griffiths (1976); White (1976); Kurz (1991). er. Plato Com. 210 K.-A., Cratin. 478 K-A., Arisroph. Byz. frr. 252-3 Slater. EusL 410.37, 573.3, Hsch.o 670, Pilot. 330.20. Griffiths (1976: 354), White (1976: 405). This pattern of naive blindness on Lynceus' pan. it is wonh noting, militates against Vossius' emendation i:c¼for iµ.c¼in 173, a change that has drawn some favor from scholars (most recently Hutchinson (1988: 164 n.35)). Vossius' emendation could allow oµalµoc; to retain its most common sense 'sibling' in the mouth of Lynceus. since Theocritus elsewhere uses i:c¼in the sense of ac¼ at Theoc. 17.50 (cf. Call. h. 3.103, A.R. 2.634, 3.140, etc.); Lynceus could then be speaking of 'ldas and your brother, mighty Polydeuces.• But while such an interpretationis at first glance attractive in its simplicity, it has, when viewed in the context or the entire speech, the decided disadvantageof doingaway with the pointed irony of Lynceus' reference 10 Polydeuces as his blood relative. And while Lynceus might reasonably be thought to spealcof 'ldas and his (i:, the verb used of the cicpap61qeu£V),32is discmboweling of Lynceus in 202-3 (£"(1Cata6' eiaco/ XCXA.ICO(i restricted in Homer to the cutting up of meat Having expected a wedding celebration. the surprised and ovcrmatched Lynceus ends his life as a figurative sacrificial animal Thus while Lynceus' assertion that the Dioscuri hold unsheathed µaxa1pa1 is in the strict sense inconsistent with the outer frame, in its context it nonetheless has the effect of increasing the pathos. Disappointed in his wedding plans, Lynceus now finds (or at least asserts) that the twins bear against him and his brother weapons more appropriate to a scene of feasting and celebration (of the sort he had perhaps been expccting~an to a 'Homeric' battle. For the divine Dioscuri, Lynceus poses but a small obstacle, to be disposed of with as little concern as one would have in killing an ox or sheep. The words with which Lynceus expresses his concern to keep the number of casualties to a minimum (176-80) have also puzzled scholars, and Gow (ad ln-80) once again detected signs of Theocritean carelessness. The passage in question reads as follows:33

yov£6a16e µit xolu xiv8oc; 11µedpo1a1l{xwµ£V.ID.1c; v£1roc;£~ £VOA.A.Ol 71:aY'tU(i eu.a. The word also occurs in the context of festivity at II. 18.597, where J.Uixaipa1are worn as decoration by the dancing young men engraved on the shield of Achilles; at II. 11.844,Patroclus useshis µaxaipa ro cut an arrow from lhe lhigh of Eurypylus. Not surprisingly. lhe passage has multiple antecedents. The end of 202 resembles the Homeric at Od. 18.96-7, while XC1A.1COC, acpap 61ixrotv in 203 rccaUs clausula oatta 6' tiCJ(I)/ t8MXCJtv poignantly Odysseus' meiaphorical words on men's quick satiety for war at II. 19.221-2:at~ u ~>..6,n&c; xtA.na\ Kopoc;c:iv8pQ)l(01CJ1v, / ~c;u it>.dcm,v µiv iawiµ,iv x9ov;, ~ [zeun-. Other models lie behind line 203 as well. Apollonius has cilpap 61ixti>aV cuUa1 at 3.320. Ultimately, though, both Apollonian and Theocritean expressions look back 10 such Homeric passages as Od. 3.456 at.· apa j,L\V 61.£X£UUV, cilpap EiC1111piafflJlVOV, Od. 14.427at~ at 1,1.1v 6tixtuav, with the substitution or the synonymous acpap (already present in Od. 3.456) for at,,a in the Homericclause. I acceptand translareGow's text; see, however,below (197).

a·

33

A MAN OF MA.J.'NWORDS

195

Let us not leave great grief 10 our parents. One corpse from one house is enough; the others, bridegrooms instead of cmpses, will gladden all their companions and will marrygirls-these ones here.

The ostensible problem here is one of arithmetic: Lynceus seems to be saying that those who survive the dispute will marry the Lcucippides, and if in 178-9 he supposes that only one of the combatants will perish in the fight, there will still be three men remaining, but only two girls for them to marry. Faced with this apparent discrepancy, Hartung (1876: 642) suggested excising the words from citap in 178 to taa6£ in 180, but deletions of partial lines arc unpersuasive, as Gow rightly notes. There arc good reasons, moreover, for seeing the lines, of which 179-80 at any rate appear already in a recently published papyrus from the second century CE (PColon. 212, ed. pr. M. Gronewald. KoinerPapyri 5 [ 1985] 65-7)~ as elegant rather than anless. Lynceus' words in 178-9, atap 6>llot 1tavtac; £ixppaveouatv ha{pouc; / vuµq,fot cxvtl v£Kprov, arc a case in point. The end of 178, E'i>q,paveouatv ha{pouc;, alludes to Hector's suggestion to Ajax that they should call their duel a draw and return to their companions for the night: cxya8ov ical VUIC't\ 1tt8ia8at, I we; O'Ut' evq,p~V!J' ,rav-ra,n:apa VTlUO'\V 'Axatouc;, / aouc; t£ µaA.tO"ta etac; ical ha{pou,, 0\ tOl £aO'tV· / a,hap i:yw Kata O.O'tUµeya Tiptaµoto o.valC'toc;I Tp∾ evq,paveOJical Tpcpa6ac; MKEO'tn:wouc; (II. 7.293-7). This contextually relevant Homeric model, in which Hector speaks of Ajax' gladdening all (n:rivtac;) the Achaeans, and especially his kinsmen and companions, may provide some support for reading n:rivtac;, found only in the second Aldine edition, in Theoc. 22.178; the manuscripts for the line all have n:avuc;. In his note on 1tavtac; Gow, who does not notice the Homeric reminiscence, comments that the word "is flat and superfluous, but xavttc; seems even worse," and speculates that the adjective may have replaced some more significant word in the text. I will return to this textual problem shortly, but for the time would observe that whether the accusative or nominative is read, the line combines an allusion to an archaic source with the reworking of a oaot auvixovtat era'ipoi /.34 Similar contemporary model, A.R. 3.365 @Uor 1r&v-re, craftsmanship marks the beginning of 179, where the alliterative expression vuµq,tot cxvtl V£1Cprov evokes and reverses the widely exploited topos of the untimely death of a bride or bridegroom. I cite only a brief sample of the passages that abound throughout Greek literature:35 Od. 20.307 ica{ ice 'tOl avti yaµoto JtafTlp taq,ov cxµq>£n:OV£ho II. 23.222-3 ~ 0£ 7tUfTlpOU1tat6oc;o6up£tat oatia ICU\Cl)V / vuµq,iou Ant. 1240-1 (cf. 810-6) IC£itat 0£ V£1Cpoc; 7t£pl V£1Cpt!Ca/ teA.11A«XCJ>V 6eiAatoc; evy' "At6ou ooµotc;

s.

34

35

Such a view obviously depends on the priority of Apollonius' poem 10 Theoc. 22, for which see Appendix. Cf. on the theme Lauimore (1962: 192-4); for the conflation of marriage and funerary rituals in ttagedy,cf. Rehm (1994).

196

SENS

civti 6e ,cap8evud\c; tuµJ}ov Aaxev 116' uµevafow / iiµata wµcpi6icovnµap bti;A.8eyowv Paulus Silent. AP 7.604.1-2 A£1Ctpaaoi civtl yciµcovbt1ti>µp1a, ,cap8ev£ lCOUptl, / E1CT1 ciicCDK'T!. For a more detailed discussion of Theocritus' reworking of epic language here, cf. Kun (1982: 103). "Therun iciw~• cipa oi occurs only here in Homer. A point made well by Richard Hunter at the workshop; cf. Kun (1982: I03): "on n'en pas moins l'impn:ssiondc 'toumer' autourd'Homcre."

200

SENS

Castor) the focus of the episode, is sadly out of his clement: a man of post-Homeric values and sensibility trapped in an 'Iliadic' frame, he fails to understand the reality, played out at the stylistic level in the narrative that frames his speech, of the heroic world in which he finds himself.

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Appendix:Theoc:.22 andthe Argonawica suxyof Polydcuces' boxing victory over the Bebryciantyrant Amycus relaled in the firstnanative ('1:/134) is also told at the opening of the second book of Apollonius' Argonautica, and there are sufficient verbalconnections between the two narratives to make it cenain that one poet had the other in mind. Significantly, Theoc. 13 relates the story of the rape of Hylas and consequent loss of Heracles from the expedition; again the Theocritean nanative is clearly related to Apollonius' versioo of the episode, which is m:ounted at the conclusion of Argonautica I and thus contiguous with the story of the encounter with Amycus. The chronological relationship among the two Theocriiean idylls and Apollooius' ArgonalUica has been much debated, though most scholars favor the view that Apollonius' poem wa., written earlier than both idylls.51 Several critics have emphasized that the episodes form a natural part of Apollonius' larger work in any event, and have thus argued that Theocritus is more likely to have been inspired by Apollonius than Apollonius by Theocritus.52 What lillle in the way of verbal evidence has been adducedalso seemsoo balance to suggest-dlough perhaps not to prove-Apollonius' priority.53 I wishhere to add two that may help to reinforce the case. ni:tpa; tic;2v ~uvuroaa.c;/ The opening lines of Theocritus' narrative, ii µh, cipa 11:p04pU'y0Uaa 'Apyco1Cai. v1q,oivt~ ci-tap'tTlpovcnoµa noV'tou (27-8) bear an interesting resemblance to Apollonius' descriptionof the Argonautic expedition at the beginning of the Argonautica: oi llovrow nmi rrroµa imi 8ia trh~ I Kuavia.c; Paav..11~ icp11µocruvn nd.iao I X,,UO£\OV µ£'t1XKci>a.c;i\\~u-yov1\MXOUV 'Apyo, (2-4; cf. also 4.1002-3).54 Griffiths (1974: 108-10), who pointed out the connection between the passages in bis unpublished dissenation, argued that it would be more likely for Theocritus to echo the opening of tbeArgonautica at the beginning of his narrative on a theme from the Argonautic saga than for Apollonius to recall the Theocritean passage at the oulSCtof his entire work. Griffiths did not observe, however, that some suppon for his view is provided by Theoc. 13, where the passage describing the voyage of the Argo also contains clear points of contact with the opening lines of Apollonius: 16 to 1puat1ov btl.£1 µna 55 That contextually related passage from Theocritus' two Argonautic poems Kci>a.c;. 21 tiie6pov ~ 'Apyo,. both share points of contact wilh the opening lines of Apollonius' poem sttongly suggests the priority of Apollonius' poem. It is, on the one hand, easy to image that Theocritus would have recalled in both passagesthe opening of the work. from which he drew his inspiration. On the other hand, it is far more difficult to suppose that Apollonius would have chosen in the opening lines of his larger and more comprehensive poem, which itself draws on a variety of antecedent works, to allude to the two separate lbeocritean poems that happen IO deal wilh stories from lhe Argonautic tradition. If it is Theocritus who reworks Apollonius, in each case the reminiscence of Apollonius' opening summary of the Argo's voyage 81lhe beginning of the Theocritean account of a story drawn from the Argonawica serves 10 set the ensuing nartative against the backdrop of Apollonius' treatment of the same episode; no comparable motivation is likely to have impelled Apollonius 10 allude to Theocritus in the first lines of his larger and more complex poem. Significantly, in 22, Theocritus locates the Symplegades passage before the Amycus episode, whereas Apollonius places the boxing match before the trip through the rocks. Thus by evoking the opening of the Argonautica in these same lines, Theocritus calls attention 10 his reversal of lhe order of evenrs in his predecessor's poem.56 The

51

The fullest expression of the opposite view in Kohnken (1965); cf. now Cameron (1995: 253, 4301).

52

Hutchinson (1988: 192), Dover (1971: 181). Cf. Campbell (1974: 38-41); Sens (1994: 66-74). With Theocritus' 11:pocpuyouaa, cf. A.R. 2.413-5, of the impending voyage through the (in the same metrical Symplegades: ti Si ICl!Vaut~ / 'tcia6' (SC. K£'tpa;) ftµiv 11:pocpuyoualV / iaa~a1, c'icmacrtii>c; Kl! ,rapa aio mi 'to 6cui11V, position) ~ 'EUci&i v6at~ OKtaOCII Cf. Hunter (1993: 123 n.89). For further speculation oo this difference between the two works, see Sens (1994: 69--72).

53

54

55 56

202

SENS

The same conclusion is suggested by another point of conlaet with ApoUonius several lines laler in the Theocritean Amycus episode. It has long been recognized that the account of the Argonauts' discmbarlcation onto the Bebrycian shore and preparations for the evening shares clear connections IO boch Apollonius' and Theocritus' own accounts of the arrival of the Argonauts in Mysia. passages that are themselves related to one another (Theoc. 13.32-5-22.30-3-A.R. 1.1182-6). Scholars have sought to find in these passages evidence for the relative chronology of the three poems. with little success. 57 Perbapa more promising is what follows directly in each case. Like Heracles and Hylas in Mysia, the Dioscuri immediately take leave of their companions. who are making preparations for the evening, and, like Hylas. soon come to a spring (22.37-13.39-A.R. 1.1221). ln pointed contrast to Hylas' and Heracles' departures. however, the Dioscuri's exploration of the surrounding counttyside is not explicitly motivared; the nanal0r notes only that they are 'looking at the diverse, uncultivated woods' (36). Their curious interest in trees becomes more readily explicable, however, if Theocritus had in mind the Apollonian passage, where Heracles, who like the Dioscuri is au~ ,ii~ leaves his companions for the woods: airtapot6aiwo&n ttapo~~t bm:til.at; [cf. 22.35 all:OlWX)'X8EVt£~ naipmv], / Pf\p' tµ.LVEl~ UA.TjV v~ .d~ ~ 1C£V ipt'tµov I ot ui>'tcpq,8aiT1lCll'tUl,tipiov ivruvaa&ai (A.R. 1.1187-9). Heracles' departure hen: is fully motivated far in advance: he hasbroken his oar on the journey and now enters the woods to search for a 1rce from which to fashion another one. Theocritus, I suggest. hasmodeled the Dioscuri's departure in 34-6 on Heracles' departure in the Argona111ica,but hasnot provided the twins with any explicit molivation. To imaginethe opposite order of composition is rather more difficulL 51

57

58

On the argument for Theocritean priority presented by Trllnkle (1963: 503-5), cf. Serrao(1971: 12940). For an interesting argument on the relationship between the two Theocritean passages.cf. Matthews (1985). I am grateful to Hugh Lloyd-Jones and S. Douglas Olson, as well as to the participantS in the workshop, for helpful discussion of the issues discussed in this paper. I would also like to acknowledge the support of a Summer Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which allowed time for research on Theoc. 22.

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REFERENCES

Cameron, A. 1995 Callimacluuand his Crilics.Princelon Campbell, M. 1974 "'Thn:eNotes on Alexandrine Poelry". Hermes 102, 38-46 De Jong, I. 1987 NarrQIOrs and Focaliurs: thepreselllalionJCOt ~i µ' roV'tat. Oberseazungen derTheokritzitat.enachBeclcby (1975). SapphoF 211 LP und MenanderF 258 KTh. Dazu Lefkowitz (1981: 37; 1973: 116), femer-mit weit.ercrLitcratur---Gutzwiller(1991: 253 Anm. 82). Gow im Kommentarzu 3.25 l3ai1:av(1950: 2.69}:"his proposal to strip before drowning himself is no doubt intentionallynaive."

206

STANZEL

Zicgcnhinen mit sciner Drohung nicht mchr ganz so cmst ist, cine Interpretation, die sich auch angcsichts der deszendenten Linic der Suiziddrohungcn anbictet Diesc zwcitc Selbstmorddrohung ist auch und gerade dcshalb so intcrcssant, wcil 3.35 cine aufflillige Ahnlichkeit mit einem Verspaar aus dem fiinften Gedicht aufwcisL In dcr ausgesprochen aggressiv gefilhrten Anfangsauscinandcrsctzung zwischcn dem Ziegenhirten Komatas und dem Schafhirten Lakon geht es um gegcnseitigc Diebstahlsvorwiirfe: Lakon soil Komatas ein Fell (vaicoc;,5.2), dieser wiederum jcncm cine Syrinx gestohlen haben. In den Verscn 14-6 beteuen Lakon seine Unschuld:

OUµaU'tOV'tOVnava 'tOVa'K't\OV.OU't£ ye Aaicmv -rav /jafrav a1riova'0 Kw.a18iooc;· i\ KaTa njva; 'tcic;xi-tpac;, ci>v8po>1t£, µavei.c;eic;Kpa.81vtilo{µav. 'Nein, beim Pan da vom Strand hOchst.selbst. der Sohn dcr Kalaithis Lakon hat niemalsden Pelz dir geraubt. Da will ich doch eher Mensch, von hier diescm Felsen in den Krathis mich Slilrzcn vor Wahnsinn.'

Hier dient der Bekriiftigung der Unschuldsbeteuerung cine Sclbstvcrfluchung: Sollte er lilgen, will er sich in Raserei in den Krathis stilrzcn. µaveic; dcutet darauf hin, da8 auch Lakon an den Liebestod denkt. 6 Er nimmt, solltc er des Diebstahls und der Lilgc ilberfilhrt werden, sogar in Kauf, daB er sich in Liebesraserei in den Tod stilrzt. Dadurch win1 seine Versicherung, unschuldig zu sein, umso glaubwurdiger, da er sich im Verlauf des Agons gcrade auch in Liebesdingen als sehr selbstbewuBt erweist Der Eingang der Verse 3.25 (tav ~ahav axo~uc;) und 5.15 ('tav ~ai'tav axrooo') ist fast identisch, so daB der Bezug beider Stellen aufeinander mehr als deutlich ist. Es werden aber unterschiedlichc Vorgiinge beschricben: im dritten Gedicht das auffiillige Ablcgen des Hirtengewands vor dem Sprung vom Fclscn ins Meer, im fiinftcn dcr Diebstahl dessclben, der durch die Wahl des Verbums besonders drastisch wirkt: Lakon soil seinem Hirtenkollegcn das Gewand Getzt ~aitav) buchstliblich vom Leib gcstohlen haben. Darilber hinaus wird der Sprung in den Tod in beiden Fllllcn mit demselben Verbum beschrieben. Demnach nimmt Theokrit ohne Zweifel in dem cincn Gedicht auf dasandere Bezug und ziticrt sich damit sclbst Freilich crhebt sich damit auch die Frage, welches Gedicht das andere ziticn. Einc Antwort darauf ist nicht ganz einfach, zumal beide Gedichte, dasdritte wie dasfiinftc, auch im Hinblick auf die Zcit ihrer Entstehung sehr eng beieinanderzuliegen schcinen. 7 Im 6

7

Gows Vermutung (1950: 2.98): "presumably, as I says, by the intervention of Pan, the inspirer of Panic tenors" filhrt hier eher auf die falsche Fllhrte. Zur Liebesraserei etwa Theoc.2.82, 3.42 (dam auch untcn S. 219-21), 11.11. Die Frage nach dem zeitlichen Verhaltnis der einzelnen Theokritgedichte zueinander sacllt sich im Zuge der Analyse der Selbslzitat.eimmer wieder. Zur relativen Chronologie der dorischenGc:dichtc (dazu Gow 1950: 1.xxx), denen in diesem Zusammenhang unser Hauptinteresse gilt, vgl. vor allcm Di Benedetto (1956), der die Abweichungen von den metrischen Gepflogenheiten des Kallimachos unddie Anzahl der Dorismen in den einzelncn Gedichten statistisch untersucht undseineErgebnisse,

SELBSTZITA1E

207

mitten Gcdicht wiro cine geschlossene Handlungsfolge beschrieben, irn ftinften geht es um verschiedene Handlungen, die nur kausal odcr konditional miteinander verlmiipft sind. Wenn wir von der durch die Untersuchung Di Benedettos nahegelegten Prioritlit des fUnften Gedichts ausgehen, kOnnten wir beim dritten Gedicht auch von einem verdichtendcn Zitat sprechen.B

2 Die intertcxtuelle Struktur der Eidyllia Theokrits Das seiner Anschaulichkeit wegen an den Anfang gestellte Beispiel 1.eigt,da8Theokrit in zwei verschiedenen Gedichten die gleiche Formulierung verwendet, damit zum Teil aber andcre Inhalte verbindet. Da aber das Zitat eindeutig als solches marlden ist, verweisen beide Stellen aufeinander. Die beschriebene An des Selbstzitats erinnen auch an die Art und Weise, wie Theokrit gelegentlich auf das homerische Epos anspielt upd dieses zitien. In der gleichen Weise, wie er beispielsweise an einer Stelle des zweiten Gcdicht die llias zitien,9 verweist er irn 'Komos' auf ein anderes Gedicht aus seiner Feder. Oberblickt man das gesamte CEuvrcTheokrits, zcigt sich, da8er in der beschriebenen expliziten Weise sich selbst fast hliufiger zitien als etwa Homer.1° Das ausfUhrlicb besprochene Beispiel aus dem dritten und flinften Gedicht ist keineswegs ein Einl.Clfall, sondem es entspricht einem an vielen Stellen vomehmlich der mimischen Gcdichte zu beobachtendcn Verfahren des alexandrinischen Dichters, da8er in vcrschiedenen Gedichten den gleichen Vers oder eine ganz lihnliche Formulierung gebraucht. Der formelhaft verwendcte Vers erhlilt irn neuen Kontext eine neue Bedeutung.

8 9

10

weil sich die Reihenfolgeder Gedichte in bciden Flllen wcitgchcnd deckt, chronologischgedcutet hat. Gutzwiller(I 991: 10~) hat wicder auf den insgesamtehcr unbeachtctgebliebcncnAufsatt Di Bencdeuoshingewiesenunddie Chronologieder Gedichtcmit ihrer Annahmedcr Entwictlung cincs bcsonderen poetologischen Konzepts in Verbindung gcbrachL In bciden Lisren Di Bcnedcttos erscheint das filnfte kun vor dcm dritten Eidyllion. Doch ist GewIBhcitin diescm Fall kaum zu crlangcn. Zur Parallele auch Segal (1981: 191), dcr allerdings Ober die Fcststellung eincr wcchelscitigcn Beziehungnicht hinauskommL In ihrcm BerichtkilndigtSimailhaDclphis' Rede mit den folgendenVcrsen an (2.112-3): 1eaiµ.' foi.80>V iocno~ bti. x8ovoc;oµ.µ.ata~m; ttt't' £It\ICA.Lvri;pl mi. e:t6µtv~~to µ.u8ov. Die Junktur iiti. x0ovoc;oµ.µma itci~m;erinncn an die Beschrcibungdes RedncrsOdysseusdurch Antenor(II. 3.21fr9). Vergleichbarware etwa auchThcoc. 15.11-3 (angcspieltist wohlvor allcm auf II. 22.183-5). In der doch schr umfangrcichenForschungslitcraturzum Problem dcr Intcrtextualitll wurdcdcrbier untcrsuchte spezielle Fall einer intertcxtucllen Struktur wcniger beachtct. Dcnnoch ist gcrade im Hinblickauf die Abgrenzungvom Ziw instruktivPlett (1985).

208

STANZEL

DaB es in Theokrits Gedichtcn solchc Wicdcrholungcn fast ganzcr Verse hiufiger gibt. ist beispiclswcisc auch von Gow ehcr ncbenbei beobachtet wordcn,11 nachdcm im vergangencn Jahrhundcrt schon darauf hingewiesen warden war.12 Doch erhebt sich die Frage, ob die Funktion solcher Zitate angemessen erkannt ist, wenn man darin ein Verfahren sieht. fiir das man den Dichtcr cntschuldigen zu milssen glaubt. da er so fast aus Bcquemlichkeitverfahrc oder zwnindest aufgrund einer gewissen Okonomie derpoetischcn Krlifte. So zieht etwa Wendel, der Herausgeber der Theokritscholicn, eine Parallcle zum Gcbrauch der bukolischen Namen, denen sein Hauptinteresse gilt, und er:ldlrt das Phllnomen aus der fiir ihn gcradezu sprichwHrtlichenMglegentia Theokrits: ehcr zufilllig, keineswegs absichtlich bediene er sich dieser Methodc; indes habe er sich solchc Nachllssigkeiten leisten kOnncn,weil er seine Gcdichte einzcln publizien habe. 13 Obwohl Gercke ( 1887: 617), der bereits vor Wendel auf das Phllnomcn hingewiesen hat, nicht so weit gcgangcn ist, scheint mir auch die von ihm ins Auge gefa8tc Alternative symptomatisch zu sein: er wirft die Frage auf, ob solche Anlehnungen ..auf Annuth des Gcistes odcr auf der Sucht, sich in der Beschrllnkung als Meister zu zcigcn", beruhen. In ncuerer 2.eit hat vor allcm G. Lawall auf die Selbstzitate aufmcrksam gcmachL14 Ich glaube aber, da8 seine Analyse letztlich unzureichend ist. nicht nur weil sic viel zu swnmarisch ist. sondern vor allem weil Lawall sie ganz in den Dienst der Hauptthcse seines Buches stellt. der Annahme einer koischen Gedichtsammlung Theolcrits,die die Gcdichte 1-7 in unscrcr heutigen Uhlung enthaltcn habcn soil. Ich m6chte auf dem von Lawall cingcscblagencn Wcg ein angemesseneres Verstllndnisder Sclbtzitate vorschlagcn: in diesen Anlchnungen haben wir in der Tat nicht reinc, vicllcicht nicht einmal beabsichtigte Wicdcrholungen, sondern bewuBteSelbstzitate zu sehcn und dies als besondere poetische Tcchnik Theokrits zu wilrdigcn: sie zeugcn von eincr Vinuositat und Beherrschung der dichtcrischcn Sprachc und crwcisen sich als bcsonderes poctisches Mittel, um einc Vcrbindung zwischen zwci Gcdichten herzustellen und dicse miteinander in Beziehung zu setzcn. Filr die Annahmc, daB solchc Verswicdcrholungendie intertextuellc Struktur der Gedichte betreffen, spricht vor allem die Beobachtung,da8 Theokrit dicses Mittel stets nur einmal einsetzt, so daBder Bezug immer eindeutig ist. Damit kommt dicse spczifische Technik gcradc in Anbetracht des doch recht geringen Umfangs des CEuvresThcokrits zu ihrer spezifischcn Bcdcutung. Freilich stoBenwir auch in den nicht aus der Feder Theokrits stammenden Gcdichten des Corpus Theocriteum (= Cl) gelcgcntlich auf Verse aus den echten Gcdichten oderauf

11 12 13

14

Gow (1950: 2.23 Anm. 2) bietet zu Theoc. 1.106 (dazu unten S. 213) eine--allerdings keineswegs vollstandige-1.iste der 'repetilions'. Gen:ke (1887) hat das Phanomen behandelt und bietet 616 Anm. 3 einen recht wnfassenden Kalalog derSelbstzitateim AnschluBan Fritsche-Hiller.Danach Wendel (1901: 3-4). Wendels Bemerkungilberdas VorkommenderselbenNamen in verschiedenenGedicluen(1901: 3-4): "haec Theocrili ut ita dicam neglegenlia in nominibus tractandis eo optimedeclaratur,quodcannina singula emisit" dfirfenwir auch auf die Verswiederholungenbeziehen, von dencnzuvordie Rede ist: "mull.islocis casu factumest, ut iisdem verbis poeta utcrctur." Lawall (1967: 111 mit Anm. 38-41 ). Dort auch der Terminus 'conscious self-quotations'.

SELBSTZITA TE

209

Theokritrcminiszcnzcn. Dabei handclt cs sich jcdoch kaum um cincn Reflex dicscr besonderen Tcchnik Thcokrits, die ein splitercr bukolischer Dichter ctwa nachzuahmen besttebt gcwcscn wlirc, sondem um cine gllngige dichtcrische Praxis in der Nachfolgc vor allcm des 'Bukolikcrs' ThcokriLEin Dichter, der sich in die bukolischc Tradition zu stellcn gcdcnkt, wirci immer wicder Versc scines Vorbildes ilbemehmcn. An einem bekannten Beispicl aus dem sicherlich unechtcn Gcdicht 27 des CT, desscn Anfangsvcrse nicht ilberlicfcrt sind, wird auch der Untcrschied zu den Sclbstzitatcn deudich: Der Hirt Daphnis will cincn KuB des von ihm umworbenen M:idchcns erhaschcn. cpilaµa lqouo\v antwortet der Vcrliebtc mit cincm Auf ihren Einwand icivov Theokritzitat aus dem 'Komos' und begrilndet damit scinen Stolz auf den rclativcn Erfolg: eat\ mi. iv icevroio\cpiA.aµaow t£P'lfl~ (27.4 = 3.20).15 Mit dem fast gnomischen Vcrs vcrleiht der crfolglosc Zicgcnhin im dritten Gedicht sciner Bitte um cinen KuB der spr6den Amaryllis Nachdruck. Zwar ilbernimmt, wie wir noch schen wcrden, auch Theokrit selbst gelegentlich ganze Verse aus einem frilheren Gcdicht, doch erschcint der Vcrs dann stets in einem anderen Kontext. AuBerdem gewinnt man bei diesem Beispiel fast den Eindruck, daB der splitcrc bukolischc Dichtcr Theokrit als Autoritlit fur die Scntcnz in Anspruch nchmen will.16 lnsgcsamt liegt sicherlich auch der Vergleich mit homcrischcn Formel- und ltcrataversen nahe. In der Tat stoBt man in den mythologischen Gedichtcn, in dencn sich der alcxandrinischc Dichtcr im cngeren Rahmen der epischen Tradition bewegt, auf cine allerdings ehcr geringe Zahl von Beispielen fur solche Verse bci Theokrit. Durch einen Blick darauf werden auch die U nterschicde zu den Selbstzitaten deutlich. oic\epci~1tAa.taviatou~ aus dcm Hymnos an die Dioskuren Die Wendung 17 (22.76) ist auch im Epithalamion fUr Helena, Theoc. 18, eincm Gcdicht, das manobgleich in dorischem Dialekt verfaBt-doch den mythologischen Stiicken zurcchnen solltc, greifbar. Dort wirci die formelhaftc Verbindung leicht variiert, und Theokrit nimmt darilber hinaus cine Fonnulierung aus einem der voraufgchenden Verse auf. 18

to

cx~ro

uxo

1.S

16

17 18

Zwn 'hyperdorism' qn.Aaµaaw vgl. Gow zu 27.4 (1950: 2.486). Es scheint mir allerdings eher fraglich,hierineinen Versuchzu sehen, das Vorbildnoch zu ilbertrumpfen. Ahnliches gilt etwa auch filr Theoc. 8.72-3 [zum Gedicht als Zeugnis filr die Sentimentalisierung der Bukolik nach Theolcritund damit zum spezifischenUnierschieddes Eidyllion zu den 'Bu.kolika' Thcokrits Schmidt (1987: 105-28)], obwohl hier kein ganzer Vers aufgenommenisc Kitµ' £'ICtOIcxvtpCll v·uc;) entsprechcn sich jedenfalls auch insofcm, als das cine zur Beschreibung des bedaucmswerten Zustands der Vcrliebtcn gcnauso gcsucht ist wie das gcwagtcBild zur Ridikiilisierung der Homerepigonen. Das Bestreben, es in der Dichtung mit Homer aufzunehmcnund ihm glcichkommenzu wollen, ist genauso vcrgeblich wic die Bcmiihung der beiden Vcrliebtenum dieselbc Frau. Im gleichen Zusammenhangsagt Simichidas,daBer denen, die ihm vcrsichem, er sei Mola6t:vtµt:o8t:,

we; to

1CCX't(j)OV at. tt: µ-upt1Cat.

'Ksch, van Olbawn da weg, ihr Ziegen! Weidet da drQben, wo am ragenden Hangdie Tamarislcensich finden!•

5.101 begcgnet ohnc jcde Variation in der Eingangsszcnc des ersten Gcdichtes: Thyrsis will den dort namcnlos blcibenden Ziegcnhirtcn dazu vcranlassen, sich bci ihm nicderzulasscnund die Syrinx zu spielen (1.12-4):

lftc; 1toti tav N-uµq,av,>.ftc;,ai1t6>.t:.tt:'i6t: 1ea8i;ac;, we; to 1CCX'tpe6' roe; xcii..tvoiicci.6'citrilv8ov £"fVV

ai>toc;Elt' citovoc;1Ctl't£'tUIC£'tO c,unofooac; IC'tA..

STANZEL

220

Thcokrit ist auch an dieser zcntralen Stelle des Gedichts daran gelegen, die Nlhe Simaithas zum liebeskranken Kyklopen noch einmal explizit hervorzuheben. Auch sic wini in llhnlicher Weise wie jener schlic8lich zur Erkcnntnis Uber das Wesen des Gelicbtcn kommen. Geradc durch die Zitatc und Anspielungen auf das frilherc Gedicht macbt Theokrit darauf aufmerksam, da8 Simaitha hier cine llhnlichc Entwicklung wic Polyphcm durchlluft. So werdcn beide Gedichtc recht eng aneinandcrgcbundcn. Die intertextuelle Struktur von 2.82 ist insofem kompliziertcr als in den bislang bet:rachtctcn Fallen, als hier nicht our ein andcrcs Gedicht aus dcr Feder Theokrits in den Blick kommt, sondem auch das homerische Vorbild ftlr beide Theokritverse, cine Passage aus dcr Alo; ci1t«'t11 (II. 14.293-6):

WE6£ V8PM1lY£PCt« ~· tb, 6' WEV, µw e~ ,ruavci(; cppiva~ciµ.cpe1CCXA.u'lf£V otov &te xpii>t6vxep eµlayea9Ttv«plAO'tTltl. ei; £UVTJV cpoltwvte,cpv..ou~ lit8ovte toKi\a~.

°"

'Und cs sah sie der WolkensammlerZeus. Und a1ser sie sah, da umhOllaeihm Verlangen die dichten Sinne, So wie dama1s,a1ssie zum erstenmal sich vereinten in Liebe, Zwn Lager eilend, vcrbolgen\IOI' den eigenen Eltrm. • (()bersclZIDlgSchadewaldt)

Daneben enthiilt dieser Vers aber auch cine Anspielung auf die mythologischc Einlage des Ziegenhirten im dritten Gedicht, der als erstes Beispiel fiir einen erfolgrcichcn Liebeswerber Hippomenes anfilhrt, der bei der unbezwingbar scheincnden Atalantc reilssierte (3.40-2):

'lx1toµ£V11;, OlCa611 't(XV xap8ivov t18w ya.µal, µil' iv xepalv EAWV 6p6µov cxvuev·a.6' 'AtaA.civta ~ WEV, ~ eµaV17, ~ ~ J3a8i>v ID.at' tp(l)ta. •A1sHippomeneseinst die Jungfrau zur Hochzeit begehrte, nahm er Apfel zur Hand und kam so ans Ziel. Atalanre sah's und vemarne sich jlh. Gleich versank sie im Abgnmd der Liebe.·

Filr Theokrits Version des Atalante-Mythos ist cine Vorstcllung relevant, die bereits in den unter Hesiods Namen iiberlieferten Ehoitn cine Rolle spielt: Es ist nicht nur an cine ganz konkret den Lauf hemmende Wirkung der Apfel gedacbt, wenn Hippomcncs sic beim Wenlauf fallen Iii&; vielmehr kommt den Apfeln als Symbol dcr Liebe darilber binaus cine Zauberkraft zu, die Atalante in Liebeswahnsinn stilrzt. 37 Da8 die Iliasverse im Hintergrund stchen, kann man kaum bestreitcn, doch macht der genauere Vergleich der Theokritverse deutlich, da8 der Dichter im zweitcn Gedicbt auch

37

Zu den verschicdenenVersionendes Mythos Lugauec(1967: 90-3) und Gauly (1992: 445).

SELBSTZITAlE

221

sich selbst zitiert, da die fraglichen Verse sich gerade durch Gemeinsamkeiten in der sprachlichen Gestaltung von den Vorbildversen in der llias unterscheiden. Bei Simaitha kann man die gleichen Symptome diagnostizieren wie bei der der Liebe gfinzlich abhold scheinenden Atalante. 1hr ergeht es in dieser Situation in keiner Weise anders als der mythischen Atalante-und auch nicht anders als Z.Cusselbst Simaitha, die sich in ihrem Zauberlied mit den groBen Zauberinnen des Mythos, Medea und Kirke, auf eine Stufe stellt, 38wird wie Atalante von der µavia der Liebe ergriffen. In dieser Hinsicht ist ein Unterschied zwischen Simaitha, Atalante und l.eus nicht erkennbar. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird eine Interpretation, die auf eine ironische Distanzierung des Dichters von Alltagsgestalten wie Simaitha abhebt, Uber dercn Liebesleid er sich ironisch hinwegsctzt, problematisch. 39 SchlieBlich ist im Zusammenhang mit den Selbstzitaten noch auf cine interessante Stelle einzugehen: Im Verlauf der Rekapitulation ihrer Liebe zu Delphis kommt Simaitha auch auf seinen ersten Besuch bei ihr zu sprechen, als er der durch die Liebesbotin Thestylis iibermittelten Einladung Folge leistete. Sehr zuriickhaltend beschreibt sie hier ihre Verftihrung durch Delphis (2.140-1):

' taxu' x~ '., £11:l ' 1t£1tVEU. ytv6µ£8', OU1C ITO. AM. ITO. AM.

(22.54-74)

The passage has not received much attention, perhaps because critics have hurried on to focus on the 'problems' in the later pans of the poem. Gow (on 55-74) saw how unusual the lines were: ''The ensuing dialogue in stichomythia is without parallel elsewhere in epic narrative. At Opp. Cyn. l.20ff. there is an absurd dialogue in distichs between Oppian and Artemis which possibly suggests that dialogue interruptions of the kind were less rare than now appears". The exchange gets very brief treatment in the standard work on stichomythy: "In the twenty-second, the Hymn to the Dioscoridae, we find a more natural and so more spirited quality in the dialogue between Polydeuces and Amycus" (Hancock: 1917: 3) Hutchinson observes that the poem "exhibits stichomythia of the most saliently tragic type (54 ff.). Not only is each utterance kept strictly to one line, but the whole conduct of the dialogue is very close to Euripides in particular'' . 19 When we think of stichomythy, we tend to think of agonistic contexts, and most readily, as do Hutchinson and others, of tragedy, and of Euripidean tragedy in particular. We could also think of comedy. But stichomythy is clearly a very mobile fonn which is not tied in origin or potential manifestation to any genre, and there seems little point. prima facie, in claiming that Euripides or any other tragedian is in Theocritus' mind as be composed these lines, or that the critical response would be one that would look primarily to tragedy. Surely it makes more sense to tum to a closer 'source', namely Theocritean bucolic. Srichomythia may be 'unparalleled in epic narrative', but there are parallels closer to home than a Syrian writing under Caracalla and going by the name 'Oppian'. Our need for the maintenance of generic compartments (a phenomenon demonstrably alien to Theocritus) has perhaps prevented us from looking away from hymn, narrative and tragedy-from looking ro the 'bucolics'.

18 19

The text of this line is that which I suggest in Thomas (1993), though the conjecture is by nomeans SW'C. The iransmiucd text (oµµata S' op8ci)gives no sense. Huu:hinson (1988: 164 and n.34), where he claims, with reference to Kroll and Rossi, •it seems justified to ralk here of 'contamination of genres.·•

GENRE TIIROUGH INTERTEXTUALITY

235

Idylls 4, 5 and 8 (this latter perhaps not of Theocritus) all contain amocbcan and to some degree agonistic passages. Only 4 approaches 22 in the sense of having true stichomythy,with alternation each line:

BATTOI Ei1ti µot, ooKopuowv, tivoc; ai. J36t:;;ii pa~u..ci>voa; KOPY~ON ouic, a.U' Aiycovoc;·[36oic£tv6i µot airt~ Wc; ica1COv E'Opov. MOV'tlveµE08aL KO. ii µav 0EV..atai YE,ical OUICt'tl

a

(4.1-14)

Battus then delivers two lines, Corydon responds with three, and so on. When we look at this opening next to Polydeuces' discussion with Amycus, various parallels emerge: for instance Battus begins with a question (tivoc; ai. J36t:;;)as did Polydeuces (tiv~ ppo-toi, &v 06£ xc.opoc;;).What is striking is that the exchange between Battus and Corydon concerns the absence of Aegon, a cowherd who is also a boxer! And a boxer who has gone off with one 'Milo' to the Olympic games. Gow (1950: ad loc) denies that this Milo can be the famous sixth-century boxer from Croton (almost surely the scene of the poem), but it seems to me we have left any real world and have entered into one where time, myth and history are blurred into a scene which is clearly related not only to a special type of fiction through Milon, but also to the only other strict stichomythy in Theocritus, the pre-fight exchange between Polydeuces and Amycus in Theoc. 22. The connection between the two poems is confirmed by the exchange at 4.11, when Battus, like Polydeuces initiator of the stichomythyin 22, responds to Corydon's claim that Aegon is the equal of Heracles with a certain sarcasm: BA.

id,µ' ecpa8'

a µatTJp TioA.U0EUICEO1CalVl(l)OEV'to; ataptTlpOvat6µa TI6vtO'U,

8£i3p'U1Ca; £iaacpi1Cav£ 8£ii>vq,O..ati1CVaq,epo'Uaa. cipaconnects to what precedes, but otherwise the nmative very much resembles the beginningof other epyllia: (Cat 64.1) Peliacoquondamprognataeverticepinus ... 22 Castorand Polydeucesdisembarkand make their way inland, only to find themselves in the midst of a locus amoenusto rival the most idyllic in Thcocritean(or other) pastoral: d>pov6' ciivaov 1CP11VTtV u1toAtaa6.6l KetP'(I u6atl 1t£JtA.T18'U'iav «ICTIPO.tq>· ai 6' u1tiv£p8e A.allal 1Cp'Uat6.llcp ti6' apyupq>iv6MAOV't0 £ICl}u8ou· U'lf11Aa1 6£ Jt£qrt)IC£resenwional

TYPE OF RELATIONSHIP semanticrelationsbetween the siaresof affairs in the rq,resentcdworkl

presenlational

functionalrelationsbetween discourseunilS

inieractional

the relationof a discourse unit ro ilS non-verbal. communicalive envirmment

SOMEEXAMPLES

'iva..ti. i:R{ cillci, ICU\ YE, lllf>, icai

ouv,vuv&i

Particles can be described and subcategorised in terms of the discourse levels at which they function. In other words, the discourse function of particles is stated in terms of the discourse level they are primarily concerned with. The representationallevel of discourse is concerned with the representation of some (real or imaginary) world. Particles which function at this level of discourse signal relations among the entities or states of affairs that make up the represented world. In Greekone may think of subordinating conjunctions like £i ('ir), 'iva ('in order that'); when used as coordinators Greek ciUa. and ica{, too, may be said to be primarily representational particles. Also the so-called scope-particlesbelong to this group. Scope particles may be defined as particles that mark the scope of (part of) the utterance in the sense that they define its exact limits, i.e. they specify to whom/to what/in which case etc. the utterance applies. This rough characterisation may be said to hold for ye Oimiting the applicability of y' ix8a;'at least till the utterance to at least the item governed by ye, e.g. Thcoc. 2.144 ,:o yesterday'), post-homeric n:ep (limiting the applicability of the utterance to precisely and exclusively the item governed by n:ep, cf. ai 1tepin Thcoc. 8.37 'exclusively in the case that') and for adverbial icai ('also', extending the scope of the utterance to also the item 11 governed by icai). Presentationalparticles concern the question how the represented world is presented or staged by the language user. They, for instance, signal how a discourse unit is functionally related to another discourse unit (in terms of central and less central information units, explanator,• or elaborating discourse units, etc.). Or they help the addressee to keep track of where he is in the organisation of a monological stretch of discourse in that they point to the functional links or boundaries between the various information units. As such they serve to indicate digressions, resumptions, conclusions, discourse topic shifts, and so on. A Greek example is, for instance, oiv, which marks a 'new step' in the argumentation or narration-a step, however, which is in some way logically connected to the preceding context, for instance, as a new point in the line of reasoning, or as a conclusion, or as a return to the main sequence of the discourse after 11

See Sicking (1986); Waldcer(1994: 301-42).

DISCOURSEFUNCTIONOF PARTICLES

251

some side sequence such as a parenthesis or a comparison; sometimes 6i also signals a return to the main sequence (cf. Theoc. 5.104 with Gow ad Joe.), especially in the combination 6i (used after countcrfactual conditionals or comparisons to return to the real world/situation, cf. Thcoc. 1.90). The inzeractionallevel accounts for the fact that every coherent stretch of discourse is integrated into a specific interactional situation. Particles primarily functioning at this level may pcnain to the involvement of the discourse participants (speaker - addressee, narrator reader) in the communicative situation, or to their commitment to the message being exchanged; they may modify or specify the illocutionary intention, or indicate the tumtaking system in a conversation. At this interactional level function the so-called modal/attitudinal particles. 12 These specify the attitude of the speaker with regard to the (truth of the) proposition and the supposed knowledge, expectations etc. of the addressee, cf. in Greek e.g. iipa ('surprisingly'; the speaker signalling his interest/surprise, in order to anticipate or elicit a possible reaction of surprise on the part of the addressee), mi('look, bow interesting'; the speaker drawing the addressee's attention), 1tou ('perhaps'; the speaker signalling his doubt and thus agreeing beforehand with any possible doubt on the part of the addressee), tot ('I tell you'; the speaker signalling that the proposition is interesting for the addressee).

vuv

3 µav/µnv in Theocritus 13

Let us now consider µciv/µfw in Theocritus and try to describe its primary discourse function in accordance with the theoretical outlines sketched above. Denniston (19542: 329) argues: (4)

"µnv fulfils three functions: (1) as an emphatic particle: (2) as an adversative connecting particle: (3) as a progressive connecting particle."

The same three categories are found in the commentaries of Gow, Dover and Cholmeley. To take Gow as an example, he explicitly speaks of emphasising µav (14.7), adversative µciv (5.77; 8.74; 10.37), µciv as a mark of progression or transition (27.27). Nowhere is it explained how these three functions of µciv/µnvarc interrelated. It is only observed that (1), µnv as an emphatic particle, is the earliest use; since in Homer this seems indeed the only (or nearly the only) use, the connective use of µciv/µriv being nearly non-existent 12 13

Cf. Sicking (1986): Sicking-VanOphuijsen(1993): Wakker (1994: 307, 343-64). There are (in the text of Gow) 35 instancesof µcxv(mainly in the bucolic poems), 4 of µ,iv (all in the epic poems). Note that µiv often occurs as a varia lectio (all in all there arc 11 cases in which bothµcxv and µiv occur in the mss.•see Gow [ 19522: ad 3.27). Gow has chosen µiv in casesof µiv ... ai (4 times):in all othercaseswhere there is no such correspondencehe has preferred µav.I have acceptedhis choice).

WAKKER

252

(Denniston 329, 334; LfgrE s.v. µav/µfiv), I agree with this observation. but I have my doubts about the appropriateness of the tenn 'emphatic'. What is exactly meant by this tenn? In which respect docs emphatic µfiv differ from other particles, the main function of which is said to be emphasis ('Y£,&;, µiv)? Note in this respect Denniston 's own iemark (330) (5)

"It is difficult to grasp the exact difference in sense between µrtv and the far commoner&;."

The functional framework sketched above allows for a description that is more precise. The so-called emphatic µav is best described, in my opinion, as an attitudinal particle that primarily functions at the interactional level of discourse. In using µav the speaker expresses his/her positive commitment to the truth of the proposition presented; he/she indicates that he/she as it were personally guarantees the truth of the proposition: 'in truth', 'really'. This insisting on the truth of the proposition is not a mere sign of 'emphasis'; rather the speaker in this way anticipates a possible reaction of disbelief on the part of the 14 addressee, cf.

(6)

KO. AA.

iiollnc;, M6pacov,x11cpa£vetat·i\ ouxl ~ap'(ta8eu; ICTl'YCO µcxvICVl~(I), M6pacov,·ttva· ic:alTU0£ A.£6aaei;.

Comaras: 'Somebody's losing his temperalready. Morson•ordid you miss it?' Lacon:'In truth. I am chafing someonetoo, Morson,and you see it' (5.120-2)

In (6), in view of Comatas's statement in 120, the addressee, Morson, might, in I.aeon's opinion, easily disbelieve his own claim; to anticipate such a reaction of disbelief Lacon adds beforehand µa.v ('in truth'), thus making it difficult for the addressee simply not to believe him. Generally speaking, µav is often used in clauses which express the contrary of what the addressee might either (1) suppose or (2) wish, cf. (7), which occurs in the enumeration of animals which are ill-looking.

(7)

BA. A£Jttoc;µav xci>taupoc; o ,rupp{voc;... I 2vvl KO. ic:alµav £c;atoµa)..1µvov V..auvetat ~ t£ ta 4>UGIC(I) Battus:'Truly, the bull's thin too• theruddyone.' Corydon: 'And really the bull is driven 10 the sailings.and 10 Physcus's' (4.20-3)

The first µav in 4.20, which introduces a new item in the enumeration of ill-looking animals, could be labelled 'progressive' (to this point I will come back below), but it may certainly also be attributed an attitudinal value. Banus explicitly signals the truth of bis

14

For a comparabledescriptionsee Sicking( 1986: 132); Sicking-Van Ophuijscn ( 1993: 54-5).

DISCOURSE FUNCTION OF PARTICLES

253

proposition, since he clearly expresses the contrary of what his addressee Corydon wishes to be true. With the second µav in 23 Corydon insists on the truth of his words in order to contradict beforehand the possible conclusion Battus could draw from what he sees, i.e. 15 that Corydon is neglecting the bull. By marking the truth of the proposition the speaker makes it vinually impossible for the addressee not to believe him (unless, of course, the addressee would explicitly say 'I do not believe you•, which, however, in normal conversation is rather blunt and does not often occur). Given this semantic value it is not surprising that µciv typically occurs in contexts where there is conversational interaction between a speaker and an addressee, i.e. in dialogical contexts, and within these contexts in declarative clauses, i.e. clauses that make an assertion, which means that the speaker commits himself to the truth of the 16 proposition. The above examples, then, are illustrative of the typical use of µav. 17 In such contexts five times µcivis combined with which may be characterised as an affirmative attitudinal particle, too; with a speaker expresses beforehand that his statement is infaith/really true (whether or not the addressee will think this undesirable or unbelievable). The combination of the two nearly synonymous particles thus affirms the truth of a proposition in a strong way and makes the declarative have the value of a strong assurance.The reason for such a strong assurance is, again, often that the speaker believes his declarative to be in contrast with what the addressee might suppose or wish on the basis of what has been said before, cf. (8)

n

(8)

AA.

n,

nµav apvaici6ac;'t£ icai.eipta 'tei6t itlCOAOV µav 6eiAaia{ YE, 1Cai.O'\llCE'tl A.WVtl viiu:a8al.

n

Battus: 'Poor beasts, it's a sorry herdsman lhey found.• Corydon: 'In failh, poor beasts indeed; and they don't care to feed any more' (4.13-4)

As µ.av often anticipates the contrary or negative reaction of the addressee it has a natural affinity with ou, cf. (11)

KO.

OUµa:v, OUtautav"(£ µciv contrasts with 1:ot£. Likewise in (16) nryacontrasts with eyw. The particle 'YEis often used to focus the attentionon a term that is 21 used in an (implicit or explicit) contrast (cf. Denniston 115-9;Wakkcr 1994: 308-10). If we assume that ya has this function here, we have either a correspondence eym µev ... tuya (for which compare the contrast tm µev ... tfiY'/'in 22.138) or, just as in (15), a correspondenceµi:v ... µav.In the latter case much the same holds good as for (15). Since a contrasting state of affairs is presented a nuance of adversativity is inherently present; µciv could be said to mark this relation, but it certainly also fulfils its primary function of attitudinalparticle.The addresseein this context is evidentlynot likely to accept the truth of this statement.Mavis, as we have seen above, often added in such cases to mark the truth of the proposition explicitly. So here, again, µciv may in any case be characterised as an interactionalparticle, though it functionsperhaps as a connector as well. Thus interpreted I have taken ya µavas two independent particles, each with its own value, whereas Gow seems to attributeone single value to the particle group as a whole. All in all, we have seen that µav 'truly' has a natural affinity with statements which present informationcontrary to what the addressee might suppose on the basis of the preceding information, or, otherwise stated, information that corrects or eliminates the (implicationsof the) preceding information.This gives rise to an adversative nuance. This nuance in its tum explains the developmentof a new function of µav,viz. that of marking the relation of adversativity at the representational level of discourse. However, in Thcocritus (just as in Homer) the attributionof a pure connective adversativevalue to µav is far from being clear. In any case, in all supposed adversative examples µav has at least also its primary attitudinalvalue. A more or less similar sketch may be presented for the development of the so-called 'progressive connective function' of µav. Mav 'truly', 'really' is very appropriate in enumerationsas a marker of that item of which the speaker may expect that it will elicit the addressee's disbelief or surprise.To anticipate a possible reaction of disbelief he marlcsthe truth of what he presents with µav. We thus often find µav in a climax, cf. e.g. (17), the conclusion of a passage of praise of Helen:

21

Cf. in Theocritus I 7.137; 22.138 (explicit contrasts); 11.60. 22.59 (implicit contrasts).

258 (17)

WAKKER OUµcxv ou6t A.'Upavnc; EJtlGtatat 0>6£1Cpotilaat I ... I ci>£P'Y0l •As for the boundaries of his domain they are known 10 the busy delving men' (25.27]

Here µ11vseems simply to introduce a second group of people who live in this domain, without any sense of climax. Here we have then a case of µ11v,which functions at the presentationallevel only and could be characterisedas 'progressiveconnective'.24 As a last example I want to discuss 7.120, becauseof the difficultiesit poses. (20)

Pa.U£-riµot 'to;otO\ 'tOViµ£p0£V'ta~\A\VOV, pa.Utt'ad 'tOV;£ivov ooi>aµopo~oi>ic£Alli µ£1>. ical 6it µav QJtlO\Olt£1tai't£p0~(µav ALU: µa:\.' cett) 'wound me with your bows the lovely Philinus, wowld him, for the wretch has no pity on my friend. And look, truly riper than a pear is he' (7.118-20)

I first quote the commentaries: Dover ad loc.: "µav is connective, and ical 6ii is a 'verbal gesture' as in 5.83" (where he argues: "ical 611:This combinationof particles often serves as a verbal gesture towardswhat is spatiallyor temporallyimminent") Gow ad loc.: "JCal6it µav : I do not know another instance of these particles in conjunction.They have sometimes been understood to mean and yet, and that would give satisfactory sense-and yet Philinus is past his prime and not worth your pains. It is improbable however that, while ical 611and ical µ11vhave in most uses much the same force (DennistonGk Part 351), ical 6it µ11vshould be used in the adversative sense which belongs only to the latter. Moreover and indeed yields as good or better sense-inspire Philinus himself with an unhappy passion; and indeed he is fully of an age for one, for girls are already commenting on his waning looks ..." I make the followingtentativeobservations:

- It seems highly unlikely that µav is a connective particle here, the connection with the previous sentencebeing marked by icai. - I have argued elsewhere (Wakker 1994: 351) that the primary force of 6iiis that of an attitudinal particle which demands the addressee's special attention for the interesting proposition presented. In its primary function 6fi may be paraphrased by means of such

24

µav

Compare perhaps also 30.31. where with iµt: the speaker returns 10 his own situation after having compared this with that of Zeus and AphrodiLC.

WAKKER

260

expressions as French 'voici ·, Dutch 'let wel •, 'zie hier', English 'look, how 25 interesting' . This is not incompatible with Dover's characterisation of a 'verbal gcsttR'. • It is not necessary either to attribute adversative force to µav in this case; it functions as an anitudinal particle and insists on the truth of the statement, here probably to correct the inference someone may draw from the request to inspire some lovely (iµep6evta) person with love. For, normally one will expect the future victim to be relatively young. In this case, however, Philinus is already past his prime. This detail serves, in my opinion, to make the request all the more urgent: there is not much time left to wound Philinus with love. These observations bring me to the interpretation 'and look, truly, riper than a pear is he•. This example brings me back to Dcnniston's remark, cited in (5), about the problems I agree with him that in many passages the difference in distinguishing µav. µftv from 611. is not immediately obvious, but both particles have, in my opinion, in their primary function as attitudinal particle a semantic value of their own. A thorough comparison between the two particles falls outside the scope of this paper, but, briefly stated. one may describe both particles as follows: with 6fta speaker asks the addressee's special attention for the (interesting and important) proposition presented. When 6ft is used it is very difficult for the addressee not to pay attention to the proposition, since he/she is specifically asked to do so, cf. e.g. 1.19; 2.67; 7.29; [25.29). With µav a speaker confirms the truth of his proposition, thus making it difficult for the addressee not to believe him. Consequently, in primary function µav prefers declaratives in dialogical contexts, while 6ft is found in all types of utterance. Of course, there are also areas of overlap, e.g. in directives, where both particles come very close: they both have the effect of making the order more urgent, but express nevertheless a different nuance, cf. (21) and (22) (21)

[I bring you ten apples) 8iiam µtoc;0 m..o,mx;. cilla JCai cocppovtu:m>